refusetofight | For @messageforyou

For @messageforyou

The palace at Skyros is only a loose sketch; Achilles dreaming memory can only paint it in sparing detail after so many years. The shapes and colors describe the place as much as Achilles’ emotions: The palace itself is washed out and bland, but the sunny rocks, the glittering sea, and the endless horizon just beyond are vibrant, tantalizing with the lure of fateful heroism.

It felt like a prison after the freedom of his bright, sunny youth on Phthia and his adventures on Mount Pelion. He was bored, impatient, but respected his mother’s wishes even as he resented them.

The dream palace is hollow and quiet. Lycomedes’ table is empty. His daughters’ looms are left abandoned. Achilles imagines the real Skyros must be in the same sorry state; he left Deidamia unwed and Lycomedes had no sons to defend his meager kingdom.

Achilles walks the halls and thumbs the shells encircling his wrist. He has no dream guide this time, but he came here on his own instincts: visit a memory both he and Pyrrhus share. Eventually, he finds an abandoned lyre and settles to play in a central courtyard where plucked notes echo hauntingly between colonnades—the only sound in the palace other than the sigh of the sea.

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It's strange to think that in many ways, Pyrrhus has more life experience than his own father. He wonders what he would have thought of the world if he only spent his adult life in the same war, sitting on the same beach.

"I didn't really think of what it'd be like to be a king. Which wasn't helpful when I actually became one." Pyrrhus huffs a soft chuckle at his own foolishness, so fixated on conquering a land that he hadn't even thought of what he'd do after. "I thought it was overwhelming. All these people came to me for answers, and I just wanted to tell them to solve their own problems and call me if there was a war."

He absently rubs the happy cloud dog's belly as he considers. "It was Andromache who pushed me into leading, actually. I suppose she must have witnessed Priam's work often enough to know what it looked like."

There's a memory attached. Andromache had been pregnant with Pergamus, then. She had yelled at him, asking what the hell he'd expected when he'd gone off on this fool's errand, what had he expected being a king meant. That he'd killed their last leader, and now to take responsibility for once in his life and make sure the people don't starve come winter. He still isn't sure why she did--if she knew he wouldn't strike her while she was pregnant and took the opportunity to put him down, if she wanted to goad him into hitting her so she might miscarry, if she was sincerely disgusted by his lack of foresight, if she was trying to help in her own way...

But she'd been right. And she was the only one who had any understanding of what the duties of a king even looked like, so it was her directing his early policy with a sharp tongue and explosive arguments. He was never quite sure that he was the one with all the power in their relationship. He had the strength to keep her in one place, but she always had the power to take his personhood and crush it between her palms, especially after his mother died. Sometimes she seemed to delight in hurting him in a way only she could, and sometimes she seemed to pity him, and sometimes she seemed too tired to do anything but gravitate towards the familiar.

"The work wasn't... gratifying. Not at first. It just seemed like endless chores, and no matter what I did it seemed someone was unhappy about it. But seeing things improve over time, and knowing that it was your decision-making that made it happen? Yes, I think I've grown to find it very gratifying."

Achilles watches the memory of Andromache with keen interest. For ten years she sat behind Troy’s formidable walls, watching her husband at war. She was only a name to Achilles: Hector’s widow, his son’s prize. Pyrrhus’ memories have made her real. Her anger is palpable, her pain is hewn into her face—a face older and wiser than the Pyrrhus in the memory.

How, after losing her home and her child, she had the energy to berate Pyrrhus, he has no idea. No, that’s not quite right. Rage can keep a spirit fighting for years on end …

But he supposes he should be grateful that she educated him after a fashion—and that his son didn’t kill the woman for her persistent audacity.

“It pleases me to hear that you enjoy it,” Achilles says earnestly. “Some men have great difficulty finding purpose outside of battle. Not to mention contentment …

“Would you be happy to continue like this? Or would you prefer war and conquest?” He doesn’t want the question to sound like a trick, an excuse to judge, so he admits: “Even had I left Troy and returned home, I know I would still hunger for war. Like a beast that needs to be over-glutted before he learns that his feast makes him ill.”

There's a lot of feelings embedded in the image of Andromache. She'd been his since he was ten, she'd witnessed his worst struggles, his worst losses, bore his children. There's love there for her, in some fashion, but there's also resentment and anger and flinching shame. There are memories that refuse to be shown, refuse to present themselves, but still whisper in the crevices of Pyrrhus' mind. A memory of collapsing to sob in Andromache's lap after his mother died, and her fingers ran through his hair, and really he saw her more as a mother than an eventual lover--a memory of slapping her hard enough that her lip split, and he cringed, because he didn't mean to make her bleed, but honestly he was lucky he hadn't broken her cheek--a memory of her screaming at him, telling him that no one loved him because he was a monster, his own father didn't love him and his mother would hate him if she truly knew what he was, and Pyrrhus grabbing her by the throat and throwing her at a wall--a memory of being crippled by a headache, the world swimming, and she smashed a pot over his head, she didn't even try to leave, she just wanted to hurt him when he was vulnerable, and she almost seemed disappointed when he didn't kill her and spent the night tending the injuries she gave him and laying compresses on his head--a memory of her blank face as she sat in bed in a puddle of her own blood and afterbirth, face almost impassive as he tried to push breath into Amphialus' lungs, she'd lost too many children and she'd stopped allowing herself to care for the ones she had--the way she looked at him when he'd told her that she was free to go, that he'd give her what she needed and she could start a new life, like he was an insect and his offer of freedom meant nothing--

Pyrrhus still has never understood how Andromache feels about him, despite having her in his life since childhood. She must hate him, but he's not sure if it's only hate, and now he probably never will be. And maybe some small part of him, a part that's still a child in a battlefield, wishes that things could have been different.

But those thoughts and memories are muffled, blanketed under a thick layer of knots and noise that Pyrrhus doesn't know how to cut through and examine beneath.

"I do miss war and battle. There's nothing I feel so confident in," Pyrrhus says without a hint of shame. He doesn't see his propensity for war as something he should be ashamed of. It's a profession. A skill he was born with a natural talent for. "But conquest means either dying or winning the spoils, and then you have to manage the spoils. I can barely manage the spoils I've already won."

He doesn't want another concubine, certainly. None would be as valuable to him as Andromache, and he wouldn't want to invite the same misery she brought into his life. He doesn't want more lands to manage, nor more people to tend to, nor more honors to live up to. He's had enough of that.

Achilles has always taken love for granted: Peleus’ adoration, Thetis’ protectiveness, and Patroclus’ quiet loyalty. They wove together as sturdy threads around his life. They sacrificed so much for him and received so little in return.

By contrast, Pyrrhus’ experience with love is brittle and sharp. Wounding. Yet he’s not so scarred and thickly calloused that he doesn’t still reach for it, doesn’t still give it in his own way. To Ophelia, Molossus, the servants of his house … his long-absent father.

Achilles hums at Pyrrhus’ answer. “Wise.”

He looks out toward the shimmering dream horizon and nods in approval. “Cultivate what you have. Leave Molossus and your people a prosperous kingdom. That is a worthy goal to my eyes. One I’m positive you’ll achieve—if you haven’t already.”

Pyrrhus rests his head against his father's, watching the horizon, the comfort of the sea so close to them. "Not sure I have yet. But I think Ophelia's ideas will go a long way."

Trade and commerce do seem to be an element of a thriving, prosperous state. An element that Pyrrhus doesn't understand and doesn't think he'd be able to meaningfully learn even if he tried, but Ophelia knows how it works, and Ophelia is brimming with ideas for how best to cultivate it.

"Tell Mom that I found a lovely woman, won't you? She was so worried about no one taking care of me after she was gone." He remembers her fretting to her dying breath. As her health declined, she was ever more insistent to her father that Menelaus must deliver Hermione to Skyros for a proper wedding, but Pyrrhus was far too young for marriage despite his honors in battle and he knows his mother died afraid that Pyrrhus would be lost and alone. And he was, really, but he doesn't want her to know that. "And the woman comes with the bonus of me not having to deal with the House of Atreus again. Which is a good thing because I can't guarantee I wouldn't knock out Menelaus' teeth."

“I will, lad. The knowledge may prove a better gift than the bracelet.” Delivering the shades of her grandsons was a mixed blessing; besides the grief of their early death, Achilles could tell she was troubled for her son. He smiles and turns his head against Pyrrhus’. “Perhaps Molossus will have another sibling before long.”

The mention of Menelaus draws his face into a grimace. If he met the man again, he’d be equally moved to violence.

“It pleases me that my blood is no longer entangled with that cursed house.” Achilles finds his jaw clenching in a passing swell of anger. He and his love are dead. His son is broken. “They took far too much from us.”

He grips Pyrrhus’ arm, firm and encouraging. “Show them the son of Achilles can live well without their favor.”

Pyrrhus nods his head against his father's, closing his eyes briefly. "I will, Dad. Their house is nothing but trouble anyway. I'm glad I won't be related to the sorts of people who murder their own family so frequently."

He's hardly the sort of man who cringes in the face of violence, but his violence has always been about efficiency. Meeting a goal using the best tool available, facing off against people on opposing ends of a conflict. The murders that haunt the House of Atreus strike him as different, as profoundly distasteful, because it's all rooted in betrayal of what Pyrrhus believes to be natural duties to one's family. From Tantalus murdering his son, to Atreus and Thyestes assassinating their brother, to Atreus' murder and cannibalism of his nephews, to Thyestes' rape of his own daughter, to Agememnon's murder of Iphigenia, to the murder of Agamemnon by his own wife and then Clytemnestra's murder by her own son...

Pyrrhus makes a face. It'd likely offend Agamemnon, but Pyrrhus is honestly far more disgusted by the activities of the family of Atreus than he is by anything he's personally done.

But he doesn't have to worry about that now. He can let go of Hermione and thereby his last tie to that family with his father's blessing.

"I'd be worried if I had another son," he confesses softly. "If I'm to die soon, I don't want to leave another boy without knowing his father. But a little girl, maybe. Molossus could tend to her like a male guardian must when she's old enough, and she'd have a mother."

He imagines girl children needing their father only for practical things, like brokering marriages and deterring the violence of other men. Practical things that Molossus can give, once he's old enough. But he knows that boy children need their fathers to learn what men are supposed to be, and without their fathers they're forced on a painful journey of teaching themselves.

Achilles knows his line suffers from its own curse—Apollo made that obvious in his prophecy of abandonment and violence. No use further tangling with House Atreus’ own brutal misery.

“Mmmm. Yes, a girl would be best.” Sons risk quarrels that sow rifts in families—especially with Molossus born of a concubine and any future boy born of Pyrrhus’ chosen queen. The latter could have a stronger claim to legitimacy.

Girls can be trouble, too, he wants to caution, but immediately thinks better of it. There’s nothing to suggest he has experience with daughters. Instead, he smiles and thinks of his own hopes for Lyra: “I’ve no doubt Ophelia would raise a daughter well. Not only to weave and dance and keep a house, but to give her husband guidance and strength, as she has for you.”

Either way, Achilles hopes Pyrrhus can enjoy one more healthy birth with the woman he so clearly adores. He deserves that much before the Fates cut his thread.

"A girl with Ophelia's eyes. I'd quite like that." Pyrrhus closes his eyes and smiles at the thought. Distantly, he imagines a girl like that, walking hand in hand with Ophelia on the beach. The girl's face is indistinct, but the colors making her suggest warmth and care. Pyrrhus has always thought most on having sons, as he expects most Greeks to, but the idea of leaving behind a girl that resembles Ophelia leaves him warmer.

But time is marching on. He can't afford to spend all his time fantasizing about future children.

"Remind me of everything I need to remember when I wake up," Pyrrhus says, voice almost hushed as he tries to root through his own head. "Three bracelets for the temple of Hermes. And her son. I need to find that woman's son, the wife of the stonemason. Remind me of her name?"

He wants to grab onto the information as hard as he can. He's afraid of forgetting too much when he wakes up.

“I hope the Fates see fit to give you a sweet girl.” A daughter would be a fine gift, Achilles thinks—she could give Ophelia some comfort after Pyrrhus’ impending loss.

Dreams are difficult enough to remember—it must be all the worse for Pyrrhus and his fallible memory. He sees the anxiety in his son’s eyes and calmly takes his hand.

“Ah, yes. Pherenike of Corinth, wife of Kleon,” Achilles repeats patiently. “If the lad looks anything like his mother, he’ll have freckles and light-brown hair.”

He grips Pyrrhus’ hand tighter and recites his own promises: “And for my part, I will tell your mother about lovely Ophelia. The boys will have a reminder that you love them, and Pergamus that you regret yelling at him. Perhaps a story of Arachne for the little spider.”

"Pherenike of Corinth. Wife of Kleon, the stonemason. I have to find her son to repay the care she gave Amphialus." He repeats it under his breath a few times, his fingers twitching as if to scratch the words in air. "And I'll make three bracelets. Amphialus and Pergamus are safe. They're with their grandparents now. Mom will know I'm okay."

Pyrrhus holds tight to his father's hand, meeting the pressure with a squeeze of his own, but his form is beginning to lose form. He's getting close to wakefulness, the colors fading from the dream around them.

"Pherenike of Corinth. Wife of Kleon, the stonemason. I have to find her son. And I need to make three new bracelets."

There's distant sounds that strike as far more real than anything in the dream. The sounds of a palace waking up. Aspasia's soft footsteps outside his room, already checking to make sure everyone and everything are in their place.

Enough time has passed that for all its whims, the dream feels real and solid. For a moment, Achilles thinks the stirring sounds might come from what remains of remembered Skyros. But the sounds are too sharp and certain, like forms cutting through a thick fog.

The happy cloud startles as Pyrrhus’ begins to evaporate beneath it. It leaps onto Achilles’ solid lap and hunkers down, tail wagging in agitated surprise. Achilles doesn’t notice; he’s still clinging to the last threads of his son’s dreaming shape.

“Pyrrhus,” Achilles says hurriedly. “If nothing else, remember that I love you. I’m proud of you, lad.”

Pyrrhus opens his eyes, already fading away from the dream, pulled closer and closer to the land of the living. And in the last moments, he smiles.

He presses a quick kiss to his father's hand. "I love you too, Dad. Come back soon."

And then he's gone. In his absence, there's a moment where the world of the living is near. The smell of smoke as the kitchen roars to life. The quiet shuffle of Aspasia walking into her master's room, laying out his clothes and fresh wax tablets. There's distant giggling, the sound of Molossus waking up. He sneaked a frog into his room and doesn't know that his father only pretends not to notice.

And then those wisps are gone too. Pyrrhus is awake, and far from dreams once more.

The sea breeze scatters the last smoky tendrils of Pyrrhus’ dream self and Achilles is left alone in the empty dream of Skyros with the familiar, numb longing of homesickness. What he wouldn’t give to visit his son’s home, meet the people who have become so important to him.

The happy cloud’s tongue lapping at his fingers pulls Achilles away from his thoughts. He sighs and gives the dog a grudging smile.

“And you.” The dog’s ears perk and its head cocks when it’s addressed. It ceases its smiling panting to look comically serious for a moment. “You stay here and keep him company while he sleeps, won’t you?”

The dog blinks, considering, then sneezes and resumes excited panting before scampering up into the sketch of Lycomedes’ palace. It assumes a place on the stone steps, watchful and waiting.

“Good pup,” Achilles says with a grateful nod before stepping into the inky, black void that precedes his own wakefulness.

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