refusetofight | For @messageforyou

For @messageforyou

Thetis wings slow circles above the shore in the shape of a humble gull. Of all the many shapes she could take, this is the most unremarkable to mortals. They’re a common nuisance, curious and daring.

This isn’t the first time Thetis has watched her unexpected granddaughter play on the shore. She’s been a seal, watching from the safety of the surf, a keen-eyed osprey roosting at the top of a tree. In animal shape, her emotions are no less turbulent.

The girl’s hair shines like flax in the sun as she delights in the waves and warm sand. Thetis might as well be watching a memory: those peaceful, lazy days with her son, bookended by the pain of his conception and the grief of his death.

Every time she visits, she promises herself that this will be the last. The same as she did with Neoptolemus. But she finds herself gripped by guilt. She could have saved her grandson from the vile mortals who would use him like they used Achilles. She could have hidden him away again, perhaps this time in her father’s realm. But what would be the use? They would still find him. Neoptolemus is still mortal. He would still die.

What do the Fates have planned for this child? Lord Hermes’ divinity shines bright within her. She’ll be coveted by mortals, yes, but not as a weapon—as a beautiful lover and mother to powerful sons. Thetis knows the special agony of that life.

But for now, Lyra is a happy child, delighting in a beautiful day. Thetis pulls her wings in to stoop lower until she can hear the girl’s laughter on the breeze. Lower still and she can see her smile. Against her better judgement, the aching protest of her old wounds, she finally lights on the sand a few yards away.

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The water tastes like fresh snow melt on the highest mountain peak. The feeble stream of power the head of Mimir shared when giving Achilles guidance is now a roaring, frothing waterfall.

There are no words. This guidance isn't conscious like it was before. There's a glimpse of insight, insight into the Morrígan herself, just a chip of perspective from an entire mountain, and yet it still rushes through the knowledge with enough power to cause a headache.

She knows Achilles. She knows humans. She likes watching things grow, and humans do it so quickly and visibly. What keeps Achilles from growing? To her, it's easy to see.

Pride.

Stubbornness.

Impatience.

Shame.

Any time she's approached for a favor, it is an opportunity to cut the bonds that constrain growth, to put upon a person the pressure required to change. She will see Achilles grow, or she will see him gone from her presence without his son.

The current of knowledge eases. Hermes crouches by Achilles, resting a hand on his back, wings pinned tight to his skull. "Brain still intact, darling?"

He'd like to fuss more, but he's constantly conscious of the company they're in and the risk of making it clear just how much he cares for Achilles.

As the water’s chill disperses into his chest, the revelations rush in. They tumble over one another like a frothing cataract before they finally pool and cohere into something useful—as clear and certain as if they were his own observations.

“No need for worry, magpie.” A headache is the least of his problems. Mimir’s answer isn’t comforting. “The Morrígan will wish to see me grow. To push myself beyond my shortcomings.”

It sounds benign to say it aloud, but for Achilles, growth is hard-won and has always meant unimaginable pain. Patroclus knows this well, and strokes his hair soothingly.

“You will overcome any challenge she sets,” Thetis says with prim certainty. Her son isn’t perfect, but he’s not far off.

Hermes furrows his brow in concern. He's not quite as confident as Thetis--Achilles has been able to triumph in many impossible situations, but Hermes struggles to think of a time that Achilles triumphed against himself. But he's done harder things for those he loves.

"It's in her nature to do that sort of thing," Lugh says, back to his slightly amused smile. "It's part of her work with her husband, the Dagda. The humans conceptualize her as a goddess of death and war, but it's more that she facilitates change. She destroys the old and dying, and then the Dagda replaces it with the new and thriving. One can't happen without the other."

Lugh stands straight, leaning on his spear. "Are you ready to go to her?"

Achilles rises and nods to Lugh with stoic determination. Either he doesn’t see Hermes’ concern, or he chooses to ignore it.

Patroclus, however, remains crouched, staring into the water and trying to formulate a worthy question. It would be a waste not to ask—if not to improve their negotiations with the Morrígan, then to help them in other matters. As shades, insight may be one of the most valuable gifts available to them.

He dips a hand into the water and the river whisks away fragments of Kelly’s glitter. Pat exhales and whispers his question: “Blood of Mimir, what does Neoptolemus need from his father?” And cups the water to his mouth to drink.

The rush of snow melt knowledge isn't quite as torrential--Neoptolemus is human, and his perspective something another human is capable of holding--but it comes with pain. Deep, tearing pain, like one's heart is ripped out, and ripped out over and over and over, a painful void yearning to be filled but never can be.

At first, the answer is just a scream. A long, agonized scream of knotted rage and grief and loneliness. A child leaning his face against the tombstone of his father, ignoring the name he doesn't recognize and convincing himself that his father loved him and would be proud. The reaching for fatherly attention from the men who most might have given it to him--Lycomedes, Odysseus, the Greeks, Peleus--and the rejection, the dismissal, not worth fathering. The gnawing jealousy and frustration of seeing other boys with their fathers, seeing their joys and conflicts and wondering why he wasn't good enough to have his own, convincing himself that he was good enough but his father just had a divine imperative to leave. The creeping, horrible thought in the back of his head that he tried to drown, ignored, repressed--that his father could have stayed, but just didn't care enough to.

The wrenching, horrible pain of the thought being confirmed. He didn't care enough to. Didn't care enough to stay, didn't care enough to think of him after he was gone, didn't care enough to live for him after his lover died, didn't care enough to give him the benefit of the doubt when others maligned him, didn't care enough to give him a chance until a better child came along and asked him to. Crumbling. Everything crumbling, his sense of self, his sense of the world around him, any sense that he can be loved.

His soul is marked. Everyone but his mother sees it. He's inherently unlovable, and he will exist and die and dissolve in the Lethe unloved.

The worst part is that his father does care. Just not enough. Never enough to choose him over anything else important.

Not enough to choose him over glory. Not enough to choose him over his lover. Not enough to choose him over following his lover into death. Not enough to choose him over his new child. Not enough to ever choose him over anything Achilles holds dear, because Neoptolemus will never be worth choosing.

Out of the cacophony, it takes time to extract the answer to Patroclus' question. Neoptolemus doesn't know it himself, consumed as he is by his pain, by his fragile sense of meaning collapsing, by the limitations of his ability to stop and reflect on himself.

But Mimir's knowledge is greater than Neoptolemus' ignorance.

Neoptolemus needs to be valued, and needs to be shown he's valued. He needs to be chosen over something else Achilles cares about, and needs to be chosen again and again, until he has enough time to trust that his father does value him and has decided to love him. He needs patience and understanding, to be accepted through his fits of anger and melancholy and pushing his father away, needs time. Time to drain the infection from his heart and heal, and then build his sense of self and meaning on something steadier and more real.

As the knowledge emerges, so too does context. Disorganized attachment. That's a term humans will one day use for people like Neoptolemus, people who so intensely want love and are so terrified of it at the same time. Pulling people close, then shoving them away, then hurting so deep if they actually leave, always unable to explain why they behave as they do, unable to predict how they'll feel or what they'll do, and so unpredictable to others. Common in people who experienced ambivalent, confusing relationships with caregivers growing up. It's not just Neoptolemus' father who contributed to this, but that's the easiest source for him to identify, next to all the adults besides his mother, the manipulations of Odysseus, the confusion of his relationships with the Greeks on the beach, and then Andromache, an ambiguous mix of mother and captive and lover and enemy. The work to mend his ability to connect with others can't be done by anyone else, only by Neoptolemus himself.

Hermes cringes at Pat's question, already predicting it'll have a painful, hard to swallow answer, and only hesitates a little before resting a steadying hand on his shoulder.

"And you? Your brain still intact?" he says, voice light but concerned.

Parts of this insight ring in painful harmony with Patroclus’ own experience. His own father mostly showed him ambivalence, and what love he showed was entirely conditional. In the latter case, the pride wasn’t in his son, but who his son stood next to.

Patroclus understands that much. He had the power to give up on his father, but it was only because he had people to replace him—Achilles, Peleus, his Greek comrades in arms.

He swallows hard as Neoptolemus’ confusion and despair crash over him. How could Achilles even begin to understand? He’s been adored his entire life. Pat grimaces, trying to imagine the dreaming conversations that Achilles recounted on his return to Elysium. How had they proceeded from Neoptolemus’ perspective?

His frown deepens around the sour guilt that Achilles chose him over his son. Why throw away his one precious life to chase a dead man into the Underworld? The fool.

Hermes’ question cuts through the harsh insight, but Pat can only nod his head mutely in answer.

Achilles gives Patroclus a pained look, shame rising in his chest. “What insight did you receive?”

“It’s not simple, Achilles. It will take time,” Pat says softly as he stands and dries his hands on his tunic. Like the iron, “I’ll hold it until it’s needed. Focus on yourself.”

Achilles doesn’t appear convinced so much as irritated, but he would rather move on than waste time arguing. His attention snaps back to their guide, voice taut. “Lord Lugh, please take us to the Morrígan.”

Hermes stands up as well, brow furrowed. He's worried about Achilles, but worried about Patroclus too. His mind is at no risk of breaking apart, he's sure, but Hermes keenly knows that any insight into Neoptolemus' mind feels like sticking one's hand through broken glass.

He looks ahead and clasps his hands behind his back, walking and not giving any outward indication of his worry, but his does just... spread his aura a little. Warmth and the smell of Grecian air, gentle and unassuming, thrown around Patroclus like a cloak on a cold day. Hopefully, enough for Patroclus to be soothed, but not so much that he'll be aware of who's doing the soothing. Hermes doesn't expect that any comfort would be effective coming from himself.

Lugh obligingly leads them away from the river, into what seems like a random direction. But the verdant air grows thinner, colder, as they walk.

"I give you one last piece of advice: before you begin negotiations, ask her to speak to you as herself unbroken, in one body. It's a lot harder to speak to her when she's in pieces, and harder still to nail down a clear pact, and you need every advantage you can get."

Around them, the trees thin. The fertile ground turns hard and bare, the old twisting trunks turning white as bone with no leaves or signs of life. Crows perch on the dead branches, and they watch carefully. They're not pristine crows, either--crows with twisted feet, crows with missing eyes, crows with broken beaks--but all of them are still observing, croaking softly.

Before the gate is one particularly short tree with long branches. Across the branches are clean white tunics, hanging as if in invitation. Lugh stops at this tree.

"If you decide to speak to her in her entirety, you'll need to shed any clothes and possessions and put these on. Give your things to Hermes for safekeeping. Anything you take with you to meet her will have to be destroyed afterwards to protect the outside."

Hermes glances quizzically at Lugh. Lugh's smile breaks into a grimace.

"They'll understand once they see her. She's... not compatible with life when she's whole."

Neoptolemus’ pain clings to Pat like a suffocating miasma, but it begins to dissipate, Pat assumes, as the river’s water loses its effect and the piercing insight settles into simple knowledge. It feels as if the cloak he left with Kelly has draped back around him. He feels steadier with each step—with no notion that Hermes might have anything to do with it.

Their new surroundings bring to mind the worst parts of Hades’ realm. The places where shades go to suffer. Patroclus looks grim, but Achilles’ face remains as steely and serious as the day he faced Hector in battle.

“Yes, I would sooner negotiate with her whole self. No trickery,” Achilles confirms, unfastening the clasp on his cloak.

“Remember to beware her eyes,” Thetis reminds him, unwinding the fabric from her son’s shoulders.

“Who will accompany Achilles?” Patroclus asks anxiously. He can’t abide the idea of sending him unarmed and alone. Not when he has that look on his face. “May I join him?”

"Any or all of you could accompany him. It's your decision," Lugh says, leaning on his spear and looking up at the gate. His expression isn't grim, exactly, but it's solemn. There's an old, serious air about the land.

And it seems contagious, because Hermes' face is solemn as well as he holds his arms out to take Achilles' clothes. "I can't go without possibly dragging Olympus into things." He nods to Patroclus and Thetis, a serious furrow to his brow. "But I think it'd be a good idea for either of you to go with him. Or both. Maybe the two of you together would stand a chance of stopping him from losing his temper and doing something stupid."

Hermes gives a Look to Achilles. He tries not to look too pleading in front of Lugh. "Please don't lose your temper and do something stupid. You still have people to return to back home." It goes unsaid in front of Lugh, but Hermes can't bear the thought of losing Achilles, nor telling Lyra that her mortal father is gone and Zagreus that his father-figure is far out of reach.

“You have so little faith in me,” Achilles huffs, swatting a tunic from one of the tree boughs and tugging it over his head. His irritation only lends credence to Hermes’ concerns.

“I— … we know your heart, Achilles. Your anger already simmers.” Patroclus has already made up his mind. He follows suit, exchanging his clothes for a tunic. In the process, Kelly’s Swiss Army knife gives him a moment’s pause. He’s not sure how any of the odd little tools could possibly assist them in negotiations with a goddess, but Kelly said it might be helpful somehow. “We can bring nothing?”

Meanwhile, Thetis gives Lugh a glance and foregoes a change of clothing in favor of an animal form: with a flap of wings she shifts herself into an osprey and alights on her son’s shoulder. She still doesn’t fully trust Patroclus, a simple mortal, to keep Achilles safe in this endeavor.

"Nothing," Lugh says, sounding firm for the first time this whole adventure. "Anything you take into her presence will be destroyed, and you will need to be washed and purified before leaving Tír na nÓg. To do anything else would be potentially catastrophic."

Hermes has never dealt with the Morrígan when she wasn't broken into pieces, so he's not sure why being in her presence would be so destructive, but he knows that Lugh is not one to lie. It just makes him more nervous about this whole thing.

He steps forward towards Achilles. "You should give me your jewelry, too," he says softly. He knows there's only one article of jewelry Achilles wears. He lowers his voice, keeping it soft as he says, "Please. Please be careful."

Patroclus gives a relenting nod and returns the tool to his belt pouch before offering the whole bundle of clothes to Hermes. He wishes he could at least take the cold iron, assuming the Morrígan is thwarted by some simple ore.

Achilles’ face softens ever so slightly at Hermes’ entreaty. He pulls Hephaestus’ ring from his finger and Pyrrhus’ shell bracelet from his wrist. Both of these are placed reverently in Hermes’ palm. Achilles folds Hermes’ fingers over the keepsakes and presses a soft kiss to his knuckles. “I will not fail, magpie.”

He knows it’s not what Hermes wants to hear. Thetis puffs her feathers and flexes her talons as if to echo the sentiment—or assure Hermes that she’ll remain vigilant.

It's not what Hermes wants to hear, but it's something. He dares to step close and bump his forehead gently against Achilles', closing his eyes and sighing softly.

Then he steps back, back to awareness of their company, and takes their gathered clothes and possessions and tucks them into his messenger's bag. It doesn't look like it all should fit, but it does effortlessly.

"I'm trusting you all to come back in one piece," he says. "Take care of each other."

The gates creek open of their own accord, opening the way to what looks like a churning gray void. Lugh steps back, nodding at the adventurers solemnly. "When you're ready, walk through the gate, and keep walking. You'll know when you've come upon her."

Thetis gives her head a jerking shake and clacks her beak. Hermes should know enough bird expression to understand what it means: Of course she’ll look after her son. What kind of mother do you take her for, Hermes?

Patroclus likewise gives a confirming nod. He doesn’t know how to deal with foreign goddesses—or any gods, for that matter—but he knows how to deal with his lover’s anger and hubris well enough.

Achilles turns to pass the gates and Pat falls into step beside him. He takes his hand in a firm grip, both to steel himself to enter the void and to steady Achilles. Stay focused. Don’t let anger get the better of you.

With each step, the two mortals and goddess-as-osprey are gradually eveloped by the thick, grey miasma.

The miasma is too thick to see anything through. Or hear, really. It smells like burning. Burning funeral pyres, gunsmoke, the subtle scent of melting sand into glass, coal smoke, the heat of the forge, oil smoke, fresh sawdust, the burn of grinding animal hooves, the dust of black powder. It's thick, like something great exploded into a fine mist, and now tiny bits of rock and concrete and wood and metal stick fast to the inside of one's throat and lungs, cloying, ready to drown from within.

And then the miasma dissipates. It's nowhere to be seen now. Instead, they stand on a familiar beach--the beach before Troy, the tents of the war camp softly flapping in the wind, the sky soft in predawn. It's like a stolen moment in time during the war, after everyone was asleep and before anyone had woken, the trembling peace and quiet of before the sunrise.

But Troy's gates are open. A familiar figure, or at least familiar from a distance, stands there, her hand resting against one of the doors swung open. The cause of the war, Helen, draped in finery and her face hidden by a veil, stands watching.

This isn't all of the goddess. Just a third. But the third still looks regal, her face concealed and yet held high.

"You came a long way for me," she says softly as they approach.

The fog clears like a drawn curtain and it should have been a relief, but peaceful as it is, the vision of Troy isn’t more welcome. Not for Achilles, Patroclus, or Thetis.

As they approach the gates of Troy, Pat renews his grip on Achilles’ hand. All the details of this gate are burned into his memory for eternity—as surely as Apollo’s strange and terrible visions.

Achilles returns the squeeze, but is quickly distracted by his mother:

That is her, Thetis confirms in a whispered thought to her son. The feathers on her head rise; she can sense the scale of the goddess’ power beyond this single, deceptive form.

“That is so, Lady Morrígan.” Achilles says with stiff formality, doing his best to tamp down the anger that’s run hot since speaking with the old man at the crossroads. “You have taken someone dear to me. You have taken him from his family. And as his father, I will retrieve him.”

Remember what you were told, Thetis urges, nipping Achilles’ ear.

“I see only part of you. I would speak to your as a whole.” Achilles can’t bring himself to be polite to this goddess. Not when she had the nerve to steal Pyrrhus away.

"You wish to speak to me in my entirety?" If anything, the goddess sounds mildly amused by Achilles' audacity. Helen looks up at the sky, the veil still concealing her face. "Then this location will suffice. But it will need to be a different time."

Then she's gone. Thousands of years blink past. The walls of Troy degrade and wear away to nothing. The peaks and hills across the horizon ripple, growing and smoothing. The beach is eaten away, the shoreline shifting. No more are there tents or warriors or the barest evidence there had ever been a conflict.

And then it's black. Black and cold.

There's an acrid smell in the air. Black snow falls from the sky, and there's already a layer on the ground, black and oily and far thicker than any meager snow that had ever fallen on Troy during the war. The waves at the shore stink, pushing more trash on the beach with every swell. It must be nighttime, for the land is as dark as a moonless, starless night.

The ground shakes. The shoreline begins to retreat.

Thetis will likely be able to feel it coming before it does--if Prometheus and Epimetheus were elephants, this is a leviathan.

One hand bursts from the sea, large enough to scoop the entire city of Troy in its palm. It digs long, talon-like nails into the earth. The nails begin to breathe white smoke, and then spit fire, dragging trenches into the dirt and casting the barren wintery wasteland in a hellish glow.

And then she rises.

An endless expanse of naked skin. As she pulls herself up, the shoreline diminishes further and further, leaving streaks of gray and black debris with the trash. Her head passes the clouds, tearing through them for a moment to allow a brilliant ray of sun through, daytime shining bright momentarily in the sunless world.

Above her naked breast, there's a cavern carved deep where her heart should be. It's lined with green rocks and ore veins, glowing a bright vivid green that has no place in nature.

And then she descends. Her hands smooth on the ground, nails still spitting fire, and she lowers herself down. Her head is below the clouds once more, and the sunlight is smothered. The sources of light are her fiery nails, her glowing wound, and her hair, hair bright and orange and plasma. Like it were cut from the surface of the sun, bright red flares peel off it intermittently, giving the impression of curls, and as she lowers herself, the spikes of plasma touch on the seawater. It boils and steams with every contact, throwing a sheet of steam behind her and warming the cold wasteland.

Her head gets close to the ground. Now, her face is visible. Three sets of wings, blacker than night, seeming to consume any light that touches them, grow from her temples and now are spread to cover her eyes.

She rests her cheek down on the sand. As parts of her hair touch the shore, the ground glows red and melts to glass. Even bowed down like this, even with most of her body still submerged in the sea, she's so large as to hide the horizon.

(If Achilles pays close attention, he might notice a strong resemblance between her and Freya. But where Freya was beautiful as a storm, the Morrígan is the storm.)

The corners of her lips upturn in a smile.

"Let us speak," she says.

Edited 2025-05-23 16:10 (UTC)

As all memory of Troy disappears beneath their feet, as the goddess emerges in her forbidding entirety, Achilles draws Patroclus into a protective embrace. He should not have accompanied me. She’ll take him too.

Patroclus balls his fists around Achilles’ tunic. He feels echoes of Apollo’s visions of the future within the goddess. War, destruction, decay. He can’t bear to look at her. Instead, he focuses on Achilles’ face, his profile etched in the darkness by the Morrígan’s red, fiery glow.

Thetis sees the Morrígan’s face begin to emerge and she raises a protective wing to shield the mortals’ view. She keeps it raised even after the dark wings stretch into place. Thetis doesn’t trust the Morrígan to keep her own eyes covered.

What does a being of this magnitude want with one small life? Achilles’ righteous anger returns, evaporating all awe and fear. Patroclus can see the familiar shift in his lover’s face. “Mind your anger,” he hisses into Achilles’ ear.

You cannot speak to her as you would to the Olympians, Thetis adds, digging her talons deep enough to pierce Achilles skin. She is closer to a primordial. Chaos, Chronos. Treat her as such.

Achilles closes his eyes as he considers this counsel. He tries to imagine what Hermes would add to it. This is a negotiation. He’ll get nowhere by making furious demands like a hero-prince.

He cautiously lowers Thetis’ wing and says: “As I said, goddess, I have come to reclaim my son, Neoptolemus, from your service. I am prepared to negotiate for his return. I ask: what is your price?”

Edited 2025-05-25 18:01 (UTC)

"Hmmm." She breathes a soft sigh. Her breath is a warm breeze that melts the black snow before it falls, smelling of gunsmoke and burning phosphorus. "How can we start a conversation with something like the value of your son?"

The feathers on her wings rustle with slight movement. With their size, it sounds like the wind through trees.

"I see two dead humans, and a sea creature shaped like a bird." Her voice is smooth, calm. Deliberately softened, if Thetis pays attention. Without softening, her voice could be painful to hear, especially for the humans. "Would you all come to my home and not even introduce yourselves?"

Though she's pointing out a breach of manners, she doesn't sound annoyed. More like a gentle prompt of an adult to a child, reminding them of something they're not expected to remember quite yet.

Thetis shrugs her wings and raises the feathers in her crest in threat. The Morrígan’s tone sounds as if it’s meant to cajole them into carelessness. If they hadn’t been warned, this negotiation would be over very quickly and the Morrígan would add a few more names to her collection.

Remember. Names are currency here, she reminds Achilles.

“Our names are not yours to have,” he says, chin raised in defiance. “We are two dead mortals, yes. Veterans of a long war, whose shades now belong to Lord Hades. And this is my mother, a goddess of the sea …

“Let us speak of my son, whose name you took.”

Her great lips turn up further in a smile. She lets out a mildly amused huff. It's a warm breeze that makes the sand blow.

"Neoptolemus." Her voice is still soft, still incongruously gentle when compared to her magnitude. "I would have hoped you would have learned about making assumptions based on stories and first impressions from him. But perhaps you need more lessons."

She's very still. She seems aware of how every small motion of hers can disrupt the world around her, so she remains still and calm.

"You come here assuming I'm your enemy, stealing your son away for amusement. But I am not. I saved him." As she breathes, her chest expands and contracts, throwing the strange green glow up against the sand and black snow in alien ways. "He was fated to die when he reached Epirus. He was to be so angry that he'd curse Apollo, and Apollo was to strike him down. And in his despair, Neoptolemus was to throw himself into the Lethe before reaching Erebus, destroying what was left of his soul. I thought it a terrible waste, someone as special as him to be lost."

And in that, she sounds sincere. She does think that Neoptolemus is special, something precious to save. And she does think it would have been a tragedy for him to be destroyed.

Patroclus feels Achilles tense as if squaring up for a fight. The planes of his face set hard as unyielding stone. The Morrígan’s calm is likely feeding his anger. Pat finds Achilles’ clenched fist and coaxes it open between both his own palms. “This isn’t a fight.”

She intends to test you, Thetis warns.

Achilles closes his eyes and focuses on his mother’s weight on his shoulder. On Pat’s hands pressed to his. They’ve chosen to join him here, to put themselves under the scrutiny of this terrible goddess.

His eyes open.

“Was he offered a choice? Did you tell him of the fate from which he was spared?” He pauses, swallowing. “I have often burdened him with my will, my expectations. As have many others, again and again. How are you different, goddess?”

She chuckles. It's soft, but it still causes the earth to tremble, the sea to splash. When she speaks, it's with the amused and indulgent warmth of a teacher to a child that asked a silly question. "I'm different because I can see the future. If a child reaches towards fire, do you not pull them back?"

And humans are infants to her. Tiny creatures that can't possibly know all that she does, know all the things that will harm them should they reach. Like children wanting to grab hold of jellyfish, or dogs pleading for chicken bones that will splinter and tear the inside of their throats. Or even an ant, wandering in the path of a upcoming splash of water, and gently plucked from danger and given a crumb before being left next to its colony. Acts of kindness that disorient and confuse and frustrate, that can never be fully appreciated, but are done all the same.

"Asking him the question would only hasten his fit of temper, and doom himself and those on his ship. He is injured, and limited in making decisions when emotional that he would stand by when calm. I took him from tragedy, for he would not be able to take himself."

Her smile softens at the edges, returning to something closer to neutral. "You wish to take him home and reunite him with his wife and son. There is no future that happens. He is fated to never see his son alive again, and if he returns to Greece before his son is dead, the Morai will cut his thread themselves. They already tampered with Fate to terrible effect, and they will tamper no further for a mortal no god in Greece cares for." No god in Greece, and she doesn't hesitate to include his own grandmother in that number. The gods in Greece find Neoptolemus repulsive, a creature to be forgotten as soon as possible. Not the Morrígan, however. She thinks it's worth the effort to deliver him from a tragic fate.

“I do not believe you,” Achilles blurts. Patroclus winces, but he’s not surprised. This is not what Achilles wants to hear, so he’ll reject it. “My son is not a child. He’s a man, capable of his own choices. Give him a chance to make them.”

Thetis shifts her weight back and forth. What the Morrígan says has a note of truth. Fate is not to be meddled with. If Achilles succeeds, he might deliver Neoptolemus to his death. She doesn’t feel strongly about her grandson, but she knows his loss will cause her son suffering. This may not end how you would like, Achilles.

Thetis’ words go unheeded. Achilles continues, “Summon Neoptolemus. Allow me to speak with him. If I convince him to return with me, will you release him?”

“For what purpose? To send him to die, to stay in an afterlife full of men repulsed by what they built him to be?”

One of her great flaming nails drags in the sand. It spits fire, digging long trenches, a slight gesture towards Patroclus and Thetis.

“You are here due to the love others have for you, not for him. A divine lover struck a deal out of love for you, a mortal lover followed out of devotion to you, a divine mother came out of concern for your safety. You ride here on the back of adoration. Would any one of these people have cared at all if not for your sake?”

She lets out another breath. She’d still calm, placid, but this time her breath is hotter and smells of burning hair. “He’s the first of his kind. And here, he is among the rest that flow through time, all the children forged as tools of war. It’s so convenient for others when they die in the process, silent martyrs to be pitied. So inconvenient when they grow, and gods and men must face what they created.”

For the first time, there’s a touch of something other than calm in her voice. Contempt. Visions swirl in the smoke that comes from her nails, in the steam thrown by the sea as her hair touches it, visions of little children holding weapons, children with wide eyes taking apart corpses on battlefields, the adults around them cringing and condemning them as monsters before sending them back into fighting as cheap fodder. The Morrígan doesn’t condemn the fighting, no, nor the children’s involvement. She condemns those who forge fighters for their own purpose, then reject them for being exactly as they were made to be.

“What about you, little sea creature?” Her flaming nail digs deeper into the sand. The eternal fire spitting from it splashes on the ground, thick gobs that burn forever. “Surely you have thoughts on your grandson’s fate.”

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