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What Prometheus says rings true; even if Achilles’ demigod physique suffered little physical injury, even if his limbs never grew tired, he would return to his shelter exhausted in ways he couldn’t articulate. Patroclus saw it, though, and did his best to soothe his lover even as he suffered through his own agonies. Ten long years of this took a toll, and those cumulative wounds still ache.

What would that same experience do to a child?

But then Prometheus introduces another factor. Patroclus hums his understanding. Even with their helmets, so many soldiers were bashed with shields, thrown from chariots, slammed to the ground. They suffered from dizziness and lingering pain, but most pushed through for fear of seeming weak. Clearly, their injuries were more lasting, possibly more grievous than any of the surgeons or physicians knew.

Achilles feels as if his heart is being wrung by a great fist. He sags down to take a seat on a stone, cupping his face in dismay. If this is true—and it must be—his son is more deeply wounded than he imagined. More importantly, this wasn’t Pyrrhus’ fault. He didn’t choose this for himself.

“Lord Prometheus, please … Is there nothing to be done for him? Is this the boy’s fate?”

“I can’t know without meeting him. A lot depends on where and how extensive the damage was, how his brain grew around it, what adaptive skills he developed to deal with it and which he didn’t…”

Prometheus gestures to Patroclus to help him sit down. His joints creek as he settles on a rock next to Achilles. He reaches out to the kettle boiling over his fire, and he pours dark thin liquid into a cup that smells fragrant and lightly herbal.

“But it’s very likely that you’ll have to reframe your thinking about Pyrrhus from matters of virtue to matters of effort and capability. Because if my theory is correct, he will never be able to meet the same standard as a man who was never injured in the same way. A man with no hands will never play the lyre, no matter how hard he works, and making that the standard he must meet to be worthy of attention is cruel. But a man with no hands may, with great effort and some help, learn how to use prosthetics, and may learn how to lay tiles for a mosaic.”

Prometheus offers the steaming cup to Achilles.

“Drink this. My brother made a plant that makes something quite good for soothing humans when the leaves are infused in hot water. He calls it tea.”

Pat dutifully helps the old Titan take a seat, then unclasps his Myrmidon’s cloak and drapes it over the god’s knees. He settles himself on the ground and feeds the fire fresh kindling to help warm aching joints.

Achilles sighs. He was hoping for an easier answer—or at least a definitive one—to put him at ease. Instead, he’s only learned that he’s probably asked his son to do the impossible.

He breathes a soft thank you for the odd drink and takes a polite, curious sip. “May I ask your advice on a related matter, my lord?”

He turns the cup in his hands as he elaborates: “I have a second child. She’s still quite young and wants nothing more than to meet her elder brother. To help him in some way. I’ve forbidden her from approaching him—I worry about his jealousy—but I wonder if there will ever be a time when the two can safely meet.”

Prometheus smiles warmly, patting Pat's hands affectionately as he lays his cloak over the old Titan's knees.

He pours another cup of tea, offering it to Patroclus, and he hums as he considers the question.

"I wish I could give you a clear answer. But once more, I'd need to meet the boy first. I'd need to assess the damage, how his brain healed and grew around it, and I'd need to assess his ability to learn new skills."

Prometheus rests his hands in his lap, staring at the fire as he thinks, frowning in consideration. The corners of his eyes soften as he looks to Achilles.

"I've given you poor news, I know. But I want you to know it's better than it could have been. Many people with these injuries will also suffer much, much more debilitating conditions, like losing the ability to make memories, or to speak, or to see movement. It's very likely he had more visible symptoms when he was younger, and he already learned how to work around them."

Prometheus leans forward and rests a hand on Achilles' knee. "The fact he lives independently, that he held a conversation with you, even if he was rough around the edges--that's a testament to your son's resilience and determination. Every success he's had since the war, he accomplished with weights no one, not even him, knew he was carrying. You should be proud of that, and it should give you hope for his ability to improve."

Patroclus understands Prometheus’ hesitance to give definitive answers. A good physician needs to examine symptoms before diagnosing them. Some ailments can be made worse with the wrong treatments.

But Pat also knows how much Achilles hates uncertainty. He likes clear answers, confident solutions.

Achilles listens to Prometheus’ reassurance, eyes firmly set on his dark tea. The Titan is right, but … “I feel terrible. I didn’t plan to speak with him at all. I heard the stories of his loathsome deeds and wanted nothing to do with him.”

His hands wring at the cup. Achilles could probably shatter it if he wanted to. “As if any of this was his choice … He was just a child …”

If Paris had stolen Helen sooner, if Odysseus and Diomedes had recruited him earlier, Achilles might have been in the same broken state as his son.

“I’m in no position to ask you more favors, Lord Prometheus, but … should your travels ever take you to Epirus, would you speak with him?” Looking like he does, Achilles can’t imagine the god traveling very far—certainly not as easily as Hermes—but he made it to the mouth of the Styx, so … “Perhaps you could glean the depth of his wounds?”

Prometheus hums softly in understanding. He hums a lot like Hermes does. "You don't need to ask me, dear boy. I already planned on it." He withdraws his hand, resting it on his own knee as he looks back at the illusion of the child, its brain so obviously damaged in comparison to the adult brain. "For his own sake, and for the sake of future humans who find themselves in his situation."

Prometheus hadn't expected a child to survive war in direct combat with other adults, but if it's happened once then it will happen again, whether through advancements in human medicine or warfare. He wants to know as much as he can about Pyrrhus and his experience so he can help the next unfortunate child.

Prometheus rubs his knees. The cloak and the fire help him, but they still ache.

"I heard you were at war for ten years before you died. Am I right to say that means you spent most of your adult life at war?" Prometheus pours himself tea. The heat helps soothe the pain in his hands. "War isn't any better at teaching adults compassion than it is children. Especially not when it lasts so long, and consumes so much of one's life experience."

Prometheus keeps his voice gentle. It's nothing but the unconditional love of a parent who knows their child's flaws and loves them anyway.

"Maybe it will be easier to have compassion for your son if you also have compassion for yourself." Prometheus sips his tea. "You made decisions you regret. Every regret is an opportunity to learn, and to make decisions you're prouder of in the future."

“Thank you,” Achilles breathes, equally relieved and grateful. The gentle, steady way Prometheus speaks puts him at ease.

“It’s true. Much of my life was consumed by war. Or preparing for it.” He was lucky his parents saw fit to round out his education beyond his martial training. “At first, the battles were thrilling. This was what I was made for, after all.”

“But then it changed you,” Patroclus interjects. “It changed us both, but it made you into someone else entirely.”

“Callous. Brutal. Vengeful. Not unlike Pyrrhus,” Achilles agrees gravely. “One of my greatest regrets is that we followed the same bloody path. He should have had a chance to learn from my mistakes, not make them again.”

He compares his hands to Prometheus’. There’s little to indicate that one set belongs to a human and one to a god. Or that one set formed the other from primordial clay. “Isn’t that the prerogative of mortals? To learn and become better than their fathers?”

Prometheus listens thoughtfully, nodding slowly as they speak. But at the question, he gives a soft chuckle.

"The prerogative of mortals is to live their lives as they do, for better and for worse. Hopefully, they learn from their parents and surpass them, but that's not always the case. The ones who don't are no less worthy of love." At least, no less worthy of Prometheus' love. He understands why humans come to despise each other so much sometimes, but he can't look at even the worst behaving human and disown them. He made them with his own two hands. Every flaw, every foible, every failing, it came from how he made them. How can he ever hold that against his own creation?

The cheetah stretches, yawning, showing rows of sharp teeth before sitting down at Patroclus' side. Prometheus smiles at his cat creation, admiring how the fire reflects on its fur for a moment.

"Tell me, Achilles, if you would indulge an old man..." Prometheus settles his elbows on his knees as he leans forward, deliberately casual, like he's about to ask a question he knows the answer to. But even so, his voice is gentle, nonjudgmental as a loving grandfather. "...Do you see Pyrrhus as his own man? Or only as a younger you?"

Patroclus rests a hand on the cheetah’s big, round head. The wiry fur so reminds him of a dog.

He’s never heard a god speak like Prometheus does. The majority of gods—Pat assumes—see mortals as animals. Lesser beasts to be toyed with. The old Titan seems to adore mortals as a father would love his children. A suspicious part of Pat wants to believe it’s a ruse, but as he watches him speak to Achilles, Prometheus’ voice, his face are too genuine.

As gently as it’s posed, the question still pierces deep and painful as an arrow buried between his ribs. Achilles takes a long sip of tea to buy himself time to recover.

“In truth, the latter,” Achilles finally sighs. “Particularly after meeting him. Seeing his face and his manner. He is not so much a reflection as … hm. As a shadow, I suppose.”

Achilles thumbs at a drip of tea slipping down the outside curve of his cup. “It doesn’t help matters that he doesn’t know how to be his own man.”

Prometheus waits patiently for Achilles to answer him. He hums softly as he does.

"Are you sure he doesn't know? He was meeting his long-dead heroic father, and he had a god in disguise manipulating his mind to make the conversation go more smoothly. I think it's safe to say that however he behaved with you isn't a reliable baseline for how he normally behaves."

It's said without judgment. All of this, all these painful and complicated emotions, they all make sense to Prometheus. It makes sense to him for a man who never really knew his son to have complicated feelings about him, and guilt for not being a father to him. It makes sense to him that a son who never knew his father would contort himself into any shape he could to gain his approval the first time they met.

"Your son is his own man, whether he knows how to be or not. He'll resemble you in many ways, but his struggles are his own, his decisions are his own, and his eventual fate will be his own. And his feelings about it all may differ significantly from yours." Prometheus' voice is smooth and gentle. He turns his own cup in his swollen, arthritic hands. "If you really want to help him--and it may be that you don't--you'll have an easier time doing it helping him for the sake of the person he is, and not for the sake of the person you wish you were at his age. If we help him work around the damage in his brain so that he'll make the decisions you wish you had, you'll only be disappointed when he chooses his own way."

And Prometheus is of the opinion that a human shouldn't have to make the 'right' decisions to be worthy of help and care and love. If that were the case, no human would be loved, and that'd be a true tragedy.

“It’s difficult. I only know the lessons I’ve learned from my own life. And I thought our lives follow a similar path.” Or do they? Both he and Pyrrhus share years of war and violence, but their upbringing, families and friends couldn’t be more different.

“In truth, I know precious little about the person he is,” Achilles admits. It’s intimidating to think of the three decades Pyrrhus has lived without him. The cumulative experiences—tragedies and victories—that have shaped him. How could Achilles ever hope to catch up? “I might as well be advising a stranger.”

“You are strangers. You need to stop thinking of him as a son. Consider him a pupil instead,” Patroclus suggests. “Like Zagreus. You need to learn about a student’s aptitudes before you can teach them, don’t you?”

"Perhaps it would be helpful to try to get to know him in a... lower pressure environment," Prometheus says gently. "A father-son relationship doesn't happen over the course of one conversation. And leaping to trying to teach him as if it has may not be helpful for either of you."

Prometheus finishes his tea, setting it aside so he can start rubbing his hands absently. The joints always hurt.

"Shades can visit the dreams of the living, can't they? Maybe an Oneiroi will be amenable to helping you into his dreams. Or perhaps it'd be easier to start with the dreams of someone close to him, so you can see him from their eyes instead of his own. Perhaps an adult who has been in his service for a while, or an ally in Epirus. Don't be hard on yourself or on him if it takes time to warm up."

Prometheus clicks his tongue, as if realizing something. "Exploring his dreams may give you more insight into how his brain is and isn't limited, too. Damage like I suspect would affect how dreams manifest in sleep."

“A clever idea—I’ve traveled in a dream before, with the help of Lord Hypnos and an Oneiroi.” An immortal’s dream, but surely visiting a mortal’s should be even easier. And what better way to find the shape of Pyrrhus’ wounds? It would be difficult—maybe impossible—to tease out memories and emotions from simple conversation. Particularly with how unaccustomed the man is with such vulnerability.

He considers Prometheus’ painfully swollen joints and suggests, “Would it be simpler for you to join me on such a journey, my lord? Dreams are strange, dizzying places and I would appreciate your interpretation.”

Surely any god can step into a dream at will? Apollo, Hephaestus, and Aphrodite had no trouble visiting Hermes’ dream.

"Wandering in a human's dream?" Prometheus' face creases with a smile. "That is an excellent idea. I would love to accompany you. Find a way to fall asleep, and I shall meet you in the land of dreams, and we will get to know your son together."

Prometheus rubs his knees. "But before all that..."

He flicks his fingers. The illusory adult brain, the perfect copy of Patroclus', floats in front of him.

"Patroclus, dear boy." Prometheus rotates the brain, looking at something that they either can't see or can't understand. "Have you noticed yourself struggling with any... persistent melancholy? Or apathy? Perhaps not being happy when you think you ought to be, or not caring when you think you should, or cheerful moods only lasting short amounts of time?"

Edited 2024-07-28 03:25 (UTC)

“Thank you,” Achilles says with a reverent bow of his head. “Your guidance will be invaluable.”

When he’s addressed, Patroclus blinks and looks up from examining the cheetah’s paws. His surprise registers as a flicker in the illusory brain, followed by a flurry of activity. Pat doesn’t understand what Prometheus means by this. It’s like asking a fish if he lives in water.

His eyes meet Achilles’, looking for what? Further explanation?

Achilles sees the confusion clearly. He might be better suited to answer that question. As long as he’s known him, Pat has been quiet, reserved, and yes, given to bouts of gloom. But it’s gotten notably worse … and not without good reason.

“I’ve seen it, love. There was a time when your smiles and laughter were more frequent. Back when we were boys,” Achilles says softly. “I see them so rarely now.”

“Of course,” Pat says with a huff, half bitter laugh, half frustrated sigh. “The war wrung that from me … and now we’re dead. Isn’t a bit of melancholy to be expected?”

Prometheus hums softly, eyes soft at Patroclus' reaction. Poor boy. He must have suffered for so long, he doesn't see it as suffering anymore.

"Yes, it is. But it's left an imprint on your brain that you won't be able to fix alone."

Prometheus turns the illusion. It changes, showing a smaller and smaller sample of itself, until it shows a truly incomprehensible set of organic growths that seem to be exchanging tiny objects.

"There are many little things in the brain that serves to regulate a human's mood. This little thing here is essential to maintaining a general sense of happiness and well-being, and it's not working like it should. You could have been born like this, or you could have suffered this from a time of extreme stress, or both."

Prometheus offers the illusion to Patroclus so he can look at it closer. "You shouldn't feel empty or sad all the time, my dear boy. You're just injured in a place no mortal can see."

“This is simply how I am,” Pat says weakly. He remembers his father’s frustration with his withdrawn demeanor. He remembers how he ruminated—still ruminates—about the boy he accidentally killed, and his subsequent exile. Achilles was the only thing that really buoyed him out of his darkness. For a while, anyway.

Achilles leans over to examine the vision cradled in Pat’s hands. The only thing he can compare it to is strange little sea creatures, or maybe plants? Are these really somewhere inside that wrinkled lump of flesh?

Panic rises at talk of injury. Achilles can’t abide the thought that Pat is still suffering. Has been suffering. His voice is pleading, “How do we heal the wound if we cannot see it?”

"You can't with the tools you have." Prometheus hums softly, tipping his head back and forth in thought. "But new tools could be made."

He drums his fingers on his arm as he considers, furrowing his brow as he stares at the illusion he's built of these tiny structures in Patroclus' head.

"Let me discuss it with my brother, Epimetheus. He's a genius when it comes to creating plants that can be used as medicine. If it's happened to you, then it's surely happened to many other humans in the Underworld, so I'd like to give you the tools to help yourself and all of them as well. It could take a while, considering how complex the brain is, but we've yet to fail when we put our minds together."

He gives Patroclus a reassuring smile before resting a hand on the human's shoulder and giving it a gentle squeeze. "Your personality is kind and thoughtful. Your mood is gloomy. Your mood isn't who you are, just a product of your circumstances."

This diagnosis taps into Patroclus’ chronic anxiety: that Achilles can’t look at him without a reminder of loss and grief. Has his gloom been making that worse? Was this why Achilles took up with cheerful, energetic Hermes?

But Achilles said he still loves him, the same as ever … Why does Pat’s mind keep doubting it?

As if on cue, Achilles moves to sit in front of Patroclus, hands gripped on either of his knees. “We have an eternity to find a solution. I want to find the Pat I remember from before Troy. I’ve seen glimpses of him.”

“And if you can’t?” Patroclus blurts. “If I’m like Pyrrhus? Permanently broken? What then?”

“We do our best.” Achilles glances at Prometheus, remembering what he warned about Pyrrhus and setting expectations. Pat could easily be the same. “Any scrap of happiness we can reclaim is worth it.”

"Permanently broken?" Prometheus blinks owlishly, then gives a surprised laugh, shaking his head. The cheetah reacts to him, turning its head towards the Titan with a look of aloof irritation, like he's disturbing its relaxing lounging by the fire. "What, you think you're a piece of furniture, made for one purpose? You break a leg, and now you're scrap? No, no. You're not broken, dear Patroclus. Nor is Pyrrhus."

Prometheus leans forward so he can look at Patroclus more closely, his eyes warm as he flicks his fingers. The strange illusion of organic structures expands, showing webs upon webs of incomprehensibly complex alien architecture, millions of tiny little objects traveling along connections to meet each other. If Achilles looks closely, it vaguely resembles the web of human connections across Gaia Hermes has shown him during intimacy before.

"You're no tool, nor object, nor actor. You're a miracle. A miracle of coincidences and connections and experiences that have come together to make a singular, unique creature, never seen before or since. Inspect the brains of every single adult human in the world, and you'll never find one without its own quirks and limitations, and to discard everyone with a limitation most others don't have means discarding the whole species."

Prometheus lets out a disbelieving huff, like even the insinuation that Patroclus and Pyrrhus are broken is beyond ridiculous. "Broken! Might as well call a piece of art broken. Call the ocean broken. The sky. Neither of you are broken, Patroclus. You both only wear the experiences you've gone through, and I'd like to help because it affects your happiness."

Patroclus recoils at being called a miracle. He knows what special looks like: it looks like Achilles. Powerful, confident, handsome. If anything, it’s a miracle that a demigod hero fell in love with someone so monumentally imperfect.

But once again, Prometheus says all of this with such earnest conviction, the words pierce Pat’s thick shell of self-doubt and skepticism.

Achilles finds Patroclus’ hands, kissing each one on the knuckles. “Tell me, Pat: what would you say to a man who insists on miserably hobbling around on an injured foot, when the wound is perfectly treatable?”

Patroclus sighs, annoyed that Achilles is right. “I would call him a fool. Tell him he suffers for nothing.”

"Exactly. And having a treatable wound on his foot wouldn't make the man broken."

Prometheus sees the telltale signs of someone who wasn't given the love they deserved when they were young. Cringing from praise, leaping to think the worst of themselves, not seeming to really understand how much value others place in him.

He squeezes Patroclus' shoulder affectionately. He made humans in such a way that they will often mistreat each other, even if they will often treasure each other as well. But at least this human, he can show how much he's treasured, at least by his creator.

"I'll speak with my brother. And when we figure something out, it will be something you'll know how to administer to yourself, and to any other shades that suffer like you do now. Medicine will be advanced because of you."

Prometheus is very clever, Achilles thinks. Phrasing it like that—as helping others as much as himself—will immediately make the idea more palatable to Patroclus.

And it absolutely does. Pat can’t abide the thought of gods favoring him alone with a gift of medicine. Why help one lowly shade? But … “So be it, Lord Prometheus. If it brings happiness to those who need it.”

Achilles’ eyes crinkle in a smile. Pat is so predictably selfless. “Those who deserve it. That includes you, love.”

Pat closes his eyes and huffs, even as he feels the heat rise on his cheeks. Achilles is so predictably adoring. “Please tell me: is there a cure for this chronic sappiness?”

Prometheus chuckles, warm and cheerful. "My wife would try smacking and shooing, but it's yet to work, I'm afraid."

If anything, it's made him more sappy, because he thinks it's funny when she tries to shoo him off. Though she doesn't really shoo him off anymore, happy as she is that he's back from the mountain.

Prometheus pats Patroclus again before waving his hand. The illusions of brains all disappear.

"Before I send you off to find sleep, I ought to ask if you had anything else you wished to discuss with me."

Or more to the point, give them an opportunity to ask him questions. He knows he's given them a lot of information. And he knows that humans often are curious about little things about themselves they don't have the tools to investigate.

Achilles leans his elbows on Patroclus’ knees and hums in thought. His eyes land squarely on the cheetah and he arrives at an idea. “Have you ever made a catalog of your wonderful creations, my lord?”

He turns his head back to Prometheus. “If you haven’t, I wonder if you would like some help? Pat has always loved beasts of every kind—even snakes and spiders.”

Achilles finds one of Pat’s hands and turns it over in his own as he continues his pitch: “You have fine penmanship. You could take dictation for Lord Prometheus and spare his hands a bit of pain.”

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