messageforyou | For refusetofight

For refusetofight

It's not long after Anthesteria that the vulture arrives. It has the same rattling rusty call, the same ugly plucked red head. It finds Achilles wherever he is in the Underworld, and it bears a message written on parchment.

Told you need to hear about human minds!

Happy to chat :) Meet me at the mouth of the Styx

Bring an adult mortal with as little divine blood as you can, who you don't mind hearing what we have to discuss

- P

Prometheus has set up outside the Temple of Styx. It'd be rude for him to invade Hades' realm. Rude--how interesting to consider through the lens of his work, knowing that it's a territorial response. Gods are just as humans, just as animals. They dislike it when those who don't belong wander in their territory.

He looks a sight better than he did when Achilles last saw him, but still not particularly good. His salt and pepper hair is pulled back, his beard now trimmed neatly, and his clothes not quite so ragged (though they're still streaked with clay). His hands are still too thin, gnarled like tree roots with bulging arthritic knuckles, and his joints are swollen and muscles withered.

His chiton is pulled up and clasped so that the scarring over his liver isn't visible anymore, and he might look to all the world as an elderly, arthritic man, if it weren't for his shadow. It spills out behind him, cast by the campfire he's built, and it is so large that it fills the whole clearing.

He's boiling water over the fire. He has a bag full of things, sitting by his side. A cheetah, his newest creation, lies languidly over his legs, keeping his joints warm and keeping pressure on them to cease their aching momentarily.

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"I'm not sure." The brightness in Prometheus' eyes dim. "I haven't seen his brain. And these things don't always behave predictably." He looks to Aspasia. The dream is twisting with her confusion. They're in a palace, they're by the sea, they're in the agora.

"Have you noticed sudden changes in your master, my dear girl? Any decline in his abilities?"

Aspasia's anxiety spikes. He'd been determined to go capture his wife, but he came home empty-handed, and he didn't say why. And he released Andromache. Gave her enough money and supplies to start a new life. All he said was that he'd been asked to do a good turn for someone.

Aspasia's hate for the Trojan bitch spikes as she walks away from Molossus without a word. Molossus doesn't even ask for her to come back. She's so detached from her own son that he's more interested in painting with mud on the floor. Aspasia would have never done that, if she'd been allowed to keep even one of her babies.

The bitch stares the master down. Like he hasn't just given her an act of generosity no other Greek would, like he isn't first among monsters.

"If there's any justice, you won't live long enough to see your son become a man," she says before she leaves. The master just lets her go, and her voice echoes like prophecy. Aspasia wishes she had permission to slap the bitch's mouth.

He just keeps writing, he's not interested in food except when Aspasia takes it to his room, he has a new pendant with blond hair in it did he meet a girl in Athens is this lovesickness why won't he tell her doesn't he know how she worries what if he marries and the wife is as cruel as all the other Greeks will Aspasia be thrown out into the world away from her master what happened in Athens what happened--

Prometheus raises a hand, and the waves of anxiety are muted, shifting from a storm to eddies. He looks to Achilles, arching an eyebrow. "I'm guessing you met him in Athens?"

Achilles can’t begrudge Andromache her anger, her uttered curse. Would Aspasia’s own hatred cool if she knew what became of Astyanax? Or would she forgive that kind of infanticide as the cost of war?

Regardless, Aspasia’s ferocity speaks volumes about her loyalty. Pyrrhus has destroyed many lives, but at least he’s improved hers … and other slaves besides. At least he fulfilled Hermes’ request.

Aspasia’s anxiety gnaws at the dream around him and Achilles can’t stop himself. He needs to relieve some of it.

“Yes, Lord Prometheus,” he confirms, then to the poor, dreaming woman, “Aspasia, you need not worry. I am your master’s father and the lock of hair is my token. I spoke with him during his visit to Athens.”

He looks directly at Aspasia and says, as if in apology, “His life has been difficult and I carry the blame for that.”

Aspasia's anxiety turns to confusion. Because Lord Neoptolemus' father is a hero of legend, and dead besides. Dead heroes don't visit the dreams of former slaves. They visit the dreams of important people.

"His father?" Aspasia, her form having blurred as the dream unmoored, comes back into focus. She blinks at Achilles, uncomprehending. If this were real, if she had all the senses of a waking person she would shut up and meekly shut down like servants are supposed to do when faced with heroes of legend.

But this is her dream. There are no secrets here, and there is no discretion.

Her face twists into a glower.

"Why did you leave him?"

Her dream twists with contempt, contempt she's never dared show her master. She knows how devoted her lord is to the memory of his father. But when she cleans the pottery depicting the great feats of Achilles, all she can think of is all her babies in the river, and how she'd give anything to have even one of them with her. What kind of great hero has what she'd die for, and leaves it on an island to grow without him, and then dies and lets his abandoned son clean up his mess? The unfairness of it all, the selfishness, and witnessing how devoted her master still is despite it makes her want to break the pottery every time she's cleaning it.

“You seem like a woman who has no use for excuses, and it’s just as well. I have none.” Achilles spreads his open palms. “I left him for the same reason all men leave their families for war—for glory, honor, renown.”

Her anger is palpable in the dream and Achilles doesn’t shy from it. This always feels more fitting than adoration. “I only discovered I made the wrong decision when I lost everything, including my own life.”

Achilles rubs his brow and shakes his head. “I don’t know if I can set this right … if I can help Neoptolemus find happiness, or even simple relief, but I intend to try, Aspasia. I hope I can do half as much as you have for my son.”

His barefaced acknowledgement of his failings and Aspasia's efforts is something, but it doesn't mollify the deep contempt in her heart for him. Aspasia's life is haunted by the loss of her babies, by the fantasy of just having been able to keep even one, and she can't help but despise anyone who had what she so wanted and abandoned it. She hates Andromache for it, and she hates Achilles for it.

"He didn't look happy or relieved when he came home. He looked burdened," she bites out. She's digging her heels in, turning up her chin, ready to challenge this hero of legend to shut her up like so many people like him shut up people like her. She thinks of her master frowning at his tablets, writing more and more things she can't understand, only looking up if she sits down with his food and begs him to eat, or if his son comes to his room to show off a new art project. Molossus made something out of a blob of clay, but her master immediately recognized it as a frog, and talking to Molossus about his blobby clay frog was the only thing that pulled him from his obsessive writing.

"You've done nothing to deserve being called his father," she says with all the hissing contempt of releasing fifteen years of silent sentiment, knowing as she did how not even she could get away with speaking ill of her master's father. "You left him with a family who didn't want him, made a mess across the sea, and died so he had to go clean it up when he was still a boy. And he did clean it for you, and he's never complained because even if you're a rotten father he's a good son."

Aspasia steps forward, getting in Achilles' face with the kind of daring that'd be suicidal in the waking world. She's shorter than him, the dream knows that, but she still manages to look at him eye to eye, such is the force of her conviction. "You know what would give him relief? What would make him happy? Knowing his father gives a shit about him and is proud of how damned hard he's worked to be a good son." She puts her finger in Achilles' face, as if her daring isn't suicidal enough. "And if you've come back from the dead to do anything but that to him, you can fuck right off."

A dormant part of Achilles sparks a flicker of anger at this accusation despite its truth. It’s a kneejerk reaction that only manifests in a twitch of his mouth, a flash in his eyes. Maybe it looks familiar to Aspasia—her master’s face probably looks the same when he’s biting back anger.

But once again, the anger isn’t at Aspasia. It’s disappointment in himself. It’s grief for his son’s suffering. Achilles doesn’t allow himself to look away from the woman’s intense glare, as hot as it is with ferocity.

“As I learn more about him, I’ve begun to see that my approval is indeed the best thing I can grant him. I asked a lot of the lad at Athens—more than I had any right to. I had hoped it was useful wisdom, but I see that it’s not what his heart needs.”

Achilles gently rests a hand on Aspasia’s shoulder. “Please don’t take that tone with other men of standing. They would not tolerate it, and you mean far too much to Neoptolemus—and Molossus, too, I’m certain.”

Aspasia sees the twitch in his face. Not because she's familiar with her master, oh no, but because she has long and hard experience with angry, violent men. Angry, violent men who'd beat her for speaking out of turn, or beat their freshly postpartum wives for not sucking their cock while she nursed their newborns in the other room, or beat their children black and bloody for embarrassing them. And nothing she's ever heard about Achilles of Phthia makes him sound any better than the same angry, violent men who she's had to bend the knee to throughout her life. She narrows her eyes, turning up her chin, as if daring him to prove her right.

But he doesn't. Instead of smacking her in the mouth, or grabbing her hair to bash her head against a wall, or punching her in the gut, he just rests his hand on her shoulder, and advises her of what she already knows. Most men won't accept a woman of no standing yelling and waving her finger in their face. And she owes it to her master and to little Molossus not to provoke them into killing her.

She huffs, the fires of her anger cooling, and crosses her arms, stepping back so she's no longer quite so much in Achilles' face. She still doesn't like him, but the worst of her wrath is now out of her system.

"He's a good son," she repeats. "And he's a good master. He knows all of our names, and the names of our spouses and children. He's good to the people who are his to care for, and efficient with those who pose threats to them." Efficient is the word she uses. Death is a fact of life for her, always has been, and Neoptolemus' style of instantly killing a person foolish enough to cross him has always struck her as more honest and kinder than the slow deaths inflicted by Greeks upon their dependents, from their slaves to their wives. Other Greeks find it cruel and unpredictable and frightening, but she thinks it's only because they're afraid of a Greek who is honest about killing, and gives them a hint of the fear they inflict on others. "And Molossus is a good boy. He's cheerful and likes to help me clean by using a rag to wipe the floor. He only spreads the mud around, but he's learning. He likes to make art of animals, especially frogs. And he's already learning his letters because he wants to write like his father."

There's still a hint of ferocious protectiveness to how she speaks of them. Declaring their virtues, as if daring Achilles to contradict her, to declare either of these people she loves so much unworthy of his love and attention. And there's also an exacting air, making sure he knows the important facts about them, making sure that he's as equipped as possible to show them love the way he should.

“I’m pleased to hear it, truly.” Achilles’ face creases around an earnest smile. It’s telling that Pyrrhus is so generous with his slaves and servants; a cruel man would gleefully abuse such power over others. “What worried me most was that my son would live a life without love and kindness. I worried war would harden him to such things.”

His smile only grows to hear Aspasia describe his grandson. “And I’m pleased— proud Neoptolemus is a better father to Molossus than I was to him.”

It’s a very low bar, but Pyrrhus has easily cleared it. A feat made all the greater with no one to show him what a good father is like.

“Your insight has been invaluable, Aspasia. Forgive me—forgive us—” Achilles nods to include Prometheus, “for disturbing your rest.”

Aspasia's anger cools further at Achilles' recognition of the virtues she's espousing. And at his expressing concern about Neoptolemus and living without love. The dream still speaks, and Aspasia herself sees how lonely her master must be, even though he doesn't seem to realize it. There's only so much he's willing to allow her to be there for him, and no Greek of his own standing is ready to tolerate his reputation and demeanor long enough to know and be friends with him. He bears the burden of solitude without complaint, but Aspasia has seen what loneliness can do, and she worries about him, especially now that he's released Andromache and lost what nominal companionship he ever found in her.

"I'll forgive you if you're good to him," she says, crossing her arms. "He deserves someone to be."

She looks to Prometheus, as if only just seeing that he's not the slave she thought he was, and furrows her brow in confusion. Prometheus smiles at her, and the dream hums with how warm and loving it seems, sincerely warm and loving in a way that she's not sure anyone has ever directed a smile at her before.

"Aspasia." Prometheus cups her face in his hands. She remembers being a child. Suddenly she feels like she's in another world, in a world where her father loved and adored and protected her and never could fathom selling her into slavery. "You're a queen among women. And you're so much stronger than you know. Sleep, and know how special you are, no matter what others have told you."

He presses a kiss to her forehead. An immense peace falls upon the dream, the peace of a child wrapped in the arms of their parent and full of the singular understanding of how loved they are. Aspasia closes her eyes and falls deeper into sleep, into dreamlessness, and she disappears, the dream dissolving around her and leaving Prometheus and Achilles in the dark void once more.

“Thank you, Aspasia. You’ve given me much to consider,” Achilles says with a final bow of his head.

As illuminating as it was, the emptiness is a relief after the roiling emotional landscape of Aspasia’s dream. Achilles releases a long sigh and turns to Prometheus.

“It was useful to see Pyrrhus through another set of eyes. If her perspective is accurate, he’s not nearly so lost as I thought.” He may not have many friends among his peers, but his servants care for him and he does the same in return. Pyrrhus is attentive and gentle with Molossus, even while he struggles through near-constant pain.

Maybe … maybe he has less to worry about when it comes to Lyra.

“What do you make of this, Lord Prometheus? Am I overly-optimistic?” He wants to trust Aspasia’s read, but love and loyalty can color an opinion.

Prometheus crosses his arms and hums thoughtfully, rocking on his heels and looking up at the nothingness that they rest in. It seems that he likes to move when he thinks, similar to Hermes.

"I cannot say for sure until I meet the boy himself," he says. "But... it seems to me that when faced with novel, potentially threatening situations, his default is to kill."

Prometheus allows Achilles a peek into his thought process, allowing the nothing to communicate his considerations as it once did Aspasia's.

When asked to make snap judgments on behalf of others, Pyrrhus said that his snap judgment would be to kill the one he thinks is in the wrong. Nothing Aspasia remembered indicated that Pyrrhus was remorseful for his impulsive violence, nor that he saw it as a bad thing. But he offered a more considered, thoughtful response in exchange for the time needed to process his thinking in writing. Which indicates to Prometheus that Pyrrhus is able to work through his impulsive violence and make more reasoned decisions, but only if he has time to write and doesn't feel pressured (by threat or by social convention) to respond immediately.

"If you choose to introduce your daughter to him," Prometheus says, "I would advise that you reveal her existence when she's far away, and reveal it gently without pressuring him to react how you wish him to. And I wouldn't expect him to respond well or rationally to start with, and if he doesn't, meeting his response with anger or rejection may make him more likely to respond violently. You would have a better understanding of how he will behave with her long term if you give him the time and space to sort through his feelings, which will take longer than the average human because he needs his writing implements to do it."

Prometheus sees the potential of Pyrrhus being a good big brother to have, because he's clearly fiercely protective of those he considers 'his' and seems to be quite good with children. He also sees the potential of him being a very real danger if he's introduced to her suddenly, and takes her as a threat to his place as his father's only (and by default favorite) child. With how little love Pyrrhus has in his life, and how essential social bonds are to human stability, Prometheus could see him having a very violent reaction of his feels that someone has taken his father's love from him.

“I see,” Achilles hums. Between his own inability to lie and Lyra’s stubborn resolve, he knows he can’t keep Lyra’s existence from Pyrrhus for long. At least he’s armed with some strategy to help that along. Though he does worry about the case where no amount of processing, of writing on his tablets will bring Pyrrhus around to love and protect his sister. What then?

“Now that we’ve visited Aspasia … is it time we enter Pyrrhus’ dreams?” Achilles is a hero. He’s not supposed to fear anything, but the thought of entering his son’s dreamscape unsettles him.

How fractured is his mind? Aspasia’s tragic experience was so far removed from Achilles’ own, it was easy to remain detached, objective. But he and Pyrrhus share a life of war. They share people: Greek allies, Trojan foes, Deidamia … Is he ready to see them again?

Prometheus takes Achilles by the hand, smiling gently, as if he knows his fear even if he hasn't said anything. Maybe he does. Or maybe he can just tell.

"We'll go together," he says. Then, like a father with a child, he gently pulls Achilles forward and the world changes again.

It's immediately clear that there's something different about Pyrrhus when entering his dream. In a few thousand years, the dreamscape could be described as a mediocre art student's first attempt at impressionism--blobs of color squished together to suggest shapes, but focusing too closely makes those suggestions fall away into nothing but colored blobs once more. The only thing that gives the world any kind of structure are laboriously scratched in words and letters that fight to outline important things.

There's a palace. It's Pyrrhus', it's Peleus', it's Lycomedes', it's no one's in particular. The words that outline it are scratched lists of rules governing the proper etiquette around visiting and hosting people within a palace, and around managing a household, like someone literally sat down an tried to commit all the unspoken rules around xenia and adulthood as a head of a household on clay. The rules are scratched over and over, building on top of each other until they make a recognizable outline of a palace in the blobs of color.

The words make the ground as well, creating a surface for Achilles and Prometheus to stand on, because the colors have no substance and they'd just fall through forever without the solidity of words. And the words on the ground are the foundational truths Pyrrhus falls back on when confused or overwhelmed.

Mom loved you. Dad loved you. Pergamus was real and alive. Amphialus was real and alive. Molossus is real and alive. You can trust Aspasia. You can trust Lykos. You can trust Korinna. You can trust Hyginos. You can trust Erasmos. You can trust Galene. Mom loved you. Dad loved you.

The web of words is brittle, fragile, overextended with too little thread supporting too much weight. Any one of these truths breaking could bring everything down.

This new dreamscape reminds him of a spider’s web or a bird’s nest: painstakingly constructed, but eerily delicate. The words are so unexpected and dense he almost doesn’t see them at first.

Reading them, the words make his heart ache with mingled grief and shame. Dad loved you.

… Did he? Achilles knows the truth: I loved war. I loved being adored. I loved myself. I loved Patroclus. If pressed, maybe he loved the idea of a son, but not Pyrrhus specifically. Certainly not when he finally heard tell of Pyrrhus’ deeds.

Does he love him now? Achilles can’t truthfully say yes. He feels sympathy for his son and the way he’s had to scaffold his life. If he’s not proud of Pyrrhus’ deeds at Troy, he’s proud of his resilience in the lonely years after. Love will only come with time and understanding …

… But I was ready to love Lyra after no more than a day. What kind of father am I? No better than Zeus, playing favorites.

“Pyrrhus?” he calls into the dream palace. “Pyrrhus, are you here?”

"Dad?"

This world is so insubstantial that it easily melts into another scene. The suggestion of a bedroom in a palace. The suggestion of Deidamia sleeping on one side of the bed, painted with the colors of safety and love and ringed with a halo of golden words. Mom loves you Mom loves you Mom loves you

Pyrrhus is at the doorway, but not all of him. Just the part that responds to being called Pyrrhus. And that part is a boy, on the cusp of beginning manhood but not quite there yet, rubbing his puffy reddened eyes. He looks like he's been crying.

"I had a bad dream," the boy mumbles. "And my head really hurts."

There's an air of familiarity to this dream shape. Pyrrhus has had dreams like this before, going to his parents' room when his head hurt, coming upon a happily married couple, alive and well.

Achilles takes in the vision of cozy domesticity and sinks deeper into melancholy. This is what could have been if he’d only sailed back to Greece. In ten years how many chances did he have to do exactly that?

Pyrrhus is near the same age as Zagreus when Achilles first arrived at the House. A tender, impressionable age: still very much a vulnerable child, but one who’s beginning to scrutinize the world and his place within it.

Pyrrhus can’t have been much older than this when he was brought across the sea to take his place at Troy. The thought makes Achilles sick.

“Oh, lad,” Achilles says gently, crossing the dark room to the sketch of a wash basin and pitcher of cool water. He soaks a cloth and wrings out the excess. “Come here and tell me about your dream.”

"It was really bad." Pyrrhus walks to Achilles guilelessly, like they've spent his whole childhood together, and hugs his father's leg for comfort. "I dreamed you were gone, and then they took me away, but they realized they didn't need me like you so they put me on an island and I was all alone forever."

The dream wobbles. There's still the safe bedroom, warm and protected, but outside the window there's a swimming impression of a memory. The memory is clearer than the world around it, embedded in his mind before his brain was damaged. Lemnos, an island that felt as far as Egypt to him at the time. Odysseus told him that a prophecy demanded they collect Philoctetes' bow and arrows, who they'd left there ten years ago because his foot was hurt. Odysseus was the one who convinced the Greeks to abandon Philoctetes, so he told Pyrrhus that he was the one who had to talk Philoctetes into a false sense of security, to lie to him and steal his bow. Pyrrhus didn't like the idea. He didn't think heroes were supposed to lie and steal, and he didn't think his father would like it very much if he did. But Odysseus was the grown man there, the one who'd spent the last ten years with Achilles, and he assured him that his father would have absolutely encouraged him to lie and steal if it meant winning the war. Pyrrhus could trust him. He was friends with his father.

Pyrrhus wasn't sure if he believed that, but he couldn't help but notice that Odysseus had the only boat, and Pyrrhus didn't know how to get home without it, and he'd just admitted to abandoning someone for ten years because they were hurt.

You wouldn't leave me here for ten years, would you? he'd asked, trying not to sound scared. His mother hadn't wanted him to go with Odysseus, but he'd insisted, because his father was never coming home and it was the only thing he could do for him.

No, lad, never. Prophecy says we need you in person. Odysseus had laughed as he said it. He probably meant it to be funny. Pyrrhus didn't think it was funny. The thought of his usefulness one day drying out and being left all alone to forever waste away wormed its way in his head, and it sits there now, unexamined, another element of the rotting, brittle foundation of his mind.

Achilles watches the memory—the “bad dream”—with a stony face and flattened lips. This deceptively calm surface hides a growing fury aimed squarely at Odysseus. How could he, another father, treat a child like this? Did he not see Telemachus in Pyrrhus? The boys were about the same age. Would Odysseus consent to dragging his son into war? Inflicting wounds that would fester and sour the rest of Telemachus’ life?

Achilles sits heavily on a klismos and gently drapes the cool compress over his son’s forehead. He takes both of his hands and helps Pyrrhus into his lap. This is what should have been. This is what was taken from them both.

“It was only a dream, Pyrrhus. You’re not alone, and I’m still here.” Both of those things are true—in the context of the dream and the waking world. “So many people still need you.”

The scrawled list of names attests to that: Molossus needs his father, Aspasia and her fellow servants need to be spared from cruel masters.

Pyrrhus sighs in soft relief as his father puts the compress over his head and takes him in his lap. He feels safe. He feels warm, he feels loved, and the bad things are far away. He rests his head against his father's chest, closing his eyes against the pain in his head as the compress does what limited work it can.

The memory out of the window blurs. Pyrrhus trying to lie to Philoctetes, feeling rotten the whole time. Tricking him into giving Pyrrhus his bow and arrows. Then Odysseus revealed himself. He wanted to leave without Philoctetes again, and the men yelled at each other, and they both demanded that Pyrrhus listen to them instead of the other. Pyrrhus' conscience got the best of him and he gave Philoctetes his bow and arrows back. He was going to leave with them until he got an omen from Heracles that his foot would be healed if he went to Troy.

On the boat to Troy, Odysseus cupped Pyrrhus' chin and talked to him with seriousness that made Pyrrhus' gut twist. If you're going to do this, you have to listen to me. If you don't, we will lose the war, and your father died for nothing.

Pyrrhus didn't cry in front of Odysseus or Philoctetes because he was a big boy going to war, and soldiers don't cry in front of other soldiers. But he did cry in his bunk later, and he wished his mother was there.

But it was a bad dream. He's with his father.

"You shouldn't be so nice to him."

Another part of Neoptolemus is in the room, leaning against the wall. A part of him the same age as he would have been when he lost Pergamus--old enough to start a beard, but still not fully grown, his limbs still long enough to indicate one final growth spurt on the way. He has a dark look in his eyes as he glowers at Pyrrhus. Pyrrhus keeps his eyes squeezed shut and covers his ears, like he knows a bully is about to say something nasty and all he knows how to do is try to block it out.

Neoptolemus cocks his head. His face seems permanently contemptuous, looking down at the little boy seeking comfort from his father. Like the child is a particularly unpleasant insect.

"You know he won't last if he's soft."

I died for nothing regardless, Achilles wants to say. I doomed us both. But that’s not something Pyrrhus needs to hear. That’s Achilles’ weight to bear for them both.

Instead, Achilles squeezes the boy tighter. He shakes his head at Neoptolemus and corrects him in the patient tone of a mentor: “Asking for help, seeking love is not weakness. Not as a boy, not as a man.”

Achilles smooths Pyrrhus’ curls, still innocently, youthfully soft. “I sought my mother’s help many times at Troy. I found solace in the arms of my beloved. A man needs people he can trust as much as he needs food and drink and rest. A weak man stands alone.”

"And a man who relies on others dies when they're gone," Neoptolemus says with the hard voice of immutable truth. "You're proof of that."

There's more to it than that. More than just Neoptolemus' knowledge of Achilles losing his mind and dying after his lover was killed. The next memory overlays the bedroom, like two times overlapping at once.

Deidamia is dead. She got sick only a few years after Troy, and declined quickly. Neoptolemus waited on her hand and foot, taking tasks from slaves and servants alike, not trusting anyone but himself at his mother's bedside. But she died anyway while he held her hand, and everything soft and warm died with her.

Pyrrhus whimpers, squeezing his eyes shut tighter and pressing his hands harder against his ears despite the pain in his head. "I don't want to think about this. Stop it!"

But the memory continues. Neoptolemus kneeling at the bedside of his mother's cooling corpse. Holding her hand. Feeling the heat leech further and further out. There's a drumbeat in his ears. A question. Is there any reason to stay here when she's gone?

No. There isn't.

He left his knife in his room. He could go there quickly. He could lie down with his mother and die with her, and they could go to the Underworld together.

The impulse grows with every beat of his heart. Why stay? His utility is all used up, for his parents and for the Greeks. His life broken into pieces by writing over and over on a tablet and lying down in a dark room in unspeakable pain with little to look forward to in between. His extended family in Skyros would rather he'd go, and he's pretty sure that his extended family in the ocean and in Phthia feels the same way. There's only one person who liked having him around, and now she's gone.

He lets go of his mother's hand with full intention of getting his knife when the last sliver of self preservation in his heart bursts forth and demands what he will say to his father when he arrives in the Underworld, dead at his own hand because he couldn't think of living through a few headaches and losing his mommy. The father he's imagined, up until now kind and heroic, twists in his mind into something cruel and rigid, demanding better, accepting no excuses or self-pity. He's not allowed to die until he has heirs and deeds worth bragging about to his father.

It's the self-flagellation thinly disguised as meeting his imaginary father's expectations that spurs him to pack his bags and take a boat to Phthia. It's the rage that he stuffs into the yawning, lethal void in his heart that keeps him alive, even as it causes his kind-tempered grandfather to bridle and convinces everyone around Neoptolemus of his inherent cruelty. And yet the drums still beat, and all he can do is create a cruel puppet of his father to shout them down and shame them into temporary silence.

Achilles knows Pyrrhus loved his mother, but the memory drives home that devotion. He knows exactly what that loss, that despair feels like. Achilles didn’t reach for a blade, but he refused food for days, willing himself to wither and die beside Patroclus’ corpse.

He rises from the chair, still cradling Pyrrhus against his chest and steps closer to the older, callous image of his son.

“And you are proof that they don’t.” He rests a hand on Neoptolemus’ arm. “You relied on your mother and she relied on you in turn. You were a good, loyal son. You didn’t die. Her love made you stronger, lad.”

He appraises the version of himself that Neoptolemus invented and sighs. It’s the same sort of unyielding father any number of Greeks would have imagined for himself. “That vision of me—it seems you needed him for a time, but he no longer serves you. I want you to know the true me, just as I want to know the true you.”

Pyrrhus wraps his arms around his father's neck to stay steady, burying his face in Achilles' shoulder. He's overwhelmed by all the feelings that he's not ready or equipped to face. Neoptolemus, on the other hand, doesn't look at Achilles, even when he's touched. He stares, numbly, at the cruel shadow he created to survive. A faceless father, larger than life, belittling every achievement he had in some twisted attempt to keep himself alive.

"Do you really want to know the true me?" Neoptolemus tears his eyes from his imaginary father to look at the real one. There's nothing behind his eyes. "It's not worth it. I'd rather you liked me."

Because Neoptolemus, this angry and grieving almost-man who forced himself to live with cruelty, is completely certain that there's nothing likeable about the real him. He's too slow and stupid to keep up with conversations like everyone else, he's not particularly charming or funny, he's not creative or worldly or wise... for gods' sake, he can't even remember basic conversations without writing things down. He's a man only a mother could love, and the best he could do was carefully curate an outward appearance of what he thought a man should be. Stoic, private, honorable, and fearsome to his enemies.

No. Neoptolemus isn't going to have his fantasized reunion with his father where he's told all about how proud he is if he actually shows him all the messy weaknesses and vulnerabilities behind that mask.

“I do. I’m not like him,” Achilles says, waving his free hand at the faceless father, “You need not hide yourself away from me.”

He adjusts his grip on Pyrrhus and looks directly into the emptiness in Neoptolemus’ eyes. It’s hard to reconcile these two parts of his son: the tender boy that still craves comfort and affection, the callous man who has hollowed himself out into a cold shell.

“I already know how you hurt,” Achilles says, resting his hand on the compress still draped on young Pyrrhus’ head. “You live a life that’s more difficult than most, and still you endure. You adapt. You care for those who rely on you.”

Achilles swallows thickly, thinking of Aspasia and everything she revealed about his son. “That is something to be proud of. A greater victory than Troy.”

Pyrrhus tightens his grip on his father. Another memory. Pyrrhus crying, curled up with his back on the wall, trying to hide his tears. Mom pulling his hands from his face. Whether you're one or one hundred years old, never feel ashamed for crying in front of your Mama.

The gentleness of the memory--something familiar, consistent, Deidamia was always kind and gentle to her son, never made him feel less than for his tears--draws sharp contrast to all the razor edges of the imagined shadow of Achilles.

But Neoptolemus--the part of Achilles' son that's still an angry, grieving young man torturing himself to stay alive--still has nothing behind his eyes. He's whipped himself so long and hard that even when presented with the praise that Pyrrhus has always so dearly wanted, he's not able to accept it.

"I'm not so sure about that," he says dully, eyes not quite focusing.

There's another memory strongly associated with this part of the whole. Pergamus. He was born a healthy, happy baby, and he was born with curly hair and bright blue eyes. A perfect baby. Neo didn't know what a father was supposed to do, and he fell into filling the role his own imaginary father had been performing for him since his mother died--pushing his son forward. Except Pergamus didn't have a loving mother in Andromache. The tenderness Pergamus got was from his wetnurse, Aspasia, and Neoptolemus reserved his affection for when his son did something. When he started to make sense with his babbling, when he walked for the first time, when he started to stack his toys.

Neoptolemus didn't realize what he was doing until the very first time he made Pergamus cry. His head hurt, he was nauseous, he wanted to lie down in the dark, and Pergamus came running, shrieking, wanting to show him something. And he yelled for the boy to shut up. And that sweet, perfect, happy baby started to cry, running into the arms of his wet nurse, like his father was a scary monster instead of a parent.

He didn't have time to make it up to his son. He didn't have time to do better. A snake took that away from him. Sitting at his son's grave, the drums beat in his ears, and not even the imagined disapproval of his father could make them quiet. He was already resolving to throw himself into the sea when Aspasia sat down next to him in the grass.

In his mind's eye, Aspasia looks softer than she looks to herself. She's colored with similar colors as Deidamia's silhouette. He wasn't used to anyone having the courage to sit so near him, much less a slave. I'm so sorry, she'd said. He doesn't know if she knows she stopped him from joining his mother and son that day, but she did.

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