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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"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.

“A moment’s impatience didn’t cause Pergamus’ death. The Fates take the lives of many children. They saw fit to cut his life short, and so it was.” Aspasia’s image lingers, and Achilles is struck by how fondly Neoptolemus’ dream renders the woman. “But they also gave you comfort in your grief.”

Achilles steps closer again and grasps Neoptolemus’ hand, firm and reassuring. “And now— now you are a kind and attentive father to Molossus.”

He can feel the bumps, the callouses on his son’s hands from his many hours of writing. There’s a very good chance Pyrrhus has written more than Achilles has—in life or death. Has Pyrrhus’ constant reflection eased his grief, or made it worse?

“Pyrrhus, lad, you lost so much. So much more than I.“ He lost his childhood, his father, his mother, two children. “And yet you still stand. In that, you’ve surpassed me.”

He could care less about ending the siege on Troy. That foolish war was inflicted on the both of them. What’s come after is far more important.

Aspasia's image in his mind has more colors of respect than his memories of Odysseus or Philoctetes. There's fond admiration there. Neoptolemus is pretty sure that Aspasia could go toe-to-toe with any warrior in Troy and prove braver, for all her physical frailty in comparison. And perhaps that's more worthy of respect than being able to swing a sword well.

Neoptolemus doesn't respond at first to his father holding his hand. He just keeps staring, numbly, forward.

But having his father, the looming shadow over his life he's used for self-abuse and comfort both, say that he's surpassed him?

His eyes grow red. And then they overflow. He doesn't make noises like his younger self, still safely cradled by their father. But he does squeeze his father's hand in his, and lean against his side, letting the tears fall silently.

The whole world of the dream sighs, as if letting out a long-held breath. The words giving structure to the world don't seem so rigid, the colors don't seem quite so overwhelming. The bedroom melts away, and the palace grows to become something closer to reality, closer to the one built by Neoptolemus in Epirus. There's a third part of the man in the dream, working tirelessly somewhere out of sight, and only now that his most pained and volatile parts are soothed can he be sensed.

Achilles shifts to meet Neoptolemus’ weight and squeezes his hand tighter. He relaxes as the dream settles into a more coherent shape.

“I know you were trying to protect him,” he says gently, nodding his head to young, tender Pyrrhus. “I don’t fault you for that, but … will you treat him with more kindness? … It won’t come easily, but will you try?”

Achilles hooks a knuckle under Pyrrhus’ chin to coax him away from his chest. “And you, lad. Will you be patient? Will you forgive him? He was doing what he thought was best.”

Whether through injury or experience, these parts of his son have fractured. Can they be mended? It’s allowed him to survive thus far, but how much longer? Will the next tragedy finally shatter him completely?

The boys look at each other like Achilles has just asked them to eat rotten eggs. The contempt Neoptolemus has for the part of himself that still desperately wants the love, affection, and protection of a parental figure, and the fear he has of opening up enough to allow people in just to be rejected and shattered and alone again.

"They're both going to lock me in a room again as soon as you're gone," Pyrrhus says, glaring at Neoptolemus.

"You'll take us all down if we don't," Neoptolemus accuses. The fragility of this mind hasn't escaped his notice. They can't have a dumb little boy pleading for his dead mommy and daddy running around making the whole thing worse. Neoptolemus huffs, glaring, but averts his eyes and squeezes Achilles' hand.

"...I can try to be nicer." He can try. That much, he can do.

From what he can tell, Pyrrhus is the one who allowed them to open up to Aspasia and save them from self-destructive grief. Asking him to listen to his instincts for love and comfort is probably too much to ask. Trying to be nice seems like the best he can hope for from this aspect of Neoptolemus.

Achilles has been so occupied by his son’s dream, he very nearly forgot about Prometheus. He spares a quick glance around to make sure the titan is still there before he turns to Pyrrhus and Neoptolemus.

“I believe one more person lives in this palace who I should speak with. Would the two of you please help me find him?”

Prometheus has deliberately made himself easy to forget. He's faded somewhat into the dream, blurry with splotches of color, purely because he can tell how important it is for Pyrrhus to have this catharsis with his father. But he's still there, and he gives Achilles an encouraging smile, as if to say, You're doing great. Prometheus can tell that Achilles has seen the value in these different estranged parts of his son and the purposes they serve, even if they don't.

Pyrrhus points down the hall. "He's there."

Neoptolemus pulls Achilles by the hand. "We'll take you to him."

Down the hall, there's a new room. It's a blurry cross between a throne room and a war tent, the sort that tacticians and kings would talk over a battle map inside late into the night. But on the table that would normally hold a map, there's sprawling plans for how to tackle not an enemy, but different goals. Everything Achilles asked for: gentle husband, wise king, kind father are accounted for with different listed sub-tasks for reaching each goal (though 'wise king' has a few question marks, clearly confusing). Some of the plans are vague. Some of them are as detailed as the most tedious paperwork in the House of Hades, with every sub-task having a written paragraph describing what is needed to satisfactorily complete it. All of them are written with the grim exacting effort of battle plans.

And over the table with all the plans, there's the King of Epirus, a grown man as he appears on the outside. Unlike his younger pieces, this part doesn't leap to greet his father. He's moving stones to mark different parts of his lists, clearly using a system that he's long since honed to mark out his priorities.

"Why are you here?" the king asks, only glancing up briefly from his work. The younger pieces have all the feelings, all the rage and love and tenderness and grief. This piece has shrugged away those things, and instead manages all the complexities of carrying on as a functional adult with a land to rule, a house to manage, and an invisible but crippling illness.

Pyrrhus hugs Achilles' neck tighter and glares at his oldest counterpart. "Don't be rude to Dad," he says, and for once Neoptolemus seems to be in agreement, muttering something insulting and vulgar under his breath. The king ignores both of them.

Achilles gives Prometheus a nod in acknowledgement. He’s thankful that they visited Aspasia first; her perspective set him up for success. It feels like slow progress, though, and there’s still the looming threat that he could slip up.

The new room is familiar—Achilles spent a good part of his life in similar, surrounded by clever and not-so-clever men arguing for hours over how to end an impossible siege. He wonders what the day was like when his empty seat was filled by a ten-year-old boy. He imagines young Pyrrhus absurdly surrounded by princes and kings: the likes of haughty Agamemnon, wizened Nestor, cunning Odysseus, powerful Diomedes … They’re as much to blame as Achilles for his son’s tragic state.

“I’ve come here to learn who you are.” Achilles ignores the cold reception and walks slowly around the table, scrutinizing the king’s exhaustive strategy. It looks about as difficult as sacking Troy and likely to take thrice as long.

“And to correct a mistake.” He stops at the king’s side and quietly adjusts Pyrrhus’ weight in his arms. “One of many I’ve made.”

"Hmm." The king hums in acknowledgement, like he's hearing a message from a general rather than talking to his long gone father. Neoptolemus rolls his eyes, pulling up a chair to sit in and frown at the king. Pyrrhus clings to his father, unwilling to let go even a fraction of the long craved affection from him.

The king pushes his carefully crafted lists aside for now, pulling forward a blank wax tablet. The stylus now writes without his hand, as if he's written so much that he no longer needs hands to do it.

"I'm interested to hear what mistake you think you're correcting." The king watches the stylus move on its own, crafting a space to record Achilles' answers. "And what you believe you've learned about me so far."

There's tension between all three parts of the whole, like it's uncomfortable for them to be in the same room. His tenderness, his ferocity, and his carefully built meticulous functionality don't mesh well, and the forces that split them to pieces in the first place hums in how the room shifts uncomfortably.

Like Aspasia said, her master looks burdened. This part of Pyrrhus could be a challenge. At least the first two could still show some emotion.

“When we spoke in Athens, I didn’t yet know enough about you,” Achilles says, rubbing young Pyrrhus’ back. Aspasia’s words drift back to him: you’ve done nothing to deserve being called his father. It’s true. “And I had no right so make so many demands of you. Certainly not when you were already well on your way to completing them …

“Where to begin?” Achilles taps a finger on the words wise king and then gestures to the wax tablet. “You know yourself and you avoid making rash decisions. You give yourself time to reflect. That is the way of a wise king.”

Maybe that wasn’t true of his retaliation against Aspasia’s master, but Achilles can’t deny there’s a part of himself who would have done the very same to secure justice for someone he cared about.

"Mmm."

All of the king's reactions seem a hair slower than someone else's might be, like he needs a moment to chew on what he's heard before responding. He watches the stylus record Achilles' answer with all the dispassion of one of Hades' scribes.

"'Time to reflect' is a word," Neoptolemus spits. Pyrrhus' head rises from his father's shoulder, pressing a finger to his lips as he glares at Neoptolemus.

"Shhh! Don't make him not like us!"

There's another memory. Neoptolemus at Phthia. All his grief and despair turned to rage, needing a direction. He'd picked Epirus, despite his grandfather's protests. He wanted land to conquer, and Epirus was the most strategically placed, sitting between Greece and the rest of the north. A servant saw all his tablets, could read a fraction of all the simple things he had to write down, all the stupid things that he couldn't hold onto without the words. The servant thought he was out of earshot when he whispered to another, "It's such a pity that Lord Peleus has such a slow, simple boy for a grandson."

Neoptolemus had grabbed the servant by the jaw and slammed his head against the wall. His teeth fell to the ground like scattered pearls. The servant couldn't talk after that with his broken jaw. Peleus was furious, and Neoptolemus was too embarrassed by his tablets to admit to the true insult, so he simply said the servant had insulted his honor instead. He'd rather be thought of as too proud than stupid.

There's a colorful smear to the memory. A luminescent orange, like Hermes' feathers. The start of the 'people sense' he gifted. In retrospect, Neoptolemus understands why his grandfather was so angry. He would have been angry too in Peleus' place. But in the moment, it just felt like more rejection, another family member who didn't want him, and Neoptolemus had felt justified in rejecting his grandfather in turn. And Neoptolemus always hid his tablets after that, always hid them from anyone who could possibly read them and know how soft in the head he really is.

"I don't know if it can be called wisdom that I take so long to make decisions," the king says, still paying more attention to his stylus than the memory. "I don't have many options."

Achilles hushes the two younger versions, as if the three were separate sons entirely.

The memory furrows Achilles’ brow and sets his mouth in a line. The tragedy he sees there—other than the servant’s injury—is that Neoptolemus didn’t feel safe confiding in his grandfather. Achilles knows Peleus would not treat the boy’s reliance on the tablets with ridicule. But how was Neoptolemus to know that?

Achilles exhales gently, with the patience of a mentor.

“It would be much easier to make a decision on impulse. And many men do.” Paris stole Helen away from Sparta. Agamemnon took Briseis. And it’s not just men—how many gods make rash decisions? But Achilles himself is in no place to cast aspersions. “I’ve made a great many decisions in the moment that caused untold pain and suffering.“

Achilles rests a hand on the king’s shoulder. “That you choose the harder path—that you wait—speaks well of your character. There’s no shame in that, or in bolstering your memory with tablet and stylus. It makes me proud that you’ve arrived at a clever, meticulous solution.”

The younger versions hush as Achilles requests. But just as he did before, the king glosses over the praise he's given, instead skipping to the part that seems undeserved.

"I'm not the one who thought of the solution," he says, still staring at the stylus rather than his father, even as his shoulder's touched.

A memory. Returning to Skyros had been an exercise in frustration and humiliation. He couldn't seem to remember basic things he ought to, even when he'd only been told the day before. He'd thought that war would make him a man, with all the confidence and valor that brings, but he'd never felt more like a helpless little boy flailing against all these limitations he didn't understand.

Deidamia was the one who took out the wax tablet. If you're having trouble remembering, why don't you write it down while you still remember?

It was a struggle. She put him in her lap like he was still a baby, and she kissed her head and gave him gentle prompts when his hand hesitated, the thoughts all knotted up in his head. She made a ritual of it every night, bringing figs (his favorite) to his bedroom and asking him questions about his day so he could write down the answers. She never made him feel stupid. If anything, writing in the tablets felt joyful, something to let him talk to his mother every day about the little details of his life, a bonding ritual to reestablish his sense of normalcy after Troy. Until she got sick.

The dream shudders. Even without talking, the different feelings of the two younger pieces seep through. They don't understand why they keep deflecting the praise they've so wanted since they were children. They don't understand why it's so hard to accept it when Achilles says that they're wise, or resilient, or that there's nothing wrong with the tablets. He said he's proud. Shouldn't they be happy he's proud? They are, but they're also scared, like if they let themselves accept what they want most then it'll suddenly disappear and everything in them will break again.

“It doesn’t matter. Better yet, this honors your mother’s memory. She didn’t want you to be ashamed for doing what you need.”

It’s becoming very clear that Deidamia might have been one of the only good aspects of Pyrrhus’ life. It’s possible he only survived this long with her love and care. Achilles is grateful to her for that; she deserved a better husband as much as Pyrrhus deserved a better father. He resolves to tell her as much when he finds her in Asphodel.

“None of this is your fault, lad. You were taken to war far too soon and it left a mark upon you. In truth, it leaves its mark upon all men, but you were only a child and so it left you with much deeper scars.” It’s devastating to compare the child in his arms to the king he’s become. “I’m to blame for that, as much as the other Achaean commanders who brought you to fill my place.”

The king watches the stylus write as Achilles speaks. He drums his fingers on the table. He doesn't respond for a while, as if he needs to wait for the stylus to finish writing.

He remembers Odysseus coming to Skyros. Seeing the ship over the horizon, Pyrrhus had been excited, hopeful that his father had perhaps come home. When Odysseus stepped off the boat, he didn't even know if he was his father or not.

Odysseus was gentle when he delivered the news. He sat down with Pyrrhus to tell him that his father was never going to come home. He was never going to have his long-awaited reunion, he was never going to be able to show off how he'd grown, he was never going to know him because the Trojans killed him. Pyrrhus expected his mother to cry, but she didn't. Pyrrhus tried very hard not to cry. Odysseus had gently tip his chin up to tell him that he was a man now, and men can't cry until the work is done, and he had to come to Troy to avenge his father.

His mother practically leapt upon Odysseus, ready to scratch his eyes out. Lycomedes had to have servants hold her back. At the time, Pyrrhus thought he was the one making the choice, being a man and following Odysseus to honor his lost father. In retrospect, he sees that he was manipulated, because Odysseus cared more about finishing the war and going home to Ithaca than he cared about the safety of someone else's child. And in retrospect, he sees that Lycomedes held Deidamia back not because he respected Pyrrhus' right to choose, but because he knew what horrors the Greek fleet could drop on Skyros if they were blamed for them losing the war.

The king keeps drumming his fingers, not speaking. His silence stretches.

"Shhhh, it was my choice, I decided to go," Pyrrhus asserts, covering his ears and squeezing his eyes shut like he's trying to block out a monster.

But the king knows better. The only adult who cared about him was powerless, and to all the others, he was a tool to use and throw away.

"Shut up, shut up," Neoptolemus covers his ears too and screws his eyes shut, lashing out to kick the king's shin. The king doesn't react. "Shut up!"

The colors that make the space grow darker. The churn with rejection, with loneliness, with resentment that's been buried so deep because unearthing it means accepting the dire reality of his past, of all the ways he was failed and all the ways he didn't deserve to be.

"You never really answered why, after all this time, you only decided to come back now," the king says, voice strangely calm despite the environment. "And why didn't Mom come from the shore to talk to me?"

He hadn't been sure, but now he is. He'd seen her as he docked in Athens. The air had smelled verdant, like a glade he'd never seen, and he could have sworn she was sobbing at the shore and washing his bloody armor. But then she was gone when he blinked.

Achilles remembers watching his own father return after a week or more away. He adored his father and his time away always felt like an eternity. What would it have been like to wait ten years, only to learn that his father had died?

And Odysseus was the one to deliver the news. Achilles used to respect him for his intelligence, but now he's not so sure what he'll do when he sees the man next. Did Odysseus think Achilles would never learn of this? Maybe the risk of Achilles' rage was a small price to pay to finally sack Troy.

He sets aside his pique to cock his head at the mention of Deidamia. "During Anthesteria, the border of the Underworld grows thin enough for some shades to walk among the living, but I'm afraid I can't account for your mother. Perhaps you were only afforded a glimpse of each other through the veil."

Explaining himself takes a long moment. At least as long as it takes Neoptolemus to process, and Achilles wishes he had a few hours to scrawl ideas on a tablet. But he doesn't.

"As for myself, I had my duties to the House of Hades for many years. I've told you as much. When I finally found myself in Elysium, in the company of veterans of the war, they told me of your deeds."

He pauses, pensively coiling his fingers in Pyrrhus' hair. "In truth, I was disappointed to hear what became of King Priam and Hector's infant son ... and many more who died by your hand. I foolishly thought this was a failure on your part ...

"The war taught me many hard lessons, but I see now—there was no one to teach you those lessons. Likely no one else had learned them. You were at the mercy of the likes of Odysseus, who wanted the war to end in victory, whatever the cost."

Achilles reaches out to gently turn the king's chin to face him, a partial gesture of formal entreaty. "Forgive me, lad. I've collected many regrets in life, and chief among them is that I took far too long to meet you. To understand all that you've endured and form my own opinion of the man you've become."

Prometheus, still trying to do his best to be forgettable for the moment, perks at the mention of Deidamia visiting, brow furrowing. He withdraws into the colors to investigate... something. But his presence can still be felt, if Achilles chooses to feel for it.

But there's more to pay attention to than an old Titan. The details of the world around them grow blurrier, harder to distinguish the more worked up the dreamer is.

Neoptolemus only hears I was disappointed. He only hears This was a failure. The colors around him streak with rejection, the same colors of Peleus and Lycomedes and Thetis, and he slams his hand on the table that barely exists anymore. "I did it for you!" He tries to sound angry, but his voice cracks.

Pyrrhus is colored with fear. Fear of his father's disappointment, fear that Neoptolemus' anger will drive him away once more, fear that Neoptolemus' rage and shouting and violence will cost them any scrap of affection they can have just like it did with Peleus. He clings tight to Achilles, wrapping his arms and legs around his father as tight as he can. "I'm sorry, I'll be better, just tell me how to be better, I'm sorry we're not really mad I'm sorry--"

But the king heard Achilles in his entirety. He impatiently waves dismissively at his younger parts' reactions. He allows Achilles to guide his head, but when he looks at his father, his eyes are nothing but cold practicality. Neoptolemus and Pyrrhus can shoulder all their collective rage and grief and insecurities. It's the king's responsibility to be sensible.

"You didn't answer the question," the king says. "That's why you didn't come back then. That's not why you chose to come back now."

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