messageforyou | For refusetofight

For refusetofight

Through the smoky miasma, thick and smelling of conflict and heat and pressure, on the other side is a forest. This one is less garish, less saturated than the rest of Tír na nÓg. Two fae creatures, odd feathered humanoids that resemble crows with cracked and broken beaks, sit at the rocks around a steaming hot spring, soap and strigils beside them.

The fae are seemingly mute, but won't allow Achilles to leave without a thorough wash. The sort that practically scrapes a whole layer of skin off, the sort where they insist on his hair to be cleaned and his nail beds scrubbed. His white tunic is whisked off to be burned, and only once he is deemed fit by the fae attendants to be properly cleaned of the remnants of the Morrígan does one bring the clothes he left behind with Hermes. They're neatly folded, but Hermes' scarf sits on top like a nest, holding Achilles' ring, his bracelet, and the stone with a hole in the middle. The scarf smells distinctly of Hermes, like cleverness and courage and Greece. Almost like Hermes is trying to give Achilles his blessing and support, even when they can't see each other before his trial.

After he's clean and dressed, the bath attendants point in the direction he's meant to walk, a plunge into the dark woods. There's the soft giggling of children within.

In the woods, children from all across time and the world huddle together. A boy holds a fist of straws, and each of the children draw a straw at once. They mumble amongst themselves, checking the straws, and three boys have the shortest one.

"Seems unfair to make him convince Stab," says a girl with messy red braids and two missing teeth.

"If you want a mulligan, you gotta give up treats until the next hunt," a blond boy with gray eyes and a short straw says, waving it in her face. She wrinkles her nose.

"I didn't say I want a mulligan!"

"Then shoo!"

As Achilles approaches, the children with longer straws scatter into the woods, some laughing. Three boys remain. One boy, with pale skin, ragged dirty blond hair and crooked teeth, wearing an oversized sweater and shorts and no shoes and a canvas bag big enough on him to almost drag on the ground. A second boy, skin dark as jet and head shaved, a pair of binoculars dangling from his neck, wearing loose sweatpants and an old linen button-down with sneakers with a check drawn on. A third boy, the smallest of them, maybe close to Lyra's age, looking like one of the people from the far east but with a permanent glower in his face, sitting on the ground and looking a little like he's drowning in the adult-sized jacket draped around him.

The blond boy jumps up on a tree stump to greet Achilles at eye level, putting his hands on his hips and smirking. "Hello, grownup! Here starts your trials! I call being the judge."

"Don't be silly. It's not a court trial." The boy in the button down approaches, holding an aluminum can colored bright red. He pops the tab, a sickly sweet smell rising in the air as the liquid inside hisses, and he holds the can out to Achilles. "My dad said men welcome each other with a beer, but if you get to Birdy she's going to make you drink a lot, so here's a coke instead."

The boy in the button down strategically stands between Achilles and the smallest boy. The smallest boy makes no movement to greet Achilles, instead staying on the ground, glowering at him with dark eyes.

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Honey smiles warmly. "Of course we will."

Gavroche squirms from Birdy's grip, landing gracelessly on the floor before sitting up and saluting Achilles with a grin. Birdy gestures towards the door. "But maybe hold your horses for the tearful goodbyes. You'll need to take someone with you."

Scout, already anticipating the question, opens the front door for Achilles to see. A wave of humidity blows in, thick and smelling of vegetation entirely foreign to Greece. Where the great city once was, there now is a rainforest, trees and branches so thick that an adult can't walk two steps without contorting themselves to climb around all the vegetation... or cutting it as they walk.

"I can come with you," Scout says simply. He goes to the umbrella stand, and he draws a machete from it with an expert air before offering it to Achilles. "I'm small enough that I can scout ahead and direct the path."

"Miss Ember usually leaves a path to find her," Honey says, sighing at the door. "But I think she wants you to work for it. You'll have to cut the path yourself."

Achilles wraps his boxed lunch in a fold of his tunic and takes the offered blade. A bit shorter than he’s accustomed with only the one edge, but it has the heft to do the job.

He gives them all a grateful bow as he steps out the door. “I trust Scout to live up to his name.”

The forest outside brings to mind the sort of overgrowth where Elysium is determined to block a shade’s (or a prince’s) path. Instead of Elysium, though, he has Ember’s will to contend with.

“Lead the way, lad.” He waits for Scout to find the trail before he begins clearing his path behind. His hero’s strength makes short work of all but the absolute thickest of branches. If anything, the machete is the limiting factor; it’s liable to break if he doesn’t wield it with some care.

"Goodbye! Good luck!"

Everyone (save for Stab) says goodbye to him at the door, smiling and waving. Stab stays in the back, just watching him. It's hard to read his face.

Scout lives diligently up to his namesake. His feet are nimble and quick, easily slipping past the thick vegetation and coiling branches. There are a few times he pauses, gesturing for Achilles to stop before scrambling up one of the impossibly tall trees, peeking through the canopy before sliding back down and leading him on again.

The land has an oppressive quality to it. When looking backwards, it's easy to not even see the cut path anymore, so thick the leaves and ferns. Looking forward, one can't really see more than a couple feet ahead. Sounds of strange animals echo in the humid air such it's difficult to point to where they came from. It's like the land itself is some kind of snare that is ready to swallow a person whole.

"Miss Ember says this is the kind of place she grew up," Scout says after a while of tireless leading. "She told us if we ever get lost somewhere like this, to find a river and walk with the current. But I don't think she's letting you have any rivers."

The trek is on an upward slope. It's like the land itself is trying to wear them down, stretching longer and longer and steeper and steeper. Scout has to pause more often, flagging, but he refuses to stop and rest.

And then, almost all at once, the forest releases them.

They're at the top of a mountain, surveying endless rolling mountains of forest and water. On the edges of the horizon, the land shifts like rippling ocean waves, changing and flickering into different shapes. Sometimes the changes dare to lap across the edges of the rainforest, but it's quick to reassert itself, strong as a cliff face against the tide.

At the peak of this mountain, there is a singular house. A palatial size for a single person, with thick white-washed walls and terracotta roof tiles. For those in the know, it'd be considered to be built in a Spanish Colonial style, with two stories and a big patio and balcony with ornamental columns that can't possibly be holding up much of anything.

Scout pauses, taking a deep breath and mopping his brow, though he's too dead to sweat. The habit remains after a long exertion, however. "That's where Miss Ember stays."

The combination of oppressive humidity, elevation gain, and marathon bushwhacking is enough to tire even a demigod’s shade. Achilles is concerned about his guide; he urges Scout to pause and rest, but finds his suggestions ignored. The boys clearly don’t appreciate being ordered around by adults, so he lets it be.

When they finally reach the peak, Achilles heaves a relieved exhale. He stabs the machete into the dirt and massages the heel of his hand. Were he not dead, his palm would be covered in burning blisters.

“Styx. I’d be wandering that forest for centuries without your help. Thank you, lad.” Achilles moves to clap a grateful hand on Scout’s shoulder, but remembers Stab’s violent response to touch. He stops mid-motion and withdraws the gesture. “Will you head back now?”

Scout notices the motion towards him, but doesn't comment when Achilles withdraws. Instead, he just slumps on the ground, leaning back on his palms. For all he insisted on moving, he's exhausted.

"Maybe. I think I'll wait a bit and decide."

He takes a deep breath and sighs, staring up at the house. "Before you go in, you should know that Miss Ember has a lot of faeries that serve her. She baits them into a wager for her name, and then she tricks them into giving her theirs. Then she sets most of them on patrols to keep unwanted people out of our space."

He points to a window besides the door. If one takes a moment to squint, it's clear there's a dark silhouette staring back out at them.

"She usually keeps a Bodach for protection and a pixie for service in the house. The Bodach is big and scary, and the pixie can do a lot of weird magic. But neither of them can hurt you if Miss Ember doesn't tell them to. Even if they really want to."

Achilles mulls over that information and eyes the threatening figure in the window. It feels a bit like he’s on the brink of heading into a proper battle.

Best be prepared, he thinks, and takes the opportunity to settle into a seat next to Scout. Achilles may not have another quiet moment to enjoy the food he was given, and the trek up the mountain certainly worked up what passes for an appetite.

“Will Miss Ember punish you for guiding me?” he asks as he pops open the container and examines the provided fork; he’s never used one, but it’s fairly self-explanatory. “I’m sure she set this challenge to test my resolve, not yours.”

"Punish me? No," Scout shakes his head, knocking his feet together. "She'd just say I did good guiding. She's never really bothered how people beat whatever test she's set up. If you beat the test, then you're strong, and if you outsmart it, then you're wily. Or if someone offers to help, it's because you're good enough with people that someone thinks you deserve it."

Scout shrugs, looking out at the rolling mountains contemplatively. "Dad always said that stuff like... you know, honor and integrity matter. But Dad was a liar, or he'd have acted different. Miss Ember says that it only matters if people thinking good of you is more important than what you're fighting for."

Scout looks at Achilles. Despite their proximity to the house and the looming dangers within, he still seems at ease. "She's like that. Practical. She says that the weak have to be practical to survive. That's why she survived, and people like me and Gav didn't." Which could come across as cool, but Scout states it as a neutral fact without judgment. Likely because it was communicated to him as a neutral fact without judgment.

“Mm,” Achilles hums around a bite of chicken, either in approval of the flavor, or in consideration of Scout’s answer.

“Many men, myself included, claim to value honor and integrity, but their actions say otherwise.” He gives a wry smile. “It’s difficult to see that in oneself, much less accept it. Especially as an adult set in his ways.”

He spears another piece of chicken with the fork and offers it to Scout. “I also find that practical decisions aren’t always easy to make. It often means denying very strong emotions. Anger, love, sadness.”

Scout considers the chicken. Then he takes the fork, eating the chicken with an approving hum before offering it back to Achilles. Honey always has the best cooking in his view.

"We'd all probably have lived if we'd been practical before anything else. Except Stab. Stab didn't have a chance."

Scout looks at the house before them. Despite the shadow in the window, it's a pretty place. The sort of place that maybe could have hosted really fun parties at some point.

"Miss Ember has told us stories about her life. The stories are sad sometimes, and scary most of the time. I dunno if I'd want to survive if I had to do everything she did." Scout gives a half shrug. "But that's why I didn't survive."

He wasn't willing (or able, perhaps) to commit to the wholesale depravity around him, nor was he able to run away from it. In that forced liminal space between abstinence and violent indulgence, he stumbled into his death.

Achilles is heartened by Scout’s acceptance of the gesture. He may not see the boy again after all of this, but he hopes Scout will feel less alienated by at least one adult.

“Lamb was much the same.” He continues enjoying his meal; the textures and flavors are unusual, but not unpleasant. Importantly, there are no onions. “I believe his ‘practicality’ was what horrified his fellow Greeks. Lamb only knew that he was meant to kill his enemies, and his divine strength allowed him to do it efficiently.”

Achilles pushes his rice around the container. “He survived the war, but it left him changed.”

He offers Scout a weary smile. “It wasn’t good that you died, but it was good that you stayed true to yourself, lad.”

Scout watches Achilles, and offers a small, lopsided smile of his own. It doesn't reach his eyes, but it's more than he's shown for the rest of the night (or day, or week, or year, however long it's been since the trial started in a place time doesn't exist).

He looks to the house again. He pulls lint off of his knee. "Something else--she's really old, so she looks like she can't hurt you, but don't threaten her. If you're lucky, she'd just sic the Bodach on you. If you're not, she'd shoot out your kneecaps and elbows and then bury you in the ground until you healed enough to claw your way back up."

Scout looks at Achilles from the corner of his eye. He has the dead serious look of someone who has witnessed such a thing first hand. "She's always said that the only way for the weak to survive is to be practical. And when the weak live long enough to grow strong, there's no reason for them to stop being practical."

The break in seriousness makes Scout look more like a proper child, untouched by war. Up until now, he’s carried the stern weight of an adult.

Achilles has met his fair share of tough, older people—both mortal and immortal—and he knows better than to underestimate them. She wields obvious power here. Enough to shape the land into a challenge and trick the native fae into her service. He takes this as seriously as his time among the Aesir.

“I still don’t believe that to be true, but I should hear it directly from her, I suppose.” He scoops up a few more bites of his meal, then offers the rest to Scout. “I shouldn’t keep Miss Ember waiting any longer. May I ask you to return Miss Honey’s bowl?”

Scout nods and accepts the remainders of the meal. "Good luck. And don't get buried in the back yard. It doesn't seem fun."

As Achilles approaches the house, the door opens on its own. There's the shadow of long, creeping fingers withdrawing from the entrance as he steps inside, but the cause of the shadow isn't immediately visible.

The inside of the home is colorful. Bright hues of paint on the walls, bright patterns on the rugs, and a colorful hammock hanging just past the entrance, right where a warm sunbeam hits. The smell, however, is thick and smoky and sweet, like a more refined and luxurious version of the sticks the boys smoked together.

The shadow slips down the hall to a room, as if to give him direction. It leads him to what seems to be a living room, with a heavy wooden table and cushioned chairs. And an old woman sits at the head of it.

She's older than anyone could naturally live in Achilles' age. Her back is hunched, her skin folded with wrinkles, tightly curled hair steel gray. He skin is lighter than Scout's, darker than Stab's, and her hands are dry and spotted from the sun. She's petite, small even by the standards of women in Achilles' time. She is almost swallowed by the bright red shawl draped over her shoulders and around her torso, almost like a blanket covering her in full.

There's a thick cigar in her face. Not her mouth, but her face. There's a hole in her cheek, and the cigar sits clenched between her teeth. Each visible tooth flashes gold in the light, not a single natural tooth to be found. The hole is healed, drooping with age like the rest of her face, like it's been there a long time.

The other side of her face has a fresher injury, too fresh to have been from life. An angry burn streaks across her cheek and in her empty eye socket. The flesh still shines angry red, as if she'd only just received the injury. Her remaining eye is cloudy with age, but she's still able to see her work.

On the table, she has neatly disassembled a gun, and she is meticulously cleaning every piece. A walking cane leans against the table near her leg. It's made of black wood, tipped with gold. And the top of it, the head, is made from the top of a human femur.

Smoke leaks from her nose and the hole in her cheek. She pulls the cigar from her face, tapping the ash in a ceramic ash tray before she rests her hand on the macabre head of her cane. Is the bone from a victim? An enemy? A clever fake, meant to intimidate?

"You can sit down," she says, voice smoky and thin with age. As she speaks, all her teeth glitter gold. She has no natural teeth left in her skull.

Achilles can’t help but compare this place to Honey’s home. This seems lived-in, and not entirely unpleasant, but the choking smell of smoke, the harshness of the assembled colors and the creeping shadow lend an unsettling edge.

After time spent with the child soldiers and young women, Ember’s advanced age is a shock. Few people in Achilles’ life could compare. Nestor of Gerenia, perhaps, but he was granted an inordinately long life by Apollo. This woman seems to have lived her long years without divine help.

He takes a seat in the chair across from the woman, straight-backed and kingly. “I’ve heard many stories, Miss Ember. It’s an honor to finally meet you.”

Achilles watches the smoke curl from her noxious stick before his eyes flick back to her face. “I assume you know who I am and what I’ve come to discuss.”

She bobs her head, but as Honey and Birdy warned, it's very difficult to read her expression. The injury around her missing eye drags the flesh down, and the hole in her cheek deforms that side of her face. Her face moves, but it's difficult to divine what the movements mean.

"Yes. A man, Achilles by name, born to a king and sea goddess. Hidden away from war by his mother on an island, where he sired a son with a princess, only to leave as soon as his mother's trick was discovered and he was called to war. Slew many people, made fool decisions when his pride was insulted, and famously lost his temper spectacularly in an explosion of violence before losing the will to live because his partner died due to those fool decisions." Ember brings the cigar back to the hole in her cheek, holding it between her teeth and breathing in the smoke. The end glows red as she does. "And now you've come here, across the world, probably by favor of some divinity you have connection with, to convince me that you should walk away with your son."

She blows the smoke from the hole in her cheek and her nostrils. It frames her face for a moment.

"Do I have the gist, in your estimation?"

Achilles would be more disturbed by Ember’s visage (and its morbid interactions with smoke) if he hadn’t spent so much time around Charon, who has significantly less face to speak of.

His own face remains neutral throughout Ember’s account of his life. There’s no reason to flinch; nothing she says stings more than his own perpetual guilt.

“What you say is accurate,” he says with a single nod. “Though you omitted my son’s abduction to this land. He was taken by trickery, not by his own will.”

Achilles rests a hand on his bracelet. After all of this, after the disaster of their last meeting at Athens, he’s anxious to see Pyrrhus again. “He should be given the choice to remain, or return to his homeland and live out his days with his wife and daughter.”

His eyes are hard and determined. “If he walks away with me, that is his decision.”

She huffs softly. It causes the smoke to wreath her face for a moment. "Why should that matter? You are the only one here by your own will."

She keeps the cigar between her golden teeth. Her weathered hands move to the prats of the gun before her--and then with swiftness that could rival any Grecian hero, she snaps each of the pieces in pace, like a dance she's memorized. It takes shape in her palm with each subsequent click, until she has a whole gun, resting in her right hand.

"I'm here by bullet. My people here by a variety of violence, from explosions to poison to maiming." She rests the gun on the table. It's very close to her hand, as if a civil but implied threat. "You want to take what's under my protection. You'll need to do more to convince me than appeal to the unfairness of the situation."

Unfairness is a fact of life to her. She sees no reason to try to correct the world's unfairness herself, when it's so inherent to everything around her.

So this is the gun that was mentioned. It’s an impressive piece of craftsmanship, and an equally impressive assembly—especially in hands as old as Ember’s.

“I understand this is your duty. An important one. I’ve met some of the souls who thrive under your protection.” Ember reminds him a little of his master, or at least the public aspect that Hades presents. He takes his responsibility seriously, and he’s not unfair.

Achilles keeps his hands still, but focuses on where Hermes’ scarf caresses his neck. “But my son is not a shade yet, and it’s my duty as a father to make sure he’s given the chance to live out his days. His survival was hard-won.”

"Yes, it is your duty as a father. A duty you repeatedly and willfully failed."

She takes the cigar from her face to tap the ash into the tray. Not even her voice is particularly expressive.

"And now you're here, after pulling strings with connections you only have by chance of birth, expecting a stranger to give you yet another chance at that duty." She leans forward in her seat. Her one eye is focused completely on Achilles. "If the stories I hear are true, you are a weak of heart coward of a man, who worse, isn't aware he's a coward. I have little patience for those. Why should I do you any kindness?"

“Yes. The stories are true. I am a coward and I failed as a father.” His two eyes are trained, unblinking on Ember’s one. “I was selfish and prideful, and it destroyed those I loved.”

Achilles thumbs the shells of the bracelet contemplatively, one after the other, a bit like one might pray the rosary many centuries after his time. There’s something here that strikes him as unfair in a different way.

“Miss Honey, little Stab, you all remember your wars.” He breaks eye contact long enough to gaze at Ember’s gun. “But when the Morrígan took Lamb’s name, Neoptolemus, she took his memories of war. Is that correct?”

If Ember has a reaction, it's hard to tell. She picks up her cigar again to take a puff.

"Correct. He only knows the name and the history with it because Honey is so well educated in the matter. He, however, can't tell the difference between the dramatic invention and reality in her books."

She breathes the smoke out through her nose.

"His body remembers, even if he doesn't. He fights like a wild animal, and he's prone to lashing out if someone walks up behind him too quietly. He's not unique in that."

“Sometimes I would like to forget my years at war,” Achilles muses, examining the ghoulish details of Ember’s fresh wound, “but I think a warrior should live with their scars and remember the mistakes—and the betrayals—that made them.”

Occasionally he regrets being so perfectly, visibly unscathed. Physical wounds were rare, or mended so quickly and neatly as to be unnoticeable. Maybe a few grisly scars in his years at Troy would have been a useful reminder of his imperfection.

He settles back in his chair, trying to put himself in the mind of speaking candidly with a respected peer and not negotiating with a hard nosed sovereign. “Would you forget your war if the Morrígan offered to take your memories?”

Ember lets out a scoff. "Might as well ask a turtle if it would forsake its shell."

She turns her face to show Achilles her healed side--the side with the hole in her cheek, old and sagging, the side with her eye still intact. She gestures to the hole with her cigar.

"My war started when I was four and I caught a bullet between my teeth. The bullet had passed through my two brothers and my cheek to slow it down, but I caught it nonetheless." She turns her face towards Achilles head on once more, showing again the raw and unhealed portion of her face and missing eye. "And the conflict was still raging enough to kill me as an old woman. The children of an old enemy ambushed me while I was bathing to shoot me in the heart." A chuckle, dark and smoky, rattles her chest. "They didn't count on me having a gun even in the nude. I took both of them down with me."

She leans back in her chair, resting her hand on the thigh bone that makes the top of her walking cane. "There would be nothing left of me if I didn't remember my war. Only an old, empty body."

Achilles doesn’t recoil from her display or her story; he hums his understanding. “Of course. War was your life. There’s no extracting it.”

He runs a thumb over his knuckles. It hits Hermes’ ring and twists it on his finger. He silently prays that this line of reasoning will reach Ember.

“With his memories of war stolen, very little is left of Lamb.” Achilles recalls the aspects of his son revealed in the dream. The boy, the angry youth, the detached king. “He has the name his mother and I used, but that is a tender, gentle name—a name from before he was taken to fight in my stead.”

He pauses for a beat, eyes still trained on Ember’s. “Shouldn’t Lamb be given his war back, if he wishes?”

It's hard to read Ember's response from her eye. Through the hole in her cheek, her tongue is visible running against her teeth. She taps her fingers against the bone head of her cane.

She sits back in her seat, shoulders relaxing.

"Here you are, in my home, and I've offered you nothing."

Ember rubs her chin, watching Achilles thoughtfully. "I assume Honey fed you, and Birdy stuffed you with drink. So instead of offering either, I'll ask: would you prefer to relax, or become more alert?"

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