Touch
Touch. I never knew the true agony that single word could convey. For me, touch had always been a pleasant thing, a beautiful sensation. I did not really consider touch to be the violent meeting of two swords in battle, or the plunge of a weapon into the soft flesh of a warrior. Many times I had seen these things, but they were not the sort of touch I loved. I thought I had discovered the meaning of touch the first time my hand gently caressed Patroclus' cheek in the moment before our first kiss. Now I touch that same cheek. It is cold and tearstained. My dear Patroclus is dead. And no agony, no wound, no death, no touch, could be worse than this. His throat has been slit.
I fall to my knees in the sand beside his body. I stare at him, almost as if in shock. The precious blood that was once pumping through his veins and keeping him alive has now become a traitor, has welled up in his throat and choked him. Light red blood still drips slowly from his blue tinged lips. The blood on his throat and tunic is now dark red and drying in the setting sun, which casts a pale pink shadow across his youthful face. His blue eyes have been closed so as not to reveal the agony in which he must have died. In those last moments…those last seconds of awareness…did he think of me? Did he wonder why I was not there to comfort him, why I had not been there in the first place to protect him? Emotions suddenly overwhelm and threaten to drown me. Love, guilt, anger, sadness. I collapse upon his body and all these feelings are released in a shriek that is so full of emotion and despair that I can barely believe it came from my own mouth.
My lips capture Patroclus' own and a hold him in a final embrace. Even now, the metallic taste of his blood will not leave me. The feeling of his lifeless form beneath my own as I lie on top of him, shaking and sobbing with grief, is a kind of touch I can hardly bare. Yet I hold onto him tightly, needing to feel him, needing this last touch as much as air itself.
I cry out his name uncontrollably, my lips forming the syllables over and over until the name almost loses its meaning. I know that under my living, breathing body lays the one I would have died for. I know that his beautiful heart has ceased to beat although my own is broken forever at that knowledge. I know that I, Achilles, will soon be as dead as he, and I welcome Death because there is no life without Patroclus.
It is only us now, Patroclus and I. I don't notice the men around me, or the weeping of Briseis. I do not even notice that the sky has become dark. "Patroclus!" I cry out his name to the night, to the merciless Gods, to Patroclus himself. Nobody answers. The Gods do not care. They are as cold and as silent as the night.
I am finally torn from his body by a few of my men, who somehow manage to drag me away from the sight. They need not have bothered-it is a sight I will see in my mind for the rest of my life.
Touch. Touch is everything. I know that now. It can be beautiful or it can be painful. As I was torn away from my sweet Patroclus, I realized that sometimes…it is both.
