Fandom: Troy/Iliad
Title: On Fire (In the Rain)
Author: AbbyCadabra
Pairing: Hector/Achilles (squee!)
Rating: R? A soft R...
Content: Angst, slash
Warning: Character death
Disclaimer: Characters are not mine. They belong to... Homer? Um? cough
- -
.
And now all of the great warriors are as Icarus was.
Fallen.
- -
He told you that this would be the moment you would remember in your dying breath.
He told you it would be greater than all of your dreams, all of your realities, all of your unthought, untouched desires. He told you, as war-heavy hands grasped your elbow and eyes blue as the never ending Aegean flashed with finally reached limits, that this—this, Hector, this—would be the memory behind your eyelids when they closed for the last time.
And then he kissed you, all fire and blistering passion and anger at kings with no honor and women with no faith.
He pulled you to him with strength that had overpowered countless men and cupped your cheeks with hands that had slew countless more. He tasted of blood on sandy beaches and summer winds, of battlefield slaughter and freedom from war. He unhinged your armor and laid you onto the sand and called you Prince, and you were flying, falling; living, dying.
He was a killer, a warrior—the finest—and he was yours, and you knew that he was right.
- -
The sand is clean. It smells of salt water rather than carnage, and Achilles takes it in, deep breaths: out, in, out. His armor is stiff with blood; it flakes like rust and drifts slowly to the ground. The sea breeze catches the sand and takes it away from the shore in swirls of rough and pebbled clouds.
Last night he dreamt of all the promises he's made. Today he says a prayer to the gods for forgiveness. And tomorrow—
Tomorrow, Achilles thinks, there will be rain.
- -
They line the River Styx. See them now? They are noble and tall and tragic.
- -
On the battlefield, Achilles was poetry in motion, a waterfall of words and a river of rhymes. On the battlefield, he couldn't be stopped. And it was on the battlefield where you hated him.
He was the enemy, after all. Those were your men under his blade, men with wives and children and futures. All of that poetry was fueled into your defeat, those waterfalls and rivers poured into your death, your state's ruin, and how could you not hate that?
Achilles didn't understand your hate because he didn't understand things such as honor and country, only the metallic scrape of swords on enemy armor and the heat of skin flush against his and cold, hard fear. He lived his life one battle at a time, one man at a time. Achilles was all passion and rage and poetry, as smooth as molten silver.
You killed many of my men today, you would say, and he would hear, When will you kill me?
And then he would whisper, Not you, as hebrought your hands to his lips, Never you, and he would kiss your wrists and you would believe him.
- -
Outside Achilles' tent, there is a trail of bloody sand that stretches all the way to the walls of Troy, where the sand lies disturbed, arranged in a scene of betrayal and death, soaked to the soil in blood. Outside lies Hector's body, wrists and ankles bound together, rope to bone.
Achilles can hear the vultures gathering.
- -
Some fell for honor, some for nobility, many for their country. Few for love.
- -
This night, Achilles said, is ours.
He held you like Helen never existed. He traced battle calloused fingertips over your skin like there was no King of Kings. He wrapped his hands around your thighs like there was no fleet of fifty thousand sailing for battle. He kissed your jaw line and gripped your hips and sighed bittersweet solace into the air like there was no Greece and there was no Troy.
He breathed your name like it would never end.
And he loved you like there was no war.
- -
The day the Prince of Troy is burned in the funeral pyre, it rains. Apollo weeps, but Achilles cannot bring himself to.
The rising smoke is battered down by the rain, and the ashes fall from Hector's body in clumps. The flames glow in the gray sky, and the rain wets the sand and turns it black. Troy mourns their prince for twelve days.
And Achilles watches the flames, and Hector becomes the rain.
But isn't that how it always was?
- -
Those two, see them? One so like the falling rain, one like fire. See how they stand so close?
Those are two who died with love on their blade.