Blood Morning
By Trust No One
Category: Angst
Rating: PG
Summary: The morning Achilles fights Hector, the Greek hero ponders on his past choices, his unexpected love for Briseis and the duty he has to avenge Patroclus' death. Three-part movie-verse.
Disclaimer: Characters and places belong to Homer and WarnerBros. No copyright infringement intended.
1. Patroclus - Fire
As dawn breaks, I'm still standing by your pyre. By now, there is little left of it, and of you, save for the pungent smell of smoke and charred flesh. It drowns out the sea breeze slithering through my hair and covering it in ashes. Your ashes, caressing my face. The shells of the necklace you wore are cutting into my palm but I feel nothing. I look at it and a distant memory stirs within me: in another world, in another time, my mother made us twin necklaces, as a going away present. I never wore mine and I left it behind, because her memory will not be sealed in a thing that hangs about my neck. Her memory lingers in the open sea, in the salty smell that gathers on my skin in delight each morning.
Just as your memory, my most devoted of friends, claws at the remains of my sanity, begging for forgiveness. Yet I do not want to hear the plea borne upon the winds that scatter your ashes further away from the world of the living. What I want to hear is an entreaty to avenge you. But I know you better than that. You would not want me to ride out to the gates of Troy this morning, lusting for Hector's blood in revenge for your death. It was all a mistake; such as we mortals make all the time. It was unfortunate and cruel, but it happened. And as much as your shadow, freshly arrived in Hades, would want to reach out and prevent me from doing what I must, it cannot stop me. You came full circle and left this world gloriously, as any warrior would want: dying in honorable combat, at the hand of a worthy opponent.
Ever since I can remember, I have always wanted to protect you. I remember us swimming together in the sea, and you were such a strong swimmer. You would say that if wars were fought at sea, in the water, the measure of the great Achilles would be how well Patroclus had taught him to dive and plunge. And I would laugh and try to overpower you, finally succeeding in pushing you under, but you would elude me every time, slippery like a fish, and come up laughing after long moments underwater. I never told you, but I worried for you. You would dive and sometimes I searched the depths of the limpid waters only to lose sight of you moments after you submerged. You went looking for rare shells and bring them to my mother so that she could make her necklaces for us. But more often than not, I found myself holding my breath until you surfaced again. Often enough I pictured myself having to rescue you, because you had got tangled in weed or rocks at the bottom in spite of you being the better diver. How ironic that the sea you loved so much brought you to the place where you would die.
I feared not for my own death, but how I feared for yours! If I could shield you a moment longer from the inevitable, then I cared not for the hurt you felt. The pain was there, in that wounded and accusing stare you gave me when I told you to man the ship and I strutted off to take the beach of Troy. Was it then that the plan of stealing my weapons and armor began to sprout in your mind? Could it have been payback for my lack of trust in you? Or was it the only way you could think of protecting me?
I wish I could hold you and tell you how sorry I was. That I would have rather died a thousand deaths than see you in harm's way. Then maybe you would have understood that all I wanted was to shield you. But I had to belittle you, because I just didn't know any better. Not once did it cross my mind that you would rise to an occasion I myself refused to meet. And when they told me you were dead, do you know what it was that I first felt? Rage. At you. For turning against my wishes and for refusing to do as I said. Was death your punishment? Gods forgive me, for I wanted to believe that as chaos took hold of my mind and waged war against the little reason left in me.
But who was I to ordain your chosen path in life? In my folly and blindness, I never saw it. Not for a moment did I doubt that you would submit unconditionally to my experience and judgment. I never cared enough to understand that you believed in everything I stood for, even if I never did. That your reason for living and dying was just as compelling as it was for the Trojans to defend their city. You alone understood what my presence meant to the morale of the Greek army and you acted on it when I chose to abandon them over an inane squabble. In believing that I was punishing Agamemnon, I was in fact costing thousands of Greek soldiers their lives. And this time I did not even have to lift my sword to do it. At the time you raced into battle, with little or no thought to your own life, I looked the other way, because I never cared enough. I had no loyalty other than myself. The friendship and devotion that I professed towards you was a lie.
Was it terrible living in my shadow, brother? Was it hard for you to keep it all to yourself, knowing each day what a hollow and pointless existence I led? Did it tear you up inside to be always the one left behind? Somehow I do not think so. For in your quiet wisdom, you saw me for what I really was; yet your loyalty never wavered. You respected my decisions, lamentable as they might have been, and decided to take the only course of action you could: fight this battle for me. You never wished to spite me, like I so foolishly believed at first. It was simply the only thing you could do. Had it not been for you, Hector's army would have claimed victory and the Greeks would have suffered irreparable damage.
There is one more thing to do and then it will be done. You, of all people, should understand why I must do this. But if I listen hard enough, your voice carries through the stillness of dawn and it mourns, in rhythm with the waves, for it cannot change my decision.
To be continued