Stories
Disclaimer: See previous chapters; I don't like being redundant.

Odysseus tells a true story.

Before he took the crown of Ithaca, he had a friend named Leonidas. He was a newly married man, of old nobility, well-liked by men and women alike, and well sought after before his marriage. But Leonidas loved his young wife dearly, and would have no other woman before her. And so they were married.

Agamemnon, young and brash like a bull amid vases at the head of Mycenae, challenges the tiny nation of Ithaca to war and Leonidas, like Odysseus and other men, goes to war. It is not a long war in most senses, but all wars are wearing on the senses, particularly when they are fought away from home. At night, Leonidas goes to sleep in his tent shared with Odysseus dreaming of his young wife, dreaming of her flesh and her scent and the lilt in her voice. He keeps his thoughts to himself, but Odysseus could read the emotions off his face and knew that the man wanted the war to be done, won or lost, whatever the cost of Ithaca, if only he could see his wife again. But when the young king-to-be approaches his friend about it, about how Leonidas would abandon his country to see his wife sooner, the noble is incensed, furious, does not mince words, and Odysseus, in a rage, orders the man onto a ship headed back to Ithaca because he cannot stand his company.

Now this perhaps was not the initial plan of Leonidas, but seeing that insulting his friend managed to send him home, he is thankful for the turn of events. But this is not a smart turn of thoughts, and Athena curses his lack of integrity.

Poseidon follows, and Leonidas finds his ship assailed with gales and storms and calm days with no wind, and the waves wash over the wooden planks, finally tossing him to the sea to teach the man about integrity. A nymph finds him and bears him away to an island unplotted, and there she spins her seduction for two long years at his resistance. At night, he dreams of his wife again, bearing his sanity based solely on thoughts of her, making silken promises in his mind to her of his fidelity and of his faithful return. The day comes when the nymph finally allows him passage and smooth sailing back to Ithaca, and his heart is lifted at te sudden favour from the gods.

What happens?

He steps across the blue tiles on the threshold of his home, and Leonidas finds his wife keeping house with another man. He curses the gods, and they curse him back – he kills his traitorous wife and her lover, then finds himself mad. He wanders the streets and alleys of Ithaca, the soles of his unshod feet stinging, until a thief crosses his path and kills him for not giving up his coin. It is a pathetic, dishonourable end.

That is the true story that Odysseus tells Achilles as they bear him onto the Ithacan flagship. He tells the story as they lay him down on a makeshift pallet in the hold of the ship, as the sail is raised and as the first oars touch the waves. He tells the story to Achilles as they leave Troy to its captors.

It is a true story.

What makes it true is its reality. It is a story that strikes Achilles, within his mild fevered delirium, as appropriate. It is true because justice has no part in it, because life is not just. It is true because it is the kind of story that makes you sick of life, because that is how life can make you feel. It churns his stomach, has no virtue, morals play no part in it, he cannot apply it to his own life. It is an entity on its own, like an individual. It is true because it is not told by wise men, who are traitorous – Odysseus arms himself with trickery, with shrewd intelligence, and he makes arms of his sins and uses them against others. He tells the story with a twinkle in his eye, because he finds it humorous, and in that he is so slightly sadistic. All of this, and much more, makes it true. Only a trickster could properly tell a true story of a noble who met a pathetic, dishonourable end.

The men bow to him, Achilles notices, whenever they step down into the hold of the ship. It gives him little pleasure.

He doesn't like it – his state, his current position, his weakness. He lies prostrate, his head turned to the side and his skin covered in a heavy sheen of sweat, glittering for the first time without the blood of the enemy to accompany it. His hair is lank, his eyes dull, and his armour lies in a distinctly not illustrious heap on the floor beside him. He is active – Achilles has been tended to as the days wear by on sea – but he does not wish to step outside yet. For now, he is alone with his thoughts, save for those few times when the men come down and bow to him.

A Greek ship is purely utilitarian. It has two levels – all it needs – and no luxuries of rooms or washbasins. For the most part, the men who man the oars sleep on deck and under the stars, sometimes on the benches they row all day upon. The kings and captains and warlords sleep beside them. Below is the hold, a place for the weapons and for cargo, rarely used as habitation.

So to Achilles, the fact that the men bow to him without prompting speaks worlds to him – men are independent creatures who can be told to think nothing if they do not think it by themselves. That they bow speaks of respect and of admiration; it speaks that he will become the demi-god creature once more.

In moments between moments, he thinks idly of Briseis. He will not see her again, he is certain, and so he is left possession of the memories of their times together, he is given possession of their stories. He thinks of how he might speak of her to friends home in Phtia, of how he might weave a complex story of humanizing the warrior in the most unlikely of places: in war. But how could he phrase the sharp curve her shoulders and hips made beneath the sheet of his bed, or the rivulet of blood the ran from her split lip, or the beauty he had found in a girl ravaged by the lifestyle he called his own?

Impossible.

He remembers a true story.

"Oh, the things I will show you…"

He laughs after he says this, but her face is smooth and unlined save for a single crease of confusion down her forehead. She shifts closer to him after he says it, laying her head on his outstretched arm and her finger brushing his strong jaw. "What things, Achilles?"

With eyes bright and alert he is like a predator circling her, and she wonders what web he is spinning around her, for her, now. Their gazes meet and his own hand reaches up to take hers, dusting around his exposed cheekbone. "Things you never had, and never will have, if you stay in Troy."

She pauses at this, and considers what he says seriously, just as she does to everything she says. Briseis has learned that despite his passion for killing, this man is no fool. But she challenges him, thinking of her lavish and generous childhood: "They gave me everything in Troy."

The corner of his mouth quirks up in a smirk, and he releases her hand to touch her neck with the calloused pads of his fingers. "No. Not everything." Those sharp eyes bore into her.

Briseis lifts her head up slightly and juts her chin, saying, "Then what?" He catches her chin between his fingers and kisses her. It is slow, but never light, though so unlike him, since he in raw passion is like an unleashed storm that will never abate. He releases her.

"Power."

She averts her eyes. Power, she has been taught, is almost a shameful thing. The soldiers of Troy fight not because they enjoy it, but because they must sacrifice themselves in order to defend their country. Power, she has learned, is a thing of the gods, not meant for mere mortals like them. But she is not surprised that Achilles speaks so freely and strongly of it, especially given what they say about him, and about his mother. Gods. Her own curiosity astounds her. "What is it like, to be powerful?"

Amazingly, he considers the question seriously. "What kind of power? There are many kinds."

Her answer is quick. "Your kind. To be like you. What is it like?"

Achilles closes up; something she should have expected. This is what he does whenever the bold dare to ask him the truth about his mother, Thetis, or about his own supposed invulnerability. He says vaguely, but with conviction, "I couldn't tell you, because I have never known what it is like to be weak. I am what I am."

Finally, she decides, "I had power in Troy."

"No, you didn't." A pause, and then he states quickly, assuredly, "A daughter of the royal family is worth one thing, and that is her virtue for a powerful marriage. And if she does not take that path, only some of her worth could be retrieved through piety and devotion to the gods."

He is watching her reaction carefully; something sparks in her eyes. Many have told her, back in Troy, that serving Apollo was not her full potential, that she should have found a husband to bind to her homeland. It strikes a chord in her, churning up old memories. "You insult me?"

"No. What I mean to say is that with me, you have the greatest power to ever be wielded over your entire life."

She shifts back, raising herself up on an elbow to regard him in his entirety, as if appraising him for his total worth. Achilles is at first amused, and then distracted by the curve of her exposed breast. She eventually states, almost in accusation, "To love a killer is to have power?"

"To be loved, to be treasured, by Achilles is to have power." He corrects. His eyes glitter, partly with a desire that she recognizes and now welcomes, and partly with an almost reverent fondness that she does not recognize. His hand cups her jaw, and he adds, "You have more power than any soldier in this camp."

She considers this. The fact that is might be true is terrifying; she remembers the unspoken respect allotted to her as Achilles' lover, after he went out of his so normally arrogant and selfish way to make her his own. She recognizes silently that here, in his arms, she has found the most freedom she has ever known, beyond the confines of propriety and etiquette and protocol and virtue. With him, and with his security, she has found some kind of paradise.

Briseis lays a hand on his chest and leans over him, her dark hair fallen over her shoulder and forming a curtain over both their faces. She asks softly, "And then what am I to do with this…power?"

His hand laces into her hair and over her scalp, bringing her down to meet his lips. "Leave the weak behind," he murmurs, running the hand down her neck and over her side. He curves his arm around her waist and flips her onto her back, catching her in a harsh and unrelenting kiss, unleashing the storm once again.

In true stories, there is rarely a point. In the case of Odysseus' friend, he tells Achilles, sitting with him below deck while eating fruit, nothing was accomplished save for infidelity, a waste of emotions, the god's ire and a thief's quick anger. In the case of Achilles in Troy, he found peace in a woman like none he had ever met but lost her, and knows full well that he will soon become the seamless man he was before her. A killing machine. Nothing was accomplished. These are the true stories that make up their lives, that make up the lives of their fellows. They live and breathe and sleep without a point; the war is over and there's still no point; and when they're home and retelling the less personal true stories to their loved ones, a point might occur to them in mid-telling, but it is lost by the time they have reached the end. At home, when the war is done, in the interim period between the next ones, they sit and wonder, What was the point?