A/N – I'm so sorry that this has been so long coming, but I've had a crazy few days. Thank you to everyone who's reviewed – I think I've replied to everyone I could have, and I'm really sorry Amanda-Kay, but for some reason my &/# computer won't let me reply to you – I tried, honest:)And also thanks to Sandra and Tiffany who I couldn't reply to, so thanks to you as well, and I'm so sorry if I've left anyone out!
I haven't got much to say about this chapter, except I'm sorry if it sounds a bit like OdysseusBriseis. It's honestly not meant to – she's still in love with out lovely hulking Achilles, so don't panic, lol. Anyway, enjoy…
Chapter 5: Behind These Hazel Eyes
'Here I am
Once again
I'm torn into pieces
Can't deny it
Can't pretend
Just thought you were the one
Broken up deep inside
But you won't get to see the tears I cry
Behind these hazel eyes'
Kelly Clarkson, 'Behind these Hazel Eyes'
Briseis woke as the pale morning light began to creep in through the windows in her room. She yawned sleepily, and, pushing the hair out of her eyes, pulled herself up to a sitting position. The sheets slipped off her body, exposing her skin to the cool morning air, and she shivered slightly. Never having been one to enjoy lounging around in bed after she had woken, Briseis pulled herself to her feet and wandered to the balcony to watch the city wake up.
If she tried hard enough, she could almost pretend that it was a few weeks earlier, and that she was going to spend the day at the temple, or talking with Andromache who was eagerly expecting the return of her husband from Sparta. She could pretend that she had not heard the name Helen, or even Achilles, and that her only worry was whether her hair looked best tied up or let loose.
She wandered through her room, plaiting and unplaiting her hair, her bare feet padding silently across the stone floor, and suddenly realised that she was hungry. It had been, quite literally, days since she had eaten, but in the bitter pain of first Patroculus' death, followed so quickly by that of Hector, and then her return to Troy, she had not felt anything but grief and sorrow.
As she thought about it, the memory of the last meal she had hit her so strongly that she sank down into a nearby chair. She could hear the gentle lapping of the waves, see the flickering torchlight, feel the warmth of Achilles' skin beside hers. She had been sitting on the sand outside Achilles' tent, the great warlord's arms around her, as he talked in soft and rich tones to Odysseus, punctuated by the eager and ever-ready voice of Patroculus. They had been eating a thick meaty stew, typical soldiers' food, mopping it up with crusty bread and Briseis suddenly felt an indescribable longing to return to that perfect evening, when she had leant back against Achilles' warm chest, dozing off to the sound of the men's reminiscent voices. The peace had lasted such a short time, but then, Briseis though bitterly, peace always did.
A tap came on the door, pulling Briseis away from that evening on the beach, and she rose to greet Paris as he entered. He smiled when he saw her, thinking that she looked better than she had yesterday.
"Will you come to eat with us this morning cousin?" he asked her in as normal a tone as he could manage.
Again, the awful fear of appearing before her family washed over Briseis, but she knew she had no excuse this time, having been at Hector's funeral the night before, besides, she was growing hungrier and hungrier by the minute, so she nodded, and was rewarded by a genuine smile from Paris, who was beginning to fear that she was going to try to starve herself.
"Good," he said, thankful that he would not have to force her to eat. "Shall I come and get in you once you are dressed?"
Again, Briseis nodded, and saw the relief in Paris' face.
"I will be back soon," he told her, leaving the room and closing the door quietly behind him.
Briseis wandered over to where her robes hung, looking at them, and longing to touch the soft white material, to return to the temple and forget about the man who had, at once, taught her to love and hate. But she jerked her hand sharply away from the material. It was what she would never be. Clean, pure, untainted. She could not live her life hiding from what had happened. She had to accept it. To move on and get on with her life. It would be a different life, admittedly, from what she had led before, but a life nonetheless.
And yet it was still the black dress that she took down and slipped over her shoulders. She walked back across the room towards the desk where pots of various creams and lotions stood, foisted on her by Andromache. She smiled fondly, picking them up and opening lids, smelling the familiar odours that seemed to come from another lifetime.
She moved to sit on a stool and stretched her legs under the desk as she took the occasional dabs of cream from the pots and smoothed it over her skin. Suddenly her wandering feet hit something under the table. Something sharp, but not so much that it cut her skin. She abruptly put down the pot that she was holding and crouched down to see what it was that she had dropped under there.
Lying on the floor was the seashell necklace that Achilles had wrapped her fingers around when she had left him. She sat there, motionless, aching to touch it, and scared of it at the same time. Her fingers crept slowly towards it, but still she held back, feeling the power that came from it, and drowning in the memory of the night when Priam had arrived, still feeling Achilles' coarse hands on her smooth skin, still smelling his rough scent.
She was startled from the memory by a tap on the door, and Paris' voice calling out to her. She hesitated for a moment, but then grabbed the necklace tightly in one hand before rising and fastening it around her neck before she left the safety of her room.
"You look lovely," Paris told her as she left the room, his eyes strayed to the string of shells around her neck. "And that is quite beautiful. Where did you get it?"
Briseis averted her eyes and looked at the ground. "I made it…" she told him in a soft voice. "On the beach." How could she tell him that Achilles had given it to her?
"Oh," Paris said, unsure how to reply to that, but was saved by Briseis.
"Shall we go then?" she asked him, glancing up with uncertainty and fear in her eyes.
"Yes," Paris said as a flash of anger shot through him at the apprehension in both her voice and her face, though he hid it carefully, knowing that it would do her no good to see how worried he was about her.
They walked down the corridor together in silence. It was, however, not an awkward silence, but a comfortable, almost friendly one. Briseis kept her gaze mostly focused down, occasionally letting her eyes flick up as they passed other people or windows, but she tried to blend into the background, to pass through the halls unnoticed.
Paris however, saw nothing of what was going on around him. An internal struggle was raging fiercely inside him. Part of him knew that it was better to get Briseis out of her room and eating again, but he didn't want her to happen to meet Odysseus who was coming under a white flag of truce to negotiate with Priam. He knew that the chance of Briseis seeing Odysseus was slim, but still he was afraid of what would happen to her if she saw anything that reminded her of her time in the Greek camp. He only knew that she had come from Achilles' tent, he had no idea of where she may have been before that. And so he walked in a heavy silence, desperately hoping that his father would keep talking to the King of Ithaca until he could Briseis safely back into her room.
If Briseis could have been given a chance to run as they approached the door of the hall, she would have embraced it, but she was still a princess, and had had courtesy and confidence drilled into her since she could walk, so she entered the hall, her head, though admittedly not high, with no other visible signs of apprehension.
Helen rose to greet her with a smile on her beautiful face, and if Briseis suspected that Paris had contrived to make her entrance easier by telling Helen to come to welcome her, she showed no signs of it, simply going to sit beside her cousin's lover, and ignoring the curious looks of the rest of her large family.
She looked at the food hesitantly, but as waves of hot, crusty bread and deliciously ripe fruit hit her, Briseis gave in to temptation and eagerly reached for the food. Paris, watching her carefully, relaxed slightly when he saw her take her first mouthful, and though he did not stop keeping an eye on her as she ate, he reached for food himself, and began to talk in as close to a normal voice as he could manage.
Briseis was, for the time being, perfectly happy to sink into oblivion and be forgotten about for a bit. She had never been an attention-seeking girl, but now more than ever, being overlooked seemed like a godsend. Nothing, however, lasts, and it was not long before the attention was turned back towards her, as Helen said, "You're looking better Briseis."
Briseis glanced up, and then nodded uncertainly. "Thank you," she said in a subdued tone.
"Did you sleep well last night?" Helen asked, feeling that it was important to include Briseis and make her feel like she was back in the family.
Briseis shrugged. "Not really. I can't get used to being in such a comfortable bed."
Things would have been alright, had a momentary hush not fallen over the assembled members of Priam's family at that particular moment, causing a remark made from one of Priam's younger sons to his companion to reach Briseis' ears.
"Is the great Achilles' bed not that comfortable then?" he asked with an uncomfortable smirk. He had never meant for Briseis to hear him, but she froze as she heard her lover's name. Her face instantly went an ashen white and she began to tremble. In a matter of seconds Paris saw her change back to the frightened shadow of a girl that had come back to them from the Greek's camp. Now everyone was looking at her, but Briseis did not seem to be aware of it.
"Briseis, it's alright," Paris said, reaching out a hand to one of her pale, shaking ones.
This snapped her from her reverie, and she pulled her hand back sharply, snapping, "Don't touch me!"
She looked around and suddenly noticed the eyes on her. She sat still for a moment, quailing under the force of all of the eyes on her, and then stood up quickly and ran from the room before anybody could see the tears that were threatening to fall.
Briseis fled from the hall, her head down, and tears blurring her vision. She did not know where she was going: the only thought in her head was the desperate need to get as far away from her family as possible. She half ran, half walked through the empty corridors, heedless of the passages she was turning down as she fought with the tears that threatened to engulf her. She had not yet cried since her return to Troy: she would not let herself cry now, just because someone had happened to mention his name.
It was because she was not looking where she was going that, as she flung herself around a corner, she impacted with a body. She looked up, momentarily immobilised with the shock of touching another human, and found herself looking into the eyes of the King of Ithaca. He had put his hand out to steady her as she hit him, and it burnt an invisible brand onto the shoulder that it rested on.
"King Odysseus," Briseis said in a respectful tone when she recovered from the feeling of his skin on hers, bowing her head slightly.
"My Lady Briseis," he returned, his voice gently mocking her formality.
Briseis looked up sharply, not used to people teasing her, but when she saw the amused expression dancing in his eyes she offered him a brief smile: the first since she had left Achilles' side.
"Are you alright?" Odysseus asked as he dropped his hand from her shoulder, his voice full of concern now as he saw the unshed tears in her eyes.
"I'm…I'm fine," Briseis said in a careful voice, looking down again.
"No you're not," Odysseus told her, gently lifting her chin with one finger to meet her troubled eyes. "What is it?"
"It's nothing," Briseis told him, doing her best to make her voice sound reassuring.
Odysseus was obviously not taken in by this, but he nodded anyway.
"What are you doing here?" Briseis asked him, trying to get away from being the topic of the conversation.
"I came to talk with King Priam," he told her. "To discuss the terms of the truce."
"Oh," Briseis said in a quiet voice. "Nobody told me that you would be here."
Odysseus' heart went out to the girl. "Perhaps they didn't want to worry you," he said in a comforting voice.
Briseis nodded. "Perhaps," she agreed. She hesitated for a moment, an internal struggle raging fiercely within her heart as she struggled to stop herself from asking what she longed to know, but eventually could not stop herself from saying, "How is he?"
Odysseus did not need to be told who he was, and guessed correctly that the former priestess was frightened to pronounce the name of the great Achilles. "Well enough," Odysseus answered thoughtfully, wondering what it was that this girl wanted to hear. "He is in one of his moods at the moment: scaring all the soldiers almost witless," he told her with a smile.
Briseis looked up and smiled nervously back. "Perhaps it is better that I am here then," she admitted, giving Odysseus a rare insight as to what was going through her troubled mind.
So she was not certain if it had been the best thing to return to Troy then? Odysseus thought, mulling this over in his mind, even as he said, "I think that if you were there, there would be no reason for him to have such a short temper."
Briseis looked up sharply, both hope and fear at once written on her face. She doesn't know what her cousin has done, Odysseus marvelled to himself. She had no idea of what will come of her stay in Achilles' tent.
"You're not alright," he said, meeting her gaze squarely. "Are you?"
Briseis did her best to hide the rising sob in her throat, but failed miserably. All the sympathy and gentleness that Paris, Helen, Hecuba and even Priam had treated her with had done nothing against the rough but kind empathy of Odysseus, and she found the tears that had been threatening for days now, begin to run down her face.
"Come here lass," Odysseus said, his voice kind, and he drew the weeping girl into his embrace. Briseis rested her head against his shoulder, her sobs muffled by his clothing, her thoughts incoherent as she rested in the comfort and warmth of his hold, knowing that he was someone who understood, though he may not have said it in so many words, he understood what she was going through.
He knew, she thought as she sobbed, he knew that Achilles had not taken her by force, and yet he did not blame her for what she had done. It was him that finally broke through the armour that she had drawn around herself, because he neither blamed, nor judged her, and, unlike her family, was trying to coax nothing out of her, but quite literally offered her a shoulder to cry on. And as the old king held the sobbing girl, he felt like she was the daughter he had never had, and suddenly he felt sick with longing for his wife and son, far away on the shores of Ithaca.
Suddenly Briseis felt Odysseus' body tense, and he dropped his hands away and stepped back quickly from her. Briseis raised her head, tears blurring her eyes, to see Paris bearing down on them, his eyes blazing with a fury directed at Odysseus, and his hand going to his sword.
"How dare you take advantage of my cousin under her own roof!" he spat at the King, all thought for diplomacy gone from his mind. "As if you and your kind didn't do enough to her when she was on the beach."
"Oh stop it Paris!" Briseis said irritably, in no mood to deal with her cousin's melodramatics. "Odysseus wasn't doing anything more than comforting me."
Paris turned his gaze to Briseis, at a loss for words for a moment. "Go to your room Briseis," he said eventually. "I'll deal with this."
"With what exactly?" Briseis asked waspishly, no longer even trying to hide the exasperation that had built up over the days when everyone had walked on eggshells around her.
"With him daring to hurt you," Paris said in a flat tone, glancing back to Odysseus who was watching the exchange with amusement, although he was not fool enough to show it on his face.
"He didn't hurt me!" Briseis said in an exasperated tone. "Will you listen to me for once?"
"Forgive me if I have offended you," Odysseus said to Paris, deciding to end the argument. I promise you that I have done nothing to my knowledge to harm my Lady Briseis."
Paris, faced with denials from both the people involved, had no choice but to back down. "Alright," he said stiffly. "My apologies."
Odysseus nodded to acknowledge this, and Paris turned to Briseis, reaching out one hand to take her arm. "Go to your room while I escort King Odysseus to the gate," he said, but Briseis snatched her arm away sharply.
"Don't touch me!" she snapped angrily at him.
Odysseus suddenly realised the true extent of Paris' anger. If any cousin of his had refused to touch him, and then ended up in the arms of a foreign diplomat, he would have carved them into pieces. Luckily, Paris was not quite so bloody-minded.
Briseis, with a low and graceful curtsey to Odysseus that managed to convey both her gratitude to him, and her disgust for her cousin, left, leaving the King and the Prince alone.
Paris turned sharply and began walking down the corridor. Odysseus fell into step beside him, matching the Prince's silence with one of his own.
They continued that way for some time, before Paris eventually gave in and spoke. "What did you say to her?" he asked finally.
Odysseus shrugged. "Not much," he admitted. "I think…I think she needed someone who knew what had happened to her. It could be too painful for her to speak, and so she just needed someone who understood."
"Maybe," Paris said grudgingly, finding it difficult to be angry with such a wise and courteous man. "I suppose I should be grateful to you. I've been trying to get her to show some emotion since she came back."
Odysseus just nodded, and they walked on in silence for some time more, until they came to the gates of the city where Odysseus' chariot was waiting.
"You will tell Achilles what I have said?" Paris asked finally.
Odysseus nodded. "But I still wish you would not do this," he told the young Prince.
"And why should I take advice from my enemy?" Paris asked scornfully. "Perhaps you are afraid that you will lose your best warrior."
Odysseus sighed. There was no point trying to reason with Paris, who felt any grievances against him as greatly as he felt any love shown for him. The older man simply nodded, and hoped to all the Gods that he could think of, that there was some way to avoid the approaching suffering.