A/N – Sorry this is such a short chapter. I think it's going to be the penultimate chapter, but I'm not sure – I'm never organised enough to write chapter plans, so you'll have to forgive me on this one.

As ever, thank you for all the wonderful reviews – one more and I'll have 100! So exciting :) Anywho, I hope you like this chapter. I'm not really sure what happened here – I never had any real plan for Neo, but he seemed to want a bigger part in the fanfic than I'd planned on giving him, so here you are.

Chapter Eleven: Crying for No One

'One by one
Only the good die young
They're only flying too close to the sun
Crying for nothing
Crying for no-one
No-one but you'

Queen, 'No One But You'

Odysseus pushed through the crowd of soldiers surrounding the body of Achilles, followed closely by Neoptolemus. The soldiers stood back a respectful distance, watching as friend and son approached the body of the man they had all thought of as invincible, ignoring the crumpled bodies of their king and his guards.

Odysseus dropped to his knees, checking for a pulse on his old friend's neck, while Neoptolemus carefully drew Briseis' unmoving body from where it was draped across Achilles' chest, revealing the arrow wounds in his armour.

"She's still breathing," Neoptolemus told Odysseus, and felt a strange emotion flood through his body: relief. Neoptolemus could not remember the last time he felt like he did knowing the pale girl lived, but the unfeeling side of him told him that it was just because he knew that Achilles, dead or alive, would find a way to kill him if he let any harm come to the former priestess.

"But only just," he added after a moment, listening hard to her shallow, uneven breaths.

"Is she injured?" Odysseus asked, his voice tight with grief.

"No," Neoptolemus said after briefly checking her. "It's probably just shock."

Odysseus nodded slowly. "Get her back to the camp. Put her in my tent if you want. I'll see to…to the body."

The younger man nodded, and rose, cradling the thin girl's body carefully in his strong arms. Another man may have thought that Odysseus was acting very callously over the death of his best friend, but Neoptolemus had seen many men die in battle, and had seen many reactions to death. Odysseus would grieve when he had the time, but he was a soldier first and foremost, and a soldier could not let emotion interfere when there were still battles to be fought.

Neoptolemus' face still wore its characteristic cruel sneer, but he held Briseis gently, almost protectively, as he walked slowly through the burning city and down towards the shore. Ignoring the screams of the dying and the pleas of womes chased by lust-filled soldiers, he looked down at her face as he walked, wondering what his father - the infamous womaniser - could have seen there to make him give up his own life.

Briseis stirred and murmured slightly as Neoptolemus shifted his grip of her, but she soon fell back into the light unconsciousness, making the new Lord of Phthia speed up his pace slightly. He had made his father and oath, and would not dare enter the underworld if he let anything happen to the girl in his arms, for fear of his father's wrath.

When Briseis woke, all she was aware of was an overpowering sense of loss, though for a moment, she couldn't understand why. She was laid out in a soft bed: warm furs tucked carefully around her, inside a tent. Early morning light streamed through the open flap, letting Briseis know that she had not been asleep long.

She couldn't see how anything could matter again: she supposed vaguely that she had been taken as a slave, but she didn't care. Nothing mattered, for he was dead. She was just about to roll over and curl up again, when a movement across the other side of the tent caught her eye, and, against her wishes, she propped herself up on her elbows to look.

Neoptolemus, who had been cleaning his father's armour, ready for the funeral later, saw his charge move slightly, and he glanced over at her to see her staring at him, her eyes wide with shock.

"But…you're dead," she whispered, her voice full of fear and panic.

Neoptolemus frowned slightly, before his eyes widened in understanding. "I'm his son," he told her, realising that she thought he was Achilles, and with good reason: he looked much like his father, and with Achilles' armour in his hands she could be forgiven for thinking so much.

Briseis' eyes clouded in grief, and she closed them tightly. "Then he's…" she could not bring herself to finish sentence.

"Yes," Neoptolemus said, no emotion in his voice.

Briseis nodded slowly, her face downcast and her eyes still firmly shut. "What happens now?" she asked quietly.

"You are now in my care," Neoptolemus told her in his usual deadpan voice, which gave no clue as to his sentiment at the thought. "As I was ordered by Achilles."

Briseis' eyes flashed open for a moment, and she looked up at the unsmiling warlord. "He asked you to?"

Neoptolemus shrugged. "He told me to. It seems he cared for you," he said it almost curiously, as if he could not understand the sentiment.

Briseis just shrugged. "Has he been…have they…" she tailed off miserably.

"Burnt him yet?" the blond man asked. "No, not yet. Odysseus seemed to think you would want to be there."

Briseis nodded again, still looking firmly downwards.

Neoptolemus sighed. "You might as well get some sleep. I'll wake you when they do," he promised, displaying an unusual act of compassion.

Briseis rolled over, her back to the man whose very sight sent waves of grief through her, so closely did he resemble the man she loved, and she let despair swallow her up.

Neoptolemus was still staring at the sleeping girl when an exhausted, smoke-blackened Odysseus entered the tent. He glanced over to Briseis and then moved across the tent to wash his face.

"Has she woken?" he asked Neoptolemus in a dead voice.

"Briefly," Neoptolemus replied in a quiet voice, so as not to wake the sleeping girl. "I said I'd wake her when we burn him."

Odysseus nodded, his jaw tightening slightly, as he washed away the traces of smoke, blood and grief from his face.

"You will take her back to Phthia?" Odysseus asked, sitting down and removing his armour.

"I said I would, didn't I?" Neoptolemus answered, his voice curt.

Odysseus glanced up, and the new Lord of Phthia noticed how the King's face had aged several decades in the space of one short day.

"Forgive me, friend of my father," Neoptolemus said, his voice oddly ritualistic. "It has been a hard day."

Late that evening, as he stood watching his father's body burn, Neoptolemus turned his head slightly to see Briseis slipping away from the pyre, passing silently through the ranks of the soldiers, and leaving her lover's burning body behind her.

She had not spoken since Neoptolemus had woken her in the late that afternoon. She had turned down suggestions that she should light the body, and had held back from the pyre and the body, almost as if she was afraid to approach it.

Neoptolemus hesitated for a moment, and then followed Briseis' retreating form, telling himself that he was doing it for her own safety, while truthfully he did not know what made him follow the grieving girl.

He found her on the blackened remains of Troy's walls, her knuckles gripping the rough stone tightly as she started out over the moonlit sea of sand to the Greek encampment and the sea beyond it.

Neoptolemus paused at the top of the stairs, but Brisies spoke, obviously aware of his presence. "Are we leaving this place?" she asked in a numb voice.

"I take you to Phthia," Neoptolemus told her, moving forwards to stand beside her. "You will live there with my mother until her death, which, I think, is not far off. Then Odysseus has offered you shelter in Ithaca, if you will go there."

Briseis said nothing, and made no movement to show that she had heart, but silently she was grateful to the grim-faced man who had set out the next however many years of her life without doing so much as consulting her. The last thing she wanted at present was to have to make decisions. And yet there was one thing he should know…

"My Lord?" she asked tentatively.

"Neo," he interjected firmly.

Briseis looked slightly surprised at this, but continued. "Neo, then. I'm…I'm pregnant," she told him, her voice trembling slightly. It was the first time that she had actually spoken the fateful words that had filled her with such fear.

"Is it Achilles' child?" Neoptolemus asked bluntly.

Briseis nodded.

"Then there is no problem," he told her, fighting to keep his voice calm, when inside his guts were twisting painfully. If he had thought that she was out of reach before, it was nothing to what she was now. She had been his father's lover. That was bad enough. She was carrying his child – worse, though still not hopeless. What turned Neoptolemus to despair was the knowledge that she still loved Achilles. She probably always would. And that simple fact made her as unattainable as any queen.

Briseis turned to him, her eyes trusting, her face betraying her ignorance of his eternal struggle.

"Thank you," she whispered, rising up on tip-toes to kiss his cheek before walking away, leaving a man who felt, for the first time in his life, something other than contempt for another human being, and was unable to do anything about it.

Had Briseis turned around, she would have seen a hand move up to touch the cheek she had kissed, or the unguarded expression in the warlord's eye that betrayed him.

But she did not turn, she did not see. And so she never knew that the Lord of Phthia, the man who fought with the strength of the Gods, and whose name struck fear into the hearts of his enemies had fallen, terribly and irrevocably, in love with her.

That night, curled up in the warmth and safety of Odysseus' tent, Briseis let herself cry. She did not weep desperately for her fallen lover, or sob like her heart was breaking. Instead, one lone tear ran silently down her cheek: the only real sign of grief she had shown since waking earlier that day.

She had not had the strength to see his body one last time before it was burnt, and she did not feel worthy of lighting his pyre. Odysseus had known him all his life, she had known him only a few short weeks, and they had been separated for most of that. If anyone should send Achilles to the boatman, it should be the only man he had ever had any respect for.

Briseis sniffed, wiping the tears off her face. She briefly wondered what had happened to Paris, before deciding that she didn't care. He had taken Achilles from her, and it would be a very long time before she ever found it in her heart to forgive him for that.

So now she was leaving Trojan shores for the first time in her life. She felt nothing at the thought of going to Phthia: it was as if her mind had become numb, to protect itself, because the pain of the last few days would probably send her mad if she could feel it.

She thought briefly of Neoptolemus: the man who looked so much like his father and was not charged with her care. Men called him cruel and merciless, but to Briseis he had never been anything but courteous and compassionate. He was a good man, Briseis thought, as she slowly drifted off to a sleep haunted by memories of a tall, god-like man who had shown her what it was to actually live for once.