A/N – why hello there! Sorry I've been so long in updating but I've really been struggling with this chapter. I still don't really like it, but I thought I'd just stick it up on the site, and then you guys can tell me the worst bits, because I've read and re-read it so many times that it's become pretty meaningless. Anywho, please do say what you think of it, good or bad, and I'm almost positive that this is the penultimate chapter, though I'm not sure how long I'll be getting the final chapter up.

Thanks to everyone who reviewed the last chapter, and please do the same for this one!

'The greatest story was you and me.
Had it all we had everything, but now the
Story's done it's just history.
The last act is over.
Your every line had the sweetest sound.
Your every touch turned my world around.
But then the light came up and my world crashed down.'

Meat Loaf, 'Not a Dry Eye in the House'

Chapter Twelve: My World Crashed Down

When Briseis woke in Odysseus' tent the next morning, the first thing she was aware of was voices behind her. She was lying with her back to the centre of the tent, buried under a pile of blankets that she guessed Odysseus or Neoptolemus must have put over her the night before, because she was sure she had just curled up in exhaustion and slept, oblivious to such minor things as comfort and warmth when filled with the coldness that had gripped her since he had been taken from her.

Not moving, mainly because she saw no reason to, Briseis let herself tune into the voices behind her, and she listened to them through her dozing state.

"Please, let me take her." That was Odysseus voice. Briseis had never heard the king pleading before, and guessing that the 'her' he referred to was herself, Briseis could not help but be mildly interested.

"She was trusted to me, old man," Neoptolemus was saying. "What do you want with her?" The animosity in the new Lord of Phthia's voice was scarcely veiled, and it shocked Briseis, because although she had heard rumours of his cruelty, he had been nothing but a gentleman to her.

Odysseus was speaking now, his tone edgy as he said, "I'd feel safer if she was with me."

"Don't you trust me?" Neoptolemus mocked.

"You must know your reputation," Odysseus shot back. "She's an innocent."

"She's pregnant with my father's child!" Neoptolemus interrupted, his voice incredulous.

"She's still an innocent," Odysseus said softly.

There was a momentary silence, before the younger man spoke again. "Tell me then," Neoptolemus asked scornfully. "What is my reputation?"

There was a measured silence as Odysseus weighed up Neoptolemus mood, for the warlord was at the best of times unpredictable. Deciding to be blunt, the King of Ithaca said, "They say that you make Achilles look merciful. That you take what you want with no thought as to you hurt. That you torture, rape and murder at a whim. That you worship no God and show loyalty to no man."

There was a silence that seemed to stretch into eternity, and Briseis felt a cold fear grip her heart. She had thought that she was safe with this man. She had let her guard down with him, and Odysseus' words now left her paralysed with fear. She desperately wanted to get away: far away. She wanted to stop having to fight every second of every day. She wanted Achilles. But instead all she had to protect her was she had his son, who Odysseus was implying only had taken an interest in her in order to bed her.

"Like father, like son eh?" Neoptolemus said, his voice slightly bitter.

Odysseus shook his head. "No," he said. "Achilles never caused unnecessary pain."

Neoptolemus looked down, and when he glanced up again the callousness was gone from his eyes, and had been replaced by a hollow, sunken look. It was an expression that scared Odysseus more than the usual ruthlessness and vicious sneer that marked the young man's face.

"I wouldn't harm her, Odysseus," Neoptolemus said in a broken voice, scarcely audible. "I would never harm her."

Odysseus met the other's man's eyes and held them there for a long time, until he slowly began to understand. He nodded sharply and rose, saying, "Be good to her. She's been living in Hades since the war began," before he left the tent.

"Haven't we all?" Neoptolemus said softly, so nobody but Briseis heard.

Three days later found Briseis standing at the ship's rail, staring moodily out across the sea, that seemed to dance and sparkle with such life and joy only to mock her. It was not the first time she had been on a ship, although she had only been six when she had been brought to Troy: the sole survivor of a raid on her parent's home, and she scarcely remembered the journey, for it was overshadowed by grief, pain and fear.

Briseis sensed more than heard or saw Neoptolemus join her at the rail, and she risked a quick glance at him to see that he, like her, was standing with his hands on the rail, staring out across the sea. Briseis quickly look away from him and focused back on the unchanging scene before her. Something about Neoptolemus, while not exactly scared her, certainly unsettled her. He was too unpredictable and capricious for her to entirely trust him, and although he had never been anything but polite to her, she had no reason not to trust Odysseus' judgement, and the old king's words when they thought she was asleep had unsettled her.

"Why aren't you crying?" Neoptolemus suddenly asked her, startling her out of her pensiveness. Briseis had grown used to his strange questions: questions that most people would never ask, for fear of sounding rude. This never seemed to bother Neoptolemus though.

Briseis thought about it. It was true: she had hardly cried since her lover's death, and she knew that theoretically she should have at least shown some signs of grief.

"I'm afraid that if I let myself start," she finally answered hesitantly. "I'd never stop."

Neoptolemus considered this for a moment, looking at her thoughtfully as if he couldn't really understand the sentiment of grief. He opened his mouth as if he was about to say something when a shout came from behind the pair, and he turned away to answer, leaving Briseis alone again, with nothing but her thoughts.

Briseis was desperately lonely. She had not really had companionship since the day the Greek ships arrived on the shores of Troy. Achilles…well, he had been kind and good to her, but she had still been afraid of him, and had not been able to confide in him, as she would have liked to. Then on her return to Troy she had been effectively cut off; ostracised and shunned by her own kin. And now, on the ship bearing her away from her home of over a decade, she had no one for company but a volatile, unpredictable warlord, who both terrified and fascinated her.

He would call for her in the middle of the night, and she would find him in his cabin, his eyes lined with exhaustion, sitting lazily in a chair, a stack of official papers at his side as he softly stroked the heavily pregnant cat in his lap.

He would smile crookedly at her as she entered, not seeming to appreciate that most normal people were asleep at that time of the night, and ask her seemingly random questions, wanting her to tell him about Troy, or the temple, or her childhood, or any number of topics.

And Briseis would answer him, would tell him what he wanted to know, watching him with uncertain eyes as he stroked the cat, a soft smile on his face, until he would finally glance up, and, as if noticing how late it was for the first time, and would send her back to bed with grave consideration. And she would go, and fall asleep almost instantly: fatigue having taken her over in these first few weeks of her pregnancy, and in the morning she would wonder whether their night time conversations had only been a dream.

It was on one cool night about half way through their voyage that Briseis woke with a start, drenched in a cold sweat, gasping for breath as her heart pounded painfully in her chest. It took her a moment to adjust to the darkness of the tiny candlelit cabin, and realise that it had just been a dream, and that she was safe. If safe was really the right word for her circumstances. She was on a ship with an unknown number of soldiers who had been separated from women for months, led by an embittered warlord. And yet she was as safe as she could be, given her circumstances.

Briseis' breathing slowed and her heart rate gradually returned to normal, but the fear from the nightmare was still vivid. She had dreamt that she was back in the Greek camp, on her second night of captivation, when Agamemnon had handed her to the soldiers. Except this time, there was no Achilles to save her. She was being tossed from man to man, screaming and screaming his name, waiting for him to step out of the shadows and sweep her up in strong arms, but he never appeared.

Briseis shuddered, climbing out of the sweat-soaked bed and pulling a thin wrap over her trembling shoulders before silently opening the door, slipping past the sleeping guard, and making her way up onto deck. She paused for a moment as she came up the ladder, letting the cool breeze scour her of the feeling of the men's hands on her body, and clear her head of the pain and dread that had seized her as she slept.

A movement caught the pale girl's eye, and she turned her head to see the shape of Neoptolemus standing by the rail of the deserted ship.

"Sorry," Briseis said, alarm in her eyes if not in her voice. "I didn't realise you were there."

"What are you doing here?" Neoptolemus asked, his voice grave and tired. "You should be asleep."

"I could say the same for you," Briseis commented dryly, crossing the deck on bare feet to stand beside him, staring out across the dark sea.

"I asked first," he said, a faint smile on his face as he turned to face out in the same direction as her.

"I couldn't sleep," Briseis said after a moment's pause.

When her companion did not answer Briseis risked a sideways glance at him to, to see the shadow of a frown on his face.

"Why not?" he asked.

Briseis shrugged. "Dreams."

Neoptolemus' expression softened slightly, and he nodded.

"But what about you?" Briseis asked, pushing away the memory of the dream.

He turned his head to look at her, and for the first time Briseis saw his face clearly, illuminated by the soft moonlight. She was shocked by how gaunt and tired his usual ruthless face was. He looked twice his age, his eyes filled with something Briseis could not describe.

Instinctively she reached out to touch his face, as if to try and give some of the warmth from her body to him.

"You should sleep," she told him in a concerned voice, the way she would speak to the brothers she lost in the raid on her home twelve years previously.

Neoptolemus smiled tiredly, taking her hand and kissing it gently. "I rarely sleep anymore," he told her. "There's always so much that needs doing."

"Work?" Briseis inquired, her own pain and misfortunes momentarily forgotten.

"Some of the forts I've captured over the years cause me more grief than they're worth," he told her, releasing her hand. "And now with Phthia to govern as well…There's always a dispute to settle, a tax to be changed. So many insignificant, petty things!"

"So let other people do them, if they're so insignificant," Briseis said.

Neoptolemus smiled crookedly at her. "And give powerful men even more power? I wouldn't trust any politician with my own life, let alone that of any of my people."

It was remarks like that, Briseis thought, that always caught her off-balance. She wouldn't have thought that he valued his people over himself, and yet he said it with such a casualness that Briseis knew he didn't think anything of it."

"Please get some sleep," she begged him. "You shouldn't do this to yourself."

"How can I deny such a pretty face?" he asked with a wry grin. "I'll be down in a minute. You should go down, you'll catch a chill."

It was true, Briseis was shivering slightly in the night breeze, but she stayed stubbornly by his side, loath to leave him.

"It's alright," he told her, glancing at her face. "I promise I'll go down in a moment."

Briseis, deciding that he was telling the truth, nodded, and turned to leave him, returned to the warmth of below-decks.

It was as she was changing into warmer clothes back in the comfort of her cabin that Briseis noticed it first. A small trickle of blood running down the inside of her leg. And it was in that moment that any hope Briseis might have had for her future, anything beyond the despair that had been threatening to engulf her since she had woken to find Troy burning, was lost.

The rest of that night passed in a haze of pain, blood and waves of anguish. And then, through it all, there was Neoptolemus, washing her body with cool, damp cloths, soothing her cries of pain and distress, wrapping her in clean sheets and holding her as she clung to him, finally weeping the tears she had been so afraid to she before.

She did not know how he had got there, she did not even know when he had arrived, for there had been times that the sharp, agonising pain in her abdomen had made her lose all awareness of her surroundings, but slowly, as the pain eased and her blood stopped, she clung to him, desperate for some warmth to escape the icy coldness that had grasped her heart.

"I would have called him Patroculus," she whispered to him through her tears as he smoothed her hair down, rocking her gently. She did not know why she told him, only that it was somehow important for him to know.

He did not answer, but just tightened his hold of her very slightly.

It was a long, dark night for both of them: Briseis lost the little hope that she had previously had, in the knowledge that she was now truly alone, and filled with guilt that she had failed Achilles in being unable to bear his son.

Neoptolemus, whose heart had grown cold with fear when he heard the girl's cries of pain as he passed her cabin door, held her as a brother would hold a grieving sister, soothed her and whispered words of scant comfort to her, even as he came to the realisation that as soon as he saw her in his grandmother's arms, he would have to leave her.

It was probably only lust, he conceded as he watched her sleeping in his arms; damp hair slinging to her face, beautiful even through all the pain and anguish. What did he know of love anyway? He was a killer, incapable of love. He told himself this over and over, until he had almost convinced himself that it was true. He knew he had to leave: to get away from her before he did anything he would regret. It would be easier for them both that way. He would not have to suffer from seeing her everyday and knowing she didn't love him. And she, well, she wouldn't have to see him everyday and know that he did.

And so he gently laid her body down onto the fresh, clean sheets, and watched her for a moment in the flickering candlelight before stooping to place a single, chaste kiss on her forehead and leaving her to a sleep haunted by shadowy figures of her parents, her lover and a son, dead before he had even seen the light of day.