As ever, thanks to everyone who read, favourited and is following this story.

Special thanks to Modern Kassandra and almythea for your reviews. almythea, I'm sorry you hated the previous chapter, but please don't rule out Achilles without giving him a chance to explain his motives. :) Hope this chapter will clarify things and you'll like Achilles better again.

Warning: This chapter has explicit, though not graphic, sexual content.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Putting my pride aside was much easier said than done. However, I did wash my feet and hands, put on a clean dress, fixed my hair and went to supper in your tent. I thought I saw a flash of joy flaring in your eyes when I arrived, but then you settled for greeting me with a simple polite nod. I responded in kind and went to sit on my usual spot.

Supper started normally enough, but as the evening dragged on, you withdrew more and more into yourself, leaving the effort to keep the conversation going almost entirely to Patroclus. By the end of the meal, you were completely silent, even gloomy. You'd respond to your friend's attempts to get you to speak with mere unintelligible monosyllables.

That atypical moroseness of yours was slowly unsettling me. A whole new turmoil was now raging in my mind: had you really been faithful to the bare hope of me for two months? Were you, a prince, really open to the idea of marrying a slave? Why had you paid a bride price for me when you already had legitimate claim to me as your prize of honour? Had I misread you so thoroughly the last couple of months that I missed the signs of a much deeper love than was reasonable to expect? Your attitude that afternoon, had it been just a way to get a reaction from me or was it something darker, a signal that you were reaching the end of your rope? If that were the case, was it silly of me to hang on to the offense I had taken as opposed to trying to understand your motives? Had I rejected you one too many times and was I now in immediate risk of losing you for good?

That very idea was enough to drive me to the edge of a black chasm of panic. I tried to collect myself and focus back on my surroundings.

The light of the fire was dancing in your hair, making it shine in all shades of gold. But your eyes were dark, your features, sombre. What was going through your mind? Where did all that gloom come from?

I needed to talk to you, but not in front of an audience. I looked around. Phoenix had dozed off where he sat, his head lolling over his chest. Patroclus had all but given up on any kind of general conversation and was chatting away with Iphis. Sophronia was pushing the crumbs on her plate back and forth.

I worked up my courage, cleared my throat and addressed you directly: "Your shoulder seems to be doing much better."

You lifted your head slowly, as if my voice had brought you back from some remote place deep within yourself, then looked straight into my eyes: "It's completely healed, thank you." There was something foreboding in your tone, as if that simple sentence held a darker meaning I couldn't quite grasp.

Phoenix woke up with a start: "I'm sorry, I guess I was rather poor company tonight. It's age playing its wicked tricks on me. I'd better go on to bed." He got up with stiff movements, turned to you: "Have a good night's sleep, son. May mighty Zeus give you victory for company tomorrow and bring you back safe and glorious."

I shivered from head to toe. "Are you already going back to battle?", I asked, my voice turning to a croak.

Your eyes focused back on mine. "Tomorrow." You studied my face. "Didn't you know?"

I could only shake my head, my throat so constricted no sound could escape through it. Patroclus stood up abruptly and turned to Iphis and Sophronia: "Come on, ladies, let's walk our good friend Phoenix to his tent."

The four of them filed out and we were on our own. Sitting across from each other on opposite sides of the room, the fire between us casting wild patterns of light and shadow all around us.

The silence seemed to drag on forever. Then we both said, "This afternoon…", and we both stopped.

"Sorry, go on", you said.

"No, no, you go first."

You hesitated for a moment. "I was only going to say I thought you had realized that this afternoon, when you saw us grooming the horses."

"No, I didn't. I did think you were doing better and might be going back to fighting soon, but I never thought it would already be tomorrow."

You shrugged. "Well, it has to be. As you may have noticed, the army has been pretty much inactive since my injury."

"Yes, that's rather obvious. It's a terrible responsibility for you, though. I mean, you're not the commander in chief, are you?"

You smiled tightly: "No, I'm not. Not officially, anyway. But for all practical purposes… they don't really do anything without me and my men."

There was another silence. Finally, you broke it: "But that was not what you were going to talk about, was it? What were you going to say?"

It was my turn to hesitate. "Only that this afternoon… well, you were a bit nasty to me."

You threw your head back and let out a bitter laugh. "Just a bit? I was convinced I had been utterly obnoxious." You looked straight at me again, with those scrutinizing eyes of yours. "Almost as obnoxious as you."

"You think I was obnoxious?", I sputtered indignantly. "I did nothing at all!"

"Precisely", you retorted forcibly. "You strayed that way, the immortals know why, then just stood there staring, tantalizing me, probably expecting me to go crawling after you like an idiot all over again. But that's over, Briseis. I'm through. I told you the other day, I take no favours and I take no pity. But I'm not going to die waiting for a mirage either. I hoped I could make you want me as much as I wanted you, heart, mind and body, but I've come to realize that's not going to happen. It's alright, I don't blame you. You just don't feel the way I do and there's nothing you can do about it. But I do demand that you respect me and don't bait me into chasing rainbows I'm never going to catch."

"I wasn't baiting you! I went there to talk to you!"

"Then why didn't you say anything? Why didn't you come over, why didn't you call me, why did you just stand there waiting for me to go to you, as I seem to have kept doing these past few months, only to hear you find yet another excuse to tell me 'no' for the millionth time?"

"That was not what I meant to do!"

"What did you mean to do then? Watch two men brushing horses? You don't even like the poor creatures!" You paused, took a deep breath, then said in a low voice, laced with finality: "I know I originally presented the whole thing to you as some kind of dare, but you must have long realized it was actually very serious. I have never toyed with you and I won't let you toy with me. That day you helped me bathe, I thought I had seen something in you. I guess I did, but apparently it was only lust. Fool that you make me, I mistook it for something else. Mind you, I'd be perfectly content with lust from any other woman. But from you, it's nowhere near enough." You rose from your chair and added, so low that it seemed you were talking to yourself more than to me: "So it has to be nothing at all."

I stood up as well, struggling against a tidal wave of panic that threatened to drown me.

"You're wrong!" I stuttered desperately. "You got it all wrong!"

You stared at me expectantly for a while. But all possible words seemed to be colliding around in my mind, in an uncontrollable maelstrom of pain and fear, and I couldn't grasp the right ones to make you understand.

You sighed. "Silence can indeed speak volumes. One of your greatest qualities, Briseis, is that you're unable to fake what you don't really feel. So… your speechlessness is quite clear. It's no. Again. I get it." You laughed bitterly. "Defeat does taste sour. I had never experienced it before. Well, congratulations; you succeeded where everybody had failed so far."

You grabbed your cloak from a peg on the wall and walked to the door. I had lost you. And I knew for a fact that your defeat was mine as well.

There had to be something I could do, something I could say that would turn the tide, change that stupid mutual defeat into victory for us both.

I called after you from the bottom of a well of anguish:

"Achilles!"

You stopped, your back to me, your hand on the latch.

And suddenly I found it. The word I needed. It was very simple, really. Just one short word, perhaps the simplest of them all.

It was resting lightly on my lips and I sent it fluttering through the air at you, beautiful and fragile like a butterfly:

"Yes."

You whirled around with that dazzling predatory speed of yours that never ceased to catch me by surprise. Your eyebrows rose in a wordless question, I lowered my lids just a fraction, in an equally wordless confirmation.

And you ran to me. You did run and I ran to meet you half way. Your arms closed around me, pulling me so tight into your chest that it was a wonder either of us still had room to breathe. Then one of your hands travelled upward to cup the back of my head in your palm, and my arms flew up as well, one hand grasping onto your shoulder, the other diving in the fiery gold of your surprisingly silky hair.

And I discovered the taste of your lips, of your mouth, and I pressed myself even deeper into you, impossibly deeper, just as you pulled me closer, impossibly closer, as if we were about to fuse into one of those four-armed and four-legged beings the ancient legend says humans used to be, and we were swaying where we stood, until we lost our balance and you had to steady us with a hand on the wall.

And then we were stumbling across the room, into your alcove and onto your bed. And clothes where flying, and your hands were looking to learn every shape and curve of me, and there was a hunger for the salt on each other's skin that we were both mindlessly seeking to sate.

And then you were inside me, and you whispered something, a word in your dialect I couldn't speak, a word that bloomed in my heart with the rich perfume of the most beautiful flower, but then I went crazy, and you went crazy with me, and I forgot to ask you what it meant.

And when my mind exploded in multi-coloured shreds of light, and your body arched and convulsed, and it felt as though we had indeed become one single, complete being, you whispered it again, that magical, mysterious word that echoed in my soul like the most perfect piece of music ever played.

Only later, much later – several nights later, in fact – did I ask you what it meant, that elusive word that seemed to have laid roots in the very chore of me and that you repeated every time we temporarily melted into one. We were laying wrapped in the velvety comfort of darkness, my head nestled on your shoulder.

You didn't respond right away. I looked up to watch the outlines of your profile shifting against a sliver of moonlight. Finally you said softly, without moving your gaze from the ceiling: "My love." Then you turned your head to look at me, your eyes glittering like jewels in the glow from the embers.

The silvery ray of moonlight shone suddenly gold, as a sunny warmth spread all through my body. I propped myself up on my elbow, kissed your mouth and whispered the same word back at you, in my own language which you didn't speak either.

You didn't ask me to translate. You didn't need to. I could feel your smile beneath my lips.