Thank you, Riverslegacy, Maria and therealbriseis for your reviews. I can't begin to tell you how important they are to me!

As always, thank you to everyone reading, following and faving this story.

CHAPTER THIRTY FOUR

The day after Patroclus' funeral, Iphis told you of her decision to return to her family. It had taken quite a bit of persuading from my part, because after my refusal to go with her she began to ponder staying because of me. But, of course, that made absolutely no sense: with Patroclus dead there was nothing here for her anymore, and I knew for a fact that she had never ceased to miss her family and, unlike many of the other women in a similar position to ours, she was sure to be welcome back with open arms. So there was quite a lot of insistence on both sides – she attempting to get me to go with her, me pushing her to go – and more than just a little arguing. Eventually, however, I won and she got ready to leave.

True to your word, you sent one of your ships, with a small detail of Myrmidons as guards, to take her back. As promised, the dowry Patroclus had given her was loaded on the vessel, doubled with an equal amount of silver, rich cloth and other precious objects taken from your own personal fortune.

It was a difficult goodbye. Iphis had become the closest friend I had ever had since childhood and I knew she felt the same way toward me. Throughout the past four years, we had shared hopes and dreams, laughter and tears, helped each other through the bad times and somehow enhanced for each other the brightness of the good ones. As the ship sailed away and her figure on the deck shrinked to an indistinguishable dot, I was overcome by a terrible feeling of loneliness.

Now, eleven days later, that loneliness had only become more real and all-encompassing. If truth be told, I hadn't felt so utterly alone since the time of my marriage to Mynes.

Patroclus, now gone forever, had been my other close friend in your camp. There was Sophronia, of course, whom I sincerely liked and trusted, but she was my mother's age and there were limits to the common ground we could find to bring us together. As for Phoenix, who had always been nice and kind to me, and with whom the shared deep concern over you had now created a new link of mutual understanding, he was an old warrior and your former teacher, a man who'd often call you "son" and whom you'd just as often address as "father Phoenix". As affectionate as our relationship might be, it would always remain fundamentally hierarchical and ceremonious.

Everyone else were either Myrmidons – your men – or servants. As well as I might get along with some of them, there was no chance of any real closeness.

Under normal circumstances I would have you. But the circumstances were anything but normal.

You spent your time fighting at the gates of Troy during the day and getting staggering, cantankerous, speech-slurring drunk in the evening. I suppose you did it to silence your demons and get some sleep, but it was clearly not working. You might drink until you'd collapse with your head on the table, but in the middle of the night I could hear you bursting out of your hut to await dawn pacing up and down the beach.

You looked terrible. The lack of sleep left you with hollow cheeks and dark purple circles under your eyes, which were already bloodshot by the excess of wine. You had cut your hair irregularly with a knife, as a sign of mourning, and had stopped shaving, which resulted in a haggard, dishevelled appearance. All that combined with a dozen cuts and bruises suffered in battle made for an utterly wild effect.

And you were completely unapproachable. Beside a temper that had gone from volatile to frighteningly dark and explosive, so much so that everyone, from the lowest servants to any visiting kings, took the utmost care not to do or say anything that might possibly trigger it – not with much success, though, as not a day went by without you blowing up for any or no reason at all – in the morning you were always too busy getting ready for battle and in the evening you were too wasted for any kind of conversation.

I had tried to talk to you anyway, repeatedly, but you kept ignoring me. As I had anticipated, you had not been physically aggressive to me, at least not so far. But you behaved as if I wasn't there. As if my presence didn't matter to you at all or, worse, as if you actually didn't want me there. It was getting to the point where I was beginning to wonder whether I hadn't made a mistake by refusing Iphis' offer. I was slowly becoming desperate.

Hector's body was still lying face down on the ground by the entrance to your camp. Every two or three days the Trojans would send messengers to try and negotiate the return of their prince's body, but you'd adamantly refuse to even see them. There was enough decency left in you that you never harmed a messenger, but still you wouldn't accept to as much as hear what they had to say.

That sort of unrelenting hatred was disturbing. I realized forgiveness was not a virtue cultivated by warriors but, as in everything else, you were taking your implacability to a new extreme. Indeed, it had quickly become obvious that no- one approved of what you were doing. Even the most hardened soldiers in the army seemed ill at ease about it.

As a matter of fact, I had overheard a couple of fragments of conversations that led me to believe that a few Trojan captives had taken it upon themselves to do all they could to preserve the body of their hero, and I strongly suspected that even the Myrmidon guards had turned a blind eye on those efforts. You would consider that treason, of course, but I wasn't about to bring a death sentence upon anybody by sharing my suspicions with you.

This was all more than enough to keep me up at night as well. That's why I never failed to hear you, even though I was staying in the women's hut, when you came out of your tent to walk the beach until dawn.

That night was no exception. I was dozing fitfully when I heard your steps shuffling past, then a sound of retching. I laid in my pallet wide awake, staring into the darkness, until the sky began to colour a pale grey through the cracks on the wooden door. And suddenly I couldn't take it any longer. I jumped to my feet, wrapped myself in my cloak and slipped outside.

You were standing barefoot on the water's edge, throwing pebbles that skidded over the surface of the water. The surf lapped softly at your ankles. You gave no sign of hearing me approach.

"This can't go on", I said abruptly. You didn't respond, so I insisted: "You're not sleeping. You're drinking way too much. You're coming back wounded from battle. Minor wounds, granted, but wounds nonetheless. It rarely ever happened before. It has to end."

You shrugged. "I suppose it will. Soon enough."

I clenched my fists. "What do you mean by that?"

Again, there was no answer. A now familiar dread tightened my chest, just as my blood began to boil in rising anger. The combination of two such contradictory feelings made me dizzy for a moment. I took a deep breath, then another.

"Achilles, do you wish I wasn't here?" I asked at last. This time you turned to look at me, but still said nothing. "Do you wish I hadn't come back?"

And, just like that, you flew into a rage: "What kind of question is that? I have the blood of dozens of my countrymen on my hands because I chose to sit idle and let them die to get you back!"

You were literally livid, white all the way to your lips, growling through gritted teeth. It was frightening, but somehow your anger just made me become furious as well. I shouted back: "So you're punishing me, is that it? You blame me for having put that blood on your hands?"

"Why should I? It was my doing, not yours."

If there ever was an ambiguous answer… but I could go back to that later. I had more pressing questions that I needed answered now:

"Then why don't you come to me? Why didn't you seek me out, not even once, since I came back? Why do you smother all my attempts to reach out to you, why do you kill every single conversation before it even has a chance to start?"

"I can't." The fury had abated somewhat, but your tone was curt, discouraging.

"Why not?" Silence. You picked up a fresh handful of pebbles and began to throw them. I clenched my fists so hard that I could feel the nails digging into my palms. "Why not, Achilles? Why can't you? Or rather, what exactly is it that you can't?"

The rage returned as abruptly as before. Your voice rose to a roar: "Go back to the way it was! You expect things to be the same as before, but they're not. They never will be. Everything changed. I changed! Nothing will ever be the same again."

"I don't expect anything to be the same!" I shouted in outrage. "Or do you think I didn't change as well? Do you think I went through all this without being affected?"

You looked slightly shaken for a moment, then turned to look out again over the sea.

"Achilles!", I realized I was also gritting my teeth. "Do you?"

"Do I what?", you asked, sounding suddenly very tired.

It was intolerable. Were you playing dumb? I unclenched my hands slowly, deliberately, took a calming breath. "Do you think all of this didn't affect me?"

You shook your head no, but remained silent. I could feel tears of frustration begin to prickle my eyes.

"Talk to me, please. If I really still matter to you at all, if you truly don't wish I was gone, then please just talk to me!"

"What do you want me to talk about?"

"Anything. Everything. Whatever you want. Or need. Why you're doing these things, why you're acting the way you are."

"What's so strange about the things I'm doing? I'm fighting the enemies of my people and avenging my fallen comrades. That's no different from what I've always done."

"The way you're doing it. It's completely different and you know it."

You shrugged and I lost it again:

"Come on, Achilles! You're coming back wounded from battle. You rarely ever did before."

"Scratches", you replied dismissively. "We're charging the gates, they're throwing stones and shooting arrows from the top of the walls. I'm bound to get hit by a few. Be happy that I've managed to escape the boiling oil until now."

"At least two of those 'scratches', as you call them, had to be stitched by Macaon. Besides, you've always charged the gates and I can count on the fingers of one hand the times you came back with any 'scratches' at all. You're being reckless."

"You don't know what you're talking about", you retorted brusquely. "What do you know about fighting?"

"Nothing. I know nothing about fighting except what I saw in my hometown and then over four years of living in your camp…"

Sarcasm had never really sat well with you. You frowned ominously: "Don't even try to compare that with actually being in a battlefield."

"Alright. Very well. Your 'scratches' and bruises are all perfectly normal and you're fighting exactly as you always did. You're not taking any stupid unnecessary risks." I couldn't keep the bitterness from my voice.

There was a pause. Why did you have to be so unbearably, impossibly difficult?

"There's a rotting corpse at the entrance to your camp!", I blurted out.

You whirled around, livid again: "There's a corpse at the entrance to my camp, but it's not rotting and the animals aren't touching it. Someone's tampered with it and I'm going to find out who!"

This time I was truly frightened. Your anger had never been so dark, so threatening. Still, I had to face it. Backing down would mean giving up on you and I wasn't ready for that yet.

I spoke softly, my voice as calm as I could make it:

"Remember how you used to say that when someone came to offer a fair ransom for a captive it was a matter of basic honour and decency to heed their plea? The Trojans have been sending messengers again and again, but you refuse to even hear them. That's not you, Achilles. That's just not you. You've always respected your enemies when they proved brave in battle, and Hector…"

You rounded on me, your lips pulled back to bare your teeth. For a moment, I thought you were going to hit me.

"Do you know what your precious brave Hector said after he killed Patroclus? After he ripped my armour, the armour that used to belong to my father, from his dead body?" I shook my head, terrified, and tried to take a step back. You grabbed my arm with iron hard fingers to make me stay put. "He vaunted and proclaimed that he would throw the body to Troy's dogs. Menelaus and his men had to fight tooth and nail to keep him from dragging Patroclus inside the gates. All the Achaeans had to fight to protect the body from your oh-so-noble Hector's wrath. Why should I show any mercy over his body now?"

I swallowed in a dry throat. You let go of my arm and turned your back on me, looking utterly disgusted.

"Mercy to his family", I whispered. "To his wife and son. To his parents. It's terrible not to be able to mourn your loved ones, not to have a chance to put them to rest, to say goodbye properly. You know that. You do!" I hesitated, then added: "What you don't know is whether Hector would have actually carried out that threat if Menelaus and the others hadn't succeeded in pulling Patroclus' body back. What he said in the heat of the moment is one thing, what he'd do afterward might be completely different. Men say things in the haze of battle that…"

You rounded on me again, your face even more frightening than before, your voice ringing with contempt:

"What do you know about what men say and do in the 'haze of battle'? What do you know about the screaming, the shouting, the moaning, the blood? What do you know about seeing your comrades fall right next to you, what do you know about looking into the eyes of an enemy who's aiming his spear at your belly? What do you know about the hatred you can see there? What the fuck do you think you know about war, Briseis, huh?"

I was speechless for a moment, feeling terribly small. And then something inside me snapped.

"What the fuck do I know about war?" Looking back, I think that was the first time I have ever truly sworn in my life. "Let me see. I know about losing my entire family. About seeing my brothers dead and my mother destroyed. About losing my city. About being made a slave, brought to a foreign place, into the midst of enemies, to be given away as a sex toy to some warrior who might very well have been the one who killed my brothers." You raised your hands and shook your head in vehement denial. I stuck a finger in your chest: "When you brought me here, you couldn't know who I'd end up with. You probably didn't even care. And even if you did care in my case, what about all the other girls you brought? The girls you still bring from your expeditions? Do you have any idea who is going to take them? What's going to become of them? Huh?" I paused for air, then went on, in a lower voice: "What do you know about war, Achilles? What do you know about having lost everything you ever knew, everything you ever cared for, everyone you ever loved? What do you know about being held captive, about being aware that you no longer have any power over your own life? What do you know about having lost everything, absolutely everything, even yourself?"

I was still shaking in anger, but I could feel the most overwhelming exhaustion I had ever known creeping up every inch of my body. I finished, my voice fading slowly to a whisper:

"What do you know about going through all that and still find in yourself the will to survive? To try and get back up on your feet, to make a life for yourself all over again from whatever scraps you have left? What do you know about finding that you ended up loving the very enemy you had originally sworn to hate?" My voice broke. "Huh, great warrior? What the fuck do you know about war?"

Exhaustion took over. The world began to spin before my eyes and my knees buckled under my weight.

You reached out to steady me, then lowered me gently onto the sand.

"Sit down. Put your head between your knees. You're going to faint if you don't."

I looked up at your face through the dizziness and realized you were crying.