Work Text:
It took me a long time to realize Clarisse was Achilles.
We knew when we both chose to try another life that we would be reincarnated in the same time period, but Achilles could have been an infant when I was an old person, Underworld magic isn’t too precise. But apparently, it was precise enough to make us both be the same age. Or maybe we got lucky. Either way, we got reunited. I know it.
It never seemed obvious before, but ever since I understood it, it’s all I can see.
I know it in the way Clarisse picks fights, stupid matters of hurt pride and proving she’s the strongest, the best. I know it in the fierce gleam in her eyes. I know it in the way she clung to Chris, crying and begging for him to get better. I know it in the way her eyes seemed darkened by a grief too strong for a girl who’s never known real loss.
I know it in the way her breaths come and her feet strike the earth.
But it really struck me when, in one of Chiron’s lectures to the little ones, he talked about Achilles. Clarisse and I had been listening ; Chiron was a good storyteller and his voice felt like home to me -and to Clarisse too, I suppose, which was probably why she insisted on spying on his lectures- and when he started talking about one of these boys he had had as a student, who ended just as tragically as the others, Clarisse froze next to me, and she looked haunted by demons that made no sense if she was just Clarisse. But she wasn’t just Clarisse. She once had been Achilles, and she was listening to the story of how she lost the person who had mattered the most to her -him. Me. Me, Patroclus. Not me, Silena. Though I suppose we’re one and the same. One soul, two bodies.
Like Achilles and I are and have always been one soul in two bodies.
Soulmates.
People nowadays use this word too lightly, they don’t know what it means. They don’t know what it feels like, to look into someone’s eyes and to feel deep in your core that they’re part of you. That you cannot exist without them, and they cannot exist without you. That you’re so similar, even if you’re complete opposites.
Like Love and War.
I see it, now. My -Silena’s- mother is Aphrodite. Clarisse’s father is Ares. Together, they birthed Fear and Terror, two things Achilles and I know too well. Separately, they birthed us. Soulmates.
Hades has a bittersweet sense of humour.
But I will gladly accept the irony of our rebirth if it means I can spend even one more second with Achilles. Even if now the long blonde hair and breathtaking green eyes I fell in love with are gone, replaced with Clarisse’s harsh features.
Even if he doesn’t know I’m me .
Well, at least I haven’t told him. Maybe he figured it out for himself. But I think the first thing he would have done if he did would have been to run to me to tell me. So I suppose he doesn’t know.
But it doesn’t matter, because Clarisse loves Silena. She shouldn’t really. We have nothing in common. People like me seem to irritate her. So maybe Achilles does feel some attraction to me, even if he doesn’t realize it’s because it’s me .
I wish I could tell him. Especially in moments like now, when I’m lying on the grass with Clarisse, whispering banalities in her ears as if they were the most important secrets.
But I’m a coward, so I don’t.
…
I should have told him.
Maybe if I had told him, he would have talked me out of doing this. Or better, he would have changed his fucking behaviour so that I didn’t have any ‘this’ to be talked out of doing.
Clarisse refuses to fight. Because her pride has been hurt. And her Cabin won’t fight if she’s not leading them.
This sounds all too familiar and it leaves a bitter taste in my mouth. How does he not realize he’s doing the exact same thing he did all those centuries ago? Does he really not get I’m me?
Or does he not care?
It’s true, we chose rebirth, we never said we wanted to go back to find each other again, alive and whole, and not just shadows of who we were.
Maybe Achilles just came back to have a chance to get into The Isle of the Blessed.
My heart clenches in my chest at the thought. It’s suffocating. It’s like being killed again, except it hurts more because the pain won’t end as quickly as when I gave my last breath.
That pain will stay, for as long as I live without the knowledge that Achilles loves me and wants me.
Just like I love and want him.
Maybe he’ll realize when I’m dead, because only in death can he truly love me.
It was when all he could hold was my lifeless body that the truth and depth of his feelings hit him, in our first life. He told me so. He told me he never really understood how much he loved me until I was nothing but a memory.
Well, if Achilles can only love me when I’m dead, maybe it’s not so bad that I’m on my way to the battlefield, clad in someone else’s clothes.
…
I’m dying. Again.
But at least this time, he’s here with me. I can feel the warmth of Clarisse’s body as she holds mine close. It’s comforting.
What a beautiful way to go.
“You stupid Aphrodite girl,” Clarisse sobbed. “You charged a drakon? Why ?”
“Someone had to do it,” I say. I think I’m crying. I’m not sure. My cheeks feel wet but it could be blood. “Just like last time.”
“Last…?” she furrows her eyebrows through the tears, and then it hits her. Her eyes widen. “Patroclus?” she whispers softly, like she can’t quite believe it.
The voice is not Achilles’s, but it shakes me just as much. Pa-tro-clus. He rings each syllable, like he used to do.
Like my name matters, like it’s worth being pronounced properly.
Like it’s important.
Like I’m important.
“Achilles,” I answer, a smile growing on my face. I missed the way his name feels on my lips.
He bites back a sob, burying his face in the crook of my neck. His short hair tickles a little.
It feels so good, I would think I was in Elysium already, if not for the agonizing pain.
“You’re not dying, Patroclus. Not when I just got you back.”
It sounds like a complaint, like a prayer. I never heard such despair coming from him.
“I’m sorry,” I breathe out, feeling my body become heavier and heavier. I know what it means, it’s not the first time it happens to me. “I’ll wait for you, okay?”
My head drops back against Clarisse’s thigh, and the last image I see is of her, so close to my face as she sobs, her lips pressed against my shoulder.
The last thing I hear is : Patroclus .