Work Text:
In the darkness, two shadows reach through the hopeless heavy dusk, their hands meet and light spills in a flood like a hundred golden urns pouring out of the sun.
In the beginning there was darkness. It is not something that one can easily describe: the descent to the underworld. We are born with the knowledge of our death buried deep within us. From darkness we are born and to darkness we return, and this is the only way I could ever describe it.
I once vowed that I would follow him anywhere, even in death. It is easy to make such promises when we are young. The world seems vast but full of wonders, and like gods, it feels ours for the taking. But then the winds of change come, and we find that we are not children anymore and promises are easily made but so, so difficult to keep.
I have told her everything, all my memories sparing nothing for myself and in return she let me go and make new ones. I thought of her often in my incorporeal wandering form, she was the only one I saw after all. I thought of her hatred deep and festering, not letting her see the truth. Thought of her love too, which she did not show enough, which she would never get to show him again. I think of her grief and the silent tears I had seen her shedding over the gleaming marble. Finally, I remember the last words she uttered to him. Perhaps this is her atonement, I think. Not to me. She was too prideful to ever apologize to me. But to him. To the boy with hair of gold who would laugh, and all the world would know the sun had shined again. I never thought that our salvation would come from her. A goddess, a mother doomed to live forever without him, doomed to mourn him for centuries, for eternity and I am once again reminded of Chiron’s words: “Perhaps it is the greatest grief after all to be left on earth when another is gone.”
I don’t know how long I wandered incorporeal and unnamed. A shade free to roam the world but always tethered to one place. In death, time does not exist. It is only after I became a shade that I realized that humans live their lives under an hourglass filled with sand always running out, never to be filled again. I suppose it should be a relief now, to exist without it, but it is not. The threat of death gave life meaning. It promised rest and a life well lived.
Most of all it had promised me him. But as the days went by and the sun had risen and fallen more times than I would want to remember the fear started welling up in me, becoming strong, consuming me like a ship left to wander a storm at sea only to be swallowed whole. Was I to ever see him again? Would I be left wandering among the silent tombs, amongst the whispers of the dead in the city of our doom? Was he to be without me mourning me endlessly for an eternity? Finally, I think of him lost and grieving between the resting souls of Elysium shaking the foundations of the deathless darkness with his screams of agony, with his torment for the loss of half of his soul. Would he drink from the river of Lethe to forget, to put an end to his misery? Had he already?
These questions filled my endless days spent beneath the shadow his tomb would offer me. I would think of him and of not ever seeing him again and I would be reminded once more to not make promises I cannot keep. But it didn’t matter now for we would meet again and nothing else was important.
The underworld was dark but void of the tragic touch humans like to give it in their songs. Or perhaps it was the thoughts of him that chased away the suffering. I can imagine his golden form finally arriving in the dark passages of Hades’s home like a beacon of hope and youth with the same smile with which he died with. I can imagine him looking for me for hours, days only to realize that I’m not there. That for once in my life he went somewhere where I could not follow. I can imagine him weeping once again like he wept over my corpse. I feel like crying out, I feel like begging. Begging for the time that was taken from us and crying out for his grief, so endless it was that I can still hear the echoes of it.
I do not look around; my thoughts are taken by him once again. I only wish for Charon to go faster, for every moment away from him is a moment lost and painful. The souls swimming in the river Styx grip at our boat like a swarm of shadows but I am not afraid. Was this the river his mother dipped him in all those years ago? Would I feel him in the cold dark waters. I am tempted to touch the holy river drunk in my hopes to see him again, mad with impatience, desperate with the wish to be with him. But then I remember of Orpheus and what he lost because of his impatience, because of his undying love and desperation to gaze at his beloved only to never see her again. I do not touch it. It wouldn’t be like him anyway. How could these dark waters ever hold even a trace of his light.
It seems like a lifetime has passed since I gave the coins and stepped into the boat. Finally, I can see the golden light of the Elysium fields. I gaze at the grass and the trees, green with fruits already ripe. It reminds me of Mount Pelion and my heart surges once again. I cannot see him though and until I have him in my arms it is not Elysium.
We arrive, and I do not even waste a second to marvel at the impossibly beautiful sight before me. I start running and calling his name frantically, desperately. Please let me see him again, I beg, to whom I don’t know. A lifetime passes and then another and another until I see him. There he is, as beautiful as the day I first laid eyes on him, as mournful as the day I lost him. He is sitting under a tall fig tree like the ones we used to go to in the beginning of summer to gather the sweet fruit. There we would sit, and we would talk, and we would laugh, and afterwards when we had stopped hiding from each other, we would kiss and whisper sweet nothings into each other’s ears. Promises and wishes and dreams of heroes and legends, of gods and mortals fighting over honor, fighting over glory, fighting to be remembered. They were just stories back then of two young boys drunk with the possibilities of the world around them, mad with the myths of heroes who survived history’s cruel judgement. We did not know back then of the choices we would have to make nor of the glory that came with them; or the pain. It is under this tree like the one from our memories that I find him but even though he could never be anything short of mesmerizingly beautiful in my eyes the golden light that seemed to surround him throughout his life isn’t there, only a dark grief so thick I could almost touch it and my heart grieves once more.
“Achilles!” I call desperately.
“Achilles!”
He turns his head in an instant and looks at me, his eyes wide and fearful almost black like he too does not trust his eyes with such a truth. There is a stillness that overcomes him, the kind of stillness that only gods possess or wild animals readying themselves for the kill. It is only a moment, yet the course of history has stopped for that single second where are our eyes met. Then he gets to his feet and runs to me, his strong legs taking him closer to me, carrying him faster than I have ever seen him run. We collide with force, and I can already feel him trembling like a fish out of water, like a dying man weak in the face of death. I have found him, I think. I have found him! He is here with me. I have him and I will never let him go. No one will separate us again. His face is in the crook of my neck, where it belongs, where it has always fit so well like a key and a lock, the key to his caged heart. He is weeping once again, and it feels like the whole world is shaking with the force of his sobs.
“My Achilles.” I whisper, tears flowing down my face once again and he wails even louder. For once, words don’t find him. He who was always better with them, cannot find them now.
“My Achilles.” I say again louder this time. And again, and again until I don’t know how many times I’ve said it, mind empty, ears hearing nothing but his sobs. I remember how for hours after my death he could not utter anything other than my name and I understand. I say it again and again the lovely vowels, the striking consonants of his name fitting perfectly in my mouth as if I was made to chant it.
"Oh, how sad you've been my love."
He wails harder. I hold him as he cries and I can’t let go, I will never let go. How many times has he held me like this, consoling me, hiding me from the evils of the world? The same evils that I thought would take him from me but in the end weaved a fate even crueler for us both. He cries and wails and cries again and it is a desperate, a tragic sound. He cries harder than I’ve ever seen him cry and my heart breaks even more with each sob. This I think is what he would be doomed to, had it not been for the kindness of his mother. This is what he went through all this time alone in the fields of Elysium without me by his side. I think of his son and the fate he had cursed my Achilles to for so long by keeping me away from him.
His wailing has not stopped. It is as strong as the day of my death. I cannot bear to see him cry. It is enough. I have seen him cry enough. All throughout his last days of Troy it was this from dusk till dawn his heart and his soul breaking bit by bit until there was nothing of the man I knew. I think of how much he suffered and of how much I suffered too away from him, and I hear his wails ringing in my ears once more and my tears flow even quicker and fall into his beautiful golden hair, like wheat in spring, like gold from Anatolia, like the setting sun on a warm summer evening.
“Achilles, please I cannot bear to see you grieving any longer. I am here.” I say to him trying and failing to halt his tears flowing like blood on a freshly made wound. I realize we are not standing any more, our legs holding us no longer. I take his face in my hands and mean to wipe away his tears. His eyes two big, brilliant hues of green large and pure enough that can fill whole oceans and forests with life now red and glistening like two diamonds under the morning sun. He looks at me and there is such desperation and guilt in those eyes. And it is so wretched, so mournful and pained is his gaze that it threatens to consume me too. It is clear as day how much he blames himself. His breaths are coming faster and faster and it is all I can do to take him in my arms once again to calm him down. I realize I am caressing his hair, and an image comes uncalled for in my mind. Of a cold mother of the sea caressing her son’s golden hair under the moonlit sky.
His sobs are growing quieter now, but they do not leave him. I still have not heard his voice I realize. I have not heard my name from his lips. Pa-tro-clus. Oh, how I have missed his voice. It is said that when one dies the first thing that gets forgotten is their voice. Such fools they are, how could I ever forget it? So beautiful and strong that it is. I can hear it in my memories even now, the deep timber comforting me with promises and dreams, singing to me with its lyrical hue and I think of Euridice and how his voice would be enough for me to fall in love with him all over again, in this life or in another. His face is lodged in my chest almost bowing and his hands are grasping my torso as if terrified I will disappear again.
We stay like that for a long time, I don’t know how much. Time does not exist here in the realm of the souls. An endless present is all there is, but it becomes an eternity for those doomed to exist in suffering. I think of this, and I am reminded of all the sunsets I witnessed from my place on his grave hoping to see him once again.
There is a silence now. Strange how silence can seem so loud after a lifetime of cries and wails. Our eyes are still flowing their endless river as they will not stop to for some time to come. Finally, I hear it. It is faint and muffled by my skin and raw and tired but so, so sweet. The most beautiful thing I have ever heard.
“Patroclus” he says.
A watery laugh comes out of me so full of relief I am after hearing his voice and I smile, tears still flowing endlessly, only now they’re tears of joy.
“There you are my love. I’m here.” I tell him. He grips me even tighter.
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, I’m so sorry.” He says again and again, like a prayer and I can only think of him all alone with nothing but his guilt to keep him company, to slowly destroy him like an old traitorous friend whom one welcomes knowing of the hurt they will bring but welcoming them all the same. A guilt he welcomed with no one there to pull him out of it. A guilt he does not deserve to live with, to have lived with for so long.
“There is nothing to forgive” I say, and I mean it like I have meant it all those other times.
“No, don’t say that. Stop it!” he says madly and goes to pull away from me, but I don’t let him. I grip him with strength I did not know I had.
“You should hate me! Why don’t you hate me? Why don’t you hate me Patroclus! Why! Why!” he wails again, and he sounds mad. Mad with guilt and self-loathing like his own mind is not strong enough to hold the force of his grief, so it crumbles little by little. His arms are flaying trying to get away from me, to drown in his self-hatred once more. But I hold him still. I will hold him through everything, I think.
“I could never hate you my love, I am made to love you don’t you know that after all this time? Please don’t blame yourself Achilles, it wasn’t your fault. I don’t blame you and I never have!” I try to make him understand, I will never stop trying to make him understand. His eyes are alight with pain as he looks at me and I want to melt under the force of his gaze, want to burn away the suffering from it.
“You begged me to go fight and I didn’t and then I let you go! I drove you to your death. It was me who killed you! It was me who drove the spear into your skin and twisted it.”
“Blame the fates if you want to blame someone, blame the gods and their stupid games, blame the Trojans and Agamemnon for starting it all but I am begging you Achilles stop blaming yourself. Do it for me, for I cannot bear seeing you mourning once again. You have suffered enough.”
That seems to calm him a bit perhaps because of my conviction, or perhaps because he remembers the last time I asked him to do something for me and he refused. In return he allows me to pull him back into my embrace where he fits perfectly like he always had. I know it will take time to heal even in a place where time does not exist. I know this scene will likely be repeated hundreds of times before he can look at me and see me breathing and feel my skin warm under his touch, and I will remind him as many times as I have to. A truth to wash away the images of my cold unmoving body in our tent. It will be hard for us both to get through everything, to be able to look at each other and not have a terror threatening to burn us alive, a fear that something will separate us again. Even Elysium cannot heal the wounds of the soul, the wounds of the past. But we will heal them together, so I can see him smiling, so my sun will shine again.
We fall to the ground in an embrace that Eros himself would look at and get jealous, that the lovers of the world would gaze upon and envy. He still does not look at me and I can see that he is ashamed. Ashamed of his actions and what they cost. I cannot have that, I do not want him to feel ashamed, to feel like he must hide from me. Me, who would love him in blindness and madness and death. Who has loved him through everything and who will be remembered for loving him for centuries to come.
I take his chin and lift it, to meet my gaze. It glistens still with old tears and is red from an eternity of crying, but there is love there too. I can see the love under the layers of grief and guilt that adorn his gaze.
“An eternity I have spent away from you. I do not wish to waste more time even if now we have infinite. I beg you my Achilles stop this hatred that you bear for yourself. I can see now; it has consumed you and I wasn’t here to chase it away. Halt your guilt, undeserving as you are of it. Put an end to your suffering for I am here, and it will be this until the end of time.”
His gaze softens after my words, and he takes my hands and kisses each one of my fingers slowly and lovingly like a priest would kiss their god and I almost laugh at the irony. He has always been the only god I would pray and bow to.
“I have nothing to forgive you from. I was never angry with you, and I never blamed you for anything.” I repeat my earlier words knowing I should repeat them as many times as I can so he can start to believe them, so that he will take my word over his and finally rest from his torment.
“My Patroclus, how I have missed you.” He whispers almost in daze.
“I know, I have missed you too, more than you can imagine.” I say glad that he has found his voice, that he is talking to me again.
My hands are still gripped in his and I have only so much strength and it is failing me. My tears threatening to start their course once again because he is here, he is with me. I am touching him, and I have heard his voice, and it is as lovely as I remember. He must see all that, for he grips my shoulders and brings our lips together in a kiss. Our lips know their way around one another as intimately as the moon knows the night sky. When we break apart, we are breathless and smiling like we are two young boys in love with each other and the world around them once again. I suddenly remember what I wanted to tell him, something that could not wait if only so I can honor her for that final kindness she had gifted us.
“It was your mother that led me to you.” I speak.
“Pyrrhus forbade anyone of writing my name in our tomb believing it would stain your name, so I was left unburied, unmarked. That’s why I couldn’t come to you, that’s why you couldn’t find me.”
At this his eyes darken, and I can see a glimpse of that godlike rage that took over him after my death.
“It was your mother who wrote my name on our grave, her kindness that brought me to you here in the fields of death.”
At the mention of his mother his gaze goes downcast once again. Despite what he would claim towards the end he loved her, and it had pained him to hate her so thoroughly. He remembers her last words to him. Her joy for my death, her preferring Pyrrhus over her own son and her disappointment for the man he was reduced to after I was killed. All these feelings and memories pass through his eyes faster than I can identify them. He has still not forgiven her, not entirely but it is like a scar now instead of a wound. A kindness, to remember her and love her even in thought, even in memory.
“She was the only person I would see after the Greeks sailed back home. She would come every day and sit beside your tomb when the sun was making its descent towards the faraway horizon. We did not talk in the beginning; she did not want to.” At this his eyes darkens again.
“But then she asked me of our memories.” I said gripping his sacred hands tighter to my chest.
“And I told her everything.”
“Everything?”
“Everything.” We stop talking letting the words fall on this undying earth, letting the truth wash away our uncertainties. He knows what I mean when I say everything, he knows that now there is someone else who has seen our life, an undying god who shares our memories, who will keep them alive. And perhaps that is a comfort as any.
“When I finished, she wrote my name to the sacred stone while she was still grieving.”
“What made her change her mind?”
“She understood now, I think.”
“She had a lifetime to understand, she put us through so much torment because she didn’t understand.”
“But she did in the end. That is what matters.” I say a finality in my voice. Despite the hatred that I once bore for her I do not want him to hate his mother. Even my own hatred was washed away by the waters she was born from before I came to the underworld.
“She really does love you Achilles. She mourned you a lot and will continue to do so for eternity, do not hate her. She deserves more than that.”
“How can you forgive her so easily?” he asks taken aback by the ease of my words, how quick I was to forget lifetime of fear and shame under her gaze. But the truth is; I haven’t forgotten it, but I have forgiven it and that is enough.
“When you suffer the same fate with someone, it is impossible to hate them.”
“What do you mean?”
“We both grieved you; we were both doomed to live an eternity without you at that time. In those dark moments she was the only comfort I could find. You know why? Because I could see you in her, in her lithe movements and her sharp gaze, in her love and grief. I was her only comfort too for she could feel you close to her through my memories, so many and rich that they are.”
At this his eyes water once more almost timidly. He sheds one, two, three tears for his mother whom he loves so much, and he will never see again. For the mother whose last words to him were arrows meant to hurt him, and for the regret that came after.
“It is alright to miss her. It is alright to forgive her.” I say again. “She will not let our story wither and die. She will keep it alive through a song, your song.”
He seems calmer after this. As if his mother’s disappointment had left its own wound, one amongst many others but now it had healed.
“I will always thank her for bringing you to me. I hope she too finds peace.” he says at last, and that is all we will say of her.
Night comes and we find ourselves in a cave similar to the one we slept on back on our sacred mountain. It is comforting how much Elysium reminds me of the world up above, of Mount Pelion where we spent the happiest years of our lives. I wonder if that is what Elysium is or if it is different for every soul here. One person’s paradise is not the same as another’s, so each soul lives their own in the place where they were the happiest. Ours is this. Running up and down the mountain, searching for figs ripened and sweet and gazing into the starry sky, tracing its' constellations. I try to think of an eternity of this and I find I can’t. Even now our minds cannot comprehend something so vast, something the gods are born knowing and understanding. But we will learn. An eternity on our mountain seems like paradise, I think. An eternity with him seems like paradise.
We sit in the entrance of the cave so we can trace the stars as we used to do when we were younger.
“Orion” I say and would show him with my finger while my head was on his lap.
“Andromeda.” he would continue and would take my hand guide it to the star. Then he would bring it to his mouth and kiss it before he buried his fingers in my hair once again.
“I do not think I believe it still.” He says suddenly, the air around us changing. “That you are finally here with me. Sometimes I look at you and I fear it is a dream, one that I will have to wake from, or an illusion crafted by the gods to torment me before they take you from me again.”
I lift my head from its place in his lap and look at him, at his sad gaze lingering on me almost fearfully.
“I know how you feel. Sometimes I can hardly believe it myself. But we are here, I am real, I am with you and no god or mortal can change that.”
It is always amazing how my words seem to calm him almost immediately. Even when alive he would not believe any priests or oracles until he heard it from my lips. I am grateful for this now more than ever. He knows I have never lied to him and never will just like he hasn’t. He takes me on his lap once again eyes fixed on me preparing himself to reveal another truth, one that has weighed him down all this time since we united again.
“When I came here and did not find you, I started going mad. I searched every part of the underworld from Elysium to Tartarus, yet you weren’t there. I even went to Charon and begged him to tell me if you were in the Underworld. He told me that he did not know of you as he had never taken you in his boat.” He pauses, the memories burning him like hot coals straight out of a fire.
“After that I was desperate, I didn’t know what to do. I went to Hades and Persephone and begged them to tell me where you were. They usually do not talk with souls that have passed, but I had caused so much trouble for them in my searching that they agreed to hear me.” I wonder how much chaos a single soul can cause in these endless fields of death, but it is him and I know him well, so I am not surprised by his words.
“I asked them of you of course. They were the ones who told me that you were still tethered to the world of the living because you had not been properly buried. Then I begged them to bury you, or to have someone else do it but they said they did not watch over the wandering souls of the living world. I offered them everything, from my name to my service, to my place here in Elysium but they refused me again repeating their earlier words."
I silently offer my gratitude to Hades for not agreeing to his desperate pleas. I could only imagine him serving the dark god for eternity, guarding the walls of Tartarus never free, never resting and how it would have been for me that he was suffering. I shudder with that thought. I suddenly want to shout at him, want to scold him for his idiocy. What good would it have been to have sold himself like that? Even if it would have allowed me to enter the Underworld, we would still be apart. Doesn’t he know by now that there is not fate worse for me that he would risk it all for a chance that I may rest. What good would rest be without him?
“What were you thinking? How could you offer something like that so carelessly Achilles?” I ask him, my feelings clear on my face.
“I was desperate Patroclus. You must understand! I was certain I would never see you again and it would have been my fault for not burying you properly, for selfishly wanting us to be buried together. Once again it was because of me that you were suffering, that you were almost denied rest.”
I look at him still suffering through the memories of those dark times and my eyes start to water again. It is so palpable his guilt. To think he blamed himself even for that? Oh, why did he have to suffer so much. I take him in my arms again and hold him close, not able to resist being away from him after a truth such as this one.
“I did not have faith I would ever see you again, but that reality was worse than Tartarus, so I tried to hold on to some desperate, wretched hope small as it was that you would come to me someday. It was the worst thing I had ever felt, this hopeless uncertainty. I did not know if I was strong enough to bear it. I even thought of drinking from the waters of Lethe, but in the end, I could never do that to us, to our memories. Besides, nothing would change, I would still feel empty and hopeless only I wouldn’t know the cause. Even if a god wiped out my memories, I could never forget you. I would always recognize you in life and in death.”
I listen to all he says to me. It feels like a confession, like the last piece of rotten flesh which now cut from the body could finally let the wound begin its healing. I knew there were things he hadn’t told me yet; it hadn’t been the time for such words. But now under the clear gaze of the stars we would leave ourselves bear, to look at each other unwaveringly and claim our eternity together.
I kiss him again desperate to alleviate his pain of those times with the beauty of the new ones and I almost want to cry from the gentleness of it, I want to weep for the suffering he went through because of me. I try to imagine me in his place, and I shudder, at least I knew where he was, at least I had not gone through the pain of his death while I was still alive. Funny how fate works sometimes. Ten years I had spent preparing to lose him only for him to lose me in the end. I think of how he begged Hades and Persephone and of how he has never begged in his life. I imagine him running up and down the Underworld creating chaos in his wake while he himself was almost mad with grief and longing. I grip him tighter.
“Tell me of the stars.” I say burying my face in the crook of his neck, breathing him in. He looks at me again bewildered thinking that we would talk more of those dark times, and I would comment again on his actions, actions he did desperately in his grief. But we don’t need to, we know each other so intimately. Many humans would find it impossible to understand another person to such a level. To be able to tell what they are thinking from just their eyes, to never doubt their love or their words, to know their weaknesses and strengths, their dreams and their fear and welcome all of it. But this is how it has always been for us. In the end we are but one soul and to know him I only need to know myself. So that is why we do not need to linger on those times in such a night as this one. No. Now I simply to want to be enveloped by his warmth and lulled to sleep by the deep timbre of his voice while it revibrates through his whole body so strongly that I can feel it on mine. So, he begins.
He tells me their stories. Stories Chiron must have recited a thousand times by now, but they still seem as interesting as they were then. In the end I do not manage to stay awake for long comfortable in his embrace and soothed by his voice I fall asleep. After a while I faintly register him lifting me and taking me to our cave before placing me down and taking me in his arms again. He then places a kiss on my forehead before going to sleep as well. Even with my eyes closed the world has never been more beautiful.
In the dark corners of the underworld a golden light can always be seen shining bright as the morning sun. It is not a god but two lovers who survived the tragedy of men and the course of history. Centuries have gone since then, empires fell and rose, gods born and forgotten, yet their story remains as a song whispered between the ruins of history and the dreams of lovers, never to be erased .