Patrochilles Oneshots

Living in Your Ashes

*Achilles reminisces about Patroclus; who he is, what he does, and everything that he lives for is because of his lost beloved. He grieves in what he has lost, but through the darkness is an eternal light that calls for him, begging him to keep on living.*
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He was once everything beautiful- now he's everything that is.

I get choked up when I think of him. I forget how to breathe for a second and I close my eyes to steady my breaths. In an instant, without meaning to, in the blackness beneath my eyelids I'm transported back to Phthia, oh so long ago, where chilly nights and gentle kisses protected us against the brutal war.

I reminisce on times of old and new when the sun was our shield and the world was our oyster. We were blinded by the false truths they told us, but even so, we were happy. Happy to be manipulated for personal gain, but nonetheless there was something freeing about being naive and juvenile.

When he was here, the world would stop as he spoke. The humming of faraway crickets and the falling leaves of late October would halt for minutes on end just so his words could be spoken. His voice pierced through my being until they alone were the strides in my steps, the beating of my heart, and the essence of my person. If it was to merely say my name or to banter about silly, unimportant things, I would listen and pay the rest of the world no attention.

Briseis said she understands how I might be feeling and says she feels the same.

I am not stubborn or selfish, but I cannot help but feel that my sorrow is unparalleled. Does she forget to eat for days on end just because her stomach wails with melancholy cries? I assume not. Does she dream about peacefully dying in her sleep so that she may be reunited with that whom she loves? I would think not. My grief is my own and it is all I know. Some part of me looks at Briseis and sees him in her; the way he would escape in his thoughts and stare at nothing until a sudden sound would shake him awake. I loathe her for that, for it almost feels like she kept part of him with her even after he passed.

I guess in a way I held on to things of his too.

He's the breeze that messes up my hair and the air on a good spring day. He's the dirt beneath my feet and the first snowfall of winter. He's the reason the sun sets and the reason it rises. He is my will, my way, the air in my lungs, the blood in my veins, all of it is him. Him, him, and him forevermore.

I dream of a beautiful paradise where he waits for me to join him. I imagine it vividly as if he has whispered it to me in the lullaby of birds in the morning dew. In their song, I hear him reach out to me with promises of eternity where we could love and love alone. I hold out my hand to touch him but I touch mere emptiness and once again, I am reminded that he no longer lives, and then sadness overcomes me and the days grow long and weary.

Thetis says my fate has been sealed and the prophecy completed. My purpose has been fulfilled yet all I feel is a yearning for my Patroclus. Pa-tro-clus. His name is bitter on my tongue, I think my body hopes to forget it. Pa-tro-clus. I wonder if he hears me mumble his name in my sleep or whisper in while I lay naked near our favorite valley. Its sound full of excellence and tragedy. I am cursed by its misfortune but I hope it will be the last words I speak before I die.

Even if I were to grow sick and forget his name, I would never forget his smile.

It was only a sunny smile and little cost in the giving, but like morning light it scattered the night and made the day worth living. I grieve for its absence and like the stories passed down to folk alike, in the end, we all become stories that once were. Soon enough we leave the Earth with marks on the gravestones of those gifted by our wisdom, but like Ozymandias who was the king of kings, we are covered by time's cynical judgment.

I ask you, my love, wherever you have been taken by death's sweet embrace, to wait until for me. I feel a tugging in my heart when I yearn for death and suddenly the blade falls from my callused hands and pulls away from my grasp. I look at its glimmer and smile. I know that you do not wish for me to die yet and so you watch over me. Hell, I wish for one moment you would turn away so that the metal could spill my blood peacefully. But I know you as I know the grooves on my fingertips and hair on my chest; you never want to watch me perish in front of you.

So now I ask once more, repeat my phrase after my death and to whoever you would meet- wait for me, Patroclus. Protect me from myself until my time has come and you have to force yourself to look away in order for me to finally welcome death like an old friend. I know you fear watching me die, but fear not, I will join you in forever soon.

I feel it is both a blessing and a curse to feel everything so very deeply. I carry your heart with me and I am never without it. There is a pain to its rhythm but I listen and it becomes my muse. So, you must wait for me, Pa-tro-clus.

Wait for me, so that I may return the heart that has replaced my own.