Tropes and Cliches

Achilles in His Tent

Imagine being in the middle of an all out battle and your strong person is nowhere to be seen. Where the hell are they? Who the hell knows. This trope is named after the Achilles who stayed burrito-ed up in his tent while his friends are dying, he does come out after his best friend/cousin/lover( no one can agree on this so just pick one) dies. 

Now this is somewhat of a difficult trope to dissect, for many reasons. One being the context of why the "Achilles" in question is MIA. And the guy is normally the lancers of group, but it can literally be there's heaviest hitter, their leader, the heart, or the one guy that actually knows where everything is. The team just falls apart for one reason or it's a domino effect. 

In the X-men movies ( it just fell apart when it came to X-men Last Stand), or at least the newer trilogy, Charles Xavier is our Achilles. He's in no way the lancer of the team, if anything he's the Mentor character, but the Achilles none the less. He gave up his powers to walk again, and then basically gave up on the school while refusing to help Wolverine with his mission. Granted, he had his reasons, but still. 

 In a non-combative story of The Jungle Book Bagheera throws up his paws in desperation at Mowgli's continued rebellion, only to return when he gets in trouble again....every time. He returns at least three times: upon Mowgli's initial encounter with Baloo (which turns out to be a false alarm), when Mowgli gets kidnapped by monkeys and was sort of held hostage, and when Mowgli runs away from Baloo. Like seriously man, I understand you're frustrated but he's a kid.And on that note, Mowgli...dafuq dude, he's trying to keep you alive. 

Now writing an Achilles in His Tent is a mid-tier level of difficulty. Why? Well is there violence in the story? If no, then how do yo write this? Well it can be anything, a friend being grounded for whatever reason and then not being able to show up to a competition and the team in question loses. Or Person B can just give up on a friend ship because of Person A, but then realizes if they leave Person A alone long enough, then who knows what will happen. If it crosses into fantasy, sci-fi or what not, the Achilles can be the one guy that can work a spell or machine and they quit because of [insert reason here].  Hell they don't even have to give up on something. There could be a mental problem going on with them, depression causes them to go into a slump, anxiety over something that happen years ago bubbles up and they need to take  a step back ,etc.