( closed ) everyone's a building burning

[heelies]

CHARACTERS: Achilles, Patroclus, Olivia
DATE: After the fire
WARNINGS: Nothing right now
SUMMARY: A little bit of this, a little bit of that.

Comments

[achaean]

[ Patroclus does not understand, even as Achilles recounts for him this story, even as he watches his tears roll fat down his cheek. He thinks that perhaps Achilles has gone a bit mad in his grief, as what he is saying makes very little sense. Whoever heard of a woman so jealous to refuse her husband to love anyone else, even a Therapon who could not rightfully usurp her position and who would not even want to? Why else would he be so excited, marrying her off to Achilles as he is? ]

Do you not find this explanation unreasonable as I?

[ He brushes the tears away from Achilles' face, hand tracing down his arm and finally settling Achilles' into his palms, threading their fingers the way they fit best as two threads on a loom. ]

Surely there must be some other, and this merely a facade. How could she hope to control your heart when it is not something that can be contained even by its owner? It is an absurd notion, Achilles, you must ask her what truly strikes doubt in her mind for you.

[ He squeezes Achilles' hands then, and thinks of other things that might be the matter. After all, Achilles has a large heart with room and appetite for many, and if Patroclus felt any guilt for being the party standing in between the marriage, it's dissipated into a fine mist at the notion that Achilles would not just so easily love another after the wedding. So readily indeed is he struck by Eros' arrows that Patroclus would be unsurprised to find a whole quiver with Achilles' name engraved on the side. ]

Will you not give her chase? This is of utmost importance, Achilles.

gently welcomes you back from vacation

[heelies]

[Weighed down by sorrow as a branch is burdened by fruits, his gaze falls to the floor beside the humble hearth, where remains the cup from which Olivia had only begun to sip. What few possessions they had together managed to salvage from the blaze sit bundled beside his god-burnished armor and shield, there in the corner opposite the beds he had fashioned. All appears ready to welcome her home - some shade of home - waiting for her to pass once more through the tent's entrance as Achilles fears she never shall.

Again he shakes his head, and his fingers tighten in his friend's.]

What other reason could there be? Just yesterday all was well, and ere sleep shrouded our eyes for the night we lay together as is the way between man and wife. What more has changed between then and now, but for your return to my side? Is it the prospect of living in this hut that turns her from my arms, now that the house in which once we were guests has turned to cinders? No, this cannot be, for she and I have together shared meaner dwellings than this.

[He breathes in a breath as sharp as the jagged rocks that jut forth from the sea. His nostrils fill with the reminder of the meal that Patroclus still prepares, but where before his heart swelled with contentment for the new house he would settle, it now sinks in despair.]

I have neither appetite for supper, nor thirst for wine - for a man as wretched as I, no pleasure shall come of these. I had thought this night would be one of thanksgiving, yet now my joy has turned to grief, and I find myself as shocked as the farmer whose crops waste to seed at once. How swiftly man's fortune turns!