( open ) thou wilt not leave us in the dust: thou madest man, he knows not why

[heelies]

CHARACTERS: Achilles and company
DATE: Right after this
WARNINGS: Gratuitous animal sacrifice
SUMMARY: The Iliad, Book 23 (Reprise)


On the eve of Patroclus' funeral, there on the shores of Dardanus' land where he had lain sleeplessly, longing for his companion, he had declared that a second grief so harsh would never touch his heart while still he was among the living. So it was - for this grief come a second time falls all the more harshly. It seems to Achilles a grave injustice then that the funeral he gives cannot be half as grand as it was when first he escorted his dear friend through death's gates.

Yet he must do what he can, all that is in his power. With the city's resources whittled away and such light manpower under his command, he who had once marshaled a thousand men, there shall be no pyre stacked one hundred feet in length and breadth upon which to lay the son of Menoetius. He shall have to accept the outrage of a lesser final throne, one constructed from what timber can be felled in the park and scavenged from the town.

When this is prepared, Achilles calls forth Jin, son of Kung, and Asher, son of Millstone, and any friends who will help to bear godlike Patroclus to his pyre: he himself holds the head, sobbing for his steadfast friend. The body is clad in a simple black suit, loaned by Asher in the absence of his native garb, the fine woolen tunic in which Achilles would have wished to wrap him for his departure. His lifeless skin, the flesh restored from its raw ruins by virtue of Koltira's godcraft, gleams with the oils with which Peleus' son had tirelessly rubbed into it. Clasped in his cold hands are the golden locks he had hacked from his head, that a piece of him too would burn away with Patroclus' mortal parts, all turned to cinders.

He had once blessed his beloved comrade's pyre with droves of long-horned oxen and fat sheep, four sturdy stallion, two of the dogs Patroclus had fed at his table, and a dozen sons of the proud Trojans, but today he has only a half dozen oxen and one goat. These were generous gifts granted by those of ALASTAIR, yet still his grieving heart sinks for how paltry an offering he sends with his friend. One by one he slits their throats, reddening the snow-muddied earth around the pyre, and skins and dresses them well. The fat he flenses from their great bodies to wrap the honored corpse from head to foot in folds rich and white; the meat he sets aside that from it the evening meal can be made. Around Menoetius' gallant son he heaps the carcasses, and against the bier he sets small jars of honey and of oil, which in a time of dearth seem a worthy gift although less than he would like to give.

The fire catches fast and burns brightly by the hand of Aqua, beloved of Zephyrus, and by the craft of young Wylan it crackles rich purple. Into the blank white sky howl the flames. Peleus' son sends all those who had lent their aid to feast in his house: all that which is his is open to them, his honored guests. He himself has no hunger for food nor thirst for wine: all that he desires burns now upon the pyre. All evening the corpse-fire rages, and all evening brilliant Achilles pours wine over the ground, calling out to the stricken shade of Patroclus, weeping as he burns his bones. Choked by sobs, he speaks little: what words he could say, his second self knows already.

Even when at last the flames fade, leaving behind smoky ghosts to wreathe the night air, still he does not rise. He must wait until the winds cool the slow glowing embers, that he may sift through the ashes at the center of the deceased pyre to retrieve his companion's bones. Until he can gather the dear white bones in the golden urn his mother gave him, he is reluctant to leave the site, despite the chill that grips the darkness and the weariness that grips his body.


[OOC NOTE: Now you know more than you ever wanted to know about Ancient Greek funeral rituals. You're welcome. Offer your condolences at any point in the evening, try to pry him away at the end of the night, or go ahead and make your own threads as you see fit. This space is open to be whatever you would like it to be!]

Comments

[dishearten]

( there's nothing easy about matters like this. Graham can't quite remember any funerals he made it to in Storybrooke (his own really doesn't count, now does it?), yet he has a few in his memories still. passing of bits and pieces of his family, watching his pack slowly and then more quickly fade away. it never got easier, watching someone he loved buried under earth. he doesn't suspect it's any easier watching them go in the heat of flame.

despite his inability to witness the slaughter of a great deal of animals, that didn't mean he did not want to be there for Achilles if he could be. it's after the sun has set, as promised, but only just — there's still a bit of color in the winter sky when he finds his way there, to the fire that's drawn low enough to only be embers, now.

Achilles is stationed at the blaze and that's where he goes to find him. it's hard to know if it's the right thing, to break him from his reverie. in the end, he doesn't break it with words, just a hand placed on his shoulder. )

[heelies]

[Achilles kneels before the pyre, buckled by grief as branches are bowed by weight too great. There in the heart of the slow dying flames lies all that remains of his dear companion, nothing more than ashes from which protrude bones scorched clean. Nothing more than a vast body of memories that lingers with Achilles as smoke lingers after the fire has been doused, but while smoke is scattered by the wind nothing would ever have force enough to clear such memories from his heart.

The primal reek of the smoke thickens the air and clings to the simple black suit Asher had lent him. Its dark sleeves are stained with the spatter of sacrifice. His eyes ought to have run dry of tears by now, so tirelessly has he wept in these last dozen days, yet always there come more. And while his eyes work to draw more tears from that interminable well, his body trembles with dry sobs cracking his lips. Then he falls still and silent until the tides of his grief rise again to drown him.

Graham finds him washed up in the silent stretch of his grieving cycle. When Achilles feels the weight of a hand upon his shoulder, he lifts his head just enough to see who has come to his side. No shadow of happiness crosses his features and no words does his tongue shape, but he seeks Graham's hand where it lies upon him and clasps it tight.]

[dishearten]

( Graham has had his losses, in his life, yet he does not suspect there is any that can compare to this one. he has never lost someone so dear, only to have them back for a blissful moment that turns too fragile to last. he can't fathom what it must be like, to grieve someone not once but twice, in the same instance. he can't really fathom what any level of pain would be like, without a heart, yet he can see the signs of it.

he wants to offer comfort, even though he is likely incapable of truly comprehending what his friend is mourning.

at the very least, he does not expect a smile. there is no need to pretend, in this moment, things are well. Graham does not take his hand back, simply kneels to join Achilles in his vigil, taking their hands both and holding on, an anchor past the dust and ash. it takes him some time to speak — of the two of them, Graham has always been the quieter one. he does not speak with expectation of answer, though, it is simply a truth he wants to share. )

I wish I might have met him. ( time could move painfully quickly in their missions, and by the time Graham had heard Patroclus had joined their ranks, a scant few weeks after he was gone. )

[grunehexe]

[The spell to conceal the funeral from the prying eyes of Woodhurst's natives is large by Sieglinde's usual standards. It has to be, to encompass the pyre, the beasts, the guests, and most particularly, the dark smoke. Before anything could begin she had walked the perimeter of the area, chalky-tipped wand on hand, laying down the runes and the boundary. Then she'd walked it again, laying small splashes of blood at regular intervals, then returned to her place by the pyre, assuming the mantle of chief female mourner.

An important job. One that allowed her to be publicly and shamelessly distraught, to leave her long, long hair unbound, to cry openly and stain her dress with tears. That allowed her to excuse her grief and weakness as respect for cultural traditions.

A chalk line connects to the smaller inner rune circle she's drawn around the pyre itself, needing to fuel the barrier but needing a certain degree of freedom of movement. Though for most of the funeral she is silent and still, paling gradually the longer it goes on, feeding power both magical and mental slowly with forlorn drops of blood onto the chalk line.

At some point she finds herself on her knees, sobbing quietly towards the grass not quite sure how she'd ended up there, but content to stay. Why it had to have been Patroclus, of all their number, why he had to have died in such a way, why "loss", when it came to people you actually cared about, had to feel like this, she didn't know, despite how much those thoughts had occupied her mind.

The heat of the fire does well to dry the tears on he face, as it is only when she notices a change in that does she finally look up, to be greeted by the dying glow of embers.

Ah.]

feel free to ignore if this is too old

[heelies]

[The sun has long since sunk below the horizon and thus darkness swallows the earth much like grief has swallowed Achilles' heart. Sieglinde is a steady presence by his side, and together they complete the quiet dirge for Patroclus, composed of their raw sobs and the persistent crackling of the conflagration that consumes the son of Menoetius' mortal parts. When at last the flames burn themselves out, still Peleus' son rises not. For a long while he stares into the heart of the dying pyre, where lie the charred bones of his dearest companion. There lies all that remains of a man who for so long has occupied Achilles' life: how unjust an end it seems to him.

At last he speaks with a voice weakened by weeping.]

Now we shall wait for the embers to cool, that from the ashes we may gather the bones of great-hearted Patroclus. Until then I cannot rise from this very spot where I have fallen, overpowered in all my power by grief so tremendous.

as if i could

[grunehexe]

[Time had become something that simply continued on, even when Patroclus was gone. How was it, that the world kept spinning once someone died? It was a poetic sentiment, one Sieglinde had never understood before, when she could have explained the reasons scientifically with precision. But that was before she'd experienced it herself- the loss of someone you actually cared about.

Not a team transfer. Not a death you knew of but didn't see for yourself. An actual loss, an end.

And now they have to gather his bones from the mix of ash remains.]

Then let the embers cool, so that you may lay those bones to rest.

[She didn't have it in her for anything large, not anymore, her magic drained almost fully from her body from how long she's held the spell to prevent natives from noticing these proceedings, but she didn't care any longer.

Sieglinde reaches out a paling hand to the ash, reverently pressing her palm into the warmth of it and murmuring softly under her breath, exhaling weakly. Spreading from her hand, a chill that begins to dull the red still showing hints through the smoldering grey.

Not only did she wish to bring some sort of closure, however small, to Achilles... but she needed this to end. Before her spell broke.]

cw: self-harm allusion

[heelies]

[That Achilles has known death before, that he has had Patroclus pried from him once already, does not dull the pain that at present devours his heart. Indeed, it only hurts all the more: just as when a stone shatters the peace of a pond, sending ever widening ripples across its face, so too does his dear companion's death rattle his heart ever more violently with its reverberation.

More than once in the past fortnight he has been possessed by the sharp urge to set a blade against his own flesh and in doing so set himself free from this suffering. It was his duty to lay Patroclus to rest that bade him live, for if he failed this promise to his friend then who would welcome him to that far shore whose banks he once scorned but now sound so sweet?

He watches as Sieglinde cools the ashes by her gifts: thus ends the short blaze of Patroclus' glorious life. He stands then, but only to crouch down in the remainder of the pyre, his gaze as heavy as his heart and his voice but a murmur.]

Take heed, now - his bones lie at the center of the pyre. At the edges are scattered the bones of the oxen sacrificed, and these must not mingle with my dear friend.

[grunehexe]

[Achilles stands, but Sieglinde crawls, weakened from the spell perhaps too large for what she's practiced for, the small flickering source of her own magic ALASTAIR had given her so many moons past. Knees and dress dust grey with ash, from tree and ox and dear friend, but she is heedless in her quest forward.

For bones, ones that had once had a face that she had known and begun to love. How could she not, when he had been so kind, and welcoming, and smiled as if he truly were a proud father at the party he had so carefully arranged for the day of her birth?

Not like the bones she had studied growing up, the human skeletons in wire frames and relic boxes.]

Fear not, Achilles... I know well the make of bones, man and beast.

[But despite her attempts to sound confident, to sound trustworthy for this momentous task... her heart still skips a beat, and her vision threatens again to blur, when her fingers curl around a cracked and burnt rib.

Human rib.]

[heelies]

[He is not so studied in anatomy as Sieglinde, if only because his era's medical knowledge is yet incomplete - but he has learned Patroclus' anatomy, knows every inch of his second self. Thus, although he cannot say with certainty what each and every piece is, as he gathers the charred bones from the mound of ashes he laments: here are the wrists I once clasped, and there is the shoulder upon which I once rested mine own weary head - and there too are the fingers that stroked my hair and held my cheek.

Gone are the lips he once kissed, the skin he once held close against his own, the muscles that once shifted beneath him. The eyes that struck him like the lightning hurled by almighty Zeus.

Everything else, however, he slowly harvests to place piece by piece in the golden urn that his mother had gifted him. All the while, he speaks nothing aloud but only weeps for his fallen companion, for his own vacated heart.]

[grunehexe]

[There isn't much to say.

Sieglinde had always thought she would know, because she's said comforting words to those who had lost people before. In Chantes, she had apologized to the natives after the chimera attacks, those who lost family she couldn't save. The same, in Nalawi, after the storm and floods, and in Perdition's Rest, after the fracking incident... but they were things that came automatically in the moment, things with vague words and sympathies over the bodies she did not know.

But this bone in her hand is someone she knew. It's Patroclus'. She knows if she studied it properly, she would be able to prove it. Prove that the size of the rib fit a man of his description, that the wear would fit a man of his physical proclivities, that the make would fit a man who had grown up in the region he had, eating the things he had...

That science didn't seem to matter so much any longer, and with a small tremble she deposits the bone in the urn.

Then another, and another. Molar. Cracked tibia. Phalanges. Femur. Jaw. All pieces carefully plucked from the ash and brushed clean, to be placed reverently.

Until her small hands sort through the ashes and begin to come up empty, come up with only the grey dust that used to be a person.]