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It’s dark, and it’s deep, and it’s ever so cold. The leaves turn from green to golden to dripping red, before tumulting towards the ground when the snow hits, and it’s still so, so cold. Icicles grow on the gravestones. Icicles melt on the gravestones. Flowers bite at the frost.
Patroclus waits.
He doesn’t know how long he’s been here, how long he’s been waiting. Seasons and times and clocks and sunsets blend together in one great big sea of memory, tugging at the corners of his mind as he tries to forget. Tries and tries and tries.
His hands are empty inside his gloves, but he knows they won’t be for long. There’ll be someone. There’s always someone lonely at this time at night.
It’s usually him.
The first time he remembers seeing Achilles, the world is still green and there are still gods wandering about. Not his gods, his old gods, but gods all the same. Their names are different, but their faces the same, Apollo leering at him over the tops of temples, mocking and mocking and mocking.
His name isn’t Patroclus. It never is, anymore.
“Watch out!” someone cries, and he’s leaping out of the way of an ox cart as it ricochets down the road. “Watch out, watch out, watch out!” The wheels of the cart scrape and knock at the harsh dirt ground, and Patroclus watches as a young man yanks viciously on the reins, wheeling the oxen to a stop. “You alright?”
Patroclus nods. “As ever,” he says, and the young man sighs, relaxing slightly in his seat. “Your ox seems a bit excited.”
“She always is,” he agrees, and holds out a hand. “Need a lift? Where’re you headed?” The boy has the wrong hair (black) and the wrong eyes (grey) and the wrong smile (too wide, too crooked, too happy than he remembers. Were they ever happy?), but the shape of his wrists as he holds onto the knotty reins sparks rivulets of hope in Patroclus’ chest. The boy is younger than Achilles ever was, with nut brown skin and the hint of scars at his cheekbones from years of working, and Patroclus’ palms start to sweat.
“Where ever you are,” he says, and the man grins at him. Patroclus feels sick as he watches him smile. His left canine presses slightly over his right, and Patroclus finds himself infinitely fond of that little tooth, despite himself. “Have you been travelling far?”
The man shrugs, and helps Patroclus up onto the front bench. “Eh. Only since Eudaemon, and I’m not too sure where exactly where to stop,” he admits, and brushes down his clothes. Patroclus watches the dust settle on the breeze, lungs sinking deep into his stomach with dread. “Have we been introduced, stranger?”
“No,” says Patroclus absently, and the other man nods with amusement, whipping the oxen to start moving, their feet trudging along on the dirt. “I hate my name. It doesn’t suit me anymore.”
He nods. “I know the feeling. I’m—”
“Don’t,” says Patroclus. The boy looks at him. “Just don’t. We don’t need names, do we?”
The boy blinks, and his expression goes cold. A breeze flicks leaves into idle torrents by the roadside. “I suppose not.”
The silence is a blanket that gives way to night. The boy’s arms are shaking and his eyes are bright and his mouth is hot on the tight skin of Patroclus’ chest. He has never felt so tired.
Patroclus can always tell when Achilles has been near, or so he thinks. He presses his fingers deep into the bruises on someone’s neck once, when he was working as a healer, and feels them shake to be near him.
He meets a girl, once, by a bayside. She’s shivering and tired and asking for her husband, she hasn’t seen her husband in months, do you know him stranger, do you, could you? Patroclus bundles her up in warm cloaks and pulls her away with him so that they can live together.
She’s happy. Patroclus is empty. She never asks why.
When her husband comes home and takes her away, he smiles at Patroclus. He has warm hands and kind eyes, and supports his wife as she heads home with him. She had whispered to Patroclus, once, between the candles and the note papers, that her husband would often look into the distance the same way Patroclus did.
“War,” she says, “can change people. What was it for you? Agincourt? There were so many at Agincourt.”
Patroclus kisses her palms and swipes her forehead clear of dirt, watching as she comes back to life under his hands. “Yes,” he tells her, “and no.” She presses her hands to his ribcage, and he laughs. “What are you doing now?”
“Checking,” she says.
“What for?”
“Sometimes,” she whispers, “you look so empty that I oft wonder if you have a heart at all. It’s beating, so you must. I had thought your chest clear of all love, and not pounding with it like the war drums.”
He smiles, and settles her hands over hers. “It’s beating, yes,” he says, and his body just aches, “but I wouldn’t call it a heart. Not anymore.”
Her husband comes to take her away, and Patroclus feels sick when he smiles. He knows. Patroclus will always know. Her husband whistles and gives him fruit as thanks (apples and pears and figs figs figs), hands big and kind and warm and Patroclus feels sick because you can use a spear as a walking stick, but you can’t change its nature.
No. That’s a lie.
Patroclus is sick because Achilles is happy with his little wife. Achilles is happy without him.
He covers his eyes.
He misses the husband looking back.
The dust never settles. Patroclus will always be running after.
Patroclus adores the girl that lives across the way from her. This time she’s been born a girl, and she rather feels like she wouldn’t mind being a girl, sometimes. She prefers being a boy though. Somewhat. Gender is becoming more and more complex as Patroclus grows up.
They met on a rainy London street, ducking under the same gargoyle. Patroclus was trying to get out of the rain, the girl was trying to get away from her governess. They pressed hands together, and raced down the cobbles, hair flying and dresses dirty with mud as they skip over puddles, rain making rivers down their arms.
They became fast friends, and Patroclus never knew. She would braid hair out of the girl’s eyes and not know. She would press soft kisses to her forehead and not know. She would whisper secrets and fairy tales and the gravest of sins and never, ever know.
They’re not in love, not really. They adore each other. Their happiness is too pure for kissing, too sweet for beds. They are married in eyes and eyes alone, catching each other in alcoves of parties and their laughs entwining the way they might have kissed.
“You’re mine,” says the girl, holding her palm up to Patroclus’ in the dimming candlelight. Patroclus hands her the sewing needle, and she pricks her thumb, blood welling at where her skin is near translucent in the light. Patroclus mimics her.
She can’t tell the difference between the stains. They’re red on red, blood on blood, heart on heart. Patroclus loves her with all her very being, and then she’s taken away.
“Engaged,” she says to Patroclus’ smile. “Married,” she says to Patroclus’ palm. “Pregnant,” she says to Patroclus’ fingers. “Gone,” she says to Patroclus’ love.
Her ship to America sails on high tide, and Patroclus would follow her. She would follow her anywhere. For a moment, she thinks she loves this girl more than she ever loved Achilles, that maybe her little fingers won’t feel so empty, that maybe the ache in her chest would stop. Maybe, just maybe, Achilles’ light had finally stopped burning her.
“I’m going to miss this,” says the girl, kissing Patroclus’ hand before she boards the ship, “and this,” she says stroking her hair, and the breath stops inside Patroclus’ mouth, “and this,” she finishes, and drops Patroclus’ hand.
The ache is sharper. She is loving Achilles, and never knew it.
Patroclus checks the trenches of the first war. Of the second. Patroclus hears stories of the camps in Germany, in Japan, in Poland and in China. He prays that Achilles isn’t there. He prays that no one is there.
There are boys in the trenches, also searching. Some for honour, some for glory, some for the peace that will set like snow at Christmas over the world. Patroclus envies them, and he feels infinitely old as they check their guns, lace their boots, fall to the ground. The gas tastes of bleach and summer breezes. The fields of the war sound like home.
There is blood on his cuffs, staining the cotton dirty brown with dirt and muck. He can’t remember what colour his blood is supposed to be anymore, he’s too used to seeing someone else’s.
He is the best of the achaeans. The charge falls in behind him, and he can’t see for the blood. There’s a nurse that swipes his forehead, and there’s a girl that throws him flowers, there’s a feeling he can’t quite shake that he’s done all this before.
He dreams of bronze those years, of bronze and horses and laughs that shouldn’t have been his.
They run into Apollo once, many years later, with greying hair and greying hopes. The god is drinking absinthe in a bar in Paris, toying with a lighter. “Just a little longer, Patroclus,” says Apollo, and Patroclus’ heart soars at the sound of their name. Patroclus. Patroclus. Patroclus.
The gods have forgotten their calls and forgone their creeds, taking their place among humanity to disappear in a quiet, forlorn death. Apollo greets them like an old friend, and they split the bill of twelve brandies, talking to each other in a language they had sworn to forget.
Patroclus tells Apollo of different lives — as a he, as a her, and now as a them. Apollo listens, and breaks in with soft comments. Apollo regrets the wars. Apollo regrets the plague. Apollo regrets everything. He admits, almost inaudible over the sound of the barman clinking his glass, that everything had been petulance. The plague was punishment for forgetting, and no one even knew.
“They don’t need us anymore,” Apollo says after one too many drinks, and Patroclus smiles at him. “They have cars and trains and lipsticks and films. They don’t need us. They’ve stopped believing in us, hell, they’ve stopped believing in all of us.” The god sighs, and looks over at them, watching the way the lighting catches golden hair. “You’ve changed, Achaean.”
Patroclus looks what may have once been a god over, and shakes their head. “You’ve fallen, Phoebus.”
They fell into bed together, fuelled by brandy and nostalgia. They bite out the wrong names and sing the wrong hymns, but neither of them mind. They’re kissing Greek mouths and swearing Greek swears, and the lines on Apollo’s hand look almost like the river Scamander from where they’re clinging to the sides of Patroclus’ waist.
“Are you even a god anymore?” they ask, and Apollo laughs, and buries his head in the skin of Patroclus’ neck. “Are you even here? Were you ever here?”
“I am made of memory,” says Apollo, his voice mocking, and Patroclus bites all the harder.
They fuck to the songs of Demeter, chanted out breathlessly between them, huffing amused breaths when their accents change, their words fumble. The god tastes of summer and artillery and looks at Patroclus like a sepia photo flirting with fading away. Apollo bites a ring of music into their collar bone, Patroclus pulls hard at his hair and whispers, “Lions and men. We are lions, and men.”
In the morning, Apollo has left bites and bruises on Patroclus’ skin, the bed rumpled and the sun streaming in through the windows.
The room smells of sex and hyacinths.
Patroclus cries.
He’s sitting on a dock, of a country whose name has changed so many times that he can’t be bothered to remember it. The sea still feels the same, at least. He can thank Poseidon for that. Or was it Neptune? Or Lir? Or Kanaloa or Varuna or Amathuanta? He has worn so many faces, he has loved so many gods, that he’s forgotten which ones were his in the beginning.
The worlds have begun to blend together, the loves and the lives. He’s given up on names and on places and on people. Apollo had burnt him from the inside out, setting him alight from end to end.
“Just a little longer,” Apollo had said. If Patroclus thinks long enough, he can almost remember what hope feels like, before the taste of bronze fills his mouth and the ocean becomes too much for him. The boats bob in the bay, watching closely. He remembers when they used to paint eyes on their boats, remembers when they sailed for Troy. For Gallipoli. For Agincourt.
His hands are empty inside his gloves, but he knows they won’t be for long. There’ll be someone. There’s always someone lonely at this time at night.
It’s usually him.
The sun’s beginning to set, and the water is wine dark in the dusk.
“It’s nice, isn’t it?” asks a voice, and Patroclus turns around. The person is lovely, with red hair slicked back with the salty spray and eyes stinging red from a swim. “Been a while since we’ve seen the ocean, Pat.”
Patroclus can’t breathe.
Apollo dips the sun lower into the ocean, and the night sets in with cold calculation. There is no moon.
“Achilles?” Patroclus asks, and the boy laughs at him.
“Patroclus,” Achilles says.
They stare for a long while, and Patroclus’ hands tilt. They do what all hands do when empty, and do what all hands do when found. Patroclus’ voice sticks to the inside of his throat, and they say nothing for the longest time, just sitting by the black ships and making up for every time they let go.
“I’m sorry,” says Achilles.
“You were always better with words than I.”