builtofsin:
strain may be putting it mildly, but he digresses. “ i’d wager both. if she nurtured her children half as much as the grudge she holds against me, perhaps they wouldn’t be so uncouth, ” absently musing, the wine savored in a sip next. achilles had once told him eternal life always comes at a price; he suspects this may be his. “ mine never wanted a daughter. only sons. he thought to kill her when she was born. sometimes i wished he had, but alas, chose our mother instead. nekhay bohy pyl’nuyut yiyi. ” his grief over this had long since passed, but there were still times, even after two-thousand years, when he missed her dearly. “ –– i’m surprised you left him at all. how long has it been this time? ”
“ perhaps, ” ceded while his smile lingers in a slight comma’s hook, then it falls. he has heard the tale before; still, a stirring like ash in his stomach, and the pressing twinge of an old bruise. “ i do not know which is worse, ” he admits gently. “ or that it serves us to weigh one loss against another. but it’s untrue, what they say — time does not always heal. ” memory unfurls in tendrils of smoke, of agamemnon and his daughter, iphigenia; the child bride whose throat had been slashed to bathe her altar and achilles’ golden skin in sacrificial red. patroclus shakes his head and sips his wine. “ how long has he remembered, you mean? we’ve lived two good years together this cycle, and six more still to come. i would like to meet your companion. ”
