IN HIS TENT ACHILLES GRIEVED WITH HIS WHOLE BEING AND THE GODS SAW HE WAS A MAN ALREADY DEAD, A VICTIM OF THE PART THAT LOVED, THE PART THAT WAS MORTAL. IN THE STORY OF PATROCLUS NO ONE SURVIVES, NOT EVEN ACHILLES, WHO WAS NEARLY A GOD. PATROCLUS RESEMBLED HIM. THEY WORE THE SAME ARMOUR.
If she is Achilles, he is Patroclus.
Orestes has always been Patroclus. His own pride has never been his undoing; it has always been that of those he loves. If Achilles had known not just his fate at Troy, but his lover’s, his best friend’s, would he have still followed the drums of war? This is not a new dance for Orestes; there is only the aching familiarity of a story he knows vaguely but cannot quite remember the end to.
Orestes has always been Patroclus, ready to don his lover’s armour and take his place. He has always been Patroclus, suffering for the tragedies of others and taking a place in the conflict, anyway. Did you know he tried climbing the wall of Troy, before Apollo dragged him down and again and again? They don’t tell you that, often. No; it is an afterthought, because Patroclus always dies, anyway. Even though he made it, with the Myrmidons rallied behind him. Perhaps he died knowing, he had touched the walls of Troy and ended the war that very day with his sacrifice, his death.
That is the way it is, for Patroclus, for Achilles. That is the way it has always been and always will be. Achilles raging, raging, always raging. And Patroclus, dead. Patroclus begging for the war, the pain, to end.
There is always one that loves more than the other. There is always one that fears to be loved.
There is a palpable tension in the air; one that settles with the sun. Orestes feels it; he sees it in her expression, shrouded in dusk. The way the pain is blatant, but not quite; the expression of a rose pricking blood; a half-finished sentence that might have ended a question, but he will never know. There is something about it that still belongs to a warrior; perhaps it is because only warriors can bear so much pain and not break. Orestes looks away. He feels as if he has said something wrong again; as if she will flee, abandoning him to the lonely resonance of his aching heart. He does not know when it became something he wanted. Perhaps it was that very first day he met her, and saw something in her eyes that has haunted him his entire life.
So. I don’t understand. How to share a burden if one cannot commit.
He has muddied the waters. Orestes works his mouth, but does not yet speak. She steps towards him and it takes all he is not to flinch.
The older he becomes, in this young-old body, the more difficult it is to do good.
Orestes… I do not give my heart away easily, if at all. So I am not made for uncertainty.
Another step.
She is touching him. Her breath, her lips, are against his ear. Orestes closes his eyes with her teeth at his throat and wonders if there is a metaphor there. Then she is low and quiet, quiet, quiet, the sound of water in a cave, the sound of night meeting day. Then tell me you will stay.
Orestes does not have the words. Does she not know it of him? Has he not showed her? And then he realises that of course he hasn’t. It is only their third time meeting. It is only their third time talking, and his heart is a bird ready to take flight. He wants to say that he never leaves anyone. He wants to say that he is the certainty of a rising and setting sun, but realises there is still too much magic in that world to make the guarantee. Yet it stands: he is old enough to remember what it felt like to walk from the sea the first time, and then a thousand after that. He is old enough to remember the way it used to be when there was only land, and sky, and sea. Orestes stayed with his homeland until it sank; the only reason he is here, now, is retribution.
He opens his eyes.
“I will stay.” Orestes voice is the quiet pitch of a prayer. “But you never have to. That is all I meant; I am not another one of your obligations. I will be so much more, and less, then that for you. I am here, Marisol. I will stay; there is nothing in me that is uncertain, not of you, not of this.” Not of anything. Perhaps he lied to himself, when he thought that his own pride is never his undoing. But Orestes cannot prevent the calm confidence; the assurance. For many years he has believed that the philosophy of doubt will end in either pain or death; and so he does not allow himself to doubt, only to believe.
Orestes smiles.
Orestes smiles, because that is what Patroclus would do.
@
"THOUGH THE LEGENDS
CANNOT BE TRUSTED
THEIR SOURCE IS
THE SURVIVOR, THE ONE
WHO HAS BEEN
ABANDONED.
WHAT WERE THE
GREEK SHIPS ON FIRE
COMPARED TO THIS
LOSS?"
CANNOT BE TRUSTED
THEIR SOURCE IS
THE SURVIVOR, THE ONE
WHO HAS BEEN
ABANDONED.
WHAT WERE THE
GREEK SHIPS ON FIRE
COMPARED TO THIS
LOSS?"
