Classics drabble series: Life of a Hero
Note: Each section of this story is percisely 100 words long (hence the title, drabble series)

Thetis smiled as she baptized her son in fire, making him invincible. He was precious to her, and she refused to lose him. He was the child of a goddess but also a man, and so he could be injured, age, even die. She would prevent all that.

Consumed by her task, she didn’t hear her husband come up behind her. A roar, and a large figured ripped her son from her arms before his blessing was complete. She screamed in anger and despair and whirled on him. But Peleus refused her and she left them both to their mortality.

***

The young man was a murderer, they said. He’d killed a friend when dicing, they said. Achilles stared at the one he was told was his cousin, watching him. His cousin wasn’t the type to murder, he was sure of it. There was something about the young man that drew him, that made him want to be with him.

When the young man saw he was being watched, he bowed slightly to Achilles. “Young warrior,” he saluted him.

Achilles smiled. His father had made the decision but had left the announcement to him. “You are to be my squire, Patroklos.”

***

“This war is nothing to you,” Thetis urged. Achilles turned away from the mother he barely knew and watched at the sole witness to this conversation. “If you fight Hector of Troy, you will die,” she continued. He wondered why she suddenly cared so much for him. “It is better for you to hide at Skyros as a girl.” His lip curled derisively. How could a warrior even stand to dress as a girl? His mother continued her persuasion and Patroklos never spoke yea or nay but merely watched Achilles in return. Achilles eventually gave in to his mother’s wish.

***

Achilles kissed the one beneath him and pushed down with his hips, causing Deidamia to moan. He didn’t hear, anymore than he saw her. In his eyes, the body beneath his was taller and had a flat but muscular chest. The skin on the arms and legs was bronzed from the sun. The face had a beard, and the voice was one he’d known since childhood, though he hadn’t heard it since coming to Skyros. The lover he saw smiled and laughed and gasped in pleasure.

His body made love to Lycomedes’s daughter, but his heart made love to Patroklos.

***

The call to war had finally reached them. Without Achilles, the mighty Achaeans would fail. His blood sang as he revealed in his newly reinstated manhood. This was a time for winning fame and glory, and he intended to bathe deeply in it. The gods would look down on the red fields before Troy and bless the warriors that fought there.

He had been promised fame, and nothing could stop him from achieving it. In Troy, his hopes and dreams were personified. There was no fear of death, if death could ever hope to take him. Nothing could stop him.

***

A pristine white cloth wrapped around and concealed the long red cut. Patroklos smiled in gratitude. Achilles stared at him, hands immobile along the bandage he had just finished securing. The world inside of his tent was quiet and warm and private. Without knowing how they’d gotten there, Achilles found his lips on Patroklos’s. A matching passion greeted him. Achilles pushed his comrade down, his deepest desires finally being fulfilled, his kinder and gentler half found. With Patroklos, he could truly be invincible. That night they forgot about wounds and war and Troy, finding only life and love and light.

***

“I will not fight for that man,” Achilles raged. “He took Briseis. She is mine.”

“She will be yours again,” Patroklos soothed.

“I will not fight for him until he has returned her! And when the Greeks die before the walls of Troy without me, he will not dishonor me again.” Decision made, he eventually ran his anger out and settled next to his lover.

“She will be returned to you, and you shall win this war for us. We shall all go home together and sing songs of your fame forever.”

Achilles smiled. “And my glory will never end.”

***

Patroklos would never go home. Achilles had had one lover returned, only to lose the other. What good to him was Briseis without Patroklos? What point was there to eternal glory, without Patroklos to share it? What use was there in going home if his heart was empty? His hands shook within Antilochos’s grip which in his grief he couldn’t break.

He could avenge Patroklos, but it would mean his own death. If prophecy was true, death would mean everlasting fame. And if he was remembered, surely Patroklos would also. Wait for me, love. I will be with you soon.

***

The mangled and bloody body of Hector, prince of Troy, lay before him. It was nearly unrecognizable, after being dragged for hours behind his chariot. He was yet unsatisfied. He gripped the corpse’s face, his hands biting into the cold flesh. “This is all your fault. If you had not killed Patroklos, then I wouldn’t have killed you. And then I too wouldn’t die soon.” The dead gave no answer. He presses his lips into frozen ones; they felt as Patroklos’s had, at the end. “I have avenged you, Patroklos. Can you hear me? I have avenged you.” He wept.

***

His heel was the only part of him that was vulnerable. He had known it from his cradle. Yet he had never worried over his weakness. He was the greatest warrior to ever live, what enemy could hope to strike his heel? And even if they did, what of it? He had seen men lose an entire foot and still survive. His supposed weakness was merely an inconvenience, nothing more.

He had never counted on divine intervention. Until Apollo guided an arrow shot by Paris, prince of Troy, to his weakness. He was relieved to discover that he could die.

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