Chapter Text
Within the walls of Troy, a bow is strung quickly by rushing hands. An arrow is selected, and princely feet hurry up stairs to a tower that tilts over a battlefield of dead and dying. Where a god is waiting.
It is easy for Paris to find his target. The man moves slowly, like a lion grown wounded and sick, but his gold hair is unmistakable. Paris nocks his arrow.
"Where do I aim? I heard he was invulnerable. Except for—'
"He is a man," Apollo says. "Not a god. Shoot him and he will die."
Paris aims. The god touches his finger to the arrow's fletching. Then he breathes, a puff of air — as if to send dandelions flying, to push toy boats over water. And the arrow flies, straight and silent, in a curving, downward arc towards Achilles' back.
The crowd assembled around the pyre is substantial, but barely anyone present seems to shed a tear for the departed prince of the Myrmidons.
They stand around the burning pile of wood, watching the flames jump higher and higher in the sky, dark-eyed and silent, many of them glad, in their heart of hearts, for this turn of events. The lions share of the recovered riches would have gone to swift-footed Achilles, had he lived through the next few days. Now they can comfortably fantasize loading their own boats with the plundered wealth and sail back home, awaited by wives and children, to live out the rest of their days in the luxury, the fame and glory that this war has brought them.
Her nymph-sisters have started their wailing, pulling on their long hair and sinking to their knees in grief as the smell of the rose oil they anointed his body with turns acrid. The sounds of their cries weave through the assembled company and Thetis wants to laugh as their leaders — the men said to be some of the greatest warriors in Hellas, who have spent the last ten years raping, pillaging and murdering their way through the countryside of Troy — turn pale and petrified, inching away from the beings of the sea as they sing their final farewell.
Thetis knows the way these men think. She knows that for half of them, the fear brought on by her presence is the only reason they haven't already begun exulting their good fortune and making a mockery of her son's death. The others stand in solemn respect for the dead, but when the pyre has cooled, they too will go back to their tents — to feast and drink, to rest for the next day.
Or perhaps to bed another unwilling slave.
They will go do to countless other women what the gods had bid Peleus to do to her, to shackle her to a mortal and lessen the thrum of divinity flowing through the veins of her son, to dilute him with humanity.
Her son, more mortal than god. Her son, dead, his every last trace burnt away from this world, succeeded by a boy unworthy of his father's name. The glory he gave his life for attained at the cost of being remembered by those who survive him for defiling Hector's body, for killing Troilus, and a hundred other cruel acts committed in his grief.
Her son, forever roaming the underworld, under the earth, where she cannot go.
It is this final thought that pushes her over the metaphorical edge and suddenly she wants to join the keening of her sisters, to beat at her breast and call on someone to avenge him, to rip Priam's son apart from head to toe and revel in his humiliation. There begin to rise inside her feelings she never thought possible for an illuminated being like her.
Ugly grief, unspeakable rage. She clenches her jaw, fingers fisting tightly in her dress, almost tearing it apart.
Her eyes rove over the men and the sea swirls within them, tumultuous and stormy. It would be easy to drown them all. She may not be the Stormbringer, but she is by no means powerless, especially against an army of mortal men with the ocean to their backs.
A singular, simple flick of her wrist and she could raise a wave towering over their tallest ships and drag them down to the seabed, these men who treated her son like a dog, muzzling and dishonoring him, unwilling to listen to reason. Wounding his pride, thieving him of his war-prize and allowing the death of his beloved— then unleashing their rabid hound upon the Trojans, his jaw foaming with blood, his every fiber seeking violence.
She sneers at their false ceremony, their pretense of solemnity. The King of Mycenae, his arrogance exceeding mortal bounds staring at the sky in increasing indifference. His brother, for whom the wheels of this war were set in motion, standing beside him, peering past the smoke to the walls of Troy. Ajax, seated at the foot of a makeshift tent, his leg bandaged and healing, closest to tears among his fellow men. Wily Odysseus, his head bowed and hands clasped behind his back, his thoughts a hundred miles away. The common soldiers who revered him as Aristos Achaion, and grew to hate him as the bringer of the plague upon their brothers, stand in quiet fear. He is dead. What hope do they have to survive?
Thetis' gaze finds each man in turn, searching and vengeful, until it lands on someone making his way to the front, his presence distorting the faces of the men around him.
For a moment she falters, her inexistent heart stuttering at the familiar sight of golden locks spilling over tanned shoulders. But then the visage lifts its head and her fury returns ten fold, and she burns hotter than she ever has.
Mingled with the crowd, disguised with the help of the glamour of the Mist pulled over his divine form, stands the god who brought about the death of Thetis' son by his own hand.
Apollo is handsome in the same, cruel way his father is. Haughty pride lines his young face as he surveys the scene in front of him with piercing sky-blue eyes. He stands tall and unimpeded amidst the exhausted warriors, cutting an almighty picture in his chiton of crimson red lined with gold. Impatiently, he taps a sandaled foot against the sand.
His arms are folded across his chest and in the glare of his sun, she sees the glint of a brilliant gold ring on his right hand, interwoven with sapphires and pearls. The sight of it strikes her like a bolt of lightning from a clear sky.
She is thrown back across the years into memories. Of a pavillion in Olympus decked out in drapes stitched from sea-foam and sun beams, of a father lamenting the loss of his beloved youngest to a no-good son of Zeus, of the first union between a full-blooded god and a demigod not yet ready to sacrifice his humanity.
She remembers a boy just as old as her Achilles, his long, dark hair crowned by a gentle silver wreath, his arms covered in bangles and his tinkling, luminous laughter. Of the god in front of her looking down at him with uncommon gentleness, brushing away a stray curl, slipping a ring onto a slender finger and accepting the same.
Inspiration begins to rear its head from the murky depths of her sorrow.
She knows that it is foolhardy to even think of trying. Perseus is the most guarded, most well protected treasure in their lands, far beyond the reach of even divine claws aching to sink their talons into him. He is the darling of the Sea God, revered by his immortal husband and the father of their child. He is unattainable. Any attempt to harm him will bring about Poseidon's infamous wrath and Apollo's calculated rage on her head. A million unspeakable tortures.
But Thetis does not care for the anger of immortals more powerful than her anymore. She has lost the fear, the respect, she had for any of the Olympians the moment her son breathed his last. She has lost herself.
The last of the flames on the pyre burn out and only ashes remain. Thetis stands motionless, wondering.
There is movement to her side. The King of Ithaca kneels.
"Goddess, we would know your will. Shall we collect the ashes?"
Despite the original gift of prophecy having been long relegated to Apollo, the sea and all its inhabitants retain some sway over it. Thetis spares a glance at Odysseus and sees the faint, red threads lining his future, writhing in agony and all the pieces of this intricate little puzzle click gently into place. She has made her decision.
"Collect them. Bury them. I have done all that I will do"
He inclines his head. "Great Thetis, your son wished that his ashes be placed—"
"I know what he wished. Do as you please. It is not my concern." Her final remarks are curt, her face unreadable as she melts into the darker reaches of the night.
There is work to be done, favours to be wheedled from greater beings and revenge to be exacted. There is no time to mourn. Peace will not be granted on her son's soul simply because his mother will collect his ashes.
She will hurl a still mortal soul to the depths of Hades. She will curse the Shining One with the same grief he caused her, add another name to his catalogue of lovers felled by tragedy. If the men are too cowardly, she will revenge her son herself.
The dead are supposed to crave blood. She will provide it.