WHO: Briseis [Narrative] open to Achilles & Patroclus WHEN: 19th - 24th July WHERE: Patroclus' apartment WHAT: The slow movements of grief, guilt, and memory
Briseis was not okay. She was, in fact, so far from okay that the very concept of it seemed impossible and unfair and she was sure, with every single horrible and painful breath she drew, that she could never be okay again.
She didn't remember much of the trip from Las Vegas back to New York, spending most of it falling in and out of sleep in the seat between her two Greek warriors, her bandaged hands curled against her chest as though that would protect either them or her. (It did neither, she knew.)
Sleeping was what took up much of her time now as the days past her by in Patroclus' apartment. She slept in the bed with either him or Achilles, verging on panic attacks when both of them were out of her sight for too long. It became almost impossible to remember that they still existed and that she wasn't alone when she could no longer touch them. She curled herself against them like a frightened child and wept, no thought spared for how any such displays might effect them. Briseis was too deep in her grief still to think of other people.
She ate only when food was put in front of her and even then only a little. She didn't bother to change her clothes, to brush her hair, to take care of herself in any way.
When she closed her eyes she watched the man she love choke on his own blood beside her.
Her dreamscapes were cold and bleak, and the less she ate and the more she slept, the ever more confusing and painful her dreams became. To separate one place from another took the sort of energy Briseis just didn't have and her life events twisted together to form a narrative that may not have been quite true, but burned deeply enough that she couldn't ignore it.
Briseis had heard the cry go out through the camp but she'd presumed that it had been misheard, because it was simply not possible that her lord and husband had fallen. She remained safely inside Achilles' tent, kneeling against the doorway to listen for any word spoken that might tell her more, and as darkness grew Briseis' panic made her more bold. She left the safety of the room that she had lived in for many years and stepped out into the glare of the afternoon, a wary animal fearful of the predators she knew too well were all around.
It was at a distance she saw the body and her breath caught in her throat. When she tried to speak a moan broke free from her lips.
In the dark bedroom she woke, someone's arms wrapped around her. Weeping in her sleep she was, and she cried harder now, whispering Achilles' name over and over, her dead husband on the sand who had left her all alone. Sleep, like waves on the shore, dragged her slowly back into it.
"Let me see him!" she'd screamed, even as one of the men had gone to grab her. She ran across the sand towards her husband's corpse, sobbing and screaming, throwing herself onto the ground in front of him, arms across his chest.
His men muttered and shouted and growled and she was snatched up by strong arms. She screamed, kicking and hissing against her captor, screaming out Achilles' name as she tried to get back to him. No, not her husband, her husband couldn't be dead! He would live forever in glory, he would take her back home with him when this war was done, he would make Briseis his true bride. All these things he had promised her. He had promised no man would ever lay a hand upon her and yet here his own men bruised her flesh to keep her from her own dead love.
"Please!" she begged. "Please take me not from his side!" Oh, let her die with him if he really be gone! Let her burn upon his pyre because what now was there for her if Achilles was dead? None would be so kind, none would see her as bride. Patroclus and Achilles, the men who had snatched her from her old life and into this one, the men who had been so kind and warm and gentle and now both were corpses.
She counted herself a curse on that day, a dark charm that would only bring disaster to those that loved it.
'I curse you for making me love you', Achilles had said to her, not days ago.
The words were with her as she crossed over from dreams to waking, but now it was David's voice that spoke them. She had let him die and he hated her for it, just as he should.
Numbly she drew herself out from Achilles' arms without a word, sitting on the edge of the bed quietly. If Achilles spoke to her then, Briseis didn't hear it. She was too busy forming her next actions, finding the bravery to do it.
Patroclus' phone sat on the kitchen bench and she picked it up in her damaged hands and then sat down on the floor in front of the fridge, making herself a safe little corner that might just protect her from the world. Then she dialed the number slowly.
The voice that answered was that of an older woman, tired, uninterested in chatting with whoever had called. Just hearing that familiar voice brought Briseis back to tears and the woman on the line paused and then asked, concerned, "Bri, sweetheart, is that you?"
Briseis nodded heavily, squeezing her eyes shut. "Elaine," she choked out, curling closer into the corner.
"Oh Bri," Elaine said, her own voice tearful. "We hoped you'd call. We've been trying the apartment but you didn't answer. Felix! It's Briseis!" In the background on that end of the phone Briseis heard the sound of a gruff man swearing with something like relief. They made Briseis want to cry all the more. David's parents, so warm and welcoming, so much closer to parents for Briseis than anything she had ever had before.
"I'm so sorry," she whispered tearfully, forehead pressed against the fridge. "I am so sorry, Elaine. I tried, I tried so hard to stop it."
"Oh sweetheart, we know, we know." Elaine was crying as well now and for a long time the two women sat there and cried together on opposite sides of the country, mourning a lover and a son, the words they spoke attempts to seek and give comfort. They didn't blame her for David's death, but they didn't know the truth.
When Briseis finally hung up, dropping the phone onto the floor beside her, she was even more exhausted than before. In four days she would fly to Montana, to David's parents, for the funeral. Briseis didn't even know how she was going to face them.