Archive of Our Own ^beta

The sun comes out for the funeral.

It’s been raining for weeks, and the air is still heavy with the smell of wet pavements, but on the morning of the funeral the sun shines fiercely onto their shoulders and catches in the leaves on the trees, bringing the streets back to life.

It is the kind of day Patroclus would have loved, Achilles thinks, on the drive to the crematorium, and feels a little sick.

His father sits beside him, hands clenched tight in his lap. Achilles heard him crying, the night Patroclus’ body was found, gunshot neat in the centre of his stomach, but didn’t say anything. He didn’t know what to say - he still doesn’t know, he just slumps silently against the window and watches the road flash by. Tact was Patroclus’ forte, not his.

The collar of his shirt rubs uncomfortably against his throat. He feels trapped by the tie and the jacket, the shoes polished a bright black, all too formal to honour Patroclus properly in. He can’t remember Patroclus ever wearing a suit, not even to their school dance; Patroclus always looked more at home in worn jeans and Achilles’ favourite hoodie.

But he was wearing that hoodie the night he died. Achilles can still picture the dark stains left behind on the familiar material - bloodstains, death stains, black smudges marring the brightness.

He used the hood of that hoodie to pull Patroclus in for a kiss before he went out, fists clenched tight around the fleece, laughing into Patroclus’ mouth. Patroclus has fallen asleep in his lap in that hoodie, has weaved his fingers into Achilles’ hair while Achilles blew him in that hoodie, has leaned against Achilles and waxed lyrical about countless novels in that hoodies - but all Achilles can see, now, is blood and guts and frayed edges.

And Patroclus’ face, white as snow without blood pumping under the skin, except for the mess of red-brown around his mouth.

(The bullet was meant for him. No one says it, no one voices the thought, but it’s there in their eyes, a dirty accusation - it should be you. They thought they were killing you.)

Achilles had cried too, pressed the heel of his hand to his mouth and wept over Patroclus’ body in the police morgue, his tears burning hot in his eyes and on his cheeks, and then again at home, sat on the edge of the bed that was Patroclus’ as much as his own, staring numbly at the wall as his eyes spilt over again. The room was so full of Patroclus that it choked Achilles, caught in his throat and blocked his breathing until everything narrowed down to the image of the body seared onto his memory.

“Fuck,” he’d muttered, because Patroclus was the wordsmith, Patroclus was the poet, Patroclus was the one who’d always know exactly what to say. All he had was fuck.

It’s all he has now, too - just fuck, running through his head like a prayer as they pull up outside a dull grey building and climb out. The concrete blocks the sun, casting the small crowd waiting by the doors into shadow. Achilles doesn’t know whether that makes him want to laugh or cry.

Briseis steps up with a tight smile, her eyes red beneath the tasteful makeup, and takes Peleus’ arm. She trails her fingers along Achilles’ arm as she passes him, her eyes soft, and he nods his gratitude. They were never quite as close to each other as they each were to Patroclus, but now Patroclus is gone and they’re both aching from the same blows, and there is a solidarity in that that comforts Achilles, at least a little.

He hovers by the car as she leads Peleus away towards the crematorium, his chest too tight to cope with the fake smiles and pitying eyes he’ll meet if he follows. The weight of it all starts pressing harder, his blood rushing under his skin - he can hear it in his ears, a dizzying pounding - and everything seems too close and impossibly far away at the same time. His throat closes, his mouth goes dry, it gets harder to swallow, harder to breathe, and-

And a hand presses against his cheek, lifts his head so he can meet steady blue eyes, and Hephaestion inhales and exhales carefully in front of him until Achilles’ breathing matches his own.

“Sorry,” Achilles mutters, when he can shape the word properly, and Hephaestion smiles sadly, stepping back to give Achilles space to fix his outfit back up.

“Don’t be an idiot,” he replies, forcibly light to hide the worry there, and Achilles avoids his eyes, and Alex’s too, hovering behind Hephaestion, for fear of what he’ll see there. Much as he loves his friends - and he does, with a terrible, blinding loyalty that Patroclus always said would get him killed one day, Achilles’ stomach turns at the irony - he doesn’t want them now.

(He wants Patroclus, needs Patroclus, misses Patroclus so badly it hurts like a fire blazing through his veins, and it’s not fair that Patroclus is gone when it was always supposed to be Achilles who died first, Achilles who took risks and made enemies and laughed at the men with bigger gangs and better than him.)

“C’mon,” he says, his voice rough, and pushes past the two of them to join his father in the crowd.

(Patroclus always said he wanted his body burnt. “I don’t want to rot,” he told Achilles once, at the top of the hill they always climbed when they wanted to be alone. “I don’t want my body to waste away underground. I want to be cremated, and then I want you to scatter my ashes right here, into the wind so I end up everywhere.” Achilles had laughed and dragged him down into a kiss, tangling his hands in Patroclus’ hair and holding him close enough that they swapped air instead of breathing.)

The hill feels smaller when Achilles makes his way up it, after the funeral is over.

Briseis had offered to come with him, and Alexander and Hephaestion, and his father, but this is something he needs to do himself. One last promise he has to keep.

The wind picks up as he reaches the top, almost as though the world knows that Patroclus deserves a proper goodbye. It blows Achilles’ hair into his eyes, catches hold of his jacket and his tie and tosses them around him, and when Achilles opens the urn and tips the ashes out they dance through the air like stars in the night sky, like they’re alive again.

Some twirl back into Achilles’ face, stroking over his cheeks and his lips like kisses, and he’s crying, he’s sobbing, he’s screaming all his anger and his sorrow and his burning, aching love into the wind.

Later, when the wind dies down and the ashes have disappeared into the sky, he collapses to the ground with wet cheeks and a hoarse throat, buries his face in his arms and whispers, “Goodbye,” until the word stops making sense.