"Perhaps it is the cruelest thing the gods can do, to leave you on the earth when another is gone. Do you think?"

"Perhaps. But I do not wish to think of that."

"What do you wish to think about?"

"You."

~

Perhaps it is indeed, the greater grief, the greatest grief the gods can burden you with, to leave you in the realms of mortals when another is gone. You reach for them, you try to grasp for them - you brush their fingers - but they have slipped just past you, into the shallows of the River Styx. 

The day was warm. In the morning they lay in the sun, his fingers skating lazily over his lover's sun-kissed skin, eyes closed, and he could tell by the way his lover's chest moved that he was not asleep. They never truly left each other until that warm day.

The sun had risen high in the sky by the time Patroclus left his lover by the beginning of the fight, giving a delightful kiss after delightful kiss, their hands linked together, still sticky with fig juice. They pressed kisses to each surface of their faces, Achilles pressing featherlight kisses to the arm that held his hand. He watched his lover leave. He promised his return, victorious, to the small tent they shared only on risky nights when they would never be found. 

Achilles was not there when the consequence of disguise came, but I was. I watched, I waited, to greet him at the ferry. The inevitable happening of death is always deep inside of me, an ache I no longer listen to, only comply with. I move where it sends me. This time it had been different. Something dark and cold was within me, the urge shorter, smaller, as if not even it wished for dear Patroclus to take his final journey. I made it there slowly, but I still saw the whole scene. I remember it. I will always remember it. 

His olive-green eyes were wide with horror, and cherry-red blood leaked from his forehead. His fingers were bravely clasped around no weapon, his fingers bleeding from clawing at the jagged ground. His body was bright and beautiful, still glowing in the light of the sun, skin still fluttering from the kisses given not long ago. His hair, dark as roasted chestnuts, was pulled back by angry clawed fingers, and the blade went through his chest in a spray of cherry-red. The birds let out cries and went silent. There was no noise, no life, in the land, as one of their guardians was taken from them.

When Patroclus died, all things bright and fast and beautiful died with him. My grey world grew greyer, even before Achilles was shown his lover's body in the aftermath of war. He bent, clawing, wailing, at the gods above - to do something, to do anything, to save his dying lover. He begged to go in return, he begged for a savior, he pleaded for sanctuary. He cried out to the heavens for hours, for days, clinging to his lover's body in the ashen grey lands.

For those days, I watched. And so did Patroclus. His spirit was trapped beside me, with no proper burial or accepted goodbye. I watched as the spirit reached for his lover, only to pass through him. I waited as he sat on the rock, watching his lover cry, waiting for his lover to leave him, to abandon him. That time never came. Throughout the days the spirit and the human waited, wailed, and cried together, for each other. 

I took Patroclus's hand on the fifth day. He was not startled by my frozen touch, he was not upset about not receiving a proper burial or a Grecian send-off. No. He refused to go with me because, and I remember what he said very clearly: "I will not leave him alone." 

His voice was small but stronger than any spirit I had ever heard before. Strong but infinitesimal, quiet but decisive. He would not leave without his lover's hand in his own.

I respected him for that. Not only did I respect him, I feared him. No God had ever feared a mortal human before, but I was not embarrassed by my fear, nor was it misplaced. This man had a fire in his bones I had never before seen, willpower so deep and powerful that he would not be moved from Achilles's side. So I left him. I traveled along the River Styx, alerted Charon to a passenger that would never arrive. The thing about me and death is that we are in tandem, as one, and forever circling. I knew a death when I saw it, smelt it, heard it. This was not death. Patroclus was alive. He would always be alive. 

I told Hades this, and he listened. Persephone spoke to me about true love, her hand kind against her husband's, and I feel that this was the lovers' saving grace. Persephone, the Queen of the Underworld, alerted Aphrodite by means of a personal visit, and within hours of our time, Aphrodite and Eros were within the Underworld's company. Now I would listen. Now I would wait.

When Achilles died, I did not find Patroclus's spirit with him. I was not surprised. The days after a body dies, the spirit has nothing to hold on to. I wished I had given him that. I wished they had been given a better burial, with fire, with love, with singing, rather than a golden urn with mixed ashes put in a box and sent downstream. But there was something poetic about it. Them, being together, even after death. Foretold even by their burial.

Achilles was hollow as a bird, his body as fragile as glass, not a warrior's body anymore, with no fight left in his heart. I remember taking his spirit's hand and being surprised at just how warm it was. He was fragile, he was broken. But Achilles was determined, and fire blazed within him like the mountain Vesuvius, and I did not query him as we stepped into Charon's ferry. Alone.

Dawn broke when Achilles smiled. He was gazing over my shoulder. At what? At his lover, standing well on the shore, his beautiful sun-kissed hands held in front of him. He was at the very edge as if about to fall into the dreaded Styx - but fear was nowhere in his expression. Only delight. Only hope. Only love. 

I did not look at them when they met, weeping, on the bank, golden light spilling from their skin as they touched. I was gazing at Aphrodite, who had come with her message, with her contract. Hades stood beside her. And for the first time in many, many, eons, I saw a glimmer of hope in the old gods' eyes. I think they saw the same in mine. 

I am made of memories. 

Thanatos, the god of death, is made of memories. I am made of memories. I know every mortal life I have escorted over the Styx, each life I have ended, each plague I have brought, each wrathful war I have strung. Memories come. Memories go. Only one has ever stayed. And that is of Achilles and Patroclus, embracing as they walked from the underworld into a new life. A new future. A future where they were reborn.

His eyelids were the color of the dawn sky. His dark hair was tied back. His hand was touching his lover's, his feet were bare. His lips were full and cherry-red, and sweet laughter fell from his mouth.

His eyes were bright as diamonds, his body lean and true. He hogged the blankets in the morning, made tea for them both, every day. His eyes were kind. His hands did not shake, not anymore.

 There is no hardship there, not for them. They have fought their battle, their war. 

I am made of memories. 

Philtatos, my mind says, coming up to me, bubbling up in my mouth like brine. Philtatos. Most beloved. How wonderful, to be loved like that.