The early morning air was cool and fresh on Mount Pelion, where the sunlight filtered softly through the leaves, casting patches of golden light onto the forest floor.

Achilles and Patroclus sat on a large, flat rock overlooking the edge of the mountain with their legs dangling off the edge, eyes gazing into the green expanse below. The mountain had become a place of refuge and learning for them, a sanctuary far removed from the watchful eyes of kings and the looming fate that awaited them both.

“You learn everything so quickly,” Patroclus said, half teasing, but with a hint of awe as he made reference of the countless things Achilles could do at first try that he himself would take hours or even days to do so.

Achilles smiled, his eyes glinting in the light. “I learn what I want to,” he replied, nudging Patroclus playfully. “But if you taught me something, I’d learn it even faster.”

Patroclus laughed, his cheeks warming. Here, with no one but Chiron around, Achilles’s eyes held only warmth, stripped of the distance they’d sometimes held in the courts of kings. This Achilles was different, gentle, his laugh echoing across the quiet mountainside.

They lay back on the rock, side by side, staring up at the swaying branches, letting the silence settle around them. Patroclus felt his heart beat steady as the moments passed, in rhythm with Achilles’s breathing beside him.

“Achilles," Patroclus murmured after a while, his voice softer, almost hesitant. “Sometimes, I wish we could stay here. That none of it, the prophecies, the wars, the expectations, mattered.”