The broth hissed quietly, soft plumes of steam curling up into the dimness of the tent. Ash clung to the rim of the pot like a ghost that hadn’t learned to leave. You stirred slowly, the wooden ladle drawing circles that dissolved as soon as they formed. The stew smelled of lentils and garlic, richer than most mornings, but you weren't hungry. Your hands moved because you needed something to do. Because stillness made the silence louder.

Achilles sat just across from you, only a few feet away, though it felt like miles. He hadn’t spoken much since you woke. Not even when your fingers brushed his wrist by the edge of the blankets, not when you had leaned in, drowsy and warm, to rest your forehead briefly against his shoulder. Achilles had only offered a faint smile then, something tight and unreadable. Now he sat with his back partially turned, gaze fixed on the tent’s closed flap, watching for something on the other side of the canvas.

The shift was subtle, but not unseen.

His knuckles were pale around the edge of his knee.

His jaw clenched just slightly when you moved.

He did not speak right away. The stew bubbled on.

Last night still lingered on your skin. In the throb of muscle, in the shadows of touches you could still trace with your eyes closed. It hadn’t been frantic. No—that would have been easier to forget. It had been slow, aching. A mapping of reverence, of hands tracing truths unspoken, mouths learning the shape of restraint before surrender. The way Achilles had looked at you—desperate, reverent, almost afraid, so unlike himself—had felt like something sacred. Like the moment before a vow is spoken aloud.

But this—this morning—felt like a retreat.

“Are you going to avoid looking at me all day?”

You didn’t mean for it to come out sharp, but it did. Not angry. Tired, perhaps.

Achilles shifted, slightly. His fingers twitched, then stilled. “I’m not.”

“You are.”

A beat.

Silence answered you first.

"You’ll say if it was..."

He paused.

"...Only kindness. What you gave me last night."

You blinked once. Stilled. The ladle stilled, too. The fire cracked, then settled.

"The truth does not often phase me."

There was no accusation in the words. No bitterness. It was quieter than that, stranger. Achilles had never begged. Had never needed to. He was not asking if you meant it—he would never stoop to something so plain, after all.

No. He was asking if he deserved it. You.

That made you pause.

You studied the curve of Achilles’ shoulder, the way it hunched inward. This was not pride. Not vanity, no. This was the god-touched boy who had once curled in on himself after the spear had slipped from his grip in training, furious not at the failure, but the meaning. This was the boy who, for all his fire, feared one thing more than death—

Undeserving.