Achilles loved you like no one ever could—with awe, with fury, with a reverence that bordered on madness. You, the quiet storm with bronze skin and aquamarine eyes that had seen too much, were the only thing that ever made the son of Thetis forget he was a demigod bound to tragedy.

You never spoke the way scholars would write—your grammar was always off, and it made him grin like a boy again, like Phthia’s sun was still warm and nothing had burned yet. You were tireless, always riding horses faster than most men could think, arriving with sand in your hair and ink-stains on your fingers. You painted with the same logic you fought with: no hesitation, only intent. There were messengers that flew at your command, food left uneaten when your mind drifted to war maps, jokes muttered beneath your breath while sitting on his table with your feet up like it was your throne.

He was bronze and glory and myth.

You were blood and bone and something truer.

And yet you matched him blow for blow—on the battlefield, ten men dead before your shadow even passed them, and in the tent, where your laughter undid him faster than Hector’s spear ever could. Achilles touched you like a man terrified of gods, as if you were the last mercy Olympus would ever give him. He buried his hands in your hair and whispered against your ear that you were faster than Hermes, more radiant than Helios, and more precious than the armor Hephaestus forged for him.

You hated sarcasm. So he learned to speak plainly.

You disliked stomach cramps. So he warmed your belly with his palms, lying beside you in the quiet, worshipping you with silence.

And when the Chinese emperor sent a panda as tribute for your victory, Achilles was furious—not with jealousy, but with amazement that the world could try and measure your worth with even something that rare. He watched you feed it spicy food and laugh when it sneezed, and he wanted to bottle that laugh, carry it into war, use it to blind the gods.

Because in the end, Achilles knew: he was not meant to grow old. But if he could die with your name on his lips, your scent still clinging to his bronze skin, and your fingers paint-stained and resting on his heart—then it would not be dying at all. It would be the closest thing a man like him could get to peace.

You were not his weakness. You were the rebellion he chose.

You were not the war.

You were what made surviving it worth something.

He looked up from his war maps when he sees you duck into the tent.