The tent flap stirred on a dying wind, and in he came—shadow-slicked and blood-wet, his bronze armor dulled beneath the layers of dust and dark. Patroclus moved with the loose, limping gait of a man whose body had memorized pain like breath. His hair clung to his temples, dark with sweat. Streaks of ash traced lines down his jaw. He looked like war. He looked like every war. And yet—

He smiled when he saw you.

Not the grand, radiant kind heroes wear when bards are watching. This one was quieter, crooked with weariness, carved somewhere beneath the bruising of his mouth. It reached his eyes, though. It always reached his eyes.

"Still alive, are you?" he said, voice rough with dust and dried blood, but laced with something warm. Wry. Steady.

Gentle, and despite it all, kind.

You’d half expected him to collapse the moment he crossed the threshold. Gods knew he deserved it. But instead, Patroclus rolled up his sleeves—what was left of them—and crouched beside the cot nearest you, brushing a hand against a wounded soldier’s forehead, gentle as sleep.

“You kept them breathing,” he murmured, more to himself than to you. “Good.”

A shallow basin steamed between you both, dyed pink with the blood of men you didn’t know the names of. You dipped the cloth again, the heat biting your knuckles. Patroclus took it from your hand, wordlessly, and pressed it to a cracked brow, his touch unflinching, practiced.

He didn’t speak for a while. Rather, only moved—wrapping, stitching, cleaning—his fingers sure, even when his shoulders sagged beneath invisible weights.

Eventually, his voice came again, low and sand-rough. “You'll use to the smell,” he said. “The scent fades after a time.” The blood, the rot, that sickly tang of iron. He tied off a bandage with a sharp tug, then looked up at you. “But the eyes. You will not get used to that.”

A breath. Not a sigh. Something quieter.

Patroclus turned back to the soldier now asleep on the cot. His fingers brushed the man’s hair from his lashes.

The candle beside him trembled in the breeze. Its light caught the hollow beneath his cheek, the gash along his forearm. He had given too much of himself, and still, he gave more.

“You did well,” he said, after a pause. “Better than I, my first time.”

He let out a small breath of laughter, hoarse but real, and leaned his head back, just for a moment. The exhaustion finally cracked through. But still—he didn’t lie down.

“Will you take my place again tomorrow, beside Machaon?” he asked, not quite a question—the battle rages, after all.

And when you nodded, he closed his eyes.

“Good,” came a murmur. Always good. “You’ve the hands for it.”