little bluebird ( wmmap )

𝗈𝗇𝖾 . 𝗅𝗂𝗍𝗍𝗅𝖾 𝗉𝗋𝗂𝗇𝖼𝖾

𝐖𝐇𝐎 𝐌𝐀𝐃𝐄 𝐌𝐄 𝐏𝐑𝐈𝐍𝐂𝐄𝐒𝐒
★ 𝖼𝗁𝖺𝗉𝗍𝖾𝗋 𝗈𝗇𝖾
( tw; mentions of abuse and gore )

           Achilles del Alger Obelia was a pitiful boy, an outcast from society and life. Unlike Athanasia who lived in Ruby Palace, Achilles was sent to the Sapphire Manor— where his life would be hell. Lillian chose Athanasia over him, leaving him behind to beggars and leftover butlers and maids of the castle. Unlike his twin— whom he never met until his eighth birthday— was unloved by even the cooks who resided in the kitchen. With a name like the emperors, he was destined to be alone and cold. Yet in the end, he couldn't protect himself.

It was his eighteenth birthday when it happened, when Athanasia was killed even before her verdict. That's when his story truly began. No, Achilles never had love for Athanasia— for he couldn't even phantom what love was. He grew up a child that was used, starved, and abused by all beside him and never allowed himself to trust anyone. His once soft and wide eyes turned narrow and became like daggers with age, his skin a pale and heavy colour. Achilles was running from a group that wished to hurt his father, it was truly funny and ironic at that.

Truth be told, Achille's looked more like a fourteen-year-old than an eighteen-year-old due to malnutrition and the effects it caused on him. His scrawny arms were frail, and could barely hold a sword. His thin legs could hardly run for another second, he was oh so weak. Achille's breath was heavy and shallow for only running a short distance, yet he knew how to be agile and miss the hands of his caretakers. He had years of experience in running and dodging.

His boot cladded feet pounding across the grass, creating small indents from the force he was pushing himself to keep on running. How these people entered the palace and entered his manor was unknown to him, but he had done this before— he just had to wait for a palace guard to show up. Achille didn't even let out a noise of pain as an arrow entered his arm, merely clenching his jaw and reminding himself of the time when his maid broke one of his wrists for misbehaving. He repeated in his head what he repeated then, he can't feel anything. Don't make a noise, don't let them know that they've hurt you.

They enjoy that.

The shouts and taunting from behind him were unnerving, he wondered truly when the knights would show up. Would they even come this time? Achille was still the forgotten little prince, a boy forced to grow up too soon. " Princey? Come on, you're tired. We can hear you breathe."

It was bound to happen one of these days, Achille just hated that he survived this long to be ended by these... imbeciles. A coarse and breathless laugh left the small boy's lips as he slowed down. It was daunting and bitter at the same, like he was looking back at a nostalgic yet painful memory. The golden-haired boy turned around, his hunters looking at him with shocked, wide eyes. His bejeweled blue eyes narrowed into slits, looking as crazed as his father.

  
" You- You really think he cares for me?"

He was screaming now, bitterness and hate seeped into his once afraid tone. The capture felt frozen under the eyes of the beast. " Do I look like I'm cared for? Do my bones not stick out of my arms and my cheeks hang hollow? Do I look like someone the Emperor treasures? Surely not! Surely not, you fools!"

His words were screaming to the gods, yelling for love, for a new beginning— yelling for another life.

   " Do you not hear my name that he has given me? Achilles. Do you know what that means? Pain! God, do you not think before you act? I am unloved and forgotten in the eyes of the oh-so-great Emperor Claude."

The men clad in hunter gear and black clothes seemed to watch him as he screamed for the world to hear him. His teeth bared and boney fists clenched together. They noticed he was right, his clothes were baggy on his small, thin body, his cheeks hung low and his complexion was of a deathly pallid hue. The wind whirled faster, leaves mixing into the breeze that seemed to get denser around the Prince. His knees fell to the ground as he let out his anguish, the sky becoming dark and moody just like him.

The cloud roared and the sky screamed in suffering, everything shook as the boy cried for someone he never was. On the side of his blurred vision, were two new pairs of eyes staring at the boy in shock and surprise. The hunters laid dead— thorns, torn from the roots of the trees around them, stabbed into their mangled bodies. Their eyes, still wide in shock as they laid impaled, seemed almost white with sheen– dead.

   Yet, in the middle of the raging storm, was a small boy with sobbed bitter, salty tears. Roots, butchered into spikes, surrounded his form, growing like weeds from the ground underneath.

Jeanette was kept safe in the castle, yet this boy fought both sides of his war. His boney hands laid against his hair, pushing into his skull with frustration. His muddy and bloody knees were on the grassy ground and his face was the most shocking. Those jewel blue eyes narrowed and screamed for help, yet his face twisted in wretched misery and furious resentment.

Claude watched in the revelation of the small boy birthed of the treacherous woman, seeing his fleeting courage morph into exhaustion. Felix watched beside him with weeping eyes, heart crumpling from the torturous sight. The boy's face turned sour as he began to taste blood, and the Emperor only gazed with melancholy as it dripped from the eighteen-year-old's lips.

Achille's felt his gaze on his fleeting form, and for some reason, it only made his rage grow in agony.

" I can't wait to die Claude. I'll finally escape you."

With dark red coating his lips, the boy turned malicious, falling back into the black void. The last words, spoken with true animosity, were unforgiving. However, when he saw those icy, narrowed eyes of his bastard of a father, he smiled spitefully.

Only his death brought his father to him after all this time.

Achilles felt only filled with peace and security in the velvety darkness.

Edited: May 12/22