heaven is here if you want it

The title for this piece comes from the song "Heaven is Here" by Florence + The Machine. Love you readers! This is my first Patrochilles work; if you haven't read The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller you ABSOLUTELY should.

When you reach the underworld, you feel no sadness. Instead, the feeling that rushes over you is unmistakably relief. It is the second time you encounter the river Styx in person, though you do not remember the first, when your mother dipped you in, holding you by the heel. Perhaps then you felt some young version of fear, dangling over the murky, swirling waters, but now, when Charon takes you over, you feel no terror, no dread.

You are only eager for the crossing, because you know he will be there.

As the other shore comes into view, you make out the figures of many people you don't know, and a few that you do. You see Ajax's hulking figure and gentle hands, and you wonder if you will ever earn forgiveness for leaving all who fought beside you to die. You wonder if you will even try.

But of course, you will. He will ask you to, and he is the one person you can never refuse. The one time you refused him was the one thing you would undo if you could change the course of your life just once.

Startlingly, he is not there, waiting to greet you.

You expected that he would be. You did not believe that he should be, not after Hector, after Briseis, not after sending him to his death over your arrogance and pride—but he has always cared for you, unfathomably and beyond reason. You gave him reason after reason to leave, piling each new burden upon him like stones in his pockets, and still he stood by your side, held your hand, ran his fingers through your bloody hair and washed it clean as you spoke to him of killing.

This is why you expected him to be here. You remember the day they brought back his body and the day they burned it. You remember the days between. You know that he is gone, that he should be there, and that he must know you are coming soon. He must know that you could not ever have let Hector live, and because of your revenge, you follow Hector across the river Styx.

And yet, he is not here.

You understand. You ended his life. You stole his slow smile, his gentle eyes and kind hands, his somber mouth and his boundless heart from the world. Perhaps he has finally found the thing that he cannot forgive you for; you have done it, you have finally crossed the last line, and there is nothing more for you but regret. In this moment, you feel that eternity in the afterlife is not long enough to encompass your regret, your endless aching and itching to do things over and set things right. You lived nearly your whole life able to reach out and puck from the world anything you ever wanted, and now that you want to go back in time and do things over, it feels as if the force of your desire alone should get you back there.

Yet time waits for no man, and it certainly doesn't turn backward.

This is the darker part of the underworld—not the darkest, but a hell of its own. Misery hangs in the air like a thick fog, and the rock above and below is as dark as night, shot through only with thin cracks of glowing molten rock, lighting the milling shades in an eerie glow. You cannot see walls in any direction; every way you turn simply fades into heavy gloom. The only feature of the landscape is the unforgiving river, glinting darkly.

He must be in Elysium, for he deserves nothing less. He deserves to walk the eternal fields of happiness among heroes, to laugh, to drink, to run, to feel Helios' sun on his face and the feel of grass beneath his feet. Even the most unfair god must give him that.

You know that you could follow him there. You could ascend to Elysium as the son of a goddess, as a hero. Aristos achaion, best of the Greeks. You do not deserve a place among them, but your mother has secured one for you. You could take it.