No One But You

Chapter One : And So It Is

A/N : Briseis is a survivor

And so it is
Just like you said it would be
Life goes easy on me
Most of the time
And so it is
The shorter story
No love, no glory
No hero in her sky'

Damien Rice, 'The Blower's Daughter'

Briseis found herself trembling as she stood on the chariot that bore her away from her lover. She kept her eyes fixed on the place that he had stood, long after he had been swallowed up by the darkness, and in her heart, she would keep watching him forever.

She felt the chariot slowing, and pulled herself out of her reverie. Surely the distance between the Achaean beaches and the Trojan walls could not have been covered so quickly? But when she looked around her they were still in the middle of the empty space where neither the fires from the Greeks, nor the lamps on the Trojan walls were visible.

Priam pulled the horses to a halt, and turned to face his niece, who stood beside him. She was still looking backwards, towards the place where she had been a slave, as if transfixed. Slowly she turned her face towards him, but, as their eyes met, Priam realised that the girl he had known was long gone. In her place was a sad, quiet woman, one who knew pain, and would always carry the scars inflicted on her in the past few days.

"Briseis," Priam said, trying to pull the girl away from the black thoughts, and remind her that she was safe. "Briseis?"

Briseis blinked slowly, and suddenly saw her uncle in front of her; instead of the gaping blackness that had occupied her sight from the moment that she had lost sight of Achilles.

"Briseis, whatever happened to you, it wasn't your fault. You are still a priestess and my beloved niece," Priam told her, but instead of comfort, which he had been trying to offer her, it seemed to bring her more pain, for she flinched at his words, and turned her face away from him.

"I cannot be a priestess any more," she said, but her voice sounded harsh, and hollow.

"Briseis, do not blame yourself for what happened to you," Priam said, struggling to ease the pain that she was in. "Sometimes...sometimes the Gods send these things to test us...to make us stronger to serve them better."

Even in her angst-stricken state, Briseis could not fail to see the irony in the old King's words. Yes, the Gods had sent her to the Greeks' camp to test her, and she had failed their test bitterly.

But she could not say any of this to her uncle. How would he understand the fear, and misery that she had felt in Achilles' tent? How could he understand what it was to give into temptation, and to lie awake for hours afterwards, wracked with guilt, and trying to reason that it was better to go to him willingly, than risk rape at the hands of the soldiers? How could he understand what it was to wonder whether, perhaps, she had been more than just another whore to him? She could not make him comprehend any of this, and so she would not try.

"I cannot return to the temple," she repeated softly.

Priam sighed. Did the girl not see that she was only making things harder for herself? But she had suffered. There was no doubt of that. Perhaps she would return to the temple when she was ready. He would not push her. "As you wish," he told her, his voice gentle, and yet it only made Briseis flinch more. She could not deal with affection or kindness of any sort now. Not yet.

Priam gathered the reins up, and clicked with his tongue as the horses moved off again. Briseis, he noted, had gone back into her silent trance, but this time she was not staring off into the darkness. She was staring into her hands. Her hands, which clasped something so tightly that her knuckles had turned white.

Priam remembered Achilles putting something in his niece's hands as they parted, and wondered what it was. As he thought about their parting, it seemed stranger and stranger to him. Achilles had not treated her as a whore, nor she him as a master. Instead, they had been almost reluctant to leave each other. A doubt began to grow in Priam's mind, and though he tried to push it away, the look that he had seen in Briseis' eyes returned to him.

The old king pulled the horses to a stop sharply this time, starting Briseis from her stupor, and when he spoke, his voice was, though not unkind, far less gentle.

"What is Achilles to you?" he demanded of her.

Briseis raised her hazel brown orbs to meet his penetrating gaze, no longer caring what he saw in her face. "A captor," she said bitterly.

Priam said nothing, but kept his eyes locked on hers. "Briseis," he said eventually, his voice full of regret. "I know it made it easier for you to believe he cared for you. I understand that. But remember, now you are free of him, he killed Hector. He is the greatest threat to Troy that exists on this earth. Do not speak of him, or if you must, remember everything he took from you." His words were deliberately harsh, but Briseis did not shy away from them as she had when he had tried to console her. She met his unspoken challenge head-on.

Briseis had changed much in the few short days that she had been a prisoner. When she had been a priestess, she would never have contemplated defying an order from her uncle, unspoken or not, but she found herself wanting to tell him that he was wrong: that Achilles had been kind to her, that she loved him, that not even Hector's memory could change that. But before she spoke, something Priam had said flashed through her mind: 'I know it made it easier to believe he cared for you', and she found herself thinking that maybe, just maybe, the old man was right. Perhaps she had just imagined any affection. Perhaps she had been nothing but a whore. It was a small doubt, but it was a doubt nonetheless, and it was enough to stay Briseis' fierce words, and make her bow her head.

Satisfied that she would do as he asked, Priam flicked the reins again and the horses moved off into a trot. Though his own mind moved on from what he had said, the words burned like a brand inside Briseis' mind, until she no longer knew truth from lie.

A /N : This story was and is not written by me but by the original author LadyOfThieves . Unfortunately she is not that active on Wattpad or even has one as far as I'm concerned so this is me just putting one of her many great works out there . This book was my personal favorite of hers from her book page on Fanfiction.net, if you want to read this book or others from her page on Fanfiction.net click/copy this link :
https://m.fanfiction.net/u/792883/.
Guys please support her as much as you can... she really deserves it .