I’d learned since then.
“Yes,” she answered. Her son’s smooth, unworried face gazed up at her, and she glanced down at him. “I am happy here, now.”
And that was that. “I am sorry,” I whispered, knowing this was the last time I would ever see her or speak to her.
“I am as well,” she replied, and with that turned her back and left.
Her son lifted a baby hand, fist opening and closing in the same wave Astyanax had given me when he was alive. This is what she should have had all along. It’s what Hector should still have.
I’d taken this from them. Though in Helen’s case, I had delayed her happiness, not stolen it completely, like I had from Hector.
Without another word, I left Sparta, traveling through desert and mountains until I found my brother again. He was the one who needed me now.
There was a pause, as if Paris was gathering his thoughts and then I was pulled back into his memory.
“Hector.”
My brother ignored me. His gaze, bleary and red-eyed, was on the waves. I didn’t think he heard me at all. When I moved to stand in front of him, he lifted his face to mine and I went to my knees.
“Tell me what I can do.”
He stared beyond me, out at the water and the setting sun. “There’s nothing to do.”
His throat was raw from screaming in pain. I thought he’d done it this time, disappeared forever, but we were immortal, and somehow, always drawn to each other.
As much as we tried to stay apart.
“How many years, Paris?” he asked me. “How old would he be today?”
I couldn’t find my voice, even though I knew the answer. Today, his son would be the same age as his father. The age his father stayed—decade after decade.
Astyanax would have married and had sons and daughters of his own. Hector might be a grandfather.
“Our futures aren’t guaranteed,” he whispered. He opened and closed his fists. Earlier, I’d found him, bleeding and broken by the beach, surrounded by boulders he’d smashed in his rage. But his cries hadn’t been for the physical hurt, it was for the hurt that didn’t lessen no matter how many years passed. “I knew, as a soldier, I knew I could be killed and I accepted that. But never—even though it happened in every war—did I think my son would die.”
“I’m sorry.” I’d said this a million times and I’d say it for infinity. “Hector. I am so sorry,”
Shifting, he brought his knees up and rested his forearms on them. He stared at his hands, opening and closing them. “I don’t need your sorries. I just want my son.”
And I couldn’t give him Astyanax back. For all our power, it wasn’t the same as the gods. Only they could bring back the dead.
Sitting on the sand next to him, I could barely make out the slide of footsteps over the beach. One set, another.
Pollux, Achilles, and Orestes joined us. They’d been gone years, but somehow, we always ended up together around this time. Maybe they knew it was the day of Astyanax’s birth, or maybe they just knew it was the day Hector was at his lowest. Whatever it was, they were here, silent witnesses to my brother’s pain.
They sat next to us, lining the shore and staring out at the sunset. Guilt pounded in my breast where my heartbeat used to be. I had done this. I had damned us all.
Gasping, I wrenched my hand from Paris’s and tried to catch my breath. The pain and guilt were like a punch to the stomach. Despite the vision ending, all of those emotions—Paris’s emotions—lingered.
I hurt for him.
And I wondered why he wanted me to see both of those events. They had both gutted him. His love for Helen… what must it be like on the receiving end of that?
That wasn’t to take away from what he felt for Hector, but the intensity of the emotions—the guilt versus his love—they were evenly matched. And I didn’t know if he even realized that.
“It never goes away,” he said to me. His gaze was dark, blue eyes sad as he studied me. “I’ll carry what I took from them both for eternity. But I’ve never looked beyond it before. I sat in the pain, let it drown me. I want to breathe again, Leo.”
“But—”