The B-List Monologues: Ajax

Right, so, I'm starting out with the working idea of using ancient mythology as a backdrop for modern writing.  That is to say, I'm essentially writing Greco-Roman myth fanfiction.  The idea here for what I'm calling the "B-List Monologues" is to do a series of pieces written from the point of view of the less well known personalities of Greco-Roman mythology.  The Muse is interested in Ajax today, so here we go.


Sometimes I ask myself how I got here and how my life came to this.  It's not like I wanted Helen, because I didn't.  Father wanted Helen, and I wanted to please Father.  Because that's what life is when your father's a bloody great hero; got to please him.  You bring him sacrifices to burn on his altar, and he either nods or turns away with no telling why.  He's the kind of father who names his son after the inarticulate wail of grief.  Aias.  What in Zeus' name was he thinking?

But father wanted Helen, and what father wants, father gets.  Achilles understood.  He'd have been right there with me if his voice weren't still honking and his beard weren't two hairs and a prayer.

I'd best back up some.  Achilles is my cousin.  Our fathers are brothers, and a sorry lot too, Telamon and Peleus.  Grandfather was no treat himself.  He took after good old father Zeus and would screw anything that moved.  Gods... they'll break you as soon as help you.  Not their fault, mind.  They just don't understand.  They get as many lives and chances as there are grains of sand on the shore.  Can't expect them to know about dying or glory or honor.  Just stay away.  That's my advice.

Right, so father.  He and Peleus killed their brother.  Over sport, if you can believe it.  Seems their own god-the-father got a little too enthusiastic cheering for Phocus at the games, and Telamon, that's my father if you're not keeping up, took care of it with a discus to the skull.  Peleus just hid the body.  Story of our lives; my branch does the killing, other people take the body.

So.  Grandfather's a rapist and father kills his own kin.  I don't care what they say; there's not enough cleansing in the world to wash off that kind of miasma.  He named his son with a wail of grief, and Peleus named his son for the pain of the people; Achilles.  You look at that and tell me if they feel clean or not.

When I was young, before I knew enough to really think about who my father really was, I'd do anything for him.  Kill?  Sure.  Go live with a centaur?  Fine.  Court Helen?  I did it.  Never mind we're both descended from that head-case Zeus, no.  Everyone in Greece wants her, and Father likes to win.  He killed his own brother so he could win.  So I went, and I prayed that I'd win and he'd love me.  No fool like a young fool.

So here I am on this shore with my cousin.  If our fathers were here, we'd be dodging a discus for sure.  "Win glory," they said.  "Become gods," they said.  What a load of bull.  We're dogs yapping at the legs of Agamemnon's table.  Oh, he made promises.  We'd be equals here, all of us kings.  There would be a council, and we could all have a say.  Booty won, glory sought, women and meat and tripods far as the eye could see.  "Lofty Ilion!" father was practically drooling.  "When the Argo berthed there, the very walls glimmered in gold!  It's a plum ripe for the picking."

"What about the walls, father?"

"Walls?"

"Never mind."  Teucer hunched back as he always does at table.  He's with us is Teucer, but not.  His mother was just some war-prize, and my mother hates her and her get.  It's not Teucer's fault.  But then, Teucer's a lucky sod because he's not father's project, his ego on display.  Maybe father expects me to kill Teucer like he killed his half-brother.  But in those days, with Troy and Aulis looming, I began to see.  I spoke up.

"Father, you told us that Poseidon built those walls.  If the earth-shaker himself rolled the stones, how is a mortal army supposed to breach them?"

Father's frown had thunder in it.  "Have I spent my best years and wealth to raise an ungrateful coward.  Dog!"

There are limits.  I felt my spine straighten as if the lash hadn't been made of words.  Sometimes in the past, it hadn't.  "Yes, father."

And there was an end to it.

I'm not him.  Achilles and I, back when we were with Chiron and away from all the mess back home, we swore to it.  We won't become them.  We'll do better.  We'll make it on our own two feet.  We won't go sniveling to the gods when we've stepped wrong.  No.  We'll speak up, stand up, show the Acheans what real heros are made of.

We didn't count on Agamemnon.  That dick.  He lies out both sides of his mouth and now!  Achilles is the only one with the balls to speak up, tell that fat wine-soaked bureaucrat to man up and honor the law of ransom before Apollo shoots us all to Hades.  Achilles is like that.  Achilles won't let some powerful ass hat screw over the people just because he wants to keep his bed warmer.

I knew Achilles would take it hard.  His glory's all he's got since that bitch of a goddess mother went and told him about his choice.  Pah.  His problem is he won't let it go.  He's won, by the gods!  Agamemnon's given in.  Publicly.  But that stupid choice hovers over him.  Glory or life.  Immortal death or mortal joy.  It's cruel is what it is.

I understand.  If I went back to Telamon and said, "Sorry, Father, but I'm not going to die for your glory.  My life is mine and I'm going to do better with it than you," I'd be beaten half to death and shoved right onto the next boat for Troy.  Peleus is just the same, though he's less direct.  Oh, he'd not beat and he'd not rage. He'd be disappointed.  Often.  Daily.  "The prophecy said you'd be greater than your father," and "To think the Best of the Acheans turned out to be a coward."  He'd chip and chip at Achilles' tender ego until death came as obscure mercy.

I wish I had the words to make it better for him.  Life looked so promising when we were with Chiron.  Glory and honor and combat and strategy, all ours.  We would be heroes.  What's better in life than to be a hero?

Oh, but the reality.  The biting, bitter reality.  We sold our rights to the simple pleasures of hearth and home for a lie.  Glory?  There is none of that here.  Only scraps from Agamemnon's table and the same daily humiliations we could have stayed home to get from our fathers.  Our bodies, our will, our swords slice Trojan flesh and blood, and slice well and truly.  We even get to keep the booty sometimes, and the fortunate have a god show up occasionally to save him.  Or kill him.  Both fortunate escapes from this ceaseless nightmare of blood and tents and the screams of women.  Tecmessa... Tecmessa.  I'm a father now too.  I can hardly bear the sight of that beautiful baby, knowing what lies ahead of him in this pisspot of a family.

Achilles has found out just how much he means to Agamemnon, all spelled out in women and gold.  The worth of his life, his fate, bought and sold like a slave at market.  Was I right to tell him to take what he could get, as I have?  Or was he right all along to tell Agamemnon and the war to sod off and let him be?  I haven't the words to say.  I'm not a man of words.

Very well, cousin.  Next move is yours.