I fell into a burning ring of fire [closed/complete]
Characters: Agamemnon, Briseis
Date/Time: Evening, November 8
Location: Elevator
Rating: PG-13?
Warnings: Agamemnon can be a very creepy fellow when his thoughts are not censored by his eloquence, and rather broadcasted by narration.
Summary: Misfortune likes to visit Briseis in the form of a cruel elevator and, as always, Agamemnon, King of Kings.
The elevator shaft moaned in protest to the hour-a low, gurgling objection that rumbled in its creaky, metal throat and beat down all twelve floors, as if the size of the whine would make Agamemnon have to visit the lobby any less. The machine was understandably exhausted after a full day of hard labor and perhaps perturbed that its slumber was so rudely interrupted with the simple punch of a button-at eleven, no less. What was so easy for the King became so bothersome for its weary cables, cogs, and mechanisms that the elevator, for a few brief moments, completely stalled in stubborn immaturity on its way up to the fifth floor with sharp, high-pitched whines that the man could register from his position outside of the sliding doors. He frowned, and his features crinkled with age and similar exhaustion as he buzzed it again, punching the lit button impatiently, over and over, until it succumbed reluctantly and the doors slid open.
In all honesty, Agamemnon wanted to go down just about as much as it did. He slammed his fist on the panel to shut the doors, and aimlessly clicked for the lobby while he dropped his weight against the far corner and made himself as comfortable as he could while leaning against the complimentary bars (for gripping, he suppose) with sharp edges. In his drowsy state, he failed to register more important things-cruel foreshadowing or the elevator jerking up instead of down.
Fresh air. It was all Briseis wanted. Her headache had actually faded, but it left her with a mild degree of impatience that rendered the presence of two men and a demanding puppy completely unbearable. Thus, she had removed her head from the window, said her goodbyes ("No, honestly, I'm fine!") and escaped to the corridor with the bare necessities. Even a few steps away from the apartment, with one arm in her coat sleeve, she could feel herself relaxing a little. Apparently her personal sphere had expanded to encompass the entire apartment. Her habit of mercilessly prodding the button until the elevator arrived was dropped in favour of trying to finish dressing herself. Still, only one arm was in its sleeve, her purse barely hanging from that shoulder. The other arm juggled trying to put the scarf on properly and join its sister in the coat. Then, of course, there would be more buttons to contend with, but those could wait.
The elevator doors opened in something of a perverse distortion of a scene from a blockbuster romance. Time stopped long enough for Briseis to realise who her travel companion was to be, all other thoughts faded to black and everything leapt into fast-forward. The purse slipped from her shoulder into the elevator, her other arm jammed in it's sleeve--buttons, there were still the buttons to think of. Flight was winning over fight, but she still managed to propel herself forward slightly, lingering over the threshold.
Somewhere in the blurs of red and gold patterns (aesthetically pleasing swirls of nothing) that adorned the complex walls, Agamemnon’s dazed vision deciphered hues too natural and perfect to be anything but human. The browns and tans settled at the top of his vision-barely there-and shuffled overhead his direct line of sight in a blurry, fluffy, impressionistic state. Those clouds of pigments, appearing vaguely heavenly to a man drugged by sleep, lingered above the leafy-patterned carpet that his gaze was presently focused on, and Agamemnon could detect the slightest trace of uneasiness from their thick, cumulous hull of flesh, hair, denim, and wool. He noted somewhere in the back of his mind that the frothy, smeared colors of humanity and femininity were storming. And his curiosity was so poked and prodded by this notion that after a brief moment he slid his gaze up to observe the thunderhead.
How the haze morphed itself into the figure of Briseis, Agamemnon realized, was something he’d never be able to fully describe. But she shifted in and out of Monet, and Joseph Turner, Degas, and Renoir. She often settled with Cassat’s brush for longer moments, but ultimately fled to some other obscure metaphor before the King could catch her in words. She swayed in the doorway very pale and frozen and indescribable. Agamemnon smiled politely, straightened himself, and gave a nod.
“Nice weather we’re having.”
"Weather..." Had the situation been different, with different people in a different elevator, that would have been a question rather than a confused echo. I'm sorry, I didn't quite catch your meaning. Instead, the word was left hanging, along with Briseis' trail of thought. Stubbornly staring at her purse and nowhere else, she managed only a near-inaudible, staggered request ("I just want--um, my purse--could you...?") while the closing doors ushered her inside rather forcefully. The fact they caught her ankle in the process garnered only a momentary frown, though she'd feel it later. Right now her attention was focused almost entirely on the General.
Briseis stared at her purse for what felt like an age, before snatching it from the floor, completely unable to voluntarily kneel in front of him for any reason. Fixing her coat, she turned to face the doors, her eyes fixed on a point past the walls, and purposefully backed herself up against the back of the elevator. She didn't have to look at him if she didn't want to. He couldn't make her. Regardless, she fidgeted unconsciously with her wedding ring as though it were a talisman--with the right prayers, and if she didn't look, he would go away.
But not to respond to an attempt at conversation was rude, and some habits were impossible to shake. "I... I suppose so. It--it's subject to... opinion."
“They say,” Agamemnon mused, expelling a heavy sigh and absently straightening his rumpled clothes, “that’s what you’re not supposed to do.” He glanced at Briseis’ position in the back of the elevator distastefully and clarified: “cornering yourself.” The doors slid close with a happy ding, and Agamemnon smiled.
“Good for you.”
With a heavy lurching sound, the elevator was slowly off, quivering with effort under the great strain of late night tragedy. Nevertheless, it descended faithfully, albeit jerkily, and rattled down the apartment complex occasionally gagging and choking on itself. Its muscles tightened, and it extended itself and pulled back and continued, halting indecisively at random points, as if unsure if this was the right thing to do despite the lit up commands of “lobby.” There was, or might have been an unsettling ache in its belly which compelled it to want to retch Briseis out of its body and far, far away from Agamemnon-or vice versa. Honestly, it wanted neither of them. A large, ill belch rumbled down the shaft again. It halted for a moment. And with a screech lurched forward, trying to make itself throw up.
Agamemnon grunted absently at the building’s sickness and swallowed his next comment on the weather. Forgetting it, he said instead “It’s a lovely ring.”
Despite that nauseating sinking feeling that seemed rather determined to bring her to her knees--or at least the floor--and that veiled something Agamemnon had shared (she trusted nothing uttered by a Greek, let alone this one), Briseis forced herself to stand tall. Shoulders pushed back, she lifted her chin and silently begged him to leave her alone. She would have considered praying, but while the gods were close by, none of them would hear her.
She had never been Claustrophobic, but the combination of being boxed in with the General and the manner in which the elevator moved was steadily leading her towards blind panic. Hands trembling and teeth clenched, she closed her eyes, breathing slowed down to that strange, measured intake one adopts as a child, hiding from the adults.
"What?" Briseis' eyes snapped open and she looked across with a fair degree of uncertainty--that's not a compliment, it can't be, it never is. "I--... thank you." But both hands disappeared behind her back, bracing themselves against the wall in anticipation of a head-on collision. She didn't want to play along with this conversation.
Agamemnon peered carefully at the red and gold board, brooding over his next move. Both of their positions were so early and too young in the game; he could not decipher where he wanted to go, what he wanted to do, how it would end up, how it should end up. He resented, presently, the walls of the lurching elevator and how it had thrust him on a battlefield earlier than he expected. He wasn’t ready for it, and he hadn’t thought about it. Briseis, he noted, was not in any way Achilles, Artemis, Zeus, etc. But she was all the same a bridge, and she teetered and panicked carefully on the game board-slid carelessly into a vulnerable square of space. For a few brief moments he frowned, and nurtured a swell of pity and sign of humanity that arose in him. But he fell, unfortunately, to concern and there, towering over the board, made his move as he sympathetically observed the smooth, pale, wooden curves of the pawn shadowed by his looming presence. The leafy patterned, “rich” colored, carpet board lurched again. And with that desperate retch he noted quietly.
“That’s an interesting move you made, Briseis.”
Paused, then added in a lower tone.
“It’s the kindest way I can think of it.”
There was a short drop in the car.
“‘Interesting,’ I mean.”
The elevator began to turn banshee and screeched and squealed down the shaft.
“Because I’m sure you have some explanation for your family when they come.”
Interesting move, kindest, interesting... Briseis' line of sight dropped to Agamemnon's shoulder as she almost unconsciously tried to decipher every remark made before the punchline could be seen over the horizon. Belatedly, of course, since she had known from the moment the ring was mentioned. Confirming a guilty conscience that had just now come into existence, both hands slipped from behind her back to her pockets and balled into fists. The strike was expertly drawn out. The run-up kept her distracted, ignorant in her own panic, filing through every possibility until the last syllable was uttered. And then even the metal case she was trapped in shrieked its disapproval.
Flushed cheeks drained completely in horror, but she said nothing. Her mind was blank; all thoughts of defense or confession rendered completely useless. But therein lay the problem either way--he was right. She tried desperately to chase away time-altered memories of a still living family whose deaths her mind had seen fit to erase. Even the present was beginning to blur--she blinked her eyes clear and the tears burned.
"I tried--" she began weakly,"--tried to--to..." That sentence was abandoned in favour of an attempt to move further into the corner, fingers clawing at her scarf to give her room to breathe. For a moment she stared at the scarf in her hand before voicing the one word that had been circling her thoughts since she let the doors close behind her. "Why?"
While Agamemnon had been the one to make the move, slide the bishop over to Briseis, knock her over, smash against her, stone her conscience, and damage her being to the will and whim of it’s king, he had not expected such a cowering or violent reaction, or for the blow to be so effective against her. He frowned vaguely, a modicum of admiration (for the clear pre-awareness of her betrayal-he didn’t need to tell her after all) stirring. Had he known that she was already bruised, he maintained for the sake of his own conscience, he certainly would not have hit so hard. But the strike was effective nonetheless and she did rock presently on the brink of total breakdown, an unpleasant but favorable position for he and his family. He reminded himself that Briseis’ wails and sobbing was for the sake of his descendents’ peace from the myrmidons and that with or without him it would’ve come to pass, eventually, when Cronus plucked her family to Manhattan. It would’ve happened. The honor of the trigger happened to fall on him-it could’ve fallen to Hector, or Priam, or Paris.
The elevator seemed to scrape down the rest of the tunnel with a deafening shriek in mourning of Briseis’ humiliation and vulnerability. It rocked to the bottom of the complex, shivering at the lobby and opened its mouth-sick to its stomach at the drama-to expel the cancer. Agamemnon moved his hand cautiously to Briseis’ shoulder and shushed her quietly. He wrapped his influence around her, taking a strong grasp of her other arm and urging her out of the space.
“You need some air,” he commented, and motioned towards the waiting area. “You should sit down.”
Swallowing the whimper that would have only confirmed her already obvious discomfort in that physical contact, Briseis slowly lowered her eyes to her feet and let the view remain unfocussed. It both infuriated and terrified her that one gesture from the General could leave the words locked firmly behind her teeth and her feet dragging to a destination he had chosen; that he could find just one loose thread--found? or had it been created for him?--and leave everything completely unraveled. These were not pieces she could put back together. There was no easy way back from this. Some of their faces she could not even remember--did he realize that? Would she even recognize them if they were to show up? Would they recognize her?
It wasn't as if she could even disagree--wasn't fresh air the only reason she was down here? And her knees were threatening to buckle if she didn't move herself from harm's way soon. Both arms pulled up to hug her midriff, purse now hanging from her elbow and the scarf tied in knots. She had stopped, her feet refusing to take her further. The idea of sitting down like a good girl was not something she could stomach.
"I'd--I'd rather stand outside." Any honorifics she may have usually added were bitten off the end of the sentence, stuck in some kind of limbo along with everything else she didn't dare say. "Please."
The couple glided over the paisley carpet ballroom, spinning circles through the pink teardrops and brown flourishes. With one hand hovering over the girl’s waist in an exercise of security, Agamemnon whirled them through the lobby. Light-footed, and silver tongue, he chose his words and movements cautiously and maintained restraint in his waltz. He swayed his hand to grab her hand. He swung his step with hers. He twisted their perspectives and caught them in a dizzy trap. He tangoed with the implications, two-stepped over the words, watched both their feet, and spun them gracefully around in circles and in a fantastically baffling dance. He enjoyed the romance of the image-fantasy-of dancing with Briseis and maintained that thought and, consequently, his good humor.
“Outside? In Manhattan? At this time of night?” the words strut out, prancing delightfully off of his tongue. “I’m sorry, I doubt that’s a very good idea, Briseis.” He whirled her over to one of the more comfortable sofas and released her hand as he sat in the armchair directly opposite. “Sit down,” he commanded beautifully, and all in all their tango, he thought, was an exquisite show even if it was the slightest bit one-sided.
“Do you need a tissue, or a handkerchief, or something?”
"I've walked home on my own before," Briseis muttered in a tone that tried to convince itself that it was not frightened. Not particularly expecting Agamemnon to be in any way satisfied with that response, she glanced around. The lack of obvious life signs made her feel sick. "And I--I have pepper spray..." She wouldn't dare use it on him--he would never give her the chance--but she still made a point of not reaching for it, or even looking at her purse. Gods help her, she had a sense of self-preservation. Which didn't explain how she had ended up in the elevator to begin with.
Muted by her own discomfort, she stared at the sofa for a moment before looking up again, almost as if she didn't know what he expected her to do with it. He gave the order and her limbs automatically shifted, joints bending to obey as quickly as possible, pausing only to smooth her coat out underneath her. Somewhere in the back of her mind she could hear herself scream and bridle against the idea of anyone having that much power over her--she wished she was that strong.
It took a moment for that series of questions--or one larger question?--to process, and she closed her eyes to try to block out any background noise while she concentrated. "I, um... I think--" Her hands patted down the pockets of her coat, though the search was abandoned fairly quickly. The item in question was in her purse. "--Never mind. I'm fine." That statement wasn't true, but it wasn't meant to be. It was a knee-jerk response when she had nothing else to say. And though her wedding ring, perched on top of her clasped hands, provided an almost ideal distraction from the man sitting opposite her, the sight of it drove her to look elsewhere.
There was an undeniable beauty in Briseis’ movement that Agamemnon took a moment to admire. He was, granted, a busy man, largely concerned with the world on the whole, the bigger picture, huge issues, and their effects but somehow that preoccupation with the monumental made the occasional moments that he focused on the simple things all the more precious. Lounging comfortably across from the feather-cushioned prison he had sentenced her to, Agamemnon watched small Briseis carefully and smiled. She shined in that light and, as she bent down, vaguely resembled some pious Western masterpiece-a glowing pilgrim in prayer. Tiny and soft, easily breakable, she appeared to him in that moment-the one he decided he wanted to own-as something perfect, pure, and virtuous. Something he had no desire to ruin and, simultaneously, had every bit of outrage at knowing it already had been. She seemed little, endearing, vulnerable, daughter-like; though she had appeared to him like so more than once before.
There was a certain delight in owning the doll to such a degree, and he grinned at her from across the mahogany sea that was the coffee table between them. He leaned forward, resting his arms on his knees and clasping his hands together as he visibly contemplated the situation. It may very well have been a matter of what he was willing to sacrifice for his real daughters, though all the same he pitied her--not only for the ring on her finger, though it did glint wickedly in the fluorescent light. He stared it down, before reaching out and touching the hand it fed off of.
“Now,” he began, rubbing his thumb over the gold. “Hector. Your family.” He paused to let it sink in before concluding with “I do not mean to distress you but it would come out eventually and better it be in front of me than him? Contrary to popular belief, I have little quarrel with your husband-after all, he was part of my army-other that his tendency toward immaturity and, of course,” his grip tightened. “What happened to your cousin.”
“I hope you’ll keep in mind that your husband’s actions do not reflect my army. He was on his own then.”
Briseis did not see that grin from across the table. She didn't. Didn'tdidn'tdidn't. She certainly did not want to know what he was thinking--the warped image of a sophist in reflection--but the moment his hand found hers, she recoiled. Of course, an arm's length was as far away as she could possibly get, since neither hand would agree to escape with her and instead remained pinned in place by his. The ring apparently drew more of his attention, and she watched him carefully--a touch of hostility added to the already existing combination of fear and revulsion. Agamemnon was no witch doctor or high priest, and the ring would not be cursed when he released it, but the man had a disturbing talent for bringing forth nagging doubts.
That he had the audacity to bring up her family was beyond her current understanding, though his declaration regarding her possible distress garnered a brief and rather forced laugh, cut off by the increased pressure on her hand.
"They died. And it was war," she stated at length, her tone lacking in feeling. "I expected little else." Tilting her head sadly, she shook it and switched to her native language. "Not from a Greek, at any rate."
For a while, riding the high of fatherly affection and accomplishment, Agamemnon felt a bright, golden wind--stream of blood, or brilliant energy--flowing from Briseis to him; speeding through the bridge their hands made and sparking at the ring which he was still throttling with the choke of his thumb. It was a steady flow of confidence and contentment, and a sporadic dance of liveliness that was cut short at the source the moment sound came out of her mouth. Speaking at all from the doll was not expected--let alone the words she chose in particular. He glanced up from her gold-banded husband to her, smile stolen, grip tightening on her hand. His forehead knit in contemplation, and his lips pursed for a moment before he cleared his throat and rubbed her hand, presumably in comfort. Her lack of compliance irritated him as only a daughter to him could.
“No,” he mused and eyed her carefully, “they don’t die like that. Or, rather, their death isn’t dragged on that long-quite literally-though I promise the pun is unintended.” He raised her hand and kissed it briefly, avoiding the ring. “And you married him, my dear.”
“Though I suppose very little can be done about that now. Do what you can with this ring. My deepest sympathies.” He dropped her hand, and leaned back into the embrace of the armchair. “You may go.” A few moments of silence on his part lapsed before he added, “And Briseis?”
Watching him intently--the way a schoolgirl watches a teacher to assess whether they truly know who threw that paper airplane--Briseis noted every movement, every muscle that twitched in Agamemnon's face, though she didn't know what any of it meant. Had he understood her? What was the price for insolence in the here-and-now? Just the fact he held her hand tighter would have been enough to push her into a wave of apologies had he shown any real outward sign of anger. She waited for it, even as he rubbed her hand, but it didn't come.
Arguably what did come next was worse, but only because she couldn't refute it. Hector's death had gone down in history, as brutal as it was. The deaths of her family had been blocked from her mind years ago. Yes, I married him. She nodded dumbly, staring at the spot on her hand that she would have argued had been violated. The rest of his 'sentiments' flew over her head. She needed to be as far away from him as possible.
Again, the General gave the word and Briseis was off the sofa as fast as she could ever hope to move, managing at least a few steps before she was recalled. Her name was enough to make her turn back round to face him, though she refused to make eye contact. She definitely couldn't answer.
"Try and keep him off my family."
"Yes sir."
Date/Time: Evening, November 8
Location: Elevator
Rating: PG-13?
Warnings: Agamemnon can be a very creepy fellow when his thoughts are not censored by his eloquence, and rather broadcasted by narration.
Summary: Misfortune likes to visit Briseis in the form of a cruel elevator and, as always, Agamemnon, King of Kings.
The elevator shaft moaned in protest to the hour-a low, gurgling objection that rumbled in its creaky, metal throat and beat down all twelve floors, as if the size of the whine would make Agamemnon have to visit the lobby any less. The machine was understandably exhausted after a full day of hard labor and perhaps perturbed that its slumber was so rudely interrupted with the simple punch of a button-at eleven, no less. What was so easy for the King became so bothersome for its weary cables, cogs, and mechanisms that the elevator, for a few brief moments, completely stalled in stubborn immaturity on its way up to the fifth floor with sharp, high-pitched whines that the man could register from his position outside of the sliding doors. He frowned, and his features crinkled with age and similar exhaustion as he buzzed it again, punching the lit button impatiently, over and over, until it succumbed reluctantly and the doors slid open.
In all honesty, Agamemnon wanted to go down just about as much as it did. He slammed his fist on the panel to shut the doors, and aimlessly clicked for the lobby while he dropped his weight against the far corner and made himself as comfortable as he could while leaning against the complimentary bars (for gripping, he suppose) with sharp edges. In his drowsy state, he failed to register more important things-cruel foreshadowing or the elevator jerking up instead of down.
Fresh air. It was all Briseis wanted. Her headache had actually faded, but it left her with a mild degree of impatience that rendered the presence of two men and a demanding puppy completely unbearable. Thus, she had removed her head from the window, said her goodbyes ("No, honestly, I'm fine!") and escaped to the corridor with the bare necessities. Even a few steps away from the apartment, with one arm in her coat sleeve, she could feel herself relaxing a little. Apparently her personal sphere had expanded to encompass the entire apartment. Her habit of mercilessly prodding the button until the elevator arrived was dropped in favour of trying to finish dressing herself. Still, only one arm was in its sleeve, her purse barely hanging from that shoulder. The other arm juggled trying to put the scarf on properly and join its sister in the coat. Then, of course, there would be more buttons to contend with, but those could wait.
The elevator doors opened in something of a perverse distortion of a scene from a blockbuster romance. Time stopped long enough for Briseis to realise who her travel companion was to be, all other thoughts faded to black and everything leapt into fast-forward. The purse slipped from her shoulder into the elevator, her other arm jammed in it's sleeve--buttons, there were still the buttons to think of. Flight was winning over fight, but she still managed to propel herself forward slightly, lingering over the threshold.
Somewhere in the blurs of red and gold patterns (aesthetically pleasing swirls of nothing) that adorned the complex walls, Agamemnon’s dazed vision deciphered hues too natural and perfect to be anything but human. The browns and tans settled at the top of his vision-barely there-and shuffled overhead his direct line of sight in a blurry, fluffy, impressionistic state. Those clouds of pigments, appearing vaguely heavenly to a man drugged by sleep, lingered above the leafy-patterned carpet that his gaze was presently focused on, and Agamemnon could detect the slightest trace of uneasiness from their thick, cumulous hull of flesh, hair, denim, and wool. He noted somewhere in the back of his mind that the frothy, smeared colors of humanity and femininity were storming. And his curiosity was so poked and prodded by this notion that after a brief moment he slid his gaze up to observe the thunderhead.
How the haze morphed itself into the figure of Briseis, Agamemnon realized, was something he’d never be able to fully describe. But she shifted in and out of Monet, and Joseph Turner, Degas, and Renoir. She often settled with Cassat’s brush for longer moments, but ultimately fled to some other obscure metaphor before the King could catch her in words. She swayed in the doorway very pale and frozen and indescribable. Agamemnon smiled politely, straightened himself, and gave a nod.
“Nice weather we’re having.”
"Weather..." Had the situation been different, with different people in a different elevator, that would have been a question rather than a confused echo. I'm sorry, I didn't quite catch your meaning. Instead, the word was left hanging, along with Briseis' trail of thought. Stubbornly staring at her purse and nowhere else, she managed only a near-inaudible, staggered request ("I just want--um, my purse--could you...?") while the closing doors ushered her inside rather forcefully. The fact they caught her ankle in the process garnered only a momentary frown, though she'd feel it later. Right now her attention was focused almost entirely on the General.
Briseis stared at her purse for what felt like an age, before snatching it from the floor, completely unable to voluntarily kneel in front of him for any reason. Fixing her coat, she turned to face the doors, her eyes fixed on a point past the walls, and purposefully backed herself up against the back of the elevator. She didn't have to look at him if she didn't want to. He couldn't make her. Regardless, she fidgeted unconsciously with her wedding ring as though it were a talisman--with the right prayers, and if she didn't look, he would go away.
But not to respond to an attempt at conversation was rude, and some habits were impossible to shake. "I... I suppose so. It--it's subject to... opinion."
“They say,” Agamemnon mused, expelling a heavy sigh and absently straightening his rumpled clothes, “that’s what you’re not supposed to do.” He glanced at Briseis’ position in the back of the elevator distastefully and clarified: “cornering yourself.” The doors slid close with a happy ding, and Agamemnon smiled.
“Good for you.”
With a heavy lurching sound, the elevator was slowly off, quivering with effort under the great strain of late night tragedy. Nevertheless, it descended faithfully, albeit jerkily, and rattled down the apartment complex occasionally gagging and choking on itself. Its muscles tightened, and it extended itself and pulled back and continued, halting indecisively at random points, as if unsure if this was the right thing to do despite the lit up commands of “lobby.” There was, or might have been an unsettling ache in its belly which compelled it to want to retch Briseis out of its body and far, far away from Agamemnon-or vice versa. Honestly, it wanted neither of them. A large, ill belch rumbled down the shaft again. It halted for a moment. And with a screech lurched forward, trying to make itself throw up.
Agamemnon grunted absently at the building’s sickness and swallowed his next comment on the weather. Forgetting it, he said instead “It’s a lovely ring.”
Despite that nauseating sinking feeling that seemed rather determined to bring her to her knees--or at least the floor--and that veiled something Agamemnon had shared (she trusted nothing uttered by a Greek, let alone this one), Briseis forced herself to stand tall. Shoulders pushed back, she lifted her chin and silently begged him to leave her alone. She would have considered praying, but while the gods were close by, none of them would hear her.
She had never been Claustrophobic, but the combination of being boxed in with the General and the manner in which the elevator moved was steadily leading her towards blind panic. Hands trembling and teeth clenched, she closed her eyes, breathing slowed down to that strange, measured intake one adopts as a child, hiding from the adults.
"What?" Briseis' eyes snapped open and she looked across with a fair degree of uncertainty--that's not a compliment, it can't be, it never is. "I--... thank you." But both hands disappeared behind her back, bracing themselves against the wall in anticipation of a head-on collision. She didn't want to play along with this conversation.
Agamemnon peered carefully at the red and gold board, brooding over his next move. Both of their positions were so early and too young in the game; he could not decipher where he wanted to go, what he wanted to do, how it would end up, how it should end up. He resented, presently, the walls of the lurching elevator and how it had thrust him on a battlefield earlier than he expected. He wasn’t ready for it, and he hadn’t thought about it. Briseis, he noted, was not in any way Achilles, Artemis, Zeus, etc. But she was all the same a bridge, and she teetered and panicked carefully on the game board-slid carelessly into a vulnerable square of space. For a few brief moments he frowned, and nurtured a swell of pity and sign of humanity that arose in him. But he fell, unfortunately, to concern and there, towering over the board, made his move as he sympathetically observed the smooth, pale, wooden curves of the pawn shadowed by his looming presence. The leafy patterned, “rich” colored, carpet board lurched again. And with that desperate retch he noted quietly.
“That’s an interesting move you made, Briseis.”
Paused, then added in a lower tone.
“It’s the kindest way I can think of it.”
There was a short drop in the car.
“‘Interesting,’ I mean.”
The elevator began to turn banshee and screeched and squealed down the shaft.
“Because I’m sure you have some explanation for your family when they come.”
Interesting move, kindest, interesting... Briseis' line of sight dropped to Agamemnon's shoulder as she almost unconsciously tried to decipher every remark made before the punchline could be seen over the horizon. Belatedly, of course, since she had known from the moment the ring was mentioned. Confirming a guilty conscience that had just now come into existence, both hands slipped from behind her back to her pockets and balled into fists. The strike was expertly drawn out. The run-up kept her distracted, ignorant in her own panic, filing through every possibility until the last syllable was uttered. And then even the metal case she was trapped in shrieked its disapproval.
Flushed cheeks drained completely in horror, but she said nothing. Her mind was blank; all thoughts of defense or confession rendered completely useless. But therein lay the problem either way--he was right. She tried desperately to chase away time-altered memories of a still living family whose deaths her mind had seen fit to erase. Even the present was beginning to blur--she blinked her eyes clear and the tears burned.
"I tried--" she began weakly,"--tried to--to..." That sentence was abandoned in favour of an attempt to move further into the corner, fingers clawing at her scarf to give her room to breathe. For a moment she stared at the scarf in her hand before voicing the one word that had been circling her thoughts since she let the doors close behind her. "Why?"
While Agamemnon had been the one to make the move, slide the bishop over to Briseis, knock her over, smash against her, stone her conscience, and damage her being to the will and whim of it’s king, he had not expected such a cowering or violent reaction, or for the blow to be so effective against her. He frowned vaguely, a modicum of admiration (for the clear pre-awareness of her betrayal-he didn’t need to tell her after all) stirring. Had he known that she was already bruised, he maintained for the sake of his own conscience, he certainly would not have hit so hard. But the strike was effective nonetheless and she did rock presently on the brink of total breakdown, an unpleasant but favorable position for he and his family. He reminded himself that Briseis’ wails and sobbing was for the sake of his descendents’ peace from the myrmidons and that with or without him it would’ve come to pass, eventually, when Cronus plucked her family to Manhattan. It would’ve happened. The honor of the trigger happened to fall on him-it could’ve fallen to Hector, or Priam, or Paris.
The elevator seemed to scrape down the rest of the tunnel with a deafening shriek in mourning of Briseis’ humiliation and vulnerability. It rocked to the bottom of the complex, shivering at the lobby and opened its mouth-sick to its stomach at the drama-to expel the cancer. Agamemnon moved his hand cautiously to Briseis’ shoulder and shushed her quietly. He wrapped his influence around her, taking a strong grasp of her other arm and urging her out of the space.
“You need some air,” he commented, and motioned towards the waiting area. “You should sit down.”
Swallowing the whimper that would have only confirmed her already obvious discomfort in that physical contact, Briseis slowly lowered her eyes to her feet and let the view remain unfocussed. It both infuriated and terrified her that one gesture from the General could leave the words locked firmly behind her teeth and her feet dragging to a destination he had chosen; that he could find just one loose thread--found? or had it been created for him?--and leave everything completely unraveled. These were not pieces she could put back together. There was no easy way back from this. Some of their faces she could not even remember--did he realize that? Would she even recognize them if they were to show up? Would they recognize her?
It wasn't as if she could even disagree--wasn't fresh air the only reason she was down here? And her knees were threatening to buckle if she didn't move herself from harm's way soon. Both arms pulled up to hug her midriff, purse now hanging from her elbow and the scarf tied in knots. She had stopped, her feet refusing to take her further. The idea of sitting down like a good girl was not something she could stomach.
"I'd--I'd rather stand outside." Any honorifics she may have usually added were bitten off the end of the sentence, stuck in some kind of limbo along with everything else she didn't dare say. "Please."
The couple glided over the paisley carpet ballroom, spinning circles through the pink teardrops and brown flourishes. With one hand hovering over the girl’s waist in an exercise of security, Agamemnon whirled them through the lobby. Light-footed, and silver tongue, he chose his words and movements cautiously and maintained restraint in his waltz. He swayed his hand to grab her hand. He swung his step with hers. He twisted their perspectives and caught them in a dizzy trap. He tangoed with the implications, two-stepped over the words, watched both their feet, and spun them gracefully around in circles and in a fantastically baffling dance. He enjoyed the romance of the image-fantasy-of dancing with Briseis and maintained that thought and, consequently, his good humor.
“Outside? In Manhattan? At this time of night?” the words strut out, prancing delightfully off of his tongue. “I’m sorry, I doubt that’s a very good idea, Briseis.” He whirled her over to one of the more comfortable sofas and released her hand as he sat in the armchair directly opposite. “Sit down,” he commanded beautifully, and all in all their tango, he thought, was an exquisite show even if it was the slightest bit one-sided.
“Do you need a tissue, or a handkerchief, or something?”
"I've walked home on my own before," Briseis muttered in a tone that tried to convince itself that it was not frightened. Not particularly expecting Agamemnon to be in any way satisfied with that response, she glanced around. The lack of obvious life signs made her feel sick. "And I--I have pepper spray..." She wouldn't dare use it on him--he would never give her the chance--but she still made a point of not reaching for it, or even looking at her purse. Gods help her, she had a sense of self-preservation. Which didn't explain how she had ended up in the elevator to begin with.
Muted by her own discomfort, she stared at the sofa for a moment before looking up again, almost as if she didn't know what he expected her to do with it. He gave the order and her limbs automatically shifted, joints bending to obey as quickly as possible, pausing only to smooth her coat out underneath her. Somewhere in the back of her mind she could hear herself scream and bridle against the idea of anyone having that much power over her--she wished she was that strong.
It took a moment for that series of questions--or one larger question?--to process, and she closed her eyes to try to block out any background noise while she concentrated. "I, um... I think--" Her hands patted down the pockets of her coat, though the search was abandoned fairly quickly. The item in question was in her purse. "--Never mind. I'm fine." That statement wasn't true, but it wasn't meant to be. It was a knee-jerk response when she had nothing else to say. And though her wedding ring, perched on top of her clasped hands, provided an almost ideal distraction from the man sitting opposite her, the sight of it drove her to look elsewhere.
There was an undeniable beauty in Briseis’ movement that Agamemnon took a moment to admire. He was, granted, a busy man, largely concerned with the world on the whole, the bigger picture, huge issues, and their effects but somehow that preoccupation with the monumental made the occasional moments that he focused on the simple things all the more precious. Lounging comfortably across from the feather-cushioned prison he had sentenced her to, Agamemnon watched small Briseis carefully and smiled. She shined in that light and, as she bent down, vaguely resembled some pious Western masterpiece-a glowing pilgrim in prayer. Tiny and soft, easily breakable, she appeared to him in that moment-the one he decided he wanted to own-as something perfect, pure, and virtuous. Something he had no desire to ruin and, simultaneously, had every bit of outrage at knowing it already had been. She seemed little, endearing, vulnerable, daughter-like; though she had appeared to him like so more than once before.
There was a certain delight in owning the doll to such a degree, and he grinned at her from across the mahogany sea that was the coffee table between them. He leaned forward, resting his arms on his knees and clasping his hands together as he visibly contemplated the situation. It may very well have been a matter of what he was willing to sacrifice for his real daughters, though all the same he pitied her--not only for the ring on her finger, though it did glint wickedly in the fluorescent light. He stared it down, before reaching out and touching the hand it fed off of.
“Now,” he began, rubbing his thumb over the gold. “Hector. Your family.” He paused to let it sink in before concluding with “I do not mean to distress you but it would come out eventually and better it be in front of me than him? Contrary to popular belief, I have little quarrel with your husband-after all, he was part of my army-other that his tendency toward immaturity and, of course,” his grip tightened. “What happened to your cousin.”
“I hope you’ll keep in mind that your husband’s actions do not reflect my army. He was on his own then.”
Briseis did not see that grin from across the table. She didn't. Didn'tdidn'tdidn't. She certainly did not want to know what he was thinking--the warped image of a sophist in reflection--but the moment his hand found hers, she recoiled. Of course, an arm's length was as far away as she could possibly get, since neither hand would agree to escape with her and instead remained pinned in place by his. The ring apparently drew more of his attention, and she watched him carefully--a touch of hostility added to the already existing combination of fear and revulsion. Agamemnon was no witch doctor or high priest, and the ring would not be cursed when he released it, but the man had a disturbing talent for bringing forth nagging doubts.
That he had the audacity to bring up her family was beyond her current understanding, though his declaration regarding her possible distress garnered a brief and rather forced laugh, cut off by the increased pressure on her hand.
"They died. And it was war," she stated at length, her tone lacking in feeling. "I expected little else." Tilting her head sadly, she shook it and switched to her native language. "Not from a Greek, at any rate."
For a while, riding the high of fatherly affection and accomplishment, Agamemnon felt a bright, golden wind--stream of blood, or brilliant energy--flowing from Briseis to him; speeding through the bridge their hands made and sparking at the ring which he was still throttling with the choke of his thumb. It was a steady flow of confidence and contentment, and a sporadic dance of liveliness that was cut short at the source the moment sound came out of her mouth. Speaking at all from the doll was not expected--let alone the words she chose in particular. He glanced up from her gold-banded husband to her, smile stolen, grip tightening on her hand. His forehead knit in contemplation, and his lips pursed for a moment before he cleared his throat and rubbed her hand, presumably in comfort. Her lack of compliance irritated him as only a daughter to him could.
“No,” he mused and eyed her carefully, “they don’t die like that. Or, rather, their death isn’t dragged on that long-quite literally-though I promise the pun is unintended.” He raised her hand and kissed it briefly, avoiding the ring. “And you married him, my dear.”
“Though I suppose very little can be done about that now. Do what you can with this ring. My deepest sympathies.” He dropped her hand, and leaned back into the embrace of the armchair. “You may go.” A few moments of silence on his part lapsed before he added, “And Briseis?”
Watching him intently--the way a schoolgirl watches a teacher to assess whether they truly know who threw that paper airplane--Briseis noted every movement, every muscle that twitched in Agamemnon's face, though she didn't know what any of it meant. Had he understood her? What was the price for insolence in the here-and-now? Just the fact he held her hand tighter would have been enough to push her into a wave of apologies had he shown any real outward sign of anger. She waited for it, even as he rubbed her hand, but it didn't come.
Arguably what did come next was worse, but only because she couldn't refute it. Hector's death had gone down in history, as brutal as it was. The deaths of her family had been blocked from her mind years ago. Yes, I married him. She nodded dumbly, staring at the spot on her hand that she would have argued had been violated. The rest of his 'sentiments' flew over her head. She needed to be as far away from him as possible.
Again, the General gave the word and Briseis was off the sofa as fast as she could ever hope to move, managing at least a few steps before she was recalled. Her name was enough to make her turn back round to face him, though she refused to make eye contact. She definitely couldn't answer.
"Try and keep him off my family."
"Yes sir."