Chapter Text
If you could ask Patroclus one rotten thing about his life, he wouldn’t take a single second to answer it. Of course, that didn’t undermine the amount of terribleness his life held. His mother was dead and his stepfather was a hunky old man who dwelled in cellars and lived on whiskey. He had no friends, no ambition, and no disposition to do anything great in life beyond drifting in the shadows.
But still, that didn’t answer what Patroclus would name as the worst thing of all this.
That, my friend, was the number seven. Bad things always happened to Patroclus through the number seven.
He was born on the seventh month on the seventh day at exactly seven am in the morning. As the sun rose from the plains of Texas dust and grime, he was delivered to a very delirious mother who looked at him and decided to ruin his life then and there.
She named his Patroclus. Not Patrick or plain Pat, but Patroclus.
His mother told him later that he looked at her and smiled when she said it in his ear. If he could, Patroclus would slap that baby for forfeiting to such a horrendous name.
It wasn’t the heritage that bothered him, but could her livid interest in the Iliad not produce a better name than one of a man whose most memorable feat was dying?
He never quite asked her, though, because before he could conjure his great disdain, she was dead. He was seven then.
See how horrible that number was?
And when Patroclus swore that this retched number would never come again in his life, it did in such irony.
Patroclus was doing nothing much that fateful day except brooding on his failing grade in English. He was curled on his swivel chair, the only comfortable furniture in his dorm. His boarding school believed that kids would learn under any conditions given the will, so they would embellish the scratchy mattress as a disciplinary device. His stepfather saw through the guise, though, so sent him hear with a delighted grin.
He was twirling a pencil, reading a medical book, because why not, when a stupid eagle smashed into his window.
The first thought that sprang to his mind was why it had to be his window of the many linear glasses on the building side.
His second thought was not really a thought, but an exasperated sigh that came instantly and instinctively. The eagle smashed into his window because it could. It was the same way Clyro and his minions would line up and smash pudding on his face when there were so many other options.
They did it because they could.
Patroclus stared into the mass when he realized that this was not an eagle.
Great, just his rotten luck.
It had an oblong head and a sharp nose. The talons were quite long, like pocketknives, and Patroclus could feel his throat tingle at the possibility of a metal interruption and iron blood. Patroclus realized then that this was a Harpy, and he hated how he knew this creature better than his book report.
Stupid B+ and Dyslexia.
He defeated that Harpy that day. Well, rather, the harpy vanished to smoke after experiencing one too many glass shards in its shoulder. That was a clear indication of his fate; he would always be too late and hesitant to do anything. Just as Patroclus was turning his back, readying himself for another restless sleep where he would pretend that life was just sunshine and butterflies, a prickly half-goat goat half-man abomination came thrashing into his dorm complaining about the dean of the boarding school, who he said was a Cacodemon.
If he could set his face to cringe, he would. It would be very efficient.
Patroclus looked at him, and that thing looked back at him.
“Come on, kid. We ain’t got all day. Call me Coach Hedge or don’t for all I care”, it barked.
Patroclus blinked, apparently for too long because Coach Hedge was already leaving. His fluent curses in a stream of mangled Greek brought fond memories of his mother at the grocery store shouting at prices. He looked around at his dorm, the tossed bed sheets and broken glass, before sending an apology to his dorm mate. Patroclus swiped his mother’s parting gift, a pair of ivory dice, into his pocket and clamored behind the thing.
He really did hate seven.