Chapter Text
Athena came to him in a vision, as she sometimes preferred to do, the evening after they had escaped from the clutches of the cyclops.
Odysseus was sitting on the ground, his back leaning against some rock he had found while aimlessly wandering the beach. He was letting the sound of the sea gently washing the shore lull him into a false sense of peace, lest his own thoughts would rot him inside out. The tears wouldn’t come but the sobs trapped in his chest had been fighting to free themselves from underneath the terrible weight of his grief. Of his guilt.
He stared unseeingly at the flickering lights of campfires dancing in the distance, but couldn’t focus on them. No matter how much he tried his concentration kept slipping every time he managed to find a foothold in the storm raging in his bones. His mind was far away, still stuck on the faces of the fourteen men he had lost. Their unblinking empty gazes. The familiar brown eyes of his friend suddenly blank with death. The blood still stubbornly lingering under his fingernails even after he had frantically scrubbed his hands raw.
His knuckles were yet to stop bleeding. He could feel the warm liquid pooling in the spaces in-between his fingers, painting his palms crimson and then finally dripping onto the windswept grass.
Later he would find it poetic. A bloody sacrifice to the gods in place of coins for the souls of his crew, who were left to wander this earth to the end of days, because there simply hadn’t been enough time to bury their battered bodies. Hadn’t been enough time to slip few Drachmas under their tongues for Charon to take his due in exchange for safe passage to Hades.
Odysseus’ hands fidgeted with Polites’ headband as well as his own skinned flesh, not letting the wounds scab over, staining the simple strip of fabric with his blood as much as the ends of it were soaked in his friend’s. The pain helped him from sinking deeper into the endless abyss of sorrow he knew awaited him at the other side of his thoughts.
He had taken and wrapped the ribbon around his right wrist while the cyclops slept, collecting it for himself as a reminder. He should’ve finished the job then and there. He should have listened to Athena and killed the monster when he had the chance. But his friend wouldn’t have wanted him to. Polites would have been so disappointed in him had Odysseus killed the cyclops out of revenge.
So he had stayed his hand. Turned away from the beast and fled like the coward he was. Odysseus had stood in front of his mentor and told her ‘mercy is a skill more of this world could learn to use’ while his veins simmered with rage and want for the cyclops’ head to be rolling on the ground.
The king of Ithaca was a hypocrite, since even now, fully drowning in his mourning, a part of him still longed to set sail and return to the cave. To take his xiphos and spear the monster’s heart on it. Give Polites and his men the burial their souls deserved.
Athena had chosen him, a long time ago, for his wit and intelligence. For the silver tongue of his constantly spinning lies, tales and words filled with fake arrogance. For his strategic thinking and penchant for mischief. He had been born to be her warrior of the mind. A sliver of ruthlessness had always been a part of the deal.
But in that moment nothing mattered more than keeping the memory of his oldest friend alive for just a second longer. And if it meant carrying his ideal close to his heart, taking that part of Polites he had reluctantly came to appreciate while on the Lotus island and covered in breathtaking guilt, and squeezing it in between all of his ragged edges, then so be it. Odysseus would turn himself inside out and bleed to death all the parts of him which had made him an accomplished soldier if only he could hold onto Polites for a minute more.
Not even his patron’s warnings could compete against this unscalable wall of grief.
The sorrow was slowly eating him alive, forcing him to seek refuge far from the rest of his crew and mourn his heartache alone in the dark. He couldn’t bear being near them. To see the same hurt reflected in their eyes. He dreaded the accusations Odysseus was sure he would find within their gazes, because what kind of captain led his people to a massacre? What kind of king managed to keep six hundred men alive during a ten-year-long war just for them to die on the way home from it?
Even Eurylochus’ pain-filled stare had made him nauseous when his second-in-command tried to soothe him with empty words of assurance. When he had tried to alleviate some of his all-consuming guilt.
Odysseus knew he had to get up soon and go to his men. Join them around the fire. Shake off his own anguish like Argos would droplets of rain and be the beacon of hope and strength his crew needed him to become once again. However, his feet felt like they would buckle underneath him if he tried to stand and his bloodied fingers wouldn’t stop trembling around the headband. He was oh so terribly cold. And yet the promised comfort of flames sounded like the biggest burden placed upon his shoulders.
Odysseus let out a shuddering breath and then between one thought and another, he found himself in a familiar dreamscape.
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The Quick Thought appeared before him almost blank, all muted colours and shallow shadows. Overwhelming white hurting his eyes, reminding Odysseus of the infinite beaches around Same. An unfinished canvas, as if the artist responsible for it only sketched the outlines and not bothered with the rest. He had been fascinated by this place every time Athena took him here, ever since he was only a teen. It had brought him a little bit of relief in times when few things had, but now it seemed more desolate than ever before. As if something sucked the magic out of it, leaving it bland and lifeless. A cruel mockery of his own grief reflected back at him even in this place.
It seemed as if the sorrow were a sharp arrow aimed at his heart, which he couldn’t hope to outrun no matter how hard he wished to do so.
And right there in front of Odysseus, with her head held high and an angry scowl covering her face, stood Athena. His godly mentor. The woman he considered one of his dearest friends.
She came to him without armour, only a helm still covering her head. He had stripped of his own bloodstained one hours ago.
Sitting on the ground as he was she looked impossibly tall, towering over him with her glowing grey eyes blazing with barely contained rage. She was clutching her spear so tight Odysseus was scared it would snap in two. Her aegis glimmered ominously.
He knew why she was furious with him. The reason obvious in the wake of their last conversation, even while it had been brief. He had refused to heed her advice, had cast aside the counsel of the Goddess of Wisdom. He had been aware, as the words were leaving his lips, that the fallout wouldn’t be pretty.
The consequences were here now, since Athena had apparently decided she was done waiting for his grief to run dry.
The king of Ithaca stood up on unsteady feet, fingers deceptively devoid of bloody smears brushing back his wild curly hair from his face, prepared to face her ire with the pride his crown had lent him when it first found place on his brow. But he couldn’t muster up the energy to mould his lips into anything even remotely resembling a grin like he normally would upon receiving a visit from his patroness.
His chest hurt too much.
„Lady Athena,” he greeted, bowing at the waist shakily. His cloak spilling on the ground around his feet like blood. Countless similar shades of crimson spattered across the fabric. Some of them had been staining the red chlamys for almost a decade already.
Athena stayed silent, watching him with something akin to pity. Or maybe disgust. Her free hand twitching at her side as if she wanted to reach out. To help him or strangle him, Odysseus didn’t know. His head felt strangely cloudy, his thoughts slow like trudging through mud, and his heart was far heavier than it had any right to be after successfully leading a decade-long campaign without casualties. But above all, he was just so damn tired. Exhausted from all the deaths and the red on his sword and the responsibly for other lives. Constantly hoping against the odds that he won’t be responsible for heartbroken wives and orphaned children.
For ten years without a break.
He had always had a duty of care, from the moment the crown was settled in his hair. Odysseus had never complained, because it came naturally to him. Watching over his people, making sure they had enough to eat along with safe beds to return home to. Never before had it felt like a burden. But by the gods this war had broken something in him. Letting fatigue creep in until all he wanted to do was curl up in Penelope’s lap and sleep.
He couldn’t do it.
He couldn’t just give up now, despite the exhaustion weighing down his soul. Ithaca deserved its king and his men deserved their captain. And so, Odysseus stared back at his mentor with defiance he didn’t feel. Charade borne out of years spent in war meetings listening to the kings from all over their world argue like little children.
He was sure she knew anyways, the depth this tiredness ran.
And then the silence between them ended abruptly, from one exhale to another. Athena’s voice cutting through the mist like the finest of blades.
„Your actions were reckless. Sentimental at best! That is not what I taught you, Odysseus!” she growled at him, teeth bared in a disgusted grimace. Agitation clear in her slightly glowing grey eyes intently trained at his person, narrowed as if he were her prey.
His name fell from her lips for the first time in years with nothing gentle in the tone of it, but charged with power which reverberated in his very bones. Nearly forcing him back on his knees to kneel before the daughter of the Thunder Bringer.
The king of Ithaca knew he should be afraid, terrified, when presented with an angry goddess who had found his decisions lacking in judgement. Especially one whose domains were warfare and knowledge. Except all Odysseus could see was the woman who had trained him how to wield a sword just like he would his words, with deadly precision. Who had visited him again and again and shown him how to strike his opponent with a spear in ways no mortal man could foresee. The god who had perched herself on his shoulder while instructing him how to hit a target with the accuracy of the finest of archers, and how to train his eyes to notice things others could not.
She had always been so very patient with him. However, now it seemed this patience had its limits after all.
His sternum felt like caving in, making it harder for his lungs to draw a breath. Pain spreading just like blood would if a blade were to pierce his ribcage.
„One would think you have grown soft, king of Ithaca. The dead struck down by Polyphemus, your friends, could probably tell tales of it.”
There was a condescending tone to her voice. The exact same one, which had always made an appearance whenever she talked in length about how dissatisfactory she had found the attempts of human beings at beating her challenges.
Before his fourteen-year-old-self had shown up, of course, with his youthful confidence and fearless spirit.
Odysseus had learnt to ignore it over the years, despite his own mortal constitution, knowing her cutting words never to be directed at him. Athena did often tell him he was a special case after all. But this time his heart was raw with grief, his emotions simmering right under the surface, ready to run rampant. The rage which filled his stomach at her words, and blinded him to the meaning behind them, was scorching like the lakes inside of Tartarus.
He wasn’t one to act by the guidance of sentiments, rather preferring to approach the situation with a calm mind and cold reason. However, with the memory of soft brown hair wet with rivers of red and ribs smashed inwards so gruesomely Odysseus still tasted the bile at the back of his throat, any sort of calmness had long fled far away from him.
He so wished to scream.
„Hey!” he growled instead, clenching his fists at his sides, desperately trying to hold onto his composure in front of Athena. He kept seeing the broken body of his friend crumpled on the cave floor. Kept thinking of the grins all of them had shared when they first found the sheep. Kept regretting the arrow he had let loose in his foolishness.
They all died in front of his eyes, because of his decision, and she-
She mocked them.
Or mocked him. Or all of them. That Odysseus had expected. But what made his fury worse was that she talked about their deaths like they didn’t matter. As if she cared only so far as to make an example out of them.
For him. To teach him something.
His hands shook with a desperate sort of anger. The kind a man experienced while staring in the face of divine apathy. Sometimes, before reason made itself known again, Odysseus envied the demigods simply for their ability to force the twelve thrones of Olympus to look their way.
Nonetheless, true to her nature as a god, she either didn’t care about his inner turmoil or simply didn’t understand it.
„You were supposed to be a warrior. You were meant to lead your men, not indulge your own weaknesses and pathetic feelings. I don’t know where I went wrong, but I warned you and yet you refused to listen to my guidance.” Athena continued in a sneering tone reminding him more of a panther than an owl, leaning down closer into his space. Her head on the same level with his, expression dark.
Their venom-filled gazes meeting in a battle of wills, daring him to speak. Tempting him to say what his thoughts begged him to voice out-loud.
Odysseus felt his eyes burning in his skull with rage, the twin to this fire spitting sparks in-between his ribs. Still he stayed silent, refusing to raise to her bait. Both his sorrow and anger were terrible beasts, battling in his mind for dominance, demanding action. He held them back with everything he had in him. Trying to frantically grasp the escaping bits of logic left within his body.
Despite her taunts and jeering, which caused the liquid in his veins to boil, because those were his brothers lying on the ground with crowns made of blood-
-she was right. Right in her critique of him. Right to lay the blame on his shoulders and not on theirs, never on theirs, he was their captain-
„So, from now on, you are to fend for yourself since you seem to not realize your place. I’ve wasted my time enough with disappointments. Consider this as my goodbye.” She said, the perfect image of dignified superiority once again as if she hadn’t been hissing her accusations to his face mere seconds prior. Her grey gaze hidden in the shadows cast by her helmet.
This was what broke the dam building up in his throat.
Not the change in attitude, no, Odysseus knew the Goddess of Wisdom too well to be tricked by her mask of false peaceful façade. He had spent too many years with her voice whispering, slithering its way around his own thoughts. Helping and guiding and scolding and screeching at the top of her lungs to get up, get up Odysseus, you have to get up or you’ll be next-
He knew her too well.
And yet his patron goddess still managed to break his heart so thoroughly with so little effort.
Odysseus seethed with a new sudden wave of fury blazing in his abdomen. Now not only outraged about her disregard of his men’s sacrifice, but also because of her dismissal of his own achievements. His thoughts circled over her words, engraving them onto the skin of his palms with his nails as he dug them deeper into the tender flesh.
Know his place, because that was what she meant, he knew.
He did, better than most thought him capable of. For all his smart loops drawn in sentences, lies and deceits, Odysseus rarely truly believed in what his mouth was spinning. He was aware of his reputation as a trickster and a madman. He had noticed the sideway looks most soldiers had sent his way when he walked by. He was aware there was something about his heritage which wasn’t quite human. And that, despite this, he could never hope to stand as equal with the demigods he had befriended or made enemies of during the war.
He was just a man with a too cleaver mind and a too loose tongue. But he refused to be controlled. Odysseus refused to be a plaything for a bored goddess without anything better to do than to monitor his every move. He would rather spit in the face of Zeus himself, and get struck down by the King of Gods for it, than surrender his free will to another.
And disappointment?
Had he not made her at least a little bit proud by his feats in Troy? By the spying, the stealing, the negotiating and the planning? All of that was just… erased by one mistake made in anger and sorrow?
Had he been too soft when he came up with a strategy that would mean killing honourable men in their beds? When he convinced a mother to send her child to death just to appease the sea? When he threw an infant from the walls of Ilion to save his own family? Hadn’t he been cruel enough when he again and again preferred to protect his men, his friends, and hadn’t cared much about the fate of the rest of the Achaeans?
If Athena thought him to be a waste of time after all that, then he was certain nothing a mortal man could do would be able to please the Goddess of Wisdom. He was doomed to fail simply for the crime of being human.
Odysseus glared at his patroness, the flames in his gut burning away the last shreds of lingering grief. Oh it will be back, and soon, promised his heart, but not for a moment yet. The sentences he wanted to throw at Athena crawled up his throat, scratching and trashing like rabid animals, until they came up bloody and hoarse. As if he had been screaming for hours on end.
The determination he’s had to keep them in, dissolving in the overwhelming whirlpools of furious hurt.
„That’s just like you, isn’t it? Why should I be surprised?” The king of Ithaca laughed, bitterly. The sound grating on his ears with the fakeness of it. His voice was a small, horrible thing filled with saltwater, choking and drowning the words in the tears he refused to shed.
Ignoring the lifeblood pouring into his chest like molten bronze from the wounds dealt to his soul, Odysseus advanced on Athena. His feet were far from steady, still trembling under the weight of the losses they had suffered, but he would be damned if he let the goddess witness his shaky knees.
To his surprise she retreated a few steps away from him, expression closed off in a horrific blankness.
„You’ve always been selfish, prideful and vain!”
„Careful, son of Laertes,” she warned lowly, numb.
„However, unlike you, I can’t just runaway!” his accusation rung throughout the empty space, echoing back to him in a distorted manner. His own voice mocking the hurt hiding underneath his tongue when it returned as a laugh, his words stolen by the power of a god.
The eyes of the Goddess of War glowed a blinding shade of grey, rage building around them as a thunderstorm would. The oppressing weight of it heavy on his shoulders.
Zeus’ child was angry.
And when Odysseus continued, he no longer sounded like the king of Ithaca, but only like a boy. A youth he had been, once upon a time, years ago before the campaign turned him into a man he never longed to become.
„Every time someone dies, I’m left here to deal with the aftermath. Since Troy I haven’t been able to sleep, so what’s a title you can lend me then?” Odysseus spat at her, his arms outstretched the same way they had been when he had stood on the walls of the city of Apollo, a crowd of soldiers chanting his name down below as his world caved in. Their voices thundering so loud he had almost missed the sound of his own humanity fleeing.
Just like now.
An infant’s corpse still swaddled in soft blankets broken somewhere underneath their feet. It wasn’t an image he was likely to forget till the end of his days.
The memory of it robbed him of his breath for a moment as silence descended.
Athena stalked closer, spear held tightly in one hand, in the other her gold-covered aegis. More of the predator he knew her to be than she had shown him in years. The Gorgon head on her shield smiling tauntingly, its maw opened wide. Maybe to swallow him whole. The snakes surrounding it crawling in the yellow metal as if it were water. The daughter of Ceto’s gaze watched him intently, her eyes glinting with the promise of a painless death in stone.
The storm in his ears got louder.
The Goddess of Wisdom stopped, towering over his fragile mortal body more than she ever did before. He thought he’d heard the howling of the winds. Still, he was unafraid.
Odysseus breathed.
„I’ll remind you I considered you my friend, but now we’re done,” he said, suddenly tired again. Yet the fury burned in his throat, unrelenting like the Fate he had been told so long ago. „At least you’ll stop haunting my thoughts. And you’ll get what you wanted, save yourself the time, the disappointment. Have your damn goodbye!”
Rage was all his mind knew in that moment. Anger the only thing his lips could form words around. Heartbreak the lonely sensation cascading down his ribs to fill his chest to the brim. An ocean he would surely drown in.
Athena’s eyes glowed brighter. A pair of twin stars, guiding soldiers to victory or their doom. The same light which had seen him through the war safely.
„I’m not looking for a friend, you’re not interested in my mentorship. I saw you as a general, son of Laertes, but it seems I’ve been mistaken.” The Goddess of Wisdom stated, with a finality to it that calmed the thunder surrounding them, turning its sharp corners of fury into mellow loops of indifference.
The change almost buckled Odysseus’ knees.
And then, because the gods were known to be cruel and because mortal kings, even favoured ones, were no exceptions to this, she added in a low voice of a mother disappointed: „What a waste of my efforts.”
Hurt was a fickle thing, it flickered around sentences which should not cause pain and completely disregarded ones that should cut deeper than any xiphos could. This one sent a lightning through his spine.
Odysseus wasn’t an insecure man, he knew his qualities and his faults and how to deal with them to get what he wanted. He had a beautiful wife, sweet son and a kingdom full of loyal subjects. He was favoured by the gods. However, something in him coiled like an injured animal would at her words, hissing and growling at the one with the offending weapon.
Lashing out now not in anger, but in hurt. It was a special kind of torture to be discarded by the being one considered family.
„At least I have something to fight for, not just my own fucking reputation. If you claim to be so much wiser, why is your life spent all alone?”
He knew it wasn’t wise to say nor fair to assume, for gods were the only ones at liberty to live their lives as they pleased and to punish those who would challenge this right as they saw fit, and yet…
„You’re alone!” he screamed, because it was true. Because he had been hoping for years for Athena to let him get closer to her. For his patron to let him climb the walls she had built around herself like a shield, but she never did.
He had grieved with her the deaths of Athenians who had lost their lives during the war, yet she never showed any signs of remorse over their passing. Not to him anyway, but he had heard her sorrow in the silence that had prevailed in his mind for days after every demise.
Odysseus had tried sharing his joy with her. When his men made him a pin for his cloak in a shape of Athena’s owl, because he had lost his original one. She had nodded with approval and that had been enough for him on that day. When his son was born he had wanted her to meet Telemachus so desperately he called her to him down from Olympus, only to be met with apathy and stiff congratulations on a job well done. That younger man had grinned and joked and wore his pride of a father as a blindfold.
He had tried and tried and tried to share his life with the goddess, to be her friend and not just her champion. Athena had refused to let him, but she did indulge him their camaraderie. She had allowed him to soften his sharp tongue around her, to take the strength from her when he was doubting the war would ever end. She had permitted him to make her his confidante when his thoughts turned darker and cruelled than his brother-in-law or best friend could handle.
Athena had stayed, listened to his schemes, his stories, his lies and his terrible jokes, throughout most of his years. He had never been truly alone, but she always had.
And Odysseus knew.
In that moment, while meeting the enraged stare of the goddess with his own, he knew he was losing her. Despite all of her previous words promising her departure, the look in her eyes was what finally hammered it into his thick skull that if Odysseus let her go like this he would probably never see her again.
The winds twisting around them picked back up, this time roaring even inside of his own chest.
The king of Ithaca saw the ache in her stormy gaze, the sting of hurt well-hidden behind grey wall of ire. The same look Polites had worn when Odysseus descended from the burning palace of Ilion, the blood of a child still fresh on his stained hands. His sword dripping with scarlet robbed off of men defending their home like he himself would stand for his island.
The resemblance was so striking his serpent tongue lost all its cunning. His heart rabbited in his chest.
And while his dearest friend had demanded answers out of him with ruthless abandon, decorum forgotten in the wake of such transgression against moral good, the goddess stayed silent. Too quiet for one who forever guarded her pride with swift vengeance.
Her lack of response cooled down Odysseus’ anger to smouldering coals, warming up his belly but failing to ignite the reckless wrath, which had previously coursed through his mind. Tears gathered in his eyes as his breathing stuttered, abruptly present like they hadn’t been all day. Not yet falling down his cheeks, instead forcing his throat to close up around the absolute nothingness even immortals could choke on.
His gaze flickered away from Athena for a fraction of a moment, gliding over the blandness decorated with silver strings weaved from sorrow, before returning back to the motionless silhouette of his mentor. He hadn’t noticed previously, too blinded by his own heartache to pay attention to the grief of this place.
With a sudden kind of understanding, which had been building at the back of his thoughts ever since his patroness brought him here, Odysseus knew why it felt so exceptionally barren on this night of all nights. When he looked upon Athena’s solemn expression the truth of it barrelled into his chest with a striking sense of pain.
The mourning of a god was not always as visible or grand as the stories would make you believe. Often times it was a quiet affair, hiding underneath layers of rage or indifference, but it was there. Lurking in the silences, in the thunderstorms and the absences. And he, among all mortals, should have had remembered that.
At least when it came to this particular goddess.
The fight left him completely, seeping out of his limbs with an abrupt retreat. His sight tumbled down to the ground, incapable of facing the mirror of his own melancholy staring back at him. His shoulders dropped, weighted down by the words lingering in the air between them. A burden he was afraid he would fall beneath. The anguish crashed into him like a wave, forcing his stumbling thoughts to a halt until all he could do was only breathe.
Odysseus had lost so much already. Ten years of his life spent far from home with people he mostly despised, in a war he had taken no pleasure in. A part of himself, which had died with tiny Astyanax. Fourteen men gone in a swing of a cyclops’ club. His friend dead on the cave floor, because despite all his cunning the king of Ithaca wasn’t capable of outwitting the bloodlust borne of revenge.
He refused to lose anymore. He blinked away the tears, pushing the ache far from his mind, because now he had to fix this. Repair what his rash words had broken.
Odysseus saw the exact moment Athena’s features hardened, steeling herself into the warrior goddess her reputation painted her as. Becoming the embodiment of cold, strict reason once more. The lax grip on her spear turning firm again.
Her might towered over him and filled his mouth with the taste of copper, counting up the years given to him by Fate as one would grains of sand. How terrifying it was, to stand in front of a being of such power, and yet feel so certain in his fearlessness.
The thunder cracked and Odysseus finally found his voice, cutting off whatever words Athena wanted to fill the resounding stillness with. Fingers trembling at his sides.
„Wait, I-“ he choked out, with desperation crawling up his throat. „I know what you are going to tell me. And I apologize for discarding your wise counsel so rashly. I might not yet fully understand the consequences of my actions, but I am certain they will represent a great burden. I am ashamed to confess I have let myself be blindsided by the heavy loss, which has befallen me.” He had to start with this, because no matter what other cruel, angry things they had thrown at each other, it was this disregard on his part which had firstly fuelled their disagreement.
His patroness visibly stalled her own tongue, her grey eyes glowing with a light bright as the sun itself. Her mouth tightened into a stern line, but she inclined her head to indicate she was willing to listen to what he had to say.
Relief prickled at the back of his neck, taunting him to let the somewhat sheepish smile break out onto his lips. Instead he stomped the temptation into the ground mercilessly.
„It is my greatest wish for you to understand that I didn’t act out of maliciousness or feelings of superiority over your judgement, rather from a desire to live up to the expectations of my recently d-,“ Odysseus gulped, struggling to get the word fully out of his mouth. It came like a wild animal, tearing at his throat with sharp claws. „Recently deceased friend.”
Athena’s expression didn’t change, her gaze remaining sharp and cutting. Although, the thundering around them did soften into a gentle pitter-patter of faint touches upon the instruments of the storm, reminiscent of the spring rains annually returning to his home island.
He bowed in reverence, uttering the rest of his words without seeing more than the tops of her sandals. Let it be known that Odysseus of Ithaca was not above sticking to proper etiquette.
„I am deeply aware that my actions were not in agreement with your ideals, nor were they within mine. I behaved foolishly in a moment of weakness while my mind was veiled with mourning,” he admitted, willing his voice not to fail him now. „I hope you can forgive my momentary forgetting of your teachings and my harsh words spoken not out of place of truth but hurt pride and my own mortal pain.” He pleaded, because in front of a goddess whose favour and friendship Odysseus fiercely wanted to keep, what else could he do but grovel?
It was also a vow, a promise not to let Polites’ belief guide his actions without reason. A compromise between keeping the last part of his friend close and doing what was necessary for survival.
Surprisingly tender fingers found their way to his jaw, interrupting his thoughts. They lifted up his chin and forced him to straighten up. Her eyes, when he stared up into them, were still full to the brim of furiously piercing ire, however, there at the edge of the dazzling light was also a well overflowing with fondness. Athena studied him carefully, spear and aegis gone to a space Odysseus could only ever hope to visit or understand, her nose close to his own.
His breath stuttered, chest spasming in an attempt at sucking in air that didn’t come. Sobs buried deep beneath the gasps stuck in his throat. He stayed silent.
Her hands on his face, one framing his right ear with the palm firmly placed on the side of his neck and the other gliding over his opposite cheek seemingly almost scared to touch, were strikingly kind. Like he was delicate and she didn’t want to break him just yet, which he didn’t doubt she easily could.
They were warm. Warm and gentle and Odysseus wanted to curl up into it like a dog abused. It was the first truly soft touch upon his skin after ten years of unending war. He wanted to lean into the contact, steal for himself a bit of his mentor’s divine strength, but for all its affectionate nature this wasn’t a friendly gesture.
It was an examination.
She narrowed her eyes in concentration, searching for something Odysseus couldn’t name. Her fingertips absentmindedly stroked with featherlight care over his cheekbone once, twice, until at last her face lost its stern hardness. The Goddess of Wisdom appeared to be pleased with the answers she had found within his gaze and stepped back, her fingers pushing his hair behind his ear before she let go of him completely.
The warmth on his skin lingered and tingled. The space of the Quick Thought grew deathly quiet. The thunder erased from it with a spell.
When Athena spoke her voice was no longer laced with the underlying tone of disbelieving rage, nor was it full of hidden mourning.
„I admit that despite my many years spent in your company, son of Laertes, I have failed to acquaint myself with the finer workings of human feelings. Your way of experiencing sorrow escapes my understanding, still,” she said and her eyes were still cold. „My forgiveness entirely depends on your success at enlightening me in this matter, king of Ithaca.”
Odysseus hesitated, sentences he knew to be learned from the lips of his elders on the verge of falling out. His hands fidgeted with Polites’ headband once again, bending his fingers in such ways they almost ached. Fear clawed at him for the first time since the cyclops claimed his first victim. His mind was spinning, whirling and twirling and yet masterly avoiding thinking about the gnawing, looming black abyss lurking in the middle of his heart.
Oh, how cruel, indeed, the gods could be.
Human words could never be enough to paint the destruction of grief, caused to the grieving or to the grieved alike, in any other way than in one that’s lacking.
He ran a hand through his hair, messing up even more the tangled curls, but his nails caught on the simple gold band sitting firmly on his brow. A symbol more than a crown. Crowns were carefully, painstakingly weaved with precision into patterns befitting the station they represented. A wreath of intertwined olive branches to honour the divine.
The one currently resting on his head was none of that. It was a diadem of a king who went to war not one who sat the throne, plain in all its beauty where it continued being masked by his hair. Like the blade of his sword. His real crown remained on Ithaca, safe in the hands of his wife and queen.
But it was the memento in the feel of cold metal on his skin that made him remember the visitor he had welcomed as a young man, still a prince, the eve preceding his coronation. And the oath of loyalty and companion he had taken while kneeling before the silhouette of an ashen-coloured owl.
Odysseus huffed out a slightly tortured laugh, the sound of it bordering on becoming a sob. A scream.
Of course. If not human words, then maybe his own suffering would be sufficient.
Athena had described it to him once, after the tenth time he had asked, how exactly the Quick Thought worked. The connection formed, however briefly, between the two of them when inside of this place. The true reason why there were so many silver strands weaved throughout the white.
Odysseus still had to find the right phrases, had to give sound to the mourning trapped in his chest, but he could be certain she would hear him. Understand him, if she so wished. And looking at her sharp grey eyes, the goddess seemed to want to do just that.
Digging fingers into wounds still bleeding, he mercilessly searched his soul for the sentences with which to explain the hollowness steadily devouring the pieces of himself he had thought untouchable. To describe the unnameable weight dragging down his body. The tired sadness lingering in his bones.
The guilt stalking his steps.
„Mortal sorrow, it… it’s like the ocean. So agonisingly vast and wild one could never hope to tame it. It’s unmovable and unbeatable. The waters won’t let you dry and they won’t let you rest. Once in the middle of it, there is no beginning nor end, just hoping for enough strength to somehow reach home. It’s a dangerous place for a person to be and if not careful one could easily forsake their life to its depths.” Odysseus’ voice cracked, memories of his dead friends overlapping in his head with the image of a blond demigod blessed with the brightest of tempers and the loudest of laughs. A man who had been lost to them long before Apollo delivered his soul to Hades.
Athena watched him keenly, attention paid to everything which left his mouth. Rigid just like the statue him and Diomedes had stolen from Troy under the cover of the night.
„For the gods, ocean poses little threat,” she admitted quietly, amicable to his metaphor, before the king of Ithaca could tear himself open for more words.
„I know,” he whispered, wrapping his arms around his ribs in a feeble attempt at hiding their trembling. His ears kept ringing with the echo of the blows from the club and the sound of an arrow released. He tasted copper.
Odysseus thought she might have said something else. All he could hear were the cries of agony in the darkness. All he could see was the red spattered on the ground.
„It feels as if I’m drowning. My head is under the surface. I can’t make out where up or down is and I can’t breathe, for my lungs are full of water,” he said, a bit of hysteria creeping in.
Not now, damn it.
His tongue rushed to get all of it out, because he feared he might choke on it all. If he wasn’t already. „I was so angry it blinded me, because I was ready to lose my men in Ilion. To the Trojans, to the gods, to the assortment of idiotic plans the other kings kept approving. Then the war suddenly ended and I let myself believe I could bring them all home alive. And he took them from me!” But you brought them to him.
The shout echoed in the empty space, drowning out his laboured breathing as his chest heaved underneath suppressed cries of sorrow. His body curled in on itself and his hands shook like bird wings when he pushed the heels of his palms into his eye sockets, desperately trying to stem the flow of his tears even as his skin grew damp with them.
And then there were slender fingers gently circling his wrists, pulling them away from his face. Athena’s face swam into view, blurry from all the water obscuring his vision. Her gaze was strangely somber and the brow above it had furrowed into a barely concealed troubled frown. Odysseus latched onto the concern like a man starved, clinging to her forearms with all the strength his hands could muster, words tumbling out of his mouth in a manner similar to beggars pleading in the square for pity coins.
„I’m sorry, I acted thoughtlessly, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry,” he struggled out through the sobs which had finally managed to scrape their way up his throat from his ribcage, tearing it apart in the process. Your fault, your fault, your fault they are dead. „Please, please, I- I have already lost one dear friend, I can’t lose another one. I already lost Polites and I can’t bear for you to leave too.”
His mentor’s grip on his wrists tightened, marks of red in the shape of womanly fingers searing themselves onto his skin.
„I already mourn one, I beg of you don’t make me mourn two.” Odysseus gasped out, as if in prayer, although it was anything but. His whole form bent even more, making him seem smaller than he truly was. His head bowed down, almost like he wanted to lay his forehead where they were holding onto each other.
Athena made a strange strangled sound somewhere in her chest, nails carving half-moons into his fragile human skin.
Never before had he begged her for anything, not even during the Trojan war. He had looked to her for assistance, advice and sometimes even simple comforts of companionship. Prayed to her in temples and called out her name on battlefields. Chattered nonsense at her in his thoughts while bored in military councils, lounging in a fur-covered chair, or spoken to her kneeling on a hard ground asking for his wife and child’s safety during labour.
He had never begged.
He did now, because Odysseus knew without a sliver of a doubt if he let her walk away something dreadful, more horrific than the blood of fourteen staining his hands, would befall his crew. They were still far from Ithaca and how was he supposed to-? Without Polites?
His upper body shuddered as his lungs tried to take in more air in-between the wet rattles escaping his mouth.
„Odysseus!” He hadn’t noticed he had somehow fallen to his knees until the stern sound of his name cut through the throb of his own heartbeat in his ears.
The king of Ithaca looked up at his mentor, tears streaming down his face and shoulders shaking along to his stuttering hiccups. Athena’s grey eyes were now openly worried, no longer glowing as brightly, when she peered down at the mortal man from where she was kneeling right in front of him. Their hands were still linked and it seemed to be his only lifeline.
He would have been ashamed to be seen like this by the daughter of Zeus, however with every breath causing him agony and his soul drenched in the looming sense of hollowness, Odysseus was irrationally grateful for her presence.
He closed his eyes, trying to hide his face from the goddess anyways when he lowered his head once more. He wished for the tears to stop falling. His chest quivered as another sob barged its way past his lips.
Gods, he had left them all there…
One of the arms underneath his hands slipped from his grip. But before the panic could even properly set in the other one slid further up his own limb. It stopped just past his elbow and gently tugged him closer to her. The first one came back right after, carefully placing a palm at the back of his neck. It guided his head to lean against a cloth-clad collarbone and then stayed there, fingers delicately tangling into his outgrown curls.
He felt it as she rested her chin on top of his hair just as his free hand twisted itself into her peplos, holding onto the fabric for dear life.
Athena didn’t say a word, didn’t hum a note, but she was there and her arms around him were warm.
Odysseus wept.
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He didn’t know how long they remained like that before his breathing finally faded from hitching inhales into a somewhat steady rhythm, and his eyes ran dry of tears. The realm of the Goddess of Wisdom didn’t operate on mortal conceptions of time and space.
Even though no more cries left his throat Athena didn’t move and Odysseus was too emotionally spent to even try to pretend her closeness wasn’t a source of comfort. So they stayed in their positions, the goddess’ fingers occasionally twitching in his hair, catching onto the gold band hidden within it. He let her.
„You have convinced me, son of Laertes.”
Her voice was so loud in the prolonged silence that the king of Ithaca startled, flinching slightly away, when she spoke. Once her words registered in his mind he let out a huff of a laugh as relief crashed through him, leaving him a bit lightheaded.
„I’m glad of it, lady Athena,” he smiled, concealing it from her sight in the white cloth on her shoulder. His own voice was hoarse, scratching in his throat like sand.
„You are very fortunate I have grown fond of you over your time in my care, foolish boy.”
His silver tongue wanted to oppose it, cheekily correct her that he was no longer a boy but a man grown. A man almost arrived at the half way point in his journey to the grave. Instead he chose to tell another truth, one he knew they both would rather hear be said out loud.
„I have considered myself such from the moment you first deemed me worthy of your attention. You might have noticed from the symbols of your divine animal and olive tree proudly displayed not only all over the whole Royal Palace, but also my person.” The pin in the shape of Athena’s owl still smugly sat on his right shoulder, holding together two ends of his cape. Branches full of olive leaves were carved by his own knife into his scabbard, xiphos’ handle and the grip on his bow.
She knew all this, because like a child, he had showed her. In his defence he had been very, very bored during some longer stretches in-between battles during the war.
Her quiet chuckle warmed something in his chest nonetheless. Odysseus couldn’t see her eyes, but he imagined they glowed in amusement like they sometimes did when he managed something very dumb in just the right way, which pleased her.
A sigh escaped her mouth, hands tightening on his form for a fraction of a second and then the sternness he had gotten to know Athena for was restored to her.
„It is high time you returned to your men, king of Ithaca. They are beginning to grow restless in your absence.”
Odysseus blinked, remembering where he was supposed to be in this moment as opposed to the place he had been brought to. He sat back on his heels, facing her grey stare for the last time this evening. Her fingers stayed on his skin.
He didn’t bother replying, knowing everything he had to say on this matter, she knew already.
„Don’t disappoint me again, Odysseus. I might not be as forgiving to future transgressions as I have been to this one.” Her eyes narrowed, silently daring him to challenge her on it.
He simply grinned, heart aching but at least somewhat lighter than it had been.
„I will do my very best, lady Athena. I wouldn’t dream of causing further strife between us.”
They were both aware that was bullshit.
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The torn skin and flesh of his knuckles bled back into existence just as the arms around him fell away. A hiss of pain left his lips, the stickiness of blood pulling at his hands when they instinctively flexed. At least the wounds had a chance to scab over a little bit during his talk with Athena, since they no longer wept red liquid into his palms.
And there weren’t any angry marks left on his wrists from way too strong of a grip. He carefully avoided looking at his fingers too closely, sensing the sorrow prowling at the back of his mind.
Odysseus was still sitting propped against the rock, the lights of bonfires growing ever dimmer in the distance. His chlamys wrapped tightly around his shoulders and covering most of his body, providing more warmth than it normally would in this cold of a night.
He sent a quick, exhausted thanks to Athena, his inner voice painted with gratitude. Then he got up on tired feet, muscles aching from the uncomfortable position he had been curled up in. A sigh escaped his lips and some of the horrible weight crushing his chest faded, instead replaced by a carefully crafted sense of gentle fondness, which enveloped him whole.
Odysseus smiled a small, fragile thing, wondering how exactly he should creep back into the camp without Eurylochus scenting his return. His second-in-command would surely notice one more shadow peeling out from the darkness.
He huffed, his legs slowly carrying him towards his soldiers, a plan already forming in his head. If he couldn’t avoid the man, then at least he could scare him half to death. Eurylochus could use a distraction from the grief, too.
One hour later Odysseus was fast asleep leaning on his friend’s shoulder, his hands carefully cleaned and wrapped in cloth laying in his lap. An arm was holding him around the waist, securely keeping him from shifting too much and tipping over one way or another. Two cloaks, not his own, piled on top of him to shield him from the evening chill.
Meanwhile a colourful bruise in the shape of a fist steadily bloomed on his left shoulder.