Chapter Text
Polites watched as Eurylochus slipped into their tent, a supportive smile lingering as he watched the larger man disappear. The tent flap stilled, the heavy canvas muffling the sounds of men murmuring as they settled. The Greek camp was settling into the gentle whispers of night, their small haven illuminated by the dim warm light of fires and the pearl moonlight. The echoing calls of night creatures and the creaking of long settled ships were a familiar lullaby. It wasn’t tranquil—things never were—but it was the closest thing to peace that the men ever got on the shores of Troy.
He stood at the entrance of the tent for a moment, his own smile slipping—not into sadness, but into a focused, weary calculation. The day had been long for everyone. There had been no movement on the Trojan front thankfully, giving all of the men some much needed down time. Unfortunately that also meant that they were all antsy, tensions only growing thicker as the blistering sun beat down on them. Polites had spent most of the day soothing small squabbles and amusing men so they forgot the bleak existence they lived in at the moment.
It was exhausting work.
Polites let out a long breath, pinching the bridge of his nose before dragging his palm down his face, trying to wipe the weariness from his face. His shoulders slumped slightly as he closed his eyes, just feeling the night around him, the cool air fill his lungs.
If he was lucky Eurylochus would actually listen to him and get some rest, call it a night early and let the camp run itself without his micromanaging for a night. He was a dreamer, an optimist—but he wasn’t a blind fool. He knew his friend. And he knew that even if Eurylochus was finally horizontal, he was probably staring at the ceiling with wide, unseeing eyes. And that within the next few hours he would be up to go check something that could wait until morning.
But Polites had calmed him, stopped the terror that haunted his friend from claiming him completely. Now, he had to deal with the other half of the storm.
He looked at his hands for a moment, the familiar callouses and scars he had earned through the years of war. They didn’t shake like Eurylochus had, a blessed mercy, but sometimes he wished they would. Then he could pretend that they were just the hands of a warrior and not the fisherman that had been dragged into battle. He blinked, breath hitching slightly before he shook his hands—it was best if he focused on the task at hand. He could reminisce on the times when the only blood on his hands was his own or of innocent fish rather than another man’s.
With a soft sigh, Polites turned back toward the fire, rolling his shoulders back and letting an easy smile settle on his face. It was practiced motion, never forced—it was a natural reflex—and made his way towards his king. The trek back was shorter without the weight of a trembling giant leaning on him, but the air felt heavier. He could see Odysseus from a distance, a sharp silhouette against the dying embers, the wine skin dangling from his hand like a spent weapon.
He stepped into the dying firelight slowly, unburdened. Odysseus was tense, didn’t bother looking up at Polites as he emerged from the bruised shadows of night. The shorter man’s finger was tapping a rhythm only he knew on the wineskin held limply in his hand, evidence that his mind was still churning. His brow furrowing with heavy thought. He looked tired—he always did nowadays, it made something ache in Polites’s chest. The weary knowledge of forgotten youth.
"You're going to burn a hole in the sand if you keep staring at it like that, Ody," Polites spoke gently as he settled on the log next to the shorter man. He stretched out his legs, feeling the muscles in his left leg protest with a sharp ache. A gift that a lucky Trojan spear had left him with from one of the countless battles he participated in.
Odysseus still didn't look up and meet the gaze of his friend. He remained a statue of bronze and shadow, the firelight catching the sharp bridge of his nose and the silver beginning to pepper his beard. Polites believed it made his friend look sophisticated, wiser, and perhaps more fatherly, but he had seen the way the king had examined the discoloration in a mirror before. It was a symbol of the years lost to a war for him. Finally, Odysseus let out a breath that sounded like it had been held for years, shaking his head.
"I see your leg has recovered,” Odysseus commented, his voice low and raspy, the regal edge replaced by a raw, human exhaustion. Though it still carried a critical weight, bluntly calling the other man out on his previous lie. His fingers finally stilled on the wineskin.
"Aye, a merciful blessing," Polites replied, humming contently despite the fact that his own deceit had been revealed. To linger on such details would only make his brother’s mood worse, it was best to acknowledge and simply move on. He leaned back, hand carefully massaging the damaged leg.
He hadn’t lied when he said it was cramping, the old wound had been bothering him all day. A persistent but dull ache.
Odysseus let out a short, mirthless puff of air through his nose.
"A blessing you use as an excuse to spirit my second-in-command away before I’ve finished my business with him," He finally looked up, his eyes sharp and searching, the restless intelligence behind them darting over Polites’s face like a bird seeking a branch to land on. His tone wasn’t sharp, but it was laced with the simmering anger Polites had overheard earlier. "Is he settled?"
"As settled as he gets," Polites answered softly, his smile softening at the thought. He stopped massaging his leg and looked into the embers, the orange light reflecting in his dark eyes. He let a beat pass before he chuckled, offering Odysseus a knowing look, "Which is to say, he is staring at the tent roof and counting the stitches of the tarp until he either falls asleep or decides to make himself busy with some useless task."
Odysseus shifted, the leather of his minimal armor creaking in a way that sounded like a groan of protest. His eyes darted to the repaired sandal at his feet before he looked back at the fire, the wineskin still hanging from his hand like a spent weight. His frown deepened, wrinkles creasing his forehead.
"Polites,” the man began, gaze hardening with thought, “He spoke of Ctimene like she was a ghost, or a client he had met years ago. As if she were a dream he’d woken up from and decided to forget for the sake of breakfast.”
He paused, closing his eyes and shaking his head before letting it rest in his open hand, massaging his brow. It was a brief moment of silence, ending with a sharp huff. “His wife. My sister.”
Polites watched his friend—the man who could outwit gods and navigate the labyrinthine minds of kings—struggling to understand the logic of a war weary brother. He would admit, it was an endearing sight, a rare moment when the king's intelligence turned on something softer. Perhaps it was even humorous to watch the great Odysseus struggle to understand a simple man’s inner workings—or a heartbreaking display of the divide that the war had forced between two friends who had known each other since boyhood.
He ignored the bitter thought, deciding to focus on the irony of such a smart man being stumped by the complexity of human emotion. His expression upturned in a gentle display of thoughtful care as he listened to his brother. Polites didn’t have to wait long for him to continue.
“I… I don’t understand it,” Odysseus eventually stated plainly. Looking from the ground to Polites as if he held the answers to the universe. He gestured with his hand, voice firming to a frustrated plea to be heard, “I sit here. Day after day… and I am consumed by the memory of my beloved Penelope—it is the only thing that keeps the blood from staining my soul. The thought of her and my son… It is what keeps me sane.”
Polites nodded apologetically, the mirth of the statement buried under a gentle smile. He was certain that not a single man was unaware of Odysseus’s longing torment for home. If the king wasn’t fooling with Diomedes, strategizing with the other leaders or brooding, it was almost guaranteed that his thoughts had returned to the shores of Ithaca.
“And I was making conversation! I was trying to offer Eurylochus the same ear he so often lends me—to bond over shared memories of our wives and he just… he…” the king’s voice strained, rising as he expressed his simmering frustration, trying to defend his own aggression. He fumbled for words for a moment, his face flushed, hand gestures short and firm. It was a rare crack in Odysseus’s control. “He does that!”
The auburn haired man let out a sharp breath as he stood abruptly, wineskin left forgotten on the log. A hand ran through his beard, tugging on the decent length before going to sweep his mess of hair from his face. His face contorted sourly as he tried to make sense of his own thoughts, to form the right words. Polites watched the way Odysseus paced—three steps left, a sharp pivot, three steps right. It was the movement of a man trying to solve a puzzle that refused to fit, and Odysseus hated puzzles he couldn’t solve.
It was no surprise that he had lashed out at Eurylochus, after the stressful day Odysseus simply didn’t have the patience to sort out another puzzle of social interactions.
"He does that," Odysseus repeated, his voice dropping into a low, jagged whisper. He stopped his pacing and looked at Polites, his eyes searching for an answer. "He shuts down. He becomes a wall. I reached out as a brother, Polites. Not as a king. And he treated my sister’s name like a piece of equipment to be inventoried and put away."
Polites didn't answer immediately. He nodded once, smile fading as he contemplated the words carefully. He had to watch what he said, lest he made this ordeal worse. He mindlessly chewed the inside of his cheek, reaching out and snagged a loose branch from the sand. He leaned forward to poke at the dying fire. A fresh flurry of sparks drifted upward, mirroring the restless energy radiating off the king.
Eventually, he settled on his approach.
"My brother," Polites said softly, his voice a calm harbor against the king's rising tide. He looked at him with a knowing light in his eye, a small smile tugging on his lips. "You know just as well as I do that Eurylochus doesn't do anything without a reason. He’s the most deliberate man I’ve ever met."
"Then what is the reason for this?" Odysseus demanded, his voice a hiss, gesturing toward the tent. A sliver of genuine distress slipped into his tone. "To pretend she doesn't exist? To act as if the life we left behind is a myth? I survive on those myths, Polites."
Polites turned the branch in the fire, watching the wood blacken and curl for a second longer before discarding it and standing. He bit back a small groan, his leg protesting the movement with a harsh twinge of pain, flinching, but he persisted. He placed a steadying hand on Odysseus’s shoulder, taking a moment to straighten his chiton before letting it rest. The shorter man leaned into it slightly, his shoulders losing some of the tension.
Polites would not pretend he knew exactly what was happening inside Eurylochus, but he had been the man’s steadying brace for long enough that he could assume. The constant fear that the gods seemed to have cursed on Eurylochus. A crushing weight of 'what ifs’ that both served as a gift and burden—something that some men would call foresight and others madness. But he also knew Eurylochus would never forgive him for laying that vulnerability bare, even to Odysseus.
"He’s not you, Ody," Polites spoke, offering a small, lopsided smile that didn't quite reach his eyes. He squeezed his friend’s shoulder, tilting his head to keep the captain’s wandering gaze. "You’ve always been able to live in three places at once—the past, the present, and whatever scheme you’re plotting for the future. You carry Ithaca like a lucky charm.”
He paused, his jaw working, letting the words settle between them. The warmth of the firelight creating an intimate space around them. He took a deep breath, choosing his next words with the precision of a man defusing a trap.
"Eurylochus…” he began, a fond smile dancing over his expression as his king finally honed in on what he was saying, ready to absorb whatever wisdom Polites held. “He is a man of the earth. He thrives in the dirt and the air of right now. If he allows his mind to wander across the sea… to the past or future—he loses his footing here.”
Odysseus’s brows furrowed at the thought, intelligent eyes flickering as they calculated and reevaluated.
Good.
Polites continued, his thumb working a mindless and soothing rhythm onto his shoulder, trying to massage the lingering tension from the muscle. “And that is a dangerous thing for a man who carries so much. He’s convinced that if he stumbles, even for a second, everything falls apart."
Odysseus opened his mouth to argue, Polites silenced him with a lifted hand. Letting a beat pass.
"Especially you," Polites added eventually, his voice barely a murmur.
Odysseus went still under his hand. The pacing had long since stopped, but the gears in his head were still turning with a frantic, audible speed. His fingers twitching from where his hands rested at his side. His eyes flashed with his notorious pride, hardening. "I am not a child. I do not need him to hold his breath just so I can breathe mine."
Polites let out a strained, wheezing laugh—not because what the king had said was humorous, but because his own exhaustion had reached that thin, brittle place where the only other option was to start crying, and he’d much rather be the camp’s fool than its fountain.
There was no winning when Odysseus’s pride was at stake, maybe Polites would have tried had he not already been battling with a hundred other men’s hubris before.
Which left him with one option.
"Five years," Polites gasped, wiping a stray tear from the corner of his eye as he cackled. His fit of laughter only intensified at the shock and confusion clear on his friend's expression. "Five years of war, and the Great Strategist still hasn't figured out that Eurylochus is just a very large, very grumpy turtle."
Odysseus paused, his hand halfway to his beard, looking at Polites as if he’d grown a second head. He blinked, hand falling. He opened his mouth, closed it, then tried again. "A turtle?"
"Exactly!” Polites exclaimed with a giggle, leaning onto the other man as he gestured vaguely towards the tent. His tone danced with a manic sort of glee, face split in a contagious grin. “And—themoment you poke him with something he doesn't want to deal with—like, oh, I don't know, emotions—he just sucks his head back in. You’ve got to lure him back out with the promise of salad.”
The mental image was enough for Polites to be consumed by another fit of loud laughter, wheezing and holding his gut as he fought through the giggles. The sounds of his fit echoing around the mostly quiet camp—he could already envision the firm glare of his brothers who were having their precious sleep disturbed. But, honestly, they didn’t give him enough credit for just how humorous he was.
Odysseus stared at him like he was mad.
"You've finally lost it," Odysseus stated after a long pause, though the razor-sharp edge of his irritation had been blunted by sheer bewilderment. He looked down at the hand Polites had braced against his chest, watching his friend vibrate with sleep-deprived mirth. A flicker of amusement and concern warring in his features. "The sun has baked your brain into mush, Polites. A turtle? You compare my second-in-command, Eurylochus, our brother, to a turtle?"
"A very armored one," Polites gasped, whispering with a childlike amusement. He finally caught his breath enough and leaned back, though he kept a steadying hand on Odysseus’s arm. The manic glint in his eyes softened into something more grounded, though the weary humor remained. “The point is, you will not get a turtle to poke its head back out by beating upon its shell and demanding it obey until your knuckles bleed and your voice is hoarse.”
He let out a long, shuddering sigh, his shoulders slumping as the adrenaline of the laugh began to fade, leaving only the bone-deep ache behind. He looked at the moon’s position in the dark sky.
"I’m tired, Ody," he admitted, the mask slipping just enough for the king to see the dark circles under his eyes. He still smiled, letting the atmosphere remain as light as he could make it. "Eury is tired. You’re tired. It’s been a long day for all of us."
Polites nodded to himself, pat Odysseus’s shoulder once before he pulled away to face the log again. He reached down and snatched the wineskin from where it rested before Odysseus could protest or react. He took a long, ungraceful swallow, letting out a dramatic sigh at the end and then firmly pressed the leather pouch back into the king’s chest.
"Stop trying to play philosopher at midnight," Polites murmured, his voice thick with a sudden, heavy gravity as Odysseus took the wineskin with a wary look. Polites simply shook his head, huffing a small laugh, a sad echo of his previous joy. "You’re not very good at it and I’m too tired to be your student tonight. Just... let the turtle be. He’ll stick his head out for some salad when he’s ready.”
Odysseus looked at the wineskin, then at the tent, then back at Polites. The fire in his eyes didn't go out, but it settled into a low, smoldering coal. Something manageable. His gaze lowered from Polite’s eyes to his favoring leg, then at the calloused hands that had spent the day smoothing over the tempers of a thousand men. They returned to his face as a weary smile tugged the corners of his lips.
"Go to bed, Polites," Odysseus whispered, his voice finally losing the last of its bite. He reached out and squeezed Polites’s shoulder—a firm, grounding pressure. His smile widened, though it was still tight, "Before you start telling me Agamemnon is a goat or Diomedes is a particularly aggressive crab."
"Diomedes is an aggressive crab," Polites chirped, already turning to limp toward the tent, his gait uneven but determined. He grinned madly, voice raising proudly, teasing "But you, my dear brother, are a ram."
"Bed!" Odysseus barked, though there was a ghost of a chuckle hidden in the command.
Polites didn't wait for a second command. He raised a hand in a mock salute over his shoulder, the silhouette of his waving fingers dancing against the canvas of the nearby tents. “Yessir!”
As soon as he stepped out of the direct radius of the firelight, the mask didn't just slip—it dissolved.
The walk to the tent felt twice as long as the walk out of it. Every step on the shifting sand sent a fresh bolt of protest up his leg, and the cool night air, which had felt refreshing moments ago, now just felt cold. He reached the flap of the tent and paused, taking one last look at the stars. They were beautiful, indifferent, and so very far away from the blood-soaked dirt of Troy.
He slipped inside. The interior was dark, smelling of cedar oil, old leather, and the salt-crust of the sea. Polites stood just inside the threshold, holding his breath. He could hear the low rhythmic rumble of a snore from a few of the men, a few shifting in their sleep. He was listening for Eurylochus, for a soft greeting or unintelligible mumbles of a nightmare. He expected the latter; Eurylochus was a man who fought the darkness even in his sleep.
But as his eyes adjusted to the dim, blue-grey light filtering through the canvas, he realized the tent was unusually still. Eurylochus was sprawled on his pallet, his large frame finally surrendered to the weight of the day. His jaw, usually clamped shut with enough force to crack stone, was slack. His hands, which had been trembling with a frantic, electric energy only an hour ago, lay limply on his chest.
Mercifully, Eurylochus had actually fallen asleep.
Polites let out a breath he felt he had been holding since mid-afternoon. It was a rare mercy from the gods—or perhaps just the sheer, blunt force of exhaustion finally winning a victory over a panicked mind. But it was a victory in his mind.
He moved with the practiced silence of a ghost, favoring his aching leg as he navigated the small space to his own bunk. He didn't want to risk so much as a floorboard’s creak—not that there were floorboards, but the dry earth had its own ways of betraying a man's presence. He sank onto the thin mattress, the fibers scratching against his skin, and felt the structural integrity of his own willpower begin to crumble.
He took a deep breath.
Without the eyes of a king or a terrified friend upon him, Polites allowed himself to slump. He didn't unlace his sandals; he didn't even pull the wool blanket over his chest. He simply sat there in the dark, watching the slow, steady rise and fall of Eurylochus’s chest.
"Sleep well, turtle," he whispered, so softly the words were barely a vibration in the air. A small smile withering away from his expression.
His own eyes began to burn, the stinging salt of a dozen hours of forced smiles and tactical cheer finally demanding payment. He leaned his head back against the thin fabric, closing his eyes. He thought of the fish he used to catch—the silver flash of them in the morning sun, the simple, honest work of a life that didn't require him to be the soul of an army.
He was so tired.