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Penelope has never seen the sky.
Sometimes she lays in her bed at night and tries to imagine it. Her cousin, Helen, saw it once, taken to the surface by some rich man trying to win her hand. Penelope had asked her to describe it, after, burning with curiosity and envy. Blue, Helen had said. blue, and wide, and endless. full of possibilities.
Penelope can’t quite imagine it, no matter how much she tries.
“Leave it be.” Tells her Helen when she asks her to tell her one more time. “There is nothing up there that is worth it.” There is a sharp edge to her voice that Penelope understands. Helen’s brothers, Castor and Pollux, died under the suns, trying to win Zeus’s favour. Fighting impossible battle in foolish hope of winning themselves a place among the Olympians. Helen, at least, is wise enough to know she doesn’t want her father’s eyes on her.
Penelope wonders sometimes, though. What her cousins felt like, taking their last breath beneath the open sky. If it mattered to them, then, that they were out. If it mattered, in that last free moment, that they had failed. If it had been worth it.
But Helen wouldn’t understand, and Penelope loves her cousin more than anything, and so she never asks again.
*
Helen is also the one who introduces Penelope to Ulysses.
“We made a deal.” She explains to her cheerfully one morning. “See, I need someone’s recommendation to get me that job at Menelaus’s, and they need the help of someone who researches mental mapping from the more technological angle to contrast their more biological expertise, and hey, my favourite cousin is an artificial intelligence expert! So…”
She gives Penelope her most charming smile. Several people around the room swoon. Penelope remains unimpressed.
But that sort of collaboration has potential, and she has been looking for a new direction…
“alright,” She says, keeping her tone flat. “I’ll talk to your thought manipulator. But I make no promises.”
And so Penelope meets Ulysses. Ulysses, sharp and brilliant. Ulysses, kind and idealistic. Ulysses, breathtakingly beautiful.
Penelope has never seen the sky, but meeting Ulysses eyes, she thinks she understands what it looks like. Blue and wide and endless and full of possibilities.
*
It is a little more than two years later (two years exactly since the day she kissed them for the first time, although she does not remember it then) when they ask her if she wants to know a secret.
“Always.” She says, and laughs.
They take her hand and lead her down, down, down. Penelope is not a higher levels girl, but she has never been so close to the core. But she trusts Ulysses, loves the excited, secretive smile they fail to hide as they pull her along, deeper and deeper, far from the main parts of even the lower levels and into a small, hidden tunnel, where it seems like no one has stepped in centuries.
At the end of the tunnel, there is a door. Above the door, there is a name. Penelope.
“what is this?” Penelope asks.
“The greatest thing I’ve ever done.” They say, in the cryptic way she has always found equally annoying and endearing. Then they turn and smile at her, so very, very soft. “A gift for you.”
Penelope is still trying to find the words that will make an appropriate response to that when Ulysses steps forward, types some code in the small keyboard that’s on the door, and gestures to it.
“Well?” They say. “Open it.”
Carefully, Penelope pushes the door open, she takes one step in. and then she understands what she is seeing, and stops.
There is a field, there is a tree. And above them, there is the sky.
Penelope doesn’t know for how long she stands there, her feet on the living grass, looking up. Maybe minuets. Maybe years.
There are drops of water, coming down from the endless blue above her, washing the lower levels dirt of her skin. When they touch her face, they mingle with the tears she didn’t notice she was crying.
Eventually, she turns to look at Ulysses, standing quietly beside her, watching her and the tree, their sharp eyes at once gentle and burning.
“if you want it,” they say, “it is yours.”
She stares at them, speechless. In the end she manages, voice almost cracking: “What does this mean?”
“It means hope.” They take her hand, hold it tightly, and Penelope hears the echo of a hundred quiet, wistful conversations had in the safe darkness of their home.
“The city could be different.” They tell her fervently, just as they have before. “The city as it is could finally die. And then our world could be reborn. We - ”
“marry me.” She says, breathless.
Ulysses stops mid-sentence. Blinks. Then smiles, breathtakingly beautiful. “Well,” They say. “I was planning to ask you that.”
Penelope marries Ulysses under the sky, and the rain drops gather in their hair as she leans in to kiss them, and it feels like rebirth.
*
Helen shows up at their door in the middle of the night a year after Telemachus is born. Her face is pale. Her hands are shaking.
“I need to talk to you.” She says.
“Paris from Ilium came to talk to me just now.” she tells them a few minutes later, seated at their small table and staring into the mug Penelope shoved into her hands. “He told me Ilium intends to declare its independence in two weeks.”
“That means rebellion.” Says Ulysses. “That means a war.”
Helen is Menelaus’s best weapon designer. There is only one reason someone like Paris will be telling her those things, and only one reason she could be telling them to Penelope and Ulysses instead of her supervisor.
“He asked you to come with him.” Penelope says, and it’s not a question. “And you said yes.”
Helen meets her eyes, unwavering. “There is going to be a war, Penny. “She says, quiet and steady and inevitable. “And I know on which side I want to stand.”
And then it seems like there is nothing else left to say. Penelope says “I love you” and Ulysses says “Be careful” and Helen says “I’ll try to write” and then she walks out the door and she is gone.
The war starts two weeks later.
*
At first, they say it will be easy.
The force that is raised to fight is small, the amount of money invested in it laughable. Agamemnon shows up in all the feeds, promising victory by new year. The Olympian representatives laugh when questioned about the insurrection.
Then new year comes and passes, and Ilium still stands. After six months, the representatives stop laughing. After nine months, the extensive recruitment begins.
After a year, there is an Olympian in Penelope’s office.
Hera is beautiful. Her smile is kind. Her eyes are the coldest thing Penelope has ever seen. She stands frozen under their gaze (there was a message from Helen, just a few weeks ago, assuring them that she is alive and wishing Telemachus a happy birthday. But Hera doesn’t know that. Hera can't know that.)
“I hear you are one of our city’s leading experts in the field of artificial intelligence.” She says pleasantly. “My family always has use for talent, and lately more than ever. An intelligent woman such as yourself - I am sure you are aware of the situation in the Ilium district. A situation that grows more and more dire by the day. A situation that requires innovative solutions.”
There is a long moment of silence. Penelope says nothing. Her left hand grips the edge of the table so hard she thinks she may be bleeding.
“Build me an A.I that can win this war.” Hera says.
And Penelope says, “Yes.”
*
After a week, Penelope knows she can do it.
She is staring at the code on her screen as the chilling truth grows clear. She can do it. This is not a completely hypothetical project, an impossible task given at the whim of an Olympian. It will take time, will be incredibly difficult – but Penelope is very good, and her resources right now are the best she ever had. In time, she can do it – can make an A.I that will break Ilium and make the Olympians stronger than ever before.
Penelope gets up. Penelope goes home. She leans in the doorway and listens as Ulysses reads their son a story about long extinct birds and tucks him in. she and Ulysses sit down together after he is asleep, and talk. They talk for a very long time.
Then, from the secure computer in their home, the one protected by illegal means so it could be used to receive Helen’s messages, she open the project again. Carefully, meticulously, she goes through the code and erases any true progress she has made.
No progress made as of yet, she writes in her report to Hera. As can be expected in such an early phase of the project.
The next day she arrives at her office, and starts all over again.
*
It’s odd, how terror can become routine, if you live in it long enough.
Helen’s messages stop arriving a year and a half after she leaves. They see her face in the news, sometimes – old ID photos from her days in the City, or military reports of Hector’s foremost weapon-maker. the face that launched a thousand ships, the headlines say, and Penelope remembers the fire in her cousin’s eyes that night and thinks, I bet you like that.
Penelope unravels her code every night. Ulysses sits by her side during those hours, every night. Some nights, when she is so tired and so afraid and so sick of being both that her hands shake on the keyboard ,they hold her as she trembles. You are so brave, they whisper, running their hands through her hair, kissing her forehead. And they don’t suspect. We still have time.
Time means nothing to the Olympians, Helen would have told her, probably, tone bitter and dry. But Helen is not here anymore, is long gone and will never be back, and anyway, that is not the point. This time means everything to me.
(her son is growing up. How could this time not matter? It is the only thing that does).
There is no viable solution, she tells Hera in her reports every week. But I have not given up.
Sometimes, she dreams of the sky. How far away they were. How unbelievably open. she dreams of the raindrops, cool gentle (sometimes she dreams that she’s drowning). She yearns to see it again. She wonders if the sight would still feel like freedom. She thinks it will.
She looks in Ulysses’ sky-like eyes and sees her own fear reflected in them, and that the faith is bleeding out of them, too. They both know that there is only one form freedom in this world.
They get six years.
Hera is not patient woman, and her patience runs out. Penelope never knows if she’s been discovered, or how. She supposes it doesn’t matter, in the end. All that matters is that her time is up.
“I have recommended you for early admittance to the Acheron.” The Olympian informs her with a kind smile. “Your work is very important, and it seemed you will have better work conditions there. Less… distractions.” She hands Penelope the official summons. “You have a week to settle your affairs and say goodbye.”
Penelope does not argue. Penelope does not scream. Penelope does not strike her across her smug, beautiful face.
Penelope nods, and takes the document, and leaves the office. Penelope goes home.
She goes to Ulysses. Her Ulysses, beautiful and brilliant and brave. Her Ulysses, who gave her her death as a wedding gift.
She doesn’t have to say anything. They take one look at her and know.
“It was worth it.” They tell her, voice breaking. “Every single day.”
Sometimes, when people in the city tried to avoid the Acheron, they would use acid or fire, trying to destroy every last part of their brain before the ferryman found them. Penelope, who has the sky waiting for her, has no need for such measures. The small vial of poison she had acquired six years ago will suffice.
In the shadows of their bedroom, with Ulysses holding her other hand so tightly it hurts, she uncorks the vial and drinks every last drop.
It was worth it, she thinks. Her freedom. Her life. Her death. Penelope is older now and wiser than she was at her wedding day, and she will not see her world reborn. She does not think it ever will be. But she does not regret her choices – does not regret a single day.
(she thinks of Castor and Pollux, so long dead, and can’t help but laugh, just a little.)
She should say goodbye to Telemachus, she knows she does, but there is nothing she can say or do that will make this better, make this right. In the end, she can’t bring herself to do anything at all. Maybe it is cowardice, but Penelope has been brave for years and she is so tired, and there is nothing left for her to give.
(“What will you tell him?” She asks Ulysses.
“I don’t know.”)
She erases her code one last time before she leaves, leaving nothing behind for Hera to use.
They walk to the vault hand in hand, and this is familiar, isn’t it? in the shadows they pass, a much younger Ulysses pull a different Penelope down, down, down, both of them smiling like love is a promise and they have all the time in the world.
The poison's effects start showing themselves as they walk down together, her head spinning and her knees growing weak. Ulysses supports her, helping stay upright as they make their way forward and deeper. For the last part of the way, they pick her up and carry her. She rests her head on their shoulder. It’s warm.
The vault, when they reach it, looks just the same. Her name shines above the entrance, and this place was always meant to be her grave.
She is crying again, but she feels that this is right. If you can’t grieve yourself, when can you grieve?
It is raining again, when they come in.
Ulysses sets her down gently on the grass, and sits down beside her. They are crying, too. They don’t let go of her hand. She knows they will stay with her until the end.
She kisses them one last time, and there are no right words to say.
Above them, the tree shakes with then force of the rain. It is cold here in the vault, and Ulysses’ hand is the last warm thing in the world. Penelope lies on the grass and lets the tears stream from her eyes and into the ground, into the roots of the tree that will never bring a revolution.