Work Text:
There’s a soft sound that the ocean's waves make as they roll back and forth across the coast. A gentle swish of water over the wash of sand and shells scattered on the rough ground. As the tide peaks and falls on the beaches of Ogygia, under the palm trees and the rustle of the delicate breeze, Calypso had spent thousands of blurry moments listening to the waves.
Years ago, during the first of her numerous, grueling lives, a man of beautiful flesh and rustic charm had sat there with her and listened too. Odysseus would lie with her under the palms with tangles of linen from their garments protecting their bodies from the sand. The sun would set in the west so the lovers would chase it all night, basking in the dim shine of the moon with the noise of the tide still in their ears and their barefoot steps trailed to the east for Apollo's rise. All with the subtle crash of the waves to soundtrack all seven years of Calypso’s joy with him.
He was a dream, but not the sort you feel you must wake up from. He was the dream that lingers on the tip of your mind, recurring and barely unalive. She felt as though she could reach out and grab him and hold onto the thought of his light.
However dreaming can only last while sheltered from reality, while asleep from the harshest ideas and grueling moments. His trap of affection could only mask his true intentions for as long as he could live without his wife, Penelope. When he left, she had felt stretching arms rip through her skin, rooting from a hole in her heart, partly reaching out for the feeling of his encapsulating embrace, partly in a pitiful attempt to steal back the slice of her heart he had taken with him back to his home.
The first night without Odysseus had left her agonizingly sobbing on the east beach, stumbling aimlessly towards the west as she could no longer navigate her own home without him by her side to take her hand and pull her and her smile and her wide eyed gaze across the coast. She spent every night from the rest of that first life like the first, painfully trailing her soul behind her.
In the morning when the sun had finally settled into place atop Zeus’ sky, she would sit in the sand on which she had been with Odysseus. Life two and life three were no different, at the end of each natural life span, 40 years or so she had guessed from her warped view on time, she withered away in the night in the middle of her walk, only to pick up in the morning with the slightest change in appearance.
She would always stay physically teenaged, a painting of nymph-like beauty that was indescribable to even her lovers. In one life she might have constellations of freckles across her face, and in one slightly fuller lips than the original pair she’d brought with her to the Island.
In some ways, she was grateful that her body was no longer her own. Her body was not tied by the thought of laying with Odysseus as her mind and soul where, as her pain remained in every crevice of her being besides her physicality.
It was in life four when she could listen to the waves in a sudo-stable peace again. In this life her hair had developed an auburn hue, of which Francis Drake had grown a liking too after crashing onto her island.
Francis had not been the type to walk on the beach like Odysseus had been, and he had no desire to enjoy the absence of his voice and hers to listen to the precious sounds of the beach at night as Odysseus had either. Instead he would sit atop his driftwood chair and tell the titaness stories of his expeditions, from all she could tell he only told these stories to remind himself of his own glory and not to entertain her.
He had taught her many important skills, many that would stick with her for dozens of lives and versions of herself. But he’d had a temper only outdone by Ares, his soul might as well could have been the fifth or sixth incarnation of narcissus. But she was so enticed, drawn in by the simple idea of being loved, that she allowed him to stay.
It was barely different from being alone on the island for all of those thousands of years. She still walked the beach by herself at night like she had after Odysseus, while Francis could be mumbling the stories of his greatness to himself or any poor bird that flew by the island.
But as it turns out, her auburn hair had not been completely unknown to his heart. Mirroring Odysseus, he had a love back home, with the same golden red hair as Calypso, his wife Elizabeth. Soon he would leave with a piece of her heart, still talking tales of fairness and justice.
She had no choice but to return to her cycle. Chasing the moon at night so she would not have to remember the many sunrises she had shared with her first love. Lives continued to pass by in a distorted wave, as she could barely remember anything besides Odysseus and Francis. As her lives grew in numbers, though, her island oasis grew darker and more somber than it had been.
It was only many loves and lives later when light would return to her drab little island. Brought in with the swish of the tide, a boy younger than the rest. She had known his name before, Perseus, a great hero only matched by Achilles and her Odysseus and a few other heroes chosen by the gods. But this boy wasn’t Perseus, although he did tell her stories of his adventures, this was Percy.
Percy’s stories never reflected the tone and ego in which Francis would tell his own. He told her of the gods he’d faced, but never focused on his great successes, only on the help of his teammates. He spoke of Grover, Rachel, his enemy Luke, and a girl named Annabeth.
Through experience though, words sound different. Annabeth sounded like Elizabeth, Annabeth sounded like Penelope. But as the poets would say, ignorance is bliss. Calypso spent night and day pretending to be unaware of her loves’ love for another woman, for the third time.
But as the days and months bled together, and he stayed, she let the part of her heart left glimmer with the smallest amount of hope that he wouldn’t leave her. Just like she had with Odysseus, they would sit on the beach and listen to the music of the beach. Truly, these moments were more real than whichever sad copy of her former body she was stuck in, but they allowed her to feel like she was real even if only for a little bit.
She would have to learn though, that lovers come like they tide. It’s beautiful as they wash in as they linger on the beach for a while, but they will never stay. The moon draws the tide away into it’s trap. Penelope and Elizabeth had been moons, and now Annabeth was the moon. Calypso understood what she needed from Percy’s stories to come to her sad conclusion. The conclusion, in the end, was that she could never be as enticing and wise as any of these women. Unlike her spot on that island, she could never be permanent in another person’s life, no matter how much they love her or she loves them. Just like Odysseus and Percy were destined to be heroes, she was meant to be a lesson for them to hold onto in memory but never in person.
Mirroring everyone, Percy went back for Annabeth. This time though, he did something only one other person would ever do in her time on the island. He promised her, with his whole heart, that he would come back for her. No hero, though, could find Ogygia twice, though, something Calypso knew all too well.
Leo Valdez was no hero. He had never saved the world in a grand manor like the other men who had landed on her island. He wielded no sword, or bag of arrows and a steel bow like the others, he had not had the charisma to match them either. He looked almost like a nymph, but not the beautiful ones she had been raised around, more of a nymphish elf.
When she had heard someone described as ‘fire’ in the past, it had never been like this. His fire wasn’t in passion or heat, Leo burned too close to the sun. Quip after quip, joke after joke, his modern inflection and obnoxious humor never stopping to rest.
Something else about him, though, possibly the flames behind his eyes and his words, forced her to let him stay. He would work tirelessly during the day, whether he was collecting crops around the island that she would have never thought to cook with herself, or repairing his precious bronze dragon that he had landed with. At night, he would sit slightly down the beach and listen to the same splashing waves as her.
His spirit and impish grin seemed to glow from across the sand, so every night she would move closer until the night where she sat right next to them. And just like Francis and Percy, he told her stories of his life. He never spoke of heroic deeds or his finest battles, but of the simple mortal life he led. She told him about her life as a titaness, in Greece, and her former loves.
For once, she felt that someone didn’t want to build a ship and return home. However, she learned that Leo had a world to save. So she collected every bit of courage she had left in her sliver of a heart, the courage she had gained from her heartbreak. She took the skills learned from Franics, from when he’d built his ship to return to his auburn love. Together, they built a raft, not a grand ship, not something that would make him appear a hero returning home. He would not have performed some heroic deed in either of their minds, he would’ve abandoned his love. Like Percy, he promised to come back.
But unlike a hero, he had no one he wished to return to. There was no moon pulling the tide, no Penelope, or Elizabeth, or Annabeth. Leo was more like a shell that had washed up on the beach, Calypso threw him back into the deep water, knowing he’d be lost forever. But just like she had thought, he was no hero, heroes never look back on their past, only forward to their next shallow victory. Unlike the heroes,
Leo came back.
Unlike the tide,
He stayed.