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aftermath

Summary:

on calypso's loneliness

Notes:

quick preface, this is the scrapped epilogue to a much longer fic about calypso and odysseus. that fic is still in the works and i canttt give an exact estimate to when ill post it besides that its probably going to be within the next month or two? i dont know shit happens. anyways. if something sounds strange its probably because it was meant to have a lot more context to it. i dont even really know if this works well as a standalone but oh well

content warning this time is just for suicidal ideation. why does every single one of my epic fics have that specific warning.

(See the end of the work for more notes.)

Work Text:

Odysseus is gone.

 

Calypso should be used to the loneliness. She'd felt it for years upon years, centuries spent in solitude. Compared to that, Odysseus was a presence in her life for barely a heartbeat. She should've slipped right back into the comfortable blanket of apathy.

 

And yet, for the first time since the start of her banishment, she is enraged.

 

She's angry for a moment, and then Odysseus is too far over the horizon to see anymore, and she stays angry. Calypso stews in it, lets it consume her. How unfair is it, that the gods rip everything from her? How much must they hate her? It's only when she's happy that they seem to notice her at all, and then that's simply to take and take and give her nothing at all as recompense.

 

Was it all another punishment from above? Did Zeus chuckle to himself as he thought of poor, miserable little Calypso, feeling joy for the first time in centuries only to have it ripped away from her? Hermes had given an obnoxious snicker as he delivered her the news, smiling all the while, brushing off her pleas to let her keep Odysseus if only for just another moment. Calypso was sure every god got a good laugh out of her loss. How amusing, to be the victors and to watch others suffer. 

 

And how cruel was Odysseus, to leave her. After all she had done? Everything she gave to try and make him happy? How could he just stand up and leave, with barely a word? Were seven years worth nothing to him?

 

Calypso stays angry. She lets her rage be all she feels for five days straight. And then, like when Calypso was a child, so furious with the unfairness of the world but realizing there was nothing to do with that feeling, the anger quiets, and all that is left is grief.

 

Once Calypso notices her sadness, it's all-encompassing and suffocating and inescapable . It consumes her every moment. She wakes thinking about Odysseus, and he doesn't leave her mind until she's unconscious again, and then he returns to her the moment she wakes up again with no one at her side.

 

Her anger with Odysseus has mostly died in the span of less than a week. She can't be upset with him when she would give anything for his company again. She can't even blame him for leaving- if she was given the offer to leave, she would've taken it too.

 

There is nobody in the space beside her when she wakes. There is no response to her words when she speaks. There is nobody sitting on the beach staring at the horizon for hours on end besides her.

 

Was this the feeling that had driven Odysseus near mad? It must be- Calypso herself is half tempted to test again the limits of her immortality, to see if the sharp rocks her love had tried to throw himself off the ledge onto could take her life, too. 

 

They wouldn't. Calypso knew that. So instead, she slept, and when she woke, she rolled over and went back to sleep. 

Notes:

uhh notes about my calypso characterization i guess bc without that whole fic as context this might be a little weird? i imagine calypso as someone whos very defined by her life of loneliness. when she was first banished she was fucking pissed at the entire world for how unfair it was and then with nothing she could really do about it she sort of became numb to it all. and odysseus was the first real break in that for her, because for once she had something to care about. so without odysseus around shes kinda fucked up again. cut this bc it felt a bit too blatant but i was going to add the sentence "there was no reason to be awake" to the end. that wouldve been a callback to uhhh a line earlier in the fic which was about how calypso doesnt need to sleep but used to a lot because there was no reason to be awake. yeah.

that calypso fic isnt cancelled. btw. i swear itll happen. ik im talking about it like it is cancelled but i swear to fucking god i will post it eventually

anyways. this isnt much of anything but i needed to post SOMETHING for me to feel motivated to keep writing. ifff you like it cool. lmk if you do your validation is what gets me to actually write things

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