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Odysseus walked, as he often did these days, with a suffocating feeling of dread. Five hundred men dead, and nearly a dozen more turned into swine because of course the first island they came across was ruled by some witch.

Worse, he had no idea how he was even supposed to begin to try to get them back. He couldn’t lose more men, not when they’d already survived so much, but after the nightmare that was the sea god’s storm (he couldn’t bring himself to think the name, even now), he was too shaken to formulate a plan.

What use was his silver tongue if he couldn’t convince the god of tides to have mercy on his men, none of whom were responsible for the blinding of the cyclops? What use were his clever plans if they couldn’t save Polites?

The forest did nothing to settle his thoughts. The closer Odysseus got to the palace, the more unnerved he felt. A deep sense of otherness hung in the air, a fine mist of supernatural influence filled his lungs with every inhale, making his head spin. His thoughts danced in meaningless patterns, evaporating as quickly as they formed.

Still, he walked. He owed it to them to try, even if he thought with growing certainty it would amount to nothing.

An unfamiliar, echoing laugh snapped him from his misery. Odysseus turned in its direction, but it just as quickly appeared behind him, then to his left, then his right until he was forced to stop lest he made a fool of himself twirling in circles.

“Who goes there?” he demanded, forcing the panic from his voice in favour of unquestionable authority. He really didn’t have time for this. The absolute last thing he needed was to waste energy chasing after some trickster spirit until it deceived him into throwing himself off of a cliff or into some carnivorous fish infested lake, or whatever bullshit a magic island used to kill off its intruders.

It would be a disappointing end to an otherwise rather eventful life. He could hear the snark of the poets already. The legendary Odysseus, renowned for his wits and strategies, sacker of Troy. He outsmarted foes and saw countless victories in battle. Well, until that business with the weird voices where he concussed himself to death running into a tree. Happens to the best of us.

If he died from something so colossally stupid before he got the chance to reunite with his family, he would haunt the world until the end of time, probably channelling all of his ghostly might to trip other heroes during important heroic moments.

“Just a friend,” the voice teased. “So defensive, when I harbour nothing but good intentions and love in my heart.” Odysseus had rarely been so sceptical in his life, but it continued before he could interject. “Circe’s not an enemy easily thwarted, darling, you’ll need some… well, let’s call it divine intervention, shall we?”

Finally, a figure emerged, and the air left his lungs in a sickening rush. Smirking before him stood the god of messengers, sporting a helmet adorned with fluffy wings and an overfilled satchel slung casually over one shoulder, spilling golden-sealed scrolls onto the soft forest floor. He swept off his helmet in a theatrical gesture, revealing curls of brown hair and unnaturally glowing eyes, the unmistakeable mark of the divine.

“Hermes?” Odysseus breathed, too incredulous to summon the necessary titles. The god’s words registered a beat later. “Do you know how I could save my men?”

Unnaturally white teeth flashed as his smile stretched even wider. “Quite. Though your men are hardly the most precious things on this island.” Before Odysseus could question that, Hermes revealed a flower with a flourish, blood red and shining with the sun’s light. “Her powers are admirable, certainly, but hardly without counter. This plant will temporarily render you immune to them upon consuming it. Gives you a delightful rush, too.”

He caught the flower tossed his way still in a daze, mind reeling. “I- Thank you, Lord Hermes,” he started, remembering himself at last. The god’s grin widened impossibly as he cut him off.

“Oh, none of that, you will most probably still die. Harbour no illusions that it can keep you perfectly safe, its effects are short lived and she is perfectly capable of killing you through mortal means. Besides, if you would like your men returned to you in human form, you’ll need to convince her to do so yourself.”

Odysseus nodded, jaw working as he strung the barest bones of a plan together.

“Oh, and you’ll have to lose this, too,” Hermes waved a casual hand at his armour and the sword hanging at his hip. They vanished at the gesture, leaving him feeling infinitely more exposed than he had a moment before. “Can’t go scaring the little one. Good luck!”

He disappeared in a bright explosion of golden dust, leaving Odysseus stunned and half blinded on the forest path. He’d known Athena was the exception to the rest of the gods with her blunt manner, but he hadn’t expected them to be quite so cryptic. Half of what Hermes had said had been entirely non-sensical, and he knew with a hopeless certainty he stood no chance of deciphering his words.

The loss of his armour and weapon unnerved him more than he would have liked to admit. They likely wouldn’t have been much use, but any protection was better than none. Odysseus stared at the flower buzzing suspiciously in his hands with the strong premonition he wasn’t going to enjoy whatever Hermes considered a delightful rush.

It wasn’t like he had much of a choice. A god had instructed him to eat a strange plant, and so he would. Odysseus could only hope this wasn’t some elaborate joke played on him by the god of tricksters, hoping to turn him too into some sort of flora. If the myths held true, the gods were fond of turning mortals into various greenery.

Reluctantly, he tore off half the plant with his teeth and swallowed it whole.

***

The rest of the walk to the palace was a blur of lights and colours as the flower took effect. By the time the concentration of trees began to decrease as he neared the end of the path, the dizzying nausea had settled into an uncomfortable buzz against his skin, like his body itself was rejecting the magic of the island. At each step, grass wilted by his feet, wind went unnaturally still. If he’d been planning on inconspicuousness, he would have failed miserably.

Finally, he broke free of the treeline and into a clearing. Odysseus had seen more than his fair share of palaces on diplomatic missions and travels, but the sight before him was undeniably breathtaking.

The building was relatively small, but lacking no grandeur for it. Its walls were constructed almost entirely in smooth stone, unnatural and shimmering with the divine. Columns rose past the tallest of treetops to support long, swooping balconies that curved one on top of the other as intricately as woven tapestry with winding, vine-like balustrades that gave the entire palace the illusion of being submerged within the forest. Along its doors, torches glowed impossibly bright and impossibly golden, emitting no smoke nor rippling the air around them with heat as they should.

A golden cage, he reminded himself. Beautiful and deadly all the same.

Odysseus shook himself and headed to the entrance, squaring his shoulders. Before he even reached the doors, a nymph glided in front of him out of nowhere, blocking his passage.

Her robes were simple, but washed with a deep orange and accessorised with golden jewellery that spoke of wealth. A polite smile graced her face, hands locked in front of her respectfully.

“Welcome to the palace of our Lady Circe, kind sir. Please state your business here, so that we may welcome you into our hospitality.” It was a demand, if disguised with pleasantries. Behind her, a flash of movement. Odysseus thought he could make out a figure disappearing into the palace behind her, presumably to warn its inhabitants of his coming. The first nymph shifted to block his view, smile straining as her expression grew more insistent.

“I am simply a traveller,” he began, as inoffensively as he was capable of. “I mean to inquire after the disappearance of some members of my crew, if anyone within your palace might have noticed anything that could aid me in my search.” Or, you know, might be able to return them to me outright. Preferably in human form.

Her eyes tightened minutely. “You will not find what you are searching for here. However, our queen is kind, and would wish me to invite you into our home so that you may rest and continue your search.” Odysseus could translate that easily. We’ll give you some probably poisoned food, and then you can kindly fuck off.

“I would be most honoured.” He smiled as gratefully as he could force himself to, and followed the tense nymph through the doors. Odysseus drew a mental map as they walked through winding hallways, planning an escape route in case the situation turned sour.

Finally, she stopped at an ornate set of double doors, pulling one open to usher him into an equally lavish room. Climbing plants covered most of the walls, twitching with magic and falling limp as he walked past. He hovered a single hand over the candle nearest to him, observing with interest how the flame extinguished as he brushed near.

Hermes had warned him the plant’s powers were short lived, and he would need to know as soon as they failed. For now, staying close to the candles would suffice. When they began to flicker back to life, he would know his time was running out.

Behind him, the nymph set up a shining goblet and pitcher at a low table, placed artistically in front of a lushly cushioned kline. It was unusual to have a palace servant alone with a stranger, especially one with a mistress so protective. More likely than not, many more of them lingered just outside the room to preserve Odysseus’s illusion of safety. It was an honourable effort, if obvious.

She rose to her feet, head bowed respectfully. “Our Lady will be with you shortly. Please, make yourself at home.” He didn’t turn from his inspection of the candles until he heard the doors close behind her.

Minutes later, they swung open again.

This time, they revealed an unnaturally tall woman with flowing golden hair and a predatory fixation in her eyes as she stared him down. Her robes were more extravagant than that of her predecessor’s, soaked in deep purple and threaded through with magical influence.

Obscured from sight behind her skirts was a much smaller figure, which immediately darted to the side without looking up at him in a blur of warm colours.

Odysseus made a show of admiring the room before him, meaning to compliment it and begin the conversation peacefully when his eyes caught on the child sitting with his legs folded in the corner.

An intricately woven veil hung over his nose and cheekbones, obscuring the lower half of his ceramically pale face behind swirling hues of sunset oranges and pinks. Delicate golden chains held it in place behind the child’s ears, curving past loops of precious metals and gemstones before disappearing behind similarly coloured robes in the same style as the witch’s.

Nothing could compare to his eyes. Golden brown, piercing into his soul with wary consideration and shining with intelligence. With a twisting ache in his chest, Odysseus realised the expression reminded him of Penelope. She would look at him the same in the early days of their courtship, always expecting some deception, some trick.

An inexplicable feeling rose in his bones that he couldn’t quite push back down as he looked at the child. Once he’d drawn the connection between the boy and his wife, Odysseus couldn’t help but notice the rest of the similarities. The dark curl of his hair, the small divot between his brows as he observed him in return.

It had been months since he’d last seen any child, and that age-old mix of guilt and longing returned with a vengeance. He would see Telemachus in all of them, imagining his smile or his laughter in place of theirs. He’d missed too much. That this child would remind him of his wife in any capacity left him feeling like the air had been punched out of him.

Odysseus tore his gaze back to Circe with herculean effort, trying and failing to ignore the familiar pain taking root in his chest.

“Lady of the palace,” he forced from his lungs, lacing the words with the smoothness that had earned him the title of silver-tongued, “You keep a truly beautiful home, and your generosity as a hostess is remarkable. I cannot express enough how much your kindness is appreciated for a weary traveller such as myself.”

The witch’s eyes narrowed, and Odysseus didn’t miss the flicker of suspicion in them, though her posture relaxed marginally. “It is not often that we receive travellers in these parts. Where do you hail from, stranger?”

His gut twisted uncomfortably. Revealing his identity to the cyclops had cost him five hundred men, he would not make the same mistake again.

“My crew and I have been turned around from Troy, I’m afraid.” Technically not false, though drastically underexaggerated. “We were waylaid by a storm.” A storm that killed five hundred fucking men, damn the gods. “I desire only to bring myself and my men home to Mycenae.” The lie came without thinking. It was a large enough kingdom to be suitably recognisable, though claiming any relation to Agamemnon, of all people, left a film of disgust on his tongue.

A sharp inhale caught his attention from the corner. The boy was watching him with renewed attention, eyes sharp as a wolf’s. Odysseus had lied successfully to all manner of creatures, divine and mortal alike, and yet he couldn’t shake the feeling that this child could see straight through him. The sensation was strangely thrilling, and his interest in the boy grew.

Circe’s sigh of sympathy forced his focus back onto her. “We’ve heard reports of terrible storms off our coasts for some time now.” The fear returned, sharp and unwelcome as his nose filled with the phantom scent of bloodied salt water. “I am sorry to hear you were caught in it.”

Before she could continue, a small servant girl shuffled through the doors, eyes flitting nervously between her lady and himself as she crept towards her. He watched, mind spinning as she whispered something hurriedly into Circe’s ear, too faint for even himself to make out. Was it the men? Had something happened to them?

Odysseus didn’t have the chance to ask before she excused herself, gesturing for the child to serve him wine. He had enough sense not to drink it, magic flower or not.

The child, Telys Circe had called him, rose from his cushion on the far side of the room as smoothly as a lynx, padding towards the low table with soft footsteps. Odysseus took the opportunity to analyse him further, to find whatever it was that was making his mind latch onto the boy so insistently. He noted his perfect posture and confident strides. His hands, lifting the wine pitcher, were delicate and well-groomed, untouched by callouses or scars. His way of looking Odysseus in the eye without deference, too, was unusual for someone he would have assumed to have been a servant, favoured or otherwise. This child had the manner of someone born into wealth. He would even have put money on his being nobility, if he were a betting man.

Odysseus waited until Telys tipped the pitcher forward and the sound of wine splashing into the goblet filled the silent room to speak.

“You do not strike me as a servant.”

Telys stilled. After a beat, he hummed to himself, and turned to stare him down with a sudden intensity. “You do not strike me as one of Agamemnon’s men.”

Odysseus raised an eyebrow, intrigued despite himself.

“No? And why’s that?”

The boy pulled back, his two handed grip on the pitcher tightening minutely.

“I’ve met most of them,” Telys paused, as if searching for the words. “They were taller.”

They stared at each other.

Odysseus had been insulted for his height in the past. Usually by other soldiers in Troy, or in drunken teasing with ambassadors on various travels. To be so by child, and one that barely reached his elbows, of all people, was a new low.

Part of him could push his bristling pride to the side for a moment to admire, if nothing else, the nerve. To insult a grown man one was alone in a room with took a formidable amount of courage. Or, he thought with growing satisfaction, enough certainty in Circe’s protection to be unafraid of consequences. Most definitely not a servant, then.

Odysseus didn’t have time to respond to the slight before the doors were swinging open once more and Circe was back in the room. She paused only to shoot Telys a questioning glance, at which he shrugged indifferently. He got the creeping sense there had been an ulterior motive to leaving the two of them alone, and was briefly annoyed at himself for not realising sooner that he was being tested, too distracted by the strange child and familiar tug in his gut.

Despite this, he watched Telys leave with a peculiar sense of loss. An unwelcome fondness had started to fester around his ribs, and his chest ached like something soft and crucial was being torn from him. The back of his mind buzzed like it did whenever he had almost solved a particularly convoluted puzzle, but he was missing something. Something incredibly important was slipping through his fingers here, but what?

He was pulled from his thoughts by Circe slamming the door sharply, all softness gone now that the child was out of sight. She stalked over to the table, bracing both manicured hands against the wood firmly and leaning over him, into his space. Odysseus resisted the urge to lean back and met her narrowed eyes.

“I know not what business you and your men have here, but understand this: everybody on this island is under my protection. I will not allow any harm to come to them.” Her words were hissed more than spoken, abandoning all pretence of playing the host.

“I do not mean your people any harm,” he replied evenly, maintaining eye contact. “We arrived here on accident, and desire only to get home.” After a beat, Odysseus added, “I can understand having a child to protect, I.. I have my own I’m rather desperate to get back to.” He let his voice waiver with the admission.

Circe’s brows furrowed, eyes glancing back towards the doors the boy had disappeared through. “Then you must understand why I cannot risk your presence here.”

“I do. But, Lady Circe, I swear to you we possess no ill intentions.” He swallowed, hard. It didn’t seem possible to get out of this without divulging some truths. “Most of my men died in the storm. We-” he inhaled deeply, trying to steady his hands before they could begin to shake once more, “- we angered the god of the sea.”

The confession hung in the air, silent and still.

Buried hysteria and panic resurfaced at once, drawing ragged laughter from his lungs as he ran a despairing hand through his hair. “And now there is no way home. No way to get back to my family, or to bring my men back to theirs, and-“ He cut himself off, dragging his hands down his face as his strength left him. “Fuck.”

Circe hummed in agreement. She leaned back with a sigh, lifting a delicate hand to her mouth to chew on the tip of her nail consideringly. Eventually, she turned her eyes back to him, sharp as sword points, assessing, testing him.

“Your family. Tell me about them.” The demand was nonsensical, but Odysseus had been asked far worse things.

“My wife is brilliant,” he began without hesitation, not bothering to hide the adoration in his tone. “The cleverest person I’ve ever had the fortune of meeting. A phenomenal weaver, too, her tapestries are more intricate than the world itself.” He bit his tongue to prevent himself from soliloquising further.

Circe’s hand fell away from her mouth as she tilted her head, watching him with unsettlingly plain curiosity. “You do not call her beautiful,” she commented lightly.

“Of course she is beautiful. But she is so much more than just that. And my son… I could not tell you much about him, though I long to be able to. I was taken from him when he was just a few months old. He was the most perfect infant, with such bright eyes.”

Odysseus closed his eyes, letting himself bask in the memory of babbled laughter and pressing his lips against tiny fingertips. For just a moment, the images shone gold in his mind, untouched by the pain of the years.

Reality sunk back in, cold and unforgiving. When he opened his eyes again, Circe was scrutinising him. She hummed decisively.

“A situation as precarious as yours calls for a prophet,” she said, her tone strangely amused. She glanced behind her shoulder, as if considering something, then shook her head. “I know of one that might help, if you aren’t afraid to journey further.”

Her robes swished as she spun on her heel and through the doors, beckoning him to follow. Odysseus scrambled to do so, thoroughly unbalanced by the turn in conversation. Was she actually helping them? Behind him, the candles began to catch flame once more, though he was too preoccupied to pay them much attention. Most likely, the sorceress was only aiding him to get him away from her island, but regardless of her motives he would take whatever he could get.

Stunned, he let her lead him down hallways and into a dimly lit room. Its walls were lined with herbs and strange tools, exotic ingredients lay scattered across work benches. Odysseus’s eyes caught on a particularly scorched station, burnt black and littered with fragments of what might have once been a cauldron and had since met an unfortunate fate.

Circe followed his gaze and sighed with fond exasperation. “Children,” she said, more to herself than to him, and shook her head.

Without elaborating, she began gathering ingredients from the far sides of the room. If there was any organisation or method at play in their distribution, it was a mystery to him. As she balanced precariously on a stool to reach some suspicious looking plant, she talked.

“Tiresias is excellent, but unfortunately very, very dead. If you can reach him in the Underworld, he might be able to guide you home.”

The Underworld. Odysseus’ heart dropped at the thought, but there wasn’t much of an alternative. Others had journeyed there and survived, if the myths held true. He’d have to play up that angle with his men later.

“I will release your men, under the strict condition you leave soon after dawn tomorrow and bring no harm to my people. Do we have a deal?” He had the distinct impressions there was a silent or will you be joining your crew in the pens? We’re already in the potions room. Just give me a reason. Still, this was a far better outcome that he’d dared to hope for. He smiled, slightly disbelievingly.

“We do.”

She returned his smile with unnaturally sharp canines. “Then we may have a feast. In celebration.”

“Unpoisoned, this time?”

“Don’t push it.”

***

The enigma of the boy stayed on his mind long after their conversation, though he undoubtedly had more pressing concerns. What kind of child behaved so boldly, without fear of repercussions, while holding the position of a servant? He was favoured by Circe herself, that much was clear, but the bravado remained impressive.

His position as the witch’s favourite, as Odysseus would come to learn from snatches of conversation caught between other servants, was odd enough without considering that he was the only mortal child on this island, and the only boy at that. The palace was bustling with nymphs, dryads and presumably other magical trainees of Circe’s craft. Divine influence practically choked the place, and yet a single mortal boy was the one who was a constant by the witch’s side.

More than that, Odysseus was forced to admit to himself that he liked the kid. He hadn’t even realised until after he’d left the room how easily he’d redirected the conversation to shift the suspicion onto Odysseus and his fabricated backstory, while neatly avoided having to say anything on his own.

He resolved to corner the boy, Telys, he reminded himself, though the name sounded inexplicably wrong to him, at the night’s feast. Perhaps he could wrangle some answers out of him then. The first one he desired was most likely the least pressing, but where on earth were this kid’s parents?

He’d considered the possibility of Circe herself being his mother, or any of the nymphs upon the island, but Telys looked so starkly different with his black hair and round ears that the odds were slim to none. But then how had he even ended up here, a place so remote and unheard of it couldn’t be found on any maps?

How had he earned Circe’s favour? Did he, too, have the power to change the forms of men? Was he safe? A traitorous part of mind whispered, reluctant to leave a child in danger despite all of the atrocities Odysseus had already committed. He wanted to make sure of it. Polites would have wanted him to make sure of it.

***

Finding a moment to speak to the boy alone proved easier said than done.

Telys was almost always surrounded by a gaggle of nymphs cooing over him or braiding his hair as he tried ineffectively to wriggle away, nose scrunched in childlike annoyance. The sight never failed to make Odysseus’s heart clench. He ached to get back to his own family, to fuss over his own son. Telemachus was probably past the age where he would tolerate such displays of affection from his parents, and the reminder of everything he had missed spiked pain between his ribs every time. Still, he was running out of time if he wanted any answers.

The feast was well underway, with many of his men already far too deep into their cups considering they wouldn’t be sleeping more than a handful of hours before setting sail. They flirted uselessly with the servant girls, shouted and cheered with abandon as drinking games progressed senselessly.

Odysseus watched their behaviour steadily deteriorate with distaste, his middle finger lazily tracing the rim of his own untouched goblet from where he slumped against a kline.

“You would think,” he sighed, “living out a few hours as swine would curb some of that disrespect. If Circe decides to transform them again, I’m leaving them here.” It was a hollow threat, and they both knew it.

Still, Eurylochus grunted in agreement next to him, watching Perimedes roughly pull Telys towards him again, gesturing drunkenly at his empty cup. The boy all but snarled, reluctantly filling it with barely contained prepubescent wrath.

“They should be more careful with that one especially. He was perfectly happy to curse them last time.”

Odysseus turned towards him, pausing his circling as interest lit up in his eyes. “It was him? The child you saw poisoning the crew?” At Eurylochus’s nod, he huffed in amusement. “He’s got guts, I’ll give him that. But what is he doing here?”

His friend groaned into his hands with exasperation. “For the love of the gods, Odysseus, I am begging you to let this go. If we have this conversation one more time I’ll ask Circe myself to put me out of my misery.”

“It doesn’t make any sense!”

“He’s probably the child of one of the nymphs-“

“Oh please, look at his ears!”

“- or at the very least some distant family friend-“

“Are you hearing yourself right now? Do you know how ridiculous you sound? I ask this out of concern, Eurylochus.”

“-or some magical prodigy she’s adopted, damn you!” he finished, in that frustrated tone he always used when he thought Odysseus was being particularly impossible. That, however, was a new theory.

Eurylochus turned towards him, eyes narrowed with suspicion at his prolonged silence. “What? No immediate rebuke?”

Odysseus hummed consideringly. “It’s an idea.”

“You cannot be serious. Family friend was too far-fetched, but a prepubescent sorcerer isn’t?”

“Child sorcerer is far more plausible than a witch on a remote island having distant family friends.” Eurylochus rolled his eyes, abandoning the conversation in favour of his wine. “And it would explain why Circe favours him so. Congratulations, Eurylochus-“ he clapped his friend on the shoulder as he rose, “-that’s the cleverest thing you’ve said all night.”

“Oh, fuck off. Wait, where are you going?”

Telys had stormed away from the company of the nymphs and crew, making a beeline for the unattended kitchens.

“I’m going to talk with him,” he declared.

“Alone? Odysseus, he will not speak with you, you cannot possibly see this ending well. Odysseus!” Eurylochus called after him as he walked away, adding something about Circe and we’re all going to die terrible deaths that Odysseus was readily ignoring.

He paused by the table where the men were feasting to wrap his hand around Perimedes’ bicep with an almost bruising grip, hardening his expression into a cold mask of authority as the man looked up at him and paled.

Odysseus leaned down until his lips were level with the man’s ear and hissed, “Watch yourself.”

Perimedes nodded frantically, sputtering drunken nonsense as he released him, setting off after Telys.

***

It took some searching to find the palace kitchens, ducking past stares from crew and servants alike while he navigated the shadowed corridors of the palace. Eventually, he came across a single, mostly deserted room occupied only by Telys, eyebrows scrunched in concentration as he shook miscellaneous white powder into his wine pitcher.

Despite himself, Odysseus felt amusement flare as he leaned against the doorway to watch him. The kid managing to lace his crew’s food once was impressive enough, but twice inspired the thought that Telys might need to experiment with alternative hobbies. Did children still learn to play the lyre?

“I sure hope you aren’t planning on poisoning my men again, kid.” Telys spun to face him with wide eyes, and for a fraction of a second Odysseus was sure he was about to have a clay jar launched at his head for startling him.

“Not poison. Just…” The kid glared at him, expression twisting the way children’s did when they were about to lie to an adult’s face. A beat later though, his shoulders slumped and he held out the pot in defeat.

“Salt,” he sighed dejectedly, and Odysseus was almost disappointed. “It’s salt.”

He leaned closer to inspect it, noticing the way Telys tensed at the proximity. Wary of grown men, then. Smart, if a little concerning. The part of Odysseus’s mind that wanted to wrap this child in soft cloth and lock him somewhere he could never be harmed strengthened its resolve.

He glanced back up at him, eyebrow raised in curiosity. “Any particular reason, or is this the latest trend with the youths these days?” He’d been aiming for sarcastic, but unwelcome pain wove itself into his tone regardless. Back on Ithaca, he hoped Telemachus might be doing something similar, getting up to the kind of harmless mischief ten year olds were so fond of.

Gods, his son was ten years old. He’d been gone for so long, missed so much of Telemachus’ life. But he couldn’t dwell on it now, had to focus on getting home before he could make up for lost time.

Telys hesitated, looking torn. His eyes dropped to the ground before he replied.

“Some of your men don’t know how to keep their hands to themselves,” he said finally, voice barely above a whisper.

An uncomfortable feeling snaked around Odysseus’s spine. He’d noticed the crew forget themselves when it came to the servants, but hadn’t intervened when it didn’t seem violent or inappropriate. If it had gone further than what he’d seen, if he’d been blind to anything more sinister…

“Keep their hands to themselves,” he repeated, forcing his voice to be level. He’d meant for Telys to elaborate, but the boy in front of him had practically stopped breathing, eyes staring up at Odysseus and wide with undisguised fear.

Fuck. He hadn’t meant to scare the kid, but it was logical for him to be apprehensive about confiding in a stranger who’d cornered him alone. He moved back, trying to give him space to breathe and manually relaxing his posture into something less immediately aggressive, even if his wrath wasn’t directed at Telys.

“I am not angry with you,” he clarified, “but I need you to explain what you meant by that.” I need to know if I have to cut off any offending hands when we return to Ithaca. Odysseus thought about his sword, magically rematerialized back at the ship with his armour by the time he’d left to fetch Eurylochus with news of his success, and how nicely it might serve for the task.

He wasn’t quite sure what to make of this mostly unfounded protectiveness for the child, only that it didn’t seem to be dissipating any time soon. He would do anything to get back to his own family, to do so without the weight of another child coming to harm on his conscience would be ideal.

“I just…” Telys started, eyes flicking to the door behind him anxiously, “They keep grabbing me. Like, my arms, when they want something.” His expression rippled with frustration. “It’s rude.”

Odysseus searched his face for a lie and found none. He leaned back, relaxing. His men could keep their hands for the time being.

“I apologise on their behalf,” he said, for quite possibly the hundredth time since he’d arrived at the island. “I will have a word with them after the feast about treating their hosts with more respect.”

Telys nodded stiffly, his surprise obvious. He glanced pointedly to the doorway Odysseus was still blocking. “Did you, um. Did you need anything?”

Right. Information. There had been a reason for this conversation before he’d been sidetracked.

“I meant to speak with you, earlier, but you’ve been hard to catch.” It was an innocent comment, but Telys visibly tensed.

“I do not speak with strange men who follow me into empty rooms,” he stressed, staring at him like he’d grown three heads.

…

Admittedly a good philosophy to have. Odysseus was suddenly acutely aware of how intimidating the situation must seem, even if he knew down to his bones his hands were incapable of hurting this child.

“I suppose that’s fair,” he sighed, moving to open the path to the door. Satisfying his curiosity wasn’t worth scaring the kid. He would be safe enough with Circe in his corner.

Odysseus watched Telys bolt out of the kitchen’s as that familiar, inexplicable ache bloomed without mercy. He shook himself. Penelope is waiting. Telemachus is waiting. Focus.

***

“How did your ‘talk’ go?” Eurylochus asked drily as Odysseus slumped back into his kline, reaching for his abandoned goblet.

“I don’t want to talk about it,” he grumbled dejectedly into his wine, pointedly ignoring his second-in-command’s sigh next to him.

“Are we all getting turned back into pigs? A heads up would be appreciated, this time.”

Odysseus mulled it over. He didn’t think he’d offended the boy too badly, though he’d ran off before he could learn anything. “Eh. Probably not. Didn’t get anything from him, though. Kid’s a mystery.”

Eurylochus’s head fell back against the wall in exasperation. “You need to let it go.” His eyes turned surprisingly sharp as he turned them towards Odysseus, expression hard. “You have your own child to get home to. Don’t get so attached to strays.”

He bristled, anger rising hot and inexplicable within him. “I know that. Do you seriously believe I think of anything else?  But that boy’s important. I can’t think of why, but I know he is. He has to be.”

Eurylochus was silent for a long moment as a nymph appeared behind him to refill his cup. He took a long drink, knuckles white with frustration.

And then immediately spat it out.

“What the fuck.” Eurylochus stared in wide-eyed horror at the white granules of undissolved salt that lingered in his drink , turning to stare incredulously at his captain.

Odysseus couldn’t help it. He laughed almost hysterically at his friend’s face, trying and failing to smother the noise with his hands. Eurylochus kept rambling, the tension officially broken.

“No, Odysseus, stop laughing, what the fuck. Did you do this?” He could only shake his head, too out of breath to respond, eyes pricking with tears as his shoulders shook with the force of his laughter.

 Eurylochus stared down at his cup in despair. “Why?”

***

A few hours later, the beach was alive with the movement of men. They darted back and forth, hurriedly loading Circe’s generous supplies into the hull: a supply of dried meats and fruits that would last them a month, two at a stretch. Moral swung unpredictably between the cheer of having saved the crew and the dread of what lay ahead, so that the noise of their voices rose and fell as steadily as the crashing waves.

Odysseus watched the preparation of the ship with growing unease. He couldn’t tear his mind away from Telys, even with the foreboding of their oncoming journey to the Underworld looming over them all.

Midnight hair. Clever eyes.

He was missing something. He knew he was and yet he couldn’t figure out what.

Your men are hardly the most precious things on this island.

Can’t go scaring the little one.

Hermes had meant Telys, so much was obvious now, but why? Why would a mortal child be of any interest to a god? More than that, why would Hermes be trying to draw Odysseus’s attention to him?

You have your own child to get home to. Don’t get so attached to strays.

Eurylochus had been right, but why had the comment incited such fury in him? Why had Odysseus been so inexplicably protective of the kid since they’d arrived here?

He turned, slowly, away from the boats and back towards the treeline. Now that he knew it was there, his eyes could find the shape of the palace against the trees with ease, shining in the early morning sun. Why did he so desperately want to turn back, when the path home was right in front of him?

A blur of white feathers caught his attention. Odysseus watched, still as a statue, as a single white owl swooped from the sky out of nowhere and landed with unnatural grace at the top of the tallest tree. It stared at him, eyes bluer than the dawn sky that framed it.

And then he knew. Gradually, and then all at once, Odysseus knew.

He might have said something to Eurylochus, some dazed comment to halt the crew and wait for him. Eurylochus might have said something back, a question or exclamation of confusion. He heard it all as if underwater, the colours of the world running together and muddying like a ruined mosaic.

A moment later, Odysseus was running. Never in his life had he run faster. Not in childhood races, not in pursuit of a magic boar, not across the bloodied lands of Troy. He tore through Circe’s forest like all of Hades was at his heels, trees and soil alike blurring past him in flashes. The great white owl soared overhead, guiding him to the heart of the palace.

He did not need it. That desperate, vicious longing in chest driving him homeward pulled him towards it more accurately than any map. His heart beat the rhythm of a single name, wet and bleeding behind his ribs.

Telemachus. Telemachus. Telemachus.

Odysseus burst into the palace clearing far sooner than he should have been capable of. The burning of his lungs and his thighs barely registered as background noise, the all consuming need to see his son enveloping his every thought.

Where would he be? The palace had countless rooms, countless places to keep a child. His child. Circe would have kept him close, at the heart of the palace where they would both be the most secure. No matter. No nymph could prevent him from getting to Telemachus, magic or otherwise.

He sprinted towards it, running past walls and balconies and pillars, around a corner and-

Directly into something small and precious and fragile. The collision sent them both to the ground, but sheer force of will pushed him to his feet and to Telemachus.

Telemachus, who was running to him. Telemachus, who was in front of him with his face bare for the first time since they’d met. Telemachus, who was hurt. He had to strangle the guilt rising in him like bile before it could choke him – there would be time for it later.

None of the protectiveness or fondness he’d felt before could compare. The need to keep his son safe blazed with the force of a wildfire within him, the urge to pull Telemachus into his arms almost strong enough to suffocate him.

“Telemachus? Telemachus are you alright?” Panic stole the words from his mouth before he could consider that his son had no reason to recognise him. Memories of Telemachus tense with fear at each of their meetings returned with spikes of pain through his heart, the last thing he wanted was to frighten his son further.

He kneeled by his son, eyes scanning for injuries before they caught on his face, unveiled before him. Odysseus had imagined countless times over the years what his son might look like, what features he might inherit from either parent. Nothing his mind had come up with could compare to the wonder in front of him.

Telemachus had nearly the same face Odysseus himself had worn throughout childhood, down to the curve of his cheekbones and the shape of his eyes. His colouring, though, was entirely his mother’s. Penelope’s pallor painted his skin, filled his irises with the most beautiful shade of warm honey he’d ever seen as Telemachus slowly blinked them open. The delicate bow of his lips, still as divinely shaped as it had been as an infant.

Telemachus pushed himself up with a single wobbly arm, and Odysseus ached. Would it be too early to hold him? He wouldn’t risk scaring him, but the desperate desire grew with each of his ragged breaths.

In the end, his son decided for him, throwing himself forward and wrapping his arms around his neck with a stifled sob. All at once, Odysseus felt his world careen to the side. The feeling of his son pressed against his chest again for the first time in ten years, that wonderful, incomparable weight of holding a child knocked the air from his lungs.

His arms moved of their own accord to wrap around Telemachus, to hold him as tightly and securely as he was capable of before the fates tore them apart once more.

“Telemachus,” he whispered, burying his face in his son’s hair. “Telemachus.” All other words left him, all he had left down to his bones was the love he had for his child, his son. To have someone to call by that hallowed name was so monumental he felt the sun should stop dead in its trajectory against the sky, the world entire should pause in reverence for this moment.

Telemachus shook as he cried into his shoulder, breaths ragged and desperate, Odysseus thought it was the worst sound he had ever heard. His son hadn’t cried often as a baby, having been even then a bundle of joy so bright he could almost blind onlookers. On the occasions he had, Odysseus could never bear to pass him to any nursemaid, unable to do anything but hold him until it passed. There was comfort in the irony that even years of being hardened by war could not change this about him.

Telemachus pulled away far too soon for his liking, and he forced himself to loosen his grip even if he felt as though his soul was being ripped away with him. It was a mercy he didn’t go far, Odysseus might not have survived the separation.

“I want to-“ He hung on each of his son’s words, fascinated in the sound of the voice he could only now fully appreciate. “I really want to go home now, Father.” Father. How long had Odysseus yearned to be called by that title? He was so light-headed from the joy of it he almost missed Telemachus’s next words, threaded with panic.

“Please take me with you, please.” His grip of Odysseus’s chiton tightened with fear as horror mounted in his bones. His son was kneeling before him with tears still staining his face, begging not to be left behind. Devastation ripped through him without mercy. Telemachus should never have felt that he needed to ask. The fates wove and unthreaded their tapestries, but never, in any life, would Odysseus abandon his son. He would sooner carve his heart from his own chest.

“I can be useful, I promise I really can-“ He could not bear it a moment longer. His hands reach upwards to cradle his son’s face, blood-stained and calloused and insufficient as they were, he hoped the gesture could transmit even a fraction of the love he held for him. Mostly Odysseus was just desperate for him to stop pleading, before he proved to those sceptical of the poets that it was possible to die of heartbreak.

“I will never leave you,” he interrupted. “Never again, my son I swear it. And you do not need be useful, or-“ the words left such a bitter taste in his mouth he could barely force them out, “-earn your place by my side. It is your birthright.” He could not stop. Not until that awful expression was wiped from his son’s face. “Oh, Telemachus. Everything I have done has been for you and your mother, I would have burned the world to the ground if it would have gotten me home to you sooner.”

His son’s eyes filled with tears once more, but he pushed his face back against Odysseus’s shoulder. Every point of contact sent a wave of warmth through his bones. He had wished for this for so long. He would never let him go again.

“I missed you,” Telemachus whispered, barely audible from where he pressed himself against him.

Oh.

It had never fully occurred to Odysseus that his son would feel the lack of his presence in his life. He had always expected to return to Ithaca to his perfect family and have to slowly integrate himself in Telemachus’s life. He didn’t quite know how to handle such immediate, unfaltering acceptance.

“Oh, kid,” he breathed, a decade of longing catching up to him. He thought of nights on the beaches of Troy, staring up at the stars and imagining that his family was doing the same. He thought of looking out at the open ocean, desperate to sail homeward, to follow that ceaseless pull to Ithaca. “You have no idea.”

“I’ve wanted to meet you for so long,” Odysseus’s heart soared at the words, though guilt crept in just as quickly. Telemachus should never have had to wait. “But now – I don’t think I’m the son you expected.”

He was shaking his head before he even realised it, the need to crush his son’s doubts for good rushing back. “You’re perfect.” He meant it. From Telemachus’s gentle nature to his quips to his shining intelligence, Odysseus could not picture a better son. He did not want to, not when the miracle in front of him existed, solid and tangible in his arms. “You are my son and you’re perfect. Even before I knew who you were I thought you were brilliant, kid, how could you think such a thing?” How miserably he had failed as a father, for Telemachus to ever be able to doubt his love for him.

Odysseus pulled back slightly, needing to look his son in the eyes. “I have not been around to tell you how much I adore you,” the tragedy of it threatens to make his voice waver, but he cannot have Telemachus think he is uncertain in this conviction, “but I swear I will not leave your side, and I will do whatever it takes to show you how desperately you are loved. My son.” He would never tire of saying the word, the prayer that had kept him going all those years.

If he had his way, they would have stayed there for hours, with his arms wrapped around his child and basking in the delight of being a father once more, but his love is still waiting for them both on their home island and the crew is likely growing more impatient by the minute.

The thought of Penelope stirred new concerns in the back of his mind. He could not picture her sending Telemachus away to such a distant island, not alone, not unless there was grave danger in Ithaca. What had happened in his absence?

Telemachus pulled back before he could start to form the question, wiping at the tear tracks on his face with his sleeve. The urge to pull him back in was almost irresistible, but Odysseus forced himself to let him speak. “We should, uh, we should tell Circe I’m leaving. She’ll probably curse you or something if she thinks you’ve stolen me.”

Strangely, the thought was comforting. Odysseus was glad to have someone so protective and powerful to look after Telemachus when he could not, though it still does not settle the question of why that person was not Penelope.

“How was it you came here?” he started, meaning to inquire after the lack of boats at the beach. He could not imagine that his son would have been left here without means to return. “I did not see any other ships on the-“

He stopped short. In pulling away, the shoulder of Telemachus’s robe had slipped down to his elbow, revealing a jagged scar curving across his bicep and into the soft, sensitive skin beneath. Odysseus reached out to slide his thumb against it, as if it might erase the mark and whatever pain had caused it. His mind whirls through possibilities, forcing himself not to assume the worst.

A bad scrape while climbing trees, perhaps. A children’s game gone wrong. A bad fall. Telemachus follows his gaze when he does not finish his sentence, and then turns strangely sheepish.

“I, ah, I got that throwing myself through a door.”

What?

His alarm must have shown, because Telemachus hurried to add, “For a good reason, though!” Odysseus was struggling to think of any good reasons for such an action. More than that, what situation could possibly have been bad enough to necessitate it?

“It’s kind of a long story, but these raiders came to Ithaca a month-ish ago and grabbed me.”

His blood ran cold. Raiders.

When Telemachus was a newborn, Odysseus had insisted on keeping his crib in their bedroom rather than the nursery, unable to sleep with the thought that his son would be out of reach in case of invasion. Nightmares of his infant being murdered or stolen in the night would wake him in a cold sweat, unable to calm down until he had held him for hours and felt his tiny chest rise and fall with each breath against him.

And it had happened. It had happened while Odysseus was too busy taunting the fucking cyclops or being trapped in the sea god’s storms when he should have been home, protecting his family. He had hardly known his son a day, and already he had failed him so terribly.

His sudden light-headedness and an insistent ringing in his ears almost drowned out the rest of Telemachus’s words as Odysseus fought against rising nausea. “They stopped at this island for like, supplies or something, and I escaped from the ship. There was a whole thing in the forest afterwards but Circe saved me and let me stay in her palace for a while.”

Escaped from the ship. His son had been captured, and then had to break a door down to escape, because there had been no one to save him. No one but Circe. His gratitude towards the queen was overshadowed only by his rising terror. How close had he been to losing his son forever? A single whim of the fates and Telemachus would have been gone, far beyond his reach before he had even had the chance to know him.

Telemachus didn’t seem particularly upset, but that kind of trauma would not have passed without leaving its mark. Gods, those vile beasts had taken his son. And Penelope. He could hardly imagine his own terror if he had woken to find his child gone, he knew how she must be driving herself mad with grief. He had to get back to her. Those raiders had hurt his family. For a moment, Odysseus allowed himself to indulge in the fantasy of hunting them down, of tearing each raider from limb to limb for daring to even breathe near Telemachus.

But his child was in front of him, and would always, always be the priority over Odysseus’s wrath.

“Oh, no, don’t worry!” he continued, breathless with excitement now that his doubts have been at least partly assuaged. “They didn’t get anyone else! I think mother must have managed to stop them from reaching the town with the guards or something, because there was definitely no one else on the ship.”

And of course she would have, his brilliant Penelope, always astoundingly competent and protective of their people. But then Telemachus had been alone. Worse, he’d convinced himself his own safety was secondary to that of the others, that his kidnapping would not be enough cause to concern Odysseus if there had not also been collateral.

“Raiders,” he echoed, unable to move past the horror of it. “You were taken by raiders?” Repeating it would not change the answer, but he could not stop himself. Injuries. If his field training had hammered anything into him, it was that the first thing to do after a disaster had settled was to check for injuries.

Odysseus began fervently scanning his son, checking his delicate skin for scrapes or cuts or anything that could get infected or cause him pain. Circe had undoubtedly healed him of any major wounds since, but he had to know. If he didn’t, the possibility of Telemachus being hurt would scream at the forefront of his mind until he could focus on nothing else.

“It’s really okay, though,” he heard Telemachus say but it wasn’t, it wasn’t and it never would be. “Besides, you found me!” He had. It was a poor consolation, since Odysseus had been too late to prevent any real damage, but he had found him. They had found each other. For now, it would have to be enough.

He pressed a kiss to Telemachus’ hair, both to comfort his son and steady himself. “Right,” he started, weakly. “Right, okay, let’s talk to Circe and then let’s go home. Your mother will be missing you to.” To think of Penelope and how she must be suffering would only keep him on his knees in grief for all he had failed to prevent. The only way to help was to get Telemachus home, safely back into her arms. And Odysseus would, if it was the last thing he did.

***

Circe stared them both down, piercing eyes narrowed.

“Let me make sure I’m understanding this correctly,” she said, pointing an accusing finger at Odysseus. “You are not just some lost Mycaenaen captain-“ he shook his head with as much sincere regret as he could muster for the lie, “- and you –“ she turned to Telemachus, expression softening from anger to pure exasperation, “- are not just the son of a merchant from Cephalonia.”

He shrugged, completely remorseless. “It sounded like a good idea at the time.”

The witch rolled her eyes, throwing both hands in the air in frustration. “Family of liars, the both of you!” She turned back to face Odysseus. “Congratulations. He’s definitely yours.”

Beside him, Telemachus beamed, though he himself wasn’t certain it was meant as a compliment. Circe continued rambling to herself incredulously.

“You come to my island, make me turn your men back into men despite all the effort I put into making them pigs, I help you find a way home and offer supplies for your men and a feast, and now after everything you steal my apprentice! Unbelievable.”

Apprentice? Odysseus didn’t have the chance to ask before she stopped in her tracks, blinking in realisation.

“Speaking of your way home, you might be able to skip the Underworld visit to old Tiresias after all.” Telemachus made a noise of alarm at the mention of the Underworld, but he was too preoccupied with her words to explain.

“How?”

She gestured loosely towards Telemachus. “You have your own travel-sized prophet right there.”

For a moment, Odysseus just stared at his son, who had developed a sudden fascination with the dirt underneath his fingernails. Circe’s eyes flicked between them both, noting the tension.

“Oh,” she said coolly, “Did he not mention the prophetic dreams?”

Odysseus stared harder.

“Telemachus?”

“Hm?” his son answered innocently, finally glancing back up at him.

“Prophetic dreams?” he stressed back.

A beat of silence passed.

“Okay, listen-“

“This is something you mention immediately, kid.”

“-it didn’t exactly come up-“

“Come up?”

“-and it’s not the kind of thing you can just casually say in conversation! ‘Oh, hello Father, nice to meet you, also by the way I get visions of the past and future when I sleep. Promise I’m not insane!’” Telemachus mimed, gesturing wildly as he spoke.

“I would not have thought you were insane,” he protested. Maybe delirious from sorceress fumes, he added mentally.

“You would have considered it, at least.”

“I consider most things!”

His son levelled a disbelieving look back up at him. Nearly forgotten about a few feet from where they stood, Circe cleared her throat until they both turned to look at her, almost perfectly in synch with their movements.

“If I may. Telys, Telemachus, is incredibly talented, but his skills are not faultless. He’ll need to know your situation and the options that lie ahead well if he is to learn anything.”

Telemachus was already shaking his head, eyes wide with panic. “I can’t. I don’t even understand what they mean half the time I can’t direct a crew I can’t-“

He was interrupted by Circe crossing the distance between in long strides, kneeling before him in a flurry of fabric until they were eye to eye. Gently, she reached to cup his face between her painted hands.

“You can,” she said, her voice impossibly soft. “You are brilliant. One day, you will return and we can properly finish your training.”

Unconsciously, Odysseus bristled. He’d just gotten his son back, the idea of sending him away, however far in the future, rankled. Circe didn’t even pause, unbothered by his reaction. “You’ve already gotten so much better at handling the dreams, I know you can do this. And who knows,” she added lightly, “maybe when you come back we could even try potions again.”

It startled a small laugh out of Telemachus, though his eyes were still watery. “Oh, no, best not.”

Without another word, he threw himself forward and wrapped his arms around the sorceress, small hands wrapping around the fabric at her shoulders. “Thank you,” he whispered, voice breaking, “for everything.”

Circe recovered from her surprise slowly, and carefully set her hands in his hair like she was afraid any sudden movement would shake him off. When she replied, her voice was slightly choked.

“Anytime, little one.”

Her eyes met Odysseus’s, and he offered her a tired smile. “Thank you,” he said in turn. He hoped it would convey what he didn’t have the words to express. She’d saved Telemachus from the raiders. She’d kept him safe at her palace, willing to protect him from anyone who might pose a threat.

It was a debt he could never repay, and his throat was far too tight to try. From her returning smile, and small nod, he thought she understood him anyway.

***

The nymphs reacted to the news of Telemachus’ departure with unadulterated outrage.

Hades hath no fury, Odysseus thought, dodging yet another flowerpot sailing through the air with his skull as its target. In the middle of the chaos stood his son, valiantly trying to calm the girls with frantic arm waving and drowned out protests.

When he realised he was making no progress, Telemachus changed strategies. He let his arms drop to his sides, and promptly burst into tears. A wave of gasps and concern swept the room as at least half rushed to his side to pet at his hair and offer panicked comfort.

Odysseus didn’t realise he’d started moving, instinctively reaching for his son before Circe’s bejewelled arm across his chest stopped him. She shook her head silently, mouthing trust him. With significant effort, he made himself step back. Forcing the girls away from Telemachus now would do them no favours.

“I want to go home,” he sniffled, pointing his wide, tearful eyes around him as effectively as a solider would wield his sword. “I can come back, when I’m older, but please. I miss my mother, and she’ll be worried about me.”

Gradually they relented, though more than a few still turned to glower at Odysseus for taking their favourite mortal child away. He stared back, remorseless. One of the oldest nymphs stepped forward to cradle his face in her wrinkled hands, concern etched in the lines of her face.

“You remember your defensive spells, yes? In case you run into any trouble?” Telemachus only blinked up at her.

“No, I’m… I’m really bad at spells,” he admitted. The woman dismissed this with a flick of her wrist.

“All the better. Any spell can be a hex when performed poorly enough,” she said sagely, as if imparting the wisest of counsels. The nymphs behind her nodded seriously, exchanging brief words of agreement to each other.

Telemachus looked between them all, baffled. “Um, I’ll keep that in mind.”

Odysseus pulled his him back to his side, unable to stand the separation any longer. “Your hospitality has been most welcome, and for your kindness to my son you have my eternal gratitude. But I’m afraid we must leave,” he settled a loving hand on his son’s head, relishing the way he leaned into the touch, “my wife is waiting for us both, and my crew undoubtedly grows impatient.”

“Wait!” The declaration burst from a nymph that had otherwise remained relatively silent near the back of the group. “Surely he cannot leave like this! He does not have everything he needs!” The rest of the girls caught on to her meaning immediately, though it eluded Odysseus and Telemachus both, and jumped into action without waiting for a response, scattering about the room and through the halls to gather everything.

Everything he needs ended up mostly consisting of robes, and Odysseus was grateful to avoid the problem of finding fitting clothes for a child aboard a ship of grown men, as well as what seemed to be copious amounts of golden jewellery.

Telemachus protested the later, trying in vain to return them, but he was entirely ignored as more were pushed into his arms and nymphs set about weaving chains through his curls despite his wriggling. With a whirlwind of motion and in record time, his son’s bedhead and wrinkled sleeping clothes were transformed to smoothly finger combed hair and the silky robes he’d worn on their first meeting.

Gods, was that truly only a day ago? Odysseus felt as if a century might have passed since he’d arrived at Circe’s doors, since he’d locked eyes with a peculiar and inexplicably endearing child from across a room and became hopelessly attached.

Telemachus walked back towards him, stunned and wobbling underneath the mound of gifts that nearly reached his face from his arms. Odysseus took them from him with a smothered chuckle as they made their way of out of the palace at last.

Gingerly, Telemachus reached to touch his fingertips against the threads of gold woven into his hair.

“I’m never going to manage to get these out, am I?”

***

Their walk down to beach was considerably slowed by the weight of his son’s new gifts. Odysseus took charge of the carrying, bundling most the gold within the fabric while Telemachus darted in circles around him to pick up any fallen items, rambling excitedly all the while.

He jumped unpredictably from one topic to the next, covering any subject from recent political drama in the Western Isles to the time he and his mother had spent nearly an hour stranded on their table in the dining hall while their guards scrambled to exterminate a sudden infestation of biting insects in the palace. He almost never spent long enough on any one sentence to finish it, but all Odysseus could feel despite the chaos was warmth.

He'd spent so long wishing for such things, for peaceful walks and easy conversations with his family that to finally have it felt surreal enough he half-expected to wake up any minute.

Sounds of heated arguments reached them as they approached the beach, carried by the wind. They cut off the moment Odysseus broke free of the tree line, the expressions of his crew morphing almost comedically from anger to surprise.

He raised an eyebrow, unimpressed. “I leave for a few hours and you’re all already at each other’s throats?”

“Captain,” Eurylochus breathed, shoulders slumping with obvious relief as he walked to his side. He faltered as his eyes caught on the bundle in his arms, brows furrowing.

Odysseus passed the load onto him without explanation, his second in command reaching to take it from him on instinct and exclaiming in surprise as he sagged under its weight.

“Men!” he declared, unable to prevent a wild grin stretching his face as he clapped his hands together. “It is long overdue that you should meet my son, and your crown prince, Telemachus.”

He didn’t see their reactions to the statement, already looking back to find the boy in question lingering back in the shadow of the trees. Come, he mouthed, reaching out towards him with a fond smile.

Slowly, Telemachus peeled away from the tree he’d chosen to duck behind, striding forward to take his outstretched hand and let himself be pulled into Odysseus’s side.

From the crew, he heard more than one panicked whisper of “Oh, shit.” Perimedes took a visible step back, suddenly pale. Odysseus recalled his careless hands with renewed vitriol, though the man refused to meet his eyes.

Those with more sense bowed, and returned Telemachus’s small waves with their own.

Eurylochus only stared between the two of them with dawning realisation. In the end, he fixed his incredulous expression on Odysseus, who could only shrug, still smiling.

***

In the end, they accepted the news without much questioning. Many gave them both a wide berth, trying to avoid Telemachus’s attention as they boarded, having finished preparations in his absence.

Odysseus began to move towards the ship before a tug at his sleeve stopped him. He looked down to see Telemachus’s hand gripping it tight enough to turn his knuckles white, eyeing the ship with trepidation.

He passed what he hoped was a comforting hand through his son’s hair with concern. “Everything okay, kid?” Telemachus nodded once, unconvincingly.

Ah. Of course.

Odysseus leaned down until he could talk quietly enough to keep their conversation private. “It’s not their ship, you hear me?” he whispered. “This one’s bringing you home. I’m going to be on it, and I’m sure as hell not letting anyone hurt you.” Telemachus finally pulled his eyes away from the water to meet his, and he registered with a flare of pain that they’d gone slightly watery, blurring the soft brown of his irises.

Impossibly brave, his son squared his shoulders and nodded again, sharp with determination. His grip on Odysseus’s sleeve did not loosen, but that was alright. He wasn’t planning on letting Telemachus out of arm’s reach any time soon anyway.

***

As far as the crew was concerned, their departure from Circe’s island and the unexpected return of their prince was cause for more celebration. With fortunate winds, there was not much more for his men to do than occasionally shift the sails, and Odysseus was still floating on air from his reunion with his son, so the festivities were permitted.

At present, they had paired up as a team against the rest in an increasingly convoluted card game his men had devised during long, uneventful nights in Troy. Telemachus was doing remarkably well, even without his help, having learnt the rules faster than any of them. The swell of pride that welled in Odysseus’s chest every time his son whispered a suggestion in his ear of chewed his lip in thought for their strategy was intoxicating.

“So,” Eurylochus asked eventually, dragging the syllable with curiosity as he shuffled his hand. “Can you do other sorts of magic too? I think I saw some cauldrons back at the palace, could you make us any useful potions?”

Telemachus’s eyes grew wide and haunted. He shook his head slowly, horrified.

Odysseus exchanged a look with his second in command. There was a story there, but neither of them were sure they wanted to hear it. Distantly, he remembered the blackened workstation in Circe’s potions room, and her sigh of “Children”.

“No, then?” Eurylochus asked.

“I could try,” Telemachus ventured hesitantly, eyebrows scrunched adorably in consideration. “How fireproof would you say this ship is?”

“No potions,” Odysseus interrupted, clapping his hands together decisively. The crew had the good sense not to argue, or were simply too scarred from their time in the pigpens to try.

The card game was finished in silence.

***

Odysseus noticed the moment Telemachus pulled away from the festivities. Their ship wasn’t a large vessel, with hardly anywhere to go, but his son’s disappearance from his side from one moment to the next was enough to put a knot of anxiety in his gut.

He scanned the railings with urgency. It was unlikely that Telemachus had ventured below deck on his own considering his earlier hesitancy to even get onboard. Soon enough, Odysseus’s eyes locked on a small frame by the port side railing, nearly hidden behind the larger silhouettes of his men still playing cards and leaning much too far out for his own comfort.

The sun had long since set, leaving behind a sparklingly clear night full of stars reflecting against the dark water. Wind twisted his beloved son’s hair around his face, rising and falling gently when the breeze picked up. Telemachus’s eyes were bright as he admired the night sky and its mirror, hands only loosely holding on to the only thing preventing him from toppling into the waves.

Carefully, Odysseus hooked his fingers in the back on his son’s chiton, tugging him back to a safer distance above the deck. Thankfully, Telemachus didn’t startle at his approach, only rolling his eyes with humour at his protectiveness and pressing against his side. He tugged Odysseus’s chlamys around himself to shield against the chill, returning to his observations with his bottom lip caught between his teeth.

Well, that wouldn’t do. Odysseus poked his temple lightly, smiling when his son turned to shoot him an irritated glare.

“What’s going through that head of yours, kid?” he asked, keeping his tone light. Telemachus scrunched his nose, which Odysseus couldn’t help but fondly liken to a rabbit’s twitch, and curled further into his side.

“Just what Circe said. About the ‘situation’.” His breath caught in his lungs. For a terrible moment, all he could hear was the crashing of the ships as waves tore through them, the screams of his crew and he could not save them.

Odysseus took a breath to steady himself, tightening his grip on his son almost subconsciously.

“We blinded a cyclops soon after leaving Troy,” he started. “It would have killed us, but Pos- the god of the sea took offence. His retribution cost the lives of the rest of the crew, and has made our journey home all the more perilous.”

Guilt flared at the truth that in taking Telemachus with him, he had inadvertently placed in him in danger. He would have been in danger at the island, too, a part of his brain tried to argue. The raiders might have returned. But Circe had protected him, then. Odysseus had already proved himself lacking.

He shook himself like he might physically empty his mind of the thoughts. Leaving Telemachus behind a non-option anyway, no use dwelling on it. Whatever reaction he’d been expecting from his son, it wasn’t the complete lack of surprise he found.

Telemachus only hummed a soft, melancholy note and returned to staring out at the ocean.

“You knew?” Odysseus questioned, feeling slightly sick at the implications. If he knew, if he had seen the things his own father had done- the thought was chilling.

“Most of it,” his son admitted. “Hadn’t put it all together.” He forced himself to calm down. Seeing part of his journey did not mean he had seen everything. Telemachus had yet to recoil from him in horror regardless.

“Father?” The word had yet to fail to send a thrill of joy down his spine, even if muted by the quiet anxiety laced through it. “How are we going to get home?”

An impossible question, with a terrible answer. I don’t know would be the truth, but Odysseus found he didn’t have it in him to look his son in the eyes and tell him how difficult it would be to get either of them back to Ithaca alive.

“There are… regions of the ocean where the influence of the god is weaker. They are riddled with monsters, and incredibly dangerous, but… possible. If we can sail through them, we can get home.”

To his side, Telemachus was quiet for a long moment.

“And I’m the guide, aren’t I? I have to figure out which routes are safest,” he whispered, his terror barely concealed.

“No,” Odysseus refuted immediately, even as his son startled in surprise as the authority in his tone. “We will figure out which routes are safest.” He held Telemachus’s face so that he couldn’t turn away, needing his point to get through.

“This responsibility is not yours to bear. You will dream, and tell me what you saw, and I will decide what the best course of action is. I mean it, kid, whatever happens is not on you. You are helping tremendously just by being here, I expect nothing more than what you can give readily.”

Eyes wide, but thankfully more convinced, Telemachus nodded. Then, as if he’d been held up by strings suddenly cut, he slumped completely against Odysseus’s side. Both of his hands reached upwards to rub against his eyes, which were falling closed faster than he could pull them open.

A fondness fierce enough to rip his heart in two tore through him.

“Tired?” Odysseus asked, too drunk on love to sound properly teasing. Predictably, Telemachus only shook his head in fierce denial. The kid had been awake since dawn, and had likely not gotten much sleep the night before on account of the feast either.

“Come on,” he tugged his son away from the railing. “You should get some sleep.”

***

Odysseus ushered his son into his cabin and towards the bed with minimal protest. He’d never given much thought to the luxury of his quarters before, unfazed by the need for status symbols that plagued most of the kings at Troy. Now that Telemachus was swaying sleepily into his side, the modest double bed that occupied over a third of the small room seemed woefully inadequate.

Still, his son half climbed and half fell into the linen sheets, guided by Odysseus’s hands to keep from toppling off entirely. Telemachus crumpled neatly on top of the covers, burying his face in the fabric with a contented sigh, and Odysseus’s heart truly could not swell any further.

He knelt by the side of the bed, unclasping his chlamys with a single, trembling hand to drape it over what was most precious to him in the world. His son tucked it further around himself, scrunching it around his face as if he was unconsciously seeking his father’s warmth once more. It would never be so far from him again.

Odysseus passed a loving hand through his dark curls, marvelling at their softness between his fingers. His adoration for his son has formed the foundation of his being for the past ten years, as unshakeable and crucial as his love for Penelope.

Gods, Penelope. His heart ached to think of how she must be suffering, forced to wonder after the safety of not only a husband but her only son. They would return to her both. They must.

He had to go back up to the deck soon, he knew. The crew would have questions about their sudden change of trajectory, and he was still a captain and their king. But for now, he was simply a father, and the men could wait a moment longer.

“Sweet dreams,” he whispered into sleeping Telemachus’s hair, distantly feeling the weight of an otherwise innocent phrase. “I love you.”

Chapter Text

Telemachus dreamt of song.

Divinely soft, fluttering through the air and muddled only by the haze of prophecy. The future, then. Strangely, he didn’t find himself viewing the world through the eyes of another, instead floating high above the scene, observing detachedly in a way he hadn’t since his visions of Troy.

Below him, their ship, rocking gently in calm waters. Men stood scattered across the deck, strange looking from his unfamiliar bird’s eye perspective. And, leaning across the railing in the way he’d just been anxious about Telemachus doing, his father.

His expression was indecipherable through the fog, but his head was propped casually against one arm as he directed his attention to the water below. Telemachus strained to see what had captured his father’s focus, willing the dream into greater clarity as the twisting melody dulled his thoughts. The calm waters were pierced through by black, shining shards of rock, unforgiving cliffsides caging them in.

And there – oh. There, swimming through the water, was his mother, as warm as when he’d been taken from her. If his dream form was capable of it, Telemachus might have cried. He moved towards her instinctively, all of the homesickness he’d smothered rising once more in a painful ache. Trying to call out had no effect, no sound nor breath left his immaterial lungs.

She did not notice him as he drifted closer, continuing to smile serenely up at his father as she sang. The words blurred, and Telemachus couldn’t discern any meaning from them past gentle melancholy.

As desperately as he wanted to go to her, something held him back. The image before him, as beautiful as it was, was wrong. His mother was not like this. She wouldn’t simper by the bottom of a ship for anyone, even her husband.

This Penelope lacked the security Telemachus had always associated with his mother. She had neither the strength in the set of her shoulders nor the intelligence in the arc of her brow that had been constants while his father had been away.

Unconsciously, Telemachus pulled away. The wind had turned sharper, the waves harsher against the bow of their ship. Slowly, the image of domestic bliss before him seemed to crack, to peel and flake away like the paint of a neglected fresco.

A ray of steadily clouding sunlight reflected off of a pointed fang, cruel behind his mother’s smiling lips, and Telemachus pulled himself sharply back into consciousness.

The glow of the dream faded around him into thick darkness. Feeling returned gradually to his limbs until he could identity the soft, sleep-warmed fabric of his father’s bed around him. Telemachus breathed through the tightness in his throat, letting the pang of seeing his mother again, but not quite, wash over him until it passed.

His grip on his makeshift blanket tightened. As the last dregs of his dream released him, the unease of the dark settled in its place. It was a childish fear, he knew, and one he’d never particularly had in Ithaca.

Telemachus had lost his stomach for it ever since those black, endless days in the hull of the raiders’ ship. The loss of sight paired with the familiar sensation of the rocking of waves beneath him churned his stomach.

Just as his panic started to rise, the darkness cleared, just slightly. No light source had been introduced, but his eyes felt sharper, able to discern enough to shapes to ground himself with. 

Athena, he thought warmly. Night vision was a common gift for her champions, passed from her symbolic owls. That the goddess would continue to watch over him and show him her favour even now was enough to calm his heart back into a steady rhythm. He would have to bring a proper offering to her temple when they were back home, even if it could never repay all she had done for him.

Sleep tugged at him insistently, but Telemachus wouldn’t be able to rest again until he felt safe enough to, old fear lingering in the trembling of his fingers.

A glance around the room didn’t immediately reveal his father, not until he looked down and found the sleeping figure on the floor, positioned protectively between the door and Telemachus. He was laying atop a haphazard pile of canvas that couldn’t have done much to cushion the cold, hard floor of the cabin, resting his head against one arm. The other lay by his sword, far enough to avoid injury in the night while remaining in easy reach.

Silently, Telemachus crept off the bed with his pillow in hand. He shifted his feet along the floorboards to keep them from creaking until he reached the edges of his father’s makeshift bedroll. Careful not to wake the man, he curled up as comfortably as possible, half on top of his own pillow.

He watched the steady rise and fall of his father’s chest through barely open eyes until the gentle rhythm lulled him back to sleep.

***

Odysseus woke to the sensation of something small and warm pressing against him. Years of war had long forged the habit of responding to any unexpected contact with immediate, unadulterated violence, but something stayed his hand before he reached for his sword.

Memories of the previous day returned to him in a flood of emotion. Telemachus. His eyes adjusted to the darkness slowly, clarifying the outline of the precious bundle by his side. A further look revealed the boy was still blessedly asleep, gods knew he needed it, and was shifting closer unconsciously.

Warmth spread through him that had nothing to do with the canvas and spare cloaks he’d mindlessly assembled the night before. He’d forgone his bed in favour of the floor, expecting Telemachus to want space, or at least be uncomfortable with the idea of sleeping in the same bed as the father he barely knew.  

His son had, once again, overruled any restraint Odysseus tried to show for his sake. That same awed, all-consuming love gripped his lungs until he could barely breathe, the backs of his eyes stinging. What had he ever done to deserve his son? He could spend the rest of his life on his knees, praying and offering his gratitude to the gods and it would never be enough.

Telemachus shifted in his sleep, his head lightly bumping Odysseus’s elbow.

Well. There was no use in both of them sleeping on the floor.

With more care than he’d ever handled any treasure, Odysseus manoeuvred his unconscious son into his arms, cradled close against his chest. He held his breath as Telemachus wriggled, almost waking, only to press closer.

Odysseus slid his hand from the boy’s back to support his head, achingly similar to when he would hold an infant on long, sleepless nights. It was astonishingly easily to fall back into the role of a father, the muscle memory returning to him as instinctive as drawing breath.

Just as gently, he carried Telemachus back to the bed, climbing in with him after only a moment’s hesitation. He would not deprive his son of closeness if he desired it, however unworthy Odysseus was.

He pulled the covers over them both, unable to tear his eyes from the boy. Telemachus’s cheek, still soft and full with childhood pressed against the pillow, a single curl of dark hair falling forward over his eyes. Without realising he was moving, Odysseus reached out with a calloused hand, the roughness of his skin stark against the softness of Telemachus’s as he tucked the strand behind the delicate shell of his ear.

He left his fingers threaded through his son’s hair as he fell back into sleep, unable to bring himself to pull away.

***

The morning passed in a soft haze of domesticity. Telemachus insisted on rising at the same time as his father, despite the man’s protests that he should get more sleep. He dressed himself the soft robes he’d taken with him from Circe’s island, savouring the light, floral scent that lingered on the fabric. It would be a long time before he could return, and nostalgia for his days at her palace already curled in the far corner of his heart.

One day, he promised himself. After a moment’s deliberation, he added a few of the golden bands the nymphs had pushed into his hands on his last day. They were gifts, he reasoned. It would be rude to treat them carelessly. Besides, their low hum against his skin served as a comforting reminder of Circe herself, and the magic that rippled off of her at all times.

Telemachus’s eyes caught on a large map hung in the clearest area of the room. It wasn’t one he recognised, depicting seas far past the ones he had sailed by Ithaca. Their home island itself occupied a far corner of the canvas, a subtle but insistent reminder of their destination.

“Soon,” his father promised from behind him, following his gaze, as he lifted his hand to run his finger along the embroidered edge of the island with palpable longing. “We’ll be home soon.”

Telemachus nodded, throat too tight to trust himself to respond. He dragged his attention away from the marking down to the small pin that marked their current location, just to the side of an island that must have been Circe’s.

Slightly above them, no further than a few days voyage, a narrow straight of jagged cliffs slashed across the map like a scar, black and malicious. He pressed a single, almost trembling fingertip against it, as if to hide it from view would keep it from existing. The viciously sharp, rocky wasteland from his dream rose to the surface of his mind unbidden.

“We’re sailing through there,” he managed, not quite a question.

His father’s hand slid down the map until it rested on top of Telemachus’s, gently pulling his hand away from the passage.

“We are,” he admitted. “How did you know? A dream?” His voice was intentionally light, but the tension in his shoulders betrayed his concern.

Telemachus nodded, stiffly.

“Not good?” his father whispered, coaxing his fingers reassuringly through Telemachus’s knotted hair with care. He swallowed, steadying his breathing. Hypnotic singing. His mother, but not.

“Sirens,” he whispered finally. “There will be sirens.”

His father’s ministrations through his hair faltered for only a moment. He hummed thoughtfully, pulling Telemachus closer.

“They were always a possibility. But they can be defended against. When the time comes, I’ll have the men prepare beeswax for our ears, and you’ll stay below deck.”

Telemachus frowned. “I can help.”

His father’s grip on him tightened until he was fully pressed into his side. “No,” he breathed, almost shakily. “I’m sure you could, kid, but I’m not putting you in danger. You’ll be safer in the cabin.”

The idea of hiding while the others fought rankled, but his father’s tone left no room for negotiation, already laced with panic at the suggestion. “Please. I won’t be able to fight if you’re in harm’s way.”

Reluctantly, Telemachus nodded. The tension drained from his father’s frame as he leaned to press a kiss into his hair in thanks and reassurance. “We’ll be alright,” he murmured, as much to himself as to Telemachus.

“We will,” he agreed, more steadily. “Athena will help. She can’t have kept me alive this long to let me get eaten by oversized fish.”

It was meant to be a joke, but his father only stared at him. “Kept you alive?” he echoed, equal parts surprised and concerned.

Telemachus lit up with excitement, his anxiety over the dream dissipating at once. “Yeah! She helped me escape from the raiders’ ship, and then hide when they chased me through the forest!”

He was cut off by his father pulling him fully into his arms, smothering the rest of his words as he worked his hands back through his hair.

Odysseus said nothing for a long moment. “I’m.. glad. Her favour is a valuable thing.” There was an undercurrent of something in his words that Telemachus knew better than to question. He settled on burying closer to his father, letting him hold him until the protective fear had passed.

***

There was a small room at the back of the ship, more of a repurposed storage unit than anything else, that Odysseus had not stepped foot inside in many months. Not since the cyclops. Not since Polites.

He found himself at its door now, hesitating. After a moment’s deliberation, he pushed it open until he could see Athena’s altar, dusty and neglected from months of travel.

Closing the door softly behind him, he knelt before the construction, setting about wiping away the dirt with his chlamys. Odysseus had not prayed to his goddess since their argument, both out of pride and the lingering fear she would ignore his call, severing their connection for good.

But she had saved Telemachus. She had intervened even after he had thrown away her favour so callously, had stopped his son from being lost to him forever. Odysseus didn’t know what he would have done if his child was gone, out of reach and alone because he had been too slow in returning home. He would have broken, shattered in a million pieces and not even Penelope could have put him back together. Athena had saved him then, too, and she had to have known it.

He recalled, too, the owl that had prevented him from leaving Circe’s island, and what was most precious to him with it. It was undoubtedly her. He would have recognised her in any form, in any place.

Telemachus had been the priority then, always would be, but the feeling of being one with his goddess once more as she soared overhead had settled something in his bones he hadn’t realised was missing.

She deserved to be thanked. No offerings in this mortal world could ever be sufficient for the irreplaceable gift she had bestowed on him, but he would not let such an act of kindness go unnoticed.

Slowly, he clasped his hands and bowed his head against the altar. With vicious gratitude, longing and regret churning in his stomach, Odysseus prayed to his patron goddess.

***

Athena had been drawn to Ithaca over a month ago by desperate, grieving prayer. The force of it, accompanied by the sweet scent of sacrificial blood in her temple from her favoured island had been enough to capture her attention even as she stewed in the loss of her champion.

She’d found her most beloved queen kneeling by her statue in her nightdress, head bowed and trembling in every limb. Her face was splotchy with tears, her nails bitten bloody where her hands were clasped in her lap hard enough to turn her knuckles white.

Please, came the prayer. I cannot lose my son. Please. He is still so young. Athena searched Penelope’s mind until she found the source of this distress: Telemachus, carried away by raiders in the night. An empty room, a damning escape. She ran her thumb along the delicate skin underneath her queen’s eye, drying her tears and cooling the feverish heat building beneath it.

For all her wisdom, she was not immune to sentiment. Athena had watched over this family for over a decade, had held infant Telemachus in her arms even as she swore to herself she would not become attached. She was not too proud to admit that she had.

My queen, Athena whispered into Penelope’s dishevelled hair, letting her feel her presence in the temple even as she kept her form immaterial. Penelope shuddered as her divine influence filled the space, coiling tenderly around her frame. Lean on my strength until you regain yours. I will find Telemachus. I will fix this.

Her queen sagged softly against her as she made herself half solid, threading sleep through Penelope’s mind with her weaver’s hands. Rest.

***

After carefully laying the unconscious woman at the foot of her statue, safe in the hold of her temple, Athena searched for Telemachus. She scanned the horizon with all-seeing eyes, past Penelope’s ships, a small army mostly comprised of fisherwomen already on a rampage across the isles for her missing son, past crashing waves and churning storms.

And there, a stain of malevolence against her uncle’s wine-dark sea, a black, curved ship cut through the waves. In its hull, a child with midnight hair and his mother’s honey gold eyes lay curled into himself, shaking with sobs in the darkness.

Divine wrath sang in the tightness of her spine, consistently repressed by the ages but still there, still there. Odysseus’s rejection aside, these were still her mortals, her favoured family. Athena cursed the raiders for the slight without a second thought: they would fall in any battle they tried to fight, die terrible, unremembered deaths, their names forever lost to insignificance.

Godly winds steered them off-course, away from the trading capitals and far from any ports. She slid her immortal hand into the folds of their minds, as horrific as they are, whispered in their ears to guide them below deck to feed the boy. She caused crisis, distraction, any time any of them thought of heading down with intentions to harm him.

When Telemachus called for her, Athena hesitated. To watch over and protect the child from a distance was one thing, but to appear to him in person would risk attracting the attention of the other gods. Her talks with Penelope were largely ignored, the business of women dismissed and unvalued, but to approach Telemachus would be seen as claiming a new champion.

Odysseus would hate her for it, more than he did even then, if not for the slight of being replaced then for the simple act of taking his son under the mentorship he had so despised. It was a discomforting thought, that even after everything that had happened between them she did not want him to hate her. The idea soured on her tongue, unvoiced.

Telemachus was insistent, as stubborn as both parents combined as he prayed to her. He was different, she knew, to any mortal she’d watched over before. Athena did not on principle interact with many children, considering them too underdeveloped and naïve to be worth much interest.

But this child, this one she had cradled in her arms when he was barely a week old, had looked down at his small, sleeping face and understood what it was that drove parents to unimaginable lengths to protect them. She would not forsake him if he needed her.

As delicately as she was capable of, Athena knelt by the trembling boy, breathed a whisper of divine strength into his weakened form. When he slumped to the side with exhaustion, she caught him, lowering the child carefully to the ground. You are safe. You are beloved of Athena, and you are safe.

***

She drove the raider’s ship onto that fateful island, beckoned Telemachus up a tree to buy him time, lured the witch into her forest with birdsong. And more than anything else, Athena watched.

She watched the boy’s thoughtless escape plan, equal parts alarmed and exasperated at the recklessness that was bound to accompany being the son of Odysseus. She watched his disastrous magic lessons with amusement, glad for her formlessness and thus lack of flammability whenever he started yet another fire.

Pointedly, Athena did not watch Odysseus. He had been very clear in their final conversation that he had no interest in being her student or maintaining any connection.  Slowly, however, as she grew more attached to Telemachus, she became aware of the beginnings of a new, decidedly unpleasant feeling.

The horribly mortal emotion of guilt.

Odysseus had been riddled with grief, then. She had seen that look in his eyes, that vicious, clawing agony she knew all too well. He had lost his closest friend.

Athena had once driven a spear through her own.

But Polites was not Pallas, and she would not let him succumb to that pain in the way that she had. She had wanted him to be stronger, to push through the loss without crumbling under its weight. If he could ensure his friend was avenged, if he could eliminate the threat for good, maybe he could move on, even if she never truly had.

That insistence had only served to destroy them, that fragile bond they had made over the years snapping as easily as the threads of the fates. And so she had not watched him.

As time passed, Athena began to consider if she might have miscalculated. It was not a sentiment she was familiar with, but she was wise enough to know it was a necessary one.

Perhaps Odysseus had not needed to be ruthless in order to recover. Perhaps he had even needed her. And she had left.

Athena was forced to pay attention once he had docked on the island, with eleven fewer ships. She let him handle the pig situation on his own, knowing he was more than capable of solving it. Some time spent as pigs could only do those men some good either way.

Having to watch two of her most favoured mortals interact without recognising each other was infuriating. More than once, she’d had to stop herself from grabbing Odysseus by his shoulders and shaking him until he came to his senses.

Look! she wanted to scream. Look at how like you he is! How like Penelope! See past the damned veil and recognise that intelligence, that bravery. Look!

He did not. He grew more attached, certainly. More protective. But he had spent so long holding other children at arm’s length, longing too much for his own to bear the similarities, the reminders of how much he had missed.

It was ironic, then, that he dismissed all signs of familiarity when faced with his actual son because of course this strange child reminded Odysseus of him. He never saw anyone else, when he looked at them.

Still, she could not let him leave, not when Telemachus was so close.

Athena knew her champion well.

They had shared a mind, once, so in sync even outside her domain it would frighten her. She knew he would eventually realise who that child with bright, intelligent eyes had been – who he had left behind. She knew it would kill him.

She knew then, too, that he would recognise the sign she was sending him as she descended from the skies in the form he knew as well as his own.

Through her owl’s eyes, divinely sharp, she watched him know.

Once the two were tangled on the palace’s cobblestoned path, radiating so much love and care she had to avert her eyes, Athena pulled away. Her job was done, she’d told herself. Telemachus was reunited with his father, and they would return home to Penelope together. There was no reason for her to remain.

And yet. And yet. They were not safe, not while her uncle still lurked by Ithaca’s coasts, stewing with his insulted pride. Poseidon would kill them both. Athena had seen enough of his fury over the centuries to know how it would play out.

He would kill Telemachus first while Odysseus watched. Perhaps he’d blind him, destroy those shining eyes as violently as her champion had the cyclops’s. As retribution for Polyphemus, Poseidon would say, but he would have done it for any slight. The fact the injury was to his son served only to give him ideas for Odysseus’s punishment.

The thought horrified Athena more than she was comfortable admitting. She had promised Penelope she would bring her family home, and that promise was not yet fulfilled. It never would be unless she acted.

An idea came to her, half-formed but possible. There was still one god who could command Poseidon to spare her mortals. One god whom she could sway.

She was pulled from her thoughts by prayer. The feeling of it, familiar enough to catch her attention immediately but entirely absent over the past months, sent a shock of electricity down her immaterial spine.

Odysseus.

***

He’d only managed half of the customary praise in Athena’s name before he felt her presence in the room, as familiar to him as Ithaca’s coasts.

Odysseus didn’t dare look up at his goddess, keeping his eyes fixed on the floorboards before him and his head bowed as his prayers died on his lips. She had hurt him, damaged their bond probably beyond repair, but she had saved Telemachus. Likely more than the boy even realised.

For bringing his son back to him, there was little Odysseus was not willing to forgive. The question remained more whether she would be willing to forgive him. Athena had been right about leaving the cyclops alive, of course she had been, and he had thrown away the counsel of the goddess of wisdom.

It had been in Polites’s honour, but his friend would never have wanted the destruction that followed. He shouldn’t have let his grief cloud his judgement, shouldn’t have let his hubris doom them all.

Athena might forgive him for his disrespect, but for his stupidity? Unlikely.

“Athena,” he choked out, throat worn with regret. “I- Thank you. For Telemachus. For everything.”

A cool, shimmering hand lightly tilted his chin upwards, until his eyes met Athena’s brilliant grey irises for the first time in months.

“I would not have left him,” she said, voice steady even as ‘Not how I left you’ went unsaid. “I will not.”

He nodded, stunned but more grateful than he could ever put into words. The catastrophic end of her mentorship aside, the idea of having Athena watching over Telemachus when he could not was a welcome one. The fact she was even here was half a miracle by itself.

“I did not think you would come.” Had that really been all it took, to be graced with her presence again? Half of a prayer at some makeshift altar?

Athena titled her head to the side, blinking even though he knew immortals did not need to, a habit she had only picked up from Odysseus during their years at Troy. He smiled at the sight, both at the nostalgic gesture and the simple pleasure of witnessing the goddess of wisdom be confused – a rare occurrence.

“You asked for me,” she stated, as if it had always been that simple.

They sat in silence for a while, doing nothing but bask in each other’s presence. There were still many conversations to be had, many emotions to be aired, but for this moment their tenuous peace was enough. It was a start – a mutual forgiveness.

“I’m sorry,” he said at last, because it had to be said, however lacking it was. “I should have listened to you.”

Athena pursed her lips, shaking her head distractedly. “I miscalculated,” she said, even if the words seemed to pain her as she uttered them. Her hand was still on his face, and Odysseus didn’t dare move lest she pull away. “And I left you.”

“But you came back for Telemachus.” He hesitated, then voiced the thought that had been bothering him since he’d heard his son’s story about the raiders. “Circe’s island is far from Ithaca. Very far for raiders in need of a supply run.”

Athena shrugged, that same pleased shine in her eyes whenever he figured something out. “The winds are strange in those parts. Confusing, for sub-par navigators.”

He laughed despite himself, a weak, unsteady sound. It felt like such a blessing to just talk to her again, after everything.

Athena turned suddenly, looking up like she could see through the wood to the deck. “Again, Telemachus?” She shook her head in exasperation. “There’s a situation with your crew,” she stated simply, voice even.

Odysseus blinked, bewildered by the sudden change in conversation. “Should I-“ he hesitated, gesturing towards the door as she nodded.

“Yes. I will speak with you again soon.” The goddess looked as if she wanted to say something else, but she stopped herself. Too sentimental, perhaps, even after what they had shared. He understood anyway.

The relief of having Athena at his back again was monumental enough to be felt in his bones, that constant, soothing presence of her favour slotting back into the space it had carved out for itself in his mind like it had never left.

He smiled at his goddess, at his friend.

“See you then.”

***

Mealtimes onboard Odysseus’s ship were a decidedly informal affair. Crewmates lay strewn haphazardly across the deck with their rations, talking amongst themselves or playing various dice games.

Since his father was otherwise occupied, Telemachus had sat with Eurylochus and his entourage, watching them debate politics too outdated for him to be familiar with while he ate.

One of the men remained suspiciously silent, eyeing his food distastefully.

“Say,” he started out of nowhere, twisting towards Telemachus. “You know magic, right? Could you heat this?” he said, waving one of his strips of dried meat for emphasis.

“That’s not a good idea, Lycaon,” Eurylochus interrupted, a tense set to his jaw.

“Come on! It couldn’t hurt to practice, right?” A few men chimed in agreement, or more likely just plain curiosity.

Telemachus chewed his lip, considering. If he’d managed anything magical successfully during his time with Circe, it was fire. If he could try to focus it, to call the same power in a calmer, more controlled form, it could work. And Lycaon was right. He did need to practice.

“Sure,” he declared, with far more confidence than he felt. “Pass it to me.” Lycaon placed his portion eagerly on the between them as the rest of the men cheered, gathering around to watch.

Telemachus hovered his hands over it, calling to mind any memory of Circe performing this kind of spell. He manually relaxed each of muscles, clearing his mind of anxious thoughts and focusing on his breathing.

Heat, he thought, forcefully.

The meat burst into flame, inciting cries of alarm from the crew as they reeled back. Lycaon swore as he threw himself away from the raging fire, burning several feet into the air at the same moment as Telemachus snatched his hands back, miraculously unscorched.

Chaos reigned until Eurylochus pushed between the panicking men to smother it with his cloak. He strangled it until the fire was well and truly put out, finally pulling away with a frazzled expression and his ruined fabric.

The door to the lower deck snapped open to reveal his father, no doubt drawn back up by the noise.

“What-“ he cut himself off abruptly, staring uncomprehendingly at the scorch marks on the wooden panels by his feet. Slowly, he turned his head to look at Telemachus, inquiringly if not suspiciously.

“Cooking spell,” Telemachus explained miserably into his plate, picking half-heartedly at the last of his food.

“Well,” his father ventured, with a valiant attempt at optimism. “It’s certainly cooked.”

Eurylochus poked the charred remains with his sword, as if afraid he too would spontaneously combust upon contact. “I prefer my meat well done over rare anyway,” he offered, still eyeing the ashes suspiciously.

Odysseus hummed in agreement and went to sit by Telemachus, ruffling his hair with a crooked smile as soon as it was within reach. “How about we practice any flammable magic over the water, next time? Might save a few floorboards,” he added, stealing a piece of dried fruit off of Telemachus’s plate with his free hand.

He glared up at his father in mock offense, pointedly ignoring his unbothered grin.

“All magic is flammable magic,” he countered, pointing his bread at his father with emphasis as the man ate his stolen fruit.

They’d developed a sort of game during mealtimes, each stealing food from the other when they weren’t looking. Telemachus suspected his father pretended not to notice far more than he actually didn’t, but that only made it more satisfying on the few instances he did pull off the theft undetected, catching the man blinking down at his emptier plate in surprise before he lightly pushed Telemachus’s head down in fond retaliation.

The rest of the meal passed with increased animation now that Odysseus had joined, conversation mostly surrounding the flame show they’d just witnessed. Perimedes shuffled so far away he would have passed over the railing had he not been stopped.

Telemachus ignored them all and their endless questions in favour of studying his father. His posture was more relaxed, his words seem to come easier, as if some invisible weight had been lifted from his shoulders.

Upon noticing his curious gaze, the man only smiled and shook his head. Later, he mouthed, before turning back to vehemently disagree with whatever Eurylochus had just said.

Telemachus didn’t argue, opting to use the moment of distraction to swipe his father’s bread.

***

Days passed, interrupted only by indecipherable snippets of dreams that accomplished nothing but unsettle Telemachus further as anticipation rose throughout the ship. They all knew something was approaching, some danger even if they did not yet know its face.

By the end of the week, the tension broke.

“Captain,” Eurylochus called softly, interrupting quiet discussions. “Look.”

Rising over the horizon were black, jagged cliffsides, piercing through the dark waters as easily as sword points. Thick fog obscured their bases, pooling ominously around the ship, stretching its malicious tendrils forward, reaching.

The crew fell silent as quickly as if all the air had been stolen from their lungs, suffocating in their terror-driven anticipation. Slowly, Odysseus rose from Telemachus’s side, his grip on his arm tightening reflexively.

He turned away from the horizon and towards his men, expression hard.

“Prepare for sirens.”

***

Odysseus had stayed behind with Telemachus as long as he could as they approached the strait, reluctant even in the face of battle to part from him. Eventually, though, there was no way to put it off any longer. He was still captain, he still needed to lead his crew through this and get them out alive.

These priorities did not prevent him from cornering Telemachus just before he left.

“I’ll be back as soon as I can, just promise me you’ll stay here,” his father had whispered, his hands tightening around Telemachus’s face.

He nodded, resolute. Slowly, the tension melted away from his father’s shoulders, and he leaned down to press a kiss against his hair line.

“I’ll stay,” he assured.

***

In his defence, Telemachus really hadn’t planned on going above deck.

He’d been patiently sitting in their cabin, ears full of beeswax and stewing in the silence with his knees pulled against his chest while he waited for the all-clear. And, admittedly, he’d been panicking slightly.

Just above Telemachus’s head, his father and the crew were fending off literal sirens. He’d only ever known them in myth, and even when nothing but ink on parchment or lyrics from bards they’d been terrifying.

His mind cycled through descriptions of black claws, rows of poisoned fangs and scales that… glittered menacingly or something.

When the cabin started rattling with the impacts of footfalls and heavy objects hitting the deck, his heartrate tripled until his breathing could only come in short, uneven gasps.

Telemachus squeezed his eyes shut, selfishly wishing his father would have let the crew handle the sirens themselves and stayed in the cabin with him. But even if it had seemed for a moment that he wanted to, his father would never.

There was a threat to their lives, which meant their was a threat to Telemachus’s life. His father had to deal with it personally.

The thought brought warmth back to his tense frame. Telemachus put his head down against his knees, focusing on his breathing like Circe had taught him to do when the nightmares from the raiders came for him. He thought about his father, once he had enough air in his lungs to think of anything else.

He thought about the gentle way he handled him, whether guiding his hands through complicated sailor’s knots or combing through his hair when the sea breeze tangled it. He thought of the look of his father’s face whenever he believed Telemachus couldn’t see him, like he’d been awarded the most precious thing in the world to look after.

A tentative, delicately glowing feeling spread from between his ribs through his entire body, tingling the skin at the tips of his fingers and seeping through the roots of his hair.

When he let his eyes drift half-open, he almost thought the golden bands along his arms were shining brighter, humming in harmony with the loving warmth within him.

Telemachus let his eyelids slide closed again, basking in the bliss of it.

In his mind, he searched for his father again, as if he could reach through the wood of the ship and be back at his side.

Swords slashing against scales. A siren’s claws, sharp and reaching. His father. Blood.

Telemachus startled, eyes snapping open. It hadn’t been a dream, more of a flash of some cruel vision, induced by a state of half-sleep and hazy with possibilities. It was enough. Something had gone wrong with the sirens, and his father was in danger.

He stumbled to his feet, heart racing. He had to do something. They’d been reunited for barely a week, Telemachus couldn’t lose his father again. The idea of going above deck, where battle must have broken out, but more importantly going against the only order his father had ever given him had his stomach lurching with discomfort.

But he couldn’t just let it happen. Shakily, Telemachus pushed the cabin door open to the hallway and ran. His footsteps rang hollow in his bones, all sounds blurred and yet amplified by the panic coursing through him.

For a moment, he almost thought he was back on the raiders’ ship, the night of his escape. The same pounding in his ears, the same terror making his legs tremble as he manoeuvred through the dark corridor. He’d been running away, then, from the men and their swords and cruel hands. No destination in mind except somewhere else.

This time, Telemachus knew exactly where he was going. He was running to his father, and maybe he always had been. Running towards the beach the night of his capture, running into that divine forest in his escape, and finally, running from Circe’s palace and to him.

The fates had led him to his father time and time again. And they would not take him away again.

He burst through the door and into blinding sunlight. All around him, silent as the dead, the crew fought with sirens. Suddenly emerging into the heat of battle disoriented him, and he stepped out from the relative safety of the doorway to locate what he came for.

Telemachus couldn’t say he was entirely confident with what his plan was. Tackle the creature, like some particularly stupid gladiator? Maybe ask it politely not to murder the man he’d already grown so attached to, making his eyes big and imploring the way that always seemed to work on his mother. He didn’t have time to decide which was the worse idea.

The floorboards rushed up to meet him in a dizzying lurch as he was slammed downwards with enough force to shred the skin from his side as it scraped unforgivingly against the wood. Pain flooded his senses at the same moment he finally registered the weight on top of him, sodden and sharp where it pressed into his back.

The golden bangle on his left wrist had broken on impact, its beautiful shards cutting into his palm as he closed his hand around them.

Telemachus craned his neck just far enough to see the creature’s face, stretched with bared teeth as its mouth opened. Its pointed fangs gleamed as it reared back to sink them into his throat, eyes shining with desperate bloodthirst.

As fast as it had barged into him, the creature was gone, suddenly ripped away by large hands and driven through with a broad sword.

Eurylochus stared at him in horrified alarm as the creature gasped, choking on its own blood as it tried to squirm away from its killer. Telemachus tore his attention away from both of them, pushing himself up and finally seeing his father by the portside railing.

His back was turned. He wouldn’t see the beast in time, nor its unforgiving claws.

Without thinking, Telemachus hurled the shattered bangle in his hand, furiously working through all memories of Circe’s spellcasting. He landed on the relaxed afternoons he’d spent watching the sorceress tend to her beloved plants, humming as she coaxed them from the earth, which was exceedingly unhelpful. Relaxing the siren to death seemed a poor plan, even by his standards.

He concentrated all lingering feelings from those hours into his throw, staring the gold down as it sailed through the air and hit its target square in the face. The creature recoiled, having the gall to look offended at the attack before its confusion gave way to panic when twisted vines sprouted from the fragments, thorned and black and writhing and furious, coiling around the shrieking creature and finally catching his father’s attention.

The plants were not particularly strong, and likely only slowed the siren for a few seconds, but those were all Odysseus needed. He spun, slamming his sword down into its chest as he shoved its body overboard.

Telemachus cheered, momentarily vindicated. Take that, fish, he thought in its vague direction. You were just bested by a ten year old who’s only advantage was being truly, hazardously awful at gardening magic.

His victory was short-lived. His father locked eyes with him in the space of a heartbeat, expression morphing to horror at seeing him above deck. The one place he was precisely forbidden from being. Before Telemachus could blink his father had crossed the distance between them, dragging him away from the battle and back towards the door.

They didn’t make it far. A few steps short, another siren was thrown into their path, snarling with unadulterated scaly hatred. Telemachus brandished a golden circlet threateningly, but his father shoved him behind him immediately, knuckles white around his sword.

Telemachus poked his head out from his father’s side, glowering at the creature.

“Try it!” he taunted, the  words muffled by the wax in his ears. “I have a full arsenal of otherwise innocent spells I can do extraordinarily badly!”

The siren visibly blanched, eyeing the circlet with more trepidation than the sword point at its throat. Its distraction proved fatal. His father used the creature’s lapse of focus to lunge, just as Telemachus ducked back behind him to avoid having to see it die.

He was pulled backwards nearly fast enough to lose balance, stumbling towards the now open door as his father pushed him past the wooden frame.

Are you hurt? he mouthed, eyes tight with panic as they scanned him.

Telemachus’s side ached, pulsing with heat now that his attention was brought back to it. Still, he shook his head. He’d distracted his father enough, and the scrape was relatively minor. It hadn’t even bled through his clothes yet.

Stay, Odysseus mouthed, emphasising the word as much as possible without being heard. Telemachus nodded as convincingly as he could. Without the immediate threat to his father’s life, he truly had no desire to return to the battle, as fun as throwing things at sirens had proved.

A gentle hand cupping his face interrupted his movement. His father wasted another few pressure seconds to pull him close enough to press a kiss to his hairline before turning around to rejoin the fray, slamming the door firmly behind him.

And then Telemachus was alone again. Without the visual noise of the fight to distract him, the silence settled, suffocating in the dim light of the corridor.

His side burned by the time he made it back to his father’s cabin. With the rush of near-death fading, the pain intensified past the ignorable.

Slowly, he eased himself down into a sitting position leaning against the bedframe. Fingers trembling almost to the point of uselessness, he undid his robes to his waist, letting the fabric pool just below his injury.

The wound was red and angry, a large scrape spreading from the side of his ribs to his stomach, pinpricked with splinters and drops of blood that had already begun to flow at all the movement. He began to pull out the largest shards of wood with shaking hands, biting his lip against the pain. Their ship didn’t have a physician, he knew, and any crewmate with medical experience would be preoccupied treating other, more serious injuries.

Telemachus would do it himself, then.

He was nearly halfway through by the time the door opened. The shaking of his hands undoubtedly slowed him down while worsening the pain, but the discomfort of the ordeal and the post-battle crash prevented him from steadying them.

With beeswax still dulling his hearing, Telemachus only looked up when he felt the impact of the door hitting the wall, rattling the walls from the impact as it was fully thrown open in panic.

Before he could register it, his father was in front of him, pulling his hands away from the wound with wide, horrified eyes. His mouth was moving too fast for Telemachus to make out any coherent words, unable to do more than stare uncomprehendingly until he reached upwards to pull out the beeswax plugs.

Noise hit him with the force of a tidal wave.

After hours of unbreakable silence, it took his ears several long moments to re-adjust, only catching his father’s sentences in snippets.

“-said you weren’t hurt- when did this- why would you hide it from me?” He sounded so devastated guilt began to squirm in the pit of Telemachus’s stomach.

“I just,” he started, the words painfully loud now that he could hear them through the air as well as his bones. “I didn’t want to bother you.”

His father went still where he had been inspecting the wound, closing his eyes as if in pain even as his hands tightened their grip on Telemachus’s wrists.

“You could never bother me. Never with this,” he whispered, mountains of guilt and heartbreak in his voice high enough Telemachus almost believed him.

Not knowing how to handle this sudden outburst of concern, he leaned forward until he could rest his head against his father’s shoulder, burying closer as the man’s hand went to comb through his hair on instinct. Slowly, the tension drained from Telemachus’s body until he sagged completely against his father, trusting him to hold him up. He did.

Telemachus had noticed, over the past few days, that his father only seemed to fully relax if he maintained at least one point of contact with him, whether resting a hand on his hair or pressed into each other’s sides at mealtimes. The feeling was more than mutual.

Odysseus pulled back slightly with obvious reluctance to call for their medical supplies, concern settling over his expression once more.

“You were pulling these out with your fingers? That’s not safe, Telemachus, it could get infected,” he sounded more horrified than scolding, which Telemachus was taking as a victory.

Whatever lecture his father was preparing to launch into about wound care was interrupted by the arrival of a crewmember whose name he had yet to learn, shuffling in awkwardly to deliver a tray of bandages, rags and other tools.

Odysseus smoothly picked up a strange-looking ball of herbs, handing it to Telemachus with an expectant expression.

“For the pain,” he explained. Telemachus considered protesting, his injury was hardly grave enough to warrant such a thing,  but his father still had a worried line between his brows and a tense set to his shoulders.

He took it without argument, and immediately regretted doing so. It tasted horrific. His face must have betrayed his disgust, as he was pulled out of debating the consequences of spitting the stupid thing out when his father snorted in amusement.

“Not pleasant?”

“This is worse than the splinters,” Telemachus complained mournfully through a mouthful leaves.

“That means it’s working,” his father replied, picking out a pair of tweezers the tray. “This is still going to hurt, I’m sorry.”

He nodded in acknowledgement, determined not to let it show if it did. The last thing he needed was to worry his father further.

That determination crumbled the moment he started on the mostly embedded shards Telemachus had been putting off. The skin was already so tender, and the ripping sensation of the tiny wood fibres being pulled out was nauseating.

His head felt like it had been stuffed with cotton, courtesy of the absolutely foul herbs he’d already had to endure, but his pain wasn’t so much lessened as it was just diluted throughout his body, suddenly stiff and uncomfortable.

Odysseus whispered apologies every time his breathing hitched, so clearly wracked with guilt it made Telemachus’s heart hurt. In the dim light of the oil lamps, he looked softer. Less the war-hardened hero of Troy and more his father.

More the man that had lifted him back into bed after Telemachus had joined him on the floor, the man who had stopped to ask if he was hurt while in the middle of battle, the man who could barely stand to have him out of arm’s reach.

“What was that supposed to be,” his father started, likely an attempt to distract him as he reached a particularly bruised area. “The vine trick with the siren?”

Telemachus managed a half shrug with his uninjured side, resigned to never understanding enchantments. “Some flower-growing spell. I panicked and just kind of thought ‘magic!’ in your general direction. Was half expecting it to catch fire, actually. And if that didn’t work, I honestly think my backup was just to launch myself at it.”

Odysseus accepted that with a perplexed wrinkle between his brows, nodding to himself. “A general ‘no’ to launching yourself at any monsters, but your spell worked out quite well. Excellent aim, too,” he added offhandedly, leaning back to inspect his handiwork as Telemachus flushed from the praise.

Still, some tension lingered in the air. Something left unsaid.

“I didn’t-“ Telemachus started, his voice wavering with lack of confidence. “I didn’t want to disobey you. I know why it was important that I stayed below deck.”

His father frowned but didn’t interrupt, cautiously wiping blood from the scrape with a water-dipped rag.

“I had this… vision? It was too short to be a dream but I just- I thought- it was going to kill you. I was scared,” he finished lamely. Telemachus didn’t know whether to brace himself, or how. He had yet to figure out what might trigger his father and what he should expect when he inevitably did.

As if reading his thoughts, Odysseus’s shoulders slumped. He placed the rag back onto the tray to cup Telemachus’s face with both hands, his gaze softening.

“I am not angry with you,” he stressed, tightening his hold when Telemachus tried to turn away. “I won’t pretend it didn’t take years off of my life with fear to see you on that deck, but I do not know what would have happened with that siren had you not intervened.” His expression twisted, torn.

“I do not want you to put too much faith in these dreams of yours,” Telemachus privately thought of the raiders, of that deceiving image of a home-bound ship that had lured him from the safety of his room. “It is possible that I would have turned, or that its first blow would not have been fatal. It is also possible that Eurylochus would have stopped it, if he were not distracted by your arrival.”

“You did well,” he hastened to clarify when Telemachus winced, “but I want you to remember what also goes for prophecies. More often than not, trying to prevent them only causes them to happen in the first place. I do not want you to put yourself in danger for my sake, regardless of what you see.”

Reluctantly, Telemachus nodded. Odysseus pulled him closer to kiss his temple, pulling back only to reach for the tray. For the first time, Telemachus noticed how tired his father looked. The battle had stretched for some time before he had arrived, and had continued after. He too had his own fair share of bruises and minor scrapes he was neglecting in favour of Telemachus’s.

“Now, lets bandage this and head to bed. It’s been a long day.”

***

His dream came to him as a memory. Tender, if a little fuzzy around the edges.

Telemachus was sitting in one of Circe’s klines, soft cushions up to his elbows as he watched her hum to her plants, drifting between stations with her robes gently swishing behind her.

“That,” she said, sounding amused, “is not how my plant spell is intended to be used.”

He blinked. This wasn’t how any of the memories went.

“That was the point, actually,” he answered, surprising even himself. It had only been a thought, and consequently the first time he’d spoken in a dream. “How are you here?”

Circe hummed to herself, coaxing a flower bud to bloom under her fingertips. “I’m just passing through. When one feels their own magic causing such commotion across the sea, they tend to check in.”

“Your magic?”

“Well,” she corrected, “I suppose it’s a mix. My influence lingers in that gold. It will protect you, when necessary, but I regret to say its not very amenable to being controlled by others.”

Telemachus frowned, looking down at his hands as they grew hazier the longer the dream went on. It would be logical, if he had been channelling Circe’s magic by accident. It was fierce, protective. It burned uncontrollably, but blanketed him in the sense of safety whenever he wore her jewellery he’d felt when she protected him from the raiders.

“How can I use my own, then?”

Finally, she looked up at him over her plants. Her face, too, was starting to fade. The dream wouldn’t hold much longer.

“Magic is inseparable from its user. It will respond to only to what you would do instinctively, it cannot be forced into anything you are half-hearted about. In short,” she sighed, “It has to come from you. It has to be what you want, unquestionably.”

The room around them was crumbling, slowly disintegrating into nothingness.

“This would have been useful to know before I destroyed your practice rooms!” he yelled, even as he felt himself be pulled back into consciousness.

Circe only laughed, her voice echoing as though he was hearing it carried by the wind from across a field.

“It wouldn’t have done you any good, then. You weren’t around anything you cared strongly enough about.”

Telemachus’s eyes adjusted to the darkness by the time he was semi-conscious, watching the rise and fall of his father’s chest as he breathed. There was a scratch that slashed across his elbow, resting just above the covers, cleaned but not deep enough to warrant a bandage.

It has to come from you, dream-Circe echoed at the back of his mind. It has to be what you want.

He wanted to fix that. Instinctively, unquestionably, what he wanted was to help his father.

Slowly, Telemachus pulled his hand out from under the blanket to rest it on his father’s arm. He let the warmth of the contact seep through his palm, searching out that strange wash of bliss that had calmed him before the sirens.

It came when he beckoned it, spreading from his heart, through his ribs and washing over his knuckles to his fingertips.

Please don’t let me set my father on fire, he prayed, to no one in particular. Odysseus would probably forgive him if he did.

Heal, he thought, holding on to all of his softest memories of their time together since Circe’s island. Please.

Gradually enough that Telemachus thought his eyes were playing tricks on him, his fingertips began to glow. Their cabin filled with a gentle wash of golden light, emanating from his hands and seeping beneath the skin of his father’s arm in a network of flowing channels.

Cuts knitted themselves back together as they passed, bruises faded back into tanned skin.

He watched, too lulled with half asleep serenity to be awed or panicked by the reaction.

The gold spread to Odysseus’s shoulder, disappearing underneath his tunic and reappearing to creep up his neck, then along the planes of his face, threading into his hair.

Telemachus traced their paths with his eyes as they pulsed gently, fascinated in a detached, out-of-body way.

Eventually, he pulled his hand back, and the lines began to fade. His father finally stirred, opening his eyes just in time to see the last of the light disperse like the setting sun.

“What?” he whispered, sounding surprisingly alert for a man who had been sound asleep just seconds ago.

Telemachus hummed in response, suddenly incredibly sleepy. “You’re welcome,” he murmured, burying back into his father’s chest as he returned to unconsciousness. “And you’re not even slightly on fire.”

***

Odysseus didn’t know what to make of any of it. He’d been awoken by an overwhelming feeling of energy coursing through him, momentarily dulling aches and pains that were years old.

Light had been the first thing he was awake enough to notice, soft and golden and unlike anything he’d ever seen before. It glowed softly from his son, shining through his skin like an outward manifestation of everything precious about him.

Even as Telemachus burrowed back against him with those cryptic words, the glow lingered, painting his fingertips golden and catching on his eyelashes like dewdrops, until it too dissolved into the darkness around them.

It took him several moments later to realise his injuries from the fight with the sirens were gone, washed away in a wave of divine power. His callouses themselves were slightly softened, faded.

Healing magic.

Odysseus had known it existed, in theory, had heard legends of it in medical tents from wistful soldiers complaining of their wounds. To experience it was another thing entirely.

He was far too energised to fall back asleep, however blissful the notion was with his son curled against him like a cat in the sun, which left little else to do through the hours until sunrise but fear.

If Odysseus had learned anything in the last week, it was that fatherhood was intimately associated with the feeling. Telemachus’s capture, seeing him on the deck surrounded by sirens, walking in of the body with bloodied hands as he tended to his own wound, all provoked a terror unlike any he’d experienced.

It was one thing, to stare death in the face on the battlefield as an enemy pointed their sword at him chest. It was another to be confronted with the possibility of the death of his child, who was still so small, and the knowledge that however hard Odysseus tried he would not always be able to protect him.

This was the sort of power that drew attention from the gods themselves, or even simply from monsters around the world who knew how valuable such skill was.

The others could not know. If the crew found out, news would inevitably spread. First through Ithaca, then all of Greece until every king was at his door demanding his son’s services in whatever war they started.

They could not have him. They could not take him from Odysseus when he’d just gotten him back. Not ever, even.

He forced himself to calm down. His crew knew about some of Telemachus’s magical ability, that could not be avoided. If they went the rest of their lives believing his son’s skills ended at prophetic dreams and explosive spellcasting, all the better.

But the healing they could keep to themselves. Odysseus would apply bandages over where he should have injuries until enough time had passed for their lack to no longer be suspicious. Convincing Telemachus not to heal anyone else, at least until he was older, would be more difficult. The kid was soft hearted, and as much as the fact delighted Odysseus it would be infinitely easier to convince him to turn a blind eye to people hurting if his first instinct wasn’t always to help.

Athena could keep him obscured from the gods, too, for some time. Perhaps she already had been.

Odysseus pulled his son impossibly closer, wrapping his arms over his back and cradling his head as securely as possible. He buried his face in Telemachus’s hair, breathing in the reality of the boy being alive and solid in his arms. Dark curls parted like water between his fingers, soft and perfect.

He could not shield his son forever. But in this moment, in this room, Telemachus was safe and Odysseus would not let him go.

Chapter Text

Odysseus was woken by the noise of his son’s uneven breathing.

He snapped his eyes open, instinct telling him to reach for a weapon even as he knew there was no enemy to fight. The threat was not a material one.

The room came into focus gradually, revealing the small mound of blankets curled around his side like a serpent around the branch of a tree, almost tight enough to leave bruises. Telemachus was shaking, his whole body trembling as he gasped in short, unsteady bursts.

For the last three nights, nightmares had crawled into his sleeping hours, cracking their fragile peace with hours of fear. With his heart in his throat, Odysseus pulled his son into his lap, running his hands through his curls in a way he hoped was soothing. Strands of gold cut through their darkness, honey-bright traces lingering from Telemachus’s feat of healing magic a few days prior. Its influence remained wherever one paused to look, from the subtle golden eyelashes that framed his soft irises to the shimmering pads of his fingers where he had rested them on Odysseus’s arm.

It had faded in intensity with the reprieve of a few days of smooth sailing, a relief considering the scrutiny they had already garnered from his crew. They had believed the lie that the divine touches had been caused by Telemachus’s disastrous gardening magic, already jesting that he was a few spells short of transforming entirely into some jewelled ornament. Odysseus had made them all scrub the deck for that comment.

The marks were beautiful, his son was beautiful, but nothing was worth this.

Damn you, Odysseus thought viciously, to the gods, the fates, whatever powers had given his son his abilities. He is not yours to torment, you hateful beasts. Let him go.

There would be no waking Telemachus, not until the dreams had run their course and released him. Odysseus could only hold him until it passed, whispering comforting nothings in the vain hope his love might reach through the misery, might lessen it or pull him out entirely.

He hated it, hated being helpless while Telemachus was hurting. Trying to shake him awake only made matters worse, and no amount of noise would pull him out of this state. It was unbearable.

Athena, he called, if only to keep him from losing his mind. His friend appeared only a moment later, glowing dimly by the side of their bed. She noticed Telemachus immediately, her expression tight with sympathy.

“Again?” she asked, voice soft.

“Again.”

“I don’t suppose he has finally told you what he dreams of?”

Odysseus shook his head miserably. “He keeps insisting they aren’t ‘useful’. I do not know how to make him understand that it is him that I worry for, not whatever omens he might be seeing.” As if Telemachus’s safety and happiness wouldn’t always be what mattered the most.

“Every gift is in part a curse. That his prophetic dreams would lead to more powerful nightmares would not be unheard of.”

“How can I fix it?”

“You know already that you cannot.”

His jaw clenched in displeasure, but Athena was right. Odysseus didn’t seem to be able to protect his son from much of anything, and there were dangers far worse than nightmares awaiting them.

The thought stirred something that had been festering in the back of his mind since they’d entered the strait, poisoning his thoughts with dread. He could not keep it to himself any longer.

“I spoke to the sirens. They said the only way through to Ithaca-” His words stuck in his throat, choked the breath from his lungs. “They said we would have to go through the lair of Scylla.”

The admission hung heavy in the air.

“Scylla,” Athena repeated, her face unnaturally blank as she considered, brushing a stray lock of hair from Telemachus’s face. “Her lair would provide you with some security, but passage comes at a cost. One I do not think you are willing to pay.”

Odysseus looked down at his son, his heart twisting in his chest. Gods, he was perfect. Every inch of him was precious, his glow of magic only the slightest external expression of his worth.

“I could do it,” he whispered, and his condemnation sunk into his bones at the confession. “To keep him safe, I could do it.” For Telemachus, there was no atrocity he could not stomach. Perhaps it should have terrified him, how willing he found himself to do such terrible things if it guaranteed his son’s life. It did not.

Good, he thought, keeping his eyes fixed on the soft curl of his hair, the brilliant golden strands in his eyelashes. Let me become the monster that he needs.

Sensing his thoughts as she always did, Athena leaned forward, turning his face to hers with one hand.

“That path will only bring you both misery,” she warned, her voice a quiet hiss in the darkness. “There is another way.”

Odysseus blinked. “The sirens-”

“-Were under no obligation to tell you the truth. Even then, their knowledge is not infallible. There are regions of the ocean even they do not dare to venture through.”

With a flourish of her cloak, Athena turned towards the map that adorned his cabin walls. Her pale finger traced the strait they travelled through, dipping just underneath where Scylla was rumoured to lurk to an unmarked stretch of water.

“Charybdis. More dangerous, perhaps, but you would at least have the chance to keep your entire crew alive.”

“Lose six men, or gamble the entire crew and my son on an all-or-nothing. The risks do not seem balanced.”

“You would lose them all either way, Odysseus,” she corrected, her tone soft but unrepentant as he flinched. “The crew would not forgive it, and you cannot make it home without them. Telemachus might not forgive it.”

It hit harder than he had expected it to. His grip on his son tightened almost unconsciously. The thought of those honey-brown eyes staring at him with hatred, or disgust or even fear chilled him to the bone. It would hurt him, too, to see the crew he had been growing to trust ripped away for his sake.

“Odysseus.” Her tone was sympathetic, and no less resigned for it. “You wish to protect him, and you have, but there is only so much you can do. I know that you are able to guide them all through Charybdis. Trust yourself to get everybody home alive.”

Terror tightened his throat to a painful degree, but he forced himself to nod stiffly.

“Charybdis, then.”

His goddess squeezed his shoulder once, and then faded back into the shadows.

Against his lap, Telemachus had stilled. Odysseus glanced down at him, noting the subtle shift in his breath pattern.

“How long have you been awake?” he asked, amused despite himself.

Telemachus hummed in response, pushing his face into the hand Odysseus had left in his hair. “Long enough.”

The next few moments passed in silence, and he let them. Every part of him wanted to apologise, to beg for forgiveness for being so utterly unable to keep his some safe. But Telemachus wouldn’t hear it, and there was nothing that could be done either way.

He kissed the crown of his head instead, the words suffocating in his chest. “Are you alright?” A useless question, but an opportunity for Telemachus to talk about the nightmare, if he wished.

“It was terrible,” he whispered into the darkness.  Something in his tone stopped Odysseus from hoping for honesty, its lightness out of place.

“There were three Perimedes.”

***

Olympus was an unsettling place.

It was the closest Athena had to a home, if such things existed for the gods, but venturing up to Zeus’s domain was never a comfort. Odysseus had spoken so lovingly of his own during the war, longing for his palace’s solid walls and warm hearth, and she had never truly understood. Not until – it’s the people that wait for me there, goddess, more than the place. Her beloved queen and the infant Athena herself would move mountains to protect.

The people of Olympus were no more dear to her than its imposing marble structures, and most centuries she went to great lengths to avoid them entirely. Today, unfortunately, interaction was crucial. Zeus would be calling a council meeting just after sundown, and it would be the only chance she got to ensure the safety of her champions.

The ocean was her uncle’s domain, but even Poseidon could not disobey a direct order from the King of the Gods.

***

Hermes was notoriously difficult to track down, usually meddling in other people’s affairs or delivering obscure messages and generally being anywhere except where you needed him to be.

A small mercy, then, that today the god had decided to be nuisance within her reach. More specifically, a nuisance currently dangling upside down from her palace’s archways, an obnoxious grin stretching his face as she approached. His helmet stayed in place purely through divine intervention, though he didn’t care to extend the treatment to his messenger’s scrolls, now scattered across her path.

“Athena!”

“Hermes,” she sighed, “Please, get down.”

“I get a ‘please’? Oh, my, the situation must truly be dire. What are you scheming, sister?”

“I do not scheme.” Hermes didn’t deign that with a response, his unimpressed stare evident even through that idiotic helmet. “I plan.”

“Right. And what are you ‘planning’ then, exactly?” he replied, his mockery evident.

She hesitated for a moment, reluctant, but Hermes had been involved in this family for generations, and his support was crucial.

“I need to secure safe passage for Odysseus to Ithaca. I will bring up the motion at tonight’s council meeting, and if the others agree, unanimously, Zeus will have no choice but to issue the order.”

Hermes sucked a breath in through his teeth, half sympathy and half caution.

“A dangerous game,” he ventured carefully. “To put his back against the wall.”

Athena could only nod, her movements slightly stiff. Zeus was a temperamental god. She was confident enough she could convince him to do so, but afterwards? There was no telling what his retaliation might look like.

A moment of tense silence passed between them, but Hermes spoke up before she could consider speaking again.

“You have my vote, of course. But sister?” he called when she started to walk away, having gotten what she came for. “Be careful, would you?”

His concern might have been more touching had he not still been upside down. Still, she nodded at him once more in gratitude and acknowledgement before setting off to her next destination.

***

The sun was high in the sky by the time she’d finished speaking with Hermes, and that meant there was only one place where Apollo could be found.

Strengthening her resolve, Athena concentrated on its path past the clouds, glorious and burning bright enough that her brother was, if nothing else, in a good mood. She appeared by his side in the chariot in a flurry of feathers, startling the god enough that he cried out.

The vessel veered off course, and in her mutual surprise over his reaction she didn’t react fast enough to prevent herself from sliding all the way to the edge, hands shooting out to hold onto its adorned sides. The idea of toppling off and into the skies was unappealing, immortality or no. The gods would never let her live it down.

After several unsteady but theatrical blazing loops, the chariot righted itself, continuing its trajectory as if there had been no interruption. Athena smoothed her ruffled feathers with one hand, turning to shoot her brother an unimpressed look.

“That’s going to confuse some mortal astronomers.”

“Entirely your fault,” Apollo countered, though there was no real heat behind it. He was always in a better mood after spending time with his latest mortal lover, which he had been if the woven threads messily braided into his golden hair where indicative of anything. He sported even more jewellery than usual, offerings from his various beloveds. Whatever Athena thought of him, she could respect that he tried to keep each of them with him, in whatever way an immortal could.

“What brings you here, anyway? I distinctly recall you calling my chariot a ‘ridiculous contraption built more for the attraction of nymphs than practicality’ at the last family get-together,” he continued, with a horrific imitation of her voice.

“I stand by my words. Unfortunately, matters are pressing enough to tolerate it for the time being.”

“Oh, good,” he sighed. “You’re here to talk me into another one of your council proposals. If this is about your campaign for the better treatment of owls, I keep saying to take it up with the nymph committees-“

She cut him off with the slice of her hand. “Not that. This is about my mortals.”

To her confusion, Apollo perked up immediately, his golden hair practically floating in his excitement. “Oh! The little Telemachus! I haven’t had time to check in lately, how is he?”

Athena blinked. “He needs help.”

The sun chariot lurched once more. Truly, at this rate, the mortals were going to start whispering about the end times.

“Help for what?” Apollo exclaimed, with an uncharacteristic amount of concern.

“Brother,” Athena cut him off, unwilling to push her bafflement aside any longer. “Why do you know about Telemachus?” Why do you care was perhaps the more accurate inquiry, but would be unhelpful for her cause.

He only stared at her, as if she had asked the most obvious question in the world. It was not a look Athena was used to having directed at her, and she found she did not care for it.

“Sister,” he stressed. “His powers of prophecy are unparalleled, and his skill in healing shows great promise. Not to mention the obvious.”

At her raised eyebrow, Apollo rolled his sun-bright eyes dramatically. “Athena, the child glows! I would have to be blinder than my usual prophets not to take notice of him.”

“He is mine,” she interrupted, skin prickling. “His family is under my patronage.”

“Calm your feathers. I am not stealing your golden child, but I reserve the right to favour those who bear my gifts.”

Athena narrowed her eyes at him, but the god of truth was by nature a terrible liar. She would take his word for it for now, and note to be particularly clear about her unwillingness to share her champions to any who came looking. Terrible things happened to mortal children who attracted unwanted attention from the gods, and she would not risk Telemachus in that way.

“Then I trust I can count on your support. Poseidon refuses to relinquish his grudge, and he plans on killing Telemachus and Odysseus both as they approach their home’s shores.” She steadied the chariot before it could spin out of control with his outrage, her knuckles white against its golden ridges. “I intend to convince Zeus to ensure their safety. Do I have your vote?”

Apollo nodded slowly, his expression tight.

“You do.”

***

Hera proved more difficult.

“No.”

The rejection was immediate, accompanied by a dismissive flick of her adorned wrist as she lounged in her lavish private rooms. A rogue peacock stared up at Athena in hostility, looking for all the word like it was biding its time before it received permission to peck her out the door.

“Hera, please-”

“No! Why should I concern myself with the affairs of yet another mortal hero, when so many already parade around their cities flaunting their ‘heroic deeds’ to any fool who stops to listen?”

“Odysseus isn’t like that, he-”

“They’re all like that!”

Athena clenched her jaw at being interrupted yet again, manually regulating her breathing. She could not afford to offend any of them, as much as her temper bared its teeth. Before she could continue, the damned peacock ran out of patience.

It lunged, squawking and flapping its decorated wings as she tried to wrestle the thing out of her face.

“Hera,” she insisted, dodging a particularly sharp claw scratch to the eye, “Odysseus has strived only to return home to his family, to his wife-” a beak latched onto Athena’s hair, pulling relentlessly as she struggled to extricate it within hurting the favoured creature.

“Penelope waits for him still, and he has never strayed to another’s bed,” she declared, finally trapping the loathsome bird and holding it at arm’s length, writhing uselessly where it was suspended in the air.

The statement captured Hera’s attention immediately, her goblet shattering into jewelled fragments as her grip went ridged. The goddess’s eye twitched, her stare fixed unseeingly on the opposite wall. Even the thrice-damned peacock went still, turning its head as if to consider biting her fingers off instead.

“I do not expect you to care for Odysseus,” Athena continued slowly, wary and unsure what to make of the steadily building rage on Hera’s expression. “But as goddess of wives, of mothers, you should want Penelope to have her family returned to her safely.”

Hera pursed her lips, as tense as the statues that decorated her garden.

“Fine, let this faithful husband return home, if he wishes for it so desperately,” she muttered, more to herself than Athena, who was immediately concerned by the ire in her words. Zeus likely had an uncomfortable conversation in his near future. Still, a vote was a vote, and so she dropped the bird with a final glare and left.

***

Predictably, Demeter could be found in her fields.

The winter had them barren, wastelands of withered crops the physical manifestation of her grief for her stolen daughter. Her mood was always the most temperamental when Persephone was away, and Athena would have to tread carefully.

Demeter sat on the frozen ground, her hands clenched around a distorted pomegranate. The fruit was misshapen, as if she had summoned it with powers tainted with her misery. She scrutinised its bleeding skin with the intensity of one trying to divine its secrets as Athena approached.

“I overheard the nymphs talking,” Demeter said, her voice rough with unshed tears. “You want to ensure the safety of those mortals of yours.”

Athena nodded, slow and wary. “I do.”

The goddess ripped the pomegranate in half without warning, staining her flaxen hands the colour of blood.

“I will vote for you.”

Letting the moment pass in silence, Athena observed her aunt as if she were seeing her for the first time. It should not have been so easy. Demeter had no reason to help Odysseus, no personal investment in his story. But the wrath of a mother was a powerful thing, and perhaps everything hit just a little too close to home.

“Penelope’s child was taken. I would see him returned to her, if there were any justice left in this world.”

There were no words for it, for the agony of such a loss, so Athena did not offer any. Hesitantly, surprising them both, she reached out to lay her hand over her aunt’s shoulder. A comforting gesture, if an awkward one.

“Thank you.”

Demeter looked back up at her with red-rimmed eyes, and squeezed her arm in return.

***

A unanimous vote was secured. A unanimous vote had been secured and everything had unravelled regardless.

Athena had managed to sway the rest of the Olympians to her cause without significant issue, had passed her motion and received the necessary golden seal, had started to believe her plan had succeeded until she turned to look at her father.

At the head of his council table, Zeus had gone perfectly still, expression stormy and dangerous. When he looked up to meet her gaze, the fury in it was enough to shake mountains. Disrespected, she realised, a moment before she wouldn’t be able to think of anything at all.  He feels that I have disrespected in him by planning this behind his back, and his pride will not allow it.

In a single, fleeting moment of clarity, Athena thought of Ithaca.

Its rocky cliffs were washed in the soft glow of rosy-fingered dawn, cradling the island with a tenderness unfamiliar to its sharp edges. She stood at the edge of her temple, the largest in the kingdom, watching a much younger Odysseus approach.

Oh, she knew this memory. It was one of the precious few she held close to her heart, despite her better judgement. In Odysseus’s arms lay a swaddled bundle, kept warm with lovingly woven blankets embroidered with her own sigils.

Telemachus, the infant she was about to see for the first time since lending her presence to Penelope’s childbed. The meeting had been meant as a courtesy to her favourite champion, nothing more.

But the child was fascinating.

Young mortals, especially infants, tended to recoil from her in fear of her immortal from, sensing her divinity even they could not make sense of it.  Telemachus had only stared up at her with those wide, curious eyes as he was handed to her, completely trusting despite his fragile mortality.

He had babbled the nonsense only children do and reached for her face with clumsy hands, and she had let him. So small, so vulnerable and so dear to the mortals she favoured. She had sworn to herself she would protect him, and she would keep that oath.

When Zeus’s first lightning bolt hit, Athena had no regrets.

***

Telemachus dreamt only of drowning.

Black water, viciously cold and forcing its way into his mouth, into his lungs. Weighed down by his own bones, limbs turning to stone as they dragged him down. Catching a glimpse of moonlight filtering through the surface, only to lose it once more.

The dreams were terrifying, but more frustratingly, they told him absolutely nothing. However desperately he tried, Telemachus couldn’t pull himself out of his body to observe the scene, condemned to his own bones until he awoke to cold sweat and his father’s concern.

It felt like all of the progress he had made with Circe had disappeared overnight, along with the tentative sense of safety he’d finally started to settle in.

He couldn’t make himself talk about them with his father, either, however much the man insisted. Odysseus had more than enough to worry about regarding literal sea-monsters without the added stress of Telemachus maybe-possibly dying because of them. Not exactly the distraction they needed.

So he told himself what his father had after the sirens, that prophetic dreams were often misleading, and did an excellent job of smothering his terror when he announced they would be passing through Charybdis that very night.

Odysseus hadn’t seemed fooled, shooting concerned glances at him every other minute while the crew prepared by adding spare oars wherever they could and adjusting the sails for maximum manoeuvrability.

This time, Telemachus had been allowed to stay above deck, if under strict instructions to stay put in a corner and absolutely not move. The reasoning, he thought, was that it would be marginally easier to swim to safety in case the ship did crash if he wasn’t trapped in one of the cabins.

He had settled in the corner with the crates too large to move to the hull so that he could brace against them, each tied down with lengths of thick rope. One of those ropes had been loosened for him to hold onto in case of emergency, though discussions of tying it around him were rejected for fear of ending up trapped if anything went wrong. The thought did not appeal.

Traversing Charybdis at night was unideal but unavoidable, given their timing. The moon was full and shining bright in the sky, but the lingering darkness and the unnatural calm of the water remained unnerving.

The sound of approaching footfalls distracted him from strategically arranging himself for the least amount of movement when the ship was inevitably thrown around. He looked up to find his father watching him, with that distinct trace of amused parental curiosity in his expression.

“That cannot possibly be comfortable,” he said, nodding to where Telemachus was experimenting with different leg positions to avoid sliding.

“It’s a work in progress,” he admitted with a sigh. “How are the preparations going?”

Odysseus shrugged. “As well as they could be, all things considered. Okay, no-” he interrupted himself with a laugh, “-That’s not going to work, try putting your foot against the corner of that one.”

Telemachus adjusted his contortion reluctantly, but found himself admittedly much steadier. He grinned up at his father in success. The corner of Odysseus’s mouth tugged upwards, and he leaned down to kiss his hair one last time before rejoining the crew.

“Be careful, okay? I’ll be right here if you need me.”

It had been weeks, and Telemachus was starting to think he would never get used to the amount of care in the way his father spoke to him. With his heart in his throat, he nodded back.

***

For almost an hour, there was nothing but tense silence, broken only by the quiet rocking of the ship against gentle waves.

It started almost imperceptibly, a subtle shift in the water beneath them. Then, all at once, the churning began, a whirlpool the size of a fleet forming beneath them as if the ocean itself had opened to swallow them whole.

In an instant, Telemachus watched his father transform into the legendary general he had heard of, shouting lightning-fast commands with a calm he would never achieve. The crew responded with the kind of synchrony that could only be earned from years of fighting and bleeding at each other’s sides, heeding every order without hesitation and darting across the deck to adjust sails or oars as lines of jagged teeth broke the surface.

Telemachus, sensing that he couldn’t exactly be of much use, squeezed his eyes shut and waited for it to be over.

This is fine, he thought, as the first lurching of the ship left his stomach behind with it. Completely fine. Think happy thoughts until the water goes still again, like home, and mother. Absolutely do not think about drowning.

So, of course, he immediately began thinking about drowning. His nightmares seemed more real than ever, near to the knuckle and breathing down the back of his neck in anticipation. Telemachus pushed them away with desperation, tightening his hold on the crates even as his muscles began to protest.

He didn’t know how long he’d clung there, forcefully controlling each breath and not moving a hair’s width, focusing on his father’s voice even when the words could not reach him, when the rocking of the ship began to ease. Telemachus pried his eyes open, wincing at the sudden moonlight after so long in darkness.

It was too early to believe they were safe, too naïve - a lull was usually the calm before the storm. He knew this, he knew not to believe the false sense of safety that was creeping over them, not until his father said so. But his muscles ached, and began to relax without his consent at the much needed reprieve.

A cry of alarm pierced the air to his right, and Telemachus turned too see a wave rising out of the water as if pulled by the gods themselves.

Prophetic dreams, he thought to himself. Always true when you don’t want them to be.

***

The cold hit him first, vicious and unrelenting as it stabbed through his skin to chill his bones, raw instinct the only thing that kept his mouth clamped shut before he gasped.

Telemachus had never been afraid of the water. He was an island prince, Ithaca’s coasts as comforting and familiar to him as the family hearth. This water, dark and churning and suffocating was a different monster.

It twisted cruelly around him, pulling him over the railing and into the depths like clawed hands as he thrashed uselessly, his palm burning where he clung to his rope.

A wave pulled him back, and even as disoriented as he was he got the distinct impression it was dragging him away from the ship, from his father. Telemachus pulled, muscles straining hopelessly from the effort, already weak and spasming from his attempts to reach the surface.

The rope went slack. For a single, terrifying moment, he thought deliriously it had been cut, sliced ruthlessly between Charybdis’s teeth to leave him to his death. He realised too late the waves were rushing forwards.

His skull slammed into the hull of the ship with enough force to wash his vision white.

And then, nothing hurt anymore.

Telemachus wasn’t in the ocean. He was sprawled across the smooth floor of one of Circe’s instruction rooms, the glow of sunset filtering through a wide balcony and softening the sharp edges of the furniture.

The sorceress in question was crouched over him, frantically tapping the sides of his face to hold his attention. She seemed rattled, her golden hair slipping out of its immaculate bindings to fall in front of her face.

“Telemachus? Telemachus, are you listening to me? We don’t have much time.”

He mumbled something incoherent back, watching the ceiling sway above him. Could they not reschedule the magic lessons for when he could think? Thinking was usually important.

“Telemachus!” she stressed, physically shaking him by his shoulders.

“Oh, my gods, yes, I’m listening,” Telemachus groaned, trying to keep his eyes focused enough that he only had one Circe to look at. “But no offense, I’m sceptical of your timing here. My magic isn’t being all that useful in the swimming department.”

“Only because you aren’t channelling it correctly,” Circe insisted.

“Helpful, thank you.” He felt bad about his rudeness, but he was rather convinced he was dying and would prefer not to be lectured cryptically in his last moments.

“Telemachus,” she continued, ignoring him entirely, “Magic cannot be commanded. That sorcerers seem to control it is an illusion, nothing more. It will act on your behalf, for what you want even if your mind tells you otherwise. It strives for one goal, for your soul’s defining ambition, and adapts to suit it. Those that strive for power are granted supernatural strength, those that crave freedom can transform, take off into the night as a bird or a wolf.”

The words made sense in a distant, echoing sort of fashion, but Telemachus couldn’t seem to string them together.

“But mine- mine doesn’t work like that. It isn’t set on any specific ability.”

“Because you’re like me,” Circe said, forcing him to meet her eyes. “You work on instinct, our training didn’t work because I was trying to get you to follow rules, guidelines, when your power has always come purely from your own heart. Your desires are not so simple. Think, little one, what do you want? What has your magic always, always tried to accomplish?”

The answer was close, stuck in his throat but silent to his own ears. His dreams, seeking out a familiar but unknown soldier across the oceans. That immediate, natural tug of healing that had overcome him all those nights ago.

He didn’t have time to pull the realisation together before the balcony started to crack, crumbling away into the void beneath their gazes.

“Oh,” he said softly, “Is the dream fading again?”

“No.” For the first time since meeting her, Circe looked scared. “No, this isn’t me. Telemachus, I need to you hold on, promise me you won’t let go, you have to remember, remember who still needs you, who you need to get back to. Promise me-”

The connection broke, and she disappeared.

The room around him shifted, twisted into a form he knew he recognised but his thoughts were too heavy to place immediately.

His eyes latched onto what he could have sworn was his bed, his real one, piled high with soft, white linen blankets half falling off the edges in a scene of picturesque domestic bliss. Stark against the pale sheets was his mother, half buried in pillows with her dark hair spilling down her shoulders, expression lighter than he’d seen in years.

Oh.

Home.

He stepped forward instinctively, crawling in with her like he had when he was much younger, seeking out the comfort of his mother’s warmth on stormy nights. Her tanned arms wrapped around him immediately, pulling him down into the embrace he had longed for for so long.

The sting of salt in his throat was fading, the burning in his lungs a distant memory. Telemachus should just stay there, he thought. He could lay his aching head down and rest, and he would never be hurt or cold again.

Circe’s echoed frantic warnings forced his heavy eyelids open. No. He couldn’t. His father still needed him, his mother missed him, he could not leave, no matter how badly he ached for it all to stop.

Telemachus leaned forward to press a kiss to his mother’s cheek, exhausted tears pricking at his eyes as his shoulders shook.

“I’m sorry,” he tried to say, but the words came out muffled and waterlogged.

The comfort of home was torn away violently enough to take his heart with it, and Telemachus was drowning again.

His mouth had opened involuntarily, swallowing sea water as it scraped through his insides. With his meagre supply of air ripped out of him, his lungs screamed. It had never occurred to him before, how much drowning felt like burning.

What has your magic always tried to accomplish?

In dreams, or healing, or bursts of visions, his magic had been reaching out for those he loved most. It shifted and changed its form to whatever would keep them safe, would bring Telemachus to them. If his magic had its own soul, its own ambition, it was to protect his family. And his death would hurt them.

With a last, desperate surge of resolve, Telemachus pulled on the rope that had been fast slipping out of his grasp, ignoring his shrieking muscles and the fire in his veins. Finally, his magic answered him.

Warmth bloomed in his chest, sluggishly rising with his own determination. The darkness around him broke, shattered by a golden glow that snaked down his arms and coiled in aureate bands as it sunk into his skin. A newfound strength seeped into his limbs with it, and finally-  

Air.

***

Odysseus turned just in time to see Telemachus disappear over the railing.

The world stopped. His world stopped. For the span of a heartbeat, the waves stood frozen, the winds stilled where they whipped his hair, his breath locked in place in his lungs. His mind raced faster than it ever had in Athena’s domain, caught on the same echoing thought.

Telemachus.

He didn’t realise he’d lunged towards the railing until he was stopped, arms wrapping around his and pushing him to the floorboards. As if they could restrain him. As if anything could prevent him from reaching his son.

The men were no longer his crew, no longer the friends he had fought alongside for over a decade. They were obstacles, meaningless shapes of flesh and bone and they were in his way.

Odysseus thrashed against their hold, raking his nails across anything soft he could reach and snapping his teeth with the ferocity of a beast protecting its young. The realisation came, in a strange and detached quality, that he was screaming.

With the snapping of bone and a pained howl, both drowned out by the pounding in his ears, he was free, and then he was falling.

Had Telemachus felt it, the stomach-dropping moment of freefall as he’d been dragged into the depths? Or had the fear smothered everything else?

Odysseus hit the water a moment later, eyes snapping open against the salted sting of the ocean.

Telemachus.

He couldn’t see him. Odysseus searched frantically, but the water was too dark, the churning of the waves too disorienting. The whirlpools had mostly stabilised by the time he’d shaken off the crew, but Telemachus had been pulled in while they were still raging. He couldn’t see him.

Telemachus was a good swimmer. Had to be, with Penelope’s blood in his veins, Odysseus reasoned. He wouldn’t have been pulled into Charybdis’s mouth, cruel and gaping and lined with jagged rows of sharp teeth.

But if Odysseus couldn’t see his son, that meant he wasn’t in the water near the ship. And if he wasn’t near the ship, then-

Then he’d been pulled away from it. Then he was- Telemachus was-

His thoughts echoed the same refrain like the chorus of a funeral choir, stopping short before he could think the unfathomable. Telemachus.

His brilliant, shining son, with Penelope’s eyes and quiet smile. His son, who had seemed so perfect but fragile when pressed against his chest, who had ran out into the midst of sirens to save his failure of a father who had never been able to return the favour.

Odysseus had had so little time with him. Telemachus.

This was not heartbreak. A single, pathetic word could never encapsulate the enormity of this anguish. This was the unmooring of everything soft and crucial within him, the feeling of his soul itself splintering as it was dragged into the depths by the ocean’s unyielding hands.

Take it, he wanted to plead. Take me, take everything I have to give, but spare my son.

Only the silence replied.

He screamed into the water, raw and agonised as the ocean swallowed the sound without a care. The ache of his lungs was meaningless. Odysseus was burning alive from the inside, nails clawing at his chest as if he could tear out the bleeding, dying thing his heart had become.

His vision was going black around the edges, fading with the rest of him. He wasn’t sure he had the strength to swim back to surface, if he even wanted to, his bones trembling and hollow from loss.

Loss wasn’t nearly the right word, he thought deliriously. Grief was not a lack, an absence of something previously cherished. Grief was an unbearable weight. A dark, monstrous winged beast that sat upon his shoulders as it dug its claws into him. It choked the air from his throat, hung its corpse from his ribs as it seeped poison into his lungs.

Penelope, what was left of his ruined heart called. It wasn’t the determined cry he’d made of it in Troy, nor the loving whisper he’d uttered countless times in Ithaca. This was a hollow, destroyed prayer that would reach no altar and bless no temples. Penelope, I am so sorry.

Only the thought of his wife could force his legs to move, to kick him back above the surface as his bones begged to sink below. Odysseus choked down air as his entire body shook, too empty to weep.

He turned for one last hopeless search of the ocean’s surface when the world suddenly righted itself. His vision tunnelled, everything swallowed by darkness except the boy clinging to the side of the ship by a fraying rope.

Odysseus barely dared to hope. If his eyes were deceiving him, if this was some grief stricken hallucination his mind had conjured, then he would not survive the loss of it.

“Telemachus,” he called, barely more than a hoarse whisper. The figure moved, and Odysseus saw his son’s face turn to him like the first rays of dawn after an eternal night. “Telemachus!”

He cut through the water like it was nothing, energy surging in his wooden limbs once more. His son watched him, blinking water out of his squinting eyes with his face scrunched in confusion as his gaze flitted to and past him repeatedly. His palms were bloody where they clung to the rope, staining the fibre with diluted red, arms trembling from the strain of holding himself up and ringed with golden marks.

Finally, Telemachus’s eyes latched onto his, and recognition cleared some of the fog clouding them. He went limp, grip going slack with fragile sigh as he slumped back into the water.

Odysseus reached him just as his head disappeared beneath the surface, diving down with him until they hung together in the wine-dark abyss. Underwater, Telemachus’s curls floated serenely to frame his perfect face, small hands half-extended towards him as he sank.

He gathered his son into his arms as easily as if he were made of feathers, the water muffling any noise or light or proof of the existence of an outside world as everything narrowed to this moment, and  kicked back to the surface with the strength of ten men.

His heart surged at the initial contact, weakly and frantically coming alive behind his ribs as dizzying relief flooded the hollow of his bones. He pressed Telemachus as close to himself as he could, cradling his head with a single shaking hand to ensure it stayed above water.

“I’ve got you, it’s okay,” he whispered into his son’s wet and tangled hair, along with any reassuring nonsense he could form semi-coherently. “It’s okay, oh gods, Telemachus.”  His boy didn’t reply, limp and as cold to the touch as the ocean itself.

They were not out of danger yet. Odysseus looked up, meeting the stunned gazes of the crew leaning over the railing to watch them with wide eyes. Useless.

“Pull us up!” he barked, throat tight from emotion and scraped raw by salt. They scrambled for ropes, clumsily untying crates to throw their bindings over the railing, joining the sodden and bloodied one hanging beside them.

Telemachus must have managed to keep hold of it, even as the ocean itself tried to drag him to Hades. A burning pride stung his eyes once more. His brilliant son, Odysseus had failed him so terribly.

More ropes fell at their side, and he hastened to wrap them around his free arm, hooking one around his leg as he tightened his hold on Telemachus. Odysseus tolerated the crew’s hands on him as they helped them up only until they both landed in an ungraceful pile on the floorboards, and then immediately pushed as far away from them all as he could manage without jostling his son.

His boy still wasn’t moving, a dead weight in his arms as he lowered him into his lap. Please, Odysseus begged any god that would listen. Please.

His prayers were answered. Slowly, and with obvious effort, Telemachus struggled to open his eyes, seeking him out as soon as he could. His pale face immediately crumpled, expression twisting as he started to sob, his body convulsing from the effort.

Odysseus held him up as he coughed up water, muscles spasming under his careful hands.

“Father,” he whined, bloody fingers grasping weakly at his tunic as he tried to pull closer, seeking his body heat. Odysseus would give him all of it if he could. Odysseus would give him anything. He met his son’s eyes, trying to convey everything words could not as they held onto each other like lifelines. Oh, gods, his eyes.

One of his pupils was blown wide, large enough to smother his golden-brown iris as he struggled to focus his gaze. The area around it and his soft temple was red and tender, already starting to bruise as purple bloomed across his already blueish skin.

“Right here,” he whispered, wrapping his arms around his son once more. “I’m right here.”

A shuffle of movement in his peripheral had his eyes snapping to his left, honing in on Eurylochus as he crept closer. Odysseus pulled back instinctively, twisting his body to shield Telemachus.

“Get away from us,” he spat, meeting Eurylochus’s eyes with all of the trembling fury he possessed.

How dare he? How dare they? He would not forget his crew’s bruising grip as they forced him to the deck, holding him back from the water and from Telemachus. If they hadn’t delayed him, he could have gotten to his son faster. Telemachus wouldn’t be bleeding, shaking in his arms from the exertion of keeping himself afloat because there had been no one to save him.

“How could you?” Odysseus managed, so quietly it was barely audible to himself.

For a moment, there was nothing but the wind.

Eurylochus met his gaze unflinchingly, lips pressed in a tight line. I was trying to save you, his eyes said. They had not yet made it out of Charybdis yet when Telemachus had gone overboard. They had all thought, even Odysseus, that his son had been carried away to his death and that nothing could be done, except from preventing their captain from suffering the same fate.

Odysseus understood it. He could not forgive it.

“He’s cold,” Eurylochus said at last, and Odysseus finally saw the chlamys he was holding bundled in his hands. He looked back down at his son, heart clenching. It was true, Telemachus was still shivering, his lips blue and skin freezing to the touch where he tried to push his face against Odysseus shoulder. Memorise tugged themselves forward of his excited rambling, his bright eyes and smart mouth hidden behind of one Circe’s veils. Always so much larger than life. Now, he just looked small.

Odysseus pulled the fabric from his second without another word, wrapping it around his son as carefully as he could. Telemachus whined when he had to pull away to secure it, a choked, miserable sound that cut him to the bone. Self-loathing was a familiar wraith as it clawed mercilessly at his lungs, screaming his failures until Odysseus could hear nothing else.

“I’m sorry,” he managed, pressing his son back against him. All other words had left him. “I’m so sorry.” Telemachus made a small, weak noise of protest.

“M’okay,” he mumbled, the word barely audible as they tumbled clumsily from his lips, like he was trying to comfort Odysseus, of all people, right now. He wasn’t. Telemachus was so, so hurt and still trying to pretend otherwise, the selfless child.

It was like every support holding him up crumpled at once. Odysseus slumped forward, resting his head against his son’s wet curls as he let himself revel in the fact his son was alive.

Alive, but hurt. They were helpless without a physician onboard, and Odysseus’s medical knowledge was barely even passable for a soldier. The only proper healing any of them had seen since the island had been-

His thoughts stopped short.

Unbidden, his mind filled with the memory of a wash of golden light, soothing his wounds. The magic had drained Telemachus, and he was likely too weak to summon it now, but with some help-

“The jewellery,” he stated suddenly, turning to the nearest crew member.

 Perimedes only stared at him uncomprehendingly. “Circe’s jewellery, get it!” Odysseus barked, until at last the fool moved. It would help. He wouldn’t pretend to understand the powers his son possessed, but the witch had been fond of him and it had protected him before. It had to help.

After far too long, Perimedes returned, stumbling forward with arms full of miscellaneous gold. “I didn’t know what to get, so I just, uh, grabbed everything I-“

Odysseus didn’t wait for him to finish, snatching as much of it as he could with his free hand and clumsily working it onto his son’s still form. The crew hovered around him, a few careful steps away. It would have been undoubtedly faster with help, but Odysseus didn’t trust himself not to break any hands if they tried to reach for Telemachus right now.

To his immeasurable relief, the bands began to glow as soon as they made contact with Telemachus’s skin – a light sheen of gold flickering weakly beneath it, fragile as a candle flame. It wasn’t as powerful as it had been that night after the sirens, but Odysseus blamed that on his son’s weakened state. The alternative, that Telemachus didn’t want to heal himself as much as he had wanted to heal him, was too painful to entertain.

He waited with his breath held as slowly, agonisingly slowly, colour started to return to his son’s cheeks, his trembling finally calming. Telemachus’s eyes fluttered open again, his pupils starting to balance as they sought him out once more. To Odysseus’s immediate panic, he started to push himself up, struggling to a half sitting position.

Before he could push his son back down, tell him to conserve his strength and stop moving for the sake of all that is holy, small arms wrapped around his neck. Telemachus buried his face in the crook of his neck and relaxed once more, finally content with his resting place.

Odysseus himself gradually relaxed in turn, releasing a slow and measured breath as he cupped the back of his son’s neck, sliding his thumb against the fragile skin until it rested where he could feel his pulse. Weak, still, but steady. Still alive. Still here, despite the odds.

He was so distracted by the relief of having Telemachus in his arms again he didn’t notice the water shift until the crew started murmuring. Confused, he glanced over the railing. Had they drifted back into Charybdis with no one steering the ship? But no, the beast would not be able to cause such disturbances so soon after its last attack. What else could –

“There you are,” a voice exploded into the silence, and Odysseus’s heart dropped to his stomach.

“Coward.”

***

Telemachus’s head hurt. Everything hurt, but his head most of all. The world had turned to slush since he was pulled out of the water, its colours muddying and lines blurring no matter how hard he tried to focus. He wore nausea like a second skin, sickly and cold as it clung to him. His muscles had long moved past the burning of exertion and settled into a heavy numbness – he might as well have turned to stone for all he could move.

All of his strength had left him at once when he’d seen his father swimming towards him, little more than a hazy figure but undeniable all the same. Telemachus’s body had recognised safety and stopped trying to keep him alive, trusting that the burden of it could be passed on.

Everything after that was fractured.

There had been hands on him, indistinguishable shapes crowding his space, but he didn’t want them. He wanted his parents. His mother was too far, always just out of reach, but his father was holding him and it was all Telemachus could do to cling to him before he slipped away entirely.

And then he was being moved, and something warm was being tugged around him but his father was gone and the fear was suffocating. Odysseus was- apologising?

No, that was wrong, it was all wrong and Telemachus couldn’t figure out how to fix it.

Gods, everything hurt. Where was his father? Still there, still holding him even if his own eyes couldn’t hold onto him, sliding away without permission. But he was fine. He had to tell his father that, else he would worry and he didn’t need to be worrying about Telemachus right now. They were meant to be doing something- avoiding something?

He couldn’t remember, couldn’t summon a name to his tongue.

Someone was shouting. The sound grated, each word as painful as saltwater in open wounds to his oversensitive hearing. Gods, he thought blearily, who do I need to hex for some quiet?

And then once more - warmth.

The fog cleared from his mind gradually, as slow and lazy as the morning mist on Ithaca’s cliffs. The familiar glow of his and Circe’s magic mingling soothed his raw senses, comforting every aching nerve. Telemachus pulled his eyes open with effort, and found the world less blurry than it had been a moment prior. His father’s face was still where he had left it, hovering over him in concern.

He couldn’t bear the terror he saw in it. With protesting limbs, Telemachus pulled himself up, slinging his arms around his father’s neck and slumping once more in exhaustion. He had never felt so tired in his life. Longingly, he thought back to his vision of his mother, some half-dead illusion of comfort, but he’d known even then that to rest, truly rest, would be to leave everything else behind. And how could he, when his father still looked at him like that?

Time stretched and moulded itself like wet clay as he hung in a state of half-consciousness, his grip around his father’s shoulders his only anchor.

The sudden explosion of noise in the air nearly cracked his skull open with pain. Telemachus couldn’t make out the words, could barely choke on a whimper as he pressed his aching palms to his ears.

His father went perfectly still, his grip on Telemachus suddenly as hard as bronze. What was happening? Ears ringing, he twisted his head around just enough to see past the railing, and almost fainted once more.

A mountainous figure loomed over their ship, body sculpted from the dark waves of the ocean itself. Long, wine-dark hair hung over his face and shoulders, disappearing into the ocean that churned beneath him. Around his neck, endless necklaces encrusted with precious stones and teeth of monstrous beasts hung in a breathtaking display of wealth and power.

Poseidon’s maliciously glowing eyes were fixed on their ship.

“Odysseus of Ithaca,” he mused, stretching the vowels behind his teeth like a predator sampling its prey. “Did you honestly believe you had escaped me?”

Telemachus looked back to his father, brain still too wounded to fully understand what was happening. Odysseus had gone as pale as a shade of Hades, his knuckles white where he pressed Telemachus against him. Too late, he remembered his father’s words the first night they had sailed from Circe’s island. The god of the sea took offence. His retribution cost the lives of the rest of the crew.

Poseidon lurched forward without warning, slamming one clawed hand into the water with enough force to rock the ship as his colossal form blotted out the sky above them. His hair slid down his bare shoulders, enclosing around the ship like the jaws of a beast. From this close, Telemachus could see the points of his bared teeth, each sharper than a blade and the length of a grown man.

“Or perhaps,” he hissed, his voice devoid of forced amusement and dripping with cold malice as it dropped to a near-whisper, “You thought that I would forget about my own son?”

No one moved, not one breath was taken. The deck of the ship was as still as if it had been frozen in time. Finally, Poseidon’s piercing gaze cut from his father to him.

Telemachus met his stare unflinchingly.

Whether it was his raging head wound, his brush with death or sheer stupidity, he could not summon his fear. They were so close to Ithaca, so close to home, and all that stood in their way was this god. All he could feel was hate.

Something new sparked in Poseidon’s eyes. Interest?

“Well, what do we have here? The princeling, with more of a spine than his father?”

“Leave him out of this,” Odysseus barked, wrathfully protective. His terror seemed to have melted away into pure fury, every line of his face screaming defiance. Telemachus watched him in fascination. It was the angriest he had ever seen him, and all of it for Telemachus’s sake. The thrill of it renewed his courage.

“My son was not in the cave with us, you cannot justify punishing him for a crime he played no part in. The gods will not allow it.”

Poseidon considered that for a moment, letting the words suffocate them with suspense.

“Perhaps it would anger some, if I took him. No matter.” His sharp eyes sparked with delight as something seemed to occur to him.

“I propose a deal then, king of Ithaca. Give me the child-” he jerked his head in Telemachus’s direction, shaking the boat with the force of the movement, “-and I will spare you and the rest of your crew. A son for a son.”

“No.”

Odysseus recoiled at the suggestion, pushing Telemachus behind him as raw horror dulled the rage in his expression.

“Never. He is favoured by Athena, more so than even I, you cannot hurt him.”

“And where is she,” Poseidon mused, “This goddess that favours you so?”

The words hurt more than Telemachus tried to let them. Athena, he called, his thoughts stained with desperation. He could still feel her presence, but it was weakened, barely stirring at his call. She would not abandon them, he knew, and concern spiked in his chest. Where are you?

The god did not wait for an answer.

“You mortals are always so naïve. So convinced you have a choice in anything.”

His hand rose, and for a blinding moment Telemachus realised they were actually going to die.

Black waves rose over the sides of the ship, but they didn’t spread across the deck to drag them all to their deaths. The water narrowed, funnelling into the shape of a serpent as it shot forward. Telemachus had time only to close his eyes and feel his father’s arms tighten impossibly further around him before they were swallowed whole.

The water pushed between them, and in a terrible rush he understood. They were not being drowned. They were being separated.

Odysseus held on with a grip that was past bruising, but the lack of air was weakening them both and the might of the divine could only be held off for so long. Telemachus could feel a sob building in the back of his throat even as his lungs burned. If he had to die, he could stomach the thought, he could face it with at least the pretence of bravery the heroes of his mother’s stories always boasted of.

But gods, he didn’t want to do it alone.

Telemachus lost the fight first, always the weak one. A sudden push of water dislodged his arms, and his father couldn’t hold on by himself. A tendril yanked him across the deck by his ankle, scraping painfully across the wood.

Odysseus lunged for him, catching one of his wrists as before he went over the edge. The force of it nearly pulled his arm from his socket. Telemachus cried out in pain, and immediately knew he had doomed them both.

Instinctively, his father’s grip loosened a fraction at the prospect of hurting him, and then he was gone.

The ship shrunk underneath him as he was lifted into the air, Poseidon’s colossal hand closing around him until he lay sprawled across his palm. Trying to scramble upright only made him shift dangerously close to the edge, so he settled for sitting half propped onto his elbow.

The god watched him with a detached curiosity, no longer paying attention to his father below them. Telemachus glanced down at him anyway, needing to know he hadn’t been hurt in Poseidon’s wave. His breath caught.

Odysseus stood at the edge of the railing, as close to him as he could get, with his sword drawn. With his wet hair hanging in front of his face, his white knuckled grip on his hilt and the water churning beneath him, he looked dangerous. He looked like a man who might try to fight a god.

“Beg.”

The demand was stated simply, almost casually, but Telemachus could only stare the god incredulously. What difference would it make? he thought to himself, half delirious.

“Ask me to spare your life. See if I feel merciful,” Poseidon taunted.

Telemachus didn’t understand until he looked back down at his father, rigid as stone. This was to hurt him. Whatever Telemachus said in these last moments would haunt his father for the rest of his life, echo in every nightmare. Worse still, he knew that the moment a plea left his mouth, the last of Odysseus’s restraint would shatter, and he would throw himself at the god regardless of the certain death that awaited.

He pressed his lips together, clenching his hands to keep them trembling. He would not beg. Whatever satisfaction Poseidon hoped to gain, whatever final torture he meant to inflict, Telemachus would not give it to him. He refused to join the chorus of screams that tormented his father.

If that meant dying in silence, so be it.

He tore his eyes back to the god, meeting his gaze for a final time, and shook his head.

A grin, slow and cruel and almost amused, stretched across Poseidon’s face. He tilted his hand to the side – a careless, dismissive gesture. There was a moment of weightlessness, a collective held breath.

Then gravity wrapped around him like a noose, and Telemachus fell.

***

Sometimes, in instances of near death, Telemachus had heard that people saw their life in flashes, spending their last moments in the embrace of their most precious memories.

He saw nothing but the sky, black and swallowing him whole. The wind whistled past his ears, but he was past feeling fear. Telemachus already felt as if he had left his mortal body behind, floating outside of pain or cold or terror in a state of numb bliss.

As the water rushed up to meet him, he tried to summon the image of his palace bedroom again. He pictured his mother, the delicate sunlight across his rumpled sheets, and tried to slip away once more.

I’m so sorry, Father. I really did try to come back to you.

Telemachus thought he started to manage it, started to disappear entirely to somewhere he couldn’t be hurt again when he felt arms wrap around him. They were cool to the touch as opposed to his parents’ warmth, but in the way that soothed the feverish burn beneath his skin instead of the biting cold of the night air.

When he dared to open his eyes, he was greeted with the face of his favourite goddess.

“Hello, Telemachus,” Athena said softly, grey eyes crinkling with affection.

***

In his nightmares, Odysseus held the infant over the walls of Troy and let go. He watched its swaddle of blankets, soft and lovingly embroidered, billow and twist as it caught the wind. The pure white of the linen was consumed by the fire and self-loathing ate him alive.

Telemachus and the infant blurred into one as they sank through the night. They were both bright-eyed and innocent and Odysseus would have done anything to spare them this.

His son did not scream. He did not reach out or try to right himself, he just fell, so small against the black sky Odysseus could have blotted him out with his thumb. A single, fragile bright patch of sunset orange against the abyss. He followed him with his eyes, knowing that the instant Telemachus hit the water his own heart would stop beating. The earth would shake, time itself would stop.

For a delirious moment, Odysseus had almost convinced himself it did.

Then he recognised the blue haze of his goddess’s touch on reality, the reassurance of her presence for just a heartbeat. Athena appeared at Telemachus’s side, white wings spread out defiantly as she cradled him against herself, gently slowing his descent to a stop.

Eurylochus’s hand wrapped around his bicep, pulling him up from where he’d sank to his knees. Odysseus couldn’t bring himself to shake him off, not when his son was still out of reach.

The ocean rippled with Poseidon’s displeasure, and he directed his flaying glare towards the goddess of wisdom.

“Athena,” he growled, voice rumbling dangerously. “You have no right to interfere in my domain.”

She met his gaze with ease, despite her form barely being larger than that of a mortal’s.

“I have every right.” A scroll appeared, hovering in the air next to her head as she kept her hands around Telemachus. He couldn’t make out the details from such a distance, but it glowed with divine power, unmoving despite the wind.

Her voice hardened with unmistakeable authority. “Zeus Olympios Himself commands you to withdraw, supported by the assembled council of Olympus.”

Poseidon’s eyes flashed as snatched the scroll out of the air, scanning the words as one giant hand clenched around it with undisguised wrath.

“There is a blood debt-“

“A debt that has been settled, more than five hundred times over.” He sneered, as if Odysseus’s entire fleet was hardly worth mentioning. “You have no right to any lives on this boat. You are ordered to grant them safe passage home and to take no further revenge. Uncle, you have done enough.”

He held his breath, hardly daring to hope that it would be enough. He still couldn’t see Telemachus from where Athena held him, however desperately he tried. Was he alright? Had he been injured further?

A dangerous silence passed. The ocean was still, smooth as the face of a mirror as Poseidon stared her down.

“I see your schemes have cost you, for once, niece,” he hissed finally, returning the title with the same scorn Athena had put behind it. His tone seethed with anger, but Odysseus caught the resignation the god was suffocating. His heart stuttered with equal parts hope and trepidation. Poseidon was backed into a corner, and he knew it.

A moment later, he saw what the god was talking about. Odysseus hadn’t noticed Athena’s glow begin to flicker, her brilliantly white wings blackening with soot at their corners. Fragments of lighting crawled along he exposed skin, hostile slices of gold that couldn’t have been further from the softness Odysseus had come to associate with the colour on his son.

Whatever mask she had assembled, it was fading fast. What had happened to his goddess?

“They did,” she replied simple, unmoved by Poseidon’s wrath. “Would you provoke His anger as well? I must warn you He is not particularly forgiving, at the moment.”

Zeus had done this to her? The thought sickened Odysseus beyond words. There was nothing he would not do to keep Telemachus safe. That anyone would hurt their own child, let alone to this extent, was unfathomable.

Poseidon stared Athena down, jaw clenched tight enough his ichor-filled veins were visible. He directed his wrath back down to Odysseus, eyes burning with hatred.

“This time, mortal,” he spat, his voice cracking across the sky like lightning. “You will not always be so lucky, you will lose your godly favour eventually-” Athena’s head snapped back towards him, rigid with anger at the implication, “- and you will meet the fate you deserve.”

With that, his form dissolved, shifting from immortal to a mound of water that crashed back down towards the ocean. The ship was thrown back by the impact of the waves, sending the crew sprawling once more. Odysseus crashed backwards into Eurylochus, who tried to catch him but was falling all the same, and they landed in a heap on the sodden deck.

Athena descended towards the ship slowly, her injuries getting worse the longer he looked at them. She hit the deck unsteadily, swaying as her wings twitched to balance her while staying wrapped protectively around her cargo. Finally, she dropped to her knees, hiding them both behind a shield of white feathers. Behind them lay what was most precious to Odysseus in the world, and he still couldn’t see him.

Shoving away from Eurylochus, he stumbled forward. Athena opened her wings a fraction to let him through, and he forced himself to slow down so as not to hurt her in the process.

The sight stole the breath from his lungs.

In her wounded arms, Telemachus lay unmoving once more, his head propped against Athena’s shoulder as she wove her hands through his hair. The pair glowed watercolour hues of glittering  metallics, their respective magic intertwining. His son’s gold tried in vain to sooth the divine lightning marks that webbed across her pale skin while Athena’s silver washed over him, coaxing colour back into his face as his bruises faded.

Odysseus sank clumsily to the deck, knowing he could do nothing for Telemachus but needing to be near him anyway. He reached out a trembling hand to cup his face, tracing uneven circles against his cold skin. A faint, golden glow hummed to life by his palm, reacting to his presence to curl lovingly around his fingers on instinct.

Telemachus’s eyes blinked open at the contact, seeking him out immediately. His pupils dilated as they locked on Odysseus’s, relaxing with a shaky exhale. A small hand landed on his forearm, squeezing weakly. The rope burns from Charybdis had mostly healed, Odysseus was relieved to see, but the skin there still had to be sensitive.

Gently, he coaxed his son’s fingers off of him, feeling Telemachus’s confused noise of hurt like a knife between his ribs. Odysseus pulled his fragile wrist towards him, pressing his lips against his son’s scraped palm.

Telemachus watched him with wide, shining eyes.

“Here,” Athena murmured, shifting her hold to pass him over. It was eerily reminiscent of the day Odysseus first introduced her to his son, handing a much smaller Telemachus into her careful hands with absolute trust.

Telemachus reached for him readily, falling back into his arms with a contented sigh. Still trembling, Odysseus held his son so tightly they seemed to meld into one person, pressing fervent kisses to his face and hair.

His magic responded in kind, growing brighter as it enveloped them both in a soft glow. When he felt the familiar bliss of his son’s healing, Odysseus tried to pull back.

“No,” he tried, throat so tight with emotion that the word came out hoarse, “Please, my heart, save your strength.”

Telemachus only tightened his hold, refusing to let him escape the spell. “Don’t go,” he pleaded, and oh, Odysseus’s heart was a wretched thing, fractured and bleeding in his child’s careful hands. “Please, I can’t- I can’t help you if you go.”

 “I’m not going anywhere,” he swore, as if his oath alone could keep the fates from their cruelty. “But please, you are-” his voice failed him, cracking and giving out, “You are so much more hurt than I am. There is no need for you to heal me.”

His son sniffled, burrowing impossibly closer.

“I can’t help it,” Telemachus whispered at last. “I love you.”

The words struck him between the ribs, viciously soft. Love tore a warpath through everything that he was, unrooted his monstrosity and his strength until all that was left was Odysseus’s devotion to his son, to Telemachus.

He couldn’t keep the trembling in his shoulders at bay any longer, nor the stinging behind his eyes. Every ragged breath caught in his throat as he slumped to rest his head against his son’s, pressing his lips against the softness of his salt streaked temple.

Behind them, the sun began to rise over the horizon. A fragile, but hopeful blessing. They had survived the night. They could survive many more to come.

“I love you,” Odysseus choked back, desperate and pained. “I love you, gods, there are not enough words on this earth to describe it, I love you.”

Telemachus hummed, quiet and content, and Odysseus couldn’t fathom ever letting go. Every time he closed his eyes, he watched his son disappear into raging waters or tumble through the darkness. A thought too terrible to bear lingered at the base of his skull, whispering that Athena almost had not caught him, had she been a moment later-

Athena.

Odysseus looked up towards his friend, who watched them both with the gentlest expression he had ever seen on her divine face. Up close, her exhaustion was apparent. Dark blue smudges underlined her grey eyes, one fractured with harsh streaks of lightning. Her left wing bent at an odd angle, positioned to shield them all from the outside world in a way that had to have hurt. Dried immortal blood remained in glistening smudges across her exposed skin.

All of it, for them.

It was bitter irony that Odysseus would be least harmed. His son was half-drowned, his goddess burned, and he remained practically unscathed. It was always the ones he held dearest who suffered in his stead.

“Athena,” he tried, eyes stuck on the cruel marks across her pale cheek. “Athena, I-”

“I know, Odysseus,” she cut him off, eyes kind. His lady never was one for displays of gratitude.

Telemachus looked up at the exchange, eyes bleary and half-lidded from near sleep. He seemed to consciously notice her injuries for the first time, his expression crumpling with concern. Her wounded hand reached to cradle one side of his face, her thumb gliding across his cheekbone fondly.

“It is alright, child, I only need some time to recover in my domain.” After a moment’s hesitation, Athena leaned forward to kiss his bruised temple.

She looked between the pair in assessment, eyes tight, and nodded to herself. “I won’t be far.”

With a final glance at Odysseus, and a small, shared smile, Athena disappeared.

“Captain?” Eurylochus called tentatively, once they were no longer obscured. Instinctively, his grip on Telemachus tightened, keeping him firmly behind as he turned to face his second.

The man opened his mouth only to close it twice without a word, before he finally pointed to the horizon.

“Ithaca.”

Chapter Text

A kingdom without a king was, by nature, a vulnerable one. And anything vulnerable attracted vultures.

Whispers of raiders had been circling, rumours of attacks enacted on islands whose leaders had not yet returned. Penelope had not been deaf to them.

“My Queen,” a voice drew her from her sleep, hushed and hurried. “They are here. Phiobe saw their black ship upon our shores.”

Penelope was awake in an instant, her eyes snapping open to land on her empty bed and loyal maid. Irene stood over her, one hand on her shoulder as her young face wrinkled with worry.

With tangled black hair falling over her eyes, Penelope pushed herself slowly upright.

“Alert the guards.” Her voice came out still rough with sleep, her syllables catching on themselves unpolished. “Tell them to assume the positions they were briefed on.”

This had, of course, been planned for.

A single ship would harbour no more than twenty men.  The palace guard outnumbered them two to one, though they would be stretched thin to protect the island’s most vulnerable targets. Most would spread across the shoreline, protecting entrances to the merchant villages – raiders would not waste their time with the poorer fishing towns, not when material wealth was easier to transport and trade. Wealthier people, too, came with higher ransoms.

A handful would keep watch at the palace gates, and two had been spared specifically to protect the doors of dear Telemachus, should the worst come to pass and any manage to enter their halls.

Penelope herself would remain in the highest watchtower with the captain of the guard and her fastest servants, who could serve as runners of information in case she changed her strategy.

She dressed simply, donning dark and inconspicuous layers with Irene’s help overtop of her sleeping clothes. The night remained dark, the glow of the full moon brightening and fading as the clouds shifted. Penelope would be unnoticeable and out of reach, but so would the raiders. A mixed blessing.

The air heavy with tension and filled only with the sounds of shifting fabric, they made their way to the watchtower.

Ithaca’s cliffs forbade any full sight of both the towns and coastline, and Penelope’s selected vantage point permitted a clear view of the largest settlements at the cost of losing a portion of the shore. No matter – she was far more interested in the damage these men intended on wrecking to her people than their shuffling on the beaches.

And there, spiteful glowing marks, creeping towards their central trading village. Predictable. Penelope allowed a corner of her mouth to tug upward despite herself. Foolish men, making themselves so damnably visible to her with their torches, in fear of falling along Ithaca’s treacherous paths.

How poetic it would be, if her beloved island enacted her own immediate justice on the vermin that plagued her lands.

Since the Fates were otherwise occupied, she would have to be satisfied with watching them meet their ends at sword point. Penelope turned her head just slightly in Phiobe’s direction without taking her eyes off the flickering lights.

Her youngest maid was a slight, fragile creature, all bony joints and straw-blond hair that tended to fall over her permanently frightened eyes. The girl fidgeted next to her anxiously, watching the procession with her bottom lip caught between her teeth.

“Sweet girl,” Penelope called, trying not to sigh at the way she went rigid with tension. “Would you run down to the group we have assigned to the grain stores and tell them to split up between the town and the cliffside routes to the palace?”

With a sharp nod and stammered titles, Phiobe disappeared in a flurry of pale limbs and dark clothing. One day the skittish girl would learn not to be so frightened of her, and of everything, but it would not be today.

Penelope turned her attention back to the view.

***

A torch flickered out, and then another. One by one the raiders fell to her guards, and Penelope watched the night darken once more as her island was cleansed.

There was an unsettling pleasure in it, in the satisfaction of a threat outwitted and thoroughly defeated. No harm would come to her people tonight. The raiders took exactly the paths she predicated, fell into each of her traps as obliviously as the wild game Odysseus used to hunt.

Odysseus.

The thought of him brought back a thrill almost smothered by time, a rush of purest air into her starved lungs. He would be home soon. The war was ended, and though he was delayed – only delayed, nothing could keep her husband from her for long – every rising moon brought her one day closer to his return.

When she was certain the last of the raiders had fallen to Ithaca’s swords or fled away in their black ship, Penelope pushed herself away from the balcony. The cold had stiffened her weaver’s fingers, each joint protesting her movements.

Over the horizon the sun began its slow passage across the sky. One more day. One more day of keeping her kingdom together and holding her fractured family close to her heart, and then she would deal with the next.

Her island was safe, and its Queen would return to her chambers until the business of the morning began.

And yet, a sick unease crept up her spine as she walked. Some unfounded terror that insisted in the back of her mind, you were not watching the shore. No matter how much she tried to convince herself it was of no consequence, that even if some raiders had taken a different path, all entrances to the palace had been guarded – it persisted.

Frustrated with herself, Penelope took a sharp turn towards her son’s chambers, ignoring the surprise of the guards following her. Telemachus was a notoriously light sleeper, and would undoubtedly be awoken if she entered his bedroom at this hour, but seeing him safe was the only way to soothe her frayed nerves.

Two men were still posted outside as she had commanded, undisturbed and alert with their spears at attention. They stepped aside in synchrony with bowed heads as she approached, pulling the ornately carved doors open behind them.

Penelope stepped inside, muscles tense with alarm.

Her son was always awake whenever she came to check on him in the night, disturbed by the movement outside his chambers or footsteps. More often than not, she would turn to find him already sat up on his bed with his little head tilted in curiosity, or pushing off his covers to greet her with his hair sticking up in wild directions from his pillow.

Instead, the room was unnaturally still. Only the sound of her own shallow breaths filled the air.

“Telemachus?” she tried, her voice barely above a whisper. Nothing.

Penelope moved forward as if underwater, dragged down by heavy layers and fast running out of air. Just outside, the wind whistled past trees and sluggish waves broke against an uncaring shore.

The bed was empty.

Telemachus was not here.

She could barely hear her own thoughts over the roar of blood in her ears. Her hand met the abandoned sheets, somehow numb enough to avoid trembling. Cold. The guards would have said something if they had seen the prince leave the room for any reason – their silence damned her son more than any of the evidence she saw in front of her.

Black dread came alive in the pit of her stomach.

No.

Some unnatural force, some cold hand of fate turned her head towards the balcony, pushed her to the balustrades. Penelope’s footfalls echoed through her bones, cracking the last of her composure with each step.

Her hands tightened around the banister hard enough to make her joints crack, and finally, finally she made herself look down.

Stark white against the darkness of the rocks below, a thick rope of tied linen sheets swayed slightly in the wind. Below it the beach was empty, deserted, like the black water had swallowed her precious child whole and left nothing but a crushing void in its wake.

You were not watching the shore.

***

Penelope didn’t remember leaving her son’s room. She didn’t remember ordering the guards to search the beach despite knowing it would be fruitless, or sending everyone she could spare after the ship that had long disappeared into the night.

Coherent thought had left her. There was only the dull, meaningless beat of her heart in her chest that echoed her footfalls against marble. Only the ache in her hands as they trembled with the urge to rip the world apart.

Her soul had twisted into some serpentine abomination. Where is he?, it hissed, fangs bared. Where is my son?

Her son.

Dearest Telemachus, who had held her whole heart in his tiny hands from the first time he had been pushed into her arms in a bundle of soft cloth, fragile and perfect and hers. He hadn’t even cried, though both his parents had been complete watery messes, only watched her with those curious eyes that already held her colour, and she had known she would never love anything in the world as much as she loved him.

Take it, she had thought, when his tiny hands would reach for her whenever they could, always accompanied with a giggle like pure light. Take anything you would like from me. It exists only for you.

He had cried the hardest after Odysseus had left, barely two months old, unable to understand why the steady hands that used to soothe him had disappeared. Most nights she could do nothing more than hold him, her own eyes burning with the same desperate longing.

The memories sunk into her heart like storm-wrecked ships.

Telemachus.

By the time Penelope reached Athena’s temple, she had all but turned to stone. Her chest was a hollow cavern, her ribs smarting against her lungs with each breath.

Her knees hit the marble floor at the base of her goddess’s statue, a shock of pain arching up her legs at the impact. Distantly, as if the thought had echoed towards her through several empty rooms, she realised she must have fallen to them already and bruised the skin. Had there been someone pulling her to her feet? Panicked shouts from her guards? The questions faded as quickly as they came, inconsequential.

Penelope clasped her hands together, squeezing until some phantom of sensation made it through the fog of grief, and prayed.

***

The councilmen talked.

They talked, and postured, and offered meaningless condolences, and talked more. No one in the council seemed capable of suggesting anything useful.

Penelope did not talk. She ran her tongue over the edges of her teeth, back and forth, until she tasted blood. She imagined them growing sharper, longer, until she could rip out the throats of those who had taken her child from her. She dreamt of tearing the oceans apart until she found Telemachus again.

The skin around her nails was scratched raw and bloody. Her eyes stared unseeing at the woodgrain before her, the patterns shifting and blurring together.

Nobody spoke to her, not really. What could they say?

That without an heir, and their king still not returned, the kingdom was more at risk than ever. That suitors would come, eyeing the throne Penelope would sooner burn than hand over. That no prince taken by raiders was ever found again, not without a ransom – a ransom that had not and would not come. That a new heir would need to be chosen.

All of this she knew already.

A mourning period would be declared, could be stretched as long as several years. More than enough time for her husband to return. And then- what? She would have to look Odysseus in the eyes and tell him that what was most precious to them both had been lost.

There would be no more children.  The physicians had confirmed it after Telemachus’s birth, that the strain had been too great, the damage irreparable. Penelope had held her son in her arms, and known that he was enough. That she could bear any pain when she saw her own honey-coloured eyes blinking sleepily back at her, framed by those perfect eyelashes.

Her councillors talked of this loss as if it were only a wound suffered by the kingdom, a political inconvenience. As if she were not destroyed, in mind and body and heart and soul. Athena’s promises were all that still kept her upright. That simple, burning hope that this could still be fixed, that her son could be brought home.

Penelope pressed her tongue against a canine, savouring the feeling of breaking skin. Against the strange echo chamber her council room had begun, every spoken word distorting into muddy incoherence, the clearness of the sensation was welcome.

Without much resolve, she tried to focus on what the man nearest to her was saying, to latch onto any distraction. Her eyes fixed on his wrinkled mouth, but though it moved ceaselessly, no word reached her ears. They may as well have been stuffed with beeswax for all she heard him.

For a moment that was distraction enough, the detached, floating curiosity of the phenomenon. For the life of her, she did not know what this man was trying to say.

It mattered little. No one was awaiting her input.

***

The taste of blood lingered in Penelope’s mouth for days.

They had officially declared a mourning period for the prince they all thought lost, and perhaps in part for the king who’s continued absence was starting to stir discomfort. She had sat by the throne, veiled and drowning in her dark clothes, and tried to look appropriately mournful as people talked.

The sharpness of her grief was their current weapon. It could be used to garner sympathy from neighbouring kingdoms, crucial if they hoped to be defended in their weakest hour, and bought precious time before anyone with a claim to the throne came knocking.

Perhaps, Penelope thought, I should wander the cliffs for some time afterwards. It would be a rather effective image: the poor, grieving Queen of Ithaca, lost in the depths of her anguish. News of her misery might reach Menelaus in Sparta, and he might send some sympathy gifts – always welcome in a kingdom rather lacking in wealth. Or better yet, a fleet, for protection.

A pause.

I do not have a family left to protect.

The thought burned too much to keep, and so she focused on her subjects.

Strategy aside, the part people expected her to play was a difficult one. Summoning the energy to wail in agony, to claw at her chest or pull out her hair in grief seemed an impossible task. Her fire of rage after discovering Telemachus’s empty room had drawn back, shrinking to fester between her lungs and prickle along her skin.

Her pain was a quieter one. Quite literally – she hadn’t managed to push a word past her lips since leaving Athena’s temple. What was the point? What could she, or anyone, possibly fucking say? How did these people keep finding the means to have conversation, how did they have points to make when the only thing that mattered was gone?

People wanted to see her misery. They wanted to sigh sympathetically, to appreciate the comfortingly aesthetic suffering of a mother and wife gazing longingly out of balconies, perhaps a single tear tracing an artful path along her statue-perfect cheek.

Or else they wanted catharsis. The screaming, the thrashing, the poetic attempt to drive a dagger into her own bosom to end her pain.

Penelope could offer neither. She could not mourn a child she refused to believe was dead, and she could not truly live either knowing that he was suffering out of her reach.

Nobody wanted to unsettling emptiness behind her eyes, the dead stillness of her face and hands. No one wanted the black, writhing mass in the centre of her chest that ate her alive. As her councillors put it, she made people uncomfortable.

So. The weaving room.

A quiet, secluded place, where she could perform her womanly burial shroud duties, and subject no one to the discomfort of her presence. Penelope was all but banished to it.

She stood in the doorway for far too long. Weave? The thought was ridiculous. I can barely move.

It did not help that she already knew what she’d left hanging on the loom. A chiton – child-sized. Telemachus’s, borrowed while she adorned it with the owl and olive tree patterns he enjoyed so much. Love in every stitch.

Penelope gathered the fabric methodically, her hands entirely steady. She folded it into neat sections, tracing her fingers along the delicate embroidery.

Once it rested as a perfect square in her palms, she lifted it to her face, and screamed into the cloth until her voice gave out.

***

Time passed. No ransom arrived, and no one expected one.

Signs from Athena grew sparse – an occasional owl perched in her garden’s trees, or swooping across the sky as she walked. Just enough to let her know she had not been forgotten, though simultaneously telling her very little.

Penelope could hardly blame the goddess, she knew more than most that excessive time spent in the company of mortals was frowned upon amongst the Olympians. Neither of them could risk the scrutiny. She could only hope that Athena’s decreased presence meant she was with Telemachus, that she was looking out for him.

Not dead.

It was the only confirmation she had, and she clung to it with all she had. Not dead. But taken. Hurt. How long would it be before she saw him again? Years? Decades? The legends cared little for longing hearts. In stories of grand reunions – of which there were very few –  mothers spent lifetimes awaiting their children.

Odysseus would be home soon. For the first time in ten years, the thought only inspired dread. Penelope had failed her family so utterly. She was plagued ceaselessly by the thought of how his eyes would scan the shore, or palace, or wherever their meeting took place for the small outline he had longed for, how he would turn to her in simple confusion when he came up empty. How that confusion would turn to horror.

With her days spent weaving a shroud that would never be finished, there was little else to think about. Penelope turned it over and over again in her mind, imaging every possible scenario, each worse than the last. She obsessed over it, all of her famed intelligence latching on to one thing.

Well, two things. There was one other, far more pleasant daydream she indulged in.

“My Lady,”

The voice was breathless, half-gasped. Phiobe stood in her doorway, her straw-coloured hair wild and her clothes mussed as if she had ran all the way there. Wide-eyed, she tried to start her next sentence twice with no avail, stopping before the words had even left her mouth.

“We caught them,” she said at last, abandoning all propriety for the sake of simplicity.

There was no need to ask who she meant by ‘them’. There was nobody else Penelope had been trying to catch.

Bracing shockingly steady hands against her loom, she rose to her feet and left the room, immediately flanked by guards. Through the darkness of her mourning veil, the world had taken an eerier quality as of late – softened and greyed. Fitting.

With every step, almost-forgotten life returned to her limbs. Finally. As she walked, Phiobe spoke, her words tripping over themselves in her haste.

“Ianthe found them – the fisherwoman with the strong arms – with the rest of her women at a trading port in Phaeacia, she said they were half-mad, rambling about some monster that had slaughtered the rest of their crew to the west-”

“You are certain it is them?” Penelope cut in sharply, her steps increasing in speed at the mention of danger her son might have been caught up in. She did not ask if they had found Telemachus with the raiders – if it was not the first thing said, then it did not happen, and she could not afford to be incapacitated by pain.

Phiobe nodded so enthusiastically her blonde hair fell into her eyes, and she didn’t bother brushing it away. “They answered questions readily when asked, Ithaca they said, they came to Ithaca and then everything turned against them – crew members dying of strange and terrible diseases, storms and winds taking them off course – they were so distraught Ianthe barely had to drug them to take them back with her.”

The entrance to the dungeons was in front of them before Penelope had straightened any of her whirling thoughts, but it hardly mattered. This wasn’t a situation for composure.

These men were going to die.

***

The palace dungeons had not been used since Odysseus had built them. There had never been a reason to. With vicious satisfaction, Penelope thought this was exactly what he would have wanted them to be used for. Justice, against those who had hurt their child.

The offenders weren’t much to look at. Even through the grey of her veil, they just looked pathetic.

Four men, their hair matted over their eyes as they peered at her from their cell. Their clothes hung loosely off of their frames, shrunk with hunger. They huddled around one man – their designated leader, no doubt – with jagged scars stretching across his face from his temple to his jaw. He sneered at her approach.

“Well, it seems they’ve honoured our request for company after all.” His voice was slurred, leering, full of the confidence of a man who had not yet realised his life was in her hands. The men beside him snickered, dragging their eyes along her silhouette.

Penelope only folded her hands across her stomach, unmoved. Her heart thrummed with enough hate to choke the room.

They stilled eventually, unnerved by her silence. She let the tension build, like a drawstring pulling back.

“Two months ago,” she began slowly, deliberately. Her voice was rough with disuse, adding a layer of something feral to her words. “You stained the shores of my island with your ship.”

“Cursed place,” a man to her right hissed, his skin sallow and puckered with plague scars. “You are infested with unnatural evil.”

It was no wonder the Phaeacians thought them mad. Their eyes were alight with a feverish zeal, staggering from place to place as if they expected this evil to jump out at them any moment.

Penelope tilted her head slightly to the side, raising an eyebrow in a practiced motion. “Cursed?”

“It was this place that made the wind turn,” he spat, “that brought us to that monster.”

Her skin prickled.

“And what monster would that be? If my kingdom is to be blamed for one, we ought to know what we’re up against.” Her tone was deliberately taunting, goading for more information.

“A woman.”

What?

“She came out of nowhere, trapping us with those vines-” He interrupted himself, shuddering with horror and pressing himself against the wall, as if still trying to escape a threat long past. “Only got away because she was too busy skewering the rest of us.”

“Where was this?” Urgency stiffened her words.

“Nowhere! That blasted island was on no maps, we thought it was a fucking blessing when we found it after weeks of storms kept us from landfall,” the scarred man cut in, his expression twisting his face into something ghoulish.

“And what of the boy?” Penelope cut in, desperation winning over self-control.

Silence.

She was starting to fear the worst, her lungs turned frozen as she breathed, when-

“Who?”

It was her turn to stare at them blankly. Who? They had taken everything from her, and they didn’t even remember? For a single, calming moment, Penelope allowed herself to savour the mental image of skinning them alive.

“The boy,” she repeated, strained through gritted teeth. “The one you stole from our shores!”

Finally, recognition flashed through his eyes.

“That fucker bit me!”

Good, she thought to herself, with a sharp flare of pride. I hope it bled.

“Where is he?” The question was more hissed than spoken, the last of her restraint crumpling. The men leaned away, trying to put distance between themselves and the deranged woman in front of them.

“Fuck if I know,” the leader said at last, eyeing her with a mix of caution and distaste. “He wasn’t there when we got back to the ship – we cut our losses. Monster probably got ‘im.”

Telemachus had always wanted to fight monsters, Penelope thought with a with a sick churn of her stomach. She was growing lightheaded, darkness creeping around the edges of her vision. Without another word, she turned on her heel and left.

“Hey!” one of the men – loathsome, hateful creatures, she was going to kill them all – shouted after her. “We need food! Where’s your hospitality?”

Their cackling laughter followed her all the way out of the dungeon.

***

Penelope headed straight for Athena’s temple, her heart hammering.

Monster.

He wasn’t there when we got back to our ship.

Telemachus, her bones ached. My boy, where are you? What happened to you?

Are you coming home?

She collapsed rather than knelt by her goddess’s statue, and prayed. For a sign, for confirmation her son was alive and safe.

Silence.

For the first time in her life, there was truly nothing. She had not even realised the whisper of divine presence she had felt at her altar until it was truly, unarguably gone. The goddess was not listening. She wasn’t even there.

And for Telemachus? What did that mean? Was she preoccupied helping him? Or-

The world twisted as the cruel facts lined themselves up neatly, however desperately she tried to push them away. There was one, obvious reason why Athena would no longer be answering prayers.

In Penelope’s chest, hope died a vicious death.

***

If there was one thing the Ithacans could never be faulted for, it was their loyalty to their own.

The people had loved Telemachus. It had been decades since the last royal baby on their island, and they had welcomed his tiny presence with the joy and affection of family. Odysseus would walk around the markets with him bundled in his arms, practically glowing with pride as shopkeepers cooed over their prince.

As Telemachus grew, he played with their children on Ithaca’s beaches, his laughter a constant and precious sound through their towns. Many of them had personally tended to his scrapes or wiped mud from his face after races or pretend fights had gotten too rough.

Penelope would send him down to run simple errands, in part for the joy it brought both her son and her people, and for the fact those big eyes and stray curls always earned them a better deal.

Ithaca loved her prince.

These men had taken him.

Penelope watched the group from her balcony, shifting anxiously as much as they could with their hands bound in thick rope and arms restricted by her guards. The crowd eyed them with a loathing so palpable it could be tasted in the air, enjoying their unease in the face of the hunger of a hoard. They’d come prepared, hunting and cooking tools hanging from their waists, gleaming in sharp anticipation.

Slowly, she turned her attention back to her subjects.

“People of Ithaca,” she began, feeling the comfortable cloak of a queen’s composure falling over her once more. The crowd quietened immediately.

“Four men stand before you. Two months ago they landed on our shores, in search of your treasures and hard-won fruits of your labours. They came to kill you. They came for your wives, for your children.”

Tension rippled across the sea of people, their hate rising. Good. Penelope swallowed, her next words stuck in her throat.

“They left with mine.”

A crack in the veneer of perfect monarchy. No longer the cold queen, but the grieving mother. Nobody in the crowd so much as breathed. From the pedestal, the raiders looked around in a panic – oh, the damned fools hadn’t even realised they had taken a prince. She would pity their idiocy if she weren’t relishing the thought of their imminent deaths.

“I leave their fates in your hands.”

Locking eyes with the captain of her guard, she jerked her head forward.

In unison, her men shoved the raiders into the waiting hoard. Ithacans swarmed them like flies descend on corpses, and they disappeared beneath a throng of bodies. Their screams were extinguished as easily as their lives.

A maid was at her arm, trying to pull her gently away from the execution. Penelope stood her ground. She needed to watch. Needed this closure, if she was getting no other. She felt only a dull satisfaction as the crowd writhed around their prey – finally, the threat had been truly purged. No loose ends.

Minutes or hours might have passed before her people pulled away – reluctantly, like starving men from a feast. One man in particular looked up at her, their eyes meeting from the balcony. She remembered him. He used to give Telemachus free samples of his bread at the markets, ruffling his hair before he ran off once more.

His hands were gloved in blood up to his elbows, his chiton soaked in it. He nodded, once, with finality, and Penelope returned the gesture. Nobody was satisfied, not truly, but a blood debt had been settled. A cosmic scale balanced.

When the crowd finally dissipated, she turned her gaze back to observe the carnage.

The grass where they had stood was dark with blood, crushed into the reddened mud. What little had been left behind was impossible to assign to any specific man. There, a skull had been caved in, crumpled and half embedded in the dirt with the force of the stampede. To the left of it, an open ribcage, glistening with exposed muscle and sinew.

It was not enough.

Telemachus was still gone.

***

A quiet ache settled over Penelope like dust.

Her fires of rage were extinguished, without recipient, leaving her hollowed and empty in their wake. She floated through the following month like a wraith, haunting her own home. She walked like a foal, unsteady, reborn bloody and raw in her grief.

Political matters were handled efficiently and methodically during the days, and in the nights she took to sleeping in Telemachus’s bed, though the scent of his favoured oils had long since faded from his sheets. She dreamt of him more, there, as if some essence of his soul lingered in the place.

Almost, in the fading light of sleep, Penelope thought she could see him in flashes – running through wild, colourful islands. Glowing lights, ships, warmth. She treasured these images with everything she had, even if they were only illusions to comfort the soul. Anything, to hope he wasn’t suffering.

There was still no sign. Her goddess had left.

If Telemachus was, truly, dead-

Perhaps his soul still lingered. Perhaps he visited her there. Perhaps he had, somehow, come home.

***

Penelope awoke in the middle of the night.

This was not a new occurrence – sleep had come to her fitfully in the past months, but tonight was different. Telemachus had felt so close.

Her arms were wrapped around his pillows, clutching them tight to her chest – a poor, cold placeholder for the small body that used to occupy the space. Her tears had formed a damp circle on the sheets beneath her face, and the fabric stuck to her cheek as she pushed herself into a sitting position.

The wind bit at her as it snapped in through the balcony, chilled by its passage over the ocean. The discomfort felt fitting – like penance.

She slid out of bed as if weighed down by the sky itself, uncertain feet guiding her to the cold. Eyes closed, she crept forward, savouring the prickling of her skin against the air until her hands found the rough stone of the railing.

With a detached curiosity, she ran her fingers along the grain of it.

Telemachus stood here, that night, she thought. His makeshift rope still hung from the balustrades, thought it was muddied and worn from months exposed to the elements – her own command. Her councillors thought her mad for it, indulged it only out of a guilt-ridden sympathy. She couldn’t explain why when asked.

But still, something stopped her from taking it down. He left the palace with it – he needs it to get back. Penelope couldn’t separate one thought from the other.

Telemachus left.

Why?

The question stopped her short. Why? She had not asked herself it before. Did it matter? He was gone, regardless of the reason. Tonight, the thought struck her with the force of a battering ram. Why?

He’d had his rebellious flares, but never like this. Why would he sneak out? Where would he even go?

Penelope turned her gaze back to the ocean. Its dark waves churned, the last remnants of a terrible storm dispersing in the cloud-blanketed sky. A new idea bloomed between her ribs, cautious yet unrelenting, like a growing fire.

My heart, what did you see?

Something had to have lured him away from the safety and comfort of the palace.

Her eyes latched onto the horizon accusingly. Well? she thought, old fury stirring. What did you show him? What lie did you tell my son?

She blinked.

Then blinked again, harder. The clouds had shifted, moonlight reflecting off of what for a moment had looked like-

Oh. Perhaps she truly was going mad.

An Ithacan ship, cutting towards them across the water. However long she stared, the image did not falter, always coming back into view with the passing of the clouds. The undeniable curve of its bow, its black shape against the ocean. Penelope would have recognised it anywhere.

Oh, she thought again. Hello, Odysseus.

***

She pushed away from the railing and dry-heaved into the corner, her hands scrambling ineffectually to keep her hair out of the way – though she came up empty. He was here. He was coming back, and she had no child to present to him.

Her knees ached where they had hit the floor, the cold of the stone seeping through her clothes. Every inch in her body was trembling with nauseating anticipation. With stuttering movements, Penelope lifted her head to stare out at the ocean again.

The ship was still there, shining with her condemnation in the moonlight.

On her third try, she managed to stand, letting Telemachus’s bed post take the majority of her bodyweight. Well. There was no use in delaying the inevitable. What she probably should do was summon her guards, tell them to put together a formal welcome on the beach. Summon her maids to help her dress. That way there could a be proper audience when the royal family fully collapsed.

No. Penelope would not. She was not naïve enough to believe she hadn’t thoroughly ruined any standing she had with the council with her prolonged grief and feminine madness – she could not let them see Odysseus fall apart.

Ithaca still needed a ruler, and so she had to tell him herself. Before anyone else got to him. But how? How to get past the guards?

The answer came to her easily. Oh, of course. Clever boy.

Scrambling around the room for her cloak and sandals, she allowed herself a moment to acknowledge the lunacy of her actions. She could likely wait to tell him until she had coaxed him into the privacy of their chambers, and the men need not see – but could she bear it? Could she stomach his joy of their reunion knowing what she did?

Odysseus would read the truth on her face as if she were screaming it. And, selfishly, she wanted a moment alone with her husband before they had to face the world.

Penelope looked down to the beach from the balcony, and wondered how high the drop must have seemed to a little boy.

With her child gone, the gods had granted her one gift – there was very little left in the world to be scared of.

Pushing the ache away, she eased herself over the railing, hooking one leg over the rope.

I am far too old for these antics, she thought, grimacing through the discomfort of the rain-drenched linen. Trying desperately not to think of how Telemachus had taken the same journey just a few months prior, Penelope climbed her way down to the beach.

There, she inched her way to the docks, cursing with each misstep on the wet rocks. It was a miracle Telemachus hadn’t broken something in the dark. Had he? She pushed the thought away. She would not get any answer.

Finally, she reached her destination. The ship was out of sight until the clouds moved again, the darkness thick and unrelenting. Penelope sat on the wooden pier, hugging her knees against her chest as she tried to match her breathing to the crashing of the waves.

And she waited.

***

The ship grew larger as it approached, and with it her nausea climbed. She had staggered to her feet sometime within the past hour, nervous energy alight in her bones.

Penelope rehearsed the words in her mind, poisonous as they were, as if sheer force of repetition could pull them from her mouth when she saw her husband.

Telemachus is gone.

She did not need to imagine his reaction. It would kill him as it had killed her – the perfect reunion destroyed, the heart of their precious family ripped away. The hope that Athena had been right, that Telemachus was safe and continued to be so burned dangerously beneath her skin. It was the kind of hope that would turn its holder to ash if killed, and still she let it fester.

She was nothing without it.

The ship crawled closer to the shore, then slotted into the harbour, and she couldn’t move.

A figure appeared over the railing.

His skin was darkened and weathered from time at sea, his hair longer and tangled with wind. But it was him. She would have known his outline anywhere, could have picked out the rhythm of his breath against a thousand others.

Odysseus met her eyes from the deck of his ship.

The world could have collapsed at her feet and she would not have noticed. Her heart, as much as Penelope could have sworn it dead, pounded its resurrected rhythm against her ribs. Neither of them moved for a long moment, unwilling to spare any thought necessary for motion when it could be used to drink in the other’s presence.

And then, cutting through the morning air and knocking the breath from her lungs-

“Mother!”

A sound that was neither animal nor human tore out of her. The last of the stone defences she had built for herself collapsed into dust at the single word she would have given anything to hear again, and Penelope surged forward.

Telemachus – her child – was struggling to lift himself over the railing before the crew had even brought out the plank, steadied by his father’s hands as he swung both his legs over. The sight brought an almost forgotten warmth back to her bones, a gesture so domestic her throat tightened.

Telemachus. Telemachus!

Penelope reached the side of the boat just as he pushed off, catching her boy as he all but fell on top of her in his haste. They collapsed on the dock in an ungraceful pile of incoherent reverence, cradling his face between her hands, pressing kiss after kiss to his face and hair.

Her son was alive, he was whole and home and in her arms again. Tears came uncontrollably, burning in chest then her eyes then spilling over her cheeks as the terror and grief she had wrestled down over the last month resurged with a vengeance.

She pulled back from trying to press him close enough to physically tuck him into her heart, the need to see her son’s face in front of hers winning over the need for contact.

Her lungs constricted as she spotted a large, yellowing bruise stretched across his temple, staining his pale skin. Sodden locks of hair obscured it where they stuck to his face, as drenched as if he’d been swimming.

Gods, his hair. Streaks of gold shot through it, stark against the darkness he’d inherited from her. His eyelashes, too, were peppered with the same colouring, inexplicable as it was.

Strange robes hung from his small frame, weighed down by saltwater and warmed by the rising sun, dyed in shades of the sky at dusk. They were bound to him with unnaturally brilliant golden bands, almost glowing against his skin. Penelope did not get the chance to ask.

No longer muffled by the fabric he was pressed against or drowned out by the relief that sang in her bones, his choked words finally reached her.

“I’m sorry, I’m so sorry Mother I didn’t mean to leave I really didn’t I wanted to see Father and they-” His voice failed, breaking off into silence with a hitched sob. The urge to kill the raiders all over again, slower, ripped through her without warning.

Fate had punished Telemachus enough for his mistake, innocent as it had been, and he was crying and injured in her arms – she was not cruel enough scold him any further, not in this state. He would not do it again.

“Oh, my heart, I know, I know – it’s okay, those men were always to blame, not you. Never you.”

His small frame shook with another sob, tears pooling freely in his already bloodshot eyes. He shook his head miserably, even as he winced in pain from the gesture.

“No, you don’t understand, I was so stupid, I thought-” Penelope interrupted him with another kiss to the forehead, pressing him close until she felt at least a fraction of her love for him had gotten through.

“Sweet child, I am not upset with you, I swear it, you can explain everything later, please just – its okay.” The words tore something soft and vital within her as they came out, devastation warring with fury in her chest. She could not take another second of his pleading for a forgiveness that was never necessary to begin with.

Telemachus slumped back against her, resting his head against the crook of her neck.

“You’re not mad?” he asked weakly, his small voice still shaking.

The world went blurry once more as Penelope’s tears returned – she would sooner go deaf than have to hear something so heart-wrenching again.

“No,” she managed through the tightness of her throat. “Never.”

Desperate for any kind of anchor in the sea of emotion that had swallowed her whole, she looked up once more.

Odysseus watched them both with shining eyes. Ten years apart could not have blinded her to the expression in them, the raw delight of seeing his family whole, the desperate longing that held him apart from them still. My husband, she thought, with a fondness so fierce it robbed her of breath, always so unaware of how deeply his love is reciprocated.

Still trembling, she held her hand out to him.

For a few seconds, her love could only stare at it.

Then, slowly, as if the moment would shatter with a sudden movement, he stepped forward. His hand, warm and calloused, slotted back into hers as easily as it had done on their wedding day – a matching set, designed to fit perfectly with one another.

Her lips shook as they curved into an unpractised smile.

Finally, as if pushed by an unseen hand, Odysseus tipped forward into her arms. Not even the stars above could have collided with such cosmic force, could have shook the earth and mountains whole. Her husband. Hers. As she was his.

She pulled him closer with a desperation time had nurtured, like a starved beast clawed its way to a meal. His arms wrapped around her back, fingers wove into her tangled hair, and she almost felt human again. Telemachus made no protest to being crushed between them, the tension leaving his frame with a quiet sigh.

Her claws withdrew, her fangs grew blunt, her armour crumbled to dust, leaving her raw and exposed and still somehow more protected than before. Every breath was purifying, every beat of her heart full of life.

“Odysseus,” The prayer.

“Penelope,” The answer.

***

They slowly extricated themselves from one another as the crew disembarked, reluctance in every inch between them.

“We should go see the physician,” Odysseus started, concerned gaze flitting back to Telemachus. Their child immediately wrinkled his nose in protest, though the expression only drew attention to his injuries.

“I’m fine, we can just grab the jewellery again and-”

Jewellery? Penelope thought, incredulous. Gods, how hard has he hit his head?

“Not a chance. You’re exhausted enough as it is, and I want someone to have a proper look at your head. Physician, now,” her husband insisted.

Penelope could do nothing but look between the two of them in awe, completely out of her depth in the easy conversation they exchanged. Still, questions could come later.

“Your father is right, my heart,” before Odysseus could look too pleased with himself, she added “Both of you need your injuries treated.”

Truly, no one could doubt the resemblance between father and son, and Penelope had never been able to appreciate it more than when her husband pulled the exact same expression at the thought of being looked after. Ridiculous, the both of them – her heart hummed with disbelieving joy.

She picked Telemachus up on instinct, unwilling to let him walk all the way to the palace in his state, and nearly stumbled under his weight. Unforgivingly, her body would not let her forget the strength she had lost in her months of misery.

Turning away from Odysseus’s concerned frow and trying not to choke up again at the stabilising hand he’d placed against her arm, she recovered with a strained smile for her son.

“I think you’ve gotten bigger,” she declared, refusing to acknowledge the ache of any moment stolen from watching him grow. Telemachus was here now, as was Odysseus. She had spent enough time grieving.

Either he was too out of it to notice the distraction, or he let her get away with it. Always the kindest one of their little family.

“I have!,” he practically lit up with excitement, “Circe measured me against this doorframe every few weeks, I’m definitely taller.”

Penelope turned to her husband with a raised eyebrow, shifting her hold on Telemachus in her arms. “Circe?”

“Man-eating witch,” he replied casually, falling into step at her side. “Particularly fond of Telemachus.”

“Ah, I see.”

Monster, a part of her brain remembered, quietly building an explanation in the background.

***

In the end, the physician declared them both mostly healthy and predicted a full recovery, except-

“Bedrest?”

Telemachus did not take the order well. “Bedrest!” he repeated again as Odysseus carried him through the hallway, incredulous. “I have one bruise!”

“You have about fifteen, actually, as well as head trauma, water inhalation and-” Telemachus interrupted his father by physically placing his hand over his mouth.

“I essentially just went swimming.”

“Your version of swimming leaves much to be desired,” Odysseus countered, unimpressed.

“High-stakes swimming,” her son amended.

“I think I’ll take that explanation now, actually,” Penelope chimed in, pushing open the doors of their bedroom. She wasn’t entirely sure she wanted to know what their boy considered high-stakes swimming, but she was desperately lost.

Across a low round table, her maids had laid out a full meal for them all, filling the air with the fragrance of warmed spices. Telemachus nodded absentmindedly, already wriggling out of his father’s arms to reach for the dishes.

“Oh my gods, real food, I missed you so much,” he said, sounding almost near tears at the sight of anything cooked.

“Eat,” Odysseus encouraged, leaning over to press a kiss into Telemachus’s hair – Penelope’s bones sang of such love. “We can do it out of order, I’ll start.”

“After-” his voice faltered, “-some complications on our journey, I arrived with my men on a secluded island.” A look in his eyes told her she’d be getting a clearer explanation of these complications later, when small ears weren’t present to hear their brutality. Telemachus glanced between the two of them, but otherwise continued eating.

“I sent Eurylochus out to scout the place with a group, and he came back alone looking like he’s seen a ghost, claiming this woman they encountered lured our men inside and then transformed them into pigs.”

“Lured is a stretch,” Telemachus cut in, “We just invited them in.”

“Eat,” Odysseus stressed with exasperation, lightly pushing Telemachus’s head back down towards his plate.

“We?” Penelope asked, alarmed.

“Right. This witch had an apprentice, of sorts, who followed her around in disguise, and served my men their enchanted meal.”

The table creaked as she turned, propping an elbow on the wood to stare at her son, who was suddenly fascinated by the dates in the dish nearest him.

“Apprentice?” she repeated.

“I’m pretty sure you told me once to take learning experiences wherever I could.”

“You turned your father’s men into pigs!”

“We turned them back! And honestly, if they wanted to keep their human forms, they should have been more polite. And also not walk around the island with their swords – didn’t send a very peaceful message.”

“Anyway,” Odysseus interrupted, “I went to go get them and was stopped by Hermes, who gave me a plant which would counter Circe’s – the witch – magic.”

“That’s why you were so strange!”

“Strange?” Her husband sounded almost offended.

“Yeah, you were unbalancing with all of our palace enchantments, it was really creepy.” The words were slightly muffled by the end by the mouthful of chickpeas.

“I was trying not to get enchanted myself. She turned out to be surprisingly co-operative, and agreed to let the men go. Telemachus was still skulking in the background for all of this, calling himself Telys – creative.”

“Coming up with a fake name is not as easy as the stories made it sound – and I was not skulking! I was observing. Strategically.”

“Why did you need a fake name at all, my heart?” she cut in gently, as her husband made disbelieving noises from the other side of the table.

“I panicked.”

Penelope blinked.

“Right.”

“Just before we left,” Odysseus continued, “I saw a sign from Athena, and finally realised why her odd little apprentice-”

“Hey!”

“- was bothering me so much. I went back to get him, we talked to Circe, and then left again.” He stopped suddenly, as if remembering something. “How did you recognise me when I came back?”

“Dream,” Telemachus answered simply. This seemed to make perfect sense to her husband, who nodded understandingly. Distantly, Penelope wondered if she might not have suffered a brain injury herself, as everyone around her continued to speak in riddles. Perhaps her madness lingered.

It seemed to occur to her boy that she was missing something crucial from this discussion, because he turned to her with all the energy in the world, his eyes alight once more.

“Oh, right! Mother, do you remember those really strange nightmares I kept getting?”

Penelope did.  Many nights had been spent with the two of them in Penelope’s bed, humming lullabies and kissing the dried tears from his cheeks after nightmares of war of death. She had thought the councillors, with their endless talk of war, or their bards responsible.

“So, turns out, they were actually prophetic, and I was seeing real visions from the war-” Odysseus’s head snapped back to Telemachus, eyes widening with a horror she mirrored. Telemachus didn’t notice, gesturing wildly as he kept talking. Breath caught somewhere between her ribs, she reached for her husband’s hand.

“-but I wasn’t really sure until we got those messengers saying the Greeks had won, and then one night I had one about a ship landing on Ithaca and I thought-” With a sudden falter, the enthusiasm dropped from his voice. His eyes slid back to his plate, picking at his food in silence for a long moment.

“I thought it was Father. I thought he was coming home, and I wanted to see him, so I… I went to the beach,” he finished quietly.

Penelope didn’t need to look across the table to see the heartbreak in Odysseus’s face. The hitching of his breath, the tightening of his hand in hers – she could always read him more easily than she could herself.

After a moment’s deliberation, Telemachus turned, reaching for his father. Odysseus reached for him at the same instant, pulling him into his arms without a word. His hands shook slightly were they rested on their child’s back.

Prophetic.

Immediately, Penelope’s mind was spinning. Any form of blessing from the divine often came with unwanted attention, with danger – she looked up to find the same fear reflected in her husband’s eyes. His grip on their son tightened minutely, and offered her a nod.

Alright. He had already considered this, and measures were being taken. For now, it would be enough. Still, prophetic.

Penelope couldn’t stop looking at the golden streaks through her son’s hair, shimmering in the soft light of the room. A mark of the supernatural, and beautiful at that. A quiet, hidden part of her missed the full, mortal black that had matched her own.

It’ll fade, she saw Odysseus mouthing, having read the soft melancholy in her expression.

Finally, Telemachus shifted to face her again, eyes slightly red-rimmed but face dry.

“Athena helped me.”

The words should not have come as a surprise, but they did.

“She was there I think, on the ship with me, and she helped me escape when we reached the island. Then Lady Circe took me in, and-”

Telemachus was interrupted by a sudden crash at their balcony.

They turned around in unison, only to see an owl half-tangled in their curtains. It seemed to have misjudged its landing on the railing, flailing to the floor in a spray of white feathers. In silence, they all stared as it ripped a snagged claw out of the linen, twitching its wings in irritation.

It turned to face them, and Odysseus went rigid at her side. Vicious, sprawling scars streaked across its face, clouding one of its eyes over their startling grey. One wing stuck out at an odd angle – likely the cause of its dramatic entrance.

“Athena!” Telemachus gasped, squirming out of his father’s hold to rush across the room. The goddess pressed her beak against his outstretched hand fondly, allowing him to pick her up.

Penelope could only stare at the exchange. At her shoulder, Odysseus didn’t seem to be recovering any faster. The goddess ignored them both entirely, content to let Telemachus fawn over the softness of her feathers.

Carefully, he carried the owl back to their table, any lingering tension in his face evaporated with excitement.

“My friend,” her husband began with a frown as Telemachus got settled, “you should be resting.”

Athena glared at him as much as her owl-face allowed, feathers standing up indignantly. After a brief standoff, Odysseus sighed. “Well, I suppose this form requires less energy to maintain.”

At Penelope’s alarmed expression, her husband hooked an arm through hers. “She has been guiding us through our journey home,” he explained simply.

Athena’s sudden absence. Her strange injuries.

A relief she had not realised she needed settled over her heart at last – she had not been abandoned, her goddess had been watching over her family. And had suffered for it, it would seem.

“We-” Odysseus faltered, voice dropping near a whisper as he glanced back at Telemachus, but the boy was too distracted to be listening. “We had to go through Charybdis. Telemachus fell in, we almost didn’t – we almost didn’t get him out. And then the sea god, he almost – if Athena hadn’t-” His grip on her hand tightened as his words failed, and she squeezed it back with as much strength as she could muster.

Penelope’s lungs were freezing to solid ice. Instinctively, she reached for her son until her hand landed in his curls, settling in the warmth that confirmed his life. Telemachus looked up at her curiously, and her heart wrenched as her eyes caught on his bruise once more.

How hurt are you going to be when the joy of home wears off, my boy? How many nightmares will haunt your nights?

With an ache that felt a bit like dying, she knew that the boy she’d gotten back wasn’t quite the boy that had been taken from her, before all of these horrors. She loved him so fiercely she couldn’t breathe.

Telemachus’s head tilted to the side, in the way he did when he had a question that she’d always found adorable.

“Are you okay, Mother?” He blinked owlishly at her, similar enough to the goddess next to him it startled a wet laugh out of her. She cradled his gentle face in her shaking hands.

“I just- I love you. I’m glad your home.”

Small words, overflowing with emotion she could never contain. My son smiled brilliantly at her, revealing that slight gap between his teeth she’d matched in her childhood, his gold-flecked eyes scrunching with warmth.

The goddess on his shoulder nuzzled her hand affectionately, and if there ever was anything to forgive between them Penelope would offer it freely. Her family was home, and if that required a prolonged absence to make happen, she could heal her aches in their newfound peace.

Penelope pressed a long kiss between her son’s eyes and finally released him.

***

They spent hours tucked away in the safety of their bedchamber, letting the palace staff handle the arrival of the crew and the councillors the news of their king and heir. Ithaca could stand without them, just for a little while.

Telemachus began to sway not long after finishing the meal, his eyelids drifting closed as his words were interrupted by yawns. Athena left them then, for their rest and her own, taking off into the sky after pressing her avian face against the side of Telemachus’s a last time.

Odysseus placed their son on his and Penelope’s bed with all the care in the world, tenderly draping their blankets over him as he nuzzled into the pillows that still carried the scent of her perfumed oils. For all of his insistence he was fine, their boy’s breathing steadied near immediately, and his frame stilled with the weight of sleep. Odysseus’s hand lingered, brushing a stray curl out of their son’s face.

A feeling too raw to name gripped Penelope’s heart. It was mirrored in her husband’s eyes, so full of love it threatened to spill over. Her love stood before her. Her heart lay curled in her bed, sheltered by its olive branches.

Her family, whole.

They had lost so much time. There was so much left to live.

Odysseus knelt by their son’s side, cautious not to wake him with any sudden movements.

“He’s perfect,” he whispered, rough with awe. “Penelope, you have raised such a wonderful boy, I would-” His voice broke under the weight of emotion. “I would do anything for him.”

Feeling like a ball of pure, glowing light had settled in her chest, Penelope moved to sit by her husband, slotting comfortably by his side. She let her head drop to rest against his shoulder, smiling softly as she watched the boy in front of them sleep.

“He is perfect,” she agreed, murmuring so as not to wake him. “And it sounds to me as if you have done much for him already.”

Odysseus winced, tension returning to his frame in a heartbeat.

“Not enough.” The admission was almost inaudible, rough with guilt.

“When he fell into Charybdis, I thought he was gone, Penelope,” he continued, his voice heavy with remembered grief. “Eurylochus almost stopped me from going after him, trying to save me from drowning, and Telemachus would have-” The words died in his mouth, too terrible to speak.

There was an anger there, too, against the man who’d been a brother to Odysseus in all but blood before they’d left. Penelope considered the words. Could she be furious with him, for endangering her son? Easily. But he had done so out of a love for her husband, and despite herself she could understand. She had so little energy left for anger.

“But he did not. Eurylochus – his loyalty to you has always blinded him to other things. He did not act in malice, you know this.”

Odysseus’s lips pressed together, but he did not argue. Good – perhaps there was something left to salvage between those two. Enough had been lost. There was another matter, one she could see coiled in the tension in his shoulders, festering beneath his skin.

“Odysseus,” she began, softly. “I do not think it is him that you are angry with.”

“I brought him there,” The words left him like they clawed at something fragile on their way out. “I took him with me into danger and failed to protect him.”

“And he was taken in the first place because of my negligence,” she interjected softly.

He frowned, expression tightening in immediate argument. With a gentle hand on his arm, she silenced him.

“My love, I think… I think we will never be perfect. We will never be able to protect him from everything, and we will fail him a thousand times over. Such is the curse of parenthood – it cannot be helped.”

He reached out to cup Telemachus’s cheek once more, tracing small patterns across his soft skin.

“How do we bear it, then?” he whispered, his voice hoarse with pain. “How are we supposed to watch him get hurt without tearing the world apart?”

Penelope thought of executing the raiders. She thought of spending nights staring blankly at the ceiling in Telemachus’s room, of biting her tongue until it bled.

“Sometimes we can’t bear it,” she admitted into the quiet.

For a long moment, there was only comfortable silence in Ithaca’s royal bedchamber.

Tenderly, Odysseus slid his free hand up the base of her neck to weave his fingers in her hair. She sighed, relaxing into the touch as her eyes drifted closed. Her husband, home. She had waited so long.

“My love?” he asked at last, more breath than words. Even then she could hear the worry in them, and managed only a hum in response. Just a little while longer, Penelope wanted to live in the world where everything was perfect, where her pain had dissolved to nothing and she was whole.

“Would you talk to me?”

She knew what he must have seen on the beach. Unbrushed hair, a cloak haphazardly tied around her shoulders over her sleeping clothes, dark circles imprinted on pale skin beneath her eyes – halfway deranged.

And still, the way he had looked at her. Like salvation. Like the woman he had been forced to leave behind on those same rocks – like nothing that mattered had changed.

“I did not,” she started hesitantly, the words sticking to her tongue like the taste of blood, “bear it. When they took him.” Her voice broke, and it was all she could do not to turn her face into his shoulder. Not to hide from the man who still loved her, after everything.

Odysseus shifted, and kissed the soft of her temple so gently she almost cried.

“I did not either, when I thought I’d lost him to the water. Or when the sea god-” He stopped, closing his eyes against a phantom rush of pain Penelope felt as starkly as her own. In a fragile gesture, he took Telemachus’s hand in his, tracing his thumb over their boy’s knuckles. Penelope watched him with her heart in her throat.

Despite herself, the corner of her mouth twitched in a small, sad smile. “I fear we’ve made ourselves terribly vulnerable.”

His body shook against in her side halfway between a laugh and a sob. “Do you think we’ll be less scared, as he gets older?”

“Gods, no. To love him is to be scared.”