Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Sleep does not come easy.

It should be, after twenty years of wanting nothing more than to get back home, that he could rest easy. For the first time in twenty years, he is in his bed, with the subtle scent of carved wood and the fresh, green fruit of the olives near time for harvest. He is in his home, familiar and with no deficit of any creature comforts he might require. More importantly, most importantly: he is with his wife, curled up around her in bed, his arms around her, his face in her hair. He breathes in the scent of her and drinks in the warmth of her body, the heat of her hand placed against his chest where his heart throbs painfully beneath his skin.

He doesn’t know what this dream was about, but it’s set him to shaking and makes him want to scream. He withstands it, trembles harder, and draws in a sharp breath to clear the cobweb air from his lungs.

He doesn’t always forget his dreams. Sometimes it’s the war. Oftentimes, it’s Poseidon or Zeus. Sometimes the Underworld sticks in his throat and cloys in his lungs until he wakes up choking on salt and fire and the screams of his crew. The wailing of an infant falling from a tower.

And then sometimes it’s Polites, and Eurylochus, and the camaraderie of drinking to a fight well fought. Sometimes it’s battle plans, and catcalling banter on the ships. Sometimes it is remembering waving goodbye to Penelope with her eyes full of pride as he’d sailed away to fight in the war, and how he remembers how he had never been more proud.

He doesn’t know which one’s worse, some days. Everything had become so tainted. How had everything become so tainted? The joy in his life feels so beset by tragedy that he drowns under the weight of it even now, the sea pressing down on him and the tears on his face and the weight of his wife at his side. And he thinks that’s the worst thing of all: here he lays, when Penelope has always been his light and life and meaning to everything, his bright spot, his North Star, holding his breath, shaking, nearly to breaking, and– all he can think is that her hand feels so heavy. His soul is so shattered, and her hand is so heavy atop his chest.

He doesn’t dare suck in another breath. He keeps what he has in his lungs now, afraid of disturbing this hard-earned quiet. His lungs scream for relief. He feels the tremor spasm down to the tip of his toes. His tongue tastes like lead, and he screws his eyes shut and tries not to think of the sea, or the sky, or fallen friends lurking in the dark like the decisions that have plagued him for over a decade of death.

“Odysseus.”

His breath catches. His eyes fly open, and Penelope is awake, watching him. Wary, concerned and considerate. Awake. Something in him clenches in dismay. For all of his trouble of not wanting to disturb her–

“My love,” she murmurs, and his hand snaps up to his lips, cupping his mouth and nose to stifle the dismay that’s trying so hard to be known. He is safe. He is home. These memories are of the past. He knows this. He knows this, and yet– the hand that had been holding her clenches into the bed linen instead, fingers taut and struggling with the strain.

Penelope watches through the gloom. The corners of her mouth are distantly downturned. She accesses his inadequacies from these nighttime interrupts. Pauses. And then the hand on his chest retracts. The breath punches out of his lungs with a sob. He covers his face with his hands and weeps.

He’s lost track of this, too. How many times. Too many times. He is so tired. He is so tired, and the nightmares never stop. He wonders if the nightmares ever stop.

“I’m here for you, Odysseus,” Penelope says quietly, and that, too, he knows. “I’m here when you need me.” 

And that’s that. It’s quiet, except for his own breathing, and his tears, and the screaming he still hears in his head. But it gets further away as the dreams fade. Just a little quieter. The unease lessens a little. He swallows against the sickly taste of sorrow, and presses his fingers at the crease between his brows. How many times must he– how much more–

He makes a noise of– maybe disgust. Maybe exhaustion. Or maybe it’s just helplessness. These nights, he barely knows. He scrubs his fingers against his eyes, his palms against his wet cheeks, and drops his hands in an attempt to wipe the wet off into their rumpled, sweaty linens.

Penelope is waiting. Always unswerving, unfaltering, waiting for whatever he has to ask of her. She smiles now, and it’s sad, but he doesn’t think it’s pitying. It never has been from her. He doesn’t know how it isn’t pitying, especially these days, but it isn’t. But she’s still there, on the bed next to him, propped up on her elbows now as she holds vigil, and her gaze on him is only patience, and compassion, and love.

He reaches over and rests his palm against her cheek. He is pretty sure his hands are still damp. He is very sure that his voice cracks when he speaks. “‘m sorry.”

“I don’t need apologies for your grief, husband.” She clasps her hand over his, and presses her face more firmly into his touch. “I bear it with you willingly.”

He takes a deep breath. It comes easier, even if it still shakes on the exhale. “I know.” He does. From the moment he’d stepped foot back in their bedroom. So much has changed, but some things remained the same. Inexplicably, but here they are.

He is so glad.

“Come here,” he rasps, and rolls to face her.

She is the one who gathers him into her arms, pulling him into the warmth of her embrace. He crowds in, tucking his head beneath her chin, and closes his eyes as he feels her lips brush against his unruly hair. He now goes willingly into the pressure that will hold him together and help him rebuild, piece by piece. He’s a mess. He’s started to accept that since he’s gotten home. But Penelope, she’s always steady. She’s always what he’s needed. That much hasn’t changed. Never would.

They settle back into the bed-covers. Penelope’s fingers trace along the nodules of his spine, and she asks, quietly, eventually: “did you need to talk about it?”

Maybe. Probably, something in him is beginning to accept. So many things left unsaid since his return home. Half of the horrors that she still doesn’t know. But the memory of the tang of panic suffocating him as he had awoken not ten minutes ago still lingers. It’s still bitter on his tongue, in the back of his mind. If he stokes the dying embers of the nightmare, he doesn’t think he’s going to get back to sleep tonight. He needs to get back to sleep, tonight. He ducks his head further, nose brushing against the swell of her breast. “I think I’d better not,” he admits sheepishly.

“Alright.” She strokes his back and his hair and kisses him like he is not the mess that he is. It’s something. It’s everything. “I’m here with you, love.”

“Thank you,” he breathes, and holds her close.

Chapter Text

She sees his twenty years of isolation some days more than others. In the safety of their own walls, she sees it less; he tenses and dreams and cries more than she would like for her love, but in the quiet of their bedroom or lounge with only the two of them, or Telemachus, he is much the man she remembers. Changed, but the core remains. Her Odysseus remains steadfast even if it requires a little coping and counsel to help remind him of that. Privately, mostly, they are comfortable, quick to tease and talk and curl into each other’s warmth.

But then there are times when she is reminded that he has spent nearly a decade on his own, with little to no company or crew. Only the haunt of friends long fallen and gods playing havoc in his life. And Penelope sees it. She knows she isn’t the only one.

The first time they had paraded him around after his return had been… jarring. Penelope would never use such a word aloud, and most certainly never to Odysseus, but gone was the man who had enjoyed the leisurely stroll through a city to take in the sights and his people. He had been strung up tight the moment work had begun inside the palace. Less noticeable, perhaps, to those who did not know him intimately. But she had seen the tension through the ceremony, scarred palms clenched and unclenched at his side. She had taken his hand, then. He had afforded her a smile not at all apologetic, so much so that Penelope had realized he did not even recognize his own discomfort. It was too tightly packed away, folded between terse smiles and tense muscles.

The realization had been upsetting, to say the least. For him to be uncomfortable was one thing. Terrible, but perhaps expected after twenty years away. But for him to not recognize his own hurt was something else entirely.

She had held her tongue, and not mentioned it to him later in the night.

She had not mentioned it subsequent times, when a switch would flip the moment the servants would walk into their room. The way the smile could fall from Odysseus’ face at so much as a trusted confidant stepping into their shared space. Joking, loving, warm one moment. Closed off and untrustworthy the next. Penelope would send their servants away with little fanfare, thanking them cordially and promising to call upon them if they were needed. Twenty or thirty minutes or so would pass before Odysseus’ limbs would sprawl untoward back across their chaise and conversation would come back easier.

It is his grief. It is his pain. She will share it with him– she had told him, from the moment he had come back, and she fully intends to make good on the promise– but she knows that even she cannot make him face it before he’s ready. She doesn’t want to. It hurts, to watch him shy away from the press of his kingdom, but it would hurt worse to force him into breaking in front of it entirely. She knows it will take time, and patience. She is very good at being patient.

And time, since his return, has dulled the sharp edges of Ithaca. She had never realized herself how gnawing the place could be, not until their twenty years spent in limbo. Her own tension had been of a different sort, brought on by mounting pressure to fill the throne and claim a new husband to adorn her arm. But she sees the tension in him when they tour the city, too, the way his hand strays a hairsbreadth too close to the dagger at his belt and the way his eyes dart around the crowd. If movement comes too sudden or too close or too loud, he’s on alert, poised to fight or flee. He never does that– she knows he is keeping himself in check, even if subconsciously– but she sees it in him. She feels it in the grip on her hand, the arm around her waist. The subtle rocking back on his heels, a half step removed from whatever stressor triggers his mind.

She remembers the sound of the siege on the palace, those days. The screaming of a hundred men being hunted and slaughtered like cattle. She knows she minds far less about their gruesome deaths than she should, but it’s those days that she can still hear the screaming through the halls as her Odysseus culled each and every threat there.

She knows he would do no harm in normal circumstances. But twenty years away did not make for usual circumstances. If something were to startle him badly enough, Penelope does worry about the strain it would place upon her husband if he were to snap under watching eyes. Maybe it would be laying hands on skin. Maybe it would be tears. She does not intend to find out. He may not be aware of the weight of his own trauma, but she will watch over it, and him, until a time where it is no longer necessary.

If that, occasionally, means stealing him away from a group of council with a false smile and an even looser excuse, she doesn’t mind. She minds more as she watches the way his throat bobs as he swallows, again, and again, in the muggy heat of the room, the flutter of his lashes as the pallor of his skin changes. The way he clutches at the scrap of red fabric tied too tight around his wrist. It is subtle. So subtle. But Penelope sees him breaking, and she takes his arm and begs their forgiveness with some quick lie, and practically pulls him into their own privacy to give him time to breathe.

She will fight to give him the space to breathe, after everything he has been through. Another promise she makes to herself, and silently, to him.

Odysseus sighs, tipping his head back against the cool concrete of the wall. His shoulders slump. He tilts his head enough to open his eyes and look at her, offering a hangdog smile. “You always know just what I need.”

Penelope smiles. She squeezes his hands, and presses a kiss against his stubbled cheek. Then gently pats it with no real force or intent. “Someone has to look after you,” she says, playful but honest. 

His eyes soften as he hears the honesty beneath it. He knows. He understands her as much as she understands him, even now. “No one alive could be a luckier man,” he returns, teasing and honest and loving.

She smiles, and stays with him until he is ready to face the world once again.

Chapter Text

The touch to the lightning scar makes his skin crawl, and Odysseus winces before he can think twice about how that display is going to come across. And true to his thoughts, Penelope’s hands pull back almost immediately, hovering midair instead, a look of guilt crossing her face.

Damn. 

He hurries to rectify it. It isn’t even– he doesn’t know. It isn’t anything. It doesn’t hurt. It isn’t pain that makes him shudder. Pain would be easier. “It’s fine,” he says quickly. “I’m– I’m fine. You startled me.” That is half true. He hesitates, and chews on the other half of honesty even though it tastes like decay on his tongue. “I’m not–” Something like shame claws at his gut. But he doesn’t want to lie to her. She has not pushed him to expose his past two decades, but he has been honest on everything he has shared. He wouldn’t dream to lie to her. “Calypso,” he says, and watches– something– cross his wife’s face, “she liked to…” He gestures vaguely towards the scar. “I prefer your hands on it, though,” he continues, also honest, and reaches to re-initiate what they had already been well into.  

Penelope allows him, although her hands stray from clutching his back. They rest lightly instead at his waist as he lavishes her throat with his mouth, licking at a very tame bite he wishes would bruise but one that he knows won’t. He puts those in stealthier locales. He wouldn’t dare to mark her in a location that may accidentally be shown off in public. For her comfort, always, always, but he sometimes fantasizes about it, claiming her publicly as his own and parading her around with possessiveness and pride. Look at my wife. He would never, but he stifles an open mouth huff against her skin at the thought, and grips a fistful of her gown to draw her closer still.

Call him a base man, but he has missed this part in particular.

Fantasies had gotten him through most of the war. Less so, after, when the gods had started to chase him across land and sea, but… always her. Always Penelope. Her voice, her fragrance, the way she laughed. The touch of her hand in his, the reverence in the way she said his name. But… things less suitable for company as well. The gasping pleas deep in the night. The pressure of her thighs against his ears. The heat of her body enveloped around him, willing and eager in drawing him in.

Gods, but he has missed this. Amongst many other things, but he is– ever, still, somehow– just a man. The urge to draw her chiton up past her waist and sink to his knees to taste is stronger now than it had been when he had left home for Troy.

The seven years on Ogygia had given him plenty of time to think about her. Those fantasies had followed him there, too, unswerving loyalty to the love of his life as Calypso worked her song and dance around her. The touch of her hand to his scars or his hair and his face dulled in comparison to the imaginings of his wife doing the same. Where the gods had taken away his time for daydreams, seven years trapped in would-be paradise had given him more than enough to return to his thoughts of Penelope. Her laugh, her smile. The tangle of her hair in the morning upon waking and the lazing relaxation of curling into bed with her at night. Her hands– not Calypso’s, never Calypso’s– on him as they settled down for sleep or more. Always daydreams, though. Only ever dreams, there, in that place.

And then– as Penelope’s hands tighten around his waist and she gasps into his mouth in allowance of a deeper kiss– he recalls the shift in the dreams. He doesn’t know why he does. He tries not to. He tries not to remember the night he had dozed off with memories of his wife, dreamt of kisses and whispered words of adoration, and pressing into her from all angles, her encouragement echoing his ears, begging him for more.

And he’d awoken on the crest of orgasm, Calypso’s name stuck on his lips instead. He had gasped through release, and shuddered through the dismay that pushed onto him almost immediately until he had thrown his linens aside and scrambled away from sleep and his lapsing mind within it. Heart pounding as he’d fled into the night, stunned and sick to his stomach. He’d walked the island for ages, hands shaking, eyes stinging, wanting to expel the contents of his stomach with every other thought. Even now, he doesn’t remember how he had made it back, but he had found himself feverishly working on the raft later that morning, hands worked raw and mind curiously blank.

Come to think of it… he had ended up on the edge of a cliff not long after. Small wonders.

“Odysseus,” Penelope says softly, so softly, but he winces again. He notices now that she has pulled away, and her hands on his waist are not grasping in pleasure, but caution. Damn. Damn. “You are too far away from me,” she says without judgment, and brushes his hair behind his ear.

Damn.

“I will not have you strain yourself when you are still haunted by her.”

“It’s not…” He would be more than happy to leave all of this behind him. He had left Calypso on Ogygia. It had to be as simple as that. “I’m not haunted by her.”

Slowly, and very deliberately, Penelope lays her palm against his shoulder blade, over part of the scar. “It can linger, when someone imposes their will upon you.”

“It wasn’t like that.” He repeats this, as he has promised her before. His weakness in dreams be damned. 

“It doesn’t have to be like that.”

“We did not share intimacy,” he repeats. He does not tell her of how Calypso had implied that the two of them would go to bed only when he tired of his wife. That she had expected– and told him, explicitly– that he would tire of Penelope long before she could tire of him, and that she did not mind waiting for him. He wonders now if she had thought that a kindness. But he would have sooner died. He very nearly had.

“She laid hands on you,” Penelope returns, and presses her palm flat against his scar. “That’s intimate enough.”

“The amount of people who have put their hands on me, as a king and soldier, far outstrips any of that.”

“Most people do not keep you held against your will for seven years.”

He sighs, slow and as quiet as possible, but he can see on her face that he is wearing the frustration of this conversation. He tries not to. It isn’t fair to her. But he is frustrated. It isn’t just about the sex. They have made good on their reunion. He is ever hungry for his wife and miraculously she is still for him; he knows they will make up for the long years in this sense, too. They have time now. But he despises that she hesitates now, for him, also knowing full well that she had been very interested in proceeding prior to this.

Wincing at her hands on him when he should be awash in rapture is blasphemous. He is failing his duty of being the man who provides for her once again.

“Husband.” The hand that is not on his scar curves along his jaw. He huffs out a breath as he is forced to look at her. “What did you feel, returning home, to hear from those men what they intended to do to me?”

“Rage.” He says it immediately, without an inkling of thought. Even now, months and months on, it still burns bright in the pit of his stomach, flashing red across his eyes. They all had witnessed his reaction. Those men are long dead, but the memory of their plans for Penelope and Telemachus sometimes makes him wish they weren’t, so he could slaughter them, in worse ways, all over again. “Disgust.”

“Then do not begrudge my feeling the same for hearing what Calypso’s intentions were for you.”

Odysseus pauses, considering those words as she scruffs his beard with her thumb. Rage and disgust. But Penelope wasn’t– surely she didn’t– well, of course she isn’t storming a palace with blood on her hands, something whispers in his head. There’s no viable target to strike here in these walls.

She has been so calm, so quiet and accepting of everything he has dared to share. To hear there is rage is– startling, he thinks, and has to turn the admission over in his head for a moment or two.

Even still, his response had been sitting primed on the tip of his tongue and it slips out soon all the same. “It isn’t the same.”

“Because she was kinder? Prettier? Because she spoke softly and offered you paradise?” Briefly, he thinks he sees her eyes blaze. But it is schooled away in the next moment, and he wonders if he’d imagined it. “Maybe she did not take you to bed, my love, but she caused you distress all the same.”

… maybe she’s right, he thinks, as he watches his wife. Flinching at touch on his bare skin and loose hair. The inability to leave memories of Ogygia behind even now. So, maybe she is onto something. He shouldn’t even be surprised. She always has been smarter than him.

He considers a moment longer, and rests his hand atop the one on his face. “Would you help me be rid of her?” And then, realizing the words sound more like a proposition than he necessarily intends in this moment, hurries to add, “I would just… I would like to associate this,” he pats her hand, “with you again. Wash away the memories of her touch. Penelope, replace her hands with your own. Please?” he asks, plaintively, and waits. 

“I would take pleasure in that,” she says, and applies only the slightest pressure against the scar. And then she pulls her hand away entirely. “But we are in no rush, Odysseus. If you find it agreeable, I will have my hands on you. But I think, perhaps, tonight isn’t the time to start.”

He lets out a breath he wasn’t aware he’d been holding. And has to laugh, just a little, because he had expected as much. He would not have pushed for their extracurriculars after her pause, but all the same, a part of him is… quietly disappointed. He tucks it away with the frustration, and the uncomfortable heat still roiling in his gut. Then nods, and rests his forehead against hers. “Maybe you’re right.”

“I usually am,” she teases.

He laughs for real, then. A quiet thing. And then he dares to press a kiss to the corner of her mouth. Just– the heat lingers. Her hands on him may not be on the table, nor sharing in their bodies for tonight, but– gods forgive him– he has missed his wife. To have her mouth against his is not hardship. Calypso had not claimed this from him. (Lies, something whispers, and he knows there had been one kiss from her, a chaste thing, strangely tentative but so hazy he can almost believe it hadn’t happened at all.) So, maybe, in consolation… 

“Odysseus.”

He smiles shamefully against her lips. Noses along her cheek. “Only this?” he breathes, quiet, hopeful, and still achingly wanting despite it all. “Penelope…”

Her hand cups his jaw again. She does not push him away. Her kiss is feather light, but there’s still a smile in her voice as she chastises, “incorrigible man.”

“What can I say?” He kisses her softly, slowly, again, and again, and again. Savoring the taste of her mouth and the touch of her skin. Lapping the quiet affection up like a dog left abandoned in the street. “Except that I missed my wife,” he continues, and kisses her again.

“I’m here.” She takes his hand.

“I know.” He tangles his fingers with her.

“We will get through this.”

“I know.”

“Just this for now,” she repeats, and kisses him warmly as he helplessly and happily agrees.

Chapter Text

After twenty years, Odysseus knows, there should be little that scares him short of parting from his family again. That should be the only thing, after what he’s faced. Everything else should have been beaten out of him, insecurities and fears battered and wrung from his skin and left out to sea. But things never have been so straightforward, and he stands on the edge of the water watching the swell and ebb of the ocean and… and he thinks he’s actually afraid. After everything– the murder, the death, the sacrifice, and loss, mythical beasts and magical spells and traversing the actual hells– after everything… it’s the water. He actually thinks he’s truly afraid of the water.

It’s ludicrous. After everything– after the confrontation right outside of this city, outsmarting the god of tides to get himself across the sea– he had done that. He had prevailed. He had done what it had taken and he had come home. But watching the water makes him sick, weak and jittery deep in his bones. He sweats under his chiton and swallows the saliva pooling in his mouth on the occasion he is out at sea now.

If the waves didn’t lock him in place from the fear, he knows he’d be inclined to run.

It’s so… stupid, he thinks angrily, and his hands shake not from anger but from this irrational thing. He clenches them into fists, and shakes them out with a breath that belays the anxiety. He trembles, and is angry for it, and stays, hoping to condition himself to the smell of brine and the sound of water being a good thing. A beautiful thing. His home. He had always loved the view. He still does. But he shivers himself into submission, now, right up until the moment where his knees buckle and he doubles over to retch pathetically into the tide, head hanging low to the sand like a sailor still wet behind the ears. He quakes as the rushing in his ears gets louder, as the breath is pressed from his lungs and his eyes sting with salt.

He is safe on his own familiar beach. So why does it feel like he’s drowning in this muggy air of his beautiful home?

He braces an arm against his stomach. The other is fisted atop the sand, keeping himself from pitching over entirely in this terrible weakness. He gasps, and trembles, and aches, and hates this for himself. He hates Poseidon for everything he’d done. He hates this broken, shattered mess he’s become. All because of a little water.

He wants to scream, if only he wouldn’t sob instead. 

He doesn’t know how much time he loses, knelt there by the water’s edge. No one disturbs him; he’s made certain of that. He chooses his time for weakness carefully, when he can crumble and then drag himself back to their room to recuperate without questions. This shouldn’t be a big deal, so he tries to mitigate how much it is to any prying eyes around him. He can deal with it on his own. He has to. 

It’s between him and the sea, and the choking, unending expanse surrounding his island.

Shuddering, he drags himself back to his feet and trudges away from the water.

Chapter Text

“Telemachus.”

“Yes, Mother?” 

Something in his gut drops at the look on his mom’s face. He’s instantly on guard, because– because he hadn’t thought anything could kill the joy he’s felt since dad came home. It had been twenty years. Surely, surely, nothing can take that away from them. And not now, it’s so soon, it’s too soon for her to have that look on her face–

He knows she can’t take more heartbreak. And he wants to be strong and say he could, but… he doesn’t know. He doesn’t think he could, either. It would be too hard now, maybe. He doesn’t know. He doesn’t want to think about it.

But he has to ask. “What’s wrong?”

“My son.” She smiles at him and it’s the world weary smile she’s held on her face looking at him for twenty years. His stomach is instantly in knots. She looks so tired, and he’s suddenly so scared, he reaches for her hands to hold as she continues. “I have something unfair to ask of you.”

“Anything,” he swears. And then, because he isn’t able to stop himself, “is he…?”

“Your father is fine.” He sags in relief, but the set of his mother’s shoulders does not change. “Or… he’s as fine as to be expected, I suppose.” She looks thoughtful for a moment, and squeezes his hands. “He needs time, Telemachus. I know you have been waiting for him. I know you have a lifetime to catch up on. But I have to ask you to be patient a while longer.” She smiles softly. “I know he wants you to pester his ear off as much as you do, but I don’t think he realizes the strain it causes him.”

Indignation flares hot in his chest. He feels the shame of it touch his cheeks, the resentment of being chastised as though he were a small child only out to annoy. “I haven’t been pestering him,” he protests. “We’ve only been talking, I haven’t been pestering him–” He falters, at the look she gives him, and feels himself shrink away from it. “I just…”

“I know how much you want to be with him,” she says quietly. “I feel it, too, love. I felt it with you every day, and I feel it with him every day now, too. But your father is changed, Telemachus. I know you can’t know that, but he’s… he has been through a lot,” she says, slightly breathless, and the rest of Telemachus’ misguided anger melts away just like that. He feels her pain. He can hear it in her voice and the way her hands seize around his. “So, it is unfair of me to ask you to give him time when you have been so deprived of him your whole life. But I am asking, Telemachus. For his sake, more than ours.”

He wonders what she sees in Father for her to say that. He doesn’t know; he can’t know. She’s right. All he has is stories. He doesn’t know what he was like, back then. So he wonders, but… but maybe he doesn’t want to know. Maybe it’s better he can’t see the difference, that he can’t tell how broken his father is. At the end of the day, all that matters is that he’s back. And it– stings, okay, yeah, that he might be overwhelming. That they might be overwhelming. But… he’s back, and that’s worth everything in the world.

“… okay,” he murmurs. He’s hurt, but– but he’ll be okay. He knows they will be. “Sorry.”

“I’m sorry,” she says, and kisses the top of his head. He scrunches his nose, but doesn’t pull away. “It is unkind, after all this time. I know.”

“It’s okay.” It isn’t, really, but he knows he needs to say that. He knows she needs to hear it, and that she wouldn’t be asking if Odysseus didn’t need it, too. He won’t do anything to push. As long as they stay together now– well. Father came home. After twenty years. Anything is possible. He had thought so before, but he knows so now. He nods to himself, draws himself up, and meets his mother’s gaze again. “Is there anything I can do to help? If there is, tell me and I’ll do it,” he swears, determined to help either of them however he can. Things are going to change. Times will be tough. But they’ll get through it, because anything is possible.

Something crosses his mom’s face that he doesn’t really understand. He’s seen it a few times, and it’s usually a little sad, but it doesn’t look that way now, so he doesn’t know. Then, she squeezes his shoulder firmly, and says “just be patient with him, and me, sweetheart. Just for a little while longer.”

“I will.” He promises.

Chapter Text

Ithaca flourishes under Odysseus’s return. Penelope is glad to see it, to watch the infrastructure rebuild itself as their king turns his attention to their city. There is so much to do and so much more to be done, but even a small change is making such a large difference. It is good to look upon the city with hope and pride in her heart again. To walk the city with her husband at her side is even better.  

The storm unleashed by Poseidon had left its damages upon their home. Not as bad as it could have been, of course; thanks to her quick-witted husband, they had only suffered minor damage instead of total destruction. But damage was still damage, something assessed and marked to be fixed in the weeks following the king’s return.

One of the ports had suffered in the storm. Work had been underway, and Penelope watches as her husband takes in what progress has been made since their last visit. It still has seen better days, she knows, but– as the wind whips the damp sea air across her face and she brushes a piece of hair behind her ear– they are making good progress.

She has just thought that to herself when there’s a crack, a shout, and she watches in horror as part of the dock collapses and sends three of the men into the water below. Odysseus is among them, and her stomach lurches as he vanishes from sight. 

Someone ushers back for her own safety. Even still, she manages to catch sight of them all in the water; they look surprised, maybe amused or maybe horrified for this to happen under their king’s eye, she cannot tell. Her eyes are drawn to Odysseus, always, barely daring to let him out of her sight in fear of something sweeping him away again, but the waters are as predictable as they ever are. There’s some banter and apologies, scrambling to collect detritus in the water and get themselves back to land. Odysseus moves among them, but… Penelope can hear her own pulse racing. There is the taste of tin on the back of her tongue. She does not know why, until she catches better sight of her husband’s face: there is terror there, shock and a sweeping agony on his face, as he clumsily treads water. She can practically see the breaths he takes even from this distance.

She tries to move forward a step, but she is still being held back. She remembers Odysseus telling her of almost drowning outside of their walls. She remembers how he had said he thought he would die, so close to their home. And she recognizes the panic seizing his face and hands now as he works to stay afloat. Oh. Oh. “Help him,” she whispers.

No one hears. No one but herself seems to notice anything amiss. There is still joking and swearing as time stands still and she watches her husband relive one of his worst nightmares.

Then there is the swell of the tide, and it catches Odysseus, and pulls him away. 

“Help him!” Penelope pulls free, sprinting down the docks. She hears wood creaking beneath her feet, but she doesn’t stop until she’s standing close and watching her husband panic. The two that were already mostly on their way out of the water seem taken aback by their great king folding under the weight of the water. They don’t know. They could not possibly know– “HELP HIM!” she screams, terrified and frustrated and in dismay all at once. She is shaking as they look to her in surprise.

Realistically, she knows it has only been seconds. But it feels like forever. It feels like a lifetime is being stolen away from them in these precious, horrifying seconds. Her whole body is shaking in frustration and fear, and she knows– she knows– Odysseus needs help. He can’t do this on his own. Not right now. He needs help, and the shock of these precious seconds has the world locked in place from indecision. 

Afterwards, she won’t blame them for their hesitation. It’s moments. Mere moments. And shock could hold you in place against your best intentions. She understands that more than most. But, in these precious seconds, all she can think is that everyone else here is completely and utterly useless.

She rips off her himation, and takes a running leap for the edge of the dock.

Arms catch her before she can. She swears and struggles and tries to go to her husband, even as time catches up around them: she is held back by a flurry of motion on the docks, trying to be shepherded to safety again; there are several men flocking to Odysseus now, catching him easily in their trained hands and herding him towards land. And Odysseus, her love, barely keeping from gasping water into his lungs, hair plastered to his face, skin pale. His face is wet, and his chest heaves.

She runs to meet up with them the moment they haul him back to safety. He is still gasping, hard, rasping things strained by salt and sorrow. His hands clutch at the front of the chiton. His stare is a thousand yards off. He doesn’t seem to notice the flurry of movement around him at all.

Penelope crashes to her knees in front of him. “Odysseus.” She wants to take this horror away from him, but she knows that she can’t. It’s over. It’s already happened. It’s still happening, for him. “My love. May I touch you?”

He doesn’t respond, save for doubling over to vomit sea water over them. His breath comes out even more of an uneven wheeze as he coughs, and clutches at his scars. He sounds like he’s dying– but she refuses to entertain that thought at all. She steels herself, and takes more immediate action.

“Get me something dry,” she says over her shoulder, and there is a cloak of some sort shoved into her hands. She reaches over and wraps it tightly around his shoulders, and rubs her hands against his arms. She does not pull back when he flinches forward from the shock. She will feel bad for it later, when he is not dripping wet in this cooler evening air and in precarious position of accidentally taking another tumble if weight distribution turns against them. “Give us some space,” she orders, once there are enough linens procured for her and she has managed to coax Odysseus away from the edge. “Keep everyone back. Go and fetch my son.” 

And then, quieter, as gently as she can while her voice still shakes, “Odysseus, you’re safe. I’m here. We’re okay. You’re okay.”

This is not the first time she has seen him like this since his return. Honestly, she would have been more surprised if he had not had episodes like these, after everything he has been through. But this is more jarring. It had not been his own mind twisting his traumas past into present day. This had been happening in real time, with very real, very physical consequences. And she knows that every time he crumbles, it is just as real to him, but those times did not involve him sinking below the surface of water and starting to drown before her eyes. So, this has shaken her.

But he needs her. He needs her to be the strong one when he cannot, and she takes that responsibility with pride no matter how much it terrifies her. “Ody,” she whispers for his ears. “Darling. Breathe with me, love.” She wants to take his hand and press it against her breast, something for him to anchor himself to besides his sins and his scars, but she does not dare. She had scrubbed the cloak against his arms to soak up any residual water, and he had flinched from that. Now she is simply holding the fabric closed around him, and doesn’t dare to do anything but keep her hands to herself until he gives her an okay. “I’m right here. We’re home. We’re safe. The shadows at your periphery are nothing when compared to us.”

She whispers these reassurances until she can see her husband start to come back to her. It’s minute, as his breathing becomes less shallow and his body stops trembling from more than simple cold. His eyes focus, even if it’s only slightly, as he returns to the immediate present. A furrow forms between his brows. And then, instead of the usual exhaustion that comes after one of these attacks: tension. She knows. She understands. Usually, these moments are in the sanctity of their own walls, or their bedroom. His weakness does not see the light of day if he can help it, but here it is laid bare on display. There are not that many people here to have witnessed this, but she knows he is becoming aware of the fact that there were people at all. A king brought to his knees.

She does not mind, and she doubts their people do. But Odysseus does, this horrible moment of being seen where he does not want to be. She hates this situation for him, and hates that she cannot change it.

“… Penelope,” he rasps. His fingers twitch towards her hand. She takes them immediately.

“There you are.”

He laces their fingers together, even as his attention drifts. She can see that in him, too. The minuscule jerk of his head, the way his eyes slide towards any of the others around. The shame. Well, she won’t have it. She won’t.

“Odysseus,” she says firmly. It does not draw his attention. She tries again. “Odysseus, look at me.” This time, his chin angles back towards her. It takes a long, hazy moment before his eyes lift to meet hers, looking tired and pained and uncertain. “Odysseus.” She holds up the hand he is not holding. “May I touch you?” she asks again.

He just stares at her for a moment, looking– beaten down, honestly. Exhausted and humiliated in the face of this fear. But she holds his gaze without pity, and he squeezes her hand. “Of course…” he murmurs, and she does, taking his face in her hand. “Penelope…”

“Everything is alright, husband.” She swipes some of the wet away from his face, and tucks his dripping hair behind his ear. “I swear it.”

He swallows audibly. His face is still pale. He looks more liable to vomit again now than he had the moment they’d pulled him from the sea, but she won’t shy away from that threat, either. Nothing could keep her from him in this time of need.

She shifts her hand to cup the back of his head, and turns his face to press her lips near his ear. “This is not weakness, husband. This is just proof that you are human. You are a man not above pain, like any other.”

He lets out a shaking breath. And then, as the evening air whips around them again, shudders violently in his wet things and battered limbs. She kisses his cheek, and pulls back.

As if on cue, Telemachus’ voice rings across the way. “Father!”

Odysseus flinches, but his head snaps up to find their son. Ingrained instinct, even in times of crisis.

Telemachus crouches next to them, hair windswept and eyes worried. “Are you okay?!” He is vaguely out of breath. Penelope wonders if he’d run here himself.

“He’s fine,” she interrupts, because she will not let Odysseus linger on anything else. “We had a bit of a scare with the rebuilding efforts,” she explains, hand resting on her husband’s shoulder again. “No physical injuries,” she promises, as she watches Telemachus put two and two together here. “But I thought we could do with the help getting back to the palace before he catches his death of cold.” As if the night is near cold enough for such a thing. As if there are not able-bodied men here that could help them back on their own.

“Of course,” he says, immediately on his feet and offering a hand down to his father. There is no hesitation. She is so proud of their son.

Odysseus is unsteady on his feet, but manages to give the scant crowd a weary smile. There is exhaustion in his eyes that he can’t hide, but he follows Penelope and Telemachus’ examples of lifting their chins as they pass. A united front, unbreakable even in the worst of times.

He may still be shaking by the time they help him back to their room, but: unbreakable. He will suffer for this accident, she knows, and she despises the pain this will cause. But she is so proud of him, too. 

Nothing could change that. She will make certain he knows, no matter how long it takes her to drive the point home. Nothing will shake her faith in him. So much has changed, but not that. 

Never that.