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Odysseus: ..how can you still look at me?
The tremble that ravaged the King's hands was felt no stronger than in the soul of Ithaca's Queen.
Odysseus: ..how can you look at the beast and see beauty? After everything.. everything..
Odysseus's words, losing measure by the second, relented at the touch of Penelope's hand on his cheek.
Penelope: Everything.. that you did for me.
Odysseus's eyes lifted shamefully from the floor to meet Penelope's, searching still for reason and rhyme in a poemless lifespan.
Penelope: Ody.. sit with me.
Odysseus felt his world's fingers gently eclipse his own, and followed her in the silence that, for the moment he blinked, rung with stinging screams.
"CAPTAAAAIIIIN!!!"
He flinched at the memory. His breath fled control, and.. stopped.
Penelope stroked Odysseus's back, slowly down his spine and then floating upward toward his neck, with the palm of her hand. Both sat on the edge of their bed.. under the branches of the peace.
He exhaled. And a tear, fleeting, slipped from his battlements.
Odysseus brushed it aside, and yet..
Penelope: ..you're crying..
Penelope softly sighed, her smile and eyes - glittering with tears of her own - swelling in hushed currents of relief.
Odysseus: I lost them all, I-
Odysseus choked on his heartbreak, his eyes bleeding in the crying, in the trembling.
And he froze.
Odysseus: ..polites..
Penelope: ..hey..
Odysseus: Polites.. he's..
His breath rose again, his arms tensed- twitched, his eyes half at the gravestone and half at the fragments of a skull.
Penelope: Hey, Ody.. Ody..
Odysseus: ..what have I done-
He gasped, and his muscles locked at a sudden motion of.. Penelope. Wrapping her arms around his shoulders.. breathing heavy, but with a hand still pressing on the back of his head.
Odysseus exhaled enough to feel a sliver of suffocation creep in his throat, and gasped again for air.
Again and again he did this, shaking in a powerlessness that made his stomach churn and his legs weak.
Penelope: Odysseus.. where are you?
All Penelope heard were the hoots of a Little Owl; guarding, despite its powerlessness, on a tree outside the window.
But Odysseus heard them too. Little hoots..
Odysseus: ..home. I'm.. I'm home..
His voice broke. His breaths, no less gasps, rose to aching sobs as the feeling of the room, the tree, the bed, the owl, Penelope; finally found him. Tears trickled down his face, but his smile was wide and real and home. His arms crushed nothing, no man's life would ever falter beneath them for Penelope was there, Penelope was within their hold, his hold, his home!!
Odysseus: Penelope..
Penelope leant back just enough to see her husband's face.. his hair still an absolute mess, skin still scuffed and scarred, scrunched up in a grieving joy.. god, he was beautiful. He was here, he was all hers, she was all his, he was home.
And she cried, free as the doves.
Penelope: ..look at you.. you're just as beautiful as the day I lost you.. but you're here.
Odysseus: I am.. beautiful..
Penelope: There is no beast in you.
Her hand now held Odysseus's cheek, guiding foreheads together and souls where Aphrodite too would weep and smile.
Odysseus: ..and if there is?
Penelope sniffled.
Penelope: Then damn it, I love a beast!
She hugged him tight again, her exhale shaking with bliss and pain.
And the owl left quietly.