Chapter Text
Odysseus,
It has been three weeks since the war ended. I had hoped you would hear the news and decide to come running back to me, but all that I’ve seen is a stillness unlike any before. I miss you. Dearly. There has not been a day since you left this house that I haven’t thought about you, my love. Your voice, your smile, those golden eyes of yours, the lips that kissed me so gently or roughly, depending on your mood. It is entirely too lonely in this nest now…but still, I cling to the thought that you will return to me, someday. My faith in you is unwavering.
I’ve received many visitors in the weeks since the war ended. Some were unmarried folk seeking to capitalize on your lack of return, a disgusting sight. Others were liars and thieves, claiming to have known you before the war and during (one gentleman described you as “a man of great skill and renown,” at which point I considered not just closing the door on him, but also intentionally catching his fingers in the frame with an aggressiveness that would leave him down to the knuckle on his right hand), but there were a few who carried the grief of knowing you deeply. It felt good to acknowledge your, ahem, abandonment with someone else, though they never felt the pain as strongly as I did when it came to you. The Odysseus they spoke of wasn’t the one I knew, and yet, they both existed. My sweet, gentle wife, Odys, the one who delayed her deployment as best she could in the wake of our baby’s birth, and the battle hardened soldier, Odysseus, who commanded a battalion of many in the hopes of winning the Smoke War. Can I ask if you would still hold my face as you used to? Would I get used to the newly formed callouses on your hands against my skin? The more I think of it, the more it hurts to miss you.
Ah. One of the wing’s directors even stopped by. I remember seeing him on the news when I could bear it, those icy eyes. And yet those very same eyes were filled with regret, downcast while at my door as he held two letters in his hand that were distinctly different. I knew exactly what they were for. The first words he said to me were a formality.
“My condolences. May I come in?”
I should have said no. I really wanted to, but the older paper he held—it looked like your handwriting—I knew that that, I wanted. So I invited him in and took the letters with false gratitude. I slid my knife under the wax seal to have my final words with you.
I want you to know that I read what you wrote to me in silence. I didn’t shed a single tear, hiccup a single cry, damn any god or devil in the vicinity. How could I, Odys? How could you? The only person I could damn to hell or heaven would be you, my dear beloved, because no matter how much that delicate script of yours sneered at me with your villainous pride, your cleverness and wits that could evade death like some tale of old, the emptiness I felt the day you left me remained still. Your absence was more tangible than your presence. And there I sat with my last piece of correspondence with you as a man I barely knew apologetically detailed your pension that I was eligible for. If I didn’t love you so much, Odys, I’d hate you with all of my heart. They only did this for me because of your status as a board member of I Corporation, because of our home in the nest, and…and this somehow angered me further—had you been unknown and I widowed, I’d suffer two terrible circumstances: your death and my inevitable starvation. The former has been cruel enough that I feel it weathering away at my soul; the latter would be overkill. Anyway, the man could sense my foul mood and quickly excused himself, but he stopped near the door, hesitating. He said to me that you were one of the best generals he conversed with, and that every word you spoke of me conveyed a love so dear and unbreakable, you even promised him that you’d come home to me, and he did hope that that promise would be made true. He was more than inclined to believe you.
I’ve said enough, haven’t I? I haven’t returned to work as of yet as I am shackled by grief; I must get back to making and unmaking my veil for your father. He dotes on me still…especially since you’ve been gone. I am his only daughter left, as he says. There’s no purpose in correcting him with “in-law.” He misses you as well.
Love,
Your Penelope