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Odysseus was eye to eye with a girl that looked too much like him to be a stranger. She had the same curls, just in Penelope's black. She had the same jaw, the same eyes that held eye contact too aggressive, didn't blink enough. Her nose was almost identical, aside from a bump on the side that gave asymmetry to her face.
She tried to look at who he was, as though she recognized him from tapestries, or pottery. After the longest minute of their lives, she spoke. "Do you... happen to be Odysseus?"
His grip tightened on his bow. Not out of readinesss to shoot, but more so to calm his nerves. He ran his thumb over the smooth wood, along the grooves, lightly.
"Yes. Who are you?" he asked.
Her face dropped from a practiced neutral to almost wonder, similar to shock, but not there. "You're- by the gods- I never thought I would get to meet you!" She moved closer, soon less than an arm's length away. She had inherited Penelope's height, about the same height as him, give or take about two inches. She also didn't appear to pay any mind to the fact that both Odysseus and the floor was covered in blood. "I'm your daughter. Kallisto." She didn't dare touch him yet.
A daughter. He had a second child. He had never gotten to see her as a baby, nor help name her, or see her birth. The war ripped those, along with the chance to help raise his children, straight from his arms. Something in his face cracked, almost softened. He moved closer to her.
"Kalli!" a voice called from the hall. It was Telemachus. He rushed into the room, before pulling his sister into a hug. "Thank the gods you're safe."
Odysseus looked at his children. The older looked more like Penelope, in subtle ways, and acted like it too. The younger, though, looked more like him, in less subtle ways. The two were quite affectionate with each other.
He had already had his sweet moment with Telemachus, the son he'd fought for. But he couldn't help but feel disconnected from his daughter, the one born after he was gone, with no reliable way to tell Odysseus of her birth. She seemed to feel similarly towards him, since she appeared to be very touchy with her brother, never fully breaking contact, even if just a gentle grip on his clothing or a hand on his arm, while she hadn't even tried to shake hands with Odysseus.
His eyes flickered down to the glint around her neck. He recognized it. His mother's necklace. She must have given it to Kallisto before death. Something felt worse inside him. He held it in.
A week later, after the halls had been cleaned of blood and the servants cleaned of disloyalty, Kallisto was organizing her scrolls. She had put those written by the same author in one pile, while a different author was in another. Odysseus watched from a seat in the corner, which the father and daughter had argued about for a few short minutes before she stormed off and realized she could use the time to reorganize her scrolls.
She was careful in how she placed them, in alphabetical order of author, then title.
Telemachus was trying to help, but kept placing scrolls in the wrong spots, getting his litle sister agitated.
"Telemachus! That goes here. In what world would that go there!?" She snatched the scroll from where he put it before placing it where it should go.
Telemachus got annoyed at Kallisto's insistence. Odysseus recognized said insistence. "Gods, Kalli, it's not a big deal!"
"Yes it is!" she insisted. "I want it to be organized, not willy nilly like you!"
The two continued arguing, soon throwing insults back and forth, until Telemachus kicked multiple scrolls out of place, making Kallisto gasp.
"Shove off, Telemachus." She wanted him gone. He ruined about two hours of work, maybe more.
He opened his mouth to apologize before deciding against it and leaving the room.
Odysseus noticed how every few seconds, his daughter would shake her hands out, breathing almost shakily as she tried to reorganize it all.
"Kallisto." Odysseus had done similar to her when everything was too much, when too many waves crashed around the ships, even during the war, though he'd been forced to learb how to force himself through it. He knew of a way to calm his daughter down.
She turnef her head towards him. "Yes Father?"
"Go to a secluded room. Make sure very little light, if any, is able to get in there. Stay until you feel better." It wasn't a suggestion.
"But why? I'm fine, just irritated, because Telemachus kept messing up the scrolls!" Her hands were in fists at her sides.
"I saw. Go."
She complied, complaining to herself along the way.
She had the same strangeness he did. Penelope's father probably didn't like that based on how much he liked Odysseus's own strangeness. He sat there for a while. Until Kallisto came back.
She looked better, though her breath was still slightly shaky. "Thank you, Father, for telling me to go do that. It helped quite a bit. I usually just go to my room and block Telemachus out of it. Mother sometimes helps though."
"How so?" He wondered if Penelope helped their daughter the same way she would help him, let him be held by her as she reminded him of how well he does.
"She lets me lie in her lap and runs her fingers through hair as she tells me stories about...." Her gaze flickered to Odysseus. ".....you. She told me how you faked madness at first so you could stay here. Told me stories of your conquests from travelers. But now I can hear it from the source. Unless you have... bad memories attached to them." Her hand went to her arm, almost protectively. Her eyes looked away from you. She seemed to understand what that was like.
"Most do. I'm not one to mind that too much though, since I was asked about them quite often for seven years."
"Do you... do you still feel them? Like they're still there?" she asked, as though she was seeking assurance.
He looked at her in the eyes, and really, truly searched in them. "Yes, but... why do you ask?"
She looked away, arms going to cover her already covered chest. "The suitors. Sometimes they tried to get to me instead of Mother. And they already tried to bed her many times, but she was locked in her room I was usually walking the halls when one of them would walk up, pin me to the wall, and grope me until Telemachus or Mother came over and threatened them. I can still feel their hands. I was just wondering if I wasn't alone in that."
His face changed. He was good at reading faces, having had 600 men's faces to read, though he was a bit rusty. She looked as thoughshe was hiding the whole truth from him.
"Did they ever do more?" he pushed. He needed to know who should have gotten a more gruesome death than was given.
"Once." A lie. It was more. "Held me down and- and took what he wanted. He didn't care that my mind did not consent, only about reactions he forced out of me. It hurt so horribly much." Tears threatened to crawl across her cheeks, already forming.
"Who."
"He is dead, Father. He got what he deserved."
"That is not what I asked, Kallisto."
"Antinous."
"Oh, yes. He was the first one. He boasted of future plans to rape your mother and brother, and kill him."
"He always was the most boastful. Bragged to others about how he had deflowered me. Bragged."
"I have some experience with a woman like that. But she was moreso the one being deflowered. Unfortunately, I was unable to push her off."
Kallisto was surprised. A woman would, in general, be unable to overpower her father, let alone rape him. "Does Mother know?"
"No. I'm... too ashamed to tell her that I was unfaithful.."
"Unfaithful? Unless your mind consented, you are not unfaithful. That is what I had been taught by Mother, in the case a man tried to court me while the suitors were here. That never happened, but nonetheless, it's applicable."
"Oh, but I am a man, I should have thrown her off and run into the forest. Before she bound me."
"She bound you? Antinous bound me, too. So I would not attack him as he took what he wanted. Maybe that is why she bound you."
The two spoke of their respective assaulters for a long while, until Penelope overheard them speaking.
"And he told me to be a 'good girl' as though I haven't been told that I'm good and obedient all my life." Kallisto sounded.. humoured. That was queer.
"Calypso kept narrating everything like a stage! As though she wasn't actively doing it." And Odysseus. He sounded like how he was when he spoke with Telemachus, not the usual disconnect he often had with Kallisto. Penelope'd have to ask about it in the morning.