The silence that followed was suffocating. Penelope was weighed down with the shame that hung around her neck. As she met her husband’s eyes, she saw hurt flicker through his gaze. It was slight, but it was there.
“Oh, Odysseus,” she rasped finally, “I didn’t… I didn’t mean -” Her hand hovered, trembling in the space between them.
“It’s alright.” He responded quickly, cutting her off. But the guilt continued to flood through her. This man had fought his way from the edge of death to be here at their side - and she flinched away from his touch. The tension in the room was palpable. The walls seemed to shrink with it. “I didn’t mean to startle you.” He whispered, the confidence missing from his voice, replaced with something quiet - almost fragile.
But it was too late. Penelope could feel the space between them stretch, as though the past twenty years might never be bridged. Their reunion, for all the warmth she had onceimagined, was now suffused with something else entirely - this was not the ease of familiarity, but the rawness of something that needed mending.
Telemachus muttered a valediction, placed a gentle kiss on his mother’s cheek, and slipped out the door without another word.
“Odysseus -”
“Don’t.” He stopped her once again, lifting his hand to comfort her before dropping it once more. “Don’t apologize for the fears I was supposed to protect you from. Protect our son from. Don’t apologize for the strength you had to carry while I was away.”
Penelope’s throat constricted, tempting her emotions to break free of the dam she had built. How long had she yearned for his protection? For her husband to stand at her side once more?
As a tear slid down her cheek, she turned her head, embarrassed at the outward show of emotion. With her eyes shut tight, she let out a shaky breath. “I am not afraid of you.” Was she reassuring him, or herself? “I have never had a reason to fear you, and I do not have one now.”
“Penelope…” Odysseus started. He reached out again but did not falter this time, brushing the tear away with the pad of his thumb. His hand on her cheek felt both foreign and achingly familiar.
He gently turned her eyes to his. This time, she did not pull back from her husband. His hand on her cheek was a warm and welcome reminder of their lost love. “The only thing I am sure of is the man I am by your side. Come back to bed. Please.”
6
HE DIDN’T RETURN TO SLEEP THAT NIGHT. How could he? He had watched his wife and his son recoil from him. Watched his son standing between them, acting as a human shield for his mother.
Odysseus’ mind raced as he lay there, listening to his wife's steady breathing, trying to piece together what had occurred in this room tonight. The room was silent. It felt suffocating.
He had been dreaming… of what - he couldn’t remember. Was it the depths of Scylla’s lair, or the halls of the underworld that haunted him? Each time he closed his eyes, all he saw was pain. But when he opened them, he saw his wife underneath him. And though her voice sounded calm, her eyes were wild with panic.
Had he been so wrapped up in his nightmare that he forgot the touch of his wife? So consumed by the evils lurking in the recesses of his mind that he saw her as a threat?
Then there was the knife. He hadn’t mentioned it, but he saw it there, on the ground. If he sat up, he could still see it. The blade glinting in the moonlight, a stark reminder of how much had changed… how much his family had to mend.
He could not undo the years of scars his wife and his son bore on their skin and on their hearts. But he would try.
For them, he would try.
He slipped from the bed with the same silence he had utilized on the battlefield. The shadows of Ithaca’s past whispered in the quiet as he wandered its halls, each step stirring dust that had long settled without him.
As he wandered the halls, walls he had built with his own hands, his mind wandered too. The moon was setting, dust floating in the air as he walked past the opened windows.
Turning a corner, he stopped in his tracks, having collided directly with a member of his house. Eurycleia scolded him, “Just because you’ve been gone nearly twenty years doesn’t mean this house has stopped turning, your grace.”
Odysseus laughed, steadying the older woman in front of him. “You know, where I’ve been, kings have silenced members of their staff who dare speak to them like this.”
“I reckon those sorts of calls go through your queen now.” Her grin was teasing, but the words twisted like a knife in his gut. Ithaca had kept moving, even without its king. It was so easy for him to block out life here. He had imagined Ithaca waiting for him as he left it, unchanged and faithful. But the world still spun. He was a ghost walking through a house built by another man’s hands.
“Excuse me.” He murmured and left her behind. A bitter taste lingered on his tongue. With no desire to continue to walk through halls of history, he turned on his heels, returning to the bedchamber.
Upon arriving at his door, he found his son standing by the door, sword strapped to his hip. They made eye contact briefly before Telemachus averted his eyes. “Father,” he said, blush creeping up his neck. “Forgive me.”
“Don’t,” He said, echoing the sentiments he shared with Penelope last night. The words came steadily as he placed a hand on his son’s shoulder. “There is nothing in need of forgiving. I am grateful for you, my son. Grateful for how you have protected your mother when I could not. You have grown into a fine man."
He could feel the physical strength of the young man that stood before him, the strength he had not been there to help forge. Odysseus kept his hand on Telemachus’ shoulder a moment longer, but the weight of it brought an unfamiliar feeling. It wasn’t the proud weight of a father reflecting on his son. It was the weight of a man unsure of where he stood with that son, a son that might consider it too late for a father’s influence.
Telemachus shifted under Odysseus’ gaze, the flush of embarrassment creeping further up his neck. “Father, I…” He stumbled over his words, “I wasn’t sure what to expect once you returned.”
He wanted to comfort his son, respond with something light to ease the tension, but the words lodged in his throat, voice thick with emotions unsaid. He knew Telemachus had held so much of Ithaca together, so much of his mother together. He had to be a man much before he should have been, and Odysseus would carry that burden to his grave.
