#After Athena makes sure Odysseus is settled at home

[differentnerddiplomatopera]

Odysseus experiences phantom touch (due to Calypso) DIE YOU BITCH (Have I mentioned I hate her)

Summary:

Trigger Warning: Sexual Assault/Rape Authors Note: I experience phantom pain from sexual assault, so I am using my experience. I am qualified enough to write about it. Please write this how you will (don’t ignore the disgusting behavior of Calypso however)

Chapter Text

Background Info: Odysseus take pride in his hair. He hates cutting it, feeling like a part of himself is being taken away. Penelope love his hair; before the war, in their most intimate moments, she would braid his hair, admiring the beauty that is her partner. Diomedes loves Odysseus’s hair, running his fingers through it while Ody tells him stories. He would never admit it to him. Later he wishes he did.

Story Idea: While on the island of Ogygia, suffering the disgusting non-consensual rape of Calypso, she takes up the habit of tugging his hair. Scratching her nails into his scalp. After an unwanted routine, he gets free from her. Looking to be free of her for a fleeting moment. As he is in the stillness of the quiet night, the phantom feeling of her hands on his head, unwanted fingers in his hair, gets to be too much. It feels like a pressure on his head, never relenting. In a moment of desperation, he cuts/rips his hair out. It feels like a momentary release of pain. His whole body aches with her touch as well, a need to be rid of the tightness on his body. His pride in his hair, taken away from a fucking shit-hole of a goddess. He hope that the pressure goes away.

Edit: I might edit this work later. This made me sad. Phantom touch is not fun at all. I don’t like his suffering at all. Might get rid of two more sad ideas, then healing. Cus he deserves healing and happiness.

[differentnerddiplomatopera]

Odysseus: I ask for a high five once, and you make a new friend-mentee- whatever, are you joking?!

Athena: Ody please-

Odysseus: No! I’m not listening, i am not listening to you!

Athena: Gods above, Odysseus I am referring to you!

Odysseus:

Telemachus:

Odysseus: You told him- everything

Athena: Yes

Odysseus: Everything? My son? Knows everything?

Athena: Yes

Odysseus: Why? Would you do this to me?

Athena:

Telemachus:

Penelope:

Headcanon that Athena mentions her "friend" to Telemachus every time she has the chance and Telemachus, being this curious boy always wanting to hear stories, always encourages her to do so.

Then one day, Telemachus being bored as hell and probably got into another fight with the suitors, goes up to Athena and asks her if her friend ever did something stupid

And Athena just. Jumps to tell all the bullshit Odysseus got into. It's like a therapy session to talk about how dumb he can be. And Telemachus eats it all up

Fast forward to when Ody comes back home and Athena just hangs around sometimes. Telemachus, again, bored goes to ask Athena about stories of her friend and the shit he did. And Athena freezes up. Odysseus gets curious, and jealous, cause he never knew about a friend, and asks his son.

The mix of pure horror on his face when he discovers his son knows all the stupid shit he did in his youth, and the joy of Athena calling him her friend and talking about it goes entirely unnoticed by his son.

Athena meanwhile is dying inside.

Penelope is cackling

[littlesparklight]

Death of Heroes: Achilles

Apollo and Paris kill Achilles, Thetis grieves (set right after his death, so before she and her sisters go to grieve by his corpse).

***

When Achilles was felled by Paris, Apollo stood behind him. It was not that Paris needed the god's assistance, for he could have killed Achilles with none at all; it was that Apollo had been promised Achilles' death, and he would have it. And so it was Paris' hand, Paris' bow, Paris' arrows that killed Achilles.

But it was Apollo who drew the first arrow back. It was Apollo who let it go. It was Apollo who guided the lethal arrow, to let it fly at the angle needed to drive the warrior to his knees when the tendon in his heel was severed. The second arrow Paris let go with a song to the trembling string from which the arrow flew, a terrible finality in the straightness of the shot, and it was Apollo who drove the arrow so deep not even divinely-crafted armour could have shielded Achilles from the blow.

It was Apollo who killed Achilles for Troilus' murder, and the god was radiant as Achilles fell, blinded by the light.

And Thetis, sitting distantly underneath darkening waves that were already roiling with the tension of settling fate, felt it. Shuddering like she was the one who had been struck by the arrows, she bent over herself, a hand clutching at her face.

"No. No, no, no, no!" Thetis had thought foreknowledge would arm her like she had armed her son, but like the divinely crafted armour made by Hephaistos' himself had not been enough in the face of divine retribution, so divine forewarning had, in the end, left her as vulnerable as her son.

"Thetis?" Agave leaned in close, a hand on her shoulder, worry knotting her brows, but Thetis could scarce articulate to herself what had happened, even less voice her new sorrow to her sister.

"My son! Curse my womb, curse Peleus!" Crying out, her other hand dug into her hair, pulling it out of the gleaming strings of pearls that held it in shining bunches around her head, yanking down toward where the first of the silver bands were, tearing at her hair. "Father Zeus, why?"

If she hadn't rejected him - no, no, that wouldn't have worked. She had been as tempted by him as she had by Poseidon, and even if Zeus wouldn't have made good on marrying her off to a mortal for rejecting him, there was still Themis and her awful prophecy, the words that had doomed her irrespective of divine affront at being rejected. If she and Peleus had just managed to convince their son to remain in hiding on Skyros for long enough to have the other Danaans leave! Curse the craftiness of Odysseus! She had been sure, so blessedly relieved and sure, that having Deidameia, his young son, and Patroklos all in one place had been anchoring him and making the heady ambrosia of glory if not less attractive, then just unwanted enough he would have refused any overtures to convince him to go back for another attempt at Troy if he was found. Five years was not an insignificant length of time for a mortal, after all. A fulfilling family life was not the glory and honour of war, no, and mortal men valued it so highly, but it was not insignificant either. He had been in love with both of them, Patroklos more than Deidameia admittedly, but his feelings for her hadn't been insignificant, and both would have been assured a long life and more children than only his first, had Achilles just stayed long enough to be passed over. Then they could have travelled back to Phthia and it would have been good.

But no. No, of course not. Achilles had been just barely twenty by that point, younger still when he first landed on Skyros; of course war and the glory he could win from it was what he'd wanted more, especially since Patroklos would be with him either way.

"Damn the man for interrupting me!" Clawing at her hair until Agave and Actaea gently pulled her hands away to hold them, Thetis realized she now had the majority of her sisters around her, and their parents were coming in as well. "My son is dead! If my husband had just let me---!"

She moaned, her throat choking up as she sobbed, and around her, as understanding spread, her sisters sympathetically drew breath for wailing. It was almost soothing to hear her growing grief echoed out and magnified. Doris and Nereus were now behind her, her mother's cheek pressed against her head, her father's wrinkled hand on her shoulder. She'd been so angry, so very angry, when Peleus had interrupted her in the only method to make a mortal or mostly-mortal human immortal without the blessing of the ruler of the sphere. It had been going well, much quicker than if Achilles had been mortal only, for his divine qualities were protecting him from the flames and soaking up the ambrosia much quicker than he otherwise would have, and the fire was burning away the mortal qualities so well. If Peleus had noticed only a few nights later, if only he had left her to her task, if only.

But no, he had interrupted her and she'd been so furious she hadn't even known what she'd done before she was in her father's arms, far away under the waves of the Aegean and in the familiar gleaming palace that was still home.

She'd gone back later, of course. Sat on rocks and watched Chiron teach her darling to fire a bow, sung along while the boy learned the lyre, held him during failure and encouraged him to go back and try again. Sat beside Peleus at feasts while Achilles and Patroklos wrestled like young wolf pups on the floor. She wished she hadn't. She wished she'd been angry enough to thoroughly abandon both husband and son, for then this might have hurt less, then she might not even have cared, might not have listened as Achilles finally tried to beseech a mother he didn't even know, but she had gone back to both - Peleus later, to be sure, and she never stayed for any length of time at any given visit, but she'd gone back. For she'd missed them, and she'd missed what she'd had, what she'd tasted of a life with a husband and son.

"Curse my foolish, precious son!"

Why could he not have understood the worth of a long life, lived well-loved? Why had he not refused Athena, telling her to get someone else to kill Apollo's son? Why had he not at least dragged the boy out of the temple? Why had he let Patroklos go alone, or at all, out on the battlefield, curse the man's compassion and honour! Why, why, why. She knew why. Achilles had gone to Troy, and had thus sealed his fate. He'd repeatedly refused any chance to turn back at every turn he'd been given the opportunity, valuing everlasting, ephemeral glory in the stead of a long, earthly life.

Shoulders shaking, Thetis sunk in over herself and cried.