#putting down her white knuckled grip on the kingdom and making herself trust that odysseus will take care of it

[zarnzarn]

"Penelope," Odysseus whispers, heartbroken. She cannot stop crying enough to see him, and it makes her cry harder, even as the familiar scent of him moves closer and is followed by his arms around her, holding her up as she falls to pieces.

"I couldn't- I couldn't find-" She gasps for air, desperately hoping no one is around. Grief comes slamming into her like a tidal wave, laying her low with unrelenting memories of the injustice of wanting her husband home the most of anyone in the war and being the only to not get her wish and fear for how her reign would end and all the other feelings she should have gotten over already. "I couldn't find you," she sobs out finally, the words shaking out of her as her shoulders heave.

"Easy, my love, breathe," Odysseus coaxes, picking her up like it was nothing, tilting her at an angle that must be straining his shoulders to let her cling to him tighter. Cry, like it's the first time she realised how her wait had outlasted their marriage, where cannot breathe in for how hard she weeps, lungs burning. "Peace. I'm here, my darling, see, would a shade be able to do this?"

A choked, teary laugh is forced out of her as he spins on his heel suddenly, stopping her sobs with the momentum, leaving her gasping for breath and sniffing, shaking like a beaten dog, out in the rain. Alone and pawing at the memories of a warm hearth, with a pack's responsibilities on her shoulders and nowhere to set it down.

"See, now, there you go, drifting away again," Odysseus chides, twirling them both around once more, fast enough to make her half-squeal. "Am I so boring to you, compared to the mamba's nest of statespeople you have toyed with these long years? Must I put on a silly costume and dance around as entertainment, my dearest, tell you jokes and riddles to keep your attention? You wound me if you say yes, for I will lose the little respect our son still has for me."

She laughs wetly again at his chatter, the tempest in her head fading enough for the sobs to go from wailing to crying.

"Penelope," Odysseus sings her name in that strange way that sounds oddly like an owl's call, that no one can replicate. The chains around his feet jangle, a familiar sound she has trained herself into associating with her husband. She blinks the tears from her eyes, calming a little at the sound so she can see him. He clicks his tongue and wipes her tears away by rubbing their cheeks together, making her burst into choked giggles.

They don't last long, and she returns back to gasping for air as she runs out of energy, trembling.

Odysseus sighs, bittersweet, as he gives up on trying to make her laugh. Penelope sniffs, clinging on tight when she's suddenly lowered into soft sheets. "I'm here," He whispers, stroking her hair, letting her dig her nails in. "Oh, my poor beautiful wife. I'm back now. I would not leave for anything."

"I couldn't find you," Penelope whispers, small and scared. "I was calling for you from the door and there was no answer. I couldn't hear the chains. And no one knew where you were."

"All those who knew were with me, which won't happen again. I was only out at the merchants to see the new cloth with Tele," Odysseus murmurs. "Darling-"

"I cannot let go of the fear," She confesses in a rush. Closes her eyes and rocks them back and forth, trying to bury her face into Odysseus' shoulder and disappear into him. "Don't know how to convince myself that you are not an illusion. How to stop missing you, even when you are right in front of me. That I will wake up and still have to do it all alone."

Odysseus pulls back and stares at her, devastated, tears in his eyes. He opens his mouth and shuts it, helplessly. "Sweetest of my heart," he says finally, and lowers himself down on top of her so she can feel the full weight of him, smell his sweat and the ointment he applies on his scars and the juices of the fruit he fed her that morning by hand.

(Telemachus had sighed the sigh of the long-suffering when he took his seat next to them that morning for breakfast. "Must you?"

"Must we what?" Penelope had teased, and then opened her mouth for another fruit from her husband's hand, who was hiding a laugh in her hair, perched on her lap, his chair knocked to the side and lying sadly on the floor.

Telemachus shook his head, mock-disappointed and sighed louder.

"Come," Odysseus had said, patting his own lap. "Here, Tele, I will feed you too. Come."

"I'm not a dog," Telemachus had complained, over Penelope's sudden protests about not agreeing to this- and then came over and jumped up into Odysseus' grasp anyway, making Penelope yell at the sudden weight and her two rascals cackle at her.)

"Odysseus," She whispers as she exhausts of her crying and interspersing sobs an hour later, letting it curl on her tongue. She had stopped saying it, when the looks around her transformed from sympathy to concern over her sanity, and it became a political decision to not say her husband's name until he returned.

"Penelope," He returns, tightening his arms around her until her ribs creak. She sometimes wishes he were a violent man, that war had changed him enough to be rough with her, so she would have bruises to carry around to remind her he was there with her. But if he was, would she love him still?

"Give me something," She begs. She feels incredibly small and stupid, shaking like a child, and it is the only the fact that her real husband wouldn't falter or recoil in the face of her weaknesses and breakdowns that keeps her talking. "Something to prove you're here, please, please, husband-"

"Peace, Penelope," Odysseus says, in a voice sterner than he's ever used with her; the one he uses in court, making her stomach swoop. He moves back when he feels her tense under her, and studies her expression with a sharp eye. She loves him more than anything, would gladly slit open her torso to give him her innards if he so much as implied a passing fancy to having them, but even that isn't enough to fend off the slight bloom of mortification when realisation flashes across his eyes.

He kisses her, harder than usual, and she tries to focus on it rather than her still-racing thoughts.

"You are no longer Queen of Ithaka," Odysseus says, low and final, and the horrifying shock of the sentence nearly makes her moan. "Not in this room. You have held the burden of the kingdom for fifteen long years, and now you will let me make you put it down."

"No," Penelope protests, between kisses. She is still coming down from the fear planted in her by all the strong women that buoyed her these years, who grimly predicted that her husband would snatch the throne back as soon as he returned, coupled with the guilty relief that she no longer had to be in charge, no matter that it was by force. "I love her. My Ithaka. Rough and beautiful."

Odysseus huffs, smiling against her skin. "She loves you too. Which is why you must listen to her beckoning for you to rest." He punctuates his sentence by pressing down on her stomach, entire body weight on his hands as he drags his palms up her abdomen, between her breasts, up to her shoulders. "Relax, Penny. The kingdom wants for nothing, food is overabundant, no one fights, no ruler gives us trouble. You do not have to hold everything together on your own anymore."

Penelope snorts. "Ithaka says so, does she?"

"Am I not Ithaka?" Odysseus says, voice twisting and changing until it sounds like a woman speaking. Penelope is hit sideways by lust, stomach flipping at the smirk sent her way. It gets wider at her expression, as he leans down and croons, "Penelope."

"Oh, gods," Penelope says, strangled, bracing herself on his shoulders.

"Give you something," Odysseus muses, in that same voice, that lights on fire the part of her that used to be obsessed with the stable master's daughter. "How about..."

He picks up her hand and kisses her wrist gently, tenderly, like it is the most delicate of pottery, the most precious of gems. He rubs a hand over her veins once lovingly, then fits his teeth around them, eyes flashing with heat as he glances over her.

Her heart skips a beat. She nods. He bites down with canines sharper than he'd left with and she screams.

"Oh," She gasps when it's done, looking at the bleeding wound lovingly marked around her pulsepoint. Her husband tips her chin up and she smiles finally, stretching up to meet his bloody kiss. "Oh, more. More, Ody."

"As my wife desires," He murmurs, possessiveness catching fire in his eyes as he turns to set his teeth to his neck- still not violent, but perhaps the slightest bit loosened from the leash.

Penelope moans, vision hazy as her head rolls, staring up at the ceiling. She takes a deep breath, then another, letting the panic recede in the face of a daydream of wandering around with a necklace of bruises every day, until they grow old.

He always knows how to handle her so well. She had begun to think she'd imagined it, how well the man she married had met her at every turn, every trick. Yet only a few months in his return and still he guides her expertly from all the bad things in life like a sheepdog, like an overanxious newlywed; some days making her so happy that the fifteen years past had never happened.

"You will look at these and remember no one else could leave them but me," Odysseus orders, the sneer of the rabid slaughterer in his gaze. It makes all the tension seep out of her, tears escaping in relief as she nods. "And I won't go out of earshot ever again, so you always can hear how you've chained your poor husband down like a mule, forever to trip over his own feet and smash into the floor."

"Chained you like a bird," Penelope corrects, her smug, thrilled smile returning at the reminder, reaching down to shorten the chain. "No more flying for you."

"None," He agrees.

Her smile wavers as the tail end of her grief comes sliding back. "Hold me?"

"Forever and ever and ever," He promises, wrapping his hands around her. She shakes in his hold. He kisses the side of her head, holding his wrist still scarred with her own teethmarks up to her lips in offering. Her eyes roll back as the familiar blood rolls over her tongue, calming the storm in her chest at last. He pulls his hand back and cards it through her hair, pulling out all the ornaments that mark her as Queen, staining them with blood. "I promise. Calm, Penelope."

"I'm calm," She sniffs wetly. "I wouldn't do it for anyone but you."

"Neither would I," Odysseus replies. "Would you like to have sex? I can please you with my mouth if you want."

Penelope snorts ungracefully at the formal way he still says it, like it's an offer to go fetch something from the kitchens. "No. Just hold me."

Odysseus murmurs something in response and starts humming, rocking then back and forth. Blood on both their mouths still.

"Actually-" Penelope says abruptly, and Odysseus bursts into laughter like she knew he would. She smiles at the sound, and closes her eyes to bathe in it, and carefully brings herself to take the first step to trusting that he will still be there when she opens them.