#that baby's most notable features are wrinkly and displeased

[kayarai]

More of Rai's Epic Fic! I've consistently written 400+ words a day for, like, the past 4 days and I'm stupidly proud of myself for it (even if there was frequently stopping in the middle of a sentence and staring into space for a good ten minutes (sometimes multiple times in the same sentence).) (I'm not moving my word count goal from 300. That's just asking for trouble)

Some notes: 1: while the previous two snippets were consecutive this one does not pick up where snippet 2 left off. This is the opening of "I can't help but wonder." There's still a few people to kill between there and here. 2: if you're confused by the bread loaf references go back and have a look at the first snippet in the 'rai's epic fic' tag. 3: for clarity, line is Ody's pov (it's the end of his next section). For some reason I got really attached to the idea of Telemachus not actually being referred to by his actual name In Ody's narration until the moment he takes off his helmet (yes that made some of Ody's parts very awkward to write.) That's the line we're starting on.

-FIC STARTS HERE-

Telemachus removes his helm.

-break-

It’s turns out they weren’t lying, all the times they told Telemachus that he looked like his father. Obviously, he had to have gotten the features he didn’t share with his mother from somewhere but still, on his worse days, he couldn’t help but wonder if it was true or if they were trying to offer him a connection to a father he was so unlike in every other way.

The face in front of him, haggard and worn as it was, left no possibility for doubt.

(Staring into eyes he’d only ever seen in his own reflection, for the first time since he was thirteen years old and men had started invading their home intent on winning (or demanding) his mother’s hand and his father’s throne—)

His helmet falls from his hand.

(choking on the stench of blood and death—)

“…Father?”

(Telemachus feels like he can breathe.)

-break-

His son looks like him.

Has his eyes. His nose, his mouth, his features but set into the lines and shapes of Penelope’s face and framed by her dark hair.

His son (his son his son his boy his tiny angry bread loaf) looks like him.

(It shouldn’t surprise him. Odysseus had had people gushing about how much his boy would grow to look just like his father from the moment he was born. Odysseus just hadn’t been able to see it. He’d rather thought his son looked like a displeased old man. His boy had been a loaf of bread with the face of a displeased old man and the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen in his life. It was an observation that made Penelope laugh herself sick in her birthing bed.)

(His son is no longer looks like a beautiful bread loaf with the face of a displeased old man.)

(His son looks like him.)

A breathless whisper punctuated by the sound of metal clattering against stone. “Father?”

There are no clever words for this. No feats of wit or strength or cunning. No foe to battle but his own tied tongue and lost voice.

Telemachus (his boy his son) watches him, waits. Waiting for… (waiting waiting so long waiting) for him.

(Odysseus can hardly breathe.)

“Son.”