Page 10 of Elysium

THEY MOVED SILENTLY THROUGH THE HALLS, shadows cast around them. His pace was breakneck. Penelope struggled to keep her skirts out from under his feet as he dragged her behind him. “Odysseus…” she started, drawing in a ragged breath.

“Not here.” His words cut sharply through the air around them, causing her heart to race. His grip on her hand was firm, almost too tight. Like she would slip away from him if he let go.

He stumbled through the door to their bedroom, closing it tightly behind them. Odysseus whirled on Penelope, eyes wild. “What was that?” He asked her, his voice bordering on feral. When he finally let go of her hand, she stepped back, pulse thundering in her ears.

Penelope wrapped her arms around herself, trying to stave off the cold that lingered on her skin. “What was that?” She asked, repeating his question. “That voice… Odysseus -”

The look he gave her stopped her in her tracks. “I know who it was.” He said, leaning back against the wall.

“Polites.” She finished, watching her husband’s face flicker with untold grief.

“Polites,” He confirmed, bending over to rest his hands on his knees. “Dead because of me.”

“Don’t do that,” she stepped towards him, hesitant. “You can’t carry the weight of all those lives-”

“I don’t carry them, Penelope.” He cut her off, his voice trembling with unbridled fury.

“They drag me. With every breath I draw, they pull at my soul. They threaten each moment to yank me to the hells with them.” His hand balled into a fist, striking the wall behind him.

The sound was muffled, but it shook the Ithacan queen to her core.

“Do you think the gods will ever let me forget how I failed them?”

Penelope watched this man, her husband, as he unraveled before her. Her breath caught in her throat like a bird trapped in a net. This wasn’t the Odysseus she remembered, the man whose laughter could carry the summer winds. She had no weapons that could fight against the weight of the gods.

“Do you know how I watched him fall, wife?” His voice cracked, carrying years of grief.

When Penelope did not answer, he stood straighter, looking through her.

“He called my name as Scylla ripped him from my grasp. I heard his screams long after the ocean dragged him under, I still -” He faltered, chest heaving as though the sound of the scream still lived within him.

She clutched the skirts of her gown, nails biting into her palms through the fabric, willing the pain to ground her. Her entire being wanted to pull him back from the brink, from the mania that had settled deep inside his soul. But how does a mortal mend wounds the gods inflicted?

“Odysseus,” she called to him.

He was pacing the room like a caged beast, his breath ragged as he dragged a hand through his hair. “You don’t understand what it means to command men to their deaths, Penelope.” His voice was a blade, dulled by sorrow but no less deadly.

“You stood here safe, untouched , while I drowned beneath their dying breaths.” He growled, eyes flashing with a fire that Penelope had never seen turned against her. “You didn’t hear their screams. You didn’t watch their blood darken the seas.”

She recoiled as though he had struck her. She parted her lips to speak, but no words came.

Penelope watched as the anger drained out of him all at once. His demeanor changed instantly, hollowed by his own words. She watched as his shoulders sagged, bearing the weight of the statements he had thrown at her. His hand hovered in the space between them, but he took no steps closer.

“Penelope,” he rasped, tears threatening to spill as he looked to her, “I didn’t… gods, Penelope.”

But her soul had already hardened, locking her hurt away behind a wall of dignity even the strongest of men couldn’t breach. “You think I was safe?” She kept her voice low and even, cutting deeper than she anticipated. “You think I was untouched?”

He stumbled over his words for another second more before Penelope turned her back on him.

“Maybe one day, we will stop tiptoeing around each other, Odysseus of Ithaca.

But do not assume that because I was in your home that I was safe.

You may bear scars from your journeys, but I carry wounds from being left behind, too.

“Your scars can be seen, husband. Mine fester in silence.”