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bluepickle36 · 6 months ago

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IT'S TIIIIIIIIIIME for secret santa!!

My recipient is @lyculuscaelus and he requested something revolving around Telemachus. Merry Christmas and I hope you enjoy this story 🩵

[Putting the read more thing because it's a little long]

This is what it means to be the Prince of Ithaca:

You have no father. Well, people say you do, but he left a long time ago when you were only a baby; he's been gone for thirteen years. The war he left to fight ended ten years ago; the other kings and armies returned home long ago. You don't think your father's coming home anymore.

Your mother is technically still present in your life, but she might as well not be. She never liked you much to begin with and as you've gotten older and started to resemble your father more and more (at least according to the people who actually remember what he looked like) your mother has become more and more distant. It's almost as if she's trying to pretend you don't exist. You spend some of your time with Eumaeus the swineherd, who tells you old stories and teaches you to play zatrikion, but most of your time is spent in the company of Argos, your father's old dog. You don't mind that he's old and slow, you're just glad to have the companionship.

Especially after the suitors show up. They're rough men, crude and loud and they come from all over the known world, looking to marry your mother. You don't want any of them to succeed, not because you think your father is coming back, but because you know that they are only there to try to obtain the throne of Ithaca, a throne that belongs to you once you come of age. Thankfully, your mother doesn't seem inclined to marry any of them. You're honestly unsurprised. None of them seemed like good husband material– or good father material either.

Time passes. The years crawl by. Your father does not come home. You are unsurprised by this. Your mother continues to ignore you. This is also unsurprising. The empty space inside you remains unfilled, for there is no love or care to fill it with. The suitors eat your food and drink your wine and call you “boy” and “little wolf” and hurt you when your mother isn't around.

You put salve on your cuts and bruises, alone in your room, and wonder why they bother waiting until your mother isn't present. You wonder if she would be bothered by the fact that the men she shelters under her roof beat and mock and taunt you and you realize– or perhaps you have known all along– that she has never cared for you and your well-being. Why would she care now?

You set the pot of salve aside and make your way out onto the balcony. You stare up at the stars and wonder if they're as cold and distant as they look.

Perhaps your mother is a star. Perhaps she is the center of your father's universe, just as the far-away stars are the center of foreign universes. She is beautiful from afar, cold and calm and made to be admired, yet when you get close enough, you realize she burns with her own flame.

Because your mother does burn. She burns with love and loyalty and admiration, but only for your father. There is no warmth left for you; it is all dedicated to a man who walked out of her life nineteen years ago and never returned.

You wonder if your father was also a star. Did he burn like your mother? Would he have loved you like he loved your mother? Eumaeus told you once that your father only went to war to save you, but you find that difficult to believe. Surely if your father truly loved you, he would have come home. If he loved your mother, he would have come home. He survived the war– those who returned brought that news with them, so you know for certain that it's true. Where is he then?

You pry yourself away from the stars and return to your bed, where you lie awake long into the night, listening in the darkness for any sound. You know the suitors, Antinous in particular, would like you dead and you wouldn't put it past him to attack you in your sleep. When you do finally relax enough to sleep, your dreams are as strange and restless as always: a tall owl woman who shoves you into the shadow of a falling club, a storm that tears you far from home and delivers you to a witch, a fish who looks like your mother and tries to feed you to a six-headed monster. You fall and fall and finally land on an island beside a dead cow. For some reason, intense fear runs through you at the sight of the cow, and you jolt awake, crying out as you lurch out of bed.

Your chiton is wet through with sweat. You sigh and switch it out for another. It's still dark out, but you know from experience that you will not be getting any more sleep. This is how all your nights are, and this is how they will always be, until you are strong enough to claim your throne or the suitors get tired of waiting and kill you. You suspect you know which will happen first.

Time rolls on, slow and unchanging. The suitors become bolder, going so far as to begin blatantly disrespecting your mother. They call her woman and widow and tramp and names a hundred times worse. You try to ignore them the same way your mother ignores you, but the insults and the taunting only grow worse until one day when Antinous threatens something unspeakable.

You do not love your mother any more– why would you when she hates even the very sight of you?-- but you at least have enough honour left to feel the spark of anger within you fan into a flame and you know what it is to burn.

You cannot stand against Antinous, of course, and he thoroughly destroys you until the goddess Athena appears and assists you in the same way you have been told she assisted your father. For a little while you think you might actually be able to defeat Antinous– to drive the suitors from your home. You wonder if this is what it's like to be your mother, to burn as your father did.

And then Antinous’ fist meets your face and you come back to yourself, a frightened, unloved boy sprawled on your back in the middle of your own hall, with an evil man looming over you, and your small flame dies as quickly as it erupted.

You retreat to your room, Athena beside you. She stays long enough to heal your numerous injuries, and then she leaves. You sit on your balcony, Argos beside you, and stare up into the empty night. The stars glitter mockingly at you, the unloved, uncared-for Prince of Ithaca. Not even the gods care enough to stay.

Another year passes. Antinous and the others grow bolder by the day. You know you don't have long to live. The suitors will make sure of that. The hills no longer seem as safe a refuge as they once did m. Argos no longer accompanies you as frequently. Fitting, you think sometimes, that a boy and his dog should draw near to the end of their lives together. You briefly consider running away, but there is nowhere to go, and besides, Antinous will hunt you down no matter where you go. Which day? you think to yourself every time you pass Antinous in the halls. How much longer until you kill me and take my throne?

Then one day, a beggar shows up on your doorstep. He asks if he can stay, asks you to shelter and feed him. You think of rough men, depleted coffers, and disrespectful glances and think to yourself, Eh, what's one more? You only hope the suitors don't kill this poor man.

The beggar finds a seat in the great hall. The suitors laugh and mock and taunt, but you ignore them. There is something familiar in the beggar's eyes, something akin to the fire that consumes your cold-star mother. (You wonder if your mother knows-- or cares-- what her suitors are planning to do to you. It doesn't matter in the end; you'll die either way.)

You wonder if this beggar-man is also a star, if he is forever looking for something that does not exist while ignoring what he has. Maybe he has a neglected son somewhere. Well, it is no use speculating, you'll never know anything about the man.

Twenty-four hours later, you stand in the center of your grand hall, surrounded by the bodies of the men who tried to kill you. There is blood on your chiton. You try to wipe it away with your hand and realize you are covered in it. So is the sword in your hand and so is the beggar-man. He stands several paces away from you, his true form revealed.

They were right, you think, everyone who told you you looked like your father. You share the same hair, the same facial features– even the way he stands is similar to you. The only true difference is in his eyes. They are hollow and haunted, yet they burn with the same fire that consumes your mother. You feel a sudden surge of doubt. Is it normal to burn? Are you the strange one for not having that burning passion set deep inside you, consuming you from the inside out?

You look at your father, only just now returned home after twenty long years. He's been absent almost your whole life. You sure he'll have an explanation for why he was gone so long, but no matter how long you have with him, it won't make up for an entire twenty years of life without a father.

“Telemachus,” he says, smiling. He opens his arms as if to hug you. You feel your heartbeat speed up and your breath is suddenly caught in your throat. For most of your life, the only people who have touched you have hurt you– but he's your father, surely he won't hurt you? Is he even truly my father? You wonder for a brief moment. Or is he just some man, come like the others to destroy and plunder, just using other means? You can't bring yourself to go to him and yet you must, lest he think something is wrong and hurt you for it.

The door to the hall slams open and you jump, raising your sword to defend against this new threat until you realize it is only your mother. As always she spares you hardly a glance, not even asking if you're all right. The dull ache of the emptiness inside you stirs, but that is an old pain; you're used to it.

What hurts is the way your mother gasps when she sees the stranger who claims to be your father. He drops his sword with a clang and stares at your mother with those burning-star eyes. If he is acting, he's very good at it. Your mother runs to the man and embraces him as she never embraced you, and you feel something inside you, some hidden part of you that somehow stayed whole amid all your broken pieces, snap in two.

Your parents (for even if he is not truly your father, you know your mother will accept him as so and therefore you must as well) look deep into each other's eyes. Star for star, burn for burn, disregarding all else in the world. You watch, covered in blood and grime and filth, alone and abandoned yet again, and wonder how two brilliant flames manage to produce such a thing as you. You have no burn, only a dull pile of cold ashes, and if you were a star, you would be a dead one.

Your mother is chattering, talking more than you've ever heard her talk. “Odysseus, you're filthy and surely you're exhausted– come, you need a bath– and where have you been?” She doesn't give your father a chance to answer. You wish she would. You suddenly have a desperate need to know where he's been, to know what could possibly be more important than his family, what could cause him to abandon you to your cold-star mother and the suiters for so long. You open your mouth to ask, but the words are stuck in your throat behind some strange feeling like joy and sadness and love and hate mixed all together. Even now, you do not burn, even under the weight of all these emotions and unspoken questions.

Your mother takes your father by the hand and leads him out of the hall. The handmaidens that came with your mother leave with them. You are alone again, surrounded by the bodies of 108 suitors. You look at the sword in your hand and are filled with sudden disgust. You throw the weapon away from you, turn and run. Where you are going you do not know or care. Let your mother revel in the return of your father alone, they do not need you. They do not want you. They never have. You tear through the palace gates and pass the still body of Argos. Not even your dog cares enough to be around. You know that's an unfair thought, but life isn't fair. It never was, never is, and never will be.

You run until you are out of breath and unable to run any longer. You're somewhere in the woods, but you have no idea where and you don't care. Tears spring suddenly to your eyes. All these years, you never let yourself cry.You learned early on to avoid it, but now you fling yourself down under a tree and you sob, and sob, and sob.

This is what it means to be the Prince of Ithaca: You have a father and you have a mother, though you may as well not. They are both brilliant stars who burn with passion with love but not for you. You are alone and you always will be; a cold, dead ash heap with nothing and no one.

So have the fates decreed.

#telemachus #odysseus #penelope #epic the musical secret santa #epic the musical #angst #whump #vaguely but it's mentioned #my writing #going to go ahead and tag this as #character analysis #i have never posted writing on tumblr before so i have no idea how to tag it #if there's anything i missed that should be tagged please let me know #i forgot to tag #antinous #i think that's everyone #not tagging the minor characters #these tags are a Mess lol #pickle scribbles

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