Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

The sun had barely risen, but Ithaca's harbor already thundered with sound and not the everyday bustle of trade or fishing boats, but a grand, swelling chorus of war songs. The people lined the shores in droves, their voices raised in ancestral melodies: sharp, rhythmic chants that stirred the air like drumbeats. These were the songs of Achaean warriors, sung in low tones and loud roars, calling upon Ares for courage, Poseidon for safe passage, and Athena for wisdom and strategy. Flutes cried above the hum of lyres, and drums thundered like heartbeats. Laurel leaves were scattered on the wind, twirling like blessings from the gods.

Odysseus stood at the helm of the procession, bronze armor gleaming beneath his dark cloak, his hair braided with sea-colored ribbon. Behind him were his most trusted men: Polites, the cheerful scout with quick wit; Eurylochus, his steadfast brother-in-law and second in command, ever sharp and resolute; Paramedes, sharp-eyed and quiet;  Elpenor, the youngest among them, adjusting his shield with nervous hands; and others. 

Behind him stood six hundred loyal men under Ithaca's banner, seasoned warriors and brave seafarers, handpicked from across the island, ready to sail for Troy. Flags flew high from the ships and sailors called out blessings to the gods. The townsfolk offered libations at the water's edge and the air smelled of salt and smoke and offerings.

On the cliffs above, among the royal family, Odysseus's mother Anticlea stood with quiet grace beside Penelope, her daughter-in-law, young but already composed like a queen. Anticlea's gaze was solemn, touched with a quiet ache only a mother could wear. She placed a hand gently on Penelope's arm as if to offer strength, though both women knew no touch could ease the ache of what was to come.

Penelope held their son, Telemachus, swaddled in ocean-blue linen. The baby's chubby hands gripped her necklace, his eyes bright and wide with curiosity. He let out a soft, bubbly giggle when the wind tousled Odysseus's cloak and made it dance like wings.

Odysseus climbed the final step to them, the sound of the crowd and the songs faded in his ears until all he could hear was the soft breath of his wife and the tiny noises from their child.

"Penelope," he murmured.

Her eyes glistened, but no tears fell..........not yet. She smiled, trembling, and leaned her forehead against his. "You'll come back."

"I have to," he whispered. "I've never left my heart anywhere but here."

Odysseus kissed Penelope then, not a light kiss. Not the kind shared in passing. This was a kiss thick with unsaid things; the kind that says wait for me, forgive me, don't forget me. His hand trembled where it cupped her cheek, and for a moment he allowed himself the weakness of a man, not a king.

Penelope's hand held the back of his neck, not letting go until the very last second. Her breath hitched. "Take care of them," she said quietly, nodding toward the men.

"I will." He looked to Telemachus, who cooed and blinked at his father, reaching out a hand with a sleepy giggle.

Odysseus gently took the child in his arms, lifting him with reverence and adoration. Telemachus babbled and kicked softly, reaching for Odysseus's beard. Odysseus laughed under his breath, resting his forehead against his son's.

"Be a good boy to your mother," he said softly, a lopsided smile curving his lips. "Don't grow up too fast. But if you do, be kind and be brave, my son." Odysseus uttered as he kissed his beloved son on the forehead; Telemachus let out a giggle and drooled on his cheek.

Anticlea stepped forward then, eyes not misty, but ever so steady, "You walk with honor, my son," she said, voice low and firm, but the quiver in the end gave her away.

He turned to her, still cradling Telemachus, and in that fleeting breath, the King of Ithaca vanished; what remained was the boy who once clung to her skirts and whispered dreams into the folds of her robes, "I wish you didn't have to watch me go again, mother."

"It is a mother's curse and gift," she said. "To raise a man so worthy, the world must need him."

He swallowed hard, then handed Telemachus gently back to Penelope. "I will come back," Odysseus said, his eyes on his mother.

Anticlea nodded. "Then we will wait."

Below, the final call to board echoed up the cliffside. The sails were unfurling now, catching the morning wind.

As Odysseus descended toward the ships, cheers and chants rose from the people, erupting into a thunderous farewell. Hands waved, horns blew, and warriors, even those who were left behind to protect Ithaca, clashed swords against shields in salute. The war songs swelled to a roar that followed the ships even as they pushed from the harbor, bound for the horizon.

......and Penelope stood there, holding their child, eyes never leaving the sea.

They sang of kings and ships and storms yet unborn, of gods watching from mountaintops and oaths carved into stone. Their voices rang over the bay like saltwind, braiding prayers into sails. Even the waves listened, slow and reverent.

But not everyone was singing.

At the edge of the crowd stood Eupeithes, stone-faced and silent, his eyes narrowed beneath his brow. He wasn't watching the king. No, he was scanning the crowd.

His son was missing.

Antinous had been gone since before dawn. Vanished without a word. The boy had been quiet at supper, pushing fish around his plate, eyes distant, fixed on something only he could see. It wasn't new; Antinous had changed since his eighth birthday. He had grown strange, quieter and sharper, with thoughts that didn't belong to a child. Thoughts that gnawed at him in the quiet hours. He still scraped his knees when he ran, but his words cut like blades. More so, he laughed less. Eupeithes told himself it was just a phase, part of a boy becoming a man, unaware that some things twisting inside his son were never meant to grow in a child at all.

Just before he left the dining room, something inside him settled; like dust after a collapse, quiet and certain. He'd asked, too lightly, too carefully, what time the ships would set sail........and by the time Eupeithes understood the question, Antinous was already gone.

Eupeithes searched the village, the shoreline, and even the temple steps. He questioned priests, merchants, fishermen, anyone who might've seen a flash of red cloth or a boy with too-quiet eyes. But no one had seen his son.

The air grew heavier with every passing hour. Whispers turned into silence, and hope dulled into suspicion. No one had checked below deck.........not yet.

The ships loomed like sleeping beasts at the harbor, sails furled, anchors buried deep, and beneath one of them, in the quiet dark, something had already shifted.

By the time they thought to look,by the time someone wondered aloud, and by the time a lantern was lowered into the underbelly of a hull—

It would be too late.

Too late to stop him, too late to turn him back, and too late to unwrite what had already begun.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

- - - - -

The ship had already left Ithaca's shores, the cliffs behind them blurring into pale green smudges beneath the rising sun. The wind tugged at the sails; bronze armor glinted and the sea rocked beneath their hull.

Odysseus stood at the helm, one hand steady on the tiller, the other resting atop the hilt of his sword. His thumb tapped a slow rhythm against the worn leather grip, absentminded, but sharp. The sea stretched around him, endless and open and the sails sighed in the wind.

But something was wrong.

It was not the silence of dawn or the hush of steady waters but it was the kind that watched. The kind that breathed behind your shoulder.

A silence with weight......and with fangs.

"Who's there?"

From behind a stack of crates, Antinous stepped forward.

He didn't flinch nor did he shrink. His spine stayed straight, eyes leveled with a soldier's stubbornness. The sea breeze tugged at the loose curls over his brow. His tunic was too big, tied with rope, and dust clung to his sandals. But his jaw was set like stone.

"You." Odysseus's voice dropped into suspicion. "Eupeithes's boy."

"I want to go," Antinous said with steady gaze and voice.

Odysseus frowned, "You're a child."

"I can carry weapons, clean blood, tie rope, and sharpen blades," A pause, "I can kill too."

That last sentence made the king snap. His grip on the tiller tightened.

"You think this is a game?" he barked. "This isn't some story your wet nurse whispered to you in the dark! This is war. Death. Men screaming with their insides torn out! And you—" He jabbed a finger toward the boy, seething.

"—You're. Going. Back. Now." Odysseus whirled around. "Turn the ship," he commanded his crew, "Bring us back to shore. Ithaca's still in sight. We can dump this boy wherever his house is."

The crew hesitated, confused, but still they were already beginning to adjust the sails but Antinous didn't move. Didn't plead.

"I'm not going back," he said quietly and firmly.

"You will," Odysseus snapped.

"No," Antinous stated again, louder this time. The word hung in the air like a stone dropped into a still pond. "I've come this far. I won't go back."  There was something in his voice made a few of the men stop. Even the wind seemed to pause.

Odysseus turned slowly, "I don't care what you want," he said through gritted teeth. "You're a liability. You'll get men killed."

"I can take care of myself."

"You're eight," Odysseus growled but Antinous looked up at him, not with fear and not even defiance. But that same steady, unsettling calm that didn't belong on a child's face. It was awful in its quiet certainty, like he knew something Odysseus didn't, and maybe he did.

"I've lived worse years than you've fought wars," he said.

The king froze.

There was something off about the boy. Not wrong, yet not broken either. Just........old. As if some battlefield lived behind those dark lashes. Something bruised and clawing and god-touched. It shimmered in him, just beneath the skin, like staring into a reflection not your own, but too familiar to ignore.

Odysseus saw something of himself there.

Not the war hero, no, not the king. But the liar, the survivor, and the boy who had once stood at the edge of the world with no one but the wind to hear his vow.

The crew waited and the sails flapped restlessly, pulling at the lines, eager to go.

Odysseus didn't blink. "I should throw you into the sea," he muttered.

"Then do it," Antinous responded, voice soft. "But I won't swim back."

There was a long beat, until Odysseus exhaled hard, rubbing a hand down his face, "Fine," he said at last. "But you stay out of my way. Do what you're told and if you fall overboard, I won't fish you out."

Antinous nodded once and the king turned back to the sea. But not before catching one last glance at the boy from the corner of his eye.

A boy with old scars and older eyes. A stranger who looked too much like the beginning of a story that should've never been written.

Odysseus said nothing more. But deep down, a quiet unease had settled, rooted in the knowledge that whatever Antinous was.......he wouldn't stay a child for long.

Not out here.

Not in war.

. . . . . . . . 

It wasn’t as if Antinous wasn’t afraid of Odysseus.

He was. How could he not be?

He was the man who had killed him, put an arrow through his throat like it was nothing. Like Antinous was nothing. The last thing he saw of Odysseus in that lifetime was the fire in the King’s eyes and the glint of vengeance in his hands.

But even so......more than that, he was Telemachus’ father and that mattered more.

There had always been stories; campfire whispers and grand songs alike, about the great Odysseus of Ithaca. How he outwitted giants, bent gods to his will, and tricked fate itself. How no man matched his cunning, no hero his resolve. But the ones that lingered in Antinous’s memory weren’t about his victories.

They were about his kindness.

How he wept when his son was born, how he knelt beside beggars, how he held Penelope’s hand like she was the thread that stitched his soul together, and how he understood things before others even spoke.

That version of him, the version before the war took pieces of him, before vengeance turned his grip to iron and his heart to ash, that was the man now steering this ship. Alive and still whole.

And Antinous, reborn and with memory, had a chance. So he kept his head down, watched and waited. Not just because he feared the man who once ended his life, but because he respected the man who hadn’t yet.

And for Telemachus’ sake......he would get close.

He would make sure it wouldn’t end the same way again.

.

.

.

- - - - - - - - -

Far above them, high on a cliff crowned with wind and olive trees, Athena stood where no mortal could follow. Her cloak stirring like storm clouds against the sky. Below, the ship slipped deeper into the sea's fog, its sails catching the last breath of evening.

She knew every name aboard.

Veterans, new warriors, and sons of proud houses. She had touched their fates, whispered in their dreams, traced their threads from cradle to sword.

But one child on that ship, one, resisted her.

A boy. Eight years old. Curled like a secret in the ship's hold.

Athena frowned. He had a name, yes. Antinous.

She saw his mother, Agethe, wringing her hands at a window, calling into the dusk for a son who had said his goodbyes and praying to the gods for his safety. She saw the small home tucked into the edge of Ithaca's cliffs, the olive tree he had once fallen from, the scraped knee, and the stubborn pride.

But when she pressed deeper, beneath the ordinary layers of memory, a veil descended. No prophecy named him, no divine design marked him.

And yet.......

Something ancient clung to him, coiled like smoke around his thread, its touch older than Olympus, older than the Titans, and older than even memory.

He should have been knowable, instead, part of his story was missing, not unwritten, but deliberately hidden.

Athena tried again, reaching with the calm precision of a thousand years. But the more she tried to see, the more the fabric frayed. This wasn't mortal forgetfulness nor just any god's interference.

No, it was something other. A quiet that pushed back and a silence that remembered more than it told.

"A child altered," she whispered. "Or spared."

By what? Or.......by who?

The wind stirred the olive leaves, rustling them with unease. Even the Fates, she felt, were hesitant to touch this thread. Athena's gaze lingered on the fading ship one last time. Her thoughts unsettled and her pulse quickened.

Something had slipped past her, and that terrified her more than any war.

.

.

.

. . . . . . .

The sea was black velvet at night and stars glittered like the eyes of watching gods. The ship carved its path through stillness; no storm yet, no omen but only breath and silence and salt.

Antinous sat at the edge of the deck, knees drawn up, arms curled around them. His legs were too short to dangle far over the side, but he liked the way the ocean air felt against his shins, cold and clean; spray kissed his face. The wind combed through his hair like a mother he didn't remember. Somewhere near the mast, a sailor snored and others murmured low, tired prayers to Poseidon.

The boy was alone and yet his head was crowded with ghosts.

Memories pressed in; ones that didn't belong to an eight year old. Blood on stone, a throne room painted in dusk. Screaming. Telemachus shouting across ruin and that final, bitter breath.

. . . . . . . . . .

He remembered the wine-stained lips of the suitors who once mocked Odysseus's long return: "Ten years at Troy, ten more to crawl home and for what? To wash up like driftwood, starved and half-mad? The gods themselves spat at him!"

"Shipwrecked, bewitched, and starved."They had laughed, drunk on arrogance and wine. But Antinous, older then and crueler, had listened and now, in the skin of a child, he remembered it all too clearly.

Odysseus doesn't just go to war, he thought. He became its ghost. He lost everything: his crew, his pride, his time, and his mind. Even when he returned, he was no longer whole.......and that cannot happen.

Not this time.

Antinous tightened his grip on the railing. His knuckles turned pale; his small hands looked almost skeletal in the moonlight. He stared out into the water as though he could see the labyrinthine path that stretched from here to Troy to the edge of madness.

"If he dies, Telemachus suffers. If he's broken, Telemachus is left behind to pick up the pieces."

The wind didn't respond, but it wrapped around him like it was listening. Antinous's jaw clenched. His voice, low and bitter, bleeding into the night.

"To save him.......I have to save his father first." Even if it meant killing again......even if it meant staining his hands earlier this time, and even if it meant rewriting fate with blood.

He didn't know what power Chronos had cursed or blessed him with memory.......but he would make use of it.

"I'm not just a boy," he muttered, "I've killed before." The waves crashed softly, as if in answer. He placed a hand over his chest, where hours earlier, Telemachus's fingers had curled against his shirt, a wordless promise exchanged between a child and an infant.

A fire still burned there. Something sacred and something unforgiving.

"I will come back to him," Antinous whispered. "Even if the gods spit in my path." He leaned his head back and stared at the stars; countless, ancient, and watching.

Up above, something stirred, threads twisted, destiny blinked, and below, in the hull of the ship bound for bloodshed, a boy who remembered too much sat like a question the gods could not yet answer.

. . . . .

Odysseus didn't sleep much.

He stood near the prow that night, fingers skimming the salt-laced wind, his eyes tracing the seam where dark sea met darker sky. Thinking.....always thinking. War was coming; he could feel it in his bones like a storm not yet arrived, and his mind refused peace.

The ship cut silently through black waters, its oars stilled, sails catching the whisper of night and then she appeared; not with thunder or glory, no trumpet of divinity, but as a hush in the stars. Starlight bent and shimmered, and from it stepped a figure cloaked in dusk and old memory.

Athena.

No mortal would have seen her. But Odysseus did, as he always had.

Her armor shimmered faintly with celestial gold; her helm rested beneath one arm; her dark hair swept behind her like smoke, and eyes glowing watched him with a sharp, ageless understanding.

"You doubt again," she said, her voice like still water breaking.

Odysseus didn't flinch as he replied, "I'm sailing to a war the gods promised," he replied, eyes never leaving the horizon. "Doubt is part of the fare."

Athena's lips quirked. "And still, you go."

"I've never been fond of destiny," he said. "But I've learned not to spit in the gods' wine."

She stepped closer, her presence stirring no shadow. "You'll survive, Odysseus. You will."

"For what cost?" he asked quietly. 

Before she could answer, they both heard it. The soft patter of bare feet on polished wood. A rhythm too light for any soldier. The unmistakable weight of a child.

Odysseus turned, frowning and Athena's gaze followed.......

A small shape paused near the mast, caught between shadow and moonlight.

Antinous. 

The boy had meant only to walk, to shake off the ache in his chest, and the silence in his thoughts. But now he stood frozen, eyes wide, his breath caught in his throat. Because.........

....He saw her.

Not as a blur,  not as some trick of starlight or dream-haze. No.......He saw her.

Blue-eyed, divine, and cloaked in the quiet power of gods too old for myth. Athena, born of thought and thunder, goddess of wisdom, war, and unyielding fate and she saw him seeing her.

Her expression faltered, "You......see me," she said, and there was something rare in her voice; not awe, not wrath but uncertainty.

Antinous blinked, dazed and drowsy-eyed. Then he smiled, wide and guileless. "You're pretty."

Odysseus's brows shot up, "Boy. What did you just say?"

Antinous rubbed his eyes with the back of his hand. "Nothing. Just saw her armor....it's shiny." Athena's gaze narrowed, the humor gone from her face. "What's your name, child?"

He tilted his head and responded, "Antinous, son of Eupeithes. I came to help." Her eyes didn't leave him. "And you can see gods."

Antinous shrugged. "I see lots of things." There was no fear in his voice. No wonder.....only a strange ease, as if the world had never surprised him, and never would.

Odysseus stared at him like he'd grown a second head. Something ancient crawled down his spine. The boy dropped into a clumsy bow, awkward and genuine. "Are you going to make sure we win the war, beautiful goddess?"

Athena didn't answer right away. She tilted her head, studying him. She had lived thousands of years, walked among kings, shepherds, and madmen. She had seen false prophets and cursed children. But this one, this small, barefoot boy, was blank to her.

'I cannot see his thread.....' 

She tried again. She reached, as gods do, through the tapestry of time, into the spinning cradle of every soul's birth, and into the folds of fate. But she met only.......shadow.

No prophecy, no divine record, and no memory. Just a void. A story unwritten, a page torn from the loom before it could be read.

"He is hidden," she murmured, mostly to herself, "And not by me."

Odysseus's eyes flicked from her to the boy. "What does that mean?"

Athena's voice was low when she spoke this time, "If he can see me, then something older than I has touched him, and not lightly."

Antinous wrapped his arms around himself and yawned, as if none of this mattered, as if gods speaking of him in riddles were part of an ordinary evening. "I just want to help," he said softly. "Is that bad?"

Now he looked small again, just a child out of place, clinging to the edges of a story too vast for him.

But Athena took a step forward, "You.....aren't what you seem."

Antinous gave a lopsided smile. "Neither are you."

A beat passed, then, strangely, she smiled; not kindly yet not cruel either.....but knowingly. Like a riddle finally speaking back.

"Be careful, child. Not every thread can be rewoven....some snap."

He tilted his head. "I'll be careful. I promise."

Their eyes met, mortal and divine,  and for a moment, the sea stilled. Then she vanished, wind lifting where she stood; stars folding quietly around the space she left.

Odysseus stared at the boy, Antinous stared at the moon, and far beyond them, the gods stirred uneasily.

History had shifted. Again. Not by swords, not by kings, but by the stubborn, soft-spoken love of a child who remembered more than he should.

. . . . .

Odysseus stared at the boy for a long time after she left. The air still shimmered faintly where Athena had vanished, like the gods left behind a pulse even after they disappeared. His hands tightened on the rail. The sea didn't feel the same.

"You're not normal," he said at last, voice low.

Antinous didn't flinch. He tilted his head, his gaze unreadable. "Neither is Ithaca."

That caught Odysseus off guard, just for a moment. Then he laughed, one sharp, humorless sound torn from somewhere deep in his chest. A laugh too old to be called such.

"Ithaca," he said, half to himself. "No, I suppose not." He turned away, eyes back on the open sea. The water whispered of coming battles, of broken oaths and blood-soaked sands, and of men who would never return. He didn't have time to figure out what the boy was. Not now. Later, maybe.

"Go to sleep, boy," he said gruffly. "We'll need every hand to row by sunrise. Even stowaways."

Antinous dipped his head respectfully. "Yes, sir."

But he didn't move right away. He lingered just a moment longer. He looked back over his shoulder, not at Odysseus, not even at the horizon, but at the stars above. They twinkled faintly in the black sea of sky, cold and familiar.

The constellations spun as they always had. Orion. The Great Bear. Cassiopeia. But something was different now. He felt it....not in his bones, but deeper. In the memory beneath the memory. The threads were tightening and the wheel was turning.

Something ancient had been nudged awake. Everything had started moving. The gods, the war.....and the dead, and everything would try to stop him.

But he would move anyway.

Because the boy who stood on that deck was not just a child. Not just a stowaway. He was a ripple from another life, sent too early, hidden too well, and he knew the cost.

Still, he whispered the name like a vow. A compass. Like a tether through time.

"Telemachus...."

And far away, a cradle stirred, a baby's hand curled into a tiny fist, and the wind shifted, just slightly, as if it too remembered.

"I won't let it happen again," he whispered to the sea. "Not this time."

If he could change the war.....if he could keep Odysseus alive, sane and whole, then the long years would not swallow Telemachus. Then maybe, maybe, he'd deserve to look that boy in the eyes again. To come back not as a ghost, but as something better.

He clenched his small fists, trembling.

"I'll rewrite your legacy," he muttered, glancing toward the sleeping Odysseus. "And mine."

.

.

.

.

- - - - -

The next morning, the sea was calmer; too calm, perhaps, like a breath held before a storm.

Mist clung low on the water, veiling the horizon in silver. The oars creaked in rhythm with the tide, but the men were quiet, eyes hooded from restless sleep and dreams they wouldn't admit to. Somewhere, a seagull cried once, then fell silent.

Odysseus sat at the bow, hunched over the glint of steel in his hands. The dagger was old, well cared for, worn from years of service. He ran the whetstone across its edge with steady precision, as if the rhythm of it could carve order out of the unknown.

He didn't look up when Antinous's footsteps padded closer.

The boy stopped beside him and crouched. In his hands, he carried a small cloth bundle, tied with coarse twine. Without speaking, he untied it and laid the contents on the plank beside Odysseus: dried figs, slightly wrinkled, soft with warmth from being held.

"I heard you skipped breakfast," Antinous said gently. "Can't command on an empty stomach, can you?" 

Odysseus stilled.

His eyes lifted slowly. The sea wind ruffled his dark curls as he stared at the boy, face unreadable. A flicker passed through them, curiosity, perhaps......or suspicion. The kind of look a hunter gave to a wolf that wasn't acting like a wolf.

He picked up a fig and turned it over in his fingers before finally taking a bite.

"You act like a courtier," he said.

Antinous tilted his head, amused. "I was raised in one."

"You're eight."

That should've been enough to end the conversation. But Antinous only smiled, calm and composed beyond his years. There was something unnervingly graceful in the way he sat there, shoulders relaxed and gaze unwavering.

"I listen well," he replied. "People say things when they think you're small and unimportant."

Odysseus grunted at that. He looked away again, focusing on the dagger. "Dangerous trait. You'll learn things you wish you hadn't."

Antinous was quiet for a moment. Then responded back,".....I already have."

Odysseus stopped sharpening. The silence between them stretched, filled with the whisper of waves and the distant groan of wood. He didn't ask what the boy meant. Not yet. He wasn't sure he wanted to know.

But he took another fig, and this time, he didn't chew so quickly.

- - - - - -

The ship rocked steadily beneath them, the rhythm of the waves like a cradle song for those born to war. Antinous sat at the prow, legs crossed, and hair tousled by sea wind. His cloak, too large for his small frame, fluttered behind him like a shadow not yet grown into its true shape.

He wasn't seasick, unlike the other boys onboard. He had braced for it, even tried to fake it when the others groaned over the railing, but it never came. His stomach was still and his eyes ever sharp. Because he had done this before, at least in memory....and what use was dizziness when he had a war to stop?

Odysseus watched him from a distance.

He hadn't said much since the boy appeared, small, shivering, defiant, out of a hidden crate below deck. Now, Odysseus leaned against the rail beside him. The air smelled of salt and prophecy, then he spoke softly, "You're too young to chase glory. Glory bites."

Antinous smiled, carefully, like folding a secret back into a drawer. "So does destiny."

Odysseus blinked, "Where'd you learn to speak like that, boy?"

"I listen. I remember things others forget."

Odysseus laughed, but it didn't reach his eyes. It was the same answer he responded in their last conversation.

Behind them, the crew lit torches against the coming dusk. Eurylochus and Polites played dice near the mast, squabbling like brothers. Elpenor sprawled on the deck beside Perimedes, snoring already despite the noise. Teucer sat on a crate, tuning his bowstring with quiet intensity, lost in the rituals only archers understood, and Agamemnon and Menelaus were farther toward the stern, murmuring over maps and scrolls, their bronze armor glowing with the last slants of sunlight like kings carved in fire.

It was a ship full of legends. Of men who would live long in song, or die screaming in them. But none of that was why Antinous stayed awake.

A shadow slumped beside him suddenly; bigger than him. Little Ajax, son of Oileus, plopped down with a groan, his cheeks flushed from sparring.

"You don't sleep either?" the lad muttered, stretching his arms behind his head. "I thought I was the only one who couldn't."

Antinous glanced at him. "You've got blood on your lip."

Ajax grinned, baring it like a trophy. "Training with Menelaus. He thinks I'm too slow."

"You are," Antinous said bluntly, then passed him a strip of cloth to dab the blood. "But not stupid. You fought left when he swung high. That's what saved you."

Ajax blinked. "You were watching?"

"I watch everyone."

The other boy considered him a moment, then nodded slowly. "You're weird," he said, but not unkindly.

Antinous shrugged. "You'll get used to it."

They sat together in silence for a while, two lads caught between fates too big for them. Above them, the stars blinked into being like watchful eyes, and ahead, just out of reach, the coast of Troy waited like a sleeping beast.

Odysseus glanced back once at the two boys at the prow. His gaze lingered; so did Athena's, from the clouds far above, hidden in the deepening dusk, and in Antinous's chest, the promise stirred again, quiet but insistent: He would come back to Telemachus. Whole, worthy, and changed.

But first......he had to survive Troy and the gods were watching. 

. . . . . .

Antinous sat alone on the deck, legs dangling over the edge, salt spray catching on his eyelashes. The sky had darkened to velvet, scattered with stars, familiar constellations, and old friends from stories once told in the great halls of Ithaca. Only now, those stories felt too near and too real. He remembered their endings. He had lived their endings.

In the deep silence of the sea, he closed his eyes. Scenes bloomed behind his lids; scenes he had once listened to through laughter and goblets of wine: How Achilles raged, how Hector fell, how the Trojan Horse turned cunning into blood, and how, after it all, Odysseus wandered; suffering storm and seductress, lost for ten years more. Ten years. Telemachus would grow fatherless, and Penelope would weep in silence as suitors crept through the halls.

And he......he would become one of them.

"Never again," Antinous whispered to the sea, to the stars, to whatever god had brought him back.

He had a plan.

First, he must protect Odysseus. Alter the ending. If the war could not be stopped, then at least the cost of its aftermath could be. That meant watching closely.....very closely. 

Odysseus was clever, but pride made even clever men blind. Antinous would be his shadow if he had to. He could use the boyish innocence to his advantage; who would suspect a child?

He stood, steady despite the sway of the ship. Somewhere above, a seagull cried a sharp sound that drew his gaze to the stern.

"Wait for me, little wolf," he stated, almost smiling, though there were tears pricking at his lashes. "I'll rewrite the stars for you."

.

.

.

.

.

- - - - - - -

That night, Antinous sat curled in the ship's bow, knees tucked to his chest, wrapped in a heavy cloak that still smelled faintly of cedarwood and oil. The sky above stretched wide and cold, pierced by stars, always brilliant and unblinking. Things that bore witness without judgment as their light shimmered across the restless sea, casting silver trails along the water that lapped at the hull.

The wind whispered through the sails like a lullaby sung by ghosts, but there was no comfort in it.

Antinous did not sleep. Could not.

He sat still, too still for a child his age, and closed his eyes.

And remembered again.

The suitors' boasts, cruel and careless, like laughter echoing off cracked marble;

The bards' songs, half-truths dressed in honeyed rhyme, the ones he used to clap for without knowing their weight;

The end of the Trojan War, as he once heard it: Achilles pierced at the heel; Hector dragged by chariot; Odysseus wandering for ten long years, bearing pain like armor;

Penelope unraveling tapestries by candlelight; Telemachus, small and alone, staring out at the sea until his eyes learned not to hope;

Ithaca, grey and sick with longing, its halls filled with beasts in noble skin;

His own voice, older and colder, echoing through the great hall as he spat words that could never be taken back; and

The whistle of the bowstring, the wet thud as the arrow struck his throat, the way his knees buckled, the way the light caught in his eyes as he fell, and the silence that followed after.

He inhaled sharply.

No, not again.

He clenched his fists tightly beneath the folds of his cloak. The ship rocked around him, but he was steady. This time, he would not grow into that version of himself. This time, he would change the song. If he had been given this body again, this second chance, then he would use it to rebuild what he once helped destroy.

Starting with Odysseus.

The king was still alive. Still human and still fallible. But if Antinous could help him survive, could help him return home whole, then perhaps..............perhaps everything else could shift with it, perhaps Telemachus would never have to harden himself just to be heard, perhaps Penelope could sleep without dread, and perhaps Ithaca would never need to rot under the rule of vultures in velvet.

Perhaps......

He could become something else entirely. Not a monster, not a man of ruin, but a man who remembered enough to choose differently. He tilted his head up and stared at the stars again, at the cold, watching gods.

"Let me be more than what I was," he whispered. "Let me be better." and above the clouds, in the company of wind and wisdom, a goddess narrowed her eyes and listened.

.

.

.

.

.

.

- - - - -

Morning came like bronze over the waves, bright and brutal. The sea glared beneath the rising sun, throwing hard light into the men's eyes, searing salt and sky into their skin. The scent of sweat, steel, and seawater clung to the deck like a second skin. Ships groaned under the weight of war, sails snapping with the wind's fury. The Achaean fleet, dozens strong, cut clean through Poseidon's skin, the black sails sharp as blades. They sailed toward a sleeping city, but already, war breathed loud and fast in the lungs of men.

Troy still shimmered beyond the curve of the world; a myth not yet made real. And yet, on these decks, prayers had already been burned, omens read, and swords sharpened until knuckles bled. Men laughed too loudly, clutched lucky charms, and even spat into the sea as if that might appease the gods. Courage always looked a little like madness before a battle.

Odysseus sat cross-legged at the command table, a scroll unrolled before him and pinned down with iron. Lines and arrows branched like veins across the drawn shorelines of Troy; red stones marked the hills and rivers and walls like blood spilled in advance. The commanders stood in a loose circle around him, armor half-donned, expressions half-hardened, and beside Odysseus stood Antinous......too still for a child and too calm for a boy meant to be afraid.

The murmurs began again.

"A child?" muttered Menestheus, arms crossed. "Is this a war council or a nursery?"

"Your cabin boy's playing war games now?" Thrasymedes snorted, unimpressed.

A few laughed, but not Odysseus. He didn't look up. He simply said, with the edge of a blade in his voice, "He's here. That means something. Listen before you dismiss him."

The room hesitated and the map fluttered gently in the breeze. And Antinous?

He didn't speak immediately. He scanned the faces of the men, older, blood-worn, and arrogant in ways they couldn't even see. Then, he raised a hand and pointed toward the eastern riverbank of Troy, near the marshes, where the defenses were weakest.

"If we send three ships east under moonlight," he said, his voice low but steady, "and raise fires far from the riverbanks, Hector's scouts will assume we're flanking from the western cliffs. Send the loudest men to the west. Make noise. Rattle their nerves. Meanwhile, the real strike happens here." He moved a stone with delicate fingers, sliding it across the map like a god playing fate. "Split the flanks. Draw them thin. Make them doubt where to look."

His voice had no tremor. His words were clinical and sharp; the kind of sharp you don't learn from play, only from experience. Impossible experience.

One of the Myrmidons scowled. "And how the hell would you know this?"

Antinous looked up at him, eyes dark, bottomless, and too old.

"I pay attention."

It wasn't said arrogantly. Just......plainly and that somehow made it worse. The room stilled. No one laughed. Even the air around the war table held its breath.

Odysseus gave a nod, rolled the map tight with a single flick of his wrist, "We move at dusk," he said and just like that, it was settled.

. . . . . . 

The day swelled with tension.

Steel clanged against steel as men practiced on the upper deck. Grunts echoed over the ocean's roar, some trained with elegance; others with desperation, and amidst the shouting, sweating, bleeding bodies, Antinous moved like a shadow. Quiet and observing. He watched the way men shifted their weight, the hesitations in their stance, and the pride in their eyes; a pride mistaken for strength.

He memorized every flaw.

He wasn't planning to fight. No, it wasn't his time yet. His role was elsewhere.....for now. But instincts ran hot in his bones. His memories were twisted and buried, half-remembered and aching like phantom limbs. He had fought, he had killed, and he had died.

That was before. But fate, it seemed, was letting him start again.

Then came him, Little Ajax.

Son of Oileus, and already bigger than most boys twice Antinous's age. Broad-shouldered, brash, carrying himself like war was already won. He shoved past Antinous without warning, the heel of his boot scraping the boy's foot, and spat near his cloak.

"What are you, a ghost? You don't blink," he said. "It's creepy."

Antinous turned slowly to face him. "You think blinking makes you brave?"

The boy's ears turned red. "You think you're better than us?" Ajax snapped. "I bet you've never even held a sword."

Antinous tilted his head, voice quiet. "I have. Just not to impress boys who swing them like toys."

That did it. Little Ajax lunged with all the grace of a cow charging a lion. Antinous didn't back away, he didn't even blink. He ducked beneath the wide strike with chilling ease, pivoted on his heel, and swept his leg beneath Ajax's. The larger boy stumbled, then crashed flat onto the deck with a loud thud. Gasps and laughter broke across the men nearby. But Antinous didn't smile. He didn't even seem winded.

He stepped closer, voice like flint against flint. "Fight with your mind. Or you die with your ego." Little Ajax stared up at him, seething, but he didn't rise to challenge again. He scrambled to his feet and stalked off, humiliated and mumbling curses.

Someone near the mast muttered, "There's something not right about that kid," and up on the rigging, where the wind sang loudest, Odysseus watched the boy walk calmly away.

He didn't say a word.....but he smiled. After a while, Odysseus sat beside the boy. "Where did you learn that?" he asked.

Antinous smiled faintly. "I watch. I remember."

"You are indeed strange," Odysseus said, not unkindly.

"Strange doesn't mean useless."

"No," the older man agreed. "But it does mean unpredictable. I don't like not knowing what game I'm playing."

Antinous looked to the sea. "Then maybe don't treat life like a game."

Odysseus blinked. He didn't ask more questions after that.

- - - - - -

That evening, the captains gathered once more, their voices sharp over maps stained with wax and sea salt; oil lamps cast flickering halos on their hardened faces. Antinous sat at the edge of the circle, small, quiet, and as always, unreadable.

He didn't speak as Menelaus ranted, or as Nestor droned on about formations. But when Diomedes leaned over the eastern valley and muttered, "We strike from here, midnight," Antinous finally moved.

"No."

The word was soft, but final. The men turned and Diomedes scoffed, "No?"

Antinous tapped the side of the map with two fingers. "The Dardanians wait there. Up in the treeline with nets and spears. You'll be dead before dawn."

Diomedes' jaw tightened. "And how would you know that, boy?" Antinous didn't flinch and he met his gaze evenly, "Because they've done it before." The words hung in the air, weighty and out of place, as if pulled from a memory no one else should have.

A moment passed before Odysseus stepped in, voice calm but firm. "Let's consider another route."

It wasn't just deference; it was trust and curiosity. The meeting ended again with murmurs and exchanged glances. No one asked Antinous again. Not tonight.

. . . . .

Later, Odysseus sat in his quarters, sharpening his blade, though his mind wandered. Antinous stood near the open window, sea wind brushing through his dark curls. Just watching the stars, like he understood them.

"You've been careful," Odysseus said. "You speak just enough. Fight just enough. Never too much and never too little."

He paused.

"Who are you, really?"

Antinous didn't turn. He tilted his head as if listening to something beyond the waves.

"I'm no one important," he said finally, soft, almost dreamy. "Just someone who......remembers more than he should." Odysseus stilled, knife halfway across the whetstone.

"And forgets the rest," Antinous added.

He smiled faintly, but it didn't quite reach his eyes. There was something older lurking there. Something careful, like he was holding back a world too heavy for the moment. Odysseus didn't press. He wasn't sure he wanted the answer.

So silence bloomed between them, wide, restless, and watchful.

Outside, the sea whispered to the hull like it, too, was keeping secrets and far beyond the curve of the world, the gates of Troy slept uneasily, unaware that a new thread had already been spun into the war's web.

A thread knotted by a boy who had no name for what he was yet.

Only the quiet ache of knowing: The story wasn't done, and this time, it wouldn't end the same.