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Chapter Text

What do you think about, when your life ends with the echo of a war-king's vengeance?

Do you curse fate? Beg the gods? Or do you, like I, remember the only thing that ever made the chaos quiet....

his voice, his gaze, the warmth that never belonged to you?

- - - - - -

They will call me a villain; history will say I deserved this.

And perhaps I did.

But history never saw the way he looked at me.....and I collapsed before I could say any of it.

The arrow was already in me, Odysseus's mark of judgment, cruel and precise, piercing my throat and stealing my breath like how I deserved it. The great hall blurred, flickering in my vision like a dying flame, and the marble was cold beneath my palms. Blood, thick and warm, gushed out of me.... I could not even scream.

The air reeked of iron, of wine, and of burning oil. I heard the triumphant howls of warriors and the gurgled gasps of dying men. My comrades, my fellow suitors, whose laughter once filled this cursed room.

We had come for power. For a throne. For a kingdom that had waited too long.

And yes, I stayed for that. For the crown. For the iron weight of rule.

It was always the plan: marry the queen, take the seat, and bend the prince boy to heel.

Everything was meant to end with me on Ithaca's throne.

But now......bleeding out on this cold marble floor, all I can think about is the sound of his laughter, the way his eyes looked for mine in a crowded hall, and the gentle, foolish trust he still had when he spoke my name.

And I realized...

Gods, I realized I wanted him. Not just to conquer him, not just to silence him. But to keep him, somehow, as if I ever could.

I spent years convincing myself that I just liked to toy with him, that I wanted to break him because he was soft. That his fear, his stubbornness, and his silence were thorns I was meant to pull.

But it wasn't that.

It was him. Always him and I didn't know how to name what I felt, so I crushed it instead.

I told myself I was a man with a plan, and I was.....until the plan broke me.

Now the blood runs hot beneath me, and I'm still too much of a coward to say it aloud.

I die not just as a traitor, but as a fool. A fool who chased a kingdom and only realized, far too late, that he'd given his heart to the one person it never could've belonged to.

. . . .

My voice is a dry husk, unmoistened by years of careful lies; my breath shuddered, ragged, and shallow. But in the darkness behind my lids, there is no pain but only golden light.......and him.

Telemachus.

Not the prince with sharpened eyes and a spine forged in sorrow, but the boy I once knew. The one I taunted, the one I touched too long under the guise of rivalry, the one I mocked just to see how far I could push him.

I told myself it was sport, I told myself it was power.....but I know now what it really was.

I loved him.

I always had.

Only, back then, I didn't understand that love could look like obsession. That wanting to be near him, to test his mettle, to see him flinch or glare or spit back at me was love twisted in armor and arrogance.

I thought it was power.

I thought it was control.

But it was always him, unraveling me from the moment I saw him.

I see the memory as clearly as if I were living it: the olive groves swaying in the golden hush of afternoon and the Ionian Sea whispering against the rocks. He walked barefoot beside me, a grin tugging at his lips. His tunic was loose, salt-kissed, his hair a tousled mess of sunlit brown, and he threw a question at me and laughed when I answered with something biting. He was never afraid of my sharpness; he rose to meet it like a flame.

My hand brushed his shoulder as I passed him on the narrow path and his gaze lingered. I remember the way it made my chest twist. I remember telling myself it was just a game, just the thrill of getting too close to something fragile. But even then, part of me knew it wasn't. Not really.

Another memory rose, unbidden....another torment.

We stood at the shore. I had offered to teach him how to fish, and he, ever proud, had accepted despite the awkwardness of the spear in his hands.

"You're too cautious," I teased.

He flashed me a grin as sunlight danced in his eyes. "I want to survive this, Antinous."

"And if I told you the right way to kill instead," I murmured, low and close, "would that be worth the risk of a lesson?"

He blinked, a pause in the wind. "A lesson.....if it's from you, I'd brave any risk."

Something in me froze at that. Something I couldn't name then. I only pressed the shaft of the spear firmer into his grip, correcting his hold and feeling the heat of his hand under mine. My voice was quieter then, almost reverent: "You will kill well....or you will come home."

I said it like a joke, but I meant it like a prayer.

. . . . . 

Now, on the stone floor, dying, I see the uglier truth: I let them mock him. I stood there—me, the strongest among them—and I laughed when they cornered him in the hall, when they jeered at his soft hands, his callused knees, and his silence. I saw the servant's whip before it struck and I could have stopped it.

But I didn't.

Why? 

Because I feared I would be seen. Not just as weak, but as his.

I masked it with cruelty. I let my jokes grow crueler, let my hand be heavier. Because I wanted to touch him because I didn't know how else to want something pure, and even now, as death closed in like the tide, I felt it; this aching need to reach for him......to whisper something honest.

But what do you say to someone who still doesn't know?

What do you say to someone who might hate you forever if they did?

My fingers twitched, and the blood stuck between them.

They will call me a tyrant.

They will write me as the first to fall.

Let them......

They will never know that the first thing I ever wanted to protect in this palace...was him.

And now it's too late.

The gift of time was never mine.

But perhaps, if the gods are not cruel, they will let me see him once more.

Even if only to say: 'It was always you, Telemachus.'

- - - -

As darkness gathered in the corners of the hall, something unimaginable happened.

The clamor of battle had faded. No more screams, no clashing of swords, no bodies hitting the marble floor with a dull thud. Only a stillness, ancient and profound, settled into the air like dust falling in golden light.

The torches blazed higher of their own accord, as though summoned by something greater than fire or oil. Their flames leaned toward the throne, casting long, trembling beams across the blood-streaked stones. Shadows shifted uneasily along the walls, and the very air felt suspended.....not with fear, but awe.

And then, Aninous saw him.

Not Odysseus.....Not a vengeful servant. Not death in the shape of a king's arrow. But something else.

A figure stood at the threshold of the hall; impossibly tall, regal, and unknowable. His silhouette shimmered between the realms of mortal and divine. His cloak billowed like storm clouds stitched with starlight, and his shoulders were broad as a mountain ridge. His hair burned with the hue of autumn fire; his beard curled like thunderclouds. And his eyes.... his eyes were time itself: fathomless, endless, ancient. They held the first sunrise and the final dusk in their gaze.

Antinous, barely breathing, lifted his head. His body was broken. Blood soaked his tunic, his limbs were cold, his lungs shallow, and his heart slowed to the edge of stillness.

And yet.

He felt no fear but only wonder.

"Antinous," the figure said, and his voice was neither loud nor soft.....it simply was. It rang through the vast hall like the tolling of a divine bell, like wind through the pages of the world's first story. It echoed across marble and memory, vibrating in the marrow of Antinous's bones.

The dying man coughed a wet rasp. "Who....who is that?" he managed to say, the words cracked and fading.

The answer came with a stillness that silenced the stars.

"I am Chronos," the figure said. "Father of ages. Keeper of destiny and seasons. Architect of beginnings.....and ends. Your final hour was meant to end your tale. Yet I have seen your heart, the sorrow within it, and the love you never spoke."

Time stood before him, not cruel, not kind. Just.....infinite. Beyond judgment, and yet, there was something gentle in the way Chronos looked at him; something that felt like mercy, or memory.

"I have listened to the silence of your heart," Chronos continued. "Those entwined regrets, those pure, patient longings, they have stirred the ancient tides. Not many mortals know such truth. Because you do, I shall grant you that most impossible of gifts: a second dawn."

Antinous's breath hitched; not in fear and most certainly not in pain.

But in grief.

Because it was true. Every word, every quiet, soul-splitting truth. He had loved. And he had buried it beneath barbs and bitterness and silence. Not because he was cruel, but because he was afraid. Because the world had no room for softness in men like him.

"I died a coward," Antinous whispered. "I let him hate me.......Even a god can show mercy," he whispered to the looming figure. "I do not deserve it."

Chronos knelt; a god, kneeling to a mortal, and laid a hand over the boy's blood-soaked chest. His touch was not heavy. It was warm and weightless, like sunlight through olive leaves.......and like the first breath after drowning.

"Then rise," Chronos said. "I do not often bend the wheel. But you.....you will have a second dawn."

Golden light spilled from his fingertips, flooding Antinous's body. The sensation was not like fire; it did not burn. It restored. The arrow slid from his throat without a wound or scar, as if history itself was rewinding. His lungs surged, pulling in a clean, salt-tinged breath, his heartbeat kicked up, steady and strong, and the weight of death vanished, as though it had never come.

And the hall.....

The hall melted into starlight and the last thing Antinous heard was Chronos' voice echoing in his mind. 

"Your true life is not yet done...."

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- - - -

It could not be.

Antinous lay on the warm sand, the morning sun kissing his skin like it remembered him. The Ionian Sea murmured nearby, waves curling in soft hushes; a lullaby from gods who once watched and did nothing. The sky above stretched wide in shades of peach, rose, and the palest gold....and he was whole.

No blood, no pain, no arrow lodged in his throat, and no final gasp caught on his tongue.

His hands were small and unscarred. His arms were thin, the skin pale and soft. He pressed a hand to his chest....a steady heartbeat. No wound,  no sign of having been through war. Just breathe and the strange stillness of being alive.

He sat up slowly, the breeze carried salt and the scent of fresh bread. Bells rang in the distance, their tones echoing faintly over fields and rooftops. Ithaca. Familiar and distant, like a name he once wrote over and over, just to believe it belonged to him.

And he remembered.

He remembered the way Telemachus used to look at him, too long, too deeply, the words he never let himself say, and the venom he'd chosen instead, to feel safe. The pride, the fear, and the mask he wore so tightly it left marks on his soul.

But now.....

Antinous looked down at his knees, bruised from play, and the hands of a child. 

Eight. 

He was eight. He knew it like he knew his own name carved into time. This was the year before everything cracked. Before the cruelty, before the crown of arrogance, and before the hurt hardened him.

He laughed, a quiet, startled sound. A child's voice, lighter than he remembered. It was strange and untouched.

He waited for panic. For a voice to scream that this was wrong, that gods did not give second chances, only punishment. But all he felt was the slow, suffocating flood of realization.

Chronos had not returned him to the eve of the war.

Not to the palace....not to the great halls of Ithaca.

Not to the night he died.

No.

Chronos had sent him to the beginning.

To the time before masks and poisons, before every word he spat was dipped in cruelty, and before blood turned his hands into something unclean.

To the year no one remembered: When his soul was still soft, when he was not yet a villain, and when he had no crown to chase, and no prince to hate....Before he had the power to hurt anyone and before Telemachus even knew his name.

His breath caught. A part of him trembled, not from fear, but from something else: reverence, dread, and hope.

He had been eight once.

And now, impossibly, astonishingly.....

He was eight again.

Chapter Text

Eupeithes found him nearly an hour later, kneeling still and silent by the riverbank, his fingers trailing through the cool water as if searching for something he had no name for.

"There you are, boy," came the voice. It was rough and clipped and carried easily over the breeze. "Wandering off again? What did I tell you about disappearing before breakfast?"

Antinous didn't answer.

The heavy sound of boots crunching over gravel reached him next, deliberate and unhurried. His father stopped a few paces behind him. Eupeithes was tall....taller than memory had allowed with a thick black beard and a frame like a war god chiseled out of stone. A bronze clasp held his cloak at the shoulder; the crest of their house glinted faintly in the morning sun. Antinous felt small beside him. Not just in body, though that too, but in presence,....and in soul.

In his early years, his father had looked at him like one might regard a sword; unsharpened, untested, and heavy with potential. But there was more to it then. A warmth behind the eyes, fleeting but real, like he wasn’t just forging a weapon.....he was raising a son. For a time, that care existed. Tangible and true.

But a few years after Odysseus went to war, something shifted. The weight of legacy, of expectation, of fear perhaps, hardened the man. The warmth dulled, the looks changed, and the boy was no longer a son in his eyes, but steel waiting to be tempered.

'No.' 

Antinous shook the thought from his head. That wasn’t the man he faced now. He had returned to a time when his father’s gaze still held that fading softness. When the weight in his voice hadn’t yet turned to iron, and gods help him, Anti clung to that. Even if it was borrowed time.

"You're acting strange this morning," Eupeithes chuckled. The sound was low, amused even, but there was a distance in it, like he couldn’t quite place the boy standing before him. Like something about him felt.....off.

Antinous stood slowly, his legs trembling beneath him. He felt the weight of his limbs, light and hollow-boned. His tunic was too big around the collar and too short at the ankles.  He was eight years old. He could feel it in the way the wind bit at his skin and how easily his breath caught in his chest.

And yet the memories in his head were not an eight year old's. They burned behind his eyes like the afterglow of lightning, like fragments of a future undone, of marble halls drenched in blood, of wine and war and the soft curve of Telemachus's lips when he smiled....the one time Antinous had made him laugh. The sound had rung in his chest like music.

"Father," he said at last, his voice fragile and high. It sounded foreign, even to him.

Eupeithes blinked, eyebrows furrowing. "What?"

Antinous looked up and for a moment, just a moment, he didn't see the cold man who would one day conspire with suitors, his pride curdled into bitterness. He saw a man younger than he remembered. Less tired and less haunted. A warrior who still believed in kings and honor and Ithaca.

"I......had a dream," Antinous said softly, the lie feather-light on his tongue. "A strange one."

His father stared at him a moment longer, unreadable, before turning away. "Hmph, you always dream too much."

He began walking back up the path toward the villa, and checked to see if the boy followed. "Come, my boy. Odysseus departs for Troy within the week. There's much to do before then. The house will be busy."

Antinous watched him go for a long moment, then he glanced back at the water. His reflection shimmered in the current. A child's face with dark eyes that had seen the end of everything. A boy who would have once grown up cruel, afraid, and unloved.

But not this time.

This time, he had a second chance.....this time, the thread had been rewoven.

He turned away from the river, as though shedding the life he once knew, and followed his father into the light, into the life he now chose to live.

- - - - - -

The palace buzzed with war-prep: soldiers fitting bronze to their chests, servants packing olive jars into crates, and scribes murmuring through ship manifests and trade lists. The air stank of sweat, oil, and salt; of urgency and things unspoken. Even the pillars seemed to shudder with anticipation. Ithaca, that quiet island, is preparing to send its king to war.

Antinous moved through the corridors like a shadow and no one noticed. His feet were bare and his steps made no sound. He knew these halls, yet at the same time he didn't. The walls had not yet been cracked by time and the tapestries still hung in full color, not threadbare with age. The guards were younger and even the mood was lighter. 

But the weight in his chest stayed the same....heavy and cold and old as guilt.

He found his way to the women's wing, guided by memory he shouldn't have.

The room was dim and warm, thick with the scent of myrrh and fresh milk. He saw a nurse dozed on a stool near the hearth. In the cradle carved of cedar and ivory, Telemachus lay swaddled in pale linen, his cheeks pink with sleep, one tiny fist curled near his mouth.

A baby.

Just a baby.

Antinous stood in the doorway, not daring to step closer. His breath hitched in his throat.

This.....this wasn't the young man with fury in his eyes and a sword in his hand. This wasn't the boy who had faced him in Penelope's hall, teeth gritted, and blood on his tunic, screaming over the bodies of men Antinous had dragged down with him.

This was someone untouched, soft, and new with a whole life before him, unshaped and unsullied and he wouldn't remember....

He wouldn't remember the Antinous who would mock him, threaten him, and provoke him in front of his court; wouldn't remember the closeness, the silence that sometimes passed between them like a thread pulled too tight, and wouldn't remember the look Antinous had given him just before the arrow struck.

His legs trembled.

How long would he have to wait? How many years would it take before that cradle became a sparring ring, before that innocent sleep became restless nights and bitter glances? Before he could speak to him again and be understood?

Before he could try?

Chronos had granted him time, but not mercy.

This wasn't a second chance, not really, it was a sentence. A reckoning stretched across years.

Yet still.....

Still, as he stood there, the baby stirred, soft and silent and a small sound escaped from that tiny throat; something between a breath and a sigh.

Antinous pressed his palm flat against the doorway, heart clenching so sharply it made his ribs ache.

No blade. No shield. No voice to argue back. Only the quiet rise and fall of a chest too small to bear what the world would give him.

He looked so defenseless and Antinous, murderer, traitor, ghost in a child's skin, had never felt more unworthy. But gods help him, he would wait. He would wait a lifetime if he had to.

Because even now, even like this, he loved him.

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- - - -

That night, he lay awake on a thin mattress, staring up at the dark wooden rafters of the house. The air was thick and warm, buzzing with the quiet hum of night insects outside and the soft rustle of someone turning over in their sleep in the next room.

His feet didn't touch the floor when he sat on the edge of the mat. His hands couldn't reach the lock on the door. His whole body felt too small for the weight he was carrying.

The bruises on his elbows throbbed; a deep, aching kind of pain that came in pulses. He had tripped earlier trying to carry a clay jug he had no business lifting. He hadn't seen the loose stone by the threshold, hadn't caught himself in time. He fell hard, the jug shattering beside him, cold water soaking into his tunic. The nursemaid had scolded him, flustered and busy, telling him to sit still next time, to stop wandering where he wasn't needed. She hadn't meant it cruelly. But she didn't understand that he wasn't just a child....not really.

He pressed his fingers to the sore spot on his arm, then let them fall back limply to his side.

In the distance, he could hear the sea. It was faint through the walls, but there, waves brushing against the cliffs and the rhythm was steady and eternal. He closed his eyes and listened. That was something, that was real. Yes. The sea hadn't changed.

He remembered a voice. A different time....a different life. 

Telemachus stood tall, though the weight of unspoken grief clung to his shoulders. His jaw was tight, not with anger, but with resolve; his eyes steady, not aflame, but carrying the solemn sheen of someone who had endured too much, and kept walking anyway. He was not a boy untouched by sorrow, but a man tempered by it.

"If it's from you," Telemachus had said, voice raw with something between respect and devotion, "I'd brave any risk."

Antinous swallowed hard.

What right did he have to remember that? To hold that memory like a vow, when the boy it belonged to now barely had teeth..... barely even knew words?

Still, he curled into himself, tucking his knees to his chest, small fingers twisting into the softness of his blanket. He tried to blink away the sting in his eyes.

Somewhere in the palace, Telemachus was asleep; tiny, fragile, and curled up with his fist in his mouth and the world still gentle to him.

He couldn't speak. He couldn't understand. He didn't know who Antinous was, or who he would one day become.

But none of that mattered.

Antinous turned his face to the wall and whispered, soft and stubborn, like he could carve the words into time itself.

"I'll wait for you to grow up again," he whispered to the dark, "even if it takes a lifetime."

It wasn't a promise made to a grown boy with a sword in his hand....it was a promise made to a baby; to hope, to love, and to the part of himself he hadn't destroyed.

Even if Telemachus wouldn't remember, Antinous would and he would keep remembering, for both of them.

- - - - - -

The halls of Ithaca's palace echoed with the clang of armor and the clipped voices of men too proud to speak plainly. The war drums hadn't sounded yet, but they beat in the hearts of every noble who walked the courtyards; their eyes on Troy, on glory, on a thousand ships gathering like storms at Aulis.

Antinous stood in the shadows beside a fig tree, forgotten in the blur of bronze and leather.

He was eight years old and no one noticed him. That was his advantage.

He had watched Odysseus that morning from behind a pillar. The king had been speaking with his captains, tall and laughing, wind-worn and clever. His voice was sharp with command, but there was a deepness in his tone....something tired and knowing. Antinous had once hated that voice.

Now he found himself studying it like scripture.

'You'll leave soon,' Antinous thought. 'And you'll be gone for twenty years. Your wife will weep. Your son will grow up angry and hating me. And I....I will ruin everything, unless I find a way to stop myself before I ever begin.'

His fists clenched in the folds of his little tunic.

'But what can I do? I'm a child. A ghost no one sees. A villain reborn before his sins.'

. . . . .

Later, he watched from a terrace as the queen crossed the gardens with her child in her arms.

Penelope.

Even young, she moved with grace. Her braid was heavy with sea-salt oil, her eyes ringed with sleeplessness. And in her arms—

Telemachus.

So small and barely up to her hip. His curls were dark, and he squirmed against her shoulder with the fierce energy of a boy who didn't yet know fear.

Antinous swallowed. The sight undid him.

He stepped back into the stone column behind him, breath shallow, and heart too loud.

'You don't even know how to speak yet,' he thought. 'And still..... I promised you, didn't I?'

His fingers curled against the stone behind him, knuckles pale. 'I told you I'd wait. No matter how long. No matter how painful it gets.'

There was a reason he'd made that promise. Because some part of him, even now, even this small, this soft, this new body of his....still remembered what it felt like to die with Telemachus's name in his mouth and still remembered the way those eyes had looked in the torchlight, older, storm-tossed, wrecked with grief.

He turned away before the ache could shatter him completely.

'Grow up safe, little wolf. Grow up strong....and when you do, I'll be here.'

'Even if it kills me to wait.'

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- - - - - -

That night, he eavesdropped.

He slipped into the outer hall where Eupeithes drank with the other Ithacan lords; men carved from salt and pride, their words thick with wine and war. The torches crackled low in the sconces, casting long shadows against the stone walls. No one noticed the barefoot boy lying belly-down in the shadows. His ribs pressed into the cold marble and his arms ached from holding himself still. But Antinous didn't flinch. His ears were sharp, honed by years of listening to words never meant for him.

"....Odysseus leaves in three days," said one voice, gruff and confident. "Sails at first light, they say. Straight to Aulis."

"Better now than later," murmured another. "The boy's too young to understand what's coming. And Penelope's grief? It won't stop fate. Nothing ever does."

"The volunteers?"

"Scattered. Most are hesitating. We'll send more when needed....the fools just want to see who comes back in pieces first."

Then Eupeithes's voice, low and sharp like the edge of a blade, "My boy's not old enough yet. But gods help me, when the time comes, I'll have him ready. I won't coddle him. We've all lost something to Troy. I won't let it take his future too."

Antinous's jaw locked.

'You already did', he thought. 'You just haven't seen it yet.'

The torchlight flickered, and a laugh rose from the group, rough and careless. The kind of laugh men used to bury fear.

Antinous slipped out like a shadow, unnoticed.

He returned to his room.  A narrow space with a soft mattress and a window that let in more wind than moonlight. He curled beneath the warm blanket, knees drawn to his chest and his back to the door. His body still ached from earlier, from the tumble down the stairs when he'd rushed too fast and no one caught him. The bruises on his elbows throbbed like echoes, quiet reminders that this small body was not made for the war brewing inside him.

Three days. Three days until Odysseus leaves, and with him.....goes everything that matters.

Antinous stared at the ceiling, eyes wide and throat dry.

'I can't stay here. I won't.'

But where could he go? He was eight years old, too young to hold a sword, and too small to be heard. Yet.....his heart, full of memory and fury, beat louder than any war drum.

He turned his face into the blanket and whispered, "I have to find a way. Before it starts. Before I forget who I want to be."

Because somewhere across those coming years, he would become the villain, cruel and cold, lost in his bitterness, and somewhere along the way, he would break the heart of a boy who wasn't even old enough yet to form words.

But not this time.

Not if he could stop it.

Not if he ran faster than fate.

- - - - -

On the second day, Antinous tried to approach the docks. Not openly, no, not like a boy with permission. He walked with the slinking posture of someone who knew he didn't belong there.

 The morning air was thick with sea salt and the bitter tang of pitch; crates thudded against planks, sailors shouted over the screech of gulls, ropes creaked and oars glinted like teeth beneath the sun. Antinous kept close to the shadows of stacked barrels and worn stone columns, his gaze darting from crew to crew, memorizing how they moved, where they gathered, which ships looked ready, and which didn't. He wasn't sure which one belonged to Odysseus yet, but he figured he'd know it by the men; the tension in their shoulders and the way they stood too straight, like they'd already buried things they didn't speak about.

He was halfway down the quay when a soldier spotted him. A tall man with a helmet too large and a grin that showed half-rotted teeth.

"Hey now," the man called, one hand on his sword hilt, the other holding a half-eaten apple. "What's a milk-toothed nobleling doing down here?"

Antinous flinched, but only for a second. He straightened and lifted his chin. "I'm to deliver wine for my father," he said smoothly, voice steady. His hands, hidden behind his back, were balled into fists.

The soldier tilted his head, amused. "Oh, are you now?" He squinted. "And where is your wine?"

Antinous blinked. "Spilled it...?" he offered, eyes widening just slightly. The way he'd seen Penelope do when pretending not to notice something Odysseus had hidden poorly.

The man raised an eyebrow, unimpressed. "Spilled it, did you? That right?" He stepped closer, and Antinous saw his fingers twitch;  not reaching for the sword, no, just toward the boy's ear, the way adults did when they wanted to humiliate instead of wound.

But Antinous didn't give him the chance.

He turned on his heel and sprinted, sandals slapping stone, weaving between carts and crates until the curses behind him were drowned by seagulls and sails.

He didn't stop running until he reached the upper cliffs, chest heaving, and palms scraped from grabbing at the rocky ledge. He crouched there for a while, watching the ships below, far out of reach. Still moving and still preparing.

His heart beat like a drum in his throat.

Next time, he told himself. Next time, I'll bring something real. A jug, maybe.....or fruit. Anything to make them look twice before asking questions.

He clenched his fists.

He had two days left.

- - - -

On the night before Odysseus was set to depart, Antinous stood at the edge of the cliffs above the bay. His small silhouette, thin and tense, cut a sharp line against the wash of stars. The sea wind pressed against him like an invisible hand, tugging at his tunic, tousling his dark curls until they whipped at his cheeks. Salt stung his eyes. The scent of the water was sharp and familiar, like the aftertaste of tears.

Below, ships rocked in the harbor like wooden beasts asleep, creaking softly in their moorings. Lanterns swung at the bows, dim and golden in the dark, as if the vessels themselves breathed in their sleep, dreaming of blood and glory and far-off lands.

He crouched, arms wrapped around his knees. His bare feet dug into the dirt, toes curling against the edge of the earth as though he could root himself there and not be moved. The night whispered in waves, but Antinous didn't flinch. His eyes never left the ships.

'I'll hide aboard', he thought, and the certainty of it settled in his bones like iron. 'It's the only way.'

He couldn't ask. He wouldn't be allowed, and he knew it. If he even tried to explain, if he said "I have to be there or someone's going to die"  they'd pat his head, lock him in a room, or worse, laugh. And if he said the truth , "I've lived this already, I've bled on a palace floor I know too well, I screamed his name as everything went black ", they'd call him cursed or mad.

But he did, he remembered all of it.

He remembered Telemachus's eyes,  wide and furious, rimmed in tears and ash. He remembered the way the boy's voice cracked as he shouted for vengeance, remembered the bitter copper of blood on his tongue, and the last ragged breath that never made it past his lips. Telemachus's name had been the last thing in his mouth, and it burned now like a promise.

'I'd rather suffer again than let that happen.'

Antinous stood. His fists trembled at his sides.

"I don't care if I die again," he whispered into the wind. "But this time....I'll choose what I die for."

The stars blinked above him, distant and unmoved....and down below, one ship, slightly large, with its sails furled tight, and its prow shaped like a snarling lion, waited in silence for the dawn.

- - - - -

So he slipped into the darkness with a satchel of figs and bread, a flask of water, a sharp knife he stole from his father's drawers, and the courage of a child with a soul aged by war. 

His small frame vanished between the olive trees and the sleeping pillars of marble that lined the road to the sea. The moon carved silver paths on the stones, but Antinous didn't falter. Every step was placed with care. His sandals slapped lightly against the dew-wet grass, and he winced each time a twig snapped beneath his weight, afraid someone might hear; afraid someone might stop him.

But no one came.

He crept through the trees, over rocks slick with night-mist, knees scraped, hands scratched, and heart pounding loud enough to drown out the crickets. The salt in the air thickened the closer he got; it clung to his skin and curled in his throat like a ghost trying to speak.

And then he saw it, the harbor, wide and quiet beneath the stars. The ships slept in rows as their sails furled like wings tucked close to chest. A torch sputtered here and there, but most of the world had fallen into shadow.

Odysseus's ship waited among them; not the largest, but the sharpest. A long, lean creature of pine and rope, its hull dark against the black water, and its figurehead carved into the head of a lion mid-roar. The lines of it were cruel and clean, like something made not for sailing but for conquest.

Antinous pressed a kiss to the tips of his fingers and touched them to the dock; he did it not out of prayer or respect, not really. It was just a promise. Then he moved. He climbed quickly, his fingers finding purchase where ropes sagged and beams jutted, his arms shaking but sure.

He pulled himself aboard without a sound.

The deck was empty, save for the faint echo of snoring somewhere below. He ducked low, keeping to the shadows, and found the hatch left slightly ajar.

Below, in the belly of the ship, it smelled of wood tar and brine and old blood. Not fresh, not alarming, but old enough to make the hair on his arms rise. Crates were stacked in uneven rows, lashed down with rope; some carried salted meat, others amphorae marked with the symbol of Ithaca. Barrels of wine sloshed faintly with the rocking.

Antinous tucked himself between two stacks, folding his limbs tightly. The satchel he wore pressed into his ribs. He wrapped his arms around it, around himself, and curled into silence.

The ship groaned as the tide shifted. Gulls cried in the dark, swooping above like restless spirits.

And the gods, unseen above, turned their heads. They watched. Not for Odysseus, not for destiny's golden thread, and not for prophecies or glory.

They watched for the boy, the stubborn, trembling boy,  who had chosen to carry the unbearable weight of memory.

And history, ever fragile, shifted once more; not by the will of kings or heroes, but by the love of a child who remembered too much.

.

.

.

- - - - - - - -

Antinous crouched behind barrels of olives and salted meat, heart thudding too loud for warships.

The hold was damp; wood groaning with the sea's breath, and salt was clinging to every surface. The scent was thick: tar, brine, and rot. It reeked of old war and long voyages, but he barely noticed. It didn't matter.

He was here.

He had made it.

Eight years old, bones small, knees bruised, and sandals too tight. But inside, he was older. A thousand regrets older. The kind of old that didn't show on your face but bent your soul at the edges. A dying man reborn, a boy who had once begged for life and now stole it back.

His thighs ached from crouching. His cheek itched from where he'd scraped it against the hull during the climb, but his hands didn't shake. Not anymore.

He had already said his goodbyes.

Not to his father. Never to him. Not to Ithaca either; not to the house that had raised him in shadows, nor the bed he shared with silence. He had said goodbye to the only thing that still felt like warmth.

To his mother.

She met him by the olive tree outside their home. Her eyes scanned the satchel slung over his shoulder.

"Where are you going?" she asked softly, voice already tight with worry.

Antinous hesitated. Then, "With Odysseus. To Troy."

Her breath caught. "Troy?" A hand came up to press against her chest. "You're still just—" She stopped herself. She knew better than anyone how fast boys in Ithaca had to grow.

Her voice, quieter now, broke the stillness again. "Did your father ask this of you?"

Antinous shook his head. “No,” he said. “He didn’t even know I planned to join. I....I want to. Willingly......no, I have to," he said, and his voice barely wavered. "It's the only way I'll ever—" He paused again, swallowing the rest. Be free, Be something. Be seen.

She pulled him into a hug. Not one of those fleeting ones from childhood, but something firm, trembling, as if trying to keep him here with her just a little longer.

"I'm scared," she whispered against his hair. "Not of Troy. Of you becoming someone I won't recognize."

He didn't know how to answer that. So he handed her the dagger.

It wasn't new, its blade was simple, and the hilt was worn. But she understood what it meant the moment her fingers closed around it.

"If he ever, if Father ever turns cruel," he murmured, unable to say more than that, "you take this. Take the money I've left in the jar behind the kitchen pots and go to Queen Penelope. She'll help. She always helps."

His mother stared at the blade, then up at him. "Why are you saying this?" Her voice cracked.

"Just in case," he said. "I'm not saying it will happen. But you deserve to be ready."

Tears welled in her eyes, and she kissed his forehead, lips trembling. "Then you promise me something too."

"What is it?"

"Come back," she said. "However long it takes. Whatever the war makes of you, come back, my son."

He nodded, and for the first time in years, he let himself be held.

She kissed his temple, soft and trembling, and whispered a prayer into his hair, one he used to hear when storms rattled the roof. He didn’t speak. He just let the moment happen. Let her hold him like he wasn’t already halfway gone.

When he finally pulled away, her warmth lingered on his skin like the last light of home.

And then he said goodbye again.

To him.

It had been just before dawn, when the island was still half-asleep, curled in the arms of night.

He had climbed the garden wall in the dark, skin catching on the stone. His palms bled a little, but it didn't matter. He knew the way by heart. The hidden path, the loose tile on the roof, and the hall with the creaky step. He moved like someone remembering a dream.

The palace had smelled of milk and crushed lavender and old incense, of prayers half-said and lullabies left humming in the walls.

Penelope had already gone to the shrine. The nursemaid in the nursery was dozing, head tilted back, and mouth slightly open. The light through the shutters fell soft and slanted.......and Telemachus had been awake.

He hadn't cried. No, instead, he had blinked, eyes round and impossibly blue; like the sea during storms, like the sky before thunder and let out a soft, surprised "ah!" before breaking into laughter. Giddy and pure. The kind of laugh that cracked something open in your chest.

He recognized him.

In the way a child remembers a face. But something deeper. Like how a bird knows which wind to ride. Like how seeds know when to bloom.

Antinous stared at him for a long moment, frozen.

This wasn't just a baby. This was gravity. This was the reason behind everything knotted inside his ribcage.

He stepped forward, boots silent on the polished floor, and knelt beside the cradle. His knees made little thumps on the tiles.

He didn't speak to babies, didn't coo, nor did he fuss. It felt stupid.

But this wasn't just a baby.

"Hi," he whispered, voice rasping from the wind and the night and the climb. It cracked on the edges like something broken and still mending. "You're still so small. Gods, you're tiny."

Telemachus giggled and squirmed, kicking the blanket away, arms flailing like little bird wings.

Antinous reached through the bars of the cradle and rested his hand against the baby's. Warm and soft....and sticky with honey and sleep.

Something shifted in him, old and aching. He didn't cry. He wouldn't cry. But a knot twisted just beneath his sternum; tight and wringing. It felt like drowning in sunlight.

"I'm going to make it right," he murmured. "This time, I'll make it right. I'll protect you."

His fingers curled slightly, as if memorizing the weight of that tiny hand.

"And maybe, when you're older," he said, quieter now, "you'll see me. Really see me. And you'll remember something.....even if it's only a feeling. Even if it's just my name."

Telemachus squealed, delighted, babbling in syllables no one would ever understand but gods. Antinous leaned forward and pressed his lips gently to the baby's brow. His eyes fluttered closed. He stayed there for a heartbeat too long, as if trying to breathe in every second.

"I'll come back to you," he whispered, voice trembling but firm. "I swear it. On every god who ever spat me out. I'll come back."

And then, without looking back, he stood, and he left.

- - - -

The wind shifted.

It came in low and steady, tugging at the sails like a whisper too eager to speak. They groaned under the weight of it, the ropes straining as the ship gave itself to the current. Dawn rolled across the sea in glints of silver and cold fire. And behind them, Ithaca began to fade.

Green cliffs, the blush of olive groves, and whitewashed walls clinging to the hills like bones. It all bled into the mist, jagged and sharp; the kind of memory that wounds on its way out.

Odysseus stood at the helm, one hand on the wheel and the other resting on the worn grip of his scabbard, thumb tapping absently against the leather as the quiet settled in.

Too quiet.

Not the kind born from calm waters or early light....but a silence with teeth. A silence that listened back.

His eyes narrowed. "Who's there?"

No answer. Just the creak of wood and the slow shift of weight below deck.

Then came movement. A boy stepped out from behind a stack of crates. Young. Too young to be there.

Odysseus's grip tightened.

He recognized the face instantly, even if it was smaller than he remembered. Messy curls, sun-dark skin, and shoulders drawn back like he thought posture could make him older than he was. That kind of defiance wasn't bred; it was carved.

"You," Odysseus said, voice low, unreadable. "Eupeithes's boy."

He didn't move and didn't flinch. The boy just looked back at him; jaw tight, chin raised, and tunic cinched with rope like it was the only thing keeping him from falling apart.

There was something too still about him....something that didn't belong on a ship bound for war.

Odysseus's gaze lingered.

And just for a breath, just for a moment, he wondered.....what kind of storm had followed them aboard?

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."

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.

- - - - -

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."

.

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- - - - - - -

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.

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- - - - -

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.

Chapter Text

The first arrow did not sing.........it screamed.

It split the sky with the raw, jagged edge of a wound, tearing through the early light like a curse unburied; an ancient voice dragged up from the dark and loosed without mercy. Its cry was not the note of a hunter's bow but the howl of something long denied and something patient enough to wait centuries for its release.

By the time it struck flesh, by the time a startled breath turned into a gurgling choke, the horns had already answered. Their metallic wail rolled across the plain, cold and implacable, carrying the declaration no one wished to hear: war had begun.

The tide came first, roaring, writhing bodies surging forward with shields locked and blades hungry. Steel clashed, men roared, and the sea itself seemed to recoil, its foamy edge dragged back from the sand as if even the water feared what was to come. The shore convulsed under the weight of blood and fire.

Antinous stood at the very rim of it all; where sea kissed earth, where the waves' retreat left him ankle-deep in wet grit. His bare feet sank with each pull of the tide, but he did not move. His arms hung loose at his sides; his cloak, once fastened tight, flapped and tugged in the saltwind like it sought to flee without him. His eyes were wide, unblinking, and fixed on the maelstrom ahead, not with fear, but with the stillness of recognition.

It was as if he had seen this before.

As if the chaos was only an echo, a memory reignited, though not in the same place.

Tents caught flame, collapsing into themselves like dying beasts. Shields splintered, the sound sharp as breaking bone. Even the air thickened, not just with smoke, but with the taste of endings. All around, a thousand stories were cut short, their sentences never finished, and their last words swallowed by the roar.

"Antinous!"

The voice cut through the roar of battle like a spear hurled true. He turned, slowly, almost reluctantly, as Little Ajax barreled toward him, more storm than man. Each step kicked up sand, his bulk moving with the inevitability of a wave about to break. His expression was thunder wrapped in flesh; blood streaked his cheek in a crimson arc, though none of it was his own.

"You're with me!" Ajax barked, his breath jagged from running. "Odysseus's orders! We hold the ships. Anyone who tries to burn them, we stop them. Understood?"

Antinous only blinked, as if the words had to swim up from some deeper ocean to reach him.

Behind Ajax, the war surged louder, Achilles glinting gold and wrathful in the sun, his every movement a brutal kind of grace, cutting through men like poetry gone feral. Odysseus fought like a riddle given form; each parry a question, each strike an answer that left no room for doubt. Their names were already being carved into the battlefield, wound by wound, syllable by syllable, until they would no longer belong to men, but to myth.

And beyond, so much further than the reach of any spear, the towers of Troy loomed in their pale, holy stillness. Unmoving, unbothered, watching,.......and waiting.

. . .

Ajax seized him by the shoulder, dragging his gaze back to the present.

"You hear me?" His voice was louder now, almost raw with urgency. "We hold the line. You're not going in there. Not today. You're too young."

The words hung between them.

For a long, measured moment, Antinous simply stood there, letting the saltwind pull at his cloak, letting the world's noise swell and recede around them. Then he tilted his head, very slightly. His face was unreadable, too calm for a boy, too still for someone small enough to vanish between the shadows of larger men.

"I understand," he responded.

It was soft. Obedient and almost convincing, but his eyes never left the fire. They burned with something far older than the boy who wore them. A knowing that did not belong to children, a stillness that comes before storms. He did not look like someone being kept from war.

He looked like someone choosing his moment.

Because this was not his battle.

No........not yet.

But it would be.

And when it was, when the time truly came, no one would tell him to wait.

This was only the beginning.

And he was not made to stand on the edge forever.

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. . . . 

They patrolled the perimeter, Little Ajax pacing like a lion locked in a cage too small for his rage. His massive frame carved its shadow across the sand, shoulders drawn tight as if bracing for a blow that never came. The sunlight caught on the bronze of his armor, glinting in sharp flashes that mirrored the tension in his movements. His shield rested against his back like a second spine, the straps creaking softly as he moved. Under his breath, he muttered old war songs, half prayer, half memory, lines his father had sung before his first bloodletting, verses meant to harden the heart and still the trembling of hands before the killing began.

Antinous followed a pace behind, light-footed as a shadow that had learned to breathe. Silent and deliberate, his small hands were folded neatly behind him in a manner more suited to a boy wandering the halls of a library than the fringe of a battlefield. But his eyes told the lie of that innocence. They flicked from dune to dune, to gullies and ridges, to the faint shifting of brush in the wind. They missed nothing.

Every dozen steps, he crouched, drawing in the sand with the point of a stick he'd found; quick, efficient strokes that looked aimless at first glance. But they were no idle doodles. They were maps. Angles of approach, lines of sight, routes of retreat, circles marking choke points and shaded zones for cover, and arrows pointing to imagined consequences. It was the kind of spatial understanding that came from experience....or from a mind that thought in war. Either way, it was not the play of an ordinary eight-year-old.

Ajax noticed. He scowled at the symbols when they caught his eye, not because he understood them, but because he didn't.

"Can't believe I'm babysitting," he muttered, glancing over his shoulder with a look that was half irritation, half wary curiosity. "You're a strange one, you know that? Too quiet. Thinking too much for a boy."

Antinous lifted his head, gaze level. "Thinking is how wars are won."

Ajax stopped mid-stride, blinking. The wind whistled past, pulling at the curls plastered to his forehead with sweat. He opened his mouth, some retort caught in his throat....something between a laugh and a curse, but nothing came. In the end, he just shook his head and kept walking.

The sun slid past its peak, spilling gold into the sea. From inland, smoke began to crawl above the treeline, thick and dark, trailing the scent of burning wood and flesh. The air carried distant echoes of steel clashing, men shouting, the rhythmic, bone-shaking roar of Achilles cutting through the enemy lines. Each cry was like a drumbeat of destruction, rattling the bones of the shore.

Then Ajax froze.

He had spotted movement along the bluffs; shapes darting between rock and scrub, low and quick, like wolves closing on prey. Six men. Maybe seven. All armed. One carried a torch, its head wrapped in cloth ready to be lit.

"They're after the ships," Ajax growled, the words low and dangerous. He planted his feet, tightening his grip on his spear until the leather binding groaned under his fingers, "Stay behind me."

But Antinous didn't step back. He took one quiet step forward instead, his expression unchanged, though something shifted in the depths of his eyes; a narrowing, a focus that felt older than the boy wearing it.

"Don't waste your energy," he said. His voice was soft, almost kind. But beneath it was a stillness; something cold, deliberate, and inevitable.

Ajax turned to look at him. "What did you just—?" He never finished. Because Antinous was already moving.

No battle cry, no clatter of armor. Just a flicker.....here, then gone. A shadow slipping into shadows. No sword and no shield. Only hands, elbows and knees.

He moved like smoke over stone, gliding between the Trojan soldiers before they could even register that he was among them. The first man choked on his own breath as small fingers crushed his windpipe with surgical precision. The second swung the unlit torch toward the boy's head—too slow. Antinous dipped beneath it, pivoting with a grace that seemed to obey a geometry no one else could see. His strike landed sharp and exact, driving into the man’s ribs. The air left him in a grunt, and the torch slipped from his grasp, tumbling into the sand.

Unlit.

Ajax roared and charged in, but by the time he reached them, the fight was already decided. His spear finished the last three with efficient brutality, but the act felt strangely unnecessary....as if he was adding punctuation to a sentence already complete.

After that was....silence. Not the peace of safety, but that eerie stillness that follows unnatural things. Antinous stood exactly where he had stopped, breathing steady, not a mark on him. A single drop of blood trailed down his cheek, not his own. His eyes, calm and unblinking, rested on the men who would never rise again.

Ajax stared at him, chest rising and falling, trying to fit what he'd just seen into the shape of a boy. At last, he spoke, voice rough. "Never thought a kid like you could move like  a phantom."

Antinous turned to meet his gaze. There was no pride there. No satisfaction, no hunger for praise....only that same cold, distant calculation, as though he had merely adjusted pieces on a board, removing threats the way one might clear dust from a table.

"This war cannot be won with strength alone."

Ajax studied him in silence, the weight of unasked questions pressing against his tongue: 'What was this boy? What had he seen? What, exactly, was he becoming?'

Yet he didn't ask. Not anymore. He simply lifted his spear again, now bloodied, and resumed his patrol. Behind him, the strange child followed; dragging the stick once more across the sand.

This time, the lines he drew were not maps of defense....

They were paths to something still waiting.

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- - - - -

The gods demand blood. But they never said whose.

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The wind was sharp that evening; salty, cold, and thick with the weight of something about to snap. Along the edge of the Achaean war camp, tents flapped like wounded wings, their ropes straining as if trying to pull free from the earth itself. The dying sun bled into the horizon, smearing rust and crimson across the sky just as a wound that refused to close. Fire pits hissed and cracked, shadows of men bending and distorting in their glow. Somewhere, a lyre's string snapped mid-song and somewhere else, laughter broke like brittle glass.

There was calm in the air, but not the kind that comforted....it stalked. It prowled the narrow paths between tents and lingered in the eyes of men sharpening their blades. Everyone could feel it. That awful quiet that came before a scream.

And Antinous was not where he was meant to be.

He crouched behind a pile of discarded crates near the supply tent, the wind carrying the distant smell of iron and ash. The earth beneath him was cold, damp with the weight of the sea's breath. His small fingers traced circles in the dirt, not idly, but counting. One, two, three. He was listening to footsteps, to murmurs, to the war beating faintly beneath the camp's heartbeat.

He was watching.

Ajax the Lesser stood ahead, his armor dull and scarred, his voice cutting through the air with commanding ease. Among them, he was massive and loud, laughing as he barked orders to a nearby officer.

Antinous didn't laugh. He didn't speak. He just stood when the wind shifted and slipped between the tents, a wisp of motion in the torchlight. He moved, resembling a smoke parting from stone.

They were planning a raid that night. Swift, silent, and brutal. A midnight strike on a Trojan outpost said to hold rations and scouts vital to the enemy. Only the best were chosen: veterans, killers, men who had learned to eat fear before it could eat them.

Not stowaways.

Not ghosts in borrowed flesh.

But Antinous had not crawled his way through lifetimes only to be left behind. He had not clawed out of his own grave just to sit by and count ships. So he followed. Past the camp's border. Past sentries too tired or too careless to see him. His feet kissed the ground in silence. Every step was deliberate, a memory reborn. His cloak, dark and smoke-stained, dragged lightly behind him. He had done this before, in other nights....in other wars, and he would do it again.

The soldiers didn't notice him until they were deep into the hills, until it was too late.

"Oi! What's the brat doing here?" Perimedes' voice sliced through the night like a blade, sharp and contemptuous. He was tall and thin, with a cruel kind of smirk carved into his face. His hand went to his sword as if insult alone were reason to draw blood. "Thought you were Ajax's little pet. Lost your leash?"

Antinous stepped forward slowly, casting no fear. The firelight from a nearby torch caught his figure and gilded it with something unnatural; an-ancient-type-of-thing that didn't belong in a boy's gaze.

"I got bored," he replied, voice flat as a calm sea hiding a storm.

Diomedes turned, his patience already fraying. "He shouldn't be here. The boy's a liability."

Odysseus said nothing. He only looked at Antinous, long and silent. There was no accusation, no amusement, just a quiet calculation. Like a man deciphering an omen and then he turned away. He didn't say a word.

That silence was a key.

That silence was permission.

Perimedes scoffed, his grip tightening on the sword now half-drawn. "Oh, I get it. You think tagging along makes you one of us. Cute." His tone twisted into something sharper. "Wanna prove you're not just some pampered stray? Come on, boy. Show us what you've got hiding behind that smug little face."

Antinous blinked once and tilted his head to the side, akin to a curious predator.

"You sure?" he queried. He stepped forward, too smooth and too quiet. A flicker of unease passed through the group, unduly fast to name....but pride killed caution.

Perimedes didn't hesitate. He lunged, blade up, expecting a messy clash or at least the satisfying crunch of a shoulder knocked to the ground. But he never reached him. It happened in less than a breath. One heartbeat, and the world shifted. There was a flash of movement, fluid and exact. A sound, soft as air leaving lungs, then silence.

Perimedes was on the ground, gasping, the night pressing heavy on his chest. His sword lay beside him, useless, a thin red line glistening across his collarbone. The boy stood over him, unruffled, unmoved. The torch’s flame danced in his eyes, revealing the faintest glint of red beneath the brown, like embers half-buried in ash.

Antinous stood over him, expression unreadable. His stance was too controlled, too calm, the balance of someone who'd seen too many fights and survived them all. It was not the stance of a child, not even of a soldier.

"You—" Perimedes croaked, but his voice cracked before he could finish.

Antinous's gaze didn't shift. "You talk too much."

He turned his head toward the rest of the group, his tone quiet but heavier than thunder, "Anyone else?"

The question wasn't a threat; it was a test, and no one answered. Even Diomedes, quick-tempered and unyielding, stayed silent. The air felt strange now, thicker. The soldiers were no longer looking at a boy; they were looking at something else.....something older, something the sea itself might have whispered into being.

Odysseus's eyes lingered on him a moment longer. Then, with that eerie calm of his, he turned and continued walking into the dark. The others followed; wordless and heavy with thoughts they didn't want to voice. Antinous fell into step behind them. His shadow stretched longer than it should have, curling along the dirt like smoke from an unseen fire. Behind them, Perimedes bled into the dirt, gasping and trembling not from pain but from what he'd seen.

Because when he looked up, he didn't see a child at all. He saw a specter wrapped in mortal skin and in the torchlight's dying flicker....it had smiled.

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The raid was clean, brutal, and swift.

They returned just before dawn, the horizon bruising with the colors of impending morning. The enemy had been caught off guard, sleeping mostly, and the Achaeans struck like a tide in the night. Not a single man in Odysseus's unit was lost. Supplies were taken, throats slit, and not one scream had risen before it was too late.

It was a flawless mission.

But no one looked at Antinous the same way afterward.

The soldiers gave him space now. Not out of respect, but out of unease. The boy who wasn't really a boy had moved through the battlefield with an eerie grace; he fought akin to someone who had nothing left to prove, someone who knew exactly how to kill. Cleanly, quietly and without hesitation.

He hadn't hesitated. Even when a Trojan no older than he appeared had lunged toward him with wild, panicked eyes, Antinous hadn't flinched. He had driven the blade into the boy's gut and watched the life drain from him, not with cruelty, but with the cold resignation of someone who had done it before. Too many times.

Later, when the fires died down and the men had either passed out drunk or fled to their gods in sleep, Antinous walked to the river alone.

The wind had quieted. The camp behind him was a distant hum, like a world he no longer belonged to. He knelt by the water's edge and began to wash the dried blood from his hands and forearms, fingers trembling slightly, not from fear, not from remorse, but from something deeper.....something hollow.

The river murmured as it moved. The moon was low, casting a pale sheen across the surface, turning it to silver. When Antinous leaned closer, his reflection stared back at him. A face that did not match the weight in his chest. Wide eyes, soft jaw, and barely a wisp of age. It was as if he was wearing a mask.

He reached out and touched the water, distorting the image. Let it ripple, break, and re-form.

. . .

Then came the voice, not from the wind, nor from the trees. It was lower than that. Older. As if the earth itself had spoken, cracking through the silence.

"You were not meant to die a suitor."

The air stilled, even the river slowed.

"You were made for more."

Antinous didn't flinch. He didn't look up, didn't ask who or what had spoken.

He only met his own eyes again in the water, and whispered, steady and sharp, "Then watch me."

The wind picked up once more, and far above, in realms where gods lingered, someone did.

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- - - - -

The air was dry, hot with the weight of midday. Sand skittered across the dunes as if the wind itself was itching for a fight. Heat shimmered above the cracked earth, the kind that clawed at lungs and melted the line between sweat and blood. Somewhere near the Myrmidon camp, a ring of soldiers had formed, cheering, goading, and laughing, drawn like moths to the violence at the center.

Blades clashed, dust exploded. Achilles stood shirtless in the circle, bare feet sunk into scorched sand, his body slick with sweat and sunlight. Every movement was poetry written in war; feral and fluid, rage wrapped in grace. He fought akin to someone who knew no consequence, no equal. The world bent around him. Even when he allowed his opponent, a hulking, snarling brute with the arrogance of youth, to land a strike, it was a kindness. A false hope. A gesture of cruelty disguised as mercy.

Because Achilles always won.

He let them rise, only to teach them how to fall.

From the dune ridge, Antinous watched silently with arms crossed. A still figure against the shifting world. He wasn't supposed to be here. Technically, he was still a child. This place was supposed to be off-limits. He was a ward of Ithaca's king. But curiosity was a wound; once opened, it demanded pressing, and in the center of the ring below was something ancient in motion. Something that called to him like prophecy.

None of the soldiers noticed the boy on the hill.

But Achilles did.

Their eyes locked in the blur between strikes. Confusion flickered across Achilles's face, a crease in the perfect rhythm of his violence. Then wariness.....then amusement, and finally, a grin: sharp as a cut, slow as a dare.

"Enjoying the view?" Achilles called out, voice slick with salt and pride.

Antinous didn't flinch nor did he look away, "It's decent," he said. The soldiers howled with laughter. But Achilles's grin didn't falter. He tilted his head like a wolf scenting something strange on the wind. Then, lowering his blade, he stepped out of the ring and began walking toward him, easy, unhurried, and predatory.

Antinous didn't move.

Up close, Achilles looked carved rather than born. Broader than expected, all sinew and scar. His presence landed like a blow.....something too large to belong to a mortal boy.

"You're the one who bled Perimedes the other night," Achilles said. "The little ghost with a knife and no fear."

Antinous tilted his chin. "He lunged first."

"And you cut second." Achilles squinted slightly, assessing. "What are you?"

Antinous smirked faintly. "Smaller than you," he said, too lightly, "but probably smarter."

Achilles blinked at the remark. Then he laughed a low, surprised sound that stirred dust from the ground and behind him, a new voice floated in. "You making new friends now, Achilles?"

Patroclus was approaching, a towel slung across his bare shoulders, curls damp with seawater and sweat. His skin was bronzed by the sun and his eyes light with mischief. He glanced at Antinous, then at Achilles, then back again. A smile slowly forming in his lips.

"Gods," Patroclus stated, "he's pretty. You pick him up from Apollo's temple?"

"I didn't pick him up," Achilles muttered.

"Pity."

Antinous arched a brow, unfazed. "I can hear you."

"I was hoping you could," Patroclus responded with a grin. The breeze caught Antinous's cloak. It fluttered around his thin shoulders like wings as Achilles shook his head, already stepping back. "Don't get too close, Patroclus. There's something.....off about him."

"Or maybe just different," Patroclus murmured, gaze lingering thoughtfully.

Neither of them noticed the way Antinous's eyes briefly flicked, not to the famed blade at Achilles's hip, but to the veins tracing strength along his wrist and the elegant violence in the way his fingers rested against the hilt. He expected brute force from a legend; instead he found precision, artistry.

Not to the weapon but to the hand that mastered it. There was beauty there, carved into sinew and tendon; proof that heroes weren't just tales in firelight, but flesh that bled and conquered and lived. Achilles wasn't some distant myth. He was right here, golden and mortal and impossibly real.

Antinous didn't stare long, he wouldn't dare, but he captured the sight in a single, greedy heartbeat. Admiration tucked neatly behind the sharp line of his smirk; ambition hidden just beneath the rise and fall of his breath.

Noted, memorized, and stored. A reminder that greatness could be touched and perhaps........... one day, equaled.

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Far above, high in the heavens where mortal eyes could not reach, Athena watched. Invisible, silent, and ever-seeing. Her gaze tracked from Achilles, golden and doomed, to the boy standing like a shadow among warriors, untouched by dust, unreadable.

'That boy will change your fate', she whispered.

The words curled like smoke into Odysseus's mind as he stood by the edge of the tents, arms folded, gaze fixed across the shore. He didn't ask who she meant, for he already knew.

'For better or worse', Athena added, 'I cannot say.'

Odysseus nodded once, the weight of that uncertainty settling into his bones akin to a prophecy he wasn't sure he wanted to see fulfilled.

And on the dunes, Antinous remained still....the wind catching in his hair, a quiet storm behind his eyes, watching the god-born son of Thetis walk away.

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- - - - - 

By dusk, Antinous was summoned.

Odysseus stood just outside the mess tent, the fire behind him casting flickers across his face like an omen. His arms were folded and his jaw tight, not with anger but with calculation.

"You're with the Myrmidons now," he said without preamble. "Watch them. Learn from them. Don't get killed and don't kill anyone, unless I say."

Antinous stood still, expression unreadable. Dust clung to his boots. His tunic was stained from training, from the trail, and from the life he had clawed into his own. He looked smaller than the warriors nearby, younger ....but something in his eyes made even the veterans glance twice and then look away.

He didn't speak. He didn't need to.

His gaze drifted past Odysseus, toward the row of black-and-red tents nestled against the rocky slope. The sun dipped low behind them, casting long shadows like reaching arms. That was where Achilles slept, somewhere beneath layers of silk and sweat and sleepless thoughts. That was where Patroclus laughed; the kind of laughter that sounded like light, even in this blood-soaked place and that, Antinous knew, was where the gods paid attention.

He could feel it. The weight of their eyes. Curious and cautious....as if they, too, couldn't decide what he was becoming.

A new battlefield. Another game. Another set of kings to play like lyres.

Antinous smiled to himself, faint, quiet, and dangerous. A curve of lips that held more secrets than any of them deserved to know.

'Let them look.'

Let them wonder what he was. Let them try to unravel a man who refused to be read.

They would stare, and whisper, and circle him like hounds around a spark they thought was harmless, never realizing fire doesn't announce itself before it burns.

He turned from Odysseus without a word, shoulders loose with the kind of confidence that didn't need permission, and walked into the camp like he belonged there.

.......And maybe....perhaps he did.

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- - - - - 

Antinous sat outside the Myrmidon tent that night, sharpening a blade that wasn't his. It caught the moonlight as if it wanted to drink it; hungry, silent, and reflective of the boy who held it. The metal whispered against the whetstone, a steady rhythm in the lull between dusk and midnight.

Around him, the camp had begun to breathe slower. Torches flickered low and chorus of small noises filled the stillness: distant clinks of armor being unfastened, the low murmurs of centurions exchanging last orders, and the faint rustle of laughter, warriors nestled in tents, and soldiers recounting old glories in the haze of wine and firelight.

He didn't speak much; he didn't need to because his eyes said more than his mouth ever would; narrowed, alert, and always thinking three steps ahead......But Patroclus did.

The older boy stepped softly out of the tent, barefoot in the sand, sleeves rolled to his elbows, a loaf of dark bread in one hand and a battered bronze flask in the other. He moved like someone who belonged everywhere, who didn't fear silence but preferred to fill it with warmth anyway.

"Was it, Antinous? Your name and .....you with Odysseus, right? " Patroclus asked, tone casual but eyes searching.

Antinous nodded without looking up. "For now."

"For now?" Patroclus echoed, amused. "Most boys your age carry spears for their fathers. But you, on the other hand....carry yourself as if someone who chose this road.....Where did you come from, boy?”

Antinous finally glanced up, brief, defensive, and sharp. "Far enough that it doesn’t matter."

Patroclus shifted his weight, settling opposite him. "Hmmm, everything matters. Even the past you're running from."

Antinous's grip tightened just slightly, a tremor hidden in confidence. "I'm not running."

"No?" Patroclus tilted his head, studying him, "Then why hide behind a sword instead of stories?"

There was a moment of silence, then, Patroclus's voice softened, honest curiosity replacing the playful prying,".....Don't trust easily, do you? Or are you just shy?"

Antinous glanced up slowly, dragging his eyes away from the blade he'd been sharpening. He tilted his head, calculating. "Depends. Do you want the truth.....or something interesting?"

Patroclus's smile came like sunlight, slow, unbothered, and full of mischief. He sank down beside him without waiting for permission, close enough for their knees to brush, for the scent of honeyed wine to mix with iron and dust.

"Interesting. Always."

Antinous considered that. Then smirked, lips curling in practiced arrogance, "Then I'm a cursed prince from a dead city. Exiled by a goddess and raised by wolves."

Patroclus huffed a laugh, the kind that slipped out before thought, and nudged him with an elbow, playful and fearless, "That explains the bite."

Antinous didn't laugh but his smirk deepened, fleeting and secret, like a coin tossed into dark water, sinking where no one could see the truth of it.

. . .

Silence settled again, but comfortable this time. The kind that didn't demand answers.

Patroclus plucked a crumb from the bread and flicked it toward the sand. "You're young," he uttered, softer. "Too young for war."

Antinous's thumb paused along the blade's edge. He didn't look up, but his voice was steady, "War doesn't ask how old you are. It only asks whether you survive."

Patroclus followed the line of Antinous's gaze..... to Achilles, laughing with the Myrmidons, bronze and arrogance and destiny all in one. His breath eased out, warm with a quiet kind of awe, "Yes.....you're right.....He makes it easier to believe we'll survive," Patroclus admitted.

There was devotion in the words, clear as a prayer.

Antinous watched that devotion, studied the shape of it. The certainty, the belonging, the way Patroclus's eyes softened only for him.......

Maybe Antinous envied that.

He dragged the whetstone along the blade again, slow and thoughtful, letting the scrape settle between them. Then, low and honest, he murmured, "It must be.....something. To have a place in someone's story."

Patroclus turned to him, not quite smiling, but close enough to feel like an invitation.

Antinous didn’t return it. But his grip on the blade loosened, just slightly, as if a piece of the armor he wore wasn't as necessary in this moment.

. . .

He dragged the whetstone once more along the blade, watching it catch the moonlight like lightning barely contained. "I wasn't supposed to be here," he said at last, voice quiet....but real this time. "But now that I am.....I'll make sure I don't fade."

Patroclus turned to him, joking forgotten, the sea reflected whole in his eyes. "Fade?"

"From history." Antinous's jaw tightened. "Most boys do. Dust and bone. Forgotten names in forgotten wars. But I won't be one of them."

For a long moment, Patroclus just stared, not unkindly, not pitying, just.....seeing him and that alone was almost too much. Then, wordlessly, he held out the bread.

Antinous hesitated, pride warring with hunger, but finally took it with a nod that was almost respect.

They sat there, two shadows stitched in silver light; not friends, not yet, but something newly formed, fragile and curious. A thread pulled tight by fate. By ambition. By the knowledge that some names refused to be erased.

Patroclus tipped his head slightly. "Your real story....." he murmured, just above the waves, "will be even more interesting. I can already tell."

Antinous swallowed his mouthful of bread and met his eyes.

"Good," he replied, because he intended to make sure of it.

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- - - - -

Far from the firelight, where waves curled akin to sleeping beasts and the wind tasted of salt and forgotten gods, Achilles stood at the shoreline.

His armor lay beside him, half-donned, half-abandoned, bronze plates gleaming like scattered pieces of a legend he grew tired of wearing. His feet were buried ankle-deep in the cold surf, the sea rushing and retreating as if testing whether he still belonged to it.

He didn't sleep. Not when the sea whispered like his mother once did, soft warnings coated in prophecy and the metallic aftertaste of fate. He stared out at the black horizon, jaw tight, and shoulders drawn like a bowstring. His mind wasn't on Troy tonight.

It circled elsewhere.

Around the boy with too-steady eyes......too clean a smile for someone who watched bloodshed like a scholar reads words.

"That boy," Achilles muttered, nearly too low for the waves to hear, "there's something....wrong."

A voice behind him, dry as wine and twice as sharp, "Not wrong," Odysseus corrected, stepping into the moonlight, "just.....not ordinary."

Achilles didn't turn to look at him because he already knew who that voice belonged to; his fingers flexed behind his back. "Odysseus."

"You speak to the sea," the king of Ithaca said lightly, hands clasped behind him as if they were discussing weather and not omens. "Let me have my riddles."

Achilles exhaled through his nose, steady but restless. "I don't trust him."

"You don't trust anyone....except Patroclus, of course," Odysseus replied. "That's why you're still alive."

"That's because I pay attention."

Odysseus's laugh was short, almost respectful. "Then keep paying attention. That boy is a storm with a name. The kind you don't see until you're drowning in it."

Achilles's gaze flicked sideways at last. His eyes burned molten bronze in the starlight. "What do the gods want with him?"

Odysseus looked out over the waves, toward the direction where Antinous sat by the fire, a small figure with a shadow too large to ignore. Odysseus didn't answer. He didn't need to.

Athena's voice had already burned into their bones, "He will change your fate. You just won't see how until it's too late."

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- - - - - - 

Later, as Antinous lay on the hard earth beneath a moonless sky, his body still and his eyes half-lidded, he let the warmth of the Myrmidon fires fade behind him. The camp noises blurred into a dull hum: the murmur of half-dreaming soldiers, the rhythmic thud of practice blades hitting wood, and the soft scrape of armor shifting over restless shoulders.

But Antinous did not sleep.

He traced the edges of the world with restless eyes, as though sleep was a luxury boyhood had stolen from him long ago.

He thought of Patroclus's smile, soft, lopsided, offered like a gift to anyone who dared reach for it. Truly, it was a rare thing here. A smile that asked for nothing and offered everything, kindness without motive, and warmth without apology.

Moreso, he had seen the way Patroclus leaned toward Achilles without realizing it....The way their shoulders drifted together like magnets made of flesh and longing. The way Patroclus's fingers brushed Achilles's wrist just to be certain he was real. And he saw how Achilles, fierce, unbending Achilles, paused. Just paused......Oh, how the world paused with him.

They believed their tenderness was subtle. They believed the camp was too loud and the war too consuming for anyone to notice. But Antinous noticed. He noticed everything.

The shared bread, the low laughter, the way Achilles's tent flaps remained open only for him; an invitation disguised as practicality. Even the way Patroclus's voice softened when he said Achilles's name.

It was not weakness, but it was a target. People who loved had something to lose, and people who had something to lose.....were breakable.

Antinous had already been broken once and he would not allow it again. He rolled onto his back, eyes fixed on the sky, a tapestry of stars that had watched too many boys become myths or corpses. His chest rose and fell with slow, controlled breaths as he let memory seep into him like cold water.

Earlier, Achilles had scowled at him, suspicion sharp in his gaze, as if instinct howled danger whenever Antinous came too close. As if a predator could smell another through silence alone. But Patroclus had smiled anyway, sat beside him anyway, and saw a lonely boy instead of the storm he carried.

......It made something ugly and yearning twist inside him.....the ghost of admiration and the echo of envy.

Soon, this place would drown in destiny. Boys would become legends or dead men, histories would be written in blood and songs, and Antinous knew. He could feel it tightening around them like a noose braided by the gods themselves.

The war was not the only war here.

There were other battles....The kind no sword could win: schemes behind armor, ambition behind brotherhood, desperation behind glory.

And Antinous?

He would carve his name into the future by force if he had to. He would not be forgotten. Not by mortals. Not by gods. But most of all.....not by the boy whose memory refused to let him go. Even here.....even now in a world that had not yet learned his name.

His fingers curled into the dirt, like he was holding onto Ithaca across oceans and years. His voice, low and certain, slipped into the salt-heavy air;  a vow disguised as a prayer: "I'll come back to you."

A breeze stirred, cold, briny, and familiar, as though the sea itself carried his promise across time.....across fate, and across every version of their story.

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- - - - -

The air was thick with salt and smoke.

Morning was barely a bruise on the sky when the horns began their merciless cry. Troys walls stood unshaken in the distance; ancient, arrogant, and hungry. Smoke from dying campfires drifted along the shoreline, mixing with the metallic tang of bronze and fear.

Antinous stood barefoot in the cold surf, toes curling into wet sand. The sea wind whipped his hair into his eyes, salt stinging, but he didn’t blink. His body remembered fear; his mind refused it. He wasn't cold. He was aware.

Aware of how fragile a heartbeat really is, how quickly a name can be forgotten and how war does not care who you are....only that you fall.

He watched the waves roll in and break apart at his feet. It was too easy to imagine himself the same way: a body swallowed by the tide, another young Greek lost before glory ever learned his name.

For a moment, his pulse jumped, a quiet, instinctive reminder: 'You can die here.'

The thought didn't paralyze him though. It sharpened him. He inhaled slowly, letting the air settle in his chest and letting the fear stay where it belonged; deep, small, acknowledged....but not obeyed.

He had seen enough death to understand that fear was reasonable. But he had endured enough to know it wasn't allowed to lead. He set his jaw, gaze locked on Troy's distant walls, the city that decided the fates of thousands.

If death waited for him beyond those gates, then it would have to chase him because he wasn't planning to stop.

. . .

Behind him, the Myrmidons were already stirring, laughter that bordered on madness and armor clashing like thunder. All while Achilles paced among them: half-god, half-weapon, all wrath. Even sunrise seemed to follow him like a loyal dog.

Patroclus approached, fingers steady as he tightened the last strap of his bracer. There was steel in his posture; softness tucked just beneath it. Softness that betrayed him whenever Achilles so much as breathed.

"You stay close, shadow," he murmured, voice low enough only the sea and Antinous would hear. "Don't play hero."

Antinous didn't respond, not because he hadn't heard, but because there were too many truths wrapped in those three simple words. His gaze fixed again on the silhouette of Troy, golden walls rising like a challenge and towers clawing into the bruised morning sky.

Antinous noticed how Patroclus's gaze always found Achilles in the chaos, how their movements answered each other as if they were one body split into two. A hand braced on an arm, a word beneath the breath, and a glance across spears and armor that spoke louder than any command.

They didn't call it love, not out loud. But Antinous saw it anyway. How could he not? He'd spent his whole life pretending not to want what he wanted. He recognized the hunger in Patroclus's softness and the ache in Achilles's rage.

He looked away, jaw tight.

He remembered Odysseus's voice from the night before, low and commanding, an order wrapped in warning, "You do not take a life. Not yet."

'Not yet.'

Antinous had nodded. Not because he feared Odysseus........maybe he still did, but mostly because he understood. The king wasn't protecting his enemies. He was protecting Antinous from being noticed too soon. So he would obey. He wouldn't kill today, but he refused to let the Greeks die either.

The wind curled around him like a vow.

He leaned forward, speaking not to Patroclus, but to the sea, the city, and every god desperate enough to listen, "Let history remember that I was not afraid."

Trumpets ripped through the air sharp as a god's fingernails across the sky. The earth trembled as rank after rank surged forward, shields lifted, battle cries ripping the dawn apart.

Achilles was the first to leap, to greet Troy with violence.

He moved like divine punishment, his bronze armor catching the sun like wildfire, his spear a streak of vengeance. The frontlines cracked beneath him. Trojans fell like wheat before a scythe. He didn't scream. He didn't boast. He destroyed. He just killed, calm, cold, and certain.

Patroclus followed, blade raised, eyes already searching not for enemies....but for lives worth saving. His purpose was different. No less deadly. No less noble.

And Antinous?

He hesitated only long enough to feel the war breathe against his skin. The world had tilted. The sound of war was not distant anymore; it was all around him, inside him.

A soldier fell face-first into the surf beside him, blood bubbling from his mouth. Then Antinous jumped. His boots hit the sand hard. The earth trembled. He didn't have a sword. No, he didn't need one. He had speed.

Then he ran, not toward glory, but toward the fallen. He seized a wounded soldier beneath the arms, dragging him behind shattered shields and fractured hopes. His hands were slick with blood, someone else's fears staining his skin, but he did not stop. He darted between the dying and the dead, smaller than the rest, nearly invisible.

He dragged wounded men back behind Greek lines, water sloshing from a cracked jug in his arms. He pressed his palms to gaping bellies and didn't flinch when blood soaked through his tunic. He gritted his teeth and yanked spears from thighs, whispering apologies as the wounded screamed.

Another man fell, crying for his mother. In the blink of an eye, Antinous was already there, ripping his own tunic into bandages, pressing against the wound.

"You.....you're just a brat—" the hoplite gasped, teeth gritted.

Antinous shoved harder, "Then bleed without me," he snapped. That made the man shut up.

Again and again he moved, darting through chaos like smoke, unseen until it was too late not to be saved. He refused to look at the corpses. He refused to count them.

Patroclus saw him; small, fierce, and stubborn as a god's curse.

He swore under his breath, "Shadow....damn it...."

"You said not to play hero!" Antinous shouted back, wiping blood from his brow with the back of his shaking hand. "You never said I couldn't help you be one!"

Patroclus didn't argue. No, he couldn't. Because for all the fury and glory raging along the beach, Antinous was the bravest fighter there.

He was waging a different battle. A quieter one....one without blades.

. . .

Achilles didn't notice the small figure saving men behind the lines, not yet. But the gods did.

Athena's gaze lingered, Apollo paused his breath, and the Moirai, the Fates, leaned closer to listen.

Because in a war where legends were carved by killing.....Antinous was writing his name in the ones who lived and when the day came that he finally chose to kill?

The world would remember.

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- - - - - -

Achilles noticed. Not just the boy's strange calm, not just the way his eyes lingered on the fallen as if he was counting souls, making sure none slipped away unseen, as though some instinct demanded every life be acknowledged.

No.

Achilles noticed the way Antinous never looked surprised. Not by death, not by agony, and not by the way warriors, fearless at dawn,  were begging for their mothers by dusk. He watched it all with the quiet recognition of someone who had already learned how easily the world ends. As if he had seen this before, as if he was waiting for it.

It unsettled Achilles more than the carnage and more than the blood still cooling on his own skin.

Patroclus had warned him, the boy was strange, but not the cruel and detached kind. Just....strange in a way that felt like the sea right before it decides whether to whisper or devour. Achilles had half-expected the boy to faint on the beach, to hide, to scream, to cry. But Antinous only worked. Silently, feverishly, and purposefully. He moved as if he had done this before....not in this lifetime maybe, but in another.

. . .

By sundown, the beach belonged to the Greeks.

Fires lit the dusk like orange stars burning holes into the veil of night, crows circled in grim spirals overhead, and the Trojan dead stained the tide crimson, floating like broken offerings.

Antinous knelt at the edge of it all, just where the bloodied waves licked at the sand, hands slick and sticky with drying blood, and face blank, not numb, not in shock, just.....quiet. Too quiet for a boy who'd just watched hundreds die.

Odysseus, sword still bleeding, joints aching, heart older than his face would ever admit, found him there and he recognized that posture. Too many boys had folded into themselves like that, trying to carry more than their shoulder blades were built for.

"Was this your first war?" Odysseus asked gently.

Antinous didn't look up, "No." A single word, too cold and too certain, made the surf seem to hesitate. Odysseus almost asked how he could possibly know war before this.
Almost. But something in the boy's voice made his throat close around the question. He crouched beside him instead.

"You saved lives today," he said, steady and true. Yet Antinous didn't glow with pride, didn't crumble either.

"I also watched people die," he murmured.

Odysseus nodded. "That’s what war is."

"No." The boy replied. Antinous turned then, eyes ancient in a face still soft with childhood, "War is what we allow it to become."

Odysseus didn't know what to say to that because it sounded like a prophecy. It sounded like something Athena herself might have carved into the bones of men if she ever grew tired of watching mortals destroy each other.

. . .

That night, long after the shouting died and the wounded slipped into shallow dreams, Patroclus returned from the med tents. He found Antinous sitting near the fire, a little apart from the rest, blanket around his shoulders, untouched and unnoticed, as though warmth was still a foreign thing.

The boy didn't look up not even when Patroclus sat down beside him.

"You did good today," the older boy said, voice warm and hoarse with fatigue.

Antinous gave a small, almost careless shrug.

"I didn't cry."

Patroclus smiled faintly, exhaustion softening the curve of his mouth. "That's not the only measure of bravery."

"I know," Antinous breathed. A beat of silence; soft, small, and true. "But it's the only one I needed today."

He leaned a little, just a little, until his shoulder brushed Patroclus's arm. Enough to accept warmth. Enough to let himself be young for one heartbeat.

For the first time that night, Antinous closed his eyes. Not to escape the memory. But to hold it, so he would remember exactly why he must survive tomorrow.

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- - - - -

Outside the tent, the night breathed slow and heavy. Smoke from the cookfires clung to the air, threaded with olive oil and damp leather and the metallic sigh of newly-sharpened bronze. A war camp's hush, not silence, but the quiet before an open wound.

Achilles stood at the entrance, arms crossed, eyes sharp as forged iron. Torchlight carved wild shadows over his face; even still, he looked like ruin waiting for permission.

Inside, Antinous sat alone. Knees pulled tight to his chest and eyes locked to the wavering flame of a half-spent lamp. Hours had passed, yet, no movement, no words. Just that slow breathing, steady as if he refused to let the world see what shook inside him.

Achilles didn't trust stillness like that.

Not from someone who had looked upon death before death ever claimed him.

Patroclus passed behind Achilles, catching the unspoken question in his rigid stance. He didn't intervene, only laid a quiet hand on Achilles's shoulder, as though to anchor him before caution turned to violence.

But Achilles spoke first, "I want him watched." Low, not loud enough for the camp to hear, but sharp enough that the night itself seemed to listen.

Odysseus stepped into the torchlight beside him, folding his arms with that familiar calm that always bordered on dangerous amusement, "Funny," he murmured. "I told him the same thing about you."

Achilles's jaw locked, suspicion snarled beneath his ribs. Yet Odysseus simply tilted his head toward the boy. Toward the unmoving silhouette that somehow made the space around it feel....armed.

"Careful, son of Thetis," Odysseus said. "That one may be smaller than you, softer than you, but something in him doesn't belong to this timeline. Or maybe it does, and we just haven't seen the cost of it yet."

Achilles said nothing, but his gaze sharpened, and high above, hidden in the folds of night, something ancient stirred.

Athena's eyes opened like twin moons in the void. She watched all of them: Achilles with his fury barely sheathed, Odysseus with his schemes, and Antinous with his secrets stitched behind his tongue. She felt the weight of the world bend slightly, like a chessboard nudged before the final move.

"Fates shift," she whispered into the void. Her voice echoed only in the realm of gods. "One of them may fall early. But not before the other learns why he was sent here."

 The wind shifted, the stars flickered, and somewhere above, in the unseen dark between stars.....a single feather of an owl drifted down.

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- - - - 

The Greeks had claimed the beach, but the war didn't sleep. Every night, wounded men whimpered in tents, and armor clanked like ghosts in the dark. The scent of blood never left the wind; it never dies; it clung to their skin, their sleep, and their souls. Even the sea tasted like fear.

Antinous trained anyway.

Odysseus had placed him among the Myrmidons like a puzzle piece that did not yet fit, and so he watched their formations, measured their breath, learned the rhythm of their killing. Not too close and never too far. Just enough to be underestimated.

Every morning, Achilles sent him flying into the dirt.

"You fight like someone who isn't afraid to bleed," Achilles said again, brushing sand from his knuckles.

Antinous coughed, spat mud, and stood, stubborn to the bone. "Because I am."

Achilles blinked and tilted his head, studying him, a flicker of curiosity beneath the hard edge of his stare "Fearless people die first."

"Then I'll live long enough to bury all of you," Antinous muttered, wiping a smear of blood from his lip.

Achilles paused, then barked out a laugh, short but real.

From that moment, strangely, they grew......familiar.

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Achilles found the boy irritatingly quick, nimble, whereas the Myrmidons were force incarnate. Antinous, in return, found Achilles unbearably dramatic.

And yet.....they matched. Stride for stride, blow for blow, and breath for breath.

"Stop thinking and move," Achilles growled during sparring.

"I'd move faster if you stopped talking," Antinous shot back, ducking a swing.

"If I stop talking, you'll die."

"If I die because you stopped talking, I deserve it." Achilles tried not to smile and failed.

. . .

In the quiet hours, they sat on the sand dunes, the war camp buzzing faintly behind them.

Achilles tossed an amphora of water toward him. "Where did you learn to throw knives like that?"

Antinous caught it without looking. "A friend," he said simply.

Achilles raised a brow. "Alive?"

Antinous's fingers tightened around the handle. His eyes followed the dark horizon where the ocean bled into the night sky. "Hmm...." His tone was almost detached, like a man reading the name of someone carved on stone. "Not anymore."

Achilles didn't press. He recognized the weight behind those words....the kind that couldn't be spoken without breaking something inside. He'd worn that tone before, too.

The waves filled the silence between them, steady and forgiving. Later, Achilles broke a fig in half and handed one piece over. "You're not normal," he said with a crooked grin.

Antinous took it, chewed slowly, then arched a brow. "And neither are you."

Achilles huffed a laugh. "But I'm born of gods."

"And you think that makes you not weird?" Antinous shot back, and for a heartbeat, the great Achilles almost looked like a boy; startled, then amused.

Sometimes, Patroclus would join them. He carried a gentleness that softened the sharp edges Achilles left behind. When he laughed, the night seemed less cruel. When he spoke, even Achilles listened.

Patroclus never demanded stories; he simply asked them open and patient. "Do you miss home?"

Antinous hesitated. His gaze drifted past the camp, past the sea, somewhere only memory could reach. "Home and I.....parted ways a long time ago."

Patroclus tilted his head, waiting, but not pushing.

A faint, almost wistful curl touched Antinous's mouth. "But I will return one day."

'To him', he thought.

The unspoken name hung in the space between breaths, not uttered, but felt.

Patroclus's smile faded with understanding, quiet and sad. He knew what it meant to love something or someone that existed only in absence. To be surrounded by people and still ache for a place that no longer waited for you.

Achilles noticed the shift and changed the subject, not out of carelessness, but protection and so the three of them sat in silence again; a demigod, a soldier, and a ghost of a boy who no longer belonged anywhere, watching the sea swallow the night whole.

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They ran together down the shoreline at sunset, the waves chasing their feet, the sky bleeding gold into the sea.

Achilles always won but Antinous always finished.

The air between them was thick with salt and challenge, neither willing to yield.

When they finally stopped, Achilles stood tall and unbothered, chest steady. Antinous dropped into the sand, breathless but with that same quiet fire in his eyes, the kind that refused to die even in the shadow of legends.

Achilles smirked, brushing damp hair from his face. "You fight better than most men twice your age."

Antinous grinned up at him. "You boast louder than most gods twice your pride."

That earned a laugh, sharp and genuine. Achilles nudged his shoulder with his foot. "You talk too much for someone who dares the gods so often."

Antinous tilted his head, still catching his breath. " I don't know what you mean 'bout that, but you talk too much for someone who thinks he can outrun them."

For a moment, Achilles went still....a flicker of something unreadable crossing his face. The tide whispered against their ankles, and he finally said, quieter this time, "I don't run from the gods, boy. I run toward what they promised me."

Antinous looked up, eyes steady. "....Even if it kills you?"

Achilles smiled, not prideful, but certain. "Especially if it does."

The wind carried their silence after that, heavy and knowing. Achilles had chosen his fate long before this night; Antinous was only beginning to understand his own....and as the sun sank into the waves, both of them, the demigod and the boy, stood caught between what they were running from and what they were running toward.

. . . 

Trust came slowly.

Not through words, but through bruises, breath, and the rhythm of sparring.

Achilles began showing him tricks he didn't share; how to strike a tendon without shattering the bone, how to pivot when a shield locks you in, and how to breathe through pain instead of around it.

"You can't hesitate," Achilles said one morning, circling him in the dirt. He stepped close, adjusting Antinous's grip with two fingers. "If you think about your heartbeat, you'll lose it."

Antinous's brows furrowed. "And if I don't think?"

Achilles's grin came sharp and bright. "Then you'll win."

But trust isn't one-sided. Antinous taught, too; lessons quieter and more deliberate. He showed Achilles how to throw small blades with such precision that even the veterans stopped to watch.

"You aim with your arm," Antinous said, eyes narrowed in focus as he lined his throw. "But you strike with your decision."

Achilles caught the blade mid-air, testing its weight. "I don't decide," he replied, tossing it back. "I simply do."

Antinous caught it cleanly, a smile ghosting the edge of his mouth. "That's why you crave war. It's the one place where 'doing' doesn't make you a monster."

The words landed heavier than the blade between them. For a moment, Achilles just stared, something flickering behind his eyes, the kind of thought that could unravel a man if he let it. Antinous feared he had gone too far.

Then, softly, almost like he was admitting a secret, he said, "....you understand more than you should."

Antinous looked away, but his mouth betrayed him....the corner tugged upward, just a little.

Achilles noticed, and when he smiled back, not his usual smirk, but something unguarded, and almost human, the distance between them seemed to fade.

Two warriors, lowering their shields, if only for a heartbeat.

. . .