Penelope reached out, gentle, to touch Odysseus - his tanned face, lined by tragedy, crumpled in grief even in sleep. Her fingertips had barely brushed skin before her wrist was nigh on crushed, strangled in a grip that was used to blood slick spears and wringing wet ropes.
"Odysseus," Penelope tried, voice gentle, gentle. Her husband was a fragile creature in these quiet, nighttime moments. A man broken and pieced back together again and again. "Wake up, Odysseus."
"Please," he rasped, eyes still closed, face still grimaced. "Please, not tonight."
Penelope blinked. That was not what she expected. "What not tonight, beloved?"
"Please, let me stay true to my wife for one night," he whispered, voice crackling like fire low in the hearth. "Let me dream of her, and think of her, without your affections tainting it. For one night. Please, goddess. I beg of you."
"Husband." Penelope mislikes this conversation. There had been no time to talk of what happened, in its entirety, in that span of ever-stretching years they were kept apart. "You will wake up and face me, Odysseus."
Her husband, a man of whipcord muscle and strength honed by the gods themselves, whimpered. His eyes opened. Then blinked. Fluttered again. She was not what he was expecting.
"What did you mean, stay true to me? Odysseus - " He'd flung himself from their bed, long legs and motion and wild-eyed agony. In that moment, he was not a man.
Her husband was no more. In the flash of too-bright teeth, a white slash in the dark, there was only a cornered creature.
Gentle. Gentle, she reminded herself. "Please, come back to bed," she crooned, reaching out.
That was the wrong thing to do.
Odysseus stumbled back from her hand, as if she was plagued, or cruel, or any number of horrible things Penelope was getting an inkling this so-called goddess was. It was a good thing she was still abed, for the realisation made it hard to stand. A goddess. At night. Every night.
Her husband begging for the goddess to stop.
Penelope carefully sat up on their olive tree bed, keeping Odysseus in sight. The moonlight caught on his cheekbones, twin trails of tears sparkling in the dark. Her breath hitched, water limning her own lashes, but this was not about her. This was about her husband. Her Odysseus. Her lovely man of many twists and turns and broken stone, a labyrinth she was determined to set to rights. To rebuild.
"Odysseus, I will not hurt you. Whoever she was, she is far behind you, and you never have to see her again."
"Pen-Penelope," his lips trembled. "I'm sorry."
She wanted to reach out so badly, take his shivering form into her embrace and lace their fingers together as she used to. Penelope kept her hands clasped together in her lap. She would not be selfish. "Whatever are you apologising for?"
"I betrayed you. I betrayed our vows, betrayed your trust, and I-I am sorry, I'm sorry. Please. I know - I know I did not want it. I didn't, I swear to you," he came closer to her and crumpled to her feet, begging with arms wound about her knees, face buried in her thighs. She let her hands tangle into those deep russet curls.
"Odysseus." She began, but she could not bring any words out of her throat.
Odysseus let loose a keening sound that shattered her heart. "I swear, I did not want it. I never wanted it, and I was not strong enough - and I could not bring myself even then to throw myself into the sea. Not when I knew in my heart of hearts you were waiting for me. I love you." Oh, what fresh pain his words brought, what fresh ecstasty. "Please, forgive me. Penelope. My Penelope, please, if you'll have me - "
She curled around his upturned face, pressing her lips to his, forcing a dam upon the torrent of his words. "There is nothing to forgive, and I will have you always. I will have you forever. Until the end of our days and beyond, I will have you. I will love you."
Odysseus clasped steadied hands to her face and kissed her.
