Chapter Text
It was not that Calypso was difficult to please, but that he refused to do the things that pleased her.
He had pleaded the goddess—when he had first arrived—to allow him to go home, but to no avail. She had taken him for the first time that night, and by morning she had caught him in a trap of tangled vines when he had attemped to escape her cave.
Now, nearly a year later, he had not ceased his attempts, even if he had been subjected into compliance throughout his stay. He had crafted a fine raft in secrecy, hopefully strong enough to carry him off and away from Ogygia.
Odysseus examines his handiwork one final time: a fine raft crafted from logs chopped from trees without Calypso's knowledge, before pushing it towards the lapping waves. He needed to leave before the dawn arose if he wanted any chance of Calypso not finding out.
The raft rocked a bit with the addition of his weight, but to his delight, it stayed stable. He had brought only a small sack, filled with some food and water, and a himation to shield him from the cold, since the impossibly thin chiton Calypso made him wear covered less than what he was comfortable with.
He nearly made it past the first stretch when he heard her shriek from the shoreline. She must have heard the bells on his... accessories jingle as he hopped onto his raft. She screamed, angry and loud, but Odysseus payed her no mind. He was going home.
The waves started to push against his raft. Odysseus had planned for this, steering his vessel with a sturdy oar, but the wind was stronger, and Calypso's screams got louder as he dropped his oar into the ocean.
He lunged to reach for it. He was so close! But all of a sudden, the kelp grew long and pulled him down into the water.
He struggled against it's hold, but, as always, it threw him onto the soft warm sand. He coughed and choked on swallowed sea-water, while Calypso stared him down.
"You were going to leave me." She says, hypocritically hurt.
"I was going home." He spits out, and rolls his sand-covered body to face the sea. In the distance he can see his raft, still afloat, sailing past the island borders and getting lodged between two jagged rocks. If he'd managed to stay on, he would have made it, probably.
Calypso purses her lips, but eventually, she lifts him with her blasted entwining vines and brings him to her cave.
"Whatever you have there, I could give you here, my love." She says, laying him on the bed, cold and soaking wet.
No you can't. He thinks. You can't give me my wife. You can't give me my son.
He doesn't answer her though. She doesn't need to know what he thinks. Instead, he glares at her in defiance.
She cocks her head to the side, almost innocently if he didn't know any better, and undresses him.
"What to do with you, dear?" She hums distractedly.
Her fingers trace along his chest, and flick the small bell that dangles from the circlet she had placed around his neck, and he feels his heart beat fearfully against his ribs.
"Even when I give you all these gifts, you still try to leave?"
Calypso brings her lips to his, and she entraps him once again against her. He struggles against the thick vines but her hold on him doesn't weaken. She takes her fill, and he's left gasping for air.
"Perhaps I could give you one more gift? Would you like that, my love?" She says sweetly, and he's shuddering, trying to catch his breath. She doesn't wait for his response though, and from the flowers that grow in her hair, she produces a small glowing fruit, the size of an olive seed.
She brings it closer to his view, and Odysseus can almost feel the divine power pulsing from it. It reminds him of the lotus fruit, and he hopes that it's effects aren't similar. Calypso's soft fingers force the seed down his throat. He chokes, struggling, but she makes him swallow.
She cups his face in her hands, wiping the stray tear that formed from his gagging. She slowly removes her clothing, never once do the vines that restrain him loosen.
"I will not let you leave, Odysseus." She sighs contentedly. "You are mine now. All mine."
Odysseus feels weak, and hopeless. He'd failed, again.
Odysseus should have thought more of the fruit, for every gift that Calypso had ever given him was just some sort of way of keeping him grounded to Ogygia.
From his clothes, that were bright and colorful, so that she'd always see him when he'd hide in the forest from her advances and short and thin so that she'd see what she wanted, but also serving the purpose of him being unable to carry anything beneath the cloth without her noticing.
His accessories, gold bracelets and anklets, as well as a secure circlet around his neck. All of which with small bells affixed on to them, so that she'd hear his every moment, like a goatherd would to his animals.
Even the food was laced with just a bit of nectar or ambrosia, to slowly give him a youthful appearance.
He suspected something out of the fruit. Would it control his mind like the lotus, erasing every memory of Ithaca and Penelope until he felt numb? Or was it something else? But days turned to weeks, and he had failed to recognize any kind of manifestation of her power.
Even so, he didn't risk going near the forests or beaches for a while. She was keeping him, once again, on a tight leash. He would play obedient again then. It wasn't much different than the first time, but it somehow felt even more difficult. He needed to survive though, he'd make it out eventually, all on his own.
With no secret escape plan to work on or hard labour to do, he spent the days in and out of Calypso's bed. Eventually she'd be pleased with his show of compliance, but until then, he wouldn't be able to do much else than to lay here as her plaything.
It had been a couple of weeks since that night. Every night after had been a close call with Calypso, before she settled for cuddling next to him instead. Tonight was no different. Odysseus didn't know if that was some kind of tactic she was trying, but he didn't feel relieved in the slightest. It was like walking on a thin wire. He didn't know when she'd snap and take him again.
One night, with a sudden force, he wakes. Ripping himself out of Calypso's embrace, he retches at the side of her bed. Nausea swirls in his stomach and he heaves it all out.
She soon stirs as well, and begins rubbing circles along his back. Her touch burns at his skin through the thin chiton.
"Ody, dear. It'll be okay." She cooes, perhaps thinking she's comforting him. It wasn't working.
He vomits once more, and trembles. This is different. He doesn't feel sick, not the way he did the first nights when Calypso brought him to bed. He isn't hot and flushed with a fever, nor borderline drowned and starved. He is just nauseous, and tired.
Perhaps he is sick. Sick of Calypso, and what she called love. Sick of Ogygia, and the sea. Sick of being some sort of twisted entertainment for the gods.
"Leave me alone!" He shouts, and is surprised by the raw anger in his tone. He is even more surprised when she complies.
His stomach contracts out of reflex, but there's no more bile in him. He wipes his mouth roughly with a cloth that Calypso had left him, and curls into himself on the bed.
He misses home.
Over the course of the next month, the truth slowly dawns on him, and he feels foolish for not realizing how compromising his current situation truly is.
He was irratible, and moody; mostly snappy. His patience was thin, and he felt exhausted and sick all the time. He hated everything Calypso fed him, and she fed him a lot, taking care of him like it was decreed by the gods. Perhaps she'd decreed it herself.
He would get sick at just the thought of food, and then he'd find himself sobbing at the intense longing for his mother's hunt that he'll never be able to eat again. He'd never eat it again, never feel her warmth, even if he did manage to escape and get home to Ithaca, because she was gone now. She was gone and he can't even remember the last time he hugged her. Gods knew that he'd never forget the last time he'd tried.
It had been when his stomach began protruding slightly, that he'd come to the impossible conclusion. It made sense when he thought of it, Penelope had acted just the same way when she held Telemachus in her, but Odysseus wouldn't believe it until Calypso confirmed it.
They got into a fight. It was inevitable, for Odysseus was rarely friendly to her, but he'd never allowed himself to be this cruel, always trying to stay in her good graces one way or another, but this time, Calypso had crossed another line, and he hadn't even been aware that she had done such a thing until weeks had passed by. He felt as violated as he had felt the first time he had woken up on her bed.
"I don't understand, I'm giving you what you want; a son." She said simply, as if he were stupid to question such a thing.
"I never wanted you to give me a son. I want my son, Telemachus." He snaps, so that there is no question about what it is that he exactly he means. "I want my wife. I want to go home!"
He hitches, and sobs, and screams. It's a raw, animalistic sound. He feels a hot rush of frustration, and he grabs the nearest object—some kind of amphora placed near the bed stand, and throws it so that it crashes onto the floor. Hot tears roll down his cheeks and a loud wail exits his chest.
"I want to go home! I want to go home! Let me go! Why won't you let me leave!?"
Calypso's lips thin into a line, and she speaks.
"You're just stressed, Dear. You feel better once our son arrives."
He scoffs at that. Of course he's stressed! He has been ever since he'd been left on this damned island. He's been stressed ever since he'd left Telemachus in Penelope's arms and kissed his wife one last goodbye.
"My love," Calypso says, and she places her soft hand on his shoulder.
"Don't touch me." Odysseus all but snarls. "You've done enough."
The goddess looks displeased at this, but he couldn't care less. All he felt now was anger, exhaustion, and defeat.
Athena. I'm sorry. Please help me. He prays throughout the night.
As always, there was no reply.
The night the infant had arrived was the worst night of his life. The pain was horrible, especially for something he wanted nothing to do with.
Throughout the night he'd howled and screamed and cried, while Calypso whispered encouragements that only reminded him of why he was here.
He cried—cried and called for Penelope, for Eurycleia. Prayed to Athena despite knowing that he won't be answered. He called for his mother the most, when the pain became unbearable. He cried until he was too numb and exhausted to, and he drifted off as Calypso kissed his damp forehead.
He soon felt her place a weight on his chest. His opened his eyes, and he saw it.
The infant was small. It opened its eyes, and they shone, unlike his own. Surely a sign of divine heritage from it's mother. It was too early to tell who it resembled more, but the infant reminded Odysseus of Telemachus too much, and he feels an intense longing.
Telemachus had been a little older when he'd last seen him, and Odysseus wonders how old his son is now.
The infant's weight is light above him, but he still feels suffocated. Even the weight of the infant from Troy was lighter than this.
"Our son!" Calypso exclaims, as if it could be anyone else's. This was not his. It was no more than a burden that Calypso had forced upon him.
"Get it off." He rasps, exhausted and disgusted. She frowns but moves to hold it anyway.
He barely sleeps that night. The infant is wailing and screaming, and Odysseus doesn't even remember Telemachus screaming this much. He ignores it until Calypso hands him the thing and asks him to feed it.
He has no idea how she expects him to do so, when he is a man, despite birthing a seed of her power. He just holds it in his arms distantly and the infant whimpers and grabs at him.
"I can't." He whispers. The infant cries louder, and he snaps. "Stop it! Stop screaming! I can't help you!"
It's futile, the infant just keeps crying. All he achieves is Calypso's vines pulling him fast and securely to the bed, as she snatches the thing from his hold. His head throbs distantly, but that is neither here nor there.
"Let me help you, love." She says, her voice calm and cheerful, as if they had been playing a game of sorts. She leaves the infant screeching on the bedside, and she climbs atop his body.
No. He thinks. He and Penelope had never done this with Telemachus in the room, let alone on the bed with them. He is too exhausted to move, and everything hurts, he'd just pushed an infant out of him. His head is still throbbing from the noise, yet the infant's screams are drowned out by the loud beating of his heart.
Calypso's hands touch and press on his chest, and he suddenly feels hot pain. Odysseus groans at the sharpness of it, and he feels it heavy on him. She then brings the infant to his chest and it suckles on it.
It is then Odysseus realizes, dazed and aching, that the infant is the same as it's mother. It takes and takes and takes, and he's stuck here forever.
Calypso tires of the infant quickly, and Odysseus is the one left to feed it and clean it, among other things. Once upon a time he'd helped out with Telemachus, and he'd been more than happy to do so, even if it meant Eurycleia shooing him out of the nursery every now and then. He felt no such enjoyment now, this was merely a chore.
He'd heard of such mothers. War-brides, who cared very little for the children borne from their captors. Before, he couldn't fathom how a person could despise a child borne from their own flesh. Now though, he understood all too well how it felt.
When he was well enough to move, he went to the beach and stared blankly into the sea until sunset. The next day Calypso insisted that he brought the infant with him, and wouldn't let him leave until he had the thing swaddled to his chest.
He held it in his arms. It hadn't cried since the first night, and it became eerily silent, staring at him with the large glowing eyes that matched Calypso's. It's weight was heavy—so heavy, and Odysseus stared out to the cliff side.
He was tempted to drop it. It wouldn't be anything he hadn't done before.
He stared out into the horizon, and spotted his raft, still stuck between those far jagged rocks. It was still in one piece, despite the storms that had passed in the near ten-months it had been stuck there.
"What will you name him?" Calypso asks once he returns. It is the twenty-first time she's asked him this. Once every day since the night the infant was born.
"Nausithous." He says, and places the boy on the bed.