#nausithous

The infant was an infant, small in his arms. He didn't look like Telemachos, Odysseus was sure, but memory was a little fuzzy on the matter. He sat there, staring down at the sleeping boy, until dark lashes fluttered open. Huge, luminous blue-gray eyes meet his with the unfocused wont of babies, and Odysseus was relieved. The boy really didn't look like Telemachos.

That was what he told himself, anyway, as the months passed.

As he saw - though he tried to ignore him and Kalypso, but he had to go back in the evenings after the weather and season turned and he could flee for the day outside once more - the infant grow, past the age he'd last seen Telemachos. Those luminous eyes remained, declaring firmly who the child's mother was, and that made it - easier. But Nausinous had thick, curling dark hair and chubby cheeks and---

"Papa!"

The delighted cry cut through the air, and Odysseus stormed out of the cave to avoid his tottering infant son attempting to walk to him.

He had never gotten to see Telemachos try to walk. He'd just about begun to crawl when the second muster was called.

Hunger and a comfortable place to sleep ever drew him back to Kalypso's cave, no matter his attempts at avoiding the cave's inhabitants. He could not avoid the child in truth, and it was hard to ignore him, to harden his heart against those huge eyes and chubby little fingers whenever they shared a table. Nausinous was quickly put in his own chair in preference of his mother's lap (he'd made it himself, Kalypso seemingly not realizing the boy couldn't sit in a regular chair just yet and growing impatient with the boy), and he was the one to dry off child-sticky chins and cheeks, he was the one to have to put the boy to bed. Odysseus knew Kalypso was partially forcing him into doing this by ignoring the child intentionally - he knew she wanted him to spend time with their son - but she also seemed to have lost interest quite quickly, as Nausinous grew out of his first few months and into his first year.

He could not imagine that happening with Penelope, and after that there would also be Eurykleia. But here there was only he and Kalypso, and Nausinous couldn't take care of himself.

"Hi."

Odysseus choked on a wet, half-groaning sob, dragging a hand down his face. Nausinous plopped himself down on the sand beside him, chubby, not-yet-five year old legs stretched out in front of him. He hadn't expected the boy to come all the way over here, but he was a stubborn child. And maybe he was realizing his mother didn't have much patience for him; those huge eyes seemed to be everywhere, Nausinous more quiet than he talked, watching. Odysseus didn't want to think it, but it reminded him of how both Eurykleia and his mother had described him as a child.

Had Telemachos been like that at Nausinous' age? Was he still so? Was his nature something else entirely?

"You should go back," he managed, sucked in a breath through his nose. It pushed back the tears. Kalypso was pregnant again. She'd told him this very morning. He couldn't deal with this right now.

"Papa's here," the little boy said, patting the sand into a vague tower, but they were too far up on the beach for it to hold shape. "Why?"

"… I'm missing home."

"Home?" Nausinous looked up, those huge, luminous eyes impossibly piercing for a child not quite yet five, and this was an infant, a child, yet Odysseus' heart quavered under the stare, reminding far too much of his mother.

"I came from elsewhere, before you were born," he said shortly, because he wasn't going to sit here and talk to a little child about what he missed, of Ithaka, Penelope and his son; what he was missing as the years passed - Nausinous' growing an aching reminder of that fact, and Kalypso's not-yet showing second pregnancy.

Kalypso named their second son Nausithous.

Odysseus felt like he was drowning though he was breathing sweet, clear air, ever salty with the sting from the sea. He ended up shouting at Nausinous the once, to leave him alone; to get back home, and then he regretted it as he watched the child grow pale, his eyes even larger, and try to hold back swimming tears. Regretted it even as he resented not knowing if Telemachos had ever looked like that, resented it even as he caught up with the sobbing boy and lifted him up in his arms - he was getting heavy. Regretted it, because it's not Nausinous' fault he was here, that either of them were were. If anything, it was his fault the boy was here, caught between a father weeping on the beach and a divine mother growing ever more distant as she cooed over the babe-in-arms.

And then Kalypso said she was letting him go.

He didn't believe it at first. Made her swear an oath, but she swore it willingly and gave him everything he needed to build a raft and hope sung in his breast for the first time in years.

At least until Nausinous came to watch, standing there quietly for a long while, intently watching, before he spoke up.

"What are you doing?"

"I'm going home," Odysseus said, then regretted that too, watching the luminous eyes grow hooded in the edge of his vision. Of course Nausinous would understand what he was saying out of what he wasn't saying. But he couldn't take the boy with him. Kalypso's distant face as she watched Nausinous play with a toy horse he'd carved for their son intruded on his mind. Odysseus closed his eyes. "Do you want to help? I can tell you about Ithaka."

He wasn't sure what he was doing, but distracting Nausinous with tales of home got them through three days without tears, got them through his own indecision. It wasn't a good idea, not knowing what he'd do when - if - they both came to Ithaka unscated, but he couldn't imagine leaving Nausinous here. Kalypso could keep Nausithous - at a couple months, the infant barely knew more than his mother's breast, anyway.

And surely now that she'd had one child she might be more ready to deal with her second. Not that Odysseus had ever considered it possible a woman wouldn't want her own children, whether she had a nurse for them or not. But Kalypso was a goddess-nymph - what did he know of the workings of divine women?

The raft was packed, he was half a breath from stepping onto it, and turned around.

Kalypso caught her breath, her eyes shining, but Odysseus held a hand out to his five year old son.

"Do you want to come with me?"

"Yes!"

The boy flew over, colliding with his legs and Odysseus could only hope this wasn't a mistake. Could only push down the sour resentment over never having had Telemachos do something like this to him, forcing him to try to catch his balance.

"Well," Kalypso said, her voice tight, a storm in her eyes. "If you're taking the one, you can take the other, too."

Odysseus didn't get a chance to say anything as she shoved their baby son at him, and the wind pushed him and Nausinous onto the raft, as well as the raft out into the water.

It went… fine, at first. Despite that he had an armful of baby and a five year old with him.

Then came the storm. Odysseus wasn't sure how he survived that, even less how he still had both children with him, Nausithous against his chest and Nausinous clinging to the mast with him. Especially when he'd had to tear both his and the boy's clothes off to ensure they weren't too heavy and got dragged down.

The problem, in the end, wasn't the storm or the rough sea; there was land so very close by. The problem was that the storm refused to abate, the sea refusing to calm, and he was only a single man with two arms. Nausinous eyes were so very huge, even larger in his tired, pale face. There was no way he'd be able to hold on, and the mast wasn't really large enough to support both of them easily. It kept dipping at the ends, in the middle, with each and every wave. If it sank, they were both lost. And the baby in his arms made it harder to both cling to the mast himself, as well as keep Nausinous from slipping off the mast and into the waters.

Odysseus stared at the distant, yet so very close shore. Stared at his sons, one beside him, one against his chest.

It'd be so much easier if he was alone.

It wouldn't guarantee he would survive, but it would be easier, and neither of these two children were Telemachos.

Nausinous cried out, choking on sea water, as a wave slammed over and into them. Odysseus, heart hammeing in his chest - guilt, anger, frustration - shoved his hand under the surface and caught his son by the hair, yanking him up and holding him there until he was clinging to the wet, water-swollen wood again.

It would've been so easy to not snatch him back.

It would have been so much simpler and easier to let Telemachos die to the plough, too; it would've kept him home for these decades, would've kept him away from the sea, away from all of this. That had been unthinkable then, and he still couldn't imagine doing that to Telemachos now. Odysseus glanced down once more, to the baby and the five year old beside him.

He was so tired.

He had done what he had to, with Iphigenia. And he had done what had seemed necessary, when it came to the son of Hektor; they were, after all, killing all the men of Troy, and letting the son of the man who'd been so troublesome, the heir to king Priam himself escape merely because some had sympathy to his wife, who undoubtedly was a worthy, stalwart woman and mother was foolish. Not safe. He would do what he had to, to ensure Troy could never retaliate.

Others' children, that.

And now, if he only had both arms, he could keep himself as well as Nausinous on the mast more easily. If there was only him, he wouldn't have to worry about the weight on the mast being too much. If he---

"Unhappy man!"

Odysseus almost drowned himself in his surprise when a goddess rose from the sea.