♫ I'd wanna hold you just for a while ♫

Ody's verse: on the surface, Ody is showing how he gets that that world where mercy is a skill more people use exists because after all, he's the one that said this to Athena. But he can't see that world anymore, because of 1) He is already the monster. He's gone too far, he can't go back. 2) He's home again, and he definitely is not going anywhere else ever fucking again. 3) he's already old, and he's mortal.

Which very convieniently leads to the implicit: Odysseus is not a god like Athena. Ody is mortal, and he's already like 50-something by the time he's home, he knows he isn't gonna live long enough to see that world so he is indirectly declining Athena's offer to be her student again, to be her warrior of the mind again. Because he is not spending any more of his precious, limited days trying to make the world a better place, when he has his world right here, with Penelope, with Telemachus

Very well.

Ohhhhh boy. You can hear Athena's pain in these two, little words. Why? Because Ody is her favorite mortal, and as I said before, Telemachus will never be Odysseus. And the regret Athena feels for My Goodbye that she tries to make up for by asking Ody again, he declines. So she will never be able to try again. She will never be able to see what could happen if she didn't make that mistake. She will never right her wrong. And she has to live with this for… millennia.

Telemachus and Penelope's songs aren't sad, more relief (kind of, it's 3 AM man go away) So, so much relief, that tears prick your eyes. Because this is Odysseus' happy ending. Odysseus's. The whole royal family's happy ending. They get to spend the rest of their lives until the day they die in happiness (there is no war in Ba Sing Se, there is no Telegony in the EPIC fandom)

Not Athena's.