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what would you change, if you had a chance to go back and do everything over again?
it's a stupid question, an impossible scenario, yet Odysseus is living it. he went back in time, and now he's living through everything again. ten years of war, three years of sailing home, and seven years of hellish paradise all erased from history but not from his mind, and he has to relive them.
(he doesn't know the details, doesn't know why he had to go back rather than move forward in order to leave her isle, doesn't know what happened to his the goddess. she won't talk about it, but there are scars everywhere he looks, scars he knows weren't there before. he worries, tells himself it's only about what is capable of hurting a goddess like that, not about her specifically. he'd lying to himself again.)
he's at the beginning again, and he has to decide what to change and how. the gods have allowed him mostly free reign over what to do, save for the goddess of the hunt, who demanded he warn the Achaeans about her groove and deer, and of course, the god of the sea, who warned him against blinding his son again, but that was to be expected.
everything—or well, not everything. there's an advantage to knowing what comes next, but I would change quite a lot of things.
he decides not to leave Herakles' arrows with Philoctetes and to kill him instead of abandoning him. he convinces Menelaus to let him kill Philoctetes to 'put a dead man out of his pain'. a small mercy, which Menelaus agrees to easily enough. a murder not unlike all the others Odysseus has committed to get home.
instead of outright killing him again, he frames Palamedes with treason. the man's love for money makes it easy to forge a letter in which Palamedes accepts an offer of gold in exchange for spying on the Achaeans. they tie him up and throw stones at him. Odysseus throws twenty.
an advantage and a disadvantage. knowledge changes people, and by simply changing one thing, everything around it changes. was it not you who said, “every slight change in someone's face—a furrowed brow, a pressed mouth, a narrowed eye—means something and changes everything”?
he tries to act natural. most of these men don't know him, but his crew do. Eurylochus and Polites—who are alive, they're alive—do, and gods know he fucked up enough by hugging them tight when he first came back and promising to get them home safe. they might have thought it was just him being scared to lose them, if he had been able to regain the attitude he had at the beginning of the war, the attitude he had because of his life, because of everything he had been through up until then. but everything's changed. he's gone through so much more since that first war, and he's no longer the same man these people knew. and as Perimedes so eloquently told him,
“no offense, capt, but you look like you've been dragged through the dirt and shit on for, like, twenty years or something.” he's starting to regret allowing his crew to speak their minds so freely, but Perimedes isn't wrong. the bastard. he'll get him home. he'll get all of them home. that's his priority now. right after he figures out how to convince Eurylochus and Polites that he's fine.
yes, but not if you know how to act, how to control the narrative through those details, and not if people don't know you. you can't tell when something is different if you don't know how it is originally, my dear.
most of the other commanders don't know him. perhaps they've seen him once or twice while they were all asking for Helen's hand, but that's it. no one here knows him, and he intends to keep it that way. he watches the commanders at the meetings again, to catch whatever he didn't the first time, and meets the eyes of the king of Argos when he looks to him. Diomedes is already looking at him, with his usual blank face, like he was the first time.
right. so what would you intentionally change then? would you pretend to be sick instead of mad, so you wouldn't be here? or, would you not take walks down to the beach to talk to a man you don't know and who doesn't know you? not yet, at least.
he looks away first, like he did the first time, and focuses back on the meeting. he doesn't look back at Diomedes again, and when night comes, he doesn't walk down to the beach. he doesn't try to get close to him again. he did once and got both of their hearts broken. he doesn't want to hurt Diomedes like that again; he doesn't think he could get hurt like that again.
hm, not a bad idea, but no, that's not something I would change. I would like to keep lying next to this man I don't know. even if I have to fight for it.
his ship is one of the last to leave this time. he makes sure to stock up on food, enough so that they might only need to stop once or twice on the way back, hopefully after they have passed the lotus eaters and the cyclop's cave. he also makes sure to leave offerings to the god of the sea for safe passage through his domain. he thinks through everything to ensure all of his men survive. he doesn't think of how empty the place where he slept has been the past ten years.
and this man you don't know would like to go home with you. if you'll have him.
he doesn't look back when they finally leave. he's going home to his wife, who he hasn't seen in thirty years and who he still loves just as dearly, and his son, who he has never had the chance to know and who he loves just as much. but he's also leaving a piece of his soul on that beach, and he doesn't want to watch it go where he can't follow. because he's no longer a piece of his soul, as well. he never was that to him, in this universe.
I would love to. I'd love you in every universe, my soul.