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You were eleven when you had your first lesson with Athena. She’d begun with the basics, passing you a wooden sword. Posture, balance, and form. It was rigorous and you were panting heavily by the time you were done.
But you had succeeded. You had mastered it all in only five hours. You remember grinning in pride, turning to Athena in all your naivety.
“How’d I do?” you’d asked.
Athena stared at you blankly.
“Fix your form,” was all she said before leaving. Your smile had fallen, replaced with a mix of surprise and hurt.
It’s fine, you remember thinking. It was only the first lesson. She’ll be proud of me. I’ll make sure of it.
You spent years hoping. Years of lessons, turning to her each and every time you’d achieved something, hoping for even the slightest bit of praise—
Fix your form. You heard, again and again. Poor posture, no balance. How can you expect to be a king when you can barely use a sword? How can you expect to protect your kingdom when you can’t even properly shoot a bow?
It’s fine, you’d thought, again and again. I just need to do better. I need to be better.
You tried so hard to reach her standards, to be her perfect general, her Warrior of the Mind.
No matter what, you’d find some way to fail her. Some way to make her look upon you with a blank stare, or worse, with disapproval.
It made you work harder, made you ignore your health and your well-being. All to make her proud. She was one of the few adults in your life that was around—with a father slowly going mad, and a mother that was withdrawing herself more and more as her husband’s mind deteriorated—your need to impress her was great.
How unfortunate that your godly mentor was one of the hardest to please.
—
The bow quickly became your most favorable weapon. Your hands were steady, your sight was clear. Your aim took work but with time, your skill was undeniable.
Your mother applauded with a grin—the first one you’d seen in weeks—when you showed her, your sister practically shook with excitement as she asked you to teach her how. Even your father, the miserable man, glanced at the target and gave you an approving nod, the side of his mouth curving upward for just a second.
You rode that high until your next lesson with Athena. You were so sure you had finally done something that would win her praise.
But where you thought would be pride, or at the very least some semblance of recognition, there was only the blank stare that was forever engraved in your mind.
“This is your best?” she asked, tone judgemental as the lights in her eyes swirled and faded.
You hesitated. “I—”
“Again,” she interrupted. “Again until you cannot miss.”
That night, your arms radiated with pain, the skin worn and your bones aching. But it would be worth it. All of it would. The pain, the exhaustion. It had to be.
It had to be.
—
Days and nights pass. Nothing changes.
This is your best? No balance. No effort. Try again. Try again. Try again. Again and again until you cannot stand anymore.
Disappointment. That’s all you see, in everyone’s eyes. That’s all you are, it would seem.
—
“You should rest,” your mother tells you one night as you push yourself to your limits and past.
“I’m fine,” you reply to her, despite the deep ache in your bones, the blood now staining your hands where the skin wore off entirely. “I need to do this.”
She stares, her lips thinning. But she does not push it further, too drained from your father’s madness. “Very well.”
And there, she leaves you—panting, hurting and so, so tired.
—
Try again.
—
“We’ve barely seen you,” Eurylochus laughs. It’s stilted and you see the concern in his eyes. It scares you just as much as it relieves you. “What have you been doing in that palace?”
You grin back and hope he doesn’t notice the weariness. “A king needs to know how to fight, doesn’t he?”
—
“What happened to your hands?” Ctimene asks you, eyes wide as she stares at the welts.
You move them off the table and away from the wool the two of you had been searching through just moments before. “Nothing, Mene.”
—
Try again.
—
Your father hits you later that night.
“Cease your embarrassing behavior,” he hisses. “You represent our family, the future of Ithaca. You are meant to be a king. Act like it.”
—
“I’ve seen more life in a corpse,” Polites jokes one day.
You laugh, ignoring the pain in your ribs.
—
Try again.
—
When word reaches Ithaca about the competition of Helen of Sparta’s hand, your parents send you to Sparta.
“Not to marry her,” your mother tells you the night before. “Just for alliances.”
“We all know she wouldn’t choose you,” your father says. “Who would?”
Your mother glares at him, but she does not argue. It takes you a moment to realize that she agrees with him.
“Alliances,” she repeats. “Nothing more. Nothing less.”
—
Nothing more. Nothing less, is what you repeat to yourself over and over again as you speak with Princess Penelope, the cousin of Helen. Nothing more.
—
“Do not be foolish,” Athena says. You no longer know what she is referring to.
—
Only three days later do you ask Penelope if she’d wish to return to Ithaca with you.
The grin on her face is blinding as she says yes.
—
When you return home, Penelope—your partner and equal—by your side, you discover your father’s mind worsened while you were gone.
There is a coronation. Things change.
The only thing that doesn’t is Athena’s expression when she gazes upon you.
—
Try. Again.
—
You and Penelope, now married, have a son.
“What should we name him?” Penelope asks one night as the two of you lay side by side, your son in your arms.
“Telemachus.”
Penelope’s eyes bore into you, knowing. Far, far too knowing. “Far from battle.”
You cannot face her. Instead, you hold Telemachus closer. “Yes.”
—
Telemachus is almost a year old when word of Helen’s kidnapping reaches Ithaca. Days later, a ship arrives.
You feign madness. You refuse to leave your kingdom, your family. Penelope does not deserve to live on in her lonesome. Telemachus does not deserve to grow up without a father. Ctimene does not deserve to lose a brother and a husband within only a day.
A man named Palamedes threatens to kill your son.
All capable men prepare for departure.
—
“Tomorrow, you shall leave Ithaca,” Athena says to you mere hours later. “Soon, we shall see whether or not I wasted my time with you.”
“We will,” you mutter blankly.
—
The bow was your favored weapon. It still is. But now, your hands shake. Now, your sight blurs with grief, your eyes burn from the smoke and ash.
Athena was harsh before. It is only growing worse.
—
“What plan do you have, Warrior of the Mind?”
—
You drop an infant from a wall and can only see Telemachus in his place.
You lose a friend, blind a cyclops, anger a father.
(Athena leaves you. For good. You were never good enough. Never. Never never never.)
You free your men from the spell of a woman that speaks of pain and treachery.
You traverse the Underworld and speak with the seer, Tiresias.
You are forced to kill your men. Your brother.
(What will you tell Ctimene?)
You are trapped for seven years with a goddess who knows no end.
You stain your hands with gold.
(It is all you see.)
You return home—
(Try again.)
—and Athena is there, teaching your son with a kindness you did not know was possible.
She changed. You changed.
(Try again.)
Only one was for the better.
—
“Odysseus,” she says one night, hesitant. You do not reply.
She opens her mouth, then closes it. Again and again. There is a sort of humanity in her that you’d never seen before.
“Good night, Bright-Eyed One,” you say after the silence drags on for far too long.
She does not say anything more.
—
That is the first and last time she tries to apologize.
—
Centuries later, you are standing in a park with your son—your second one. He’s full of life, just like Telemachus, but there’s something more to it. Something else.
You train him to fight, as best you can with only so much control over the living world. Perseus assists, knowing exactly when to step in and when to let you lead.
You teach your son, Percy, to use a sword, though
When Percy overshoots and nearly falls over, struggling to regain his balance, you don’t reprimand him. You don’t push him with an uncaring hand and force him to learn the hard way. Once he adjusts himself, he turns to you.
“How did I do?” Percy asks you later, looking up at you with a bright, boyish smile. You hesitate.
Nearby, Perseus watches you, expression blank—but there is understanding in his eyes.
Lazy, you think in a voice that isn’t your own. Careless. Shaky.
Athena would have a million things to say, none of them good. She would’ve scolded Percy, would’ve forced him to redo it over and over and over again until it was nothing short of perfection. Fitting for a Warrior of the Mind.
Horrible posture, she would’ve said. Terrible balance, you’d die before you could even make it to the battlefield.
You do not say that.
“Good job,” you say, the only thing Athena never did.
Percy beams.