Don't shoot!
I'm still working on everything else, okay? I just realized I had this almost finished on my computer. And then forgot about it. So, here ya go! Some nice Calypso angsty feels for all you frantic FanFiction freaks!
She walked the beaches of her island prison, hand-in-hand with nothing but air. The wind servants were no excuse for a living companion. She had been put on this island for eternity, and so far, fifty years, the loneliness was getting to her. She had started a garden of flowers. Even the gods weren't cruel enough to keep from her the only thing she liked to do anyway, gardening.
She knew she would last no longer here than the gods, and that thought gave her hope.
Hope that the gods would fall.
For she was lonely. And already tired of this open prison, where nothing but bleak eternity awaited her, where hope was useless.
For what was the use of hope when there is nothing to hope for?
So when the first hero landed on her island, she rejoiced, thinking the gods had fallen.
The Fates were indeed cruel.
A man, well-built, handsome, but unconscious, washed up on her shore the next morning.
She ran to him. He was alive, she could tell, but starved and near death.
She brought him back to health.
When he awoke, she was sitting next to him.
"Where am I?" were the first words out of his mouth. "Where—"
"You are on my island, Ogygia," she said, trying to keep the hope out of her voice. "Tell me, what is your name?"
"Odysseus," the man said.
"And has Olympus indeed fallen?"
"By the gods! Olympus fallen?"
So it had not. So the gods had lifted her curse! She was free.
"Who are you?" Odysseus asked her.
"I am Calypso, brave one. Rest. You have had a long journey."
He drifted to sleep. Calypso ran to the fountain in the corner of her cave. She fished a drachma out of her pocket and flung it into the mist forming above the crashing water.
"O Iris, Goddess of the Rainbow, accept my offering. Show me Lord Zeus, on Olympus."
The mist shimmered, forming an image. Zeus was staring through her image, thinking of something, she could see. Not too sorry to interfere with his thoughts, she said, "Greetings, Lord Zeus. Tell me, why have the gods seen fit to land a shipwrecked mariner on my island prison?"
Zeus jumped, startled. Then he glared at her. "Titan spawn. Calyp…Cali…"
"Calypso, lord."
"And no, the gods have not seen fit to end your sentence. You are still condemned to your island for all eternity."
So she was still a prisoner. Her recent, joyful thoughts of freedom and the outside world faded, replaced by a bitter disappointment.
"Then what is the man Odysseus doing on my island?"
Zeus smiled. A cruel smile Calypso had seen only twice before. Once when he cut his father Kronos into pieces, and once more when he had imprisoned her here.
"The Fates have decided to give your life a few more twists."
"What do you mean?"
"Every now and then, the greatest hero of every age will land on your island, Ogygia. And…you will fall in love with each and every one of them."
Calypso began to say something, angry, but Zeus raised his hand.
"But none of them will ever stay on your island. Each of them will return to their lives and friends. A raft will appear for them every time you fall in love and they decide to leave."
"No!" Calypso cried. "No! How dare you! Zeus! King of the gods. You monster. You—"
Zeus snapped his fingers and the Iris Message vanished.
Calypso returned to the bed. She watched Odysseus sleep, and after a minute, a smile came to her lips.
When he awoke, she was still there. Watching him. He rolled onto his side and raised himself onto his arm. "Where is this island?" he asked.
"It is anywhere and nowhere," Calypso said. "It is out of the mortal realm. You cannot enter nor exit this island."
"Then…then…how can I get back to my family? Penelope? I must return to them!"
"My hero," she said. "Tell me first how you got here."
So he told her. A tale of greatness. She could see how he was the greatest hero of the age, and she didn't want him to leave her.
When his tale was told, he fell silent. "And now…now, what shall I do?" he asked after a silence.
"You must rest. Get your strength back. In the morning, we shall speak."
He slept.
In the morning, she told him of her sentence. The punishment of the gods. And her offer.
"You may stay with me," she offered. "Become immortal."
He gazed out at the ocean. She could sense that his thoughts were long and careful.
He looked back at her. "I cannot," he said. "My family awaits. And my love is for my wife."
As she heard the words, something broke inside her. She nodded wordlessly.
A raft washed up on the beach.
The list of heroes went on. Each one she nursed, offered, and was rejected. And each time one of them left, they took a piece of her soul with them.
Calypso wished for nothing more than death. An eternity in Asphodel would be preferable to having her heart broken time and time again.
The next hero was a son of Poseidon.
"Tyson," he murmured in his sleep. "Grover. Mom."
She wiped his forehead with a wet cloth. This hero, she told herself, was strong. To have survived such a fall would take the power of a minor god.
"Annabeth!" he cried. Tears fell from his closed eyes.
She tended to him. For three days she nursed him, losing track of each one as the timelessness of Ogygia wore any count away.
Then one day, he awoke.
"Stay still!" Calypso said. "You're too weak to rise."
The demigod stared at her, uncomprehending. Calypso sang a healing chant. It soothed the demigod back into his restless sleep.
The next time he awoke, she was speaking to Hermes. She looked back and saw him standing at the mouth of the cave.
"Farewell, my lord," she said to the god. He nodded and disappeared.
She ran back to the half-blood. He looked like a god.
"Well," she said. "The sleeper finally awakes."
"Who were you talking to?" he asked, hoarse.
"Oh…just a messenger," she said. "How do you feel?"
He shook his head. "How long have I been out?"
She sighed. She explained the rules of Ogygia again. Halfway through, she suddenly reached out and ran her fingers through his hair. He stepped back.
She cursed herself. Of course, she was strange. He didn't know her. She couldn't…
She apologized. Helped him back to his room. Promised him she wasn't evil.
And prayed to Aphrodite to harden her heart. This demigod would hurt her, she knew. If she let herself go again, his image would torture her for the rest of time.
For the next few days, she tried to avoid him. Keep herself from falling in love. But…like all other heroes before him, Percy took her heart.
And when at last he left, as she'd known he would the day he landed, when at last he sailed off into the rising sun, she knelt on the ground and cried.
She wept for what seemed like forever. Time was difficult on Ogygia.
She was tending her garden. Years later. And she heard an explosion.
She ran to the beach. What had happened? Gaea was rising, she knew. Was the end of the world coming?
Then she saw a smoking crater in the sand. At the bottom of it, was crouched a small boy, holding a strange metal ball in his hands.
"What are you doing!" she yelled. "You destroyed my dining table!"
The boy, Leo, was a nuisance. She hated him. When Gaea offered her the chance to destroy him and have Percy back, she almost accepted. But then she realized that Gaea must need him gone.
And she wanted the world as it was.
The first time she felt something for Leo, was when she gave him the fireproof clothes. She tried to cover it up with complaining about the noise he was making (she couldn't hear it from the cave) but she was worried he had seen her stare.
Then the wall in her heart broke when the boy said he was leaving. She couldn't help it. Now she loved him. More than Odysseus, more than Drake, more than Morgan, more than Earhart.
There was something about him. The way he never gave up. The way he joked about everything.
And the way that he covered his pain. She had seen him, sleeping, shaking and crying. He called names. Esparanza, Hazel, Sammy, Tìa.
And when the raft came to Ogygia, she didn't protest that there was something wrong. There was good reason for it to have landed.
They loaded the raft. It didn't escape her notice how well they worked together. And that Leo took every extra second to look at her.
"The raft finally got here," he said.
"You just noticed?" she asked, trying for sarcasm.
"But if it only shows up for guys you like…"
"Don't push your luck, Leo Valdez," she said. "I still hate you."
"Okay."
"And you are not coming back here," she insisted. "So don't give me any empty promises."
"How about a full promise?" he said. "Because I'm definitely—"
She grabbed his face and pulled him into a kiss, which effectively shut him up.
"That didn't happen."
"Okay."
"Get out of here."
"Okay."
She scrubbed at her eyes. She turned away.
By the time she glanced back, the raft was already a dot in the distance. But she heard his faint parting words.
"I'm coming back for you, Calypso! I swear it on the River Styx!"
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