Touch of Death

by Dragon_Inside, Dragonreads19

Summary:

Odysseus can see ghosts of those not put to rest.

Chapter 1: Prolouge

When Odysseus was seven, his aunt had died. The next day, she was going to be buried. Ctimene was getting ready, with his mother’s help. After she was done, their mother helped him get into his dark clothes. As his aunt’s only remaining family, they had minor responsibilities in the funeral ceremony, and as such, they were the ones performing the rites. Odysseus was sad, but he was excited to help with the funeral rites. Even from a young age, the dead and dying had fascinated him.

They arrived at the funeral grounds, and their mom positioned them. He was watching the crowd, but he heard Ctimene emit a small gasp.
“Auntie!”
He turned to look, and indeed, their aunt was moving.
“Ctimene. You know that your aunt is dead. Do not seem so excited,” their mother rebuked. Odysseus wondered why Mother said that. Auntie was clearly standing right there. Maybe she wasn’t dead after all!
“But mother, she’s right there! Not dead at all,” Ctimene pointed directly at their aunt, who was standing next to her body, now watching Ctimene intensely.
“Mother, can’t you see her?” Ctimene protested. Odysseus frowned, Auntie was right there, walking straight towards Ctimene.
“Ctimene, stop this madness. Your aunt is dead. I know it is sad, but she is gone. We will talk about this more when the rites are over, but for now, we need to do the rites,” Mother seemed to be getting annoyed at Ctimene, so Odysseus did not mention that he could see Auntie as well.

As they completed the rites, Auntie faded out, soon disappearing completely. She looked so happy as she vanished, going down to the Underworld for the afterlife. After the funeral, Mother quickly found out that Ctimene could really see the dead. Ctimene was instructed to keep this ability quiet, as there were superstitions around death. Odysseus never told his mother he had the same ability as well, scared of his mother’s reaction. As he grew older, ghosts often surrounded him, asking him constantly to put them to rest. He rarely could; their bodies were typically lost beyond retrieval.

Athena found out almost immediately.  She filled his mind full of tales about stoneings, witch huntings, the constant fear surrounding death.  He hid his powers as much as he could, terrified of the same happening to him. 

Things were worse in Troy, the dead constantly surrounding him. He tended to try to ignore them, his default strategy for dealing with the dead, never letting them know he could see them. Still, he was constantly flocked by the smarter ones, who noticed his eyes following them. He tried to put as many of them to rest as he could, but most of them were in out-of-the way places the gravediggers had missed. He still never told anyone.

Notes:

This is one of our first fics, please comment, leave kudos, they help immensely. We already have chapter two mostly written. There will be no update schedule, but we will not abandon this. We know this chapter is short, future ones will be longer. Thanks for reading!

EDIT: 3/15/25 - Remembered that Athena exists, and put her in.

Chapter 2: Chapter Two

Summary:

Post cyclops saga.
Polities is a very unhappy pancake.

As the ships sailed away from the cyclops’ lair, Polities’s ghost stared at him.
“You can see me?” Polities asked, not for the first time. Odysseus tried to ignore him for the time being, and focus on Eurylochus’ reports.
“Seventeen men dead,” Odysseus could feel them surrounding him, asking him what was happening, why they were dead, pleading for an explanation, “Four more men injured. We now have enough supplies to last us back to Ithaca, assuming no more delays.”
Odysseus tried to push back the pain. Ignore the voices, ignore the hurt, ignore the doubt, ignore ignore ignore. These were the first men that he lost.
He had gotten all the way through the war, ten years of staying alive, and now, because he hadn’t heeded the lotus eater’s warnings, because he hadn’t directed them better, because they were standing in the wrong spot at the wrong time, seventeen men were dead.

“Odysseus, you don’t get to ignore me, you definitely know what’s going on. Can you please fill me in? Can you even still see me? Odysseus, I heard you talk to me. We’ve been friends for years, you don’t get to just pretend I don’t exist at the drop of a hat!”
Odysseus couldn’t just start talking to the air. He tried his best to ignore Polities as he pleaded for answers. Luckily, Eurylochus understood Odysseus needed some space after what had just happened, and finished the reports quickly, leaving to comfort the men. Odysseus fought down the thought that Polities should be the one helping the men. He went down to his own cabin, to try to calm down Polities and the other ghosts. They deserved answers.

“What’s going on!?” Polities said, yet again.
“I can see ghosts. Have been able to for as long as I can remember,” he hoped Polities wouldn’t be mad he’d kept it from him.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” Polities asked, sounding hurt. Odysseus had wanted to tell him, a thousand times when the words had almost left his throat, before Athena’s warnings had flooded his mind. Trust no one. They will betray you, it’s only a matter of when.
“My curse was never that relevant.”
“How is this a curse?”
“Most things associated with the dead are considered curses. And there’s nothing else I can do besides talk to you. You’ll still be bound to your bodies, unable to go to the underworld.”
One of the other ghosts piped up, Aciaus if Odysseus remembered correctly, “Captain, you say we’re tied to our bodies, but I tried to leave the boat a few hours ago. I couldn’t go more than a few yards past, before being caught.” This was new. Ghosts had always been bound to their body, or their place of death. Never to him, as much as some had tried.
Odysseus tilted his head. “Strange. I’ve never seen a ghost bound to anything other than their place of death or body. But you won’t have to stay forever. You’ll eventually…fade away.” This was . . . a version of the truth. As time went on, ghosts slowly lost themselves, the need for the afterlife slowly consuming their souls. He couldn’t bring himself to tell Polities that, though. Couldn’t even think about everything that made Polities Polities fading away.
“Okay then. We have to make the best of a bad situation, huh? Only you can see us, so I’ll try to talk to you less when you’re with others. However, this can still be a positive. We could be scouts! Or help you do your boring paperwork stuff, or something!” Odysseus loved Polities’s optimism, his endless belief that every situation could be good if they tried hard enough. It was part of what made Polities and Eurylochus a good pair: Polities’s eternal optimism and Eurylochus’s hard realism.
However, Polities was clearly grasping at straws to see the bright side here. This curse wasn’t some secret superpower, it was a curse. Sure, he could occasionally use it to his advantage, but for the most part, it was just swarms of the dead begging to be let into the underworld, yearning for their eternal wandering to be over.

Notes:

Sorry for the late update, I (DragonInside) got to go see a traveling Broadway production of Hamilton! It was a bit of a commute, and I was wiped afterwards. Hopefully, updates will be once every two or three weeks. We're also trying to write one chapter in advance, so that might cause some delays.

Chapter 3

Summary:

Odysseus has a chat with the wind god.

The storm had been hounding them for three days now.  Everyone had been pulling triple shifts, trying to stay aloft in what was surely an act of some vengeful god.  They wouldn’t be able to keep this up much longer.  The crew was close to keeling over from exhaustion, and they had already sustained some major damage to the fleet.  

 

“Captain, look!” It was one of the ghost crew, Chrestos.  The ghosts had probably saved a dozen crewmembers, alerting Odysseus whenever someone was in danger.  “An island in the sky!”  Odysseus turned, and true to Chrestos’ word, there was an island floating some hundred feet above the choppy sea.  A sign from the gods.  

“Eurylochus! Get the harpoons!”

“What?  Why would we need harpoons?” Eurylochus asked, turning to give Odysseus a sceptical look.

“Just get them!” Odysseus shouted.

“Captain, look!” Elpenor, a live crewmember, shouted, also pointing at the island in the sky.

“Yes, I noticed. That’s why we need the harpoons. We are going to harpoon the island, and get up there,” Odysseus said tersely.

“How did you see that before the scouts?” Eurylochus questioned.

“Get the harpoons already! Every second we wait it will be harder to keep the ship afloat!” Odysseus said, remembering that no one else had heard Chrestos.

 

Eurylochus obeyed, knowing that Odysseus was right.

 

The crew threw the harpoons, and after a few tries, enough harpoons were on the island to keep the ships in place. Odysseus moved to one of the harpoons, and tugged on it, then began the climb.

 

“What are you doing?” Polities and Eurylochus asked, in perfect unison. 

“I’m climbing up to the island,” Odysseus said, matter of factly. 

“Do you have a death wish?” Eurylochus asked incredulously, while Polites gave a resigned sigh.

“Do you know when the storm will leave? This is clearly the home of the wind god. Maybe I can get him to help us.” Odysseus replied.

“Or you could die, and I need you alive. Your wife and son need you alive. Your luck will run out eventually,”  Eurylochus shot back.

“We can’t stay upright in this storm for much longer. Aeolus might be able to help us,” Odysseus refuted.

“Maybe you should have this argument somewhere more private? Besides, you're right. We don’t have any better options.” Polites interrupted.

“600 men went to war with me, and none of them died there. We have survived worse than this, and I intend to get us back home. Eurylochus, I want to talk to you below decks.” Odysseus said, trying to pacify the crew before turning and going below decks with Eurylochus tailing him.

“I need you to trust me, or at least pretend to, in front of the crew. I can’t have you planting seeds of doubt.” 

“... Okay.”

Notes:

Remember when we said we'd update every few weeks? Life happened, and we're going to try for about once a month now. No promises. We will tell you if we abandon this work, and currently have no plans to do so.