When Nathan was a young man, his Western civ teacher, his Latin teacher, and three separate English teachers had placed variously worn copies of The Odyssey in his hands with the promise, "You are going to love this. You're just like Odysseus." His Latin teacher had added, "It's an excellent story, despite the fact that Homer wasn't a Roman."

And Nathan could see why his teachers kept directing him to the same book, the same hero. Odysseus believed in right and wrong. He believed in it fiercely.

But he also believed in using craftiness. While other heroes were "swift-footed" or "broad-helmeted," Odysseus was "clever."

Of course the literal meaning is better translated as "many-turned" than as "cunning" or "clever"; the term was play on two things: the labyrinthine tricks and deceptions that came from his twisty, turning mind; and, the the fact that before he could go home, he was turned around and around, tossed by the sea and fate and anything else that had the chance, so that his path -- like his thought-- never followed a straight line.

And Nate admired Odysseus. And he recognized that it was a great compliment to be compared to him. But he didn't really see himself that way.

He wanted to see himself as Telemachus. Men like wolves, circling about his home, because of the neglect of a father. But at the end, Telemachus proves that he is indeed his father's son.

No, the one Nate actually identified with was Penelope. Penelope, who was so much like Odysseus - clever, deceptive, yet moral and true.

But Penelope was the one who spun and spun, undoing her work and doing it again. Penelope was the one who stalled because she knew that time was her only ally.

And even at an early age, Nate could sympathize. A spinning wheel. A rotating spit the suitors use to eat their stolen meat. The ball of yarn, winding and unwinding and winding up again. A life being turned this way, then that way.

Back and forth, back and forth, back and forth.

Full bottle, empty bottle, full bottle, empty bottle.

Hope, despair, hope, despair.

While Odysseus had his adventures and affairs, Penelope had her spinning and her tears. She was trapped, waiting patiently for something to change. And though her wisdom and cleverness were praised, she was not the hero. But she was good.

Young Nathan was not a great pursuer of glamorous adventure. He knew he would never be Odysseus. Or at the very least, he hoped.

Nathan's life turned out to be more full of adventure than he thought. His team, his troops, his crew.

He tried to abandon them, to let them find their homes instead of being dragged down into the murk. Which is what usually happened to those around him.

But they kept finding him.

And they used two dozen variations on the Trojan horse to make things right, to take their war-prize. And like the ancients, the prize was in both goods and people, with the defeated enemies taken away in chains. Well, handcuffs, anyway.

But when Nathan thought about that old story, the one he had read so many times, he worried a little.

Because none of Odysseus' crew survived.

And though he managed to save his wife from her suitors - and, of course, to save his son from the vulturous greedy men who didn't care whether he lived -- there was something a little strange about the ending of the tale. Because Odysseus, when he finally comes home, commits a massacre.

All those teachers who said the book had a happy ending left that part out.

All the evil suitors. And all the merely morally suspect suitors. Killed violently. And all the women who kept any sort of company with them. Burned while begging for their lives.

And perhaps it was necessary for it to finally be done. Perhaps after 10 years of war, and 10 years of wandering, he wasn't willing to fight any more battles. He just wanted one spree to dispatch all possible threats.

But still... a bloody triumph for such a calm, intellectual man.

Nate knew, though, that he would not be tempted to imitate this man, this myth. It was too late to save his family, for one. For another, his revenge would be nonviolent. It would utterly destroy... but it would be nonviolent.

But then, when he actually got his revenge on Blackpool, he found it less satisfying that he thought it would be.

He was pessimistic, cynical, a realist, sure. But some part of him had hoped that finally obtaining his revenge would feel like...

Like coming home.

But it didn't.

And Nate would remember that other great hero. Achlles. The young hothead, impetuous, rash, foolish. The one to whom no one would ever compare Nathan Ford.

The one whose rage drove him to isolate himself from everyone. To stop fighting for victory or anything else. Who lost the one he loved most, and almost went mad from it. Who, given the circumstances, most certainly blamed himself. Who tore at his own hair and wailed like an animal and could not ever, ever be consoled by anything short of destroying the one man responsible. He gave no thought to the broader war, the things that allowed for such destruction to happen to countless others. He thought only of his own loss. And revenge for this loss.

A heroic revenge. Not just killing the one who took his loved one, but dragging his body behind his chariot, up and down the battlefield, again and again and again. Humiliation of the corpse, in direct view of the royal family's seats on the high city walls of Troy.

Nate sometimes wondered if he could find a way to avoid being either Achilles or Odysseus. The warrior-kings who did their societies proud.

Some new character. Who could have his revenge, and not regret it. But not wish to repeat it either.

But he realizes that he does repeat it. Every client is another act of revenge, another humiliation against people who are just like the ones who destroyed the one he loved.

Revenge.

Again and again, back and forth.

Despair, hope, despair, hope.

Nathan Ford. Weeping and waiting like Penelope.

But the thing about Penelope is this: even though she kept unraveling her own work, desperate for more time and reclaimed hope, by the time things settled, she had woven together something beauiful.

AN: First chapter Originally written for the comment_fic on livejournal