Odyssey

Coming back is always difficult. Especially when ‘you’ were never gone, according to many people. Stepping in for the first time in weeks to come face to face with ‘yourself’, reading ‘your’ newspaper articles that ‘you’ wrote while you were in hospital fighting for your life, only to find out that it was ‘you’ that put you there in the first place. Such was the experience of Odyssey upon returning to the Gazette.

So much was familiar: the building, the smell, the sounds of the city below. Sam was even still the Editor, as they had been before. Yet so much more was different. Hafton, gone from office. Aya, pacified and missing her iconic millinery. Charles Humphreys, ejected and disgraced. Even worse was that ‘he’ had been responsible for some of them: Constantyne and Thompson, those bastions of noir determination, were back together again after so many years, only to leave before he really got to know them together because of ‘him’ and ‘his’ investigations with them. T.C. Strange, that enigmatic fellow in Puzzles, fired and exposed as a spy because of ‘him’. It was all too much to process.

Luckily, with four brand-spanking new machines, he had a lot of coffee to fuel his thoughts.

The most striking thing was people’s reactions. He wasn’t approached with any of the small talk he was so used to. There were very few watercooler-side chats or cubicle gossips. Instead, people would come up to him with a task, only to stop midway through the sentence and turn away sheepishly. He got updates on reports ‘he’ should have known about, especially from Constantyne, Thompson and Elodie. They had helped catch him up to speed, but there was always that crestfallen, mournful look in their eyes. It didn’t bother him at first, but the more and more it happened, the more the feeling grew. It was all quite disheartening.

Maybe Iliad was right. ‘His’ vitriolic comments hurt, especially when they broke Odyssey’s treasured lie: that they loved each other. Iliad hated him, he was sure of that. But Odyssey was realising that maybe he didn’t love Iliad as much as he thought. A better brother would have noticed. A better brother would have been more supportive. A better brother wouldn’t have let it come to this.

He rubbed the back of his neck. He could still feel the force of the impact.

It was true. He had gotten complacent. It must have been infuriating for Iliad, who worked so hard, to watch him squandering this position. A position Iliad had done so much with. Disappointment, that was the word Odyssey was looking for. That was what fuelled Iliad, and what was fuelling everyone else now. Disappointment in him, who had done great things, yes, but in times long past.

Well then, thought Odyssey.

Let’s take it back.

Black Clouds and Reclaiming the Name: An Exposé on Iliad Phobos

Written by Alyssa