Telemachus loved his father so, the man who'd embraced him covered in the blood of the men who'd tormented both him and his mother for years.
But it was hard to part from; the mocking sneers, the ones that still echoed over the now empty halls, he'd failed in becoming enough of a man to save his mother himself.
Telemachus wanted to be legendary, enough to live up the crown his father had already stained with greatness.
It was comforting to be curled in his mother and father's arms, soothing that strange inner voice that still mumbled like the small child listening to the queen's stories about the man who'd slayed a boar while just a child.
His own father was able to survive twenty years at sea by himself, Telemachus should be able to do something as measly as sleeping in his own bed.
Despite how much it clawed at his heart, that inner voice screaming that he'd wake up in pieces at the bottom of the ocean the moment he went to sleep in his own chambers.
"My boy," his father's weak, old knees would sink onto the flooring of the palace, scarred hands wrapped up in the blue fabric as if he could swaddle his son into his arms like those twenty years hadn't passed at all, "My boy."
Tears streaked down the scarred face of his father, face scrunched in pain like the very notion hurt him more than whatever he'd seen out at sea.
"Please." he gasped out with a choked voice, "Just one more week, a day, a single second more, my son."
The man who he'd idolized for the last twenty years was shaking like a leaf only because Telemachus had suggested the idea he slept in his own bed after months of sleeping like a small child.
The king who'd only stopped whimpering and trembling once Telemachus curled back into bed with him, arms wrapped around him until the boy was curled against his chest like an infant.
Perhaps he didn't have to be legendary today.
He felt safe again, the warmth leaking onto him to chase away the painful knowledge he could've ended up at the bottom of the ocean.
Because his dad chased the waves themself away.
