It’s been…a lot of years, since Odysseus left for war. His mom has been holding strong despite the hardships…but things are still deteriorating…he can’t just ignore it.

He would often look back fondly when he could walk down the halls of his palace without a care, free to pursue whatever aimless childish venture he wished. Servants scolding him for running or sneaking away from his lessons...oh how easy he hadn’t realized things were…and how much worse things would get as both he and his mother would age.

Now though…his mother’s suitors have been around for years, and he despised them and everything they strive to achieve.

The replacement of his father, the desire to degrade his mother, and their callous ambitions to sit atop a throne they could never deserve. He just wanted them to all disappear and leave he and his mom to await his father’s return. And yet as each day stretched on with the young man using his long since developed secret passages through the palace, his patience would wear thinner and thinner hearing these brutes and their true opinions.

. . Telemachus typically avoided walking down the hallways of the palace of Ithaca…his own palace. In favor of using his many hidden crevices and path’s that he’d use to traverse the land. With these moments with no judgmental eyes daring him to break, being some of the only times he could truly let his body slacken as he made his way completely unseen through a dirt path in the gardens covered completely by shrubbery.

That is, until he is suddenly grabbed gr behind and yanked through the bushes-! A hot panic searing through his chest as he’s suddenly tossed into the grass by a large figure, quickly identifiable as one of his mother’s nameless suitors…only focusing on them for a moment before another of them would move to yank him up before “accidentally” sticking his foot out, sending his falling back to the ground, landing hard on his side-…

“Watch where you're going, Little Wolf,” the man sneered with a predatory gleam in his eyes while the others chuckled in gross amusement alongside him as they stood above him in a loose circle.

. . Telemachus clenched his teeth, but didn't say anything. It's not worth it. You don't want to make things harder for mom, he kept silently telling himself. So he grit his teeth and began to push himself up again...ignoring the slight burning in his knees and now green stains on his white clothing…

Except they wouldn’t let him get off that easily, another suitor quickly moving to roughly rank his shoulder…only for the man to freeze as his hand clasped around the boy’s arm, because someone behind the group spoke up with a stern tone in their voice, drawing the attention of the suitors as well as the prince-