Father’s were of weakness.

He came from Mycenae, where his father lay beneath soil with a blade carved into his sternum, where his mother a lover to the man who slew her husband. His world of betrayals, where his ancestry ate the children they bore from their muck.

He expected a son, an heir, the image of himself or whoever his wife may have lain with, and the midwives handed him the infant of man and woman—he saw you, with your soft cheeks and skin, your eyes of the greenery he had known beneath his feet, known to be scorched in fires.

He did not speak of it for days after your birth, your mother cared for you while he away to other women’s beds and other king’s lands.

It’d been a day of return, of when Mycenae welcomed him home with grand feasts with mirth no wine could bring to the blood. His horse trotted on, against the gravel as his palace came into view, and you held by a maid whose fingers pale. He dismounted, his hand around the reins of his stallion, handing it off to a servant man.

Until he found the small fingers wrapped around his armored leg.

He saw you, faint ringlets of hair, your small hands clutching at armor you’d never understand and the maid rushing to fix what had been done. The son of Atreus made hardly a sound as you were carried off to the palace though your eyes stared back with a young naivete he had not known in decades.

The King of Mycenae found himself within your nursery, within the gardens with tangled flowers, you sitting alongside him on horse’s saddle, bringing you where even your mother rarely found herself besides Agamemnon. His arms, ensnared in chain metal, found themselves wrapped around your softer framework, your lungs weak yet the brightest of sounds left them, greeting the son of Atreus’s ears. Blooming himself a smile.

“What have you found, child?” He asked, his hair back as he rested along the edge of the sea beside you, your small feet against the sands and the blood far from your eyes.

Just as he’d keep it.