Work Text:
They took a break by the edge of the water, a great oak tree lending its shade to them on the hot day. Kratos wanted to stand but Faye pulled him down by the wrist, an anchor dragging him into the depths of the sea. He went with the weight because it is her, and sinks into the soft grass, his bare back rubbing against the rough bark. Kratos did not protest any of this because she immediately rested her head in his lap, laying flat on her back like an anchor that would not follow its ship anymore. The line of thought disturbed him and prompted him to run a hand through her long hair, the softness memorised and yet still so astonishing, a grounding ritual. Faye stared up at the sky and its puffy clouds while Kratos stared down at his world. The world caught his unwavering eyes and smiled. “What’s on your mind, my love?”
Faye went back to looking at the clouds as she waited, knowing it would take the world opening up from underneath his feet to rouse the man. Kratos took his time answering. He wasn’t even sure if he would answer at all, instead warming up more and more to the idea of just sitting here for the rest of his life. There was nothing else he could possibly desire when the world was in his lap, waiting for him.
“I… do not know how to explain.”
“Try.”
Kratos sighed deeply at her order, which made Faye snort. Her blue eyes lit up with amusement in the same way the lake in front of them glittered in the shining sun. Kratos wanted to kiss her. He also didn’t want to break the spell of stillness. He compromised by reaching for her hand, bringing it to his lips and then holding it to his cheek. His eyes closed automatically. Faye was warm. Warmer than the sun made him on a hot day like today. To think that his anchor could leave ship frightened him to his very core. Faye was the one good thing in his life and even she…
“I do not want to miss you,” he managed to say into her hand, eyes still closed. To whisper that he was afraid of a time when they could not be together while she was still so close was perhaps a louder admission than the way he would scream in slaughter for her. But he took a shuddering breath and said it again, more violently, because Kratos was nothing if not his own executioner. “I cannot bear to miss you.”
Faye did not answer.
When he opened his eyes, he was in a dark cabin, sitting upright on a bed too large for just him. His bed. The empty shell of his anchor was tied to his waist; it had been long since she left for the bottom of the sea. He took a deep breath in to try and ease the tightness in his throat. It did not work, but Kratos did not mind as much as he usually would. The weight in his throat dragged him that much closer to the sea floor where she lay, but it was useless. Grief was not the same as love. A ship could never traverse into the depths of the sea. She was gone, leaving Kratos in a never-ending winter with a son who grew faster than Kratos could keep up with.
Their son slept on the bed across from Kratos. He was still sound asleep, a relief. It seemed he did not scream this time as the head hadn’t seemed to notice his rousing either. Kratos looked at his sleeping form, the even rise and fall of his breaths. Atreus slept curled in on his side. He had always slept this way ever since he was small enough for Kratos to hold him in just his two hands. A defensive position, meant to protect the internal organs. Kratos wondered what the boy had been scared of since he was that young.
Atreus winced in his sleep. His face did not relax immediately, and he realised Atreus was having a nightmare. He was reminded of when Faye used to hold the boy after nightmares. He would sleep flat on her torso, arms wrapped around her and face buried into her neck, sobbing quietly. Kratos had never understood why she let Atreus sneak into their bed after his nightmares, much less why she held him like that. Fears were to be overcome alone or else the heart would grow weak. To cry was to show fear, to show fear was a sign of weakness. There was no room for weakness in Sparta. When he brought it up once, Faye just poked him in the ribs with a mock-shushing look.
But Kratos knew how painful dreams could be. He did not want his son to experience that, so he gingerly reached over and shook his son’s shoulder. “Atreus,” he urged softly. “Wake up.”
Blue eyes pried open, heavy with sleep. “F….Father…?”
“You were having a nightmare.”
Atreus blinked slowly. Kratos released his shoulder but remained leaned towards him. Candlelight flickered, casting dancing shadows on the hollows of Atreus’s face and onto the walls. He languidly lifted his head to look at Kratos. “Did I… wake you up?”
Kratos shook his head. “I too had a dream. I woke up when it ended.”
“Oh.”
Atreus settled back down, this time on his stomach. The small change relieved Kratos. He laid back down on his bed as well, flat like a board. The dark ceiling greeted his fully alert eyes; Kratos knew he would not be falling back asleep tonight. It was so quiet that if he tried, he could hear the little flame burn on the wick. The other half of his bed felt emptier than it had in a long time. If he tried even harder, he could fool himself into thinking he could smell Faye on her pillow.
“What’d you dream of?” his son asked, oblivious to interrupting his efforts.
“Of her.”
“...Me too.” His voice dropped off, beginning to quiver. Kratos did not prompt him to continue. The boy began speaking again but quietly, as if that would make Kratos think he was not upset. “We were on a cliff. Mother was hurt really bad and couldn’t pull herself over the ledge. I wasn’t strong enough to lift her either…”
It was obvious there was more to his nightmare. Kratos knew he shouldn’t encourage his son to talk so openly about his fear but he didn’t need to. Atreus continued on his own. It seemed Faye had taught him that this was okay… and why shouldn’t it be? Atreus was not in Sparta. Kratos didn’t even want that life for his son.
“I tried and I tried but it didn’t work. The worst part was her telling me to let go. She said she might pull me down with her if I kept trying, that it’d be better for me to let go first.”
“You did not let go first.”
The words escaped him, an unconscious thought.
“I couldn’t ,” Atreus managed, voice cracking with sadness. “She pried my hand off and fell and I… I started screaming but Mother… Mother was smiling the whole time.”
In the stillness of their dark cabin, Kratos heard his son loud as day. Suppressing his sobs turned his breathing into loud, choked hiccups. There was a choice in front of him. Kratos could sink into the stillness and not do a thing, or he could confront his own fear.
To sit up and rub the boy’s shoulder the way Faye would felt like sticking his fingers into an old wound that refused to heal properly. It was a wound he lived with his whole life. It was comfortable. Kratos did not want to pass that on to his son. Atreus looked up at him, eyes shining with tears, bottom lip trembling. When Kratos did not move away he surged up into his arms, burying his nose into the crook of his neck. His arms stayed limp at his side at first, dumbfounded. Only when little hands scrambled for purchase on him did he encircle the boy, holding his back securely, but gently. Kratos pulled his son the rest of the way back to his bed so that they were not hanging in limbo between the two beds, carefully cradling his head. He could feel tears run down his neck and pool in the dips of his collarbones. Atreus shuddered violently with each breath. Kratos rubbed his back in slow, soothing circles. He knew he should say something- Faye would always whisper loving affirmations to calm their son- but words failed him completely. What could Kratos even say? There was no more nightmare to wake the boy from. Faye was dead. This was their reality. Grief would be a part of Atreus for the rest of his life, compounding with time instead of fading.
“I miss her, Father. I miss her so much… I miss her, I miss her, I miss her, I miss her,” Atreus said over and over again. Kratos did not shush his rambling. He simply held his son closer to him so that he did not feel alone. “I know. I do too.”
The little hands holding onto his bare skin clenched at the same time that his sobbing stopped. Blunt nails pressed furiously into his sides as the boy tried to forcibly calm himself down. Kratos moved his hand to pat the boy’s head. His hair was short and felt sparse like a newborn, although this time by design. Atreus was born with a little bit of hair. Kratos was reminded of when he scalped the infant with his knife so that his hair would grow back healthier, an old custom.
“Cry. Let it out.”
Atreus finally looked up at Kratos. His eyes were big and glossy with unshed tears, staring wide at him. Kratos wanted him to stop crying. Deep down, it still made him uncomfortable to see the boy cry. A long dormant instinct (that Kratos hesitantly recognised as the parental instinct) within him wanting to shield Atreus from this suffering did not make matters easier, but he fought both. The boy had to cry, to feel. He cannot end up like…
“But-”
“-There is no shame in crying, Atreus. To love your mother is to grieve her. To not grieve her is shameful.”
His son’s eyes became impossibly bigger, the tears brimming in them largely responsible. “But you never cry…”
The weight in his throat returned. It was grief, but not for Faye. It was grief for something he never knew. Something he needed desperately. Grief he hadn’t realised he was harbouring until Atreus asked him about it. It was physically painful to push words out around that weight, but he spoke anyway, surprised when his tone turned out mournful. “I was… made not to cry as a boy. Even if I wanted to cry now, I cannot.” He paused for a moment, hesitating, before remembering. He did not want Atreus to have the childhood he had. And that meant working past his own comfort. “To cry is to love. And to love is to be strong.”
Tears rolled down Atreus’s face. A cathartic feeling washed over Kratos, his eyes softening at the sight. The clog in his throat felt much lighter. Of course, he did not wish for Atreus to be upset, but he knew very well how burying these emotions would only harden the boy’s heart.
Atreus cannot end up like Kratos. He must be better.
Kratos guided the boy’s head to his chest with a gentle hand, leaning him there so might relax a little more. Atreus kept crying, freely and unashamed, Kratos hoped. He held Atreus close, finding that comforting his son brought comfort to that part of him that was shunned since childhood. It would not fix anything, he knew, but comfort was not supposed to be productive. Just as Faye would not miraculously come back to life, Kratos could not change his past. Atreus nuzzled into Kratos, and he found himself almost smiling at the feeling. Comfort was just that. Comforting.
Much time passed just with them sitting there. Kratos was content to tuck the boy back into his bed, but Atreus spoke up before he could even begin moving. Still curled against Kratos’s chest, the boy asked, “So you don’t cry. How do you grieve then?”
“I dream of her every night. She always leaves.”
A moment of silence. “...So you lose her every night?”
Kratos had never thought of it like that before. He supposed he never thought about his dreams much after waking in general, a by-product of being told emotion was weakness. Atreus’s perspective on the matter was surprisingly wise, giving words to emotions Kratos was not even supposed to have. He stared blankly at the top of the boy’s head, who did not seem to realise the impact of his words and was still just sitting there. It wasn’t just his son who was allowed to express sadness. Kratos could allow himself to as well.
“It’s not fair that happened to you as a kid, Father. I’m sorry.”
His eyes unfocused as he looked up at the candle on the table in front of them. The little flame danced and danced despite the movement burning away its very life force. It will burn and be burned, giving light and destroying life. The flame had no say in the matter. That was simply the way of things.
“Little is.”
“I know,” he said immediately. Kratos could hear the pain in his voice. “Doesn’t change that it’s not fair though.”
He sighed deeply. It would be too easy to defend his youth, he had been doing it his whole life after all. “You are right.”
Despite what he tells himself, Kratos has always had a choice. To kill, to forgive, to love, to hate, to move on, to remain rooted. To be better for his child meant he could not keep burning away at himself. He must be to Atreus what Faye was to the both of them. He gave Atreus a squeeze, a hug within a hug, and then laid down with the boy still latched onto his torso, arms anchoring the boy to him. The boy had long since stopped sobbing, but Kratos was content to leave him be. A part of him would always mourn what he did not have anymore and what he was never given in the first place, but that was precisely why he would not allow the same to happen to Atreus. He would always choose to be better for his son.
“Night, Father.”
“Good night.”
The ceiling did not keep his attention anymore, instead focusing on his son in his arms. His breaths were even but shallow. Kratos could not see his face as his head was curled downwards on his chest, but he knew the boy was already sound asleep. Sleep did not come for Kratos nearly as easily, but when it finally did, Faye greeted him like she always does. Kratos did not chase her right away as was customary. He looked at the sky, grey and angry. He looked at the waves in front of Faye, crashing on the shore and lapping at her feet. He felt the sand in between his toes, shoes being gone more than likely to be Faye’s idea. He then looked at her despite the pit forming in his stomach. Faye smiled at him over her shoulder. She did not reach for him or beckon him closer like she always does.
Faye’s ankle began to melt into the seafoam. She was still smiling.
Kratos saw the choice before him. He chose to let go first, to keep her smiling in his memory. The walk back to the mainland was agonising. He wanted to look back, to chase after her, to hold her until the last possible moment. Comfort was just comfort. The only thing keeping his heavy legs moving forward was the strength of his choice, knowing that someone was waiting for him there on the mainland. A child who depended on Kratos to anchor him. His son who Kratos depended on for an anchor too.