Chapter Text
"I thought you were going to show us your claws little wolf." Antinous looms over bruised and bloody Telemachus, menacing smirk gracing his lips. Encircled by a group of useless muscled suitors he geared up for a new round of torment while Telemachus pushes himself to his elbows.
Antinous grins "Aww look he's wants more. Maybe if you bark like a good little pup we'll let go."
His lacky's snigger and shove each other as Telemachus looks around the palace garden he decided to pick a short lived fight in.
"Well, I'm waiting" Declared Antinous.
Telemachus wipes a trickle of blood from his lips baring his teeth like the little wolf they mock him to be. "Go fuck yourselves." he croaks.
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Lying beaten in his mother's private garden inside his own palace, Telemachus can do nothing but stare at the blue skies above him, face partially shaded by an olive tree. It must have been specially transplanted because he doesn't see any growing naturally beyond the wall. Telemachus knows that his father designed this place from the ground up paying special attention to his mother's gardens. They were supposed to be places their family could use to relax and spend time together. "What would he say if he could see..." He whispers reaching one hand up to the sky.
Telemachus tries to catch the floating cloud in his palm but when he unfurls his fist he comes up empty.
Maybe if... When Odysseus returns Telemachus can ask him why he chose to include this particular tree in the corner of the garden.
Suddenly a crunch in the tree directly above him snapped the peace.
Telemachus remained painfully still. Listening, waiting. The wind held its breath and in the silence of the palace gardens he could hear a faint inhale and exhale.
There! It was above him. Another suitor coming back to reveal in the prince licking his wounds? Or a crueller trick?
It couldn't be an animal he knows, all the animals had been hunted to extinction on the palace grounds. The suitors taking joy in the carnage, when they got particularly border they remarked how similar Argos looks to a suckling pig from behind. He's kept Argos locked up in his room since then.
"Show yourself." Telemachus demands.
Silence radiates around the garden, the slow inhale and exhale had ceased.
He continues, tone softer "I know you're watching me. Show yourself for I can already see you."
"Is that so?"
He flinches as a clear female voice tricked out from the tree, a nymph?
"You claim to see through my spell?"
No the voice sounds different, different then any of the nymphs he met playing around the palace as a child. The tone the intonation, it almost sounds... otherworldly.
"No my lady" He hurries, sitting upright and glancing around seeing nothing more than rustling leaves, "It was only a bluff. All I can see is the rustle of the leaves on the olive tree."
"Hmmmm, you're clever. I guess that makes sense, your father has always been favoured."
"Favoured?" He muttered. Suddenly the careful crafted silver pins, elaborate tapestries and well maintained alter in his father study came to mind. Telemachus took a slow exhale, he may not be as quick as his famously ingenious father but he had a good idea of who was likely sitting above him in that olive tree.
The voice continues "Well, enlighten me what's your name."
"Telemachus my lady." He replied jumping to his feet to take a formal bow towards the tree.
"Why do you call me my lady?"
"I, I would hate to presume but should it be accurate to say you're not entirely mortal my lady?" He stutters.
Silence reigns, just as he ponders if being smited would be painful or painless due to the speed of his bodily evaporation, the goddess breaks the silence.
"Why do you let them treat you like that?"
Telemachus hunches his shoulders, it would be too much to hope the goddess hadn't seen his pathetic display earlier.
"They're suitors of my mother your grace. I am to occupy them so they forget their purpose of being here." He justified.
"And how is letting them treat you like a punching bag is the beta way to achieve that?" A punching bag? Like a straw training post?
Telemachus bristles "I'm buying time. Time for my father Odysseus king of Ithica to return."
"Is that what you want?" The voice nested in the olive tree rings out. "For your father to come home and solve all your issues? If you're sitting there waiting to be saved by hopes and legends then there's I have nothing to add here"
Telemachus clenches his fists gaze down "No." He retorted.
"No that's not what I want.
What I want is to remove those scum from my home, to humiliate them, show the world the depths of their stupidity and depravity. Ruin them until they line the palace steps begging for my mother to reign as queen.
I want my father to return home to a wife who doesn't sit at night unweaving a mourning shroud, to a son who doesn't sit and wait like a beaten dog. I want him to arrive to the kingdom of Ithica in it's glory, glistening in Apollo's sun, steadfast amidst Poseidon's waves and free."
"Okay." The voice chuckles.
"Okay?"
In a swift motion a figure appears from nowhere crouched in the olive tree over head, bright blonde curls contrasting with cool clear grey eyes.
"Call me Annabeth" the figure says "because this I can work with."
This warrior, who cut him deeper with words than swords ever could, smirks at him. Despite her brightly coloured, strange and otherworldly garments Telemachus knew she was no mere woman. She was salvation, she was trouble.