#His house is a bloody battlefield and there's 107 bodies to clean up

[kayarai]

Yesterday's adventure in Epic fic writing: featuring Telemachus having A Bad Time (Content warning: brief suicidal thoughts near the end (lines immediately following a list of single words in parentheses). Telemachus has massive self-worth issues and a knife to his throat. You can probably guess where his thoughts might go.)

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It was painfully obvious that Melanthius didn’t actually what to do with a hostage. Sure, he’d managed the first two common sense steps of “incapacitate sword arm” and “knife to throat.” The next logical steps should’ve been “drag your hostage upright and use them as a shield” and “put your back to a wall.” Instead, Melanthius made the truly brilliant decision to shove his hostage down and stand with his back to the open hall.

As the hostage in question, Telemachus couldn’t really say he minded all that much that the man holding a knife to his throat was only half competent and leaving his back wide open to attack from…

“Your very presence has doomed the king—”

from…

“We can still defeat the king—”

from…

“Make the king obey our commands—”

…anyone.

There was one small downside to the man holding a knife to your throat being half competent however. That would be that a half competent man holding a knife to your throat might be inclined to do something less than competent with that knife, which was, again, being held against your throat.

Maybe is was the blow to the head, or maybe his luck had just run out. The focus and battle-calm he’d managed to cling to while fighting had shattered. His thoughts broken into thousands of jagged shards. Shards with sharp edges cutting him apart from inside as they spun and spun, and broke and broke, and shattered and—

Melanthius’s mediocre hostage holding capabilities was probably the least painful of his spinning thoughts to try to hold in focus and Telemachus had to hold onto that otherwise…

otherwise…

(Last week, yesterday, two hours ago he’d considered Melanthius one of the handful of suitors inclined toward letting him live. Now though? With the flat of a blade pressed so firmly against his throat that he couldn’t draw a proper breath? It was obvious Telemachus had horrifically miscalculated.) (What else had he miscalculated?) (What else had his mistakes threatened?) (What else had he endangered with this failures?) (With his weakness?) (His mother.) (Their kingdom.) (His…

“Your very presence has doomed the king, young prince”

father?)

(What would his father think? His father. Returning home to find the son that should be following in his legendary footsteps like… like… this.) (Defeated.) (Broken.) (Hostage.) (Liability.) (Burden.) (Disappointment.) (Shameful.) (Failure.) (Weak.)

If he could wriggle just enough… Shift his head in just the right way… he wouldn’t be useful leverage anymore. (He wouldn’t have to face his father’s disappointment.)

“No.”

*snap*

Somewhere between the snap of a goddess’s voice and the snap of a bowstring, Telemachus manages to pull enough of his scattered thoughts together that the moment the grip on his arm slackened and the knife began to fall away he’s moving, scrambling for his spear and darting to put a wall at his back.