One shots- various fandoms

GoW|To forget is to admit defeat (and I wish to lose) {DONE}

Atreus is looking for something. A substance to clean his bow. His mother usually kept it on the cabin's second floor with all their other junk items.

Up there were shelves full of treasures— stumbled upon during his mother and father's outings— and liquids used to preserve his mother's spoils after a particularly bountiful harvest.

Atreus can't help but be attracted more to the shelf crammed with striking sculptures. With the figures' colors so vivid and carvings as detailed and elegant as his father's own statues.

They're all so breathtaking that it takes the boy by surprise when he sees an ugly thing balancing in the dark and dusty corner of the shelf. It is in no way nice to look at but it still demands Atreus's attention just as the others did, if not more.

He doesn't know why but he can certainly guess. Is it a cursed item? Can it be so mangled that the figure gained sentience out of pure spite in its creator, and has chosen Atreus to carry out its revenge? Or is it simply so hideous that he can't help but stare? All guesses sound plausible.

The boy pushes the other figures out of the disfigured ones way— another reason why he shouldn't have even laid eyes on it; others were blocking its way!— but pauses and leaps after a delicate-looking marble figure that got too close to the edge and tipped over.

Atreus is able to catch the figure but not without him falling face-first onto the floorboards, knocking his chin and elbows against the planks. He winces when he hears a huff and a gravelly, "Boy."

"Yes, father?"

The god is silent as he stares at his son, who's cradling his chin. "Why are you up there?"

"I wanted to find the wax that mother used on the bow," the boy shrugs his shoulders as best he can from the floor, "I thought it would be up here."

"Are you hurt?"

"No, father." The man hums in lieu of an answer.

His father walks off and Atreus assumes the conversation has ended. The boy places the marble figure back on the shelf, intending to ask about the other later.

He continues his search for the wax.

His mother had always told him if he wanted to improve, then so too should his weapon. With the light bows Freya had gifted him, and the work the Dwarf brothers had done on his bow, the last thing that Atreus himself could do was clean it.

Long before his mother died she had shown him what a hive looked like. His mother had explained the process of removing, cleaning, and preparing the wax but Atreus had gotten distracted by a whittled stick he found in his father's belongings.

"Do you know what it is used for?" she had asked him.

The boy dramatically whipped his head from side to side. His mother's smile deepened his own mouth followed suit. She always had that effect on him.

"It's to play music. It is called a flute."

Atreus lets out an "Oh," before looking back down at the flute. He turns it side to side. Then upside down. He sees something carved into the bottom. The character "κ". The boy doesn't think much of it. "How do I use it?"

Faye extends her arm out. "Give it here, it gets complicated if you don't know the basics."

"He... has lost something of yours." Faye whispers to Kratos, "A wooden flute."

"Atreus." A low voice calls out, startling him out of his memory.

"Coming," he mumbles out, making his way down the ladder.