Chapter Text
Crack!
Boom!
Clytemnestra groaned, shoving her pillow over her head. With every crack of lightning or harsh boom of thunder, she heard a whimper from across the room. A pitiful, small little thing that, if it belonged to anyone else, would have caused her to shush them. But no—she was the first hatched, expected to be the keeper of the nest.
Clytemnestra pushed herself onto her elbows and peered into the inky darkness of the chambers she shared with her sister and cousin.
“Helen? Helen!” She hissed a whisper, letting it drift through the night. Quiet enough to grab Helen's attention, but not loud enough to wake Penelope. Clytemnestra swore her cousin could hear a pin drop, even as she was fast asleep, exploring the depths of her dreams with Hypnos covering her eyes.
She was only met with a pitiful whimper, a small assurance that Helen was 'fine'.
Clytemnestra knew better.
Since their hatching, Helen had always glowed with a light Clytemnestra did not have. The nursemaid who scooped her up from the broken eggshells nearly dropped Helen upon seeing her. Not because she was some abomination of feather and flesh, something that their mother had feared since their conception, but because even then, there was not a flaw upon her. She was divine, whether Tyndareus announced it as official before his people or not. Yet the crashes from the sky always made her shiver and snivel and whimper. Helen, unlike others with divinity in them, never had a love for all that. The loudness and the crashing and the mighty roars of greatness never called to her.
Clytemnestra sighed and shifted her arm to lift the sheets. “Come here, Helen.” It was softer than she usually spoke. Perhaps just out of fear of waking Penelope, or perhaps something else. Clytemnestra showed softness for very little. Where their mother was soft, often quiet, lovely as a rose like Helen, Clytemnestra prided herself on being hard, firm, and resolute…but there was something in seeing Helen’s discomfort that broke that stone-heart a bit. The instincts of a firstborn.
Clytemnestra watched the form of Helen, how it curled in on itself as it crept through the darkness, creeping on the tips of her toes. She slipped under the cotton, and Clytemnestra ducked her head underneath to be with her.
“Are you alright?” She asked. Her eyes had not yet adjusted to the darkness, so she saw only flashes of movement, the faint darkened shadow that was Helen, with her shoulders tensed in a familiar silhouette.
“I do not like the storm,” Helen confessed shakily. There were many things she disliked, as her leash was kept short. It had to be when she was perhaps the fairest woman to ever be. A slice of divinity gifted to the rest of the world. But being hidden behind walls made the world outside of them quite frightening.
“I know…” Clytemnestra said slowly. “I do not either.” That was a lie. She said it in a sad attempt to make her feel better, but all it did was make another crash hit the Earth. Helen nearly leapt out of her skin. She probably would have, if Clytemnestra’s hands hadn’t clamped onto her shoulders to ground her. “Breathe, Helen. Slowly. Come on, it's just lightning…”
“What if he's displeased?” Her whisper was panicked, uttered quickly from between trembling lips. Never had Clytemnestra seen her so frightened. Besides the time she had turned a corner and seen a man of the palace speaking to her, inching closer until Clytemnestra informed him he was “well close enough”. Clytemnestra’s gaze could make men falter as much as her sister’s, but for very different reasons.
"Who?"
"My father!"
“He is not, you've not done anything,” Clytemnestra reassured slowly, though it was not a promise she could keep. Favor the gods was…well, it could switch as quickly as the winds could. Though Helen had not done anything. If anything, she was blessed; beautiful as she was… "You haven't done anything, have you?"
“I asked him for a favor,” Helen confessed softly. Even though the shadows obscured her, Clytemnestra could sense her growing pale. “I asked him…to speak with Penelope’s mother, just to ensure she arrived to see her—”
Clytemnestra processed her words, hands still gripping her shoulders tightly.
"Did he keep his word?" She asked.
"I just requested it…I didn't even pour libation, Clytemnestra!" Helen groaned, her head slumping forward. "I just asked like a fool, and now I am sure he is displeased with me…I've never had anyone displeased with me."
“Helen," Clytemnestra sighed. "Don't stress yourself. It's fine, I'm sure. It's just rain…rain is important. And besides, we are safe as long as we are together, aren’t we? And am I not here now?”
“You are….” Helen whispered. “Nessie?”
“Mhm?” Clytemnestra combed back Helen’s reddish hair. It was an action she had done a million times since childhood, though Helen’s hair always bounced back to their perfect, golden waves that framed her face.
“Have you ever asked him for anything? Our father?”
Clytemnestra made a face at her words.
“...Tyndareus is my father, Helen.”
Helen’s perfect brow furrowed.
“No,” she said slowly, “you are my sister. And I am a hemitheos. So you are too.”
Hemitheos. Half divine, half mortal.
“No, Helen,” Clytemnestra sighed. She had never explained it to her sister, for she thought she just knew. It was wrong of her to assume. “You are divine; I am not.”
“No…” Helen reiterated, and she shook her head. “If I am divine, then you must be too. We are sisters! We were born from the same eggs!”
“It does not work like that, Helen.” Clytemnestra was unsure exactly how it worked, but it was not that. She didn't have a divine bone in her body. Divinity shone through the skin like sunshine, and when Clytemnestra looked at herself, all she saw was dull, dull, dull. Even Penelope had a bit of that glimmer. “Look at me. We are not the same.”
“Well, of course not.” Helen frowned. “I mean, we don't look the same. You look like mother, but you are still very beautiful! She was the most beautiful woman in the world before I was born. We’re still very similar, just a little different."
A little.
Clytemnestra held back a laugh. She wondered again, for the hundredth time, if Helen’s beautiful head was filled with nothing but storm clouds. Her, calling Clytemnestra beautiful? She almost pointed out the irony of it before the blanket shifted above them.
Once more, Helen jumped like a startled cat. Clytemnestra wrapped her arms around her shoulders to steady her, as she gazed into Penelope’s drowsy face.
“Hello, Penelope.”
“You are loud.” She groaned, sleep practically making her slur. “Why are you loud?” Her words were directed to Helen, her eyes narrowed in a sleepy glare.
“Oh, sorry,” Helen smiled apologetically. She shifted aside, allowing room for Penelope to clamor inside with them. Her lanky limbs moved drowsily with sleep before folding in her lap under the safety of the blanket. She yawned.
“Why are we hiding?” She let her head slump onto Helen’s shoulder, eyes fluttering shut and open again as they tried to choose between sleep and consciousness.
“Helen was being a baby,” Clytemnestra answered.
“I was not!” Helen yelled sharply. The lightning crashed again, making her squeal.
“Point proven.”
“Helen, don’t worry about the lightning. I would worry more about the river flooding us out all the way to the ocean—” Penelope yawned mid-existential tangent, “Sea King willing.”
“Or…” Clytemnestra allowed a smirk to stretch over her lips, “A terrible earthquake!” Her fingers leaped to action, tickling relentlessly into Helen’s side as she shrieked with laughter. It was the only time she seemed imperfect in her composure, heaving breaths while her face turned red. She was always ticklish.
“No! Stop! This is not—” Helen let out a snort of laughter, trying to slap away the hands. “Clytemnestra, that is not funny!”
“Well, I find it funny.” Penelope rubbed her eyes with her wrist, leaning aside as though she wished not to be caught up in the torture of Helen of Sparta.
The next strike of lightning that came, Helen did not flinch, nor cower. She laughed.