"Send me! Send an army! Send a thousand ships! I don't care, just bring her home. I hate being without her."
[ PERCY JACKSON x FEMALE OC ]
[ PERCY JACKSON SERIES ]
cover by @humaneity !
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0011. | A SINGLE SHIP CAN BE WORTH A THOUSAND
Octavia dreamt of Troy.
These Trojan dreams never felt really like dreams. It was the captured moment between awake and sleep that haunted her in the body of someone else. She knew she wasn't quite herself, and yet, she didn't entirely feel like Helen either. She supposed because Helen didn't feel like Helen in this moment.
The weight of that feeling was heavy in her chest.
She could feel it on her chest like a boot, pressing down and down and down. She was laid on soft soil or soft silks, she couldn't tell. The roughness of her treatment was poorly-recalled. Helen had fought, for once in her life, she had fought. She had tried to show those Trojan men what came of attacking a Spartan woman, but she was no Clytemnestra. She was Leda's daughter, hunted and captured just the same.
"Κράτα την κάτω. Hold her down." A man said.
"Καπετάνιος, Captain," another spoke. "Είναι άγρια. Δεν είμαι σίγουρος για πόσο καιρό μπορούμε— She's wild. I'm not sure how long we can—,"
"Κράτα την κάτω. Hold her down."
Octavia's body felt heavy. With her hands and feet held down, weighted and dull, she could hardly move. She had tried too hard already. Now, her head had been cracked by a step she had fallen down. The Trojan men had dragged her through the back entrance to the Citadel, to the rooms of her captor. She remembered the orders. Helen was to be placed in the palace before King Priam could give orders to return her to her home and husband. Her reputation had to be sullied so that the king would be honour-bound to defend his son and his desired second wife. Apparently what Theseus had done in Aphidna all those years earlier hadn't done it well enough.
Helen's body was too heavy and drowsy to fight back. Now she was slung about as easily as a doll, no more weight to her. The muscles of her youth, fighting with her sister, training with the other girls had been stolen from her in the years of being queen and married to a man who wished to ensure she never raised a spear again. Now, she was a stranger to a weapon. Only her teeth would do.
Through the glimpses of her hooded eyes, caked down by the weight of the wound at her head, Helen's vision was that of a newborn. Octavia was not used to such sooted vision. Her god-given eyes were too superior for this sudden sight. She could see nothing beyond the blurred figures moving about her. She couldn't see anything discernible about the figures at all, only that they were human. But she knew they were men. It was always men.
