Orestes says: I've loved Hermione since I was three. What were their childhoods like together?
How do you feel about someone who used to just be your baby cousin, nothing more complicated than that--and then suddenly, the whole world had gone to war and its all centered around your family.
You move into your aunt's home because both your parents are gone. You've stayed with them before of course, but now you're stuck here. And your now favorite cousin who was like an older sister to you is dead, and your aunt resents you for it. That you are here and she is not and for more reasons you don't fully understand.
Your other cousin resents you as well, the one who is just your age, your dark haired twin. For you are here and her sister is not. You are here, an u welcome guest (hostage?)in her home, and she will make sure you know it
The only cousin who still cares for you is barely less than a baby. And all he can talk about is how he dreams of the day he can keep you here in this unhappy house forever. So sure, in his child-belief, that you will be happy against all the odds and evidence that mounts up before you that no one in this family has ever been happy in marriage. Every game of Prince and Princess he plays feels to you like another bar on a cage you're realizing you were born in.
And yet you do care for him, still. He is your family. You've helped raise him, you and his brittle sister who was once your friend. All of you are children are growing up together in a gilded cage together
So when you see danger coming to this child, even though, in your wirst thoughts, you see how it could have freed you from the cage, of course you help him fly from it instead.
Of course you send him off with hope of a better tomorrow, of his dreams coming true. How often have you wished someone would do so for you?
He'll grow out of it, of course. As he sees more of the way of the world. He'll have to, to survive. As you have. But let him be a child for a little longer.
And then, it's just you and your dark haired cousin-twin. With nothing to keep the barbs at bay, nothing to keep the bitterness from spilling over and the brittleness from fully cracking.
And when it finally does, when it's been a decade on since you've seen either of your parents, from the world as you knew it ending, when there is nothing keeping you here, no child smaller and more vulnerable to the cruelty to of the world to protect any longer ---that is when you decide that enough is enough.
And so you make your way to the temple of the God of War, and you pray for a way to make the world stop ending.
