Chapter Text
Helen had never had a particular talent for finding things. Her whole childhood, she could recall constantly losing certain pieces of jewellery, of smaller accessories, and certainly a lot of special thread for weaving and half-finished tapestries she’d long forgotten. Sometimes she’d come across something she lost years ago in an old bag or stuffed under disorganized messes. Her husband had never enjoyed this aspect of her, but she was lucky Menelaos was remarkably tidy, because she did not feel quite so guilty about losing things when she knew they’d turn up again. Because he’d find them one way or another.
That was not the case with Paris. She had been rather unsure of the man at first, and definitely wasn’t happy with her kidnapping, but he was… pleasant. Not that interesting, and she wasn’t sure how much activity was going on in that mind of his, but his beauty surely rivaled hers. He was easy to talk to. Excellent with a bow, very good with his… hands.
But Lords above and below, he willingly lived in squalor. Maybe it was his upbringing as a shepherd, but he was much, much less organized than Helen. She was glad she wasn’t the only one who thought so, too — hearing shouting down the hall from Hektor or one of the other sons, or one of their wives, at something Paris had left out, lost, or broken was not an uncommon thing to hear. She was glad that, at least, she was never the target of the House of Priam’s ire.
Then Paris went to fight and didn’t come back.
And she tried not to be sad. She really tried. The man had taken her from her home and family, he’d started this war in the first place. But she’d had to live with these Trojans, and she knew them more intimately than she ever would’ve wished or known. Seeing kind Hektor defiled and destroyed had almost been too much for them, and Helen had spent day and night consoling and being beside Andromache and Astyanax. None of them had deserved to die the way they had.
Paris’ lack of return was only the beginning of the city’s burning. Helen was in the palace with the rest of the family, in their Temple, in a holy place of worship, when the Achaeans broke down the doors. She had hid. She wasn’t proud of it, but the son of Achilleus was— he was—
“he is like a snake that fed on poisonous plants/ and swollen underground all winter, now/ his slough cast off, made new and bright with youth,/ uncoils his slippery body to the light”
A nightmare walking. Neoptolemus had come to slaughter the rest of the brothers of Hektor, of kind, dear Hektor, who had unknowingly killed his father’s lover. And good gods, he had. Sword dripping blood like flames licking the blade, greaves stained with the viscera of this family, eyes holding the fire of the gods within him. She’d hid when he slaughtered Polites. She’d hid when he trod through corpses. She’d hid when he came with the baby Astyanax, a babe she’d seen born and taken care of herself, gripping him by the leg, encouraging the screaming as he lifted the child and bashed Priam over the head with his small body. The sounds of bone and soft flesh cracking against each other, of the wet slamming of a small, bloodied body against the altar itself, and Helen hid.
Until her husband was in the doorway, and his eyes found her immediately as though drawn there by some otherworldly force. There was a terrible anger in him, a hideous fury that she’d never seen on him before. When he stomped through Polites’ already trodden body and paid no mind to Neoptolemus’ brutal beating of a now thoroughly dead baby, Helen was sure he was there to kill her.
“Please!” she wailed, throwing herself down at his feet, trying not to gag at the blood soaking into her hands, the bottom of her dress. She held his ankles, his feet, grasping at his greaves in desperation. “Please, husband, please—!”
And he’d stopped short. Sword lowered, his entire face changed as though broken from a curse. He did look at Neoptolemus, then, at the mangled body that had once been Astyanax, at the King Priam drenched in the blood of his sons, at the Queen screaming and pleading. When Menelaos caught Helen’s gaze again, there was a new kind of lucidity deep in the brown of those beautiful eyes.
“My love,” he crooned, more lovingly than Helen thought she’d ever heard. His huge arms lifted her, broad hands she had long forgotten the touch of holding her, and with a newfound haste he took her swiftly from the Temple.
She had not been outside it since the beginning of the battling. The sky had turned to ash; the streets reflected flame over blood-slick stone; the walls of the city itself were engulfed in fire and death.
She must have made a noise, for Menelaos was holding her head close to him, trying to shield her gaze. She was not made for this, she thought. She was not made for war and killing and death. And her husband knew that, and he shielded her from it. They were nowhere near Sparta, but she already felt like she’d arrived at home.
No, Helen had never had a particular talent for finding things. And neither did Paris. But it was then, running out the gates of the city, that she saw him, bloodied and struggling on the ground.
In the wet and deceivingly deep mud he lay flat, arms out, trying to pull himself forward and away from the fighting. The trembling in his muscles was visible through his pallid skin, and every inch of him was drenched in sweat. His hair, a deep and soft black, endless like the deep earth and curling like smoke, was strewn about his face and dragging through the mire and viscera. And those large doe-eyes, hazel-green and misty, were blown wide in terror and panic. Tears streaked through the coating of dirt on his cheeks, snot ran from his nose, drool dripped from the corner of his plush lips and pooled under his chin.
“Menelaos,” Helen gasped out, gripping his bicep to get him to pause. The clattering of swords around them was loud, out there, but not as loud as it was within the city walls. A few of Menelaos’ attendants and captains had gathered around them, leading the way back to the ships. And Menelaos heard her, he listened, and stopped. Followed her gaze. Hardened his eyes.
“I will end his misery,” he murmured, setting Helen upright to stand on her own, but she did not let him go. Paris seemed to be choking on something, and reached for her, desperately, like the poor souls in the Lethe.
“Please.” Helen held Menelaos to her. “Please. He has only been kind to me. If you love me still, my dear, please trust me in this. Please help him. Take him with us as our prisoner, a slave if you must. Just please don’t let him die.”
Menelaos took a long and deep breath, glancing back at his captains to nod them ahead. They began walking again, shouting orders to get back to the ships, with only a few staying to wall themselves between the rulers of Sparta and the burning city. Menelaos wasn’t answering. Helen looked down at Paris weeping for her, wordlessly forming his lips around her name.
“I could not help him if I wanted,” Menelaos said, finally. “He has been struck with Herakles’ bow, by an arrow soaked in hydra blood and gall.”
Whatever noise forced itself from Helen’s throat was nonsensical, half-mad, but she did not care to stop her reaction of running and falling forward in front of Paris. Menelaos called her name; she did not hear it.
“Dear Alexander,” Helen cried, brushing his long hair back from his sweat-drenched face. He was pretty, still, somehow. The feverish flush of his cheeks only seemed to complement the paleness of his fair skin, the stark contrast of his night-dark hair over marbled brown-gold-green eyes almost godly in beauty.
“Hhhhe…” He was trying to say her name, still, and was not quite able to. “…Lenn…”
“Menelaos!” Helen called, teary-eyed, turning back to her husband. “Please.”
Behind her, the watching attendants leaned forward and whispered something to their King. Paris heaved and curled over to spit up bile.
Menelaos took a step forward, and Paris noticeably flinched. Then, to his attendants, Menelaos said, “Take him to our ship. Send for our best healer, secretly.”
The attendants only exchanged a brief few glances before nodding and doing as he said. Paris keened and fumbled a hand onto Helen’s forearm, streaking her tanned skin with more blackened earth and dark blood. The men grabbed him, hauled him up by the arms like a half-dead cat, and so Helen went with them, holding his hand tightly.
“Please do what they say,” she hurried to tell him. “Dear Alexander, please don’t cause trouble. Please. Just— be good. Be a good boy.”
She knew what effect that always had on him. His already flushed face reddened further, and his mouth gaped around unformed words, and once more he reached helplessly for her. She let go of his hand. He was carried away, to the ships on the horizon, at the beaches far ahead. Menelaos’ large hand rested on her shoulder, so gentle she hardly felt it at first.
“Let’s go home,” Menelaos cooed.