[closed/complete] Characters: Helen (immaterialed), Menelaus (avaliantman) & Jubokko (vampiretree) Date/Time: May 28th Location: Below the Arena, post-battle Rating: PG-13 Warnings: Death. Descriptions of injury. Summary: The price of victory.
Sometimes Jubokko got such perfect patients. They weren't the kind that would recover but the ones hanging on by threads. And then he would come along, took the scissors to just a few of those threads and let nature do the rest. Unfortunately, he had discovered that he had lost his one ability that connected him to his true self when he arrived in Rome.
And now he had the perfect patient before himself. Blood ran of the table, had stained all that it touched. It was warm and slick and Jubokko hated himself as he was for being unable to enjoy this as he should have, hated the man for presenting him with such a beautiful sight. Bits of the man's insides had threatened to burst forth from his abdomen from where he had been so viciously stabbed before victory had become his.
Jubokko was sure that if that hadn't happened, Menelaus had a risk of dying anyway. He had ugly gashes littering his body that were sure to get infected in a place like this. It was so unsanitary and he shuddered to think of how awful the fever would be if Menelaus somehow survived to endure one. He had felt cracked ribs and knew that blood loss would have also contributed to an early death. Yet with the stab wound, death was certain and certain soon.
Laying a clean, slim hand (how he constantly had to wash his hands, had to demand the presence of that slave girl to keep the water he used and the floors of his work area unpolluted) over his patient's forehead. Even with his ability he could feel the man drifting toward his end. His hand drew back and he turned away from Menelaus. There were actually patients worth saving and things he should be doing. He'd done all he could.
And in the midst of his pain, Menelaus could only think of Lena and Hermione. Of Mona. Of Percival, Brie, the twins and Aeneas.
Of Helen. Unfocused eyes opened and he tried to lurch up, barely away how he was tearing open what Jubokko had just carefully sealed. He missed the narrowed eyed look the doctor gave him even as he was shoved down, barely registered the accented voice to tell him to save his last of energy.
Like weakened pup, he was flat on his back, dizzy with pain and frustration, unaware that his guts were starting to peek out and that the doctor was back to work at try to seal what Menelaus had ruined.
He was going to die in this awful place. Alone. And as pretty as the doctor was, he'd have preferred the last person he saw to be his Helen. He wanted to take the sight of her into the arms of the Underworld.
How goddamn selfish of me.
Oh, Helen wasn't blind, she had seen what had been done to Menelaus in the field. She also wasn't stupid, after ten years in Troy she had seen many injuries. So many. Enough to know. Helen knew whatever had happened to her husband in the arena was serious. Fortunately, she was a proactive woman, so damn them all for thinking she would sit back and twiddle her thumbs while her husband bled out on a filthy surgeon's table.
It took a few very angry words and thrown coins at guards, but she was able to bargain her way into Jubokko's medical...well. It wasn't even a room really, just... well, a cell more like. Helen brushed him aside as if he were nothing more but part of the furniture in the room and went to clasp Menelaus' hand.
Jubokko bristled a moment when pushed while attending to the man she'd come to see but what was there to care about so much? She was holding the hand of a dead man. And though he refused to watch outright, he never took his attention off of them, almost feeding off the misery that was about to unfold.
It was fascinating.
Softer hands than those belonging to the doctor was a sign that something odd had happened. And when he turned his head, he drew a short, pain-filled breath.
"I don't even want to know how you managed to get down here, woman," he gruffly said, lifting a hand stained with blood, sand and sweat to cup the side of her face. Let her comment, let her frown but he wanted to feel her, to touch her before the end came.
In a rare moment of tenderness, Helen placed her free hand on the one cupping her face, pressing it hard against her cheek. "You're getting me dirty." She complained (mostly because it was expected of her to do so), but it lacked her usual sass and bite. Instead she smiled a little, "I'm Helen, darling, I can do anything I want." And maybe it wasn't true but sometimes it felt true. It was a skill really.
"You won." She added suddenly, a note of pride audible, and she was giving his hands a brief squeeze. "You always win. It's almost like cheating." Anything to make this moment normal, or maybe it was that Helen felt it was normal. She couldn't grasp the idea of Menelaus dying and leaving her. That was not the way things happened, it was Helen who left, he remained. He came. He would never leave her or let anyone hurt her. That was just how things were.
"Only I'm allowed to get Helen of Sparta dirty. To throw her in pools and to see her at her worst." His thumb swept over her cheekbone. "Only me because only I would still feel the greatest of affection and desire for her in those moments."
His free hand moved to cover where the half-done job of re-patching him up had happened and the man let his eyes close. It wasn't good and it wasn't going to get better. "Andrus could have won if I died first. But I did win. I won and I will demand my freedom for this. And then I will come and kill your husband and take you away. Like I always do for you."
He shouldn't have been saying any of this and yet he knew his wife needed something. Not talk of what to do while he was dead. Not talk of finding her brothers and staying safe. Just words of assurance like this.
Helen gave another wane smile, "Of course you would, I'm the greatest treasure you have." And while she believed that, she did also know - deep down - that Menelaus did love her. "But he didn't, you won, and you will get your freedom." The sinking feeling from her stomach began creeping upwards, aching as it curled around her lungs, pressed against her heart and strangled her throat.
"You can't die. You won't. You're going to get better. The doctor patched you up, and yes, you will come and kill another husband of mine. Like always." Helen parroted the words back, but the fact that he was going to die didn't sink it.
It wouldn't, even as she leaned over him and something inside betrayed her. Beautiful, beautiful Helen, who she tears so rarely she might as well have forgotten how- she was crying for him.
Knowing the tears were for him from a woman that did not dare show weakness in such a way, he loved and hated it. An unsteady hand swiped at the tears that he could catch but it was an effort in vain and he let his hand fall in a weariness that came too fast.
"You know, no matter what, I'll always find you. That I will be with you in the end because that is how our story goes." No smile came to his lips but his words grew more insistent, more urgent as he knew death was coming, that it was waiting for his battered body to finally give up, for him to be unable to fight any longer. "You were the most beautiful woman but you know you'll always be more than that to me. Tell me you know that, Helen. Tell me." Before the end comes. Before I have to leave you in this filthy place, wishing I could have torn out Khaos' throat for making you hurt this way. Gods above, he would make the so-called goddess pay for this.
If he came back.
"I know." Helen replied with a conviction she didn't truly feel, "I'll be waiting, right here, for you to get better." She didn't lean down to kiss him, but it meant more- the way her fingertips swiped against his lip in a tender gesture. There was an incredible tenderness to everything Helen did in this moment, something that would never see the light of day otherwise. Weakness had never been an option and Helen lived by a certain motto. It was more fun to just go with it and laugh.
She'd been the deaths of thousands, she's lost husbands before. Why should it be different? It shouldn't, but it was. Menelaus had never left her before. Never, not when faced with armies, walls, other men. He'd never left her. Helen's mind couldn't accept or understand otherwise.
Wouldn't.
With the words he wanted to hear had, a smile spread beneath her thumb, finally granted to her. And despite all the agony that wracked his body, he tried once more to cup the side of her face before he told her words that he should have been able to say all along.
His hand dropped only inches from her face and Menelaus of Sparta passed from the world without a single further word to his wife.
He left and, Helen's world came apart.
Unlike some, Helen didn't burst out into hysterical sobbing, nor did she give out a cry, she simply came apart, fainting on the spot. Her carefully rational world was torn apart, because she had never been in a world he had abandoned her. Men came and went, Helen watched carelessly, however...
This time it was different.
Menelaus had left her, and Helen couldn't handle that.