#but on the other hand I'm simply incensed that Fury didn't go back for him

[martianbugsbunny]

"What would you do if I was dying? Hold me and let me die in your arms or just let me lay there and bleed?"

[littlesparklight]

Opening snippet from a post-war, pre-reaching Sparta Helen/Menelaos/Paris fic I'm not writing yet but planning to write. (Tt follows the eight years of wandering, with Helen/Menelaos reconciliation and reconnection developing into OT3.) The scene came to me today so I had to get it out, other fics will be written before this one, haha. Paris survives his duel with Philoctetes, barely... *

"There you are!" Menelaos bellowed as he slammed the door to the bedchamber open - not the bedchamber he'd expected to open, not the one he'd first stormed through the second they'd reached the palace's gate, following the implication of Helenos' words.

He couldn't put a finger on why, but that Helen was still sitting in Alexander's rooms incensed him far more than the prospect of having to find her in yet another man's bedroom.

"Menelaos," Helen said quietly, smoke from the city drifting near the ceiling, head bent and hands around the handle of a dagger she had resting against Alexander's throat. White-knuckled and trembling, that was obvious even from a distance, but the throat so close to the blade was unmarred. "I was going to give him a gentle death, but I find I can't."

Menelaos stopped in the middle of the room, looking from wife to wife-stealer. Thought Alexander looked rather dead already, pale and sweaty, but he was still - barely - breathing. Helenos had clearly simply mistaken on how soon Alexander was going to die from the poisoned arrow he'd taken, but in that case there was something ghoulish in Alexander's brothers having fought over his stolen wife before he was already dead.

Shaking that thought away, Menelaos fixed his stare on Helen, his hand aching around his sword.

"And why can't you?"

Not out of a wish for a punishment, that much was clear, for Helen's voice had been soft with sentiment, and her large, shining eyes were dark with many emotions, but not anger. Fury slid cold through his limbs, carried on a snake bite pain in his heart, at the realization that Helen still loved Alexander.

"He has many faults, but he doesn't deserve to die in more pain or humiliation than has already been visited on him," Helen said firmly, looking up now even as she reached out - to brush a couple limp curls for Alexander's cheek. Menelaos' jaw hurt from how hard he was grinding his teeth, but a glance down at the sleeping, or unconscious, man didn't deepen his anger. Alexander looked small and fragile, pale where he'd been tanned just a week ago. Angry at himself now, for how weak his heart was, Menelaos snapped his gaze back up to Helen, drawing a too-hot breath. She got there before him. "If you promise me you will do it kindly, right here and now, I won't stop you."

Perhaps that hurt just as much as Helen leaving originally had, as finding Helen sitting here beside Alexander's sickbed, tending the pale flame of his struggling life.

"Fine," he ground out, stomping across the room and snatching the dagger from her lax grip. Turned around - and maybe that was his downfall, maybe that was why Helen hadn't been able to do anything either, but to slit his throat gently, to allow Alexander's life to slip out on a quiet, bleeding breath and not just stab his in the throat or chest, one had to see what one was doing.

If it was only the throat, it wouldn't have been an issue. A throat was a throat, one much like the other, even graceful as Alexander's was. But Menelaos was staring at his throat, the pointed chin, above that a slack mouth that looked wrong, caught in tension sleep ought not to have, robbed of an ease of movement and smiles Menelaos remembered. Alexander laughing in the sunlight during a hunt in Sparta. Quiet, smothered huffs as they hiked up Mount Ida, little curls dark with sweat sticking to his forehead, but never complaining out loud. The angled, low-lidded looks thrown his way while long-fingered hands caressed strings, both in Troy and Sparta, before everything.

And that was the problem, wasn't it?

It shouldn't be one, not with what Alexander had done to him, but it was. It was, and Menelaos found his hands trembling with tension as he stood there, the idea of killing this pale-faced, fragile-looking version of Alexander while he couldn't even theoretically defend himself sitting ill on his heart. It was his right, though. It was. Shadows danced with the bare few oil lamps lit, but they didn't match the steady little flames.

"Well?" Helen snapped, her hands tightly folded in her lap, not having moved from her seat other than shift away enough to give Menelaos a chance to squeeze in next to the head of the bed to reach. "Are you going to do this, or not?"

"Be quiet!" How was he supposed to think, with Helen's liquid honey voice in his ears, accusing, knowing? The tunnelling vision the threatening darkness closing in despite the oil lamp just by the table on Helen's other side had caught him in wavered with her words. Why was he even hesitating, dawdling here? He could just take Helen and go, even if he couldn't kill Alexander. The room grew darker again, easier to do what he was supposed to, for now it was harder to see Alexander's face. In fact, he should - but someone else would find him, and if they didn't kill him themselves they might just take him along and present him to Menelaos in front of all the commanders, because surely he should want this one, particular life to spill by his own hands.

He should want this.

"You can't, can you?" Helen asked, accusation weighed down under that knowing, needling him. "You, who when faced with the man who had wronged you so, didn't reach for his sword, within such easy reach, when you lost your own, and didn't reach for a nearby spear either. You dragged him away instead, choking but not killing by will, and you're going to sit here and accuse me o---"

"Curse you!" Menelaos shouted, whirling around and tossing the dagger away. The shadows retreated, settled back where they should be while the knife bounced off a wall and only after that fell to the floor, spinning and skidding over the painted plaster to come to a gentle stop up against the feet of Helen's chair. He had his sword in his hand now, but he could use that as little as he could the dagger, and was facing his wife now anyway. "Curse both of you!"

His sword up between them, Helen stared at the bronze edge close to threaten her body, gleaming faintly in the light from a nearby oil lamp. She looked up, eyes huge and infinite, lips thin and bared her throat.

"Well?" A repeat of her earlier demand, but this time it was soft. Weighted with emotion, and surely she had more words than this - Helen always had more words, she wouldn't just sit here quietly while faced with a sword intended for her neck. But she was, hands still folded in her lap, nails digging into her skin. She didn't need to say anything, anyway.

"Helen---" Menelaos' voice cracked partway through and he reached out - not with his sword, but with his other hand. They both flinched when his fingertips brushed her cheek, but whereas the hot, wet weight in Menelaos' chest spilled up and over, flooding him and burning his eyes, sight turning blurry, Helen's gaze was steady.

Her lips trembled briefly as she, still staring, tilted her head just slightly into the cradle of Menelaos' hand.

"We're leaving," he proclaimed, sheathing his sword and feeling lighter than the heavy tears he had to scrub away should account for.

"We're not leaving him here," Helen countered, her voice firm but her eyes begging-wide.

Menelaos should be angry, he felt, but he'd already had the same thought. The risk of leaving Alexander behind and then be presented with his still-alive but unconscious body and be expected to kill him like that - be expected to want it, when Alexander currently barely looked capable of breathing - dragged the unsettled weight on his heart down into his stomach, unwieldy and nearly nauseous. If he could be assured no one would find him, maybe. Leaving him to die by fire wasn't the kindness Helen had demanded from him, but Alexander would surely die from the smoke alone before the fire came for his flesh. The thought brought no pleasure, despite that it should.

"Why - how - is he even alive?" Menelaos asked, grunting, as he dragged a hand down his face and turned back to face the bed. Not acknowledging what Helen had said, but his answer was plain in his attempt of wrapping Alexander up enough he might pass unnoticed through the confusion of the city. He just needed to get both of them to the camp - he would have gone directly there with Helen anyway, would be expected to. This might yet work. "From the way his brother talked, I expected to find you with another brother of his, not sitting by his bedside. Is he even alive?"

Menelaos glanced between Helen and the bed. Alexander didn't really seemed to be, despite his shallow breathing and thundering, too-thready heartbeat when Menelaos lightly touched his throat, skin hot and dry. He didn't stir at all when moved.

"He is," Helen insisted with the fervent intensity of belief. Menelaos almost felt bad for her, but if Alexander never woke again, or died out at sea, then this would've been a small price to pay. "A nymph came a couple days ago, and though she didn't stay, she gave me a mix of herbs. Said they wouldn't have been enough if he wasn't born of the blood he was. Apparently there's enough naiad nymphs and river gods in the bloodline of the Trojan family to fight against Hydra poison."

Helen chuckled, a soft, dry sound, and shook her head. "He woke up the other day, if only briefly. He eats, what little can be encouraged into him, even when he can't fully wake. He's alive. No thanks to Deiphobos. If I hadn't been awake when he slipped inside here, Paris really would be dead. Is he dead?"

Menelaos might have startled from the crack of Helen's voice, vicious in the smoky air, but for as long as it'd been since he heard it, it wasn't too surprising. He'd heard stories of Helen's anger when she'd been kidnapped by Theseus.

"He is," Menelaos said, and the slight shudder through Helen, as well as her drooping shoulders, was not relief just out of anger at Deiphobus attempting to, if not kill, then speed up his own brother's death to marry her. Whatever Alexander had been, the reasons she'd followed him, Dephobus wasn't something she'd wanted.

Deiphobus shouldn't have happened at all, Alexander dead or not - the weight of judgement on Troy would be a little lighter, from the gods at least, if they should've given his wife back, then. But they hadn't. Shaking his head, Menelaos picked a thoroughly swaddled Alexander up in his arms, and even with the extra weight of blankets he definitely weighed too little. He turned around to face his wife, and they stood there for a few, far too long moments, staring at each other. He was burdened enough - would she choose to run, now, despite this? Despite everything? Maybe because of it?

Helen stepped close, her hand latching onto his elbow and her nails now digging into his skin instead of hers. It was as much a relief as it only made the weight in his gut lurch sideways with an uncomfortable awareness of beginning, and it didn't even have to do with the softly brown curls tickling his mouth. Alexander's presence - whether he truly survived this or not - wouldn't make this easier, no, but his absence wouldn't heal fifteen years gone, either.

He had what he wanted, but now, as he got himself walking and Helen followed, Menelaos had no idea what to do, going from here.