Flashback Part 2. Bit of a trigger warning though minimal, non-graphic, and not carried out.
Bigby did not know first-hand what had happened after he left them, but the story he was able to collect from creatures of the woodlands went like this:
Ivan and Helen did not ride more than a mile into the woods before three men surrounded them, penning them in and drawing them to halt.
Helen managed to shoot one of them in the arm before she was knocked from the Horse with the Golden Mane. Her ears rung, dimming the sounds of Ivan's struggle and failure to stay on the horse. She gasped for breath as her lungs lurched back into functioning.
This was short lived as a kick to her ribs by the man she had shot drove the air back out.
"Leave her alone!" Ivan shouted at them. He was being held by one and the other was fishing around in his saddle bags, pulling out gauze and wrapping the arm of the third. "She has nothing to do with this!"
"Who are these assholes?" Helen panted, before receiving a stunning backhand for her phrasing.
"They're my brothers," Ivan had moaned.
Her mind spun. This would explain the "competition" elements of his story. She had assumed he was competing with others in the kingdom, but no... he was competing within his family, a far more dangerous game.
"And they have no intention to losing a kingdom to a fool," the youngest, Andrey, growled. He pulled a hatchet from his saddle bags and drove it into Ivan's chest.
Helen screamed until they gagged her, watching two of them hack Ivan to pieces while another held her in a vice like grip. She kept hoping the Grey Wolf would hear her and would return. But he did not. No one came to save her.
"And her?" the second oldest and the one holding her, Sergey, asked. "I want her, if I'm not to have the kingdom or the horse."
"Or the horse?!" she had shrieked at him through the gag.
"Take the horse," the oldest, Nikita, hissed at him. He stopped beside Helen, drenched in blood, and ran a hand through her long hair. "I want her." He looked her in the eyes, his face inches from hers. "I'm going to take the gag away. If you scream, I will cut off your lips."
He took away the gag and she did not scream.
"You will marry me. If you do not, your fate will be the same as his."
"I would kill myself before I married you," she spat at him.
He considered this. "I believe you." Nikita rose and pulled a set of handcuffs from his saddle bags. Short, thin spikes lined the insides of the handcuffs and Helen began to struggle to get free from Sergey. "So these will help. They're spelled. You should be a far more compliant fiancee with these."
The handcuffs drove into her wrist bones and veins, pouring their hateful magic through her. Her mind clouded and everything went very dark; she remembered nothing clearly until the wedding.
A week passed and Bigby began to worry as he had heard nothing of Ivan or, more importantly, Helen.
As he headed toward the distant castle, he began to ask creatures if they knew what had happened to the princess and Ivan. After a day of traveling, he came across a badger who led him to Ivan's body. Other animals skittered out of their homes nearby and filled in the details. Bigby felt he was going to throw up. He had failed her completely and now she was in serious danger.
Catching the nest of a crow in his mouth, he managed to convince her to bring him the water of death to save her babies. This revived Ivan and Bigby rushed away with him, hoping desperately that he would be on time. As he gained on the castle, he could hear the sound of the wedding beginning.
Though she did not know it, Helen felt the handcuffs pulled from her wrists as Bigby rode toward her with Ivan on his back. Her mind slowly began to clear and she realized her wrists were a mangled mess of shredded skin. As she was dressed for the wedding, they began to ache. As she was escorted with rather a lot of force to the hall the wedding was to be held in, they burned like fire. And as she was faced with Nikita, her wrists throbbed to the grip of his hands on hers.
When it came time for her to speak, she hissed she would not marry him and he twisted her wrists in his hands. She nearly collapsed at the pain of it and her consent was suddenly found unnecessary to the service. They were announced married, though she fought to pull away from him and kicked at him viciously.
What followed was worse: A blow to her stomach doubled her over and Nikita bent her over a table in the hall, fighting with her for access between her legs. Her wrists were breaking as she fought him, giving her almost no strength to resist with her hands or arms, when a thundering wind blew the doors from their hinges.
Bigby was not known in the Rus fables the way he was further west. The sight of the Big Bad Wolf sent the wedding guests scattering. It also distracted Nikita long enough for Helen to draw his sword from his belt and run him through with it. The force this put on her wounds sent her spiraling into darkness with the floor rising up to meet her face.
She woke to the feeling of something nuzzling her face. Bigby watched as her blue eyes opened so very close to his. He also watched them slide away, refusing to hold his gaze. He helped her stand and watched her take in the slaughter around her. Bigby had demolished the brothers and any stupid enough to fight him. His own face was marked with wounds from their swords and arrows stuck from his back.
Ivan ran back in, returned from pursuing anyone who might dare to stay in the castle, panting with his hands on his knees. "Oh Helen!" he exclaimed. "You're okay! Now we can -"
"WE?!" she half screamed at him. "We have nothing to do with one another! If you ever speak to me again, I swear I will kill you!"
Bigby watched her flee the room as Ivan gaped. "I would take her at her word. The kingdom is yours. Be grateful." Then he followed Helen into the evening.
"And what do you want?" Helen had spat at him, pausing in her flight to throw daggers with her eyes.
"I'm so sorry..."
"Your sorry will not heal my wounds! Your sorry will not undo what I have seen and felt! Your sorry will not restore my mind!" She turned away and continued running down the steps of the palace.
Bigby hung his head. It was all true. "What if I could send you somewhere safe?" he offered. He heard her slow and then stop, considering. At last she whirled back to him.
"I don't trust you, Wolf!" she screamed at him. "You were not there! Not only did you fail to protect me, you barely intervened in time to keep everything from being taken away from me!"
If Bigby was honest, he was mildly awed that this little edible creature was so robustly dressing a wolf the size of a house down like this. But this thought was pushed aside for the truth of her words.
He had promised and he had failed her. He had nearly been too late and in many ways he had been too late from the moment he turned his back on her. She had been at the very least a friend and now...
Slowly he approached her, dripping a slow trail of blood. "I could send you out of this land. There would be no more Ivans. No more magic and no more Adversary. Your wounds would heal."
"Would you be with me?" she whispered without looking at him.
"No. I must stay here. But I will take you there myself, every step."
He approached her cautiously and gently lapped at her wrists. "I would do anything..." he murmured.
When Helen turned and looked into his face, she saw the truth and emotion in what he was saying and what he was trying to show.
"Very well. But first we should tend our injuries."
She washed out his wounds, he wrapped her wrists, and they left. Their trip was long since it involved crossing so much of the Fable territories. And as before, they became a symbiotic pair.
When at last they reached the gate, Bigby was loathe to see her go. But he could not ask her to stay with him, not after he had already failed her once.
"This world isn't like ours," he gestured at the gate with a paw. "It's mundane, but safe."
Helen nodded, holding his gaze with the steady fearlessness he had always loved in her.
"Will I see you again?" she asked.
"Maybe, when I can do no more here," he said.
She leaned forward, planting a sincere kiss on the end of his nose. "I hope I do."
Then she was through the gate, and was gone.