Hi! Thanks again to all those who wrote me my lovely reviews! Please keep writing them, they make my day! J
Notes: This chapter will be presented in two different parts that will come up as two separate chapters on the menu thing. Part two should be in some time in the next two days, but it doesn't make sense with this part, so that's why I separated them. So sorry if anyone is upset with the shortness of the chapter, I promise part two is on its way!
(P.S. to Poppy2 ((third note in a row!)) Helen will be speaking to Charis in this chapter, and its similar to what you had in mind. READ ON!)
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The morning after Hector and I had spoken in the stables, I found myself waking early again, this time after having almost no sleep the night before. Every time I managed to drift to sleep, I kept having nightmares, haunted by ghostly visions of Briseis, Paris and Helen. I could never remember what occurred, exactly, in these dreams, but the pained faces lingered in my mind long after I was startled awake by them. Dressing quickly, I made my way to the wall again, still thinking of the strange dreams that had filled my mind all night.
I had forgotten that I had been walking until I reached the wall. In fact, my thoughts had occupied me so well I was not watching where I was going at all, and managed to run headfirst into something. Someone, to be precise.
"I'm sorry." I mumbled, dusting myself off. "I know my way to the wall so well, I don't even have to look anymore, and usually no one's up here, anyway, at least not this early." I reached down to help the person up, and nearly dropped her hand when I realized who it was.
"Oh, no, I'm the one who should be sorry." Helen said, smiling slightly. "I see you come up here all the time, Paris told me it's where you like to go to think. So I know I'm intruding, but everyone says the view is so spectacular from here, I just had to see it myself."
"Uh, yes." I said dumbly. It was impossibly hard to keep my composure, considering that the woman standing before me was the same one who had filled me with rage and awful dreams that had kept me up for the majority of the night. And there's no one up here to hear you scream at her. I pointed out to myself, biting my lip. You have to leave now before you can't control yourself anymore. Even if no one is up here to hear you scream, she'll tell Paris and that will make him even angrier. Besides, Hector will find out. He always does.
I knew I couldn't stay there any longer, so I made to leave. "Um, well," I said. "I guess I'll be going now."
"No, wait." She said, grabbing my arm. My lip was screaming with pain under the extreme pressure it was enduring from my teeth. "I need to talk to you."
"About what?" I said, slightly surprised, blood dripping down my wounded lip. I highly doubted I wanted to hear anything she had to say, but I was shocked she even had anything to say.
"I love him." She whispered, staring at me with a strange look in her eyes. "I love him more than anything in the world. I'm sorry that this war happened, but I can't take it back, no matter how much I wish I could, and believe me, I do. But, I love him and I would never do anything to hurt him, not as long as I lived."
I stared back at her, dumbfounded. She released my arm. "I just thought you needed to hear that." She said, turning to leave. I watched her go down the steps, my head starting to hurt again.
Realization hit me hard as I watched her go, remembering the look in her eyes.
By the Gods, she loves him. I thought, mystified. It had never occurred to me that she could have thoughts and feelings, that she had an opinion and a voice as well. To me, she was simply the enemy, the wrong doer, the person that could be blamed. Was it like this with the Greeks, too? Did some Greek on our shore think of Hector as the monster and Achilles as the savior?
It would be easier, I reasoned, If there were only one side to an argument.
And I sighed, because now I no longer understood where the blame lay with this war, if Helen could not be the cause and the Greeks were people, too.