Hello readers! This is a revised version of You Don't Have a Choice. I recently got a review that can be termed as "bad". It was actually filled with some constructive critiscism so i read it and thought about what it said. Have i mentioned thatthis is my first one-shot? I'm used to writing chapter stories so its hard for me to pack a lot of details and emotions into one short story. Which is why i actually valued that review and so here's a revised version which is hope is a little bit better.

PS. Dear reviewer, i understand your constructive critiscism, but is there really any need to be mean about it? blunt? fine. straightforward? great. mean? thats not cool.

"Briseis, dear, what's wrong?" Helen pushed the door to her lover's cousin's room open. She was greeted by sobbing.

"You haven't stopped crying since you came back with Priam. What happened in the Greek camp?" Helen, the woman's whose face had launched a thousand ships, inquired of the weeping woman, a slight frown between her eyes.

When Helen had first come to Troy, the ex-priestess had been full of light and happiness. Now, she seemed to have nothing left in her soul but despair. Briseis hadn't been able to stem her tears for days now and Helen, though she had her selfish moments, could not help but feel compassion for her.

"Hush," the blonde woman soothed, "it'll be all right, whatever it is."

Briseis lifted her head from her pillow and turned ravaged eyes to Helen.

"It will never be all right, Helen. Never." she whispered fiercely her hand involuntarily clenching the animal furs that she laid upon.

"And why is that?"

Helen found herself being measured by eyes swollen by tears and sleepless nights, however, despite the obvious damage to those once beautiful orbs she still felt a shiver at the depth and strength of those dark eyes.

"You would know, I suppose, about forbidden love?" Briseis asked, sitting up and wiping her tears. Her voice was raspy from lack of use and from the deep throated sobs she couldn't seem to hold back for long.

"I'm here aren't I?" Helen answered dryly. She thought back on all the conflicting emotions she had felt when she had realized she had fallen in love with a Trojan prince.

Briseis studied Helen for a prolonged minute before turning her face away.

"I used to hate you, you know." she said quietly. "Very very much."

Helen shrugged with a pretend indifference. "Who didn't?"

"I wondered how you and Paris could live with yourselves after bringing war down on Troy." Briseis continued as if the other woman hadn't spoken. "I scoffed and said that it wasn't love that had led you here, but weakness. After all, how could love destroy a city? Wasn't love supposed to be all that was good and right in the world? I had thought what you have with Paris couldn't be love because it seemed so wrong. I thought it was weakness."

Helen laughed weakly, "if it had just been that, I could have resisted." She paused then continued quietly, "I love Paris. He brought happiness to me when I was living a life of despair. Briseis, you can't know what it's like to be the wife of a Spartan when you didn't grow up in that culture."

Briseis turned back and Helen saw an astounding mixture of pain, longing, and sadness in the other woman's eyes. She was abruptly catapulted back to the time when the first battle had been over and she had stood inside the palace walls and listened to the keening of the widowed women. Their cries had held the same combination of emotion that were in Briseis' eyes and Helen found she could hardly bear to look in them.

"I know. I know you love him. I'm even glad for it." Briseis lifted a trembling hand as if to lay it on Helen's cheek, but at the last moment she snatched it away.

The room filled with a sad sort of silence that seemed too fragile to break. Finally Helen couldn't stand it any longer.

"What happened in the Greek camp, Briseis?" she asked quietly.

"I found.." the dark-haired woman swallowed convulsively, "I found what it was that brought you here."

"Love? Who?"

Another swallow. "Achilles."

And finally, Helen understood.

"Oh, my dear." She brought Briseis' face to her shoulder and allowed her to mourn there silently. "My poor dear."

Minutes passed while Helen felt her robe slowly soak in the weeping woman's tears.

"I didn't.." Briseis lifted her head and looked into Helen's kind blue eyes. "I didn't want.."

"I know."

Briseis wiped the tears from her cheeks with the sleeve of her robe.

"When I had been captured by those Greek soldiers, I had vowed to never give in. I had sworn to myself that the Greeks could break my body, but never my soul. Never my soul."

Helen listened quietly to the other woman's raspy words as they poured out.

"But then I was brought to his camp. And his man had come in with him saying I had been brought there for his entertainment and I was so afraid." Briseis' eyes took on a faraway look as she remembered. "But instead of pouncing on me and raping me, Achilles cut my bonds and told me not to be afraid." She laughed lightly. "I was still afraid, but by then I was angry enough to talk back, to argue with him. And still he treated me courteously. I told myself that it was all just a trick to make me complacent for later. We argued a bit more, then Achilles left to go to Agamemnon's tent for a victory celebration and shortly thereafter, Agamemnon's pigs came and dragged me away."

Helen gasped, "Surely they didn't force you to.. With Agamemnon.."

"No, at first I thought it was just a trick of Achilles. But when they forced me into Agamemnon's tent, I saw his face and realized he had no part in it. In fact he drew his sword for me and demanded Agamemnon return me to him."

"Did they fight?"

"No. I had grown weary of all the violence of men and told Achilles I would not permit him to fight over me. He acquiesced and I became Agamemnon's slave. I didn't have to.. Service him." Briseis said in answer to Helen's silent question. "He basically left me alone. A few weeks later Agamemnon suddenly gave order for me to be given to the men, and that was when real fear started to take root in me. But then.." she paused and a smile formed, "but then Achilles came for me. He gave me food and water in his tent that night, and tried to care for my cuts. I didn't, of course, let him touch me, so he let me do it by myself. It was entertaining frustrating him. We argued again but this time I came to the realization that Achilles wasn't a stupid brute of a Greek and it shook me."

Helen nodded, "You were becoming attracted to him."

Briseis nodded slowly then continued on with her story in a slightly dreamy voice. "That night as he slept I pressed a knife to his throat and he woke and told me to do it. To kill him." Her voice hitched. "I told myself to do it too because I knew if I let him live he would just kill more Trojans. I knew that and I told myself over and over to press the knife against his throat and just do one quick slice, but I couldn't and then we.. We.." Briseis stopped and blushed.

Helen smiled slyly. "Go on."

Briseis averted her head and blushed again. "The next days I existed in dream state and Achilles and I talked forever. I learned things about this invulnerable man I could never have guessed and I fell.." she swallowed, "oh, I fell so hard in love with him and I thought he with me. He even talked of leaving the war and taking me home with him and I would have gone. Helen," Briseis looked at her desperately, "I would have left with him."

"Yes," Helen murmured softly, "I see you would have."

"But then, Hector.. Achilles and Hector.." Briseis could no longer continue and instead shook her head as tears formed in her tired eyes.

"And then.. Oh.. I see.."

"How can I love him still, Helen?" Briseis asked urgently. "Hector was like a brother to me and Achilles killed him, yet I still can not.. Can not.. I love him still and it's wrong! It's so wrong!" She pounded an angry fist into her pillow. "I'm a traitor in my heart!"

"Oh Briseis you can not help what your heart feels."

"I want it to feel nothing. I want my heart to be empty."

"If you could turn love on and off like that then," Helen shrugged, "it wouldn't be love."

"That's the point! I don't want it to be love! I don't want to ever see him again!"

"Is that the truth? Is that the gods honest truth?"

Briseis' lips quivered. "No. I don't want to ever see him again but I yearn for him. My heart breaks for love of him."

"Then love him and stop tearing your heart up over it."

"I can't." whispered Briseis.

"Why?"

"Because it is wrong."

"Why is it wrong? Love is love."

"Helen, do you know what my people would do to me if they knew what happened when I was in Achilles camp?" Briseis demanded, angry that Helen didn't seem to comprehend that love did not conquer all.

"Well they would.." Helen paused, "I suppose they would.."

"They would stone me! The all think right now that I had been raped by Achilles, but if they ever find out I was his willing partner they would kill me without a moment of pity."

"Why? Why would they be so hateful?"

"Because they would believe I was a traitor." Briseis' eyes turned inward and she looked at herself without any sympathy. "And they would be right."

"You are NOT a traitor!" Helen exclaimed, wondering why this sad woman seemed to insist on martyring herself.

"I am, and do you know why?" Briseis waited until Helen shook her head, "Because if Achilles were to come now, somehow get into Troy, scale the palace walls, and get into my room, all he would have to do is touch me and I would follow him anywhere. I would give him anything he demanded of me. I would give him Troy were it in my power to do so and were he to ask for it."

Helen shook her head dumbly, amazed at the passionate woman's fervency.

"Yes. That is what I would do for Achilles." Briseis rose from the bed and paced to the window. "If that is what love is, the power to make a woman willing to destroy her own country, then I do not want it. I will not have it."

Helen tried to control her reeling wits. "I think, Briseis, that you do not have a choice."

"I don't."

"Then what are you going to do?"

Briseis laid her hot forhead against the cool stone around the window. "I wish you had never come to Troy, Helen. For then I would never have met Achilles and everything would be so much easier."

"I'm sorry."

Briseis closed her swollen eyes, "Don't apologize, it's too late for that now.

Helen opened her mouth then closed it. What could she say to this woman whose heart not only seemed broken, but her very spirit?

"I wonder…" Briseis turned and stared."I wonder what Hector would tell me to do right now." She paced back to the bed and perched on its edge. "He always was annoyingly wise."

"He would tell you to accept your love for Achilles." said Helen decisively.

"Are you mad?"

"Hector would tell you that"

"Well, I will never accept this traitorous love."

"You must." Helen looked patiently into the other woman's heartbroken eyes. "Your love for Achilles will remain with you forever, it has already withstood the test of Hectors death. Obviously, your love might fade with the passing of time, but it will still always be there. Achilles has your heart and you can not live without it."

"I can live without Achilles."

"If what happened between you and him had just been lust, you're eyes wouldn't look like you rubbed sand in them and then punched them a few times. You look like a person who has been deserted by love and dying because of its betrayal."

"I will not forget about what Achilles did to Hector and what he will do to Troy."

Helen stood from the bed and brushed the creases from her robe. "Troy will always be here, if not standing behind its mighty walls, then existing in tales and legends. As for Hector, he always knew that the fates were calling for his death by the hands of Achilles, it was only confirmed when he accidentally killed Achilles' young cousin."

"Patroclus was a fool."

"Yes, but he was a young fool and Hector knew that." Helen began to walk away. "Hector and Achilles might have been enemies but they respected each other. I think that Hector would have wanted you with someone who he could have respected."

"Oh Helen, how can it be that simple?" asked Briseis softly from where she sat on the bed.

Helen turned in the doorway. "Love is a very powerful force, Briseis, but part of what it is, is made by us. Treasure your love for Achilles and accept that you will always love him, for even the gods envy us because we can feel such a powerful emotion and be so faithful."

Briseis stared after Helen and for a few seconds and thought on her words. Then she threw herself down on her bed and wept the heartrending sobs that had come as soon as she had willingly left Achilles' arms.