Author's Note: I really need to stop being so self-conscious about my work. Whenever I'm nervous you won't like something, I'm completely off the mark about what you won't like. The past couple of chapters have been well received - 100% favorable reviews (though some of you might just not be expressing your displeasure).
Well, I'm awfully proud of myself. I fit an entire novella's worth of expository backstory into one chapter. When I initially started this book, it was with the scene where Andromache, Hector, and Cygnus figure out that Helena is pregnant. (Then I decided it would be more interesting to discover things a bit at a time as Zoro does;it is called Zoro's Odyssey after all). I'm glad I figured out a way to work it in via flashback, though.
Also: publishing a day early because I have no self control. ^_^'
***********TRIGGER WARNING*********** - if you have ever lost an infant, this might be rough. If you don't want to risk reading it, PM me and I can send the chapter to you without said triggers, or give you a summary of what happens in this chapter so you don't have to read it. I describe (not graphically) the dying baby. (Obviously some symbolism involved as well, what with Hades coming to take the Royals and such).
Ch. 15 – Helena's Tale
"I got my reign off to a glorious start," Helena said with a weak laugh. "I mean, you and your crew were there at first to see it. – dancing at my own coronation, marrying a pirate, offending all the neighbors. I was ready to take on the world, and you all were my inspiration."
As she spoke, Helena almost smiled, remembering how she had been then. – How she'd tied Zoro's bandana around her ponytail every morning to remind her of his determination in the face of uncertain odds.
"Do you remember how the Navy broke their promise to my father, and attacked your ship as you sailed out?" She went on. "Bags tried to meet with me after that. You know who I mean, right? –The porker of a World Government liaison. He's been working off and on with Ilium for almost thirty years now, provided we'll let him."
"Bags wants to see you," Cygnus had warned her one morning, not long after the Straw Hats had left.
"Wait, doesn't he usually meet with you?" Helena asked.
"You're the Queen now, my dear. I gladly give this responsibility over to you!" Cygnus crowed. "Now, I warn you, he will try to waste your time with a board game. It's the only way he'll talk. So lose on purpose, or you'll be playing for hours. – anyway, I've begun to suspect he uses loaded dice."
"Board games?" Helena asked incredulously. "How old is this man again?"
"He's all set up in your study," Cygnus went on, grinning delightedly at her expense.
"My study?"
"Well, yes. I don't need it anymore, do I?" Cygnus told her, practically skipping in delight. "Ah, retirement sure is nice. I think I'll go for a stroll in the gardens."
Of course, he'd done nothing of the sort, as Helena discovered soon after the fact. Curious to know how her first meeting alone with the World Government Liaison would go, he'd waited outside her door.
The meeting hadn't lasted long.
"Ah, Your Majesty," Bags said, bowing to her as she entered. "As you can see, I'm ready to play, like it's my job."
He indicated the colorful Monopoly board on her desk.
Helena stared at him icily for a moment. Never once doubting herself, she strode over to the game and knocked it aside, letting the pieces fall to the ground with a satisfying crash.
"It may be your job to play games, but it certainly isn't mine," Helena snapped, holding her head up proudly. "Care to explain why your people attacked my husband as he left port?"
"From what I understand, the pirates started it," Bags insisted, though he looked ruffled. "They tried to sail head on into our frigate, and…"
Helena drew a sword and pointed it at Bags' nose.
"Ever heard the phrase, Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned?" she asked, smiling sweetly.
Bags' beady eyes grew about as wide as they could go.
"Well, it's wrong," Helena went on, and the smile disappeared. "It should be, Hell hath no fury like a woman denied her honeymoon by a stupid fat man who broke his promise. – The other one's pithier and easier to remember though."
"Your Majesty, please, hear me out…"
"Leave," she told him, lowering her blade. "Our trade agreements with the World Government are now formally at an end. You and your officials are not welcome in my ports, and you have twelve hours to evacuate yourselves from my kingdom before I have you forcibly removed. Good day, sir…"
"This was all just a big misunderstanding!" Bags pleaded.
"Misunderstanding? Was my mother's murder a misunderstanding?" Helena murmured dangerously. "Was the recent attack on my people? Don't try to deny it. I know you used Troy as both weapon and scape goat. Your people did something to him; when he came back he wasn't the man I knew, and I will get to the bottom of it someday, believe you me. Perhaps if you're forthcoming with me about it, I'll consider talking to you again over tea in a few decades or so."
"Your Majesty, please reconsider!"
Helena rewarded his pathetic plea by slicing one of the tips off of his famous mustache.
"Get. Out."
Now that's the Helena I remember, Zoro thought to himself, his spirits lifting slightly at her story. "How did your father take it?"
"Not well," Helena confessed. "He immediately tried to dissuade me, saying I'd collapse our economy if I wasn't careful. I told him that if so much of our economy relies on the one trade partner, we haven't got much of an economy to begin with, but…well, he knew what he was talking about."
"I thought your Dad refused trade with the World Government for ten years after your mother died." Zoro wasn't sure he remembered that detail correctly, but Helena confirmed it:
"Yes, all the more reason he knew what he was warning me about. It can be done, but not without a good deal of difficulty," Helena explained, "Still, the people were on my side. It wasn't hard to convince them that Troy, an ex-marine, had been sent by the World Government to destroy us. They were hurting as much as I was. It didn't matter to Papa, though. –He was after me about it daily; and he wasn't above claiming I was emotionally unstable because I was pregnant."
A weighty silence passed between them. Zoro finally broke it, but hesitantly:
"When did you find out?" he asked softly.
"A little more than a month after you left," Helena murmured. "The others actually saw it first…"
"Have you guys noticed anything weird about Helena lately?"
Lieutenant Andromache addressed the question to General Hector and King Cygnus over lunch in the Queen's study. –a delicious lunch at that. Their cook at present far superseded his predecessor, though that wasn't saying much.
"Strange?" Hector asked, biting into a decidedly non-cheesey pastry with a look of satisfaction on his face. The entire pastry disappeared into his large, square jaw in a matter of two bites. "Strange how?"
"Well, during our pre-dawn training she couldn't stop crying," Andromache went on. "Has something happened that I don't know about?"
"My daughter's husband abandoned her a little over a month ago," King Cygnus pointed out with little delicacy, stabbing an olive with a fork. "Naturally she's still upset."
"Abandon isn't the word I'd use. He was sort of kidnapped if memory serves," Andromache replied, running her fingers through the half inch of pink fuzz on her head. Her pointed, pixyish face darkened into a scowl. "And anyway, I don't think that's it. Helena's never been one to cry her eyes out over a man. –in fact, I was thinking she'd handled Zoro's departure rather well, all told. Until today, that is."
"Perhaps—" Hector started, but stopped short when the door to Cygnus' office creaked open, and the person they were gossiping about walked into the room. "Good afternoon, your Majesty," he said a little too cheerfully.
Andromache kicked him under the table for being so blatant, but the normally astute Queen Helena didn't seem to notice anything. She seated herself with her usual sangfroid, her long, elegant figure held with precision against the leather-backed chair.
"Sorry I'm late," she told them. If she were as depressed as Andromache had said, she hid it well. "What did I miss?"
"We were just discussing…" Cygnus started, but stopped short. A servant had just brought Helena a dish. As he lifted the silver tray covering the food, Helena clapped a hand over her mouth and nose.
"Are you ill?" Cygnus asked.
"What is that smell?" Helena demanded. "I thought we hired a good cook this time."
The three exchanged glances. King Cygnus sniffed through his large, beaked nose. "I don't smell anything," he said.
"Really, did he put a whole bulb of garlic in here?" Helena asked, indicating the pasta on the plate before her.
"I barely noticed the garlic," Andromache replied, inspecting the pasta on her own plate. "It's just a hint if anything."
"Nevermind, I'm not all that hungry," Helena said to the servant, closing the dish and waving at him to take it. Despite her words, she pulled the bowl of olives from the center of the table and started popping them into her mouth two and three at a time. "You were saying, Father?"
Cygnus eyed her with one fluffy silver brow raised, stroking his well-trimmed beard. "Helena…"
"What?" she asked through a mouthful of green olive.
"You hate olives."
Helena paused, looked down at the bowl, looked up at her father, shrugged, and popped another olive into her mouth almost defiantly.
Cygnus, Hector, and Andromache all exchanged wide-eyed glances.
"No…" Cygnus started.
"It couldn't be," Hector gasped.
"Just like Leda…" Andromache put in.
"What?" Helena asked innocently, pausing in her olive-feast to return their shocked expressions with a bemused look of her own. Before she knew it, her tall, lanky father had reached a flexible limb around her desk and grabbed her by the ear with his toes.
"HONK!"
"OW! PAPA!" she shrieked, trying in vain to escape him. "WHAT DID I DO?!"
"You promised me you weren't going to consummate!" he spat, brow furrowed in anger. "What in Hades were you thinking, you foolish…!"
"I took precautions!" Helena asserted, still unable to wrest her ear from her father's infamous toe-pinch. "What do you take me for!?"
"Precautions! Ha!" Cygnus pulled her closer so she could readily see the livid expression on his face. "What good are mortal measures when the gods are obsessed with propagating our bloodline?!"
He finally released her, and Helena stared at him in shock. "You can't possibly think that I'm…that I'm…-but we were only together for one night! I can't possibly be…"
"Pregnant," Helena chuckled softly. "And after all you were afraid something like this would happen."
"Yeah," Zoro said, then gave a start, "Wait, you knew?"
"I figured it out when I thought about it later," Helena confessed. "I mean, you never waited for permission to kiss me when you wanted to, you know. But on our wedding night you were just so hesitant, and some of the things you said–"
Zoro snorted. Did she have any idea just how nerve-wracking it had been for him the first couple of times they'd kissed? Or how vulnerable he'd felt at first when they'd made love?
"You're really sweet when you want to be, you know that?" Helena informed him. He snorted again in derision, though he secretly kind of liked it when she called him sweet. – just as long as Curly Brows or any of the other guys never heard her say it.
Her hand brushed his; a hesitant olive branch, it seemed. He caught her fingers in his before she could beat a nervous retreat.
Unseen by the other, each cracked a smile at the small victory.
"So, we tried to keep the pregnancy a secret as long as we could," Helena went on. "After what happened to my mother, we decided it was best if our enemies didn't know about it. Togas suddenly became very fashionable…" She snorted. "It didn't help much, though. Somehow the World Government found out…"
"Helena, you're sure this is Zoro's child?" Cygnus leaned over and whispered.
"Papa!" Helena barely stifled the exclamation from where she sat on her throne, swathed in artistic layers of fabric to hide her ever growing belly.
"I'm just saying, you look a lot bigger than you should," he pointed out from where he sat beside her on a smaller throne. "You and Troy were awfully close, and…"
"Need I remind you that in the month prior to Zoro's arrival we were all under siege in the palace," she whispered fiercely, "It's not like Troy and I could have had time for anything of the sort. Oh, and let's not forget that he was the one laying the siege to begin with!"
"Your loveliness!" Paris announced, entering the room with his usual aplomb.
"What about Paris?" Cygnus whispered, eyeing the man. "He's always liked you…"
"PAPA!" Helena snapped, then glanced sheepishly at Paris, who stared at them in confusion. "Yes, what is it Captain?"
"Monte Bags is back, I'm afraid," Paris said, bowing.
"Seriously?" Helena sighed. "That man is ridiculously persistent. Tell the guards to throw him out. Again."
"I don't know if that's such a good idea this time," Paris informed her. "He mentioned something about war. Perhaps you should hear him out."
"War?" Helena paused for a moment, a long moment, thinking. Her brain had felt more and more foggy as of late, but she did her best to try to hide it. She didn't need to give her father another reason to criticize her. "Send him in."
"Paris is a handsome fellow," Cygnus insisted as the Security Head strutted out of the room, "I wouldn't blame you if…"
"Will you stop it?" Helena growled. "You know you raised me better than that. –Zoro is the father, alright? We should just be happy the baby is growing at a healthy rate."
Cygnus grinned at her, pleased that he'd managed to rile her with his teasing. She should have realized he was just trying to push her buttons. If he really thought she'd taken on a lover, he'd have blown a gasket. He could at least have had the decency not to bring up Troy though. Sometimes she wondered at her father's lack of tact.
Bags waddled his way into the room, carrying his umbrella and a rolled newspaper under one arm. He puffed a few bubbles from his pipe, then retrieved the paper and flicked it open to the front page for her to see.
"Care to explain the meaning of this, Your Majesty?"
Helena didn't need to look at the paper to know what he was talking about.
"Yes, it would appear that the Straw Hats have declared war on the World Government," Helena said, smiling at him. "And burned Enies Lobby to the ground. Amazing the lengths they'll go to save one of their own."
Helena had thoroughly enjoyed reading the story over breakfast. It made her feel all the more justified for standing up to the World Government in the first place. After all, if Zoro and his crew could get away with it, and there were only seven of them, she and her nation would be just fine. Oh, sure, they all had to tighten their belts a bit (pregnant ladies aside) as they tried to adjust to the huge change in trade, but Helena firmly believed things would even themselves out. She had a stimulus plan already going, and…
Bags cut into her thoughts:
"Am I to understand that this declaration of war extends to your nation as well? Roronoa Zoro is, after all, your husband."
"Ah, but you will recall, he is my consort, not the King," Helena informed him glibly. "We are not responsible for what he does until he is crowned."
"You think you can write it off, just like that?"
"Yes, I do," Helena replied, grinning. "Or am I to understand that you are declaring war on us? I have some gods to consult if that is the case."
Bags eyed her a moment in displeasure. "That won't be necessary," he said at last, then turned to go.
Helena smiled victoriously at his retreating back, but then he turned and glanced at her over his shoulder. "Ah, and I understand some congratulations are in order," he said almost as an afterthought. "So is it a little prince or a little princess?"
Helena jumped to her feet, her sword in hand almost instantly. The whole room went up in arms with the queen, including Cygnus, Paris and his guards.
Bags calmly eyed the Queen, ignoring the circle of spears pointed at his throat.
As she stood, her extra layers fell aside, making her belly more apparent, but at that point it didn't seem to matter. "How did you know?" she growled.
"I didn't. At least, not for sure," Bags said, grinning as he looked her up and down, "But now I do, like it's my job. So, boy or girl? I'd like to send a gift, you know, as a peace offering."
Helena lowered her sword, anger flooding her at having been so easily tricked. "I've decided I want to be surprised," she informed him, forcing her voice to remain even. "After all, if it's a girl, who knows what our more sleazy enemies will try."
"Enemies?" Bags asked. "I'd rather we be allies, wouldn't you?"
"In your dreams," Helena snarled. "Stand down," she added to her guards.
Bags smirked at her, then started waddling his pompous way out of the throne room.
"Oh Bags," Helena called to him.
He paused with his back to her.
"Try anything, anything at all, and we'll be on the attack this time. I'm done playing the defensive."
"I'm shaking," he called, walking away.
"You should be."
"That's my girl!" Zoro said in triumph.
Helena could definitely hear the smile in his voice now, and it almost made her cry in relief. Just moments before everything had seemed so bleak between them. She went from letting him hold her fingers to holding his hand, just to let him know she liked being claimed by him again.
"If I had only taken an ultrasound, I might have realized…"
She hesitated to go on. The next leg of the tale was where everything went wrong, and she didn't want to lose the ground they had just regained.
"That it was a boy?" Zoro supplied.
"I didn't want there to be any record anywhere of the gender. I didn't even want the doctor to know. The heartbeat was plenty strong, so it was good enough for me."
"What happened?" Zoro asked when she hesitated longer. He squeezed her hand. "Come on, Helena. I can take it."
"If I had just let Papa take over for a little while…. I didn't let myself rest. I didn't want to be weak. Anyway, my vision and Papa's were so different that I didn't trust he'd handle things the way I wanted them…"
"Helena…"
Helena took a deep breath, leaning against his back and letting her head rest against the back of his shoulder. He'd gotten taller, and a little broader too. It was one of the reasons she didn't recognize him at first, but she kind of liked it.
"It was not quite seven months after you left," she started, and she felt him tense. Yes, if he did the math, he'd realize when that was. "Bags came by the same day it happened, even before it hit the papers…"
"I was just wondering," Bags asked. Again he stood fearlessly in her court, trying to wear her down with his persistence. "When you last heard from your husband."
If Helena hadn't been running on little to no sleep, she might have realized what an odd question it was in the face of the news to follow. She'd started to think jokingly to herself that there must be a couple of little people fighting each other in her stomach, what with the amount of kicks she felt any time she sat down to rest. Her child sure was feisty.
"I have not," Helena said. "You know that he and I are not in contact. Anything he has done does not reflect my wishes or Ilium's."
"I'd expect not," Bags said. "Roronoa Zoro is dead."
Zoro's heart jumped into his throat.
"He told me you'd been killed by Bartholomew Kuma," Helena said. "And I am ashamed to say I believed him. He showed me awful photographs that never made the press, confirming that the Straw Hats had been defeated, scattered. He said he didn't know the status of any of the others, but that you were a confirmed kill. That you had died first, even.…"
Helena started to shake.
"You all had meant so much to me. – That you had been defeated pulled the foundation out of everything I had been trying to build. I went into shock," she said tremulously. "The shock put me into early labor."
Zoro saw his dream again. –Kuma's attack passing through him to strike her and the child. His failure had passed through him straight to them.
"Before I knew it I was on a hospital bed. The doctor was on leave that day. We had to send for him, but he didn't make it in time. Andromache had agreed to be my doula, but she ended up having to deliver our son." Helena started to shake. "It all happened so fast. When Telemachus arrived, he was so small I could practically hold him in one hand. He was completely white, and he didn't cry, and he already had Hades' mark in his hand…"
-The golden pomegranate blossom, sign of a royal death. Zoro's throat tightened.
"He…didn't look like either of us, really; he looked like my mother. – no hair to speak of, just one little blue curl over his forehead. He was barely breathing. He never opened his eyes; he never saw me…" Helena broke down as she described him, and Zoro knew she saw the child vividly still. "- I begged Hades not to take him. –I kept asking for my swords. I wanted to fight him, but Andromache kept pushing me back down onto the bed. She had a good reason, but I fought her with everything I had. Hades was merciless. He stole Telemachus from my arms, and before I knew it I was holding the golden pomegranate. It weighed more than he did…"
Zoro turned around, placing a hand on her arm. "Helena…" he rasped.
"I shouldn't have doubted you," Helena cried out in sudden agony. "I should have remembered your promise. I should have known Bags would lie! If you want to accuse me of faithlessness, then it wasn't in loving another man. It was in doubting you at that one crucial moment. I let myself fear, and in my fear I destroyed our son!"
Zoro couldn't take it anymore. His grip on her arm tightened, and he used it to pull her around and onto his lap, grasping her forcefully to him. She hid her face against his chest, and together they wept for their lost child.
"I should have been stronger," Zoro averred, his voice tight. "We had no idea what we were up against; no idea just how underprepared we were. I never dreamed that my weakness would have had repercussions this far-reaching…"
"It was my fault for making those stupid provisos," Helena insisted. "I couldn't tell you anything and…" she started to look up at his face, but Zoro covered her eyes with his hand.
"No," he said fiercely. "Helena, the rules we play by have been damn inconvenient, but they saved my life once. We're not reneging them now. It wouldn't have made a difference anyway. It's not like I could have come back, even if I had known we were expecting."
The Grand Line was an unforgiving sea, and at the time he'd known little to nothing about vivre cards. He and the crew wouldn't have known how to go back. She needed to stop beating herself up over something that couldn't have been helped.
"You are not responsible for our son's death," Zoro told her firmly. "If anyone is to blame, I…"
"No," Helena cut him off. "Zoro, we both had a hand in how it happened, but Hera's the real culprit."
"How?" Zoro asked. It seemed pretty cut and dry. –no meddling gods in sight.
"Athena appeared to me a day later. I don't know why she came…maybe it was to assuage my bitterness. After all, she had once promised me that when Ilium needed you most, when I needed you most you would protect us," Helena sighed. "I raged at her for lying to me, though she insisted that you were protecting me even at that moment."
"I was?" Zoro asked, feeling oddly comforted.
Helena nodded.
"You have to understand, when Bags showed up with news of your death, he already had an entourage of suitors with him, ready to challenge me for my hand. I probably would have gone and fought them myself, but Father took over…"
"Ann, get her out of here NOW!" Cygnus roared as Helena cried out in pain, sinking to the ground as she clutched her belly.
"I can take care of this myself," Helena shouted, looking out over the suitors with a half-crazed gleam in her eye. "I'll take all of them at once."
"Helena, you're still in shock," Andromache said gently, helping her to her feet. "Think of the baby right now, alright? We've called the doctor. He's on his way…"
"The baby's not coming for another couple of months," Helena insisted, "I'm fi….augh!"
"Her contractions are coming closer together," Andromache said in a panic.
"Then do as I said and get her out of here," Cygnus snapped. "I'll deal with these clowns."
Andromache bodily picked Helena up in her arms. The short, pixyish woman had no trouble doing it, but that came as no surprise to anyone who had seen the size of her sword. She hauled the Queen out of the room mid-contraction, while she was in too much pain to resist.
"But your Majesty," Pompadour insisted shrilly, stepping out of the crowd and addressing Cygnus. "We have the right to challenge her…!"
"You heartless, honorless coward," Cygnus seethed at him. "Helena's no longer a princess, and no longer bartering her hand for a sword match. If you want to marry her, why don't you try standing up to her husband instead?"
"But Roronoa is dead!"
Cygnus turned to twelve palace guards standing on duty. "You men, come here!"
For a moment the Princes might have believed they were going to have to fight twelve of the palace axmen. To everyone's surprise, the King gave orders for the twelve soldiers to stand their axes up in a line.
"Roronoa was famous for fighting with a sword in his mouth," Cygnus announced, "And famous for being able to cut steel. If you want my daughter, then I suggest you prove yourselves his equal. Hector, could you lend me a hand please…"
The General nodded in understanding, sending a mess of roots through the point of his spear and anchoring the axes into the ground.
"Go on!" Cygnus shouted to the stunned princes. "You all talk big. Let's see if you have any teeth."
He never got to meet his grandson.
"So you see that you protected Ilium with your reputation alone," Helena told him. "So her prophecy hadn't been wrong."
"That's kind of cold comfort," Zoro sad flatly.
Helena snorted, but then sobered. "That's what I told her. I told her flat out she was grasping at straws, but then she insisted that you were still alive. She even gave me a…" Helena hesitated, then went on, "Nevermind, the point is, that claim hurt more than anything else she could have said. If you were still alive it meant…" she hesitated.
"It meant that our son died for no reason…" Zoro supplied in understanding. No wonder she had been in such denial this whole time. No wonder his return had been more bitter than sweet.
Helena nodded and sighed. "Athena is a goddess of wisdom. She is all logic, and I think she didn't take into her calculations the emotional affect her words would have. She tried to comfort me by letting me know that nothing could have saved our son. Even if I had carried him to full term, he was doomed to die because Hera decreed it."
"What?" Zoro cried.
"The gods can't attack mortals directly, not unless they've been attacked first, but that doesn't mean they can't affect their desired outcomes on us," Helena explained. "I don't know what part she played in our son's death; maybe she helped Bags reach me at just the wrong moment, when I was most tired and vulnerable. – maybe she knocked the wheel off of the palace doctor's chariot so he couldn't get there in time. Suffice it, according to Athena, nothing could have saved our son. If he hadn't died then, he'd have died another time, because Hera willed it."
"Why?" Zoro seethed.
"Because she hates you," Helena murmured. "Because you didn't give her the golden apple."
"WHAT?" Zoro roared, his arms contracting around her, shaking in his rage. "She killed our son over a BEAUTY CONTEST?"
Helena nodded into his chest. "So I, uh, kinda destroyed her temple."
"I'll do worse than that if I ever see her again," Zoro declared.
"I already have done worse," Helena informed him meekly. "See, if you think about it, Hera didn't act alone. Zeus and the other gods allowed her to go unchecked in getting her stupid revenge. The way I see it, they're all responsible."
"So you destroyed all of their temples?" Zoro asked hopefully.
"Well, no," Helena said. "I did declare all of the temples off limits though. For a while, no one was allowed to worship the gods. I kinda caused a plague. And a drought. And a famine."
"Oh," Zoro said, not quite sure how to react.
"Yeah. It wasn't long before I had to relent for the sake of the people," Helena confessed. "I made restitution with the gods and allowed their worship again. I don't pray to them anymore though. And while the people can pray to Hera as they see fit, I refuse to let anyone rebuild her temple.
"As you can guess, I became pretty unpopular for a while, and I no longer had the backing of the people. Papa used some, uh, drastic measures to get me past my pride and to start up trade with the World Government again. On top of that, while we were recovering from the blights I brought down on us, we couldn't afford to mess up trade with our neighboring kingdoms either, which meant I had to let the stupid princes have their way. – I had a brilliant plan to get rid of them tonight, but…"
"But your husband came home?" Zoro asked, not sure if he should laugh or cry.
"Not so much that you came home. You just kinda cut them all up, dear."
"Yeah, I kinda did," Zoro said unapologetically. "They had it coming."
Helena chuckled at his unrepentant tone: "Yeah, I guess they did," she admitted.
It felt amazing to hear her laugh at something he'd said. –to hear her laugh at all after everything he had put her through.
Zoro straightened up with Helena in his arms. She dutifully kept her gaze averted from his face as he placed her on her feet.
"Can we start over?" she asked quietly. "We both behaved abominably tonight, and I'd rather forget it ever happened."
"I don't know," he admitted honestly. "Some things happened that can't unhappen, but I'm more than willing to try again from where we are now."
She couldn't look at his face, but that didn't mean he couldn't look at hers. He saw on her averted profile a small smile tweak her mouth; the mouth he had almost struck.
He deliberately got down on his knees before her, bowing his head to the ground both in reverence and so that she could look at him.
"Zoro…?" Helena started.
She had openly and willingly apologized; in fact, she'd impressed him by confessing the truth to him without even knowing that he knew about what had happened in the garden. Not only that, but she had laid her heart bare, telling all of her secrets despite the pain of divulging them. Of the two of them, only one now remained who needed to make amends.
"You have said your share," he told her quietly. "Now it is time for me to say mine. Beloved, I should not have doubted your fidelity. But regardless of your actions or what I believed, I should not have raised my hand to you."
"Zoro, it's alright," she murmured, touching his shoulder.
"It is NOT alright," he said with force, and she straightened up almost as though he had commanded her. "You are no common woman, but even if you were, I would rather cut off my own hand than strike you. Consider it a promise. –my word as your husband and protector. I will cut off my hand if I ever raise it to you again."
Helena hesitated a moment at this dramatic vow, perhaps worried what its implications would be should he have to follow through with it. She was right to worry; he'd shown her an ugly side of him he didn't even realize he had. Forgiveness was all very well, but forgetting only meant it could happen again.
"Very well," she responded at length. "I accept your apology and your promise. But please; you are not one of my subjects. Do not bow to me again. It makes me feel lonely; like too much separates us."
"I'll try to keep that in mind," Zoro said.
She crouched down to offer him her hand, though she kept her face turned aside with the self-control he'd come to expect of her.
"I hope that I never give you reason to feel anger like that toward me again," she said sincerely, helping him to rise. "After all, your three-sword-style would suffer if you had to start using your feet. You always were rubbish at toe work."
Zoro snorted. "It looks like in that regard you've got me beat," he said. "So are you a five-sword-style swordsman now?"
"Nah," Helena said. She turned, leading him by the hand as she spoke. "That's one too many swords for my liking. I just wanted to make sure I could win my hand back. –that was my Plan A before the princes made the idiot move of trying to assassinate me."
Zoro followed her as she led him to the playhouse Hector had built for a child that was not meant to be. – not to the playhouse, to the wall paneling behind it. Helena reached out and pushed some of the paneling aside, revealing one of the palace's many secret passages.
"Where are we going?" Zoro asked.
"To my last secret," Helena said. "There is someone you need to meet."