Work Text:
Being king meant the power to destroy, the power to save. The sick joke of it was you could destroy everything, but couldn’t save everything.
When she was younger, she’d hoped being queen meant something different. Perhaps that hubris is what made her luck and the gods betray her, trapping her on the throne as something not quite either, and somehow both.
It is a beautiful throne, one she has vivid fantasies of setting on fire. Carved cedar from an ancient tree, molten gold poured into the grooves and left to harden, wood blackening wherever it touched. A handful of rubies inlaid in the shape of the constellation Hephestia's Crown. Gilded iron scrollwork feet and frame underneath. Carved to be uncomfortable, but centuries of royal asses have worn the seat smooth as silk, twisting the metaphor like a Thief twists a knife in the gut. Knife marks, the fidgets of various rulers scar the armrests, a few initials carved where only the king may see. It takes three grown men to lift it.
In a play she saw once, ghosts were laden with chains that bound them to the weight of transgressions they had committed in life. She has no doubt even in death she’ll be dragging the weight of that throne wherever she goes, chained to her ankle, her spirit already limping and thrashing, a rabid dog dragging its stake.
In her dreams she dances with a goddess on the peak of a mountain that once breathed liquid fire. In her dreams, the goddess smiles at her, then chokes. Reaches into her mouth, down her throat, pulls out a shining blue stone. Drops it onto the sacred rubble at their bare feet. She retches, drops to her knees, elbows shaking as ash pours from her distended throat, every knob of spine visible through her gown as her back arches, chest heaving, red tears dropping into the dirt, magma dribbling from her nose. She cannot breathe, and she cannot breathe, and the mountain swallows them both before it, too, chokes.
In her waking hours more marks whittle their way into wood as she punctuates every order with the thud of knife on throne, the only sound the men around her will hear. She hears the clang of steel on steel, the dull thud of fist on skin, the bark of men’s raised voices. Never her sword, never her fist, never her shout. Always her word, never her breath given to say it.
As queen, she feeds men into her cannon, readies the fuse, aims. Can’t you see I’m trying to save you? she asks, screams, begs, the sound underwater. Why won’t you let me save you?
She fires. The smiling goddess gurgles and spits molten rock onto the ground where the volley lands, always where the cannon aims, never seen until it fires. She holds her hands out, welcoming, skin blistering red, set alight, and her hands are her hands, her face is her face, she is choking, they are choking, all air is ash. She looks up and sees herself, horrified, reaching out to cup her own face, feels her lips smiling as she wakes.
Anything, not everything. Blood soaks into the fertile earth and there begins to boil.
Helen has always been a woman being fed live coals, scorching out her throat, belching up smoke, calling it holy.