Indulgences
a/n: bc I’ve loved shakespeare for a decade and some, and the fact haven’t written a lick of fanfiction for it is cruel. Here is my self indulgent work I can rest easy.
The wilds were no place for heartache. No place for tomfoolery of any kind. But how could she hold back her tears after he left her there? After saying such awful, terrible things. Perhaps it was her fault in the end? Perhaps she should have been more like Hermia, beloved and perused, the way she glided through life and the forests knowing that someone somewhere would love her. That her fingers would never be bone bare like Helena’s. That gold would adorn her flesh and love decorated her heart.
Helena in truth had no idea how to portray that sort of confidence, to put herself out there? After all she had been through, after all she had just gone through moments ago. Denial, rejection, being made a dumb fool because of love? Love, ha, a jester with cruel jokes who poked and prodded at Helena’s flailing ego with a hot branding rod. It wasn’t fair…but she tried the best she knew how only to be left in the woods. Alone…with god knows what. Perhaps beasts wouldn’t be attracted to her either. Perhaps they’d smell her pitiful heart break and saline raindrops and be repelled by her as every son of Adam seemed to be.
Or perhaps this was mother nature’s grand finale for her. To be consumed by the forest never to be heard from again. Then again who would miss plain, dull, loveless Helena? Certainly not Hermia who was madly in love, or the worthless man De—no his name wasn’t even worth remembering.
She placed a trembling hand to her lips and stifled more tears when she heard the snap of branches. Helena bounced to her feet and began to move swiftly, hardly making out her escape path through the fogged clouds of dewy tears that coated her ducts. She made her way around some trees, the loose ends of her dress torn where the lace had caught on to several low hanging branches, and into a clearing by a stream.
Exhausted from tears and fright Helena fell to her knees by the water. “Now…stiffen up.” She muttered to herself. “You it to be so, a fool he made of you…a fool Eros had played you and oh—blind and young Helena how you fell…” She cupped her hands with water from the steam. “Well if this is truly your end, see it with a brave fast, don’t give the otherworldly mother more reason to chastise you for your lack of wit…or nerve.”
Cool and refreshing the water felt on flesh flushed from feverish feelings of fright and foreboding. Once the water cooled her face, the swelling of her sorrows began to sink, and her coronas clear again to see… she realized in her hand, still cupping some residual water was…a lily? Perfectly cut under the stem, the type to be given as a token or decoration with only its flaw of being damp being what was off putting. Helena glanced to the water and saw a siren?
She had to be, she was a gorgeous face. The ethereal and aquatic beauty of blonde and youth simply floating along the water’s edge. For a second Helena had lost her mind and thought she was entranced by a nymph but after realizing the woman’s lips were trembling she quickly assessed. “Oh heavens, she’s alive!” Helena leaned over the steam and grabbed the delicate, fair faced beauty by the shoulders. With all her might in the moment she hauled the waterlogged maiden up.
“Are you mad!” Helena yelled at her as though she was a child who knew nothing. She shook her by the shoulders forcing the woman to cough and tremble more. Helena was furious now, what nonsense did she have? Alone in the woods, in water soaking her good garments. She would have given her what for if their eyes didn’t meet.
Helena saw her eyes in this stranger. Pained, foolishly heartbroken eyes. Of course her eyes were lovelier than Helena’s. Blue so bright they were nearly violent, rimmed with fair lashes that curled so perfectly upward even while damp. Lips lightly purpled from the chill, hair soaked but still held a flower crown around her head.
“There…ther-there is nothing for me.” The siren spoke, she mumbled softer, ”No family, no love, I’ve lost it all to madness…to senseless hate…and violence. To ghosts and foolish Danish princes who know not what they want…”
Helena had no clue what she babbled about…Danish princes, madness, violence but the heartbreak was a language she understood. Did she look that pitiful moments ago? Like a doe wounded and left for the wolves. This girl looked as though her own ankles couldn’t carry her weight. “No matter” Helena stood up rolling up her soaked sleeves to her forearms. She took the lady by her hands eyeing a ruby ring on her finger. “You’ll catch your death here and—“
“Twas my intended company…” She admitted, mostly resentfully.
“No matter” Helena replied in the same crude tone. “You missed your company and found I instead, and I will make sure that the only companion you find now are dry garments and a brush.”
Helena walked through the forest, strange now she had passed the spot she felt so lowly before with a new set of purposes. Tugging being her a woman who didn’t seem to care where she was being pulled now that she was fair from whatever nightmares plagued her. “What do they call you?”
“nothing worth calling now…” she responded with a pout, before responding with what Helena wanted to hear. “Ophelia…nothing more. And you? What is it they call you?”
“Helena…”
“Like the Greek woman? The princess of Troy whom the war was fought over?”
“Ironic…I know, trust I know the jest behind the name and how ill-fitting it is to be placed with such a backing and title.” Helena sneered.
Ophelia paused a bit and continued speaking in a slightly louder tone, her dream like voice carrying just a little more weight. “I feel it fits…Helena of the…” Ophelia looked around. “The Forest.”
A small smile formed at Helena’s lips, childlike, her thoughts were imaginative yet intelligent. There was a childlike playfulness to her words but overshadowed by a dainty sorrow. Like a waterlogged lily. Lovely but dampened. “You are mistaken Ophelia of the stream, no wars will be fought in my honor…men are callous, stupid and…predatory creatures that pray on the helpless unless something more fitting for a feast finds their way.”
“Agreed, men are foolish, stupid, selfish…who trust not even those who have given them nothing to earn distrust. Who have chosen them over family and title…who keep secrets and lies…”
Heartbreak made good conversations, Helena felt the weight lifted off her just a little knowing someone else was carrying it as well. “Who needs them?”
“…Not I…not now…”
“Not I, not ever.”
Soon by the time Helena reached her home, they were no longer walking one dragging the other, but side by side like old friends. Emerging from the forest, talking soft with only a smile. Their pains still painted on their clothes like water stains but their misery had been more or less left behind for the beasts to feed upon.
Once home, Helena sat Ophelia down on a bench and began delicately taking the flowers out of her hair. She ran her a bath much like a chamber maid would have and Ophelia seemed to be quite comfortable with the notion. She wasn’t a common girl from where she had come from. “Bath is set, warm water will bring color back to your lips and fingertips.” Helena scolded her gently, taking her hand and examining how far the cold and seeped into her bones. She walked behind her and began to unlace the wet knots of her corset piece.
“Thank you, Helena…” Ophelia whispered. “I had gone looking for the company of death’s embrace and found a much sweeter, kinder face. I had lost hope that the world had any kind faces left…for I lost so many…kind, kind eyes… lost them to a plague unseen by doctors or priests…simply a darkness of the soul and I feared it had me as well.” She felt her chest relax as the corset loosened just an inch. “I am not completely freed from its virus but I feel as though I am at the mend.”
Helena didn’t quite understand all she meant by darkness and loss but Ophelia seemed genuinely frightened and …thankful…Helena did little, perhaps save her from a chill that might have claimed her life at one point. “You can babble gratefully after a bath and a meal. Perhaps then I can make some sense off you.”
“Can I stay?”
Helena looked her over and though bringing a stranger into her home was the last thing her mind wanted. Having something…someone to keep her mind off her heart was a godsend. Perhaps a medicinal message from a mother looking out for her drab daughter, “you may if you have no home to return to…no family whom misses you?”
“None…all gone…”
“Then…” Helena loosened the last lace. “Here shalt be your home.”
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