I have decided to participate in Wattpad’s Open Novella Contest!! The goal is to write 20,000 words in 13 weeks, using a prompt given from the ONC crew. I am thrilled to introduce the novella I will be working on for this contest: Alexis of Troy! This is a comedic story of a girl thrown into the legend of Troy. Aided by a frustrated goddess, Alexis must find a way back to her world without messing with the timeline. The only problem, she’s caught the attention of one Paris, Prince of Troy!
“And when, on Paris’ return, Cassandra saw Helen coming into Troy, she tore her hair and flung away her golden veil; but the city nevertheless received this woman as a jewel meant to enhance its beauty”.
Chapter title: Elysium Summary: Reaching the Underworld, Helen is confronted not only with the particular difficulties set before her as obstacles, but the realisation that her husbands have been living in all this time passed as well.
(but even without the dream omen, without foreknowledge, the three roads offered by a single apple all lead to the same end, because fate likes the symmetry of overdetermination - there is no escape)
but what has a child done
to deserve to die, for a city to live?
(is the child not the essence of the city boiled down into a single point of existence?)
What is the worth, the prize, of a single life,
but the humanity of everyone else’s?
(it was over before it begun.)
mortal struggle, divine desire, nothing matters when death is demanded, and it’s all tied to this one city.
(This one life?)
The warrior defending the city with his life will be praised and mourned. The torch that’s offered light will be cursed out whether it burned down too early, leaving darkness behind, or if it was knocked over and burned down the whole city in its last conflagration.
Summary: AKA Helen Goes Husband-Hunting Down Below
At the completion of things, Menelaos went to Elysium without death getting him there, as Proteus had predicted. Helen was taken to Olympos, frankly relieved to leave everything behind. But what might originally have brought relief can become something missed, and Helen is the daughter of a god. Does she not have the right, after everything, to be a little greedy, to want more than she could have imagined while mortal?
“Hope we didn’t keep you waiting for too long,” Paris said brightly as he came into the little cave, smiling beatifically in the face of the glare Menelaos shot him past the gag. “Your brother’s making a right ruckus, so I don’t think we can waste much time.”
“We?” Menelaus grumbled as soon as Paris helped him sit up and tugged the gag down. He stole a quick kiss, which Menelaus obliged, mouth hot against his, tongue surprisingly insistent. Well, he had been made to wait for a couple hours. Paris’ grin softened as he pulled back in the face of something that had sounded a little like hope, like anticipation, even while Menelaos shifted pointedly, straining against the ropes wound about his torso and tying his arms both together, and up against his back.
“No need for relay today,” Helen said where she followed behind Paris, the echo of her voice riding above theirs, and Paris imagined there was a different quality to it, to mark what she was even in this way, though it was probably just imaginary fancy. He liked the idea anyway, however. She came up beside him, winding her arm through his, and her eyes were bright as she studied Menelaos. “He looks very nice like that, doesn’t he?”
Menelaos, having drawn breath to speak, sputtered while Paris struggled to laugh quietly, to not set the whole cave ringing with his delight and alert anyone too close, whether Trojan or Achaean, that there were people where there shouldn’t be. They didn’t want to be found too early.
“He does,” Paris agreed, leaning up to kiss Helen’s cheek while keeping his gaze on Menelaos, smile widening in the face of growing annoyance and, on top of that, a blush. “Arms tied behind his back like that just emphasizes his shoulders. So solid and strong, yet right now he can’t do anything at all.”
“Untie me,” Menelaos snapped, now thoroughly pink-faced, all the more obvious against his reddish-blond hair which the oil lamp Paris had brought with him helpfully revealed, denying Menelaos his dignity. He strained against the ropes again, and Paris bit his lip, watching the shift and bunch of muscle, both still draped by fabric and that lay bare, since Menelaos’ armour was in a pile on the floor of the cave, off to the side. Helen hummed, also watching, and slipped her arm down Paris’ side instead, to steal down towards his ass. Not quite touching, yet.
“It would be dangerous, to free such a strong Achaean lord,” Helen said, though she did not bother trying to put any true, breathless fear into the words, not making a play of them, though that only embarrassed Menelaos in another way compared to if she had. “I am afraid we would be overwhelmed, and I’d be carried off by my brutal husband!”
Helen, wide-eyed like an unwed maiden, touched a light hand to her chest even as she squeezed Paris’ behind, and Paris’ chuckle turned into a squirming half gasp. Shifted his hip into her hand and turned his face to kiss the graceful tilt of her jaw, making sure to arch against her.
“I’d be devastated,” he murmured, but more than loud enough to be heard by the other two, and glanced to Menelaos again, just to see him try to suppress his exasperared, flustered groan. He didn’t do anything about the eye roll that followed, though. Nor hide the reluctant tug of a smile that lurked in the corner of his mouth. Paris didn’t bother to hide his own as he kissed Helen’s jaw again, and then the spot in her throat where her pulse beat, tender underneath the skin. “But if we keep him like this, we could be assured of safety while showing him his place, what it gets you to be careless and captured by Trojan hands. Perhaps it will finally scare him off.”
“Yes,” Helen proclaimed, nodding, though by now she was blushing a little past the amused smirk lurking in the corners of her mouth. “That would be safest, and worth a try.”
“If you come close—” Menelaos started and then groaned, going red, shaking his head. “You’re impossible. Both of you.”
Protesting he might be, and squirmed in the ropes that Paris had wound so securely about him, near lovingly around his arms for the way it framed the muscles, but Menelaos was half-hard by now.
It was easier like this, pretending. Not that they always did it like this, or at all, but Agamemnon really was tearing up the countryside looking for his brother, so Helen and Paris needed to be ready to evacuate quickly if they stood at risk of being found, and it’d be safer - look less suspicious, be easier - if it seemed as if Menelaos had had no choice in his disappearance.
“Our husband is very bad at this,” Helen remarked, laughing quietly. Underneath the amusement was an edge, however, and Paris, ignoring the weight on his heart, touched her cheek and then slid out of her grip, to kneel behind Menelaos and wrap his arms around him. Pressing his chest to Menelaos back, ignoring the awkward catch of his arms between them, he leaned down to kiss the stretch of skin bared by the wide collar. Menelaos shivered underneath his lips.
“He is,” Paris agreed, “but since he’s tied up, he can’t do anything but play along.”
They really needed to hurry up, but Paris buried his face in the crook of Menelaos’ neck instead of reaching to caress, or pull up the drape of the tunic over his thighs. The shoulder shifted up as if to cradle him, while Helen sat down in Menelaos’ lap, kissing him as if she wanted to cry.
It was hard to pretend to some sort of light playfulness when none of this should be happening at all. When they’d tried to end things, long before this, and every time they’d attempted to do so the attempt had been nullified in increasingly obviously influenced ways. What had started out as desperate stolen kisses and touches, both for themselves for Paris and Menelaos, and to be given to Helen, from Menelaos via Paris, had led into the first attempt at getting Helen back to Menelaos. Had led to this, for at least they were not thwarted in simply spending time together, as long as they didn’t try to end the war by having Helen go back with Menelaos to the camp. They’d initially thought they could do this, and Paris would join later.
That had proven impossible.
However long the war was supposed to last, they were very sternly being forbidden from ending it too soon. As if anything could be too soon. Tied up as they were, those restraints were perhaps a lot less obvious than the ropes currently keeping Menelaos tied, but no less unbending for that.
Age-swapping Menelaos and Paris is like putting a wounded lamb in front of two hungry lions.
Complete fucking bloodbath. :D
So have a quick rundown of how this AU could work:
The Judgement happens earlier, but in comparison to regular canon Aphrodite isn’t offering up someone else’s wife. Paris is the lone non-Achaean attending Helen’s courtship.
Makes an impression on young teens Menelaos as much as Helen has as he’s been growing into puberty /cough
The oath is taken as normal, Helen and Paris marry, they go off to Troy. Couple years later the whole “curse of sterility + epidemic” happens, Menelaos goes with Kastor and Pollux to Troy, gets put in the metaphorical lion’s den.
He stays in Troy (it’s not like his brother need-needs him! and he was trying to both pay back Sparta for how they hosted him and Agamemnon, plus trying to show his brother he is Competent and growing up lol), undoubtedly amid increasingly exasperated messages from Agamemnon to come the fuck home.
Couple years later, Achilles now old enough to actually Do Shit and with no outside reason for a war in Troy but still his split destiny, Hera and Athena have their opening to (attempt to) get revenge. Because, after all, why should the most beautiful woman in the world, an Achaean woman, be married to someone who isn’t Achaean? And even if Achilles wasn’t old enough back then, now that he’s old enough to marry, if anyone, shouldn’t Helen be married to him?
It’s not so hard for the goddesses to spread this sentiment throughout the royal houses of the islands and mainland, even if this isn’t how the oath should be weaponized, it’s how it gets used.
(I feel like Agamemnon is by now sure there’s sorcery or something involved in keeping his poor, naive, deluded little brother in Troy. He Must Be Rescued.)
Enter war.
Now, you can either go more canon-ish and have the usual end, or have a Troy wins AU (I’d lean towards the latter lol). Menelaos spends ten years trying to avoid fighting his brother and worrying about him staying safe, but he’s not going to leave his lovers. :v
“Go sit with Alexander yourself; henceforth be goddess no longer; never let your feet carry you back to Olympus worry about him and look after him till he make you his wife, or, for the matter of that, his slave […]” (Helen, Book 3)
“[…] while Aphrodite keeps ever by Alexander’s side to defend him in any danger; indeed she has just rescued him when he made sure that it was all over with him […]” (Zeus, Book 4)
These are the only two direct statements we have about Aphrodite, Paris, and their relationship.
I feel like I had a thought about this, because I love the implications here/their possible/actual relationship, but now I can’t remember what it was.
Something about how, while Helen statement is obviously phrased to provoke, it does imply a certain - too much? - closeness. But that I also don’t think/don’t want to read it as sexual or romantic, because that would be too straightforward, but I also don’t want to say it’s noteither of those things?
Like, have Paris and Aphrodite kissed? Maybe. Have they have sex? No, I don’t think so, but the possibility of it going there, Aphrodite’s care too intense for plain platonic affection (as she gives to and attends her son with), but never fully blooming out into anything provably “this mortal and immortal are Involved carnally”. But aside from the inherent insult in Helen’s comment, that Aphrodite dotes on Paris to such a degree that it would be more “straightforward” for her to take the full step Helen charges her with to do in her stead, to lower herself (again) into a mortal’s bed, and this time as the lowest mortal there is.
Zeus’ comment is, too, meant to provoke, but to provoke Hera and Athena this time, not Aphrodite, and the provocation wouldn’t mean much of anything if there isn’t truth in his judgement of how attentive Aphrodite is of Paris’ safety. Which, I do think we get a good view of in the way she rescues him - off the battlefield entirely (she attempts to do the same with Aeneas but is hindered). All other divine rescues don’t full on remove any mortal so tended from the battlefield (unless they’ve been removed by other mortals, like Hektor).
So, yeah, maybe the thought was something about how it would be simpler to read it as “more than” platonic care, plus that it’s nice that there is something solid to read out of these two statements and the rescue she gives Paris.
This is technically just a preview and also technically OT3 for the full image but we can’t show that sort of thing on Tumblr anymore, so enjoy Helen and Menelaos kissing. :v
If, however, you want to see the full image, plus a couple other ones, go hereandhere
