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Helena is in the garden because she needs the space and the sunshine. No matter how big the room is, being surrounded by stone feels like—
(cold, so cold, and she's so tired but she can't fall asleep, falling asleep is dangerous because—because—she doesn't remember why but she can't, and it's so, so cold)
—she needs the space and the sunshine.
And then Leo is there, and he's even better than space and sunshine because Leo means safety, and maybe answers, too.
Leo does give her answers. Leo tells her the most devastating, horrifying story she's ever heard, and she knows that every word of it is true. He wouldn't lie to her. Not about this.
(King Alexander is lucky that he's already dead. Helena would kill him right now if she could.)
He tries his best to sound detached. Not too long ago, Helena would've been fooled by his calm, steady voice and his mask of indifference.
But she's been watching carefully for months, learning how to read him. She can catch a glimpse beneath the surface here and there. Leo is haunted by the things he's telling her. He's half-consumed by a tangle of guilt and self-hatred, made worse by the fact that he can't fully regret any of it because he still can't see a better way.
(There should have been a better way.)
(Helena thinks of a six-year-old being forced to either kill or die, and she can't stop the tears.)
('There should have been' does not always mean 'there was'.)
She holds him as tight as she can while she sobs. I'm here, she tries to tell him. I don't hate you. I don't think you're a monster.
She's barely dried the last of her tears when another thought occurs to her.
When he spoke briefly about his mother, there had been love, and grief, and agony. A fresh agony, not dulled by fourteen years. There is something related to his mother that didn't hurt before, but is hurting him now.
Maybe it's a cruel thing to ask. Maybe she shouldn't pry, when he's already shared so much.
But she has to know.
"Will you tell me about your mother?"
His mother's name, Helena learns, was Melina. She had green eyes and blonde hair; raven-haired Leo had inherited the first, but not the second.
("I wish I looked more like her," he says quietly. "Sometimes I look so much like my father that it makes me want to scream.")
Melina had been sweet, and kind, and loving. She told Leo that he was her greatest joy in all the world. She tried to be cheerful for him. And she was desperately unhappy almost all the time.
She had been the youngest daughter of an impoverished baronet—as low-ranking as it was possible to be, while still retaining noble status. So when she'd fallen in love with a farmer, her father had genuinely approved of the match.
And then, two weeks before the marriage, she caught the eye of the king.
The proposal had been an order disguised as a question. Refusing the king was not an option. Protesting that she was already engaged would only have painted a target on her fiance's back. Melina couldn't say no.
So she said yes, and never saw the man she loved ever again. She didn't even get to say goodbye.
She got married on the day that had been appointed. But not to the groom she had chosen.
("He wasn't satisfied with just stealing her happiness and her future," Leo hisses, "he stole her wedding day.")
And she'd been forced to pretend that she was not just happy, but thrilled that the king would deign to notice someone of her lowly status.
In the end, Melina had been killed for being in someone's way. Murdered, because she was married to a man that she wished she'd never met.
("She only got to hold Alice for a few minutes," Leo says. Helena is crying again. He's crying, too.)
("She asked me to take care of my little sister, and then she was gone.")
Suddenly, Helena understands. The fresh agony hiding beneath the mask of indifference. The depths of self-loathing in his eyes on their wedding night, even as he vowed never to touch her without permission.
The only thing Leo hates more than his father is the thought of being like him.
And he thinks that this is what he's done to her. Stolen her happiness and her future by tying her to an unrepentant monster against her will and making her pretend to be happy about it. An echo of the past where he plays the same role as someone he despises and does something he cannot forgive.
It really is amazing, how someone as smart as him can be so incredibly stupid. Because there are some very significant differences between what happened then and what's happening now.
"I keep wondering, but I've been too much of a coward to ask. Did I—did you—" He sounds utterly miserable. "Back in Esthria, was there someone who—"
It takes her a moment to understand what he's trying to say. "Oh! No, there was never anyone like that."
She can see the weight that lifts from his shoulders at her words.
At least she's accomplished something besides just dredging up all of his most painful memories.
(If she tries to explain to him all the reasons why he's nothing like his father and is also not even a little bit responsible for the fact that he was put in a kill-or-be-killed situation at the age of six, she's just going to end up yelling at him, and that's not going to help anything.)
(So instead she's just going to stick to him like glue for a few days to help him get it through his thick idiot skull that she doesn't hate him and she's not leaving.)
(...and maybe also because she's more than a little traumatized by that whole thing where she got kidnapped because she was separated from him for two minutes.)
(After that, she needs to write a letter or two.)