Fever

by Kizzykat

Hephaestion makes himself ill for Alexander.

Fever by Kizzykat

The end of this doesn't work but I gave up trying to fix it.

Alexander, please don't make me drink that."

Alexander looked up in surprise from the cup he was carrying carefully towards Hephaestion's bed. Hephaestion had sat pale and listless in the schoolroom all morning until master Aristotle had felt his forehead and told him to go and lie down. He was now resting against the pillows on his bed, looking wan and dark-eyed.

Alexander's face fell in disappointment as he looked down at the cup he was holding. Its contents certainly didn't look appetizing with tiny bits of dried leaf floating in a muddy green liquid. He had raided his teacher's supplies to make the medicine for Hephaestion in gratitude: only a loyal friend would have made himself ill for another.

"It might make you make you feel better," he said with tentative hope.

"Please," Hephaestion said, looking fretful. Alexander's concoctions tasted vile even when he felt well enough to pretend they didn't. "It's got feverfew in it, Alexander. I can smell it. I hate feverfew."

"Oh, I didn't know." Alexander set the cup down carefully on the chest beside Hephaestion's bed, relieved once he'd got it safely down without spilling any. "You should have told me before you didn't like it."

"I didn't know before," Hephaestion said in a small voice, feeling he was being ungrateful. He knew Alexander was trying to be kind to him.

"It does smell horrible," Alexander admitted, watching the cup. "But it's supposed to work on fevers." He looked up at Hephaestion. "I put some lemon verbena and honey in it to make it taste better. You like honey. And it's not that bad. I tried it."

Alexander always tried his potions first, and always said they weren't too bad, even when he was lying. Hephaestion inevitably acquiesced in his self-delusion and tried it. When he couldn't supress his shudder of distaste, Alexander would try to make it better by adding things to it. Usually, he only gave up when Hephaestion started retching: his stomach was more delicate than Alexander's.

Hephaestion raised his head and looked at the cup, feeling he ought to at least try Alexander's medicine as it might make him better. Curiosity stirred, as though perhaps it wasn't his nemesis. "How much honey did you put in?"

"A spoonful."

"Will I really be able to drink it without being sick?"

"Yes. I promise."

Trusting him, Hephaestion rolled over and stretched out his hand towards the cup. Alexander dived in quickly and passed it to him carefully, not without a small amount of pride. Propped on his elbow, and trying not to breathe in the smell, Hephaestion took a tentative sip.

He was aware of Alexander hovering expectantly and, not to offend him, took another, less dubious sip. He was surprised it didn't taste as bad as he had expected. The honey wasn't as overpowering as he had thought it would be either. Alexander was definitely getting better at mixing potions. He took another sip, suddenly caught the pungent whiff of feverfew again and turned his head aside, holding the cup away from his face. Alexander quickly took it from his hand and set it down.

Hephaestion lay back against the pillows, feeling tired. Alexander watched him anxiously, fingering the edge of the bed. "Do you feel very ill?" he asked.

"No, just empty. Like my bones are hollow."

"Aristotle said you've just caught a chill from standing out in the rain so long yesterday."

"I didn't stand out in the rain," Hephaestion said. "I stood under the eaves so I wouldn't get wet."

"But you still got damp and cold," Alexander said in a small, guilty voice. He hesitated. "Why did you do it? You didn't have to."

Hephaestion turned his head away. "I don't know." A tear slowly rolled down his cheek beside the pillow. Alexander doubted him, questioned his friendship, and he didn't have the strength to understand why.

He had stood in the rain all yesterday afternoon waiting for Alexander to leave the quarters where his mother was staying overnight, watching the door until he emerged. He had thought Alexander might need him, that he might be upset by his mother's visit to Mieza. She always made demands on Alexander that he couldn't satisfy. No one could. She was never satisfied, no matter how hard Alexander tried and that made Alexander feel like he was a failure. Yet he wasn't. Hephaestion realised he didn't like Alexander's mother.

"I'd have come to find you," Alexander said thinly.

Hephaestion turned his head back to Alexander. "No, you wouldn't."

Alexander stared at him, his chin threatening rebellion at being contradicted, but Hephaestion persisted.

"You would have run off and hidden, just like you did, until you didn't hurt so bad. And then I wouldn't have known what was wrong."

Alexander had emerged from the women's quarters, carefully closing the door behind him as if he didn't want an animal to escape. In turning, he saw Hephaestion waiting under the eaves and, oblivious to the rain, he had walked steadily across the muddy ground towards him. His footsteps were laborious as though there were a great burden of heavy air around him that made movement arduous.

He halted in the rain, staring at Hephaestion, his face set with anger, his eyes dark with mute agony while raindrops ran down his face and dripped from his hair.

Hephaestion reached and caught Alexander's arm, drawing him under the shelter of the eaves. With an impassioned sigh, Alexander threw his back against the wall, tipping his wet head up to stare at the dusty wooden beams supporting the roof of the building. The sound of the heavy rain on the clay roof tiles sealed them off from the rest of the world.

"I hate her," Alexander stated vehemently. "I hate her so much."

He continued staring upwards blindly, breathing hard as though it were an effort to contain himself. Hephaestion stared at him, not knowing what was best to say or do.

"How is it possible to love someone so much, yet still hate them?" Alexander demanded. "She wants to take everything away from me. She only wants me to have what she gives me. She will leave me nothing. Yet even if I gave her my very life, she would still want more."

He sighed, moving in angry restlessness. "She wants me to go back to Pella. She says Aristotle will turn me into a philosopher, not a soldier, and I won't know how to be a king. Her kinsman Leonidas will turn me into a soldier, a real man, not Aristotle."

"She thinks with a mother's needs," Hephaestion said desperately. "She misses you, that's why she wants you to go back to Pella."

"But I love it here, and I won't be allowed to study properly there, just soldiering and hunting, and training. I want to learn: I have to learn. Yet she says Philip will forget me if I stay here. But he sent me here. He chose Aristotle to teach me. How am I to overcome my enemies if they know more than I do? Father knows that, but Mother thinks she can teach me everything, that I only need her. But I don't. I need so much more than she can give me, but she can't see that. She won't listen to me." He closed his eyes briefly. "What am I to do?" he cried.

"You cannot let her rule you like a child," Hephaestion said, searching for an answer. "It is right you honour her, but she must let you be a man and make your own choices. She must."

"It's not just that," Alexander said, turning his head towards Hephaestion. "She wants power. She wants to control me. She thinks she can rule through me, like my grandmother did through her sons when they were young. But I'm not even king yet, and I may never be! He's not even dead! I don't want him to be dead!"

"But…"

"Oh, I know, I know, he could die in battle tomorrow and I have to be ready! Yet the army could choose my cousin Amyntas as king because I'm thirteen and he's twenty!"

"You can't do anything about that except try to be better than Amyntas," Hephaestion said passionately. "Your father is not going to forget his own flesh and blood, nor is his army. He put you here to learn how to be a king. She is trying to distract you so that you fail him, because she hates him. Don't you see that? She hates him!"

Alexander stared at Hephaestion like a Gorgon, his lips pressed together in a tight line, his eyes burning like hot embers. He peeled violently away around the end of the building, out into the pouring rain, away from prying eyes.

Hephaestion hesitated, thinking he had made him angry, yet he turned to follow him anyway. He loved Alexander and wanted to help him. In turning though, he was only then aware of Aristotle. Their tutor had stopped in the colonnade across the other side of the courtyard to watch them. Hephaestion stared at Aristotle briefly, then quickly forgot about him and hurried around the end of the building.

Alexander had hunkered down against the gable wall of the building where the only witnesses were a grove of silver birch saplings stretching away down the slope. His back against the wet wall, he had wrapped his arms tightly around his knees as he stared at the greenery rippling in the rain.

Hephaestion squatted beside him, white-faced with trepidation as the rain pelted his back and head. Anxiously he watched the turmoil in Alexander's face, not knowing what to do.

"How do I win?" Alexander cried, turning his eyes upon Hephaestion, "when she tells me lies?"

"What did she say?" Hephaestion whispered.

"Nothing. She said…," Alexander said in anguish, looking away. For a moment he looked close to breaking down. "No, I can't… It's too terrible." In torment, he turned back to Hephaestion. "She even wants to take you away from me too. She says you're nothing, a nobody. That I need friends whose fathers can help me when I'm king. She says I'm not to waste my time with you anymore. If I do, she said she'll make Aristotle stop teaching you."

Hephaestion stared at him through the rain. "Can she do that?" he asked in a small voice.

"No," Alexander said, shaking his head. "I won't let her."

"Can she send me away?"

"No, the king sent you here, not her," Alexander said, surging to his feet. "She has no right. She's not the king."

"Don't upset her," Hephaestion said urgently as he too rose to his feet. "I can go away, and we can still be friends."

"No," Alexander said emphatically. "Aristotle won't listen to her either. He won't let her bully him." He searched Hephaestion's face through the rain. "She thinks I am worthless and cannot judge who are true friends. But I can."

Surprising Hephaestion, he leant forward and placed a rain-cold kiss on his lips. Drawing back slightly, he ordered fiercely, "Don't wait any longer. I'll be back later."

Turning, he ran straight down the slope among the trees and was soon out of sight. Hephaestion stood and blinked against the cold rain, yearning to go after him. Alexander, a king's son, had kissed him on his lips as though he were an equal, a real friend, a proper companion. Yet then he had left him behind, wanting to be on his own with his pain, instead of sharing it with Hephaestion. He did not know if Alexander truly wanted him to be his friend, or whether he was going to cast him aside as his mother wished.

His uncertainty kept him silent when Alexander returned at suppertime. Alexander had changed into dry clothes but his hair was still damp and he felt cold as he sat down so close to Hephaestion that their thighs were touching. He smiled and greeted everyone cheerfully, but he shrank from looking directly at Hephaestion and Hephaestion remained silent, not knowing how to ask him if he was alright.

Alexander didn't say much during supper. He answered brightly when anyone spoke to him, but he volunteered nothing. As soon as he had finished eating, he stood and, bending towards Hephaestion, said in a low voice, "I shall have to go and spend the evening with Mother. She will be upset that I didn't have supper with her."

Hephaestion nodded silently in understanding and Alexander left. The next morning things were the same; after his mother had left to continue her journey to Aegae, Alexander was unnaturally silent in class and Hephaestion was too uncertain to break his silence. As the morning progressed though, Hephaestion, not realising he was unwell, found his mind increasingly lethargic and simply accepted Alexander's silence and secrets.

Outrage flared briefly in Alexander's eyes at being called to account, and he stared back at Hephaestion. "My mother says," he said, defiance edging his voice, "that Philip is not my real father."

Lying against his moss-filled pillows, Hephaestion's brave, ingenuous gaze was slowly filled with horror as though Medusa had shown her face to him.

"It's not like that," Alexander said quickly, his voice hardening as he saw the word 'who?' forming on Hephaestion's lips. "She says a god visited her. She could not refuse a god."

Hephaestion sat up with a catch of his breath. "A god?" he whispered. "How did she know?"

"He came to her first in the form of a giant snake."

A faint look of disgust passed over Hephaestion's face.

Alexander's voice rose defensively. "He turned into a man before laying with her."

"Oh, yes," Hephaestion said.

"He was a dark, bearded man. Like Philip, only she knew he was different. He told her that she was to expect a great gift from the father of the gods."

Hephaestion raised wide eyes to Alexander. "You are the gift from the gods?"

"So she would have it." Alexander stared at Hephaestion, a faint tremor of distress passing over his face. "I know that people think she is strange because she allows snakes to sleep in her bed, and that Philip dislikes it. But she is a priestess and she says snakes are the messengers of the gods, and they whisper secrets in the ears of sleepers."

"Could it have been a vision?" Hephaestion asked quietly, scarcely daring to utter the words.

Suddenly Alexander sat down heavily on the bed. "I don't know."

Close to Alexander's shoulder, Hephaestion said, "Even if it were a dream, it is surely a mark of the god's favour for you."

Alexander glanced at him with tremulous gratitude. "She says," he said huskily, "that it was Zeus himself."

Hephaestion gasped in awe, his eyes enormous as he stared with parted lips at Alexander.

"She says it means I am destined for greatness."

"But you are anyway," Hephaestion said instinctively. Alexander flashed him a look comingled of surprise and pleasure. Hephaestion grew a little confused. "I mean, Philip is a great man and has achieved things more than worthy of his ancestors. Any man who is recognised as his son will be respected because of that."

"Yes," Alexander said. He looked uncertain, as though it were not quite the answer he wanted. "But I wish to achieve greatness on my own." A little warmth crept back into his face as he gazed steadfastly at Hephaestion with his large eyes. "I want to be remembered for my own feats and not because of whose son I am, whether it be Zeus or Philip."

"Of course."

"But you must never tell anyone," Alexander warned.

"No," Hephaestion said without wavering. He gave no promise, nor uttered any oath, simply gave Alexander's trust back to him full fold.

"Because… I do not know what Philip would do to my mother, or to me, if he found out I was not his real son."

"But you look like him. Not a lot, but you do."

"She says Philip lay with her after the god did and that his seed mingled with the god's."

"Oh.

"In a way it makes it easier," Alexander said, "knowing that Philip's not my real father. It explains why, not being his son, he doesn't love me."

Hephaestion drew back slightly in protest. "Yes, he does. Of course he loves you."

"No, he doesn't. He's never here, he never takes any notice of me except to find fault, and he sends me away. I never know whether he favours me or one of my brothers, or Amyntas, or whether he thinks I'm not good enough to be a soldier, let alone be king after him."

"He's a busy man," Hephaestion said lamely. Growing tired, he propped himself with his arm.

Shaking his head mutely, Alexander said, "He doesn't like me because of my mother. She constantly tells him that someday I will overthrow an old, crippled man like him, and a true king will rule in his stead. He dislikes me because I am too much like her. He fears my ambition."

"But that's why he sent you here, away from her influence."

Alexander's wide eyes flew to Hephaestion's face, but then doubt clouded them. "She has grown bold enough to tell him that he is only Heracles' descendant, but that I am the new Heracles."

Gravely, Hephaestion stared at Alexander. "What will he do?"

"I don't know."

Drawing a breath to steady himself as he sat up again, Hephaestion said, "Show him how much you respect him. Respect him as a king, as a man, as your father."

"He has to earn that respect!" Anger and distress flared with a touch of colour in Alexander's cheeks. "He shouldn't say the things he says to her and cast her aside like she's worn out and useless! He shouldn't sneer at me and call me a girl because I like music and poetry!"

Danger fluttered around them, and Hephaestion felt its wings. "Alexander, be careful."

Tears clouded Alexander's eyes. "I will. At least until I'm old enough. When I'm old enough, I'll prove to him that I'm good enough to be a hero. That I'm good enough to do what he has done, and even more. That I'm good enough to be his son, to be Zeus's son even. Even good enough to be a divine hero."

Hephaestion nodded uncertainly, not certain if this were blasphemous and if Zeus would punish them for this presumption. He had no idea how one became a divine hero except by achieving extraordinary feats. Divine heroes like Achilles and Heracles, Alexander's ancestors, paid terrible prices for the god's favour, for the price of immortal fame.

"Promise you'll help me to be the best I can," Alexander said suddenly, his voice hollow with uncertainty.

"I will."

"And promise you'll never let me win at anything if I don't deserve it."

"That would be cheating," Hephaestion said. "I'd never cheat, ever. Not even for you."

Alexander's head rose. "I wouldn't expect you to. A hero's honour should be above question, as should his friend's."

"Achilles," Hephaestion breathed.

"I will need to be Achilles himself to outstrip Philip's achievements."

"Or the son of Zeus," said a man's voice. Their teacher Aristotle stood in the open doorway.

Both boys looked up in startlement at what Aristotle may have overheard, but he did not seem perturbed as he looked at them both.

"Young men are always ambitious and dream of being greater than their fathers," Aristotle continued calmly as though giving them a lesson. "They dream of being remembered forever, but that is a fate reserved for the gods. Or for heroes whom the gods favour greatly, but it is not won lightly. It is only won through much labour and heartbreak."

"I am ready for that challenge," Alexander said, standing up proudly.

"I am sure you are, Alexander," Aristotle said. "And at the moment you seem to have achieved the great feat of resurrecting Hephaestion from the dead." He looked at Hephaestion with benign surprise.

"I am much better, thank you," Hephaestion said. "Alexander gave me some medicine."

"Ah, he hasn't managed to poison you yet then," Aristotle said, picking the cup of medicine up and sniffing it with a slight wrinkling of his nose. "Do please check with me before you administer medicine in future, Alexander."

"Yes. I'm sorry."

Aristotle sipped the medicine. "A little heavy on the feverfew, but on the whole, no harm done."

"It tastes alright," Hephaestion said.

"You are admirably loyal, Hephaestion," Aristotle said. "But now, perhaps Alexander will be good enough to fetch you something to eat."

"Oh, yes. What would you like? Chicken? That's easy to digest," Alexander said. "I could have a bed brought in here tonight so that I'd be able to fetch you anything you want."

"I don't think that will be necessary, Alexander," Aristotle said. "I don't want the two of you staying awake all night chattering: both, instead of just one of you, will be half-asleep tomorrow. Now go and get Hephaestion's dinner. And get yourself some too, you ate hardly any supper last night."

Alexander smiled with affection at Aristotle before turning on his heel and running from the room.

"Hephaestion, a word of advice," Aristotle said after he'd gone. "Alexander's mother is a pernicious woman. Guard against that influence."

Hephaestion nodded gravely at his teacher, not quite sure what pernicious meant or how he was to avert it.

"Doesn't the poet say, sir," he said respectfully, "that a mother is as close as we get to the face of god?"

Aristotle's eyebrows lifted infinitesimally. "A mother is, indeed, the making or breaking of a boy," he said. "But the father is the true parent of the man."

"Oh, I forgot to say," Alexander said, having run back and stuck his head in the doorway, "I am going to be better than Achilles because I have Homer for inspiration. He had a teacher and a friend as I do, but he didn't have a poet." He smiled and disappeared again. "And one day, I'm going to conquer Persia!" he called back to them.