'He did! He did name a successor!' Hephaestion said, 'Me!'
Renewed chaos broke out, as he'd know it would, with different voice shouting out their disbelief. This was the moment, now he would have to step up and prove himself worthy of Alexander's dream.
'He did,' he roared through the pandemonium, and waited a breath-stroke for everyone's eyes to turn to him, 'Right before he died, when you asked him to name a successor, Perdiccas, he said my name.' More grumbling broke out, but this time it lacked the earlier fervour and Hephaestion knew he'd won this struggle. They didn't like it, but for the moment they would accept him. Forcefully, he looked at each of them in turn until even Cassander's hateful eyes glanced down in defeat. He maintained his self-assured stance until the last of them had stumbled out of the room. Then he turned back to the bed, staring once more at his Alexander.
When he was finally able to pull his eyes away from his lover, he turned to Bagoas, who didn't seem to have moved at all. He was still sitting on the ground in a corner, head pillowed on the knees he had crushed against his chest.
'Bagoas?' Hephaestion asked gently, and he waited for the boy to meet his eyes. Had he not felt so far removed from the world and anything of love in it, he would have felt a rush of affection for the eunuch as he met eyes that reflected the same emptiness his soul felt. Here in this former slave was a kin in loyalty to his beloved Alexander. 'Bagoas,' he started his request, 'would you prepare the king for his funeral rites?'
The boy nodded slowly, as if grief had disabled his very ability to move. Hephaestion felt the same, but knew that if he were to do anything for Alexander, he couldn't afford himself that luxury.
With one last glance at his beloved's face, he turned around and resolutely strolled out the room. He wished he could stay and spent even the last moments with Alexander, but he had other things he needed to attend to. Now that he had claimed Alexander's legacy, he needed to live up to it and see to it that what Alexander would have wanted to happen did. Oh, he knew Alexander had not meant this, had spoken his name as his lover, not his king, but really, what else could he have done? Watch these once-loyal generals circle around Alexander's empire like vultures and in their struggle destroy the realm he had worked so hard to build? Watch the dream that had brightened his face for all these years die and turn to ashes like he himself would? No, then Alexander truly would have failed, and he would do anything within his power to make it so that that didn't happen. His Alexander might have died, but his dream would live on, and shine on all men; he would make it so.
But it meant he couldn't follow him down to Hades, not immediately, and for that Hephaestion grieved. He needed to be down there, not in this world where without Alexander he was already half dead. But for him, for his dream, he would do it, so that when he was finally able to follow his love to the pits of Hades, as he had promised he would, he could tell him of his vision, how it shone and brightened the faces of all the freed men of the world; truly a deed to rival Prometheus. And then they could dine and feast together in the halls of Hades. So for that he would live, and work, and pray. So that one day, he too may die.
With that beacon of hope in his mind, he returned to the world he currently dwelled in and looked around him. As he passed, the servants looked at him with barely concealed curiosity, before averting their eyes when they caught his. They didn't know what to make of him, he knew, and he wondered what mayhem was being plotted by those above them, the other generals most of all. Were they already scheming to do away with him or would their love for Alexander last him beyond the king's funeral? Either way, he urgently needed to organise his plans and set in motion the chain of events that would lead to the salvation of Alexander's reign. And his bloodline.
It was for that reason that Hephaestion, with a bit of trepidation, now made his way into Roxane's chambers, who was to be the mother of Alexander's rightful heir.
TBC
