"The Pyre"
Author: Tierry Leoine ( tierryo2.pl )
Pairing: Alexander/Hephaistion
Rating: PG
Summary: Different people musing over Alexander's relationship with Hephaestion just before the burial pyre of General Hephaestion is to be lit. Each part is told by someone else.
Warnings : slash (does anyone here need a warning from that?) minor movie spoilers, character death
Feedback: always, in any form. Constructive criticism is always welcome. It keeps me going people (along with chocolate cookies and tea)
Archive: sure, if You really want it. Just ask.
Disclaimer: if they were mine, there would definitely be more that hugging between them in the movie!
Author notes: You may find that I recalled event from the movie rather than historical ones. And this have only one reason. My interest of Alexander and ancient Greece was subdued for some time and most of the books I read on him were….a long time ago. So, please do not bite my head off for some historical inaccuracy.
Thank You Note: well, Yes. This note is for Tari Aelin, my wonderful and very patient beta-reader, who helped the story gain shape. And for Annie (Enigmata) for her encouraging words. Without the two of them this would not be here.
PTOLEMY
I am his guardian, one of the companions, yet i cannot do anything to save him now. I can only watch him crumble before my eyes, disappear.
I think I should have seen this coming. I should have predicted this possibility. Unfortunately even I , the one the rest of the Companions mockingly call 'the philosopher', could not imagine Alexander without Hephaistion. I can only imagine, watching him now, that he could not either.
Yet, we all should have seen this as a possibility at the very least. War is a risky business at best. With a commander of the army like Alexander this risk doubles and triples. Yet, we survived. Not all of us, but many. Most of those that count. He did, too, only to succumb to grief.
I stand here among the rest of the Companions and wonder how they feel about that they witness. Each face is unreadable, but none so as Alexander's. He stands there, cool, collected, a true emperor. It is hardly believable that this is the man me, Cassander, Antigonus and Perdiccas, and I had to drag away from the body of Hephaistion just two days ago. Now, he stands proud, almost glorious.
But I saw, I have looked Alexander in the eye that day and knew that all this splendor was just an illusion, an act, necessary to put all the doubtful minds to rest. To kill all the rumors that started flying when Heph died. And those, that went around when he lived too.
I was impressed by how unmovable Hephaistion was. How none of the rumors, often vicious, could hurt him. I was there, I heard what Crateros, Eumenes and their like said about him behind his back. Few dared to do so to his face, fewer even went unscarred. None liked him. King's boy, they would say, a Chiliarch only because Alexander sleeps with him sometimes, the leader of hetairoi for the same reason. A poor strategist and soldier, they would all agree, nothing special about him, Alexander's bed-warmer, one fallen from grace too.
I have always had confused feelings about the whole situation. Hephaistion was a good soldier, undeserving of such treatment from his Companions. Yet, sometimes, even when he was treated like all of us, he seemed…more equal. Like Alexander would always listened to what he had to say, even if he did not do the same with us. This appealed to none of us.
Yet, he stood proud and dignified among us. Always behind his king, ready to defend him with his life if necessary. Always a presence looming in the shadows. Wherever Alexander went, Hephaistion was there. Finally they got used to him, even if they did not like him. I genuinely did. He was a quiet man, only indulging in wine when in solitude, not in public like the rest of us. I sometimes drank with him.
I remember a particular night-the night of Alexander's wedding-when feeling decidedly lonesome and missing my wife, I found him on the battlements far from the feast with only a pitcher of wine for company Neither of us spoke until we saw the copper of the bottom. He smiled then and said that he missed home, and those times when everything was simpler, easier somehow. I could not have agreed more. He asked me then to tell about my wife and home. If I missed it, if I wanted to go back, if I have ever regretted coming into Asia.
I could have loved him as a brother then. He understood. Perhaps he was the only one, who ever understood. For he paid even a higher price for making his Alexander's dreams reality. What he paid we can hardly imagine, definitely not understand.
He paid for realizing Alexander's dreams, for being the one pillar, that has never crumbled. Now Alexander was paying his price for having had him. And a great price that was. A disaster had befall on him, but one much smaller and at the same time greater than anyone imagined.
It was Hephaistion's death that finally broke him. One death, when he sacrificed thousands to reach the end of the Earth. He did not break, when he had to give up his dream, when he could not reach his end of the world. His disaster was small and personal, yet influencing all of us. For, if a mighty one like our Alexander could fall, what of us, mere mortals?
I stand here now and look at the high pyre of one I would have liked to call a friend. Then I look, though I have no real desire to do so, at my friend, king and commander, who stands there, motionless, staring with empty, hollow eyes, not seeing anything.
What is it, that he sees, I wonder.
I wait for the pyre to be lit. I am but one of many gathered. Still, somehow…somehow, when I look at him, when I look at Alexander I feel that this is a more private ceremony, than any I have ever witnessed. That this is a way soul-mates bit farewell and that there is no world beside them at that moment.
Perhaps that is what Alexander sees with his golden eyes. Just this pyre…of himself and Hephaistion.
please review!
I hope You liked it.
Tierry