A/N: Happy New Year everyone! The journey's almost over everyone, only one more chapter! Please review.

Roxane, Queen of Babylon, watched as Hephaestion honoured the vow he had made her almost fourteen years ago, to give her son, as Alexander's rightful heir, the crown he had taken upon Alexander's death. She'd wanted it, then, been prepared to fight him if he failed to do as he'd promised, but now that he proved true to his word she could find no joy in it. Because it meant he was dying. And despite how much she'd hated him once, resented him for the place he'd held in her husband's life, the place that should have been hers; how he, not she, had had Alexander's trust, his confidences, and his love, despite all, she hated to see him die. Because his death was depriving her son of the only father he'd ever known, the father-figure he loved. And, she admitted to herself, a man she too had come to care for.

In the years that had passed since Alexander's death, Hephaestion had been her strongest supporter and ally, and she'd learned to trust in his honesty, his loyalty and his compassion. As time had gone by, she'd found it more and more difficult to hate him for having been loved by her husband, for she too loved him, in a way. And now, as she sat there and watched the tears cascade down her son's cheeks, as he sat on Hephaestion's deathbed like Hephaestion had on his father's, she felt a stab of love for him she had not felt before. He loved her son, loved Alexander's son, more than he ever could a son of his own. And he'd cared for him like no other, taught him, played with him, been by his side and on his side all his life; even Alexander himself could not have done more.

Tears slowly started to form in her eyes too, and she wished desperately that his time had not yet come. Her son still needed him, needed him to live. As much as she wanted her son to rule, she knew he, at thirteen, wasn't old enough to wear the crown, wasn't old enough to be king, but, most of all, he wasn't ready to loose Hephaestion. She saw it in the way he clung to his hand, almost ashen in colour now. And how he pleaded, in-between sobs, for Hephaestion to stay. And yet she could not deny him his departure, for even she saw how, on the brink of death, he looked more peaceful than he had in the last fourteen years of life. A tear rolled down her cheek as she realised her son would loose him, soon.

To Be Continued