Author: Rothalion
Title: Shadowboxing (Formally The Punch, sorry for the confusion but I had no firm title when I first posted)
Summery: Alexander reflecting on Hephaistion. Movie driven. First ATG fan fic. Movie based I suppose. An expansion of Cleitus punching Hephaistion at the banquet before the wedding. I love that scene. Not sure where it will go just yet, it's already growing far larger than planned. Switching here to Hephaiston POV for a bit. Pov changes will be noted.
Rating: PG-17 for safety
Disclaimer: Don't own him. After all besides Hephaistion who could?
Chapter Two-Hephaiston's pain
Why am I so cold? Why is it so dark? I feel the thick slick, tackiness of blood on my hands. My hands? I try to focus through the pain marshaling my body and eyes that are swollen mostly shut. Cleitus? Some thing about Cleitus? Gods he is…my thought slips away as the gossamer clouds veiling the bright moon allow its light to be thrown down upon me. I can not stop the painful gasp that steals from my mouth when I see that this is no battle field. That I am not surrounded by the mangled remains of the enemy as I'd expected. This thick blood is mine and I am, to my horror covered in it. My face, my hands, my arms, my legs. Cleitus.
I start to shiver violently. My clothes are gone. My brain screams at me to rise and go back, back? Where is back? Where is here? I scream, through bloodied lips, despite myself as a large rat runs straight up to me and onto my bloody stomach. Thrashing blindly I try to knock it aside, in my terror a vision of Prometheus flashes across my mind. The agony of movement is enough to send me back into a dark sleep but I grit my teeth and stay awake. Alexander, where are you Alexander? Rolling over I try to make it to my knees. Weakness and pain only grant me, like two foul and conspiring gods my stomach and my bitter reward is the added agony gifted to me of broken ribs. Alexander. Get back to Alexander. Alexander needs you Hephaistion, I scold myself. You must get back to Alexander. Crawl. Crawl Hephaistion, you get up on your battered knees and crawl your sorry ass back to me to your Alexander. I keep hollering to myself inside my head. I let the memory of his voice fill my mind urging me forward. Come on now, on your knees!
The voice was nice, it gave me a feeling of calm but what really got me moving was the rat that had, like any good scout, returned with reinforcements.
I'm scrambling now, up the steep embankment. The sharp rocks gouging my hands and knees, the rats chasing me sometimes getting on me, nipping at my already scratched skin and I have to knock their burly little bodies away. This is not how Patroclos is supposed to die. If he's dies such a dishonorable death then what of my Achilles. I scream into the star lit darkness for Alexander to come to me.
Finally I reach the top and strike away the last rat. They'd given up; I'm still too alive I guess. The climb has cost me though and I collapse on the edge of the deer trail completely spent. Rolling onto my side I try to curl up for warmth. I feel it then, my pendent. My pendant from Alexander. I take it in hand and wrap my fist around it as tightly as weakness will allow. He too carries an identical one. He gave them to us after Chaeronea, to bind us forever like the men of the Sacred Band of Thebes. Oh, how Alexander so loves his histories, tales and gestures. As if being Patroclus to his Achilles was not enough. I laugh out loud, a deep and strangely distant sound to my ears, which seem to be the only part of my body not in pain or broken in some way. He's always trying to join us somehow, yet he scolds me for my insecurities. He is bound to 'me', only a simple soldier. He does not see sometimes that my 'only' vow is to him, as his friend and lover, but he… he happens to be the King. He does not understand that I am bound to a man in love with a kingdom and so surrounded by duties and the love of thousands that I can't help but feel afraid to be cast aside…insecure I may be but damn you, Alexander, the gods know my reasons. Damn my ears too. I guess this means, since they work, I'll have to listen to him scold me about this little problem I'm having. Huddled up on the hard ground I tried to piece the night together. Cleitus' punch, my room, couldn't sleep, took a walk…at the next memory I again screamed into the night…attacked and raped. My honor ripped from me, like grapes from the vine, and stomped into a slurry of crimson that I will never be able to wash from my skin. In my failing consciousness I remembered being on my knees, surrounded by six maybe eight laughing men and asking Cleitus, why? His words drove the last bit of awareness from my tortured mind.
"Because Hephaistion, 'you too are Alexander' and right now I want to punish the ungrateful brat for degrading our country."