Title: The Other Persian
Author: BalianswordChapter: 7 –"In Memory"
A/N: I realize now that in my haste I have completely skipped over some of the story line that I meant to put in. The biggest question, who killed Arias and why, will be answered in this final chapter. Thanks for bearing with me. Hope you enjoy!
Bagoas entered the room, as quietly as he could. Hephaestion acted fine in front of his king and newly requited lover, but in private, his emotions were the farthest opposite imaginable. Hephaestion sat, his hand resting dully on his lap, and his eyes staring at nothing but the wall. Bagoas walked in front of his focal point, just to see if he would look up in the slightest, but Hephaestion did not. Instead he sat where his was and as he was.
Bagoas turned and pulled out a chair. He moved it in front of the table and sat down directly in front of Hephaestion, forcing him to shift his eyes, or so he thought. Instead he continued to stare through him and the thought chilled him to the bone. There were not many that could do such. In fact, he was the only one that had dared to do it.
"It was not your fault," Bagoas whispered quietly as he moved his chin onto his carefully curved palm. His elbow steadied him on the table. Hephaestion did not respond. He just sat with the same dull expression.
A full hour passed before finally Hephaestion moved in the slightest. As he watched him Bagoas thought that perhaps this was the first time he had blinked in the last day. Drawing in a small breath a tear fell from Hephaestion's right eye, sliding down his cheek, and leaving a salty trail of despair.
"Tell me what you feel," Bagoas almost mutely said. His eyes said this as well as Hephaestion moved his eyes to glance at him. For the first time Hephaestion truly thought that perhaps he was sitting with a friend. Perhaps, just perhaps, Alexander had found in Bagoas what he had found in Arias. Someone that could understand, someone that would love without holding back, or all of the other things that Hephaestion had come to love about Arias in their short time together.
"I will never understand it," Hephaestion answered after thinking this. "It is as if everything that happened had a purpose, and I was there, but at the same time I was sitting on the sidelines. It feels like I was outside of my body at the time. It becomes a blur."
Bagoas continued to stare at Hephaestion in the same way, with longing in his eyes. He wanted to lean forward and wrap his arms around him. Hephaestion was not the only one that had lost. Hephaestion had lost a lover, and perhaps a piece of his soul, but Bagoas had too in a way. He had lost his cousin and, perhaps, the bravest person he had known in his life. He'd risked everything for the one man in his life that he had loved, and the only thing in his life he could have loved, or ever would have loved.
"I killed him," Hephaestion said. "I killed him by loving him, didn't I?"
"If you would have never met," Bagoas told Hephaestion, "he still would have loved you. You are what he was looking for in life. The old prophets claim there is but one thing that is worth living for, worth dying for, and worth searching for. Do you know what they claim it is? Love. You did not kill him Hephaestion, you saved him, and you set him free from this world in which he did not belong. He never did belong, he was always too good to be here, above the air."
Hephaestion began to cry. The tears could not be held back. They just ran down his cheeks, scaring his soul as they left him. Bagoas stood and leaned over the table, wrapping his arms around Hephaestion's neck, and holding him close.
"He lived for you, and he died for you. Theroas killed him Hephaestion, he killed him because he thought he was you, but you let him live. Mourn for Arias, and cry for him, and make a place for him in your heart, but do not feel guilt about his passing. It was better that he die now, in love with you, than die years from now without you."
Bagoas pulled back and looked at Hephaestion. He had the shocked expression that he would have pictured him to have. Bagoas sat back down before he explained his words. He knew that it was not all that he would have to explain before Alexander would eventually venture down to the room.
"Alexander wants the world," Bagoas explained. "He will not stay here forever. What do you think that will happen when he decides to leave? His soldiers cannot carry a palace. When the Alexandrites leave, they will not take Persian eunuch with them, not even will Alexander. You would have been separated."
"I would not have left him."
"You say this," Bagoas agreed quietly as he folded his hands together. "Yet you know that it would be inevitable. Alexander may take me, but he would never let others come. Not unless they are soldiers. Arias would have had to stay, as would Cassander's boy, and the rest of the lot."
Hephaestion stared through him for a moment again. Bagoas saw the realization in his cerulean orbs. He knew in his heart that Alexander would not stay here forever. He also knew that Arias would have been ordered to stay in all likeliness. He looked at Bagoas once more, this time with questioning eyes.
"Did you know?"
Bagoas only nodded at first. "I knew. Even Arias knew what was going to happen. It was all planned. The peasants had planned to try and overthrow Alexander, to overthrow you. When the king left, they saw an opportunity, they saw you. Hephaestion, the lover of Alexander, to kill him would drive a stake through the Macedonian king's heart. They knew this, or at least thought it to be true."
"You heard this?"
"I hear all of the gossip in this palace. Do not hate me for it, but I shall say, that it is my palace. Alexander owns it in title yet in its going ons only I know the truth. Only I can see what others do not."
"And Arias?"
"I told him of their plans," Bagoas admitted boldly. "I would have gone myself, but I am not trusted amongst my people. I am too close to Alexander, they say, and they are perhaps right. I love him, and in that, I am a slave to him. I would have killed them all myself had I been able. Since it was not possible for me to spy on their meetings, Arias did."
"He told them what they asked for," Bagoas continued. "He told them your room, he told them when you would be there, and when. There was only one problem. On the night that they attacked he brought you to his chambers. He bedded you there, and left in the night. He had a dagger, but in his pleasure, he fell asleep."
"No," Hephaestion said as he put his head forward in his hands and began to cry. There was no shame in it. Perhaps others would frown upon it, but his guilt was tugging at the cords of his heart, and he could not hold back. Even if he had been able to he would not have wanted to.
"When Theroas came, Arias was asleep. His head would have been turned, his back to Theroas, when he was first stabbed in the back. He would have had many wounds by the time he could begin to try and fight back. It would be too late though. Theroas, upon seeing Arias' face, aimed for the beauty that he saw there. After cutting him enough to satisfy himself, or perhaps when he heard your army outside coming, he stabbed the blade deep in Arias' neck."
"Arias was a fighter though," Bagoas said. "He would have been fine, he would have found a way to fight back still. The stab to his chest is what killed him. Theroas aimed for his heart."
"Stop," Hephaestion pleaded through his tears. Yet Bagoas did not do this. He must continue, Hephaestion must know. It was now Bagoas' job to make sure the commander knew that it was not his fault. It was merely Arias' sacrifice for their love.
"He was not dead when I entered the room," Bagoas said. "I tell this to only you. Not even Alexander knows what happened in this moment. I went to Arias and I took his hand, held it in mine, and stared at him. He still breathed even though his eyes were wide and his body was quickly draining of its blood. Before he died do you know what he said?"
Hephaestion had looked up. He still cried, and did not want Bagoas to continue, but knew he would. He shook his head softly. His tousled hair flowed with this gesture. Bagoas could see then what Arias had found so elegant about him.
"He said 'forgive yourself'," Bagoas told him. "At first I thought that he was saying this to me. But he wasn't Hephaestion. He was speaking to you. I realized it when I saw you like this. It no longer is I saying that you must forgive yourself, but Arias said it as well. So that is what you now must do. It was not you."
Bagoas stood, and left the room quietly. Hephaestion did not follow him with his eyes. Instead he stared at the wall once more. One more single tear fell down his cheek. He then turned his head upon hearing the door open and another enter the room. Alexander stopped and crossed his arms over his chest, and leaned back into the wall.
"Are you feeling better?"
Hephaestion nodded, "I am."
ENFIN
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