What Price Fury

Author: Rothalion
Title: What Price Fury
Rating: PG for now.
Fandom: Stones movie
Summery: Not For the first time in their relationship Hephaistion is a victim of Alexander’s wrathful temper. Mitigating issues play a part weakening the faithful Generals defenses causing him to retaliate and havoc ensues before the two can reunite. I can’t help but feel as though these two had there fair share of brawls. Egos aside…besides Hephaistion’s got other things on his mind.
Genre: Anger and angst and reconciliation
Reviews: Please send advice to rothalion@hotmail.com and thanks!
Disclaimer: Mr. Stone for this one, he brought them to life so we can torment them! Not purely movie driven I tweaked it a bit.

Alexander paced the small room. He’d stopped and stood three times now over the still slumbering Hephaistion. Stopped and reached out all three times to touch the man, whose heart he’d ripped in to pieces, he’d reached out and on each occasion his guilt drew his trembling hand back. Guilt. Of all the things he done in his short life this was the most heinous to date and he had absolutely no idea as to how he should begin to fix it. He’d ripped a chasm in his relationship with Hephaistion and undid all the other man’s hard work at proving himself to the others. He wished that Hephaistion would just awaken and beat him senseless.

Finally he walked to the small table and sat down. He poured himself a glass of the cool water that had been set out by Leo and picked up the correspondence from Pella telling Hephaistion of his father’s death. Alexander knew that Hephaistion’s relationship with Amyntor was the antithesis of his own and Philip’s. The two were extremely close and Hephaistion had suffered much uncertainty over his decision to go campaigning with Alexander or stay and aid his aging father. His love for Alexander had won out and knowing that they would never, in likely hood, see Pella again he said his goodbyes and with Amyntor’s blessing, he followed his beloved Alexander into the unknown. Now Amyntor, Hephaistion’s last ink to home was dead, and Alexander had seemingly cast him aside as well.

There was nothing else to do but pray to the gods that he could win him back, and let the council know that the breech in honor had been his and not Hephaistion’s. He crossed to the wash basin and lifted it carefully. He carried it to the bed side and sat down on the edge of the pad. Carefully so as not to awaken him Alexander began to wipe Hephaistion’s cheek and forehead with the cool refreshing water. As he dabbed the thin sheen of sweat from the sleepers face he spoke to him.

“ Ahh my beloved Hephaistion, what grief I have brought upon you. What weakness allowed me to speak such cold and villainous words to the one I love so dearly. The one who before the eyes of the gods I have given my eternal soul. Hephaistion, no apology can sooth this wound, no apology can take back the pain that I know I have caused you. If you will, then punish me by withdrawing from my heart. I will bear the loss for a short time my love but I fear without that spark that is uniquely yours, the flame that ignites the furnace of my soul and drives me forever forward will extinguish itself in my desperate grief. I know that you hate me now. Hate this world that has stolen everything from you that you have ever loved, hate the fragility that is this life and the loss that the reality of our impermanence brings upon us. I know that you loved Amyntor well, as did I. And I will, if you would allow me to, grieve his passing with you. Help you carry the sadness that I well know fills your gentle heart. Hephaistion…”

“Alexander.”

Alexander looked down into the blue pools of Hephaistion’s tear reddened eyes. He moved slightly aside so that the groggy man could sit up. Hephaistion coughed, raised a battered hand to his face and clumsily pushed back a loose strand of hair. He sat completely still. Hunched up, leaning away to left, away from Alexander. His head hung down and he held his broken hands in his lap. Alexander studied the bloody bandages. Cleitus had not told him how Hephaistion had damaged them. All he recalled was that they were already battered when he’d arrived at Hephaistion’s old room. He watched in silence as his lover tried weakly to stand but sat back down and eyed the chamber pot where is sat across the room with a frustrated sigh. Alexander stood and retrieved the item, set it on the floor in front of Hephaiston then stepped back and started to look away. Before he could fully turn he heard Hephaistion curse softly so he turned back to his friend. The saddened man stared forlornly down at the pot, his beaten hands rendering him helpless. Alexander read his thoughts then, and moved back to him. He stood quietly for a moment then knelt down in front of Hephaistion. He looked up at him trying to send his love and concern through his worried eyes, then took up the pot in his left hand and Hephaistion in his right.

After he’d finished Hephaistion leaned forward a bit, as Alexander set the pot aside, and with an unwelcome feeling of unwillingness rested his forehead on Alexander’s shoulder so they were cheek to cheek. He shuddered at the feel of Alexander’s stubble against his face. Alexander wrapped his arms around him and smoothed his hair. They said nothing there were no words.

They sat that way for a long while neither wishing to part, yet both feeling the horrible gap that now loomed between them. Finally Alexander eased Hephaistion’s head up. He ran his thumbs across his lover’s cheeks to erase the tears that still fell down them and softly kissed the ugly purple bruise that covered Hephaistion’s temple and cheek. It was not an attempt at an apology but a generous attempt at easing the sad man’s pain. Alexander knew that it was too soon for words requesting forgiveness. That would have to wait.

Keeping his voice a low whisper he spoke. “Phaistion,” he’d risk the pet name and hoped it at least carried his love to his friend. “Let me tend to your wounds and bath you. Say nothing Hephaistion. Just allow me this honor, allow me that much.” He finished speaking and waited with his head bowed for Hephaistion’s answer.

“Honor, Alexander?” Hephaistion paused and tried to find words, any words at all to express the emotions ripping apart his soul. He suddenly regretted his weakness from earlier, the weakness that had allowed him to seek comfort in Alexander. It had been such an instinctive action, beyond his control. “Honor. I…can see to it myself. You have made it quite clear where you stand Alexander. Do the honorable thing and simply get out. Get out.” His throat constricted at the words. Alexander knelt unmoving at his feet, head still bowed in a position of servitude and humility.

They stayed deadlocked like that for a while neither wanting to give ground. Hephaistion new how patient his king could be when he desired some thing badly enough. Get out. The words had hurt to say them. They’d been dredged up from a place so remote and deep within his heart that he had not, until he’d uttered the order in complete calmness, known to exist within him. Get out. He did not have the strength to command Alexander in a louder voice.

“Hephaistion. You need some help with this. I am begging to be allowed to do it. To…I know that you loved him with all of your heart my beloved. I loved him as well. I love…” He broke off, words of love would not heal this rift. “Hephaistion just let me bathe you, let me tend to these wounds, allow me to grieve for ‘our’ lost father, with you. Hephaistion, I am not asking for your forgiveness, I am merely asking that you give me a chance to heal with you. Hephaistion?”

Alexander looked up and into Hephaistion’s dull eyes. He saw in them the same loss he’d felt when his own father had been murdered in front of him. No they had not been not close but Alexander cared for the man. Never in all their years together had Alexander witnessed such anguish in Hephaistion’s blue eyes. The light that normally shown from them was completely gone and replaced an almost desperateness, a frightening glimmer of resignation. Alexander shuddered at the sight. Was his Hephaistion simply going to give up?

“Hephaistion?” He shook his friend gently and pleaded silently with his eyes for the distraught man to acknowledge him. Hephaistion shuddered and looked down at Alexander.

“Why didn’t you come to me when I needed you?” The question was whispered. Hoarse with regret and pain, riddled with the trembling of coming tears. “When have I ever asked anything of you Alexander? Why couldn’t you just come to me?” He sighed and went on. There was no anger in his tone, only sad regret. “I could give a damn about the meeting Alexander. The men have always hated me, it matters not to me any longer. Now they simply have the proof that they have always wished for. The proof of your contempt for my love. It changes nothing. Why didn’t you come to me Alexander? I know that Leo told that it was urgent, that I was upset… The one time I truly needed you by my side, the one time in all these years that I needed you to hold ‘me’ up, the one time that I finally gave in to my loneliness, admitted my weakness and actually risked you thinking that I was too weak and therefore no longer capable of bearing you up, the only time…why Alexander? If not because what you said in that meeting was true, then why? What kept you from me?” He shuddered and placed his bandaged hands on each side of Alexander’s face. Blue eyes battled with gray for a moment and finally when both had filled with tears the broke the stare. “By the gods I-needed-you.” He finished with a choked sob.

“Wine.” He answered flatly. “Wine and thoughts of only myself and my own problems Hephaistion. Selfishness.”

So that was it Alexander thought. Not so much his tirade in the meeting. Not so much the fact that he’d been shamed before his peers but that Alexander had failed to heed the importance of Hephaistion’s request that he come to him. Alexander knew that he should have read between the lines of the message should have know intuitively that Hephaistion was in trouble if he’d actually asked for him to come but he hadn’t and nothing could reverse that mistake. Nothing.

“Come, Hephaistion. I am going to bath you. I am going to re-bandage your wounds and nurse you until they are healed. I am going to mourn Amyntor with you, at your side for as long as you need me. I will win back your love and trust. I will make this right between us if it takes until the end of time. I ‘will’ Hephaistion. What I will not do though, my Hephaistion, is ask you to or expect you to grant me your forgiveness. Not in this lifetime or the next. I do not deserve it, and I will not accept it. All that I will accept from you is to bask once again in your love and your devotion just as I once did before this grim day. That is all that I will accept. I will wait, Hephaistion. Wait as long as the gods deem it necessary to punish me with the loss of you. I will have your heart and soul as mine again. I give to you my love, I give to you from the depths of my soul all the comfort that I can to help ease your grief at the loss of Amyntor and myself. Now come, you need to soak away yesterday and I need to begin my journey down the long road that will be my path to redemption in this matter. Come.”