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 General’s 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.


Thanks: To everyone who awaits updates to this tale and all who provide encouragement. I thought that this chapter would lean toward a conclusion but it seems instead to have opened up the thing to more stuff…we’ll just have to see where it goes. Do not despair. Leave that to me….

Chapter Four

The Shame of Silence and the Pain of Loss


“I don’t know what to do for him Nearchus, he is so lost it seems. I would have never thought that Amyntor’s death would effect him so strongly.” Alexander said morosely as the two men watched Hephaistion make his way across the terraced area to the temple for the third time that day.

“Alexander, we all grieve the loss of our fathers. Hephaistion and his father were extremely close though. Think on it a moment. The rest of us most of our lives were spent apart from our fathers. Mine was nearly always away on some campaign or another, yours was always busy with running the country, Ptolemy and Cassander as well our fathers were always away. We grew up with the expectation of never seeing them again each time that they left us. But Hephaistion, he never had that fear of loss, the fear of loosing his father. Amyntor had already been retired when he was just a very small boy. You know as well as I do that Amyntor raised him alone and they spent every moment that they could together. Don’t you recall how he moped for months after coming to Mieza. Had he not fallen into your heart I don’t think anything would have cheered him up. He missed Amyntor. I think that in a way you replaced him. It was just them just as now it is always just the two of you.. He loved his father as much as he loves you I think, so his grief is deep and filled with regret and guilt at not having been at Amyntor’s side. Hephaistion does nothing in small bits Alexander, and that applies to how he loves as well. Also to how he grieves.”

“Yes, then I deny him my comfort and call him out in front of his peers. By the gods I have made royal mess of all this.”

“It true that he prays a lot these last few weeks, its never been like him to truly indulge the gods. He is devout but three and four times a day he off to the temple, what is he seeking Alexander?”

The king shook his head. He had no idea what Hephaistion sought at the temple. While Alexander always paid his tribute to his gods Hephaistion was often negligent in the practice. Now the man had suddenly found some solace or peace in the temple. “Nearchus if only I knew, if only I knew.”

“Follow him and see what he prays for Alexander.”

“Maybe, maybe. I just feel so lost with out him at my side in council and at diner and…well anytime. It’s bad enough when I send him off on a mission, I drive myself crazy with worry that he’ll disappear but this…to have him right in front of me, to feel his pain and not know how to ease it because all the tools I once had to do that have been taken from me. He knows the words to bring cities peacefully to my feet in surrender but by the gods I do not have the words to bring a simple peace between us. Oh if only I could ask his advice in solving my problem I know that he would set me straight.”

“Ask him then. What do you have to loose? Maybe Alexander it is a simple as that. Seek out his advice just as would normally do when you are troubled.” Nearchus yawned as he finished speaking and stood up stretching his stiff back. “By the gods Alexander I truly do hate horses and mountains! You need to get me back on a ship and out on the water again soon or I will be asking the gods for a new spine.”

Alexander stood with him and frowned, they said their goodbyes, embraced. Nearchus heading off to meet his lifelong companion and lover Nicco and Alexander, without further thought, headed off straight toward the temple. What, after all, did he have to loose. He wanted to heal the rift between them before the wedding and it was fast approaching; only six days away. Maybe the temple would offer enough peace that Hephaistion would open up to him.

Alexander entered the cool, dry darkness of the small temple that had been quickly constructed on the grounds of the Sodium complex. He found it slightly ironic that it had been Hephaistion’s assignment to oversee it’s construction. Now it seemed as though the grieving man lived in the dimly lit building. Hephaistion was sitting, as he’d always had a wont to do, cross legged in front of the deity wrapped in his favorite cloak, rocking gently. Alexander warmed at the sight; it was the cloak that he had given him, he knew Hephaistion wore it to keep him close or when he sought comfort. Alexander could barley hear his whispered prayers as he approached silently; waving off the priests and attendants with a warning of silence as he went. They all quietly slipped from the alter room giving the two men the privacy Alexander sought. With a silent sigh and a prayer of his own he approached the only person in the world he’d truly ever loved.

Hephaistion was so enrapt in his praying that he did not hear Alexander step up behind him. He started and spun his head round to face the intruder as Alexander placed his hand gently on Hephaistion’s slumped shoulder.

“Shh.” Alexander whispered placing a finger on his lips. “Shh.”

Hephaistion looked up at him his blue eyes full of questions, and also a hint of reproach for having been interrupted during a private moment. He silently scolded himself at the glare, when had there ever been anything ‘private’ between them. Alexander sat down cross legged as well, shoulder to shoulder, knee to knee beside the hunched shell of a man that was his friend. Hephaistion leaned away from him but could not deny the goose bumps that had riffled down his spine at Alexander touch.

After long moments passed in silence Alexander finally found the courage to speak. It had been easier to attack Darius at Gaugamela he thought to himself. Love, how could it incite such fear?

“Three times today. Five yesterday.”

“You are spying on me Alexander?” Hephaistion replied, stretching a bit but wary of touching Alexander.

“No, not really, Hephaistion. I…I just caught a glimpse of you headed this way. Well, and yes, I suppose I’ve heard it told that you are coming here quite often.”

More silence. Off in a corner a rat scurried and Alexander saw Hephaistion flinch and pull his cloak tighter around his bent shoulders. He knew that Hephaistion feared a rat more than he feared an entire battalion of Persians.

“Its run off. It’s ok now. Relax.” Alexander offered. He wished he knew the reason for his friend’s unnatural terror of the little beasts, he’d fight a lion empty handed before he stood before a rat. It made no sense to Alexander, he’d cared nothing about them when they were youths. They’d hunted and caught them for sport. Then, out of nowhere, the new terror appeared. Alexander first observed it after returning from his exile for attacking Attalus. Hephaistion had been kept behind by Philip as a punishment to Alexander. Hephaistion’s sleep had been plagued with horrible nightmares of the little creatures; waking Alexander nightly. It baffled and amused the other companions, and now Hephaistion and not the rats made for good sport; how many battles had Hephaistion waged over his outrageous and unexplainable fear of the rodents? Yet he still came to pray, sitting cross legged on the floor exposed to the animals attack.

“This isn’t like you.” Alexander said in a hushed voice not wanting to stir the calming silence, not wanting to breech the soothing effect that the darkness and solitude of the chamber.

“What Alexander? Praying or fearing rats?”

‘Stubborn fool’, Alexander thought to himself, stubborn fool. He’d deny himself water and food and beg for his death if it meant giving an inch. Only Bucephelus was more thick headed.

“I…” They hadn’t spoken in three weeks and the silence was difficult to breech. “What is it that you are asking for, praying for, secluding yourself for weeks now, in this darkness for. Hephaistion you will fade away, you…”

“It is the silence Alexander.”

“The silence?”

“I only ask to hear it…hear it just one more time, so that I can…can stamp it into my memory. I thought that in this silence…I keep trying but…”

Alexander watched Hephaistion’s shoulders rise and fall as a long sigh escaped his lips.

“Hear what my friend?” He placed his hand on Hephaistion’s knee and squeezed it gently. “Hear what?”

Hephaistion began to shake, his shoulders bowing beneath some burden unknown to Alexander. “His…his voice. His voice. It’s gone from my head. It has fled Alexander…oh, by the gods what crime have I done to be punished so…what deed can I do that will grant me forgiveness and return the sound of it to my memory. Alexander…my father!”

He turned then to face Alexander getting on his knees, tears streaming down his pale, stubble coarsened cheeks. Alexander shuddered at the site of him. Hephaistion was completely exhausted. He cursed himself for keeping his distance these past few weeks, and watching only from afar. Dark circles framed Hephaistion’s blue eyes. Blue eyes that even during the harshest of tests had still sparkled with a glad and vibrant light. They were lifeless now, dull, and the dark of the temple had robbed his skin of the sun’s healthy color. Those once flashing eyes were now full of pain and grief and confusion. Full of guilt and an anguish so unspeakable that Alexander instantly choked and only with an enormous effort held back his own tears, at least for just then until he could calm Hephaistion then he knew they could sob together, but for now…

“He is ‘completely’ lost to me! I’d not noticed until he was gone and now, and now…I try to hear him in my head…” he grasped first at Alexander’s hands, weakly with his still healing ones, released them and then pressed the startled King’s face between his palms. Staring into Alexander’s eyes as if trying to extract some answer from him. He continued on his voice frantic and shaky. “I can’t hear my father’s voice any longer. I cannot recall the sound of his laugh, can’t…hear…him…Alexander. I Pray. I pray and pray and pray and plead to be able to, just one time more in this silence to hear him again! And by all that I can offer I swear, I swear Alexander that I will never let it slip from my memory again. Alexander what have I done to deserve this pain? Grant me just this one thing my Great King just this…What have I done? I’d cut my own tongue from my head to be given just one last chance to hear him say he loved me to hear him…call me his Fierce Little Colt. Alexander!” Hephaistion moaned in his despair. What he said next though, crushed Alexander’s pride and destroyed the great myth he’d been living. Hephaistion again took Alexander’s hands in his and bowed his head to the floor of the temple in complete supplication to his King. “You are the son of Zeus-Ammon; are you not Alexander? By the judgment of Siwah? You, you told me so… I beg of you my King… I beg you… please grant me this if you truly are a god’s son… grant me this one gift.”

Alexander was at a complete loss. He knew that he could not grant his beloved’s request and deep in his heart he knew he was no son of a god. He wished it and he craved it and it kept an Army of followers at his feet wielding their might at his asking but this, this was beyond any gift he could grant. There was no possible way to grant Hephaistion’s prayer no way to give him back his father’s voice. Alexander grieved then for the loss of his dream and for the loss of courage and confidence. So it was in fact all just tales and fables, just myth and the magic of words. His spirit was broken and his soul crushed. His hands and heart tied by the doom all men who think themselves great and divine suffer; the inevitable plunge back down from the lofty heights of godhood and into the grim pit of reality. The sound of Hephaistion’s voice brought him back to the now.

He was still prostrated and his weary voice was muffled. “Alexander, is it because I doubted your love that day in the meeting, my words were in anger, I doubted you my King, my Achilles my, lover my…is that… I never meant to truly cut you from my heart. There is no blade sharp enough…”

Alexander placed his hands on Hephaistion’s trembling shoulders and raised him up. The man was a wreck; weeks of grieving in solitude and loneliness had eroded the very fabric of the proud warrior’s demeanor. He was but a shadow of himself. Pushing aside the pain tearing apart his own chest Alexander sought only to comfort Hephaistion. He took his beloved’s face in his hands and spoke his heart with tears streaming down his cheeks.

“Hephaistion, Hephaistion my dearest friend and beloved Hephaistion; he is here,” Alexander placed his right hand over the trembling man’s heart, “he is and always will be here, ‘my’ Fiercest of Stallions. You are a colt no longer. We have both now tasted the true and bitter draught called death and we both will be stronger for it. Bear up now, mighty Hephaistion, bear up beneath this burden. Come now and see reason through your grief. I would never willingly leave your heart, cut from it or not. That day was folly and the fault all mine.

Every time, Hephaistion, that you gentle a horse, every time you calm a foaling mare, every time you weep over the death of some mount that you’ve trained or loved, every time you smile and beam at the sweetness of an apple or scorn and rant endlessly about the crookedness of a row of Persian pear trees, or voice your joy at just sitting and watching the sun set and when you smile at the giggles of children, ruffle their hair and school them in the ways of horses and orchards…oh but mostly my Phaistion when you love me; because he taught that which my father never taught his son. How to love. How to trust enough to just love with all that’s in your heart. When you set my soul at ease or send me into rapture with your touches, all these things these skills and devices and quirks. You do realize, Hephaistion, that only you in this entire army can argue at length and with absolute conviction about the proper sweetness of a proper apple…it is in them, these joys and dreams and arguments that the voice of your father speaks Hephaistion. He is not lost to you…he is not. He is not, my beloved and he never will be. It was his gentle and unconditional love for his Fierce Little Colt that taught the Stallion how to love and I am the recipient of that teaching; of that very love. So often, as now, undeservedly so. He is with you, with us still, Hephaistion. I am sorry. No, sorry doesn’t have enough merit… Hephaistion please, please let me be here for you…you wither away before my eyes…Hephaistion what would you have me do to earn your love again?”

Hephaistion was simply too exhausted to fight against it. He needed Alexander, had needed his strength for weeks now but stubborness and anger had kept him away. His chest burned and his mind still reeled at the memory of Alexander’s words that day but his body…his body fell forward into Alexander’s arms he had little choice in the act. Alexander pulled him tightly to his chest and crushed him into himself with all the strength he could. Hephaistion sobbed, he sobbed for the loss of Amyntor and of Alexander and of youth and life. He shook and trembled under the long over due onslaught of emotions but Alexander held him tight, trying to squeeze the desperation and grief from his body; like wringing dirty water from a sponge.

Long after the sun had set and the dinner hour had passed Alexander was awoken from his sleep in a very uncomfortable chair at Hephaistion’s bedside with the feather touch of a kiss on his lips. He opened his eyes and found Hephaistion kneeling on the floor between his splayed knees. He sat up straighter and rubbed the sleep from his tear weary eyes. He’d cried for what seemed an endless time after Hephaistion had finally fallen asleep, at last succumbing himself to his fatigue. He had practically carried the distraught and exhausted man from the temple and then had put him to bed. After running his fingers through his hair and over his face, Alexander furrowed his brow and stared the man kneeling before him in sleepy confusion.

Hephaistion reach up and took Alexander’s face in his hands, pulled him down just a bit and kissed him again but roughly this time, biting Alexander’s lip. His face showed no joy or pleasure in the act only a certain seriousness, a sort of matter of fact-ness. It worried Alexander and he pulled away breaking the kiss off.

“I…want…you…Alexander.” Hephaistion’s voice was hoarse and demandining. Devoid of the love and tenderness usually present when they joined with one another. “Now.” It was a hollow demand, a demand from some other person but certainally not his Hephaistion.

Alexander studied the blank face before him and tried, with a general’s mind to gauge the threat that he was confronted with. ‘Now’. That was not like Hephaistion, nor was the crass demand. What game then was being played here.

“Heph…”

“Now!” Was all he received in response. “Now, Alexander. You and me, now. I want you now.” Hephaistion was trembling, his breath coming in heaving gasps. Like a horse before the charge, Alexander thought. His emotions bunched in a tight, tense and vibrating knot ready to pounce, ready to pound into submission anything in his path.

Hephaistion stood and pulled a still stunned Alexander roughly toward the large bed. He let himself be dragged along and then pushed roughly down onto the soft furs.

“Hephaistion.”

“Shut up! Do not speak Alexander! Just do not! I want you. Want you now! Need…”

Hephaistion took Alexander. Silently, emotionlessly, without care or love or concern. Without any preparation. He tried to drive the memory of Alexander’s cruel words at the meeting from his mind with every vicious thrust of his hips. Missing was the gentleness of his touch, missing were the soft whispers and caresses that usually defined their coupling. There was none of that. Just the brutish encounter of one man and another. As if they were desperate strangers fucking in some filth strewn alley, simply rutting for the sake of the act, for release. Hephaistion bit him and scratched him, clawing incessantly at his flesh as though Alexander was going to vanish, or be torn from his grasp. Alexander was reminded, in a grim flash of memory, of his father. Philip’s animalistic treatment of his partners had always sickened Alexander and now…

Finished, Hephaistion collapsed, drenched in sweat, onto Alexander’s chest. He was completely spent now that the fear, fury and need that had woken him from his sleep had been satiated. He had nothing left. Nothing. Three words swam listlessly across his waning consciousness. Words he’d promised to say, planned to say, prepared himself to say as he’d dragged himself from the remnants of the nightmare that had fueled his rage; ‘Alexander, get out!’ but not having the strength to utter them he just stayed where he was, a limp, numb empty heap of a man stretched out across Alexander’s broad, heaving chest. Sleep found him quickly and all Alexander could do was try to make himself comfortable beneath Hephaistion’s weight and hope that sleep would also find him and give him some respite from the nightmare that being awake had become.