A Hypothesis of Madness

Beta: Beth (a transcendent genius), avhn (an angel among mortals)

Disclaimer: Don't own the Iliad, Troy or their affliates.
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::A Hypothesis of Madness::


*~Paris~*


‘What is your purpose here, brother?’

For all the reasons men amass armies and slay each other (greed, glory, honor, pride), Hector cannot help but think that the delicately barbed chains of deathless Love bring the most suffering. Love has seen to the slaughter of his countrymen; brothers, cousins, friends and more. For the love of one he doomed another on a scale of harsh equality. To keep one another had to be sacrificed; the scales balance.

‘Hector, what is the meaning—’

The dark effervescence that rose within his body at every casual brush of flesh on flesh subsumed the devotion every son of Troy feels for his mother-city. When the divinely gifted—or so the sweet voice proclaimed with casual authority—Paris returned from his visit to the city of Sparta with a wife he had not possessed upon his departure from Troy, Hector allowed the madness of his own treacherous emotions to rule him. Only this youth of wild sable curls and sparkling eyes could ever induce the noble warrior to forsake his city. For one exquisite kiss he would tear out his own still-beating heart.

Now, however, he has finally reached a compromise between Troy and his brother. He has finally taken a course of action to free both loves from the bonds strangling them slowly.

‘Stop this! Are you mad?’

Gently he smoothes back Paris’ sweat-dampened hair with a steady hand and flexes his fingers resting above the youth’s heart. Beneath his fingertips the steady pulse of the organ reassures him of his brother’s continued life. An unnerving pallor lingers just beneath the sun-color of his skin, like alabaster seen through a fine powder of gold. Hector holds the insensible form closer and wills his strength to flow between the barrier of flesh and muscle to flush the young prince with his usual vitality.

‘Please, don’t! Please!’

“Will you forgive me, brother-mine? Will you hate me?” he wonders aloud to deaf ears. Paris’ face, relaxed in the manner only achieved by the unconscious, has already begun to lose that preternatural beauty gifted to him by Aphrodite. Small imperfections and scars mark the youth’s once flawless body. The traumas of an active childhood raise pale, uneven lines upon kneecaps and hands. Hector places a soft kiss upon a scar just revealed upon his brother’s right temple. Paris is still uncommonly beautiful, but now in the way of mere mortals.

‘No! Hector—’

For Troy and for Paris he has removed the source of the Goddess’ hold upon the youth. He has severed their connection forever.

The stench of burnt hair and flesh no longer fills the eldest prince of Troy with dazed nausea. The primal odors of blood, urine and fear comfort him for they are scents worn by men of various levels of courage upon the battlefield. He does not even mind that he rests upon fur coverings matted with the spilled fluids of his beloved younger brother. War has dutifully prepared him for all manner of atrocities, whether by his own hand or that of the enemy.

‘Please, brother!’

Resolutely Hector lowers his eyes from Paris’ sweet face and follows the lax lines of his brother’s body to the mutilation his decision has wrought. The mute slave performed his task with delicate precision despite the screams and thrashing of the restrained youth. The cauterized flesh, carefully cleaned and covered in salve, between Paris’ elegant thighs breathes horror into the warrior, but he will not flinch from what he has brought about. This is for Troy, to stop the Grecians from pounding her buildings to dust and massacring her children; this is for Paris, to break the poisoned hold that women have over the very core of his being.

‘Please…’

Helen will come when the slave delivers the fragrant wood box containing the severed genitalia and the message stating that her marriage to Paris has been annulled. A woman can only bond herself to a man, and Hector has ensured that his brother can never fulfill the duty of a one. The stolen Spartan queen will not understand that Hector did this out of love and not spite. She will be returned to her first husband with her entourage and the gold Paris took as a bride price. Paris is no longer hers.

‘No…’

No, it is now Hector who will tend to the youth, despite the chastisement their father will issue and the grief of their mother. Paris will need no other protector and no other comfort.

Guilt and resolution battle within his slowly hemorrhaging heart. He never desired to cause such pain in his brother, not even when the youth reached into untold depths of exasperating conceit. His shrill screams still echo through the cavity of Hector’s mind and the sight of the blade slicing into his brother’s tender flesh will not evanesce. What he has done was not easy but necessary, like so many other aspects of war.

With utmost tenderness he tilts Paris’ head up and presses a loving kiss upon the slack lips. For a moment he imagines that there is a response—an invitation. He imagines that everything that has transpired so far is neither a violation nor a vile trespass; and slips his tongue into his brother’s mouth.


*~Helen~*


‘What have you done?’

Hector cannot blame Helen for the venomous accusations she threw upon his shoulders upon receiving the evidence of the invalidity of her marriage to Paris. He does not hate the woman, even though she is the one to whom his brother finally offered his guarded love. The slight arrogance hiding in the corners of her mouth and flowing in the curve of her spine is warranted; she truly is a goddess among mortal women. This Hector does not deny. He even forgives the adoration his brother lavishes upon her for there is evidence in the way her sharp blue eyes soften upon spying him that speaks of returned affection. If only this woman, knowledgeable in the power of her own beauty, had not been not married…

‘Paris, is it…is it true?’

With a horrible scream Paris awoke not too long after Hector moved them from the soiled bed to the pillow strewn bench upon the balcony. Then the youth subsided into an almost palpable shell of silence and has since maintained it. Nothing Hector does coaxes the sweet voice to author words. Even the stormy arrival of his wife and wild diatribe have failed to rouse him to speech. With glassy eyes he continues to make a mockery of living, but he is alive and has not thrown off Hector’s protective embrace.

‘How could you do this to your own brother?’

Helen does not understand what effort of will it cost Hector to be the cause of such injury to his younger brother. The most profound essence of his being rebelled against the necessary violence, yet he overruled it with the righteousness of his devotion to Troy. He was the one who held Paris down for the slave’s knife; he was the one who wept for the youth when the cauterization pushed him into unconsciousness. Again and again cruel, heartless Love mocks his struggles, but now he has mauled Her, tamed Her to his will. Paris will never again meet suffering by Her cold hand.

‘You are mad!’

“She is going back, brother-mine,” he whispers into the soft curls tickling his face. He shifts the nude body upon his lap and strokes calloused palms down the womanly soft arms. “And you will remain here—with me, with Troy.” The orders have been given and preparations made. All reminders of Paris’ beautiful wife will be gone by the following day, and the Grecians will leave the sand with their hard won prize. Will his people revile him for giving up what they have let themselves die over for so many years? Will the Gods, all of whom seem so bent on this conflict, curse him and shatter his plans until the soil retains so much blood that a thousand years will not see it cleansed?

‘Others shall know and they will hate you!’

If only Paris would speak, say anything, even hurl recriminations, then doubts would not set root in Hector’s mind. He saw the path to this moment so clearly before, but blood and tears now obscure the route beyond. He is blind in the manner that only one who once had sight can fully understand. The beacons of his two great loves still shine forth, but he can only feel their transient warmth and not see their guiding glow.

“Do you forgive me, Paris? Do you hate me?” The youth continues to deny him the solace of his voice, and Hector despairs.


*~Andromache~*


‘There must have been some other way, my lord.’

The Grecians have left the dirtied shores of Troy after declaring their triumph with clamorous celebrations. Troy, ancient Illium, dwells in a haze of confusion. She does not know why the beauteous treasure, the stolen pearl of Sparta, has been returned. She seeks answers only to find inchoate surmises and disparate hypotheses. Slowly, though, Troy turns her great mind to other matters and settles down into the banal practices of peace. The truth in its gruesome entirety only fills the mind of a select few. Even the gentle-hearted mother of Paris does not know why her son freed his prize; though, if she were to, no doubt the madness that courses through her lineage would be made known.

‘I cannot understand this cruelty.’

Priam knows that one of his sons has been unmanned and he knows for what reason. The rage he thundered down upon Hector left the warrior shaken and pale, but he offered no apology. If the king had not loved his eldest less, he no doubt would have taken violent recompense for the wrong done to one of his youngest. However, mercy stayed his hand, as well as the knowledge that he has already lost too many of his blood to the cruelties of the War. Hector finds himself more than willing to offer his body up for whatever punishment his father sees fit, if only to give Paris back his stolen voice. Perhaps Priam believes his eldest child’s suffering is sufficient.

‘You would harm your own blood for this city…’

Andromache knows; there is no way that she could not. The young prince shares their apartments. He is a silent ghost languishing wherever Hector places him. A living statue, warm to touch but unresponsive and indifferent to the entreaties poured into his ears. Andromache has come to hate the youth’s silent presence, though not the prince himself, and has told Hector as much. However, the warrior refuses to relinquish his brother into the care of others, save the mute slave when he himself is unable to tend to Paris. Hector would beg the forgiveness of the rest of the world, of his wife and neglected son, of grieving father and returned bride, but the only true forgiveness that can assuage the crawling death beneath his flesh waits in the silence of his charge—and even then he does not know if it exists.

‘Did some madness seize you?’

Hector sighs and runs his fingertips over the ribs beginning to show just beneath Paris’ soft skin. The youth refuses all food and drink unless placed directly upon his tongue. It has now been a year; a year of this horrible silence and stillness. For all that Paris is slowly wasting away, he is a sight almost too lovely to look upon. The favor of deathless love has left, yet something new, something glowing and pure burns just below his skin. Perhaps Hector is watching death manifest itself in a mortal form, or perhaps this is the true Paris burning through the old.

“Do you forgive me, brother-mine? Do you hate me?” he whispers against the softly parted lips. He lets one hand tangle in Paris’ dark locks while the other strokes against the rough scars at the apex of the youth’s spread thighs. Even this gains no reaction.

‘Would you even sacrifice our son?’

“Come back to me. Let me hear your voice.” Hector closes his eyes against the empty stare and pushes his tongue into the moist warmth of Paris’ mouth. Carefully he slides his hand past the scar tissue and down to the cleft of the younger prince’s buttocks. Groaning gently into his brother’s mouth, Hector pushes one finger past the guardian ring of muscle. There is such heat inside Paris and it burns bright enough to bring Hector a moment’s respite.


*~Hector~*

‘Do you forgive me? Do you hate me?’

A strange vision awakens Hector this night that is painted with the phosphorescence of false dawn. Only the weight upon his chest assures him that this is no dream, however uncanny. The figure crouching above him with wild sable curls and sparkling eyes is his brother, his Paris. A familiar smile full of confidence and certitude curls his lips. Placing two fingers upon Hector’s lips to silence him, Paris grasps something he has placed upon the bed.

“Yes,” he answers, and holds up an all too familiar blade.