Something Broken, Something Blue

Disclaimer: Troy, the Iliad, et al belong to other people and not myself, so no money made, alas.

::Something Broken, Something Blue::


The glorious sun-chariot is a fiery ingot in the scorched blue sky. Before a sagging hut dappled in wavering brilliance from the sheltering, aromatic shade trees the old shepherd looks down the sward to find a figure on horseback approaching. With hands little more than gnarled fists, he sets aside the task he has been attempting and stands as much as his twisted spine allows. Flash-fire effulgence burns across a distinctive emblem set upon the stranger’s round shield and the old man’s heart quells. Though companioned only by his mount, the hard-riding prince of Troy brings an army of wrath and rage. A chill shakes Agelaus’ brittle bones and he offers silent prayers to the ever-knowing gods for protection. Dark tidings dog the prince’s coming.

“Are you Agelaus?” the doughty general demands upon halting before the cowering peasant.

Father of a child not his own, the old man nods. “I am he, my lord. I—”

“Send the boy out.” Prince Hector’s tone is implacable. Agelaus bows as low as bent back permits. There is no need to ask whom the mighty warrior seeks with such disgusted fervor. There can only be one.

One boy, one wayward flame of breathless prophecy.

Hector watches the warped figure hobble into the hut and dismounts from the stallion’s bare back. A stinging runnel of sweat slides down his face. Angrily he wipes it away, silently cursing the sultry weather of this season. No discussion breaks the drone of insects hidden in the branches above and in the undergrowth below. All is silence within the stifling confines of the dilapidated residence. Several moments creep by and the prince’s fraying rein upon his temper falls further towards ruin.

Then a figure, bared to the waist, skin of illumined gold, breaks through the darkness of the domicile’s entrance and pauses there. Eyes dark as fresh turned earth and wood-smoke meet Hector’s and offer a proud defiance that sets a conflagration in the general’s royal blood.

“What is your desire here, my lord prince,” the slender youth inquires with chilled deference.

“The sovereign of Troy demands your immediate return, Paris,” Hector bites out. Impudent puppy, false prince, he thinks with savage dissatisfaction in his own troubled mind. His fists itch to lash out and crush those elegant cheekbones into splinters of bone and hunks of flesh, wreak havoc upon the svelte creature’s perfect countenance. How dare this guardian of legged mutton seek to claim the greatness of Hector’s lineage? How dare he succeed and then vanish without reason or explanation? Even now the proud queen languishes in a delirium of anguished sorrow over this callow usurper of a lost child’s name.

“You may gently inform his royal glory that I remain here of my own design and desire.”

“Unacceptable.”

Paris’ lilting laugh breaks upon the older man’s ears in jagged, angry shards. Heedless of the palpable menace mantling the warrior, the youth swaggers forward with sinuous grace. A few steps away he stops and smiles bitterly—beautifully.

“Perforce you must learn acceptability for I refuse to return to that viper’s nest.”

“How dare you speak ill of Troy.”

A vision of bronze and blood fills Hector’s mind: his sword, glowing in the adust bars of sunlight piercing the tree boughs, thick rivulets of Paris’ heart-blood sliding down, slicking Hector’s hands, which are clenched upon the hilt. He can tear into this horrible, obstinate, lovely, exquisite, devastating child, teach him manners in sanguine violence.

“I will speak of it the same as has been spoken of my person,” is the youth’s cold retort. “I have encountered nothing but cruelty since I first arrived. After besting the greatest athletes at the games, I am chased, unarmed, by one particularly surly prince for having won. Then a mad princess announces that I am the lost son of the king, and I am then subjected to contrary whispers and rumors that I am nothing more than a peasant seeking above my estate, especially by you, my vociferous lord. Then my poor, aged foster father arrives bearing the remnants of my swaddling clothes and, behold, the royal insignia can be quite clearly seen.” The youth pauses, eyes glowing with shards of lightning-flash. Hector finds his retort curdled and thick upon the back of his tongue in the face of Paris’ vicious accusations.

“And, finally, one would assume that all would be well, that no more spiteful words would swarm about my tender ears. Not so, brave general, not so in the slightest. Now the whispers mention ruin and the cursed brand that will set the beloved city ablaze.

“I have my pride, and it will not allow such lack of liberal sentiments for long. I have tried to be the proper son and prince, and found myself in want of success. Now I am exhausted. Leave me to my poverty. At least here I do not have to deal with the likes of you.”

“You have no pride. You only have Troy.”

“I care nothing for Her!”

The crack of flesh upon flesh startles nature into shocked silence. The youth cries out as he is dashed to the ground under the heavy blow of the warrior. Such a rage chokes Hector and spills a harsh metallic taste across his tongue that he can only stand with stinging palm and harsh breath above the downed Paris, who holds a protective hand over his assaulted cheek.

Incredulity festers in the youth’s eyes as he lowers his hand and stares up at the giant of a man towering over him. Upon his cheek the flower of Hector’s rage blooms in deepest crimson. A crawling, repulsive satisfaction squirms into Hector’s stomach as a tracery of fear catches Paris’ breath in a small, choked noise. Yes, the spiteful creature should always have that stunned-victim-look. Tears of new-sprung pain should always hang in crystal droplets from his lashes. This is the lesson life should have burned into his smooth, flawless flesh, Hector thinks with the barest evidence of a smirk.

“Stand up, boy. We leave.”

Hector turns to gather his mount when the youth’s unbending “no” punches into his ears. A crimson flood downs his vision as if hot blood has been poured into the sockets of his eyes. The enraged thunder of his heart roars in his ears and roots painfully in his temples. Like an aged, weathered wall battered beneath the tenacious surge of the ocean, Hector’s faltering control crumbles beneath the onslaught of his temper. Between one moment and the next he finds himself astride the youth’s struggling body. One hand is clenched upon a slender throat while the other keeps his balance upon the ground.

Paris’ elegant fingers claw at his arms and scratch bleeding furrows where the leather of Hector’s vambraces do not protect. However, the general only feels the brutal, tearing pulse of his own blood swelling his veins to bursting and the burning trails of sweat snaking down his face. Beneath a shroud of red the youth’s face devours his sight. Skin flushed deeply with want of air, eyes brightly lit with terror, the boy-creature is more beautiful than he has any right to be. His lips are kissed by divine reverence even as they part upon a choked scream. Alluring as danger and ineluctable as the carefully spun thread of a man’s life, Paris is a force of visual ecstasy not to be denied. He is the terrible power of unknown change and willing stagnation.

A shout from the hut rudely intrudes upon the delicious song of Paris’ raw cries, and Hector, still in thrall to the turpitude of spirit he has spent so many years binding in adamantine chains, snarls at the old shepherd and orders him to retreat. This dealing is beyond the realm of the wretched man’s apprehension.

“Please, my lord,” Agelaus pleads, but the fear of royal reprisal chases his devotion to foster family, whimpering and weeping, into a tiny corner of his heart. His absence becomes a screaming void of silence that feeds the madness clamoring in the general’s ears. The world is mad, and he the only sane one amongst the crazed cacophony.

Empires fall before Hector’s eyes, flames curling below low-hanging clouds of sulfurous hue—hot, scorched—and their destruction follows the wild roll of Paris’ eyes. Bereft of strength—perhaps of life?—the youth’s arms fall to the ground and his desperate undulations still. Hector’s hand releases its grip and slides down to rest upon Paris’ clavicle. His mark glows in deeply purple-red pigments upon the youth’s throat—each fingerprint a deeply impressed pearl of imperial purple laced with crimson.

Prophecy’s bewitched and bewitching child has fallen, finally, under Hector’s power.

And the rage transmutes, flowing in thick, metallic bursts into his cock. In this blindingly barbaric moment Hector discovers what many before him already have: all men unfettered by ill-formed moral precedents know that power is the truest of all aphrodisiacs, and those that will deny it deny the very core of their own humanity.

The youth issues a hacking cough and attempts to curl in upon himself. His life still flutters weakly within his wrenchingly beautiful shell. Helpless, a broken child’s toy at long last.

An inchoate protest bleeds from Paris’ flushed lips as Hector’s strong hands travel down his chest. Driven by an ineluctable need to fully inculcate his dominance, to wreck this creature beyond repair, Hector shifts his weight from the youth’s supine form to kneel between restlessly moving legs. Coughing harshly, slim hands clenching and unclenching in his attempts to crawl away, Paris offers no real resistance to the great warrior’s intended transgression.

The skin beneath Hector’s calloused fingers is as smooth as the expensive cloth imported from the Ancient East, a sweet winter-gold. With implacable strength he forces the sculpted thighs further apart till the defeated youth is wholly open, the crude cloth of the khiton bunching at the boy's slim waist and drawing attention to the state of his vulnerability. For a moment, when Hector's gaze tracks back to Paris’ pained face, his eyes catch in the fury pulsing in the young shepherd’s dark eyes and the glistening tears cutting across his flushed face. Then Hector must look away to maintain his ideal of control, to defy the tatters of resistance still flaring in the youth’s eyes, and, instead, he seeks out the receptacle for his own rampant acrimony—leaking, hard, too eager.

Flesh parts, rends, tears, bleeds for him as he strains to break the last of the boy’s defenses. Then there is—oh—heat and clenching tightness as the body ripe with desecration attempts to expel his invasion. A broken, angry ululation of denial pours from the youth's lips as he renews his struggles against the assault, but Hector will have none of it and ruthlessly continues to delve the tightness jealously holding him.

This will show the creature. This will teach him.


~End~