Five Loves of Hephaistion Amyntoros
Jun. 17th, 2009 03:06 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
toujours_nigel
Oh, his parents too, of course, and Helike. But Chryse most, Chryse who laughs at him and binds his scrapes and makes him comb and braid her hair and takes him riding, before he can quite manage it on his own and helps him mount his first horse and looks so like their father, all fair skin and profusion of light brown hair and generous, laughing mouth and large, deep-set blue eyes, and listens to all his stories till she is wed and then writes him reams of long letters full of nonsense and sound advice and gives him Xanthos.
***
He was going to grow up and marry her and they were going to have children who were brave and had her dark, curling hair and his eyes (Xanthos had nothing of his father save the eyes). Because she was so pretty and smiled at him and never complained even when he made her follow him around over fences and through thickets, and only cried a little when her palms got skinned. (His mother had a word with his father and a new handmaiden was obtained for Helike: Aelia, said Chrysothemis, was too young, when she really was too old.)
***
Six years younger and more sibling than nephew. Well, cousin, perhaps, because not even her own son can take Chryse’s place and she lives far too far away for him to include Xanthos in anything, and six years seems very large a gap at thirteen, and then there is Alexander. None of which stops Xanthos from coming with them as page when they leave Macedon, or serving in his regiment when he gains it, or fighting endless battles about engineering and troop-movement and diplomacy in-between the actual battles, or being angry on his behalf, or holding him while he dies.
***
For a time, he is the best friend, and awed and proud to be it. They are lovers in others’ eyes for nearly as long as they know each other, and in his. But the fevered lust fades, and the innocence of the early years, and they simply are, and he stops asking himself what it is they are. He loves Alexander because he has always given Alexander what he needs and Alexander needs him, still, because he cannot not and still remain Hephaistion remain Alexander, too. Patroklos loves Akhillos. He loves Alexander. There is no reason. It simply is.
***
He had wanted sons, once, but that had faded—everything had faded, save Alexander—and he had thought, when he thought it, of some girl his mother would choose, and a quiet wedding, and a life lived away from kingly courts. Not this Persian princess who looks him in the eye and shivers beneath him, whose white skin takes so easily the imprint of his hands that he is forever careful, forever tender, who has Aelia’s doe-eyes and Chryse’s laugh and something, even of Alexander’s arrogance and who is his, entirely, as nobody has been, wife and beloved and child.
why, yes, i am on a Hephaistion kick today.
***
He was going to grow up and marry her and they were going to have children who were brave and had her dark, curling hair and his eyes (Xanthos had nothing of his father save the eyes). Because she was so pretty and smiled at him and never complained even when he made her follow him around over fences and through thickets, and only cried a little when her palms got skinned. (His mother had a word with his father and a new handmaiden was obtained for Helike: Aelia, said Chrysothemis, was too young, when she really was too old.)
***
Six years younger and more sibling than nephew. Well, cousin, perhaps, because not even her own son can take Chryse’s place and she lives far too far away for him to include Xanthos in anything, and six years seems very large a gap at thirteen, and then there is Alexander. None of which stops Xanthos from coming with them as page when they leave Macedon, or serving in his regiment when he gains it, or fighting endless battles about engineering and troop-movement and diplomacy in-between the actual battles, or being angry on his behalf, or holding him while he dies.
***
For a time, he is the best friend, and awed and proud to be it. They are lovers in others’ eyes for nearly as long as they know each other, and in his. But the fevered lust fades, and the innocence of the early years, and they simply are, and he stops asking himself what it is they are. He loves Alexander because he has always given Alexander what he needs and Alexander needs him, still, because he cannot not and still remain Hephaistion remain Alexander, too. Patroklos loves Akhillos. He loves Alexander. There is no reason. It simply is.
***
He had wanted sons, once, but that had faded—everything had faded, save Alexander—and he had thought, when he thought it, of some girl his mother would choose, and a quiet wedding, and a life lived away from kingly courts. Not this Persian princess who looks him in the eye and shivers beneath him, whose white skin takes so easily the imprint of his hands that he is forever careful, forever tender, who has Aelia’s doe-eyes and Chryse’s laugh and something, even of Alexander’s arrogance and who is his, entirely, as nobody has been, wife and beloved and child.
why, yes, i am on a Hephaistion kick today.
