Not having noticed the 'death character' warning (yes, despite the uppercase), i have to say Hephaestion's death really took me by surprise. And Alexander life -without Tion- was such a pitiful / sad one that i was secretly hoping for him to die too *-*

But then, here's Hephaestion and the dream explanation, and from that moment everything got more and more better -especially when Ale decided to give up his dream for spending a long happy life with his beloved husband.

Wonderful end!

Dear toobeauty,

This is a very interesting AR tale, although very sorrowful and heart breaking. The Granicus is the same great victory, but *our* Alexander will never be the same afterwards. The Achilles / Patroclos theme shines through very brightly, Alexander's deep mourning puts tears in my eyes. It feels good towards the end that it all was just a nichtmare.

All the best wishes and many thanks for sharing,

/ NorthernLight

Very descriptive... and heartbreaking to read the death and the anguish between them... but then the ending gave hope.. what a beautiful story M... sorry I am way behind on reading A/H stories.. but this was wonderful!

Well, it all fit together, but it wasn't quite as dark as you previewed.

I wonder what word DID exist in the Greek language for two men post-erastes/eromenos? I gather it was an honored "set up" from the way it was in Last of the Wine by Mary Renault.

In that book the two guys just hung together until the end (they "liked" their wives, had kids, but heavens to betsy murgatroyd they never went out but went out together, or maybe because one was sort of the narrator, we were only seeing them together all the time, you know what I mean?)

So I remember reading that some Greek wrote that Alexander destroyed the Temple of Aesclepios (or the Persian equivalent of the god of healing) when his "eromenos" died (and this was a contemporary writing, within 10 years or so).

As the years went by, did the two lovers ALWAYS refer to each other that way; was the dude writing about the destruction of the temple being a jerk because he was an Athenian who did not like Alexander; or was there some other word to describe the relationship? Just asking, I wouldn't even know where to look it up (sexual practices in the ancient world, eeck).

Thanks for the story.

Eva

Aw pobre Alex se ha de sentir horrible soñar eso tan seguido!