The Morning After

The morning after I died, my ghost, my spirit, my soul -- whatever you wish to call it -- sat on the gates leading into Babylon. Hephaestion was there with me and it had rained the night before, the morning I imagine was chill, but when you're dead, you can't feel things like that. You notice the dew on blades of grass, how some soldiers are having a problem getting their blades out of the sheath, how it catches on spider webs out in the field and leaves them looking crystalline.

Especially when the sun breaks over the horizon, orange gold and sickeningly fat. Hephaestion felt warm beside me, though it wasn't heat, you can't feel that, all you can feel is the presence of someone beside you.

We stood there in silence, taking one last glimpse at the sunrise, one last glimpse at the land that I had fought to have and control, the empire which I had built, and then we walked into the sun.

Words:167
Muse: Alexander the Great (post takes place after his death)
Fandom: Historical Real Person

If you could change one aspect of your society, what would it be?

I would change so many things, but the first of those would be the hate they show for other cultures. Always with disrespect, always with hatred, even when those cultures are far older than our own. I would change that first, let them see the beauty of another culture, take what we like of it and add it to our own. If they have lasted this long, they surely must be doing something correct.

That which is shoddy does not become the strongest nation in the world and maintain that place for years on end.

Take Persia... For years we have lived in their shadow as a great kingdom, yet my Companions, my countrymen, look down on them as if they are only frogs and something so far beneath us that they aren't even worth mentioning.

They are as worthy of my respect as my countrymen are.

I wish they could see that.

Words: 153
Muse: Alexander the Great
Fandom: Historical RPF

What do your ancestors mean to you?

Everything.

I grew up with stories of my ancestors, right along with the stories of the Gods and Goddesses and the Titans. At first they were stories of Philip and what he was doing to expand the Macedonian empire, followed by stories of Achilles and Patroclus (which later provided a bit more inspiration than I believe was intended, especially after Hephaestion and I ran naked through their tomb, amongst other things).

After Siwa, the stories of the Gods and Goddesses became the legends of my ancestors, with Zeus-Amon seated at the head. Everything I'd learned as a child suddenly had some reference to me, some deep reference that drove everyone and myself half crazy.

Now it means that I will tell my children the same stories that were told to me as a boy, but I will add to them the story of myself and Hephaestion. They'll know the truth from me, even if they are the only ones outside of myself and Hephaestion that do. They have earned it.

Word Count: 170
Muse: Alexander the Great
Fandom: Historical RP

Tell the truth about something you usually lie about.

That I was happy to go back to Babylon after my failure in India. That I wanted to go home at all. The truth was, my men needed to go home and to see their families, to spend out the rest of their lives in Macedonia or Babylon or Alexandria or whatever place they chose to make their family at. They needed that and I did not have it in my heart to keep them fighting. A commander can ask no more of his men than he asks of himself, but they were unhappy with all that I asked. I led them as far as I could and their hopes, their dreams, were not my own. I did not want to put down another rebellion and so... So I gave them what they wanted.

Had I stayed to fight, I would have found others possibly, a new army, but I would have turned my back on all that I was to do it and I would have rather go home and find my peace there.

The only peace I ever had was with Hephaestion and in death. When he died, what else was I left?

Words: 195
Muse: Alexander the Great
Fandom: Real Person (historical)

Have you ever rebelled? If you have, how did you do it?

In some ways, I have. In others, not as much. I have not led a rebellion so much as I have led one in my heart. My mother still counsels me to marry a few more times and ensure myself an heir, but my heart is not with these women, not even with Roxane.

And now I have two beautiful children, yet she is not happy. Some would consider that a rebellion. She certainly considers it one that I have not followed her every word to the letter, but I must make my own choices. I cannot lose myself to the darkness that has consumed her.

Yet, I have led my people as it was always desired of me. I’ve taken them further than my father ever managed to, further even than my mother dreamed of, but I have not yet taken them as far as I have dreamed of.

Parmenion counseled me once to listen to my peers, but in this case, I must follow my own dreams.

Words: 169
Muse: Alexander the Great
Fandom: Historical Real Person

Revenge.

I have never believed in revenge, though a few who know me believe that I do. They think it was revenge that had me chasing Darius to the Steppes, but it was not. Revenge can consume a man, but that is not what it was. I needed the man so I could assume my position as King of Asia, for as long as he lived, he could claim that title until by his death or his transfer of the title to me.

It was not for revenge, a petty state. My mother had her revenge, plotted her life around her small revenges for slights from my father, from life, from my father's new wife. It consumed her utterly and she spent every moment plotting and twisting until she had time for little else. I did not want that life for myself. Better that it was left to her, she who had the time and will for such things.

Words: 158
Muse: Alexander the Great
Fandom: Real Person (Historical)

Name one thing about human nature that puzzles you.

Human nature... an odd concept. I've always been raises that we are not all human, that some of us are chosen by the gods, touched in a way that normal humans are not. We are all different, and that it is based on some choice of where we are born and what family we are born into. Even my mother is far different than Philip was, her family despising his because of nationality.

Even our teacher, Aristotle, who filled us with knowledge... We were greater than the Persians. We were never thought of as a whole even then, even now with me controlling most of the known world, we are not thought of as one people, but rather by the borders of the former countries.

Perhaps that is what puzzles me most. We all have one ruler, one leader, and the land is mine, but yet we are thought to be different based entirely on where we were before.

Why? Will it always be so?

Muse: Alexander
Fandom: Historical RP
Words: 165

[written in Alexander's private journal]

Hephaestion remarked to me today that I have not yet written in here about my son yet.

Our son, I should note lest he remark about that.

I think in part it is because... I want to keep him all to myself. As if writing about him in here means that he now belongs to history and not I any longer even though when I look down at him and his chubby little fingers grasp my one, I know it's not true.

Still, he grows well, our little Alexandros. No doubt due to his mother and now his father, Hephaestion.

Talk about something you inherited. (It could be an object, a physical attribute, a belief, etc.)

Besides what both my mother, my father, and Philip have given me... I inherited a love of snakes. It's something I so rarely indulge that I do not know if even Hephaeston knows about it, though it would not surprise me if it did. I never was capable of keeping a secret from him, but that is a topic for a different discussion.

When I was small, perhaps give, I snuck out of my room to go to my mother's when I found a snake. Like her, I picked it up and let it coil inside my tunic. Later she called it my daimon, my protector. He disappeared later, slithering off into some garden to eat mice, but I can still remember the feel of him against my stomach, the way his muscles moved beneath the warm scales that tickled my skin.

I never told my mother, never told anyone that I loved her room so not because of her, but because of the low hiss of the snakes she kept around her.

Muse: Alexander the Great
Fandom: Historical RP
Words: 173

What is your favorite retreat from the world?

They told me that it was a whore of a city, that I would arrive and she would spread her doors open like legs and I would be welcome there. Babylon.

Not even home is as welcoming.

I still remember that first procession through the streets of Babylon, my Companions riding beside me as people filed out to cheer us -- to cheer me. Every time I return to that place, I can still feel that, still breathe the air that filled my young self and remember what it was like to make my first rout.

A rout that everyone thought I would not, could not, make. Yet, I did and it was the first of many.

It is Babylon that is my home, my retreat. Not even the many Alexandria's are as much a home to me as Babylon is. She may be a whore of a city, willing to allow anyone in, but she welcomed me with more warmth than even my mother would have.

Muse: Alexander
Fandom: Historical RPF
Words: 167