MEME: AU Drabble Things

[aintnoconvict]

Speaking of AUs: I am blaming Dien and her tumblr for this.

1.) Tag in with your characters.
2.) Someone else tags you with with an alternate universe setting. Inclusion of their character(s) in the AU is totally cool.
3.) Write a three-sentence fic drabble-like thing in response.
4.) You tag others with AU prompts and get drabble-things in return.

GO GO GO!

Comments

[infinitelystranger]

That 1% chance or instance where Bagoas is ever seriously interested in a woman! It doesn't have to be a good thing. :D

[thepersianyouth]

Her name was Chandrika, so named for the full moon on the night of her birth, praised in India as well as my own lands. Her eyes were dark, moonlit pools hiding unseen depths and her hair draped heavily over her shoulders into a thick braid that reached all the way to her ankles.

Of all the women I had met; out of all the concubines and wives that followed in the wake of Alexander's marches, belonging to his generals or his footmen, or his servants; she was neither the most beautiful, nor the most charming. She had fire. She had within her grasp a calm surety that kept her voice level even when aggravated. She was the daughter of one of the many Indian kings Alexander brokered treaties with, and she knew me for what I am from the moment she laid her eyes on me.

I could hear Oromedon's caution in my ears though years had passed since I last saw him, longer still since I had heard his voice or enjoyed the simple pleasure of his smile. Never think of women, he had told me in no uncertain terms, and yet here I was, long after that lesson had been etched into my mind's eye...

At the festivities, when I danced I knew, though I had not a word of their language; I knew it was at her request. I could feel her eyes on me the entire time, felt her smile as she spoke to her sisters where they all sat in royal splendour.

After, she whispered something to her father, his vibrant green beard so big as to almost obscure her from view. As I made to leave, the translator bade me come forward.

She called me Rukmini; the translator said, in honour of my embodying the sacred love between one of their many gods, and his consort. He explained that the people here believed that when the Lord Krishna joined his once mortal Radha, they were one and the same; Saktiman were nothing without his Shakti, within whom lay any and all power. She saw the Mighty God within me. Radhakrishna; not lacking, as I had been viewed since the age of ten, but complete.

My heart pounded in my chest. I could scarcely draw breath. While the princess spoke and our translator explained, I was no longer a servant, but elevated for one precious moment above all the petty, unspoken laws of men. In their eyes, in hers, I was something more than what was done to me as a child.

All eyes were on me. I didn't dare set my gaze on the Macedonian generals, nor the few Greek scholars who were there as a courtesy, nor Roxane, from whom I had gained nothing but ill blood since her marriage to Alexander.

But it was not she who broke the silence. It was Ptolemy, who in his youth knew no better than to laugh. 'Bagoas? A fine boy, prized for his beauty, true! But he is no Hermaphroditus, else Alexander has kept us in the dark!'

'A living symbol of the union between man and woman?' Someone shouted in return. 'Well and good... If you're in Athens!'

Cups were raised, people laughed and cheered. Hephaistion, when I looked, was an unreadable mask. Alexander was not amused, that a compliment from one end of the table to the other would be so ill received.

Chandrika's father bade Alexander forgive his eldest daughter her ignorance, which of course Alexander did.

What he said, I cannot tell. I stood frozen to the spot, mortified, until the other dancers ushered me along to somewhere out of sight that I may voice my outrage without further aggravating the situation. I had no words, only shameful tears and fire in my chest.

Her mistake had been to voice compliment in the company of brutes; mine, to have let her words touch me. For those few, treacherous moments where no one in the entire hall drew breath, I had looked into her eye and saw her looking back, seeing me. Lifting me up to something greater than myself, like no one had ever done before.

I never saw Chandrika again, knowing full well that it was my doing that set her in isolation. I knew without a doubt in my mind that thinking of her would lead to nothing but heartache. Oromedon's words echoed inside my head, cautioning me once more. Never be importunate, never think of women...

And yet, there I was. Thinking, that perhaps she understood what the women (or men) of Persia could not.