The Stars and the Cookie Jar

Somebody commented in a friend's journal saying very nice things about the way I played kassandraloxias, and I remembered I had written this. I guess... it's... Iliad fanfic. Many the classicist can beat me about the head for the errors in it; it was written for a plot thread in milliways_bar, but I like it all right. And it was kind of hidden away back there.




   When the war began she was not yet fifteen. She was sitting on the floor with him in his chambers, playing at Egrets and Lions, when they came to tell Hektor it was war.He did not get up to saddle his horse, as the chronicles said. He did not go valiantly to kiss his bethrothed and take up his shield. He stayed on the floor, until a spider settled on the hem of his blue garment. He put his arms round Kassandra and rocked her, white-faced, speaking in whispers. He shook as he spoke to her. He swallowed hard.
    "Littlest, Skandra, I cannot. I can't lead his armies out there to kill -- to be killed -- I'm about to be married! The girl's come halfway around the world, for the gods' sake!"  
   "She'll understand," said Kassandra, who was crying, only a little.  
   "And you, what's to become of you?"  
   She winced, but his eyes were shielded in her shoulder.  
   "Oh, sister, I can't." 
    "You are going to be king," she lied, "you can do anything in the world."   

   The Sight of his death was what turned her mind. Apollo the god brought it to her, when she scorned the heat he offered; strong enough poison to kill her wits, the sight of Hektor broken, burning, dead. She was fevered for days, lashed to a cot in the precinct of the Temple, and Hektor lent his horse to Aeneas and left the siege. It seemed, to Kassandra, that he came wearing his breastplate and greaves, shining bright enough to blot out the memory of the god. That was only a dream, she knew, a fever-trick, no man came armed to Athene's house; but she dreamed, all the same, and sometimes she saw his beautiful high-crested horsetailed helm on the ground, bloody and beaten in the dust.    
   When she was not screaming, or far away in dreams, she knew he held her hand. He talked to her as if she sat in her own chair in the Great Watching Chamber, not bound to a sweat-damp bed. "Tell me what you saw, Skandra, and I'll help you, I'll help you find your way back. You've lost the path, that's all, for a little while, shhh. Tell me, Littlest, and I'll drive it away, and then you can come home. I'll see you home."  
    But when her body recovered, it was agreed that her mind had gone. A god's caprice, or her payment for some great folly: the rumors started then. She held the stirrup-cup for Hektor, because delicate Andromache feared the men and the horses, and when the battle-bloody men rode in at the gates she was there to hold Hektor's bridle. The Skaian Guard thought her a bird of ill omen, but Boukephalos knew her hand.   
  
   When his son was born, Hektor was fighting for the beaches. Inside the walls, people ate their dogs. It had been years since Priamos' forgotten daughter had talked any sense, but there was light in her mind still, amidst the ghosts and the scars; she knocked down three of her ladies and stole Paris' horse, the big showy gold gelding, and she went to find her brother. She rode as the men did, with her garments kilted above her knees, stretched flat along the horse's neck for speed. She looked like madness itself, a sapphire-colored streak on the dawn's back, but no one shot at her. There were pikes and caltrops both sides had set to bring a rider down, but her head was full of news, not visions, and she rode fearless. As she and the horse and the world vaulted up into the last jump, she heard a shout, and someone cried to the archers Hold! -- Hektor was there.  
   "Kassandra?" He repeated it, over and again, until she found her breath and slipped from the horse.   
   "My lord Prince," she said, and then she was laughing. "Brother, a son for you, a healthy son, and a living wife, a little lord for the Towered City." 
    Hektor picked her up and spun her dizzy. He swung up behind her on the golden horse, crying, laughing, singing like a boy. At a gallop, and in bowshot of the Akhaian camps, they rode, and no arrow was loosed. The War-Prince Hektor would not go riding glory-or-Hades up an open field of battle, whooping, joyous, with a laughing girl on his saddlebow and his dark shining curls unhelmed. He was a madman, surely, a crazy brother to match the Prince Hektor's crazy sister, and it did not do to shoot at the mad.   
   It was the happiest day of her life. The little prince was named Scamandrios, and when he was three years old, his father died.  

    Hektor walked with her on the ramparts, in the dark of that morning. He left his bed and his wife and his boy, because Kassandra was waking, because he knew she knew. He spoke to her very gently, with one hand on her arm and the other hand on his sword, braver than he felt. And because he did not need to be told his own fate, he asked if she had seen her own.   
   She told him, rocked him, kissed his hair. The sword fell from his grasp with a cold aching sound, metal on matchless stone; he held on to her smotheringly, until she broke away to breathe.   
   She picked up the sword, and considered it, and handed it back to him.  
   Hektor, War Prince, drew in a shivering breath. He twisted and steadied his grip on the pommel. He set the sword's point high to her ribs, just below her heart. She hissed, because it hurt, and there was blood sliding hot inside her robes. Her brother swore, and stilled the bleeding with his hands.   
   Neither of them said anything. The sun came up, soaking the city walls to red. Hektor let her go.   
   "Don't go down to him, brother, don't!"  
   He looked at her so sadly that she had to follow him. Down to the stables and the armory, at the first turning of the walls, he strode as if he could not hear her bare feet. But when she lifted his bright-bossed shield, too heavy for her, he took it and smiled.   
   "Go back, Skandra. Go back to the walls, sweet heart."   
   She did not move, and so he walked with her through the dust to the gates. The sally port, when he opened it, groaned like a woman in pain. No one woke to it, none of his Guard.   
   "I want to see him," she said, nauseous. She clung on his hand.
    "There," said Hektor, pointing. "Akhilleus the Great."
   "He's a man," she said. 
   "No man lives that can best him." Hektor's voice did not shake. 
   "One does."  
   He kissed her forehead. She was crushed against his armor: heat, leather, blood. "Kassandra go back, go back, go back..."  
   After that she was choking, silent, on salt burning screams. She watched them silently as they rounded each other in the dust. She bit her knuckles. Both their spear-casts missed; Akhilleus lost his shield. Hektor fought barefoot, circling, darting, nimble; Akhilleus tripped on his sandal-strap. But neither blooded the other, and they were no longer young men.  
   "Fight, Prince," Akhilleus gasped at him. "Fight. Your whore, your sister, she come out to watch you die?"  
   Hektor smiled terribly. She saw his teeth. "My brother Paris will kill you, but my sister will avenge me. Remember us, when you fall at the Skaian Gate. For her sake not one of your Akhaians will make it home."  
   "Yes, why go home when we'll all be so busy fucking her through the --"   Hektor thrust, once, well, and his sword passed through Akhilleus' throat. Both men looked astonished, Kassandra remembered that.   
   "Look at her," Hektor commanded, and even if he could not die, Akhilleus was transfixed on the sword and the blade made him silent. "Look at her and see all your men drowned. Be very fucking afraid, Akhilleus son of Peleus; she's going to strike them all down."   After that, nothing but pain that would not stop, pain, and others now watched from the walls and they did nothing, watched as Hektor fought, as he fell. And when she tried to go to him, someone pulled her back, and she went mad.