Chapter Text
Screams echoed around the city square as they were amplified by the acoustics of the brazen bull, which housed the source of the commotion. A wooden sign told the literate stander-by that the convicted man was 'Daedalus, traitor to Atlantis'. Pasiphae, with her heavily scarred features, watched coldly on as the tortured man hoarsely screamed out his final breaths.
Cassandra stopped chanting and whipped up her bald head. She was no longer a stranger to violence; ever since she had begun her training to become an Oracle, her visions had steadily become more violent, especially when they included Pasiphae. She had, deep down, been expecting this but had kept her fears from her new friend. She couldn't, however, neglect telling Icarus of his father's untimely end and begrudgingly rose to tell him the grim news. She couldn't help noticing the small looks of fear which her companions tried to hide from her when they saw her disappearing into her room with her tools of divination, but she couldn't abandon her duty to the Gods. She certainly didn't enjoy being the bringer of, more often than not, bad news to her friends; however, not only was she an Oracle, but she owed it to Melas to continue in her sacred calling. The thought of her adoptive father brought her close to tears but she bit them back and went to find Icarus.
Hercules heard hurried footsteps and strangled sobs passed quickly by his door, followed by the slamming of a door and the closing of a latch. Poking his head out of the door to his room, he saw Cassandra staring sadly at the now locked door. 'What is it now?' he said tiredly, but not unkindly. Ariadne also appeared in the corridor and Cassandra gave them both the news of Daedalus' plight.
Approaching the door, from which there emanated the sound of sobbing, Hercules (followed silently by Ariadne) knocked hesitantly. 'Icarus? It's Hercules. Can I get you anything?'
'Please... Hercules... please leave me.' Begrudgingly, Hercules did as he was bid, as did Cassandra and Ariadne.
...
Through lunch and dinner, Icarus wept, refusing to leave the room he shared with Pythagoras. He would not accept food nor water, indeed, he would not open the door for anybody. After attempting to coax him out or even to get him to eat or drink something to no avail, Hercules and Ariadne convened in Hercules' room (whilst Cassandra was in her room communing with the Gods and praying for Daedalus' soul) to quietly worry about Icarus and wonder what, if anything, they could do to help their friend. 'Hercules, are you sure there is no way in which we can help him?'
'He knows that we all know what it's like to lose a father, but I fear that he has forgotten that we understand how he feels. I just wish that Pythagoras would return soon...'
...
It was dark by the time that Pythagoras and Jason returned, tired and hungry, from their day's work. On hearing the news of Daedalus, Pythagoras forgot about his hunger and hurried straight to the room that he was sharing with his lover; the others held back, leaving him to comfort his partner.
After hesitantly knocking, Pythagoras whispered searchingly, 'Icarus? Icarus? It's me, Pythagoras.' The sobs, if anything, became slightly louder and the door shook with their weight.
'Pythagoras... what a monster you must think me... I left my father... he was still weak from the beatings... I didn't even think about what would happen to him... I could've...' Pythagoras couldn't make out any more as it was drowned out by the sobbing of his lover.
'Icarus - please let me in. I can help you, comfort you... please...'
'How can you want to help me? How can you understand how I feel? What can you possibly do that can heal this?... I failed him...'
Pythagoras knew that there was only one way to make his partner let him in, let him help. He'd always run from it, tried not to face it because it was too painful... Now he would have to face up to his past.
After a long pause, he came up with the courage he needed and began to speak. 'I swear to you, Icarus, you are the only person I've told about this - not even Jason knows - but... I tell everyone that I was orphaned at birth... that I never knew my parents... it's easier, less painful, to pretend that I never knew them... then I never have to talk about them... Icarus...' Pythagoras let out a choked sob. He had been talking quietly before, but now it was a whisper, 'Icarus... I watched my father die...'
Muffled scuffling could be heard on the other side of the door and then the latch was raised. The door opened ever so slightly and then Pythagoras could see Icarus' face: his eyes wide in concern and sadness and brimming with tears, his floppy hair which only partly covered his face, and his lips, which his lover could never kiss enough, quivering with emotion. He invited Pythagoras into the room and closed the door and latch behind him. They fell into each others arms and just stood there, holding each other, for what seemed like an eternity.
Pythagoras started whispering his story into Icarus' hair and, once he started, the words flowed out of him like a flood. He confirmed that, yes, it was true, his mother did die in childbirth, but his father, well, his father wasn't so lucky.
His father had lovingly raised him, encouraging him to enquire into the world around him and see beauty in how everything worked. He was told of how he had inherited his mother's kindness and how her last words had been words of pure love for her only son. His father told him of the day they had met, both of them servants at the palace, and, despite their seeming poverty, they had been wealthy in the love they had shared. He was told of the day that he was born, where, it seemed, his mother had died in his birth, how her death had resulted in a 'miracle'. He had loved his father with a child's love for both his mother and his father, which made it doubly hard to lose him...
Pythagoras had been so distracted by his father's challenges to further his learning that he had not noticed his father's illness until it was too late. It had been the paling sickness. It had been slowly consuming him for months but Pythagoras had never noticed; indeed, he didn't notice until the wool was forced from his eyes in the most terrible way. His father had simply fallen whilst retrieving something, he didn't remember what, from the top shelf. The fall had caused him to dislocate his shoulder, which was simple enough to fix, but Pythagoras had only been a small boy of ten and it had scared him dearly, so he fetched the doctor. It was easy enough for the doctor to fix his father's shoulder but, on examining his patient, the doctor had found some seriously developed signs of the paling sickness which his father had been hiding, believing that they were nothing.
The fall had weakened him, however, and it was not long before he was dismissed from his manual job at the palace due to the reducing range of movement in his arm. He managed to find a number of small jobs after this but the range of what he could do was decreasing as he developed more and more of the symptoms. The young Pythagoras had tried to gain his father's old job at the palace but that, and numerous other jobs, were refused to him as few wanted to use the work of a scrawny ten year old boy. As his father's condition deteriorated, he continued to care for him, never giving up in his search for a cure. But it was to no avail.
On his father's death, Pythagoras had been distraught, unable to comprehend how life had treated him, but the world refused to wait for him to grieve. Him and his father's lack of jobs had left them penniless, with money collectors arriving day after day to take more of his father's precious possessions. He ended up losing the room which they had kept, along with its contents, and was left to live on the street. Cold, hungry and friendless, he was often taunted and physically abused by others but was too small to react and too lost to want to try to.
Luckily for him, it was at this time that Hercules returned home to Atlantis. The old friend of his father recognised him due to his resemblance to his parents and determined to care for him. His father's death and the taunting he was later faced with resulted in Pythagoras having dreadful and vivid nightmares of his father's tortured soul along with a number of the beatings he had received at the hands of others. Hercules had always been there when he had woken up screaming to comfort him - mainly he would slowly stroke Pythagoras' hair to relax him so that he could fall back asleep. Hercules could never replace his father but they had developed a strong friendship.
'I swear to you, Icarus, that I will always be there to comfort you no matter what, because… because I know what it's like to need that comfort.' During the time that Pythagoras had been talking, Icarus had nestled back in his lover's arms in order to watch his face. Silent tears were running down both of their cheeks.
'I... I'm sorry, I never knew... Thank you...' And then the most magical thing happened. Through all the tears and all the heartbreak, a small smile, it was very small but a smile nonetheless, found its way onto Pythagoras' lips. He whispered,
'Gods, I love you, did you know that? And I will never stop loving you. Don't you ever say that I can't love you, because it's not true.' And with that he gently pressed his lips to Icarus'.
Holding each other for comfort, and softly stroking each other's hair, Pythagoras and Icarus lay down in each other's arms and slowly drifted off into a dreamless sleep.