A/N: Deals with domestic violence and child abuse (nothing too graphic, hence the T rating), miscarriage and death. I do not own any rights to 'Atlantis', and I am making no monetary profit from this story.
-x-
Pythagoras is thirteen and Arcas is six. Their father is dead in the kitchen and their mother is weeping beside his body. Pythagoras is still in shock when he retreats to the bedroom he shares with his brother. The healer is long gone, the blood scrubbed from the floorboards before it stained, and his father's glassy eyes closed. The body will be moved in the morning, but for now they must sleep.
Pythagoras knows he won't be sleeping tonight. Despite that knowledge, he closes his eyes and rolls over.
"Pytaga?"
Arcas' poor pronunciation of his name causes him to turn back onto his side. Wide brown eyes stare back at him through the dim light of the looming dawn.
"Go back to sleep," he says hoarsely.
"Had a bad dream."
Pythagoras bites his lip. "Read for a while, then. The sun will be up in an hour or so."
"No." Arcas is stubborn as a mule. He always has been. It's a trait Pythagoras is sorry to say originated from their father. "Reading's stupid."
"Reading is not stupid," Pythagoras argues automatically. "Not many six year olds can read. You should be grateful I taught you." Against our father's wishes, he adds silently, and then realises his father will no longer have any impact on their lives.
His brother's lip wobbles. "I'm scared. Can I sleep in your bed?"
The older brother stares at him for a moment, but then relents and taps the bed beside him. Arcas flies across the room and lands gracelessly on top of his brother. "Thanks, Pytaga."
"Pythagoras," he corrects, closing his eyes and dropping his head to his pillow. Tonight has been exhausting for him, and on top of that he barely got a wink of sleep last night. He feels the brush of fingertips at his temple and flinches away. The touch returns and he snaps his eyes open.
"Arcas, would you please just leave me—"
He halts. Arcas is staring down at him in shock. The boy removes his fingers from Pythagoras' forehead and transfers his gaze to them instead.
"Blood?" Arcas whispers.
Pythagoras' stomach twists. He thought he'd washed off all the blood – and there had been a lot of it, too. Not all his father's, mind.
His brother is still wide-eyed and he knows there's only so long he can bluff before the six-year-old finds out the truth.
"It's our father," he says eventually, still not sure how he's going to break the news to the boy who had been so close to the family patriarch. "He . . ." Pythagoras hesitates. His brother idolises their father, and in return he'd never laid a hand on the boy. Is it really fair to shatter the illusion now the man is dead outside the door? "There's been a burglary. The man . . . he, uh . . . he didn't take anything. Didn't have time to. Father fought him off, but he hit his head."
"The burglar?"
Pythagoras shakes his head slowly. "No. Father."
Arcas' eyes glitter as he realises the weight of the situation. "Is he . . . is Daddy alright?"
If anything, the quiver in his brother's voice makes Pythagoras angrier. "No. He's not alright – he's dead."
"D-dead?"
Whatever fury there had been turns to regret. "I'm sorry, Arcas. Really, I am."
They lay in bed for a few minutes, both staring up at the ceiling. Arcas' cheeks are damp with silent tears; Pythagoras' cheeks are dry. The only thing he feels sorrow about is upsetting his brother.
"Pythagoras?" This time, the six-year-old says his name correctly, and Pythagoras supposes it must be symbolic of some loss of innocence, but poetry has never really been his forte.
"Yes?" he says, instead of dwelling in useless thoughts.
"Why is your eye all bruised?"
For a moment, Pythagoras contemplates telling him the truth, but that wouldn't be fair on anyone. So instead, he lies, unaware that that lie will form the foundation of their future relationship.
"I tried to fight the robber off after he killed our father. I managed to scare him away, but not in time to save . . ." He breaks off, the weight of the lie crushing his chest.
"Oh." There's a pause in the darkness. "You're really brave, Pythagoras."
Brave.
Out in the kitchen, his mother screams a bloodcurdling scream.
-x-
Pythagoras is six and the baby in his mother's tummy has no name yet. The gem engraving trade is bad and he finds his mother weeping just outside their house.
"Mama," he whimpers, sure something must be wrong. His mother never cries – not even when she burnt her hand trying to bake bread last month (they always buy bread fresh from the bakery now).
She turns to him, and her face reveals how surprised she is to see him. "I thought you went to see your friend?"
"Xenophanes is stupid," he declares. "I hate him. Why are you crying?"
She wipes her cheeks brusquely with the back of her hand. "I was just thinking of a very sad story my grandmother once told me."
Pythagoras likes stories. He likes stories about brave, handsome warriors and exciting quests, because he knows his own life will be nothing like them. He's not brave, and he's not handsome, and if he's entirely honest with himself, the whole concept of quests sounds a little frightening.
"Did everyone die in the end?" he asks. Sad stories usually end with everybody dying.
His mother laughs, but it isn't a happy laugh. It speaks of the tears she hasn't yet shed, and that makes Pythagoras all the more worried. "You are such a good little boy," she says, which isn't answering his question, but he doesn't mind. She pats her stomach. "I hope your brother or sister learns a thing or two from you."
"Can I name it?" he asks, their previous conversation forgotten. He's six, and his attention moves very swiftly from one area of focus to another.
"You can suggest names, but you know it's your father who makes the final decision." This seems to sadden her somewhat, but Pythagoras doesn't know why. It is customary in their country for the father to name the children. Usually, as with Pythagoras, the eldest is named after his paternal grandfather, and subsequent children are named after various relatives. The only thing that worries Pythagoras is his uncle.
"Please don't let Father name him Xenophanes," he begs. "I know it's after Uncle Xenophanes, but Xenophanes from Colophon is stupid and I hate him." The boy of whom he speaks is visiting relatives on Samos, and has been on the island for a month so far. In that time, he and Pythagoras have become friends and fallen out more times than his mother can count.
"So you've said. What did that boy say now?"
Pythagoras crosses his arms. "He called me wet."
His mother laughs. "Wet? Why in the gods' names would he call you that?"
He sighs dramatically. "He said something bad about Apollo and I told him the gods would be angry with him, so he starting joking about the gods being fairy-tales designed to frighten babies, so I told him he was stupid. He said my rhetoric needed improving and called me wet." He notices his mother is still confused, and explains. "Xenophanes thinks everybody is either wet or dry or somewhere in the middle. I don't really understand, but I pretend to. I think being wet means you're naïve, and being dry means you're cynical."
His mother looks at him for a moment – just looks at him – and then smiles, giving him a one-armed hug. "Thank you, Pythagoras. You've cheered me up."
"Why were you really crying?" he murmurs.
She pauses for so long he doesn't think she's going to answer him, but she does. "I was just thinking about your father. He's not got much work commissioned at the moment."
"And you're sad for him?"
Again, she hesitates before speaking. ". . . Yes. Yes, I'm sad."
-x-
Pythagoras is seven and Arcas is three months. Their father is wasting his afternoon in the tavern and their mother is trying to soothe baby Arcas back to sleep. Pythagoras should be starting education this year, whether formal or informal, as is the Greek culture. Most of the wealthier boys he knows have started at the local school, and they return each evening reciting poetry and talking about geometry.
Pythagoras isn't even sure what geometry is.
The poorer boys are still being taught – whether by their parents or by family friends. They are learning how to read and write, how to count on an abacus, as well as morals.
Pythagoras is lucky if his father stumbles home sober each evening.
"I'll teach you to read once Arcas is older," his mother has said countless times, bobbing the baby on her hip. Pythagoras stares at his younger brother with undisguised hatred. He's ruining everything.
Most afternoons when he's not required to do some sort of work at home, Pythagoras is ordered out of the house because he's getting under his mother's feet. In those spare hours, he wanders the town and listens to the merchants advertising their wares. Occasionally he'll stop and gaze at written signs, wishing those little squiggles made some sort of sense.
A man he assumes to be a merchant catches him staring and goes to shoo him away, but for some reason stops.
"I didn't realise those prices warranted such interest," he comments.
Pythagoras startles. His natural instinct is to run, but he holds his ground. "Is that what it says? I can't read," he admits, staring at the ground.
The man squints. "How old are you, eight?"
"Seven."
"Started school yet?"
"We can't afford it."
"Oh. Is your mother teaching you to read?"
Pythagoras kicks at a pebble and misses. "Not until the baby's older." He glances up at the man and catches a glimpse of silver beneath the stranger's tunic. "I like your necklace."
It's expertly crafted – a perfect ring with a triangle at its centre.
"This?" the man asks, pawing at the pendant. "I had it specially made just last week." His eyes suddenly spark with passion, like Xenophanes' used to do when he talked about poetry, before he moved back to Colophon. He removes the necklace and hands it to Pythagoras, who takes it gingerly. "It proves something."
He kneels down so that his face is inches below Pythagoras', and points to one of the lines of the triangle. "This edge stretches across the two farthest apart points on the circle. It's the diameter, and it'd do you well to remember that."
Diameter, Pythagoras considers.
"These other two lines of the triangle meet at a shared point on the circle's edge. See? And the angle between—"
"Angle?" Pythagoras interrupts. He's heard the term, but has no definition to go with it.
The man rocks back on his heels. "The angle . . . is a way of measuring how much space is between the two lines. How much one is inclined from the other, if you like." He picks up a sharp stone from the ground and scratches two joining lines into the sand. He then draws another two lines. "These two have a large space between them, so they have a large angle. For these two lines, the space between them is far smaller, and so the angle is smaller."
He brushes the picture away with his bare hand and draws another two lines. "This is a right angle – ninety degrees, is what we call it." He adds two more lines, which form a square with the other two. "Each of the four angles in a square are right angles."
"That's interesting," says Pythagoras, and it is. He is still confused on a few points, like why there are ninety 'degrees' within a right angle, but he doesn't question it, just like he doesn't question why there are six obols in a drachma. It's just the way it is, he supposes.
"Very." The man's eyes twinkle once more, and he points to the angle formed by the two lines that meet at the circle's edge. "What do you notice about that angle?"
Pythagoras looks closely, and then looks down at the square in the sand. "It's a right angle," he realises.
The man draws a rough circle with a diameter. "Make a triangle where one of the lines is the diameter, and the two other lines meet at a point on the circle's edge."
"Just like your necklace?"
"Similar, yes."
Pythagoras obeys.
"Notice anything?"
The seven-year-old squints at the dusty circle and feels his eyes widen. "That's another right angle, isn't it? Just like a square." He brushes away the circle, draws another, and the same thing happens. As long as one of the lines is the diameter (and his drawing isn't too wobbly), the two lines will always meet at what the man has defined as 'ninety degrees'.
Pythagoras grins and looks up at the man, only to find the stranger has vanished. The market stall he had assumed belonged to the mysterious 'merchant' is manned by somebody else.
It's only three days later when the older boys are talking about the legendary Thales of Miletus, philosopher and mathematician, who came to visit Samos but did not tell a soul of his presence, that Pythagoras confirms what he already suspected.
He sleeps with the triangle necklace under his pillow that night, and not even Arcas' wails wake him from his slumber.
-x-
Pythagoras is eleven and Arcas is four. His father is sleeping off a late night at the tavern and his mother is meeting a friend in town. It is the first time Pythagoras has been properly alone with Arcas for months, and he intends to make good use of the time.
When his mother finally found time to teach him the basics of letters and words, Pythagoras had struggled. He had been nine years old and was no longer interested in learning such a thing. He'd become interested in drawing, primarily circles and triangles, and those enigmatic symbols suddenly seemed silly to him.
He is hardly fluent in reading, despite most eleven-year-olds being able to read Homer with ease. Not only is he uninterested, but he also finds it difficult. The letters buzz and flicker on the page and refuse to stay still, and if he stares at the page for too long he gets a headache and the room starts to spin.
Nevertheless, he decides that writing is a vital part of a Greek boy's education, and he tells himself that learning earlier is better. And so he endeavours to teach his four-year-old brother how to read.
Every evening from then on, after their mother has started preparing dinner but before their father returns home, Pythagoras leads Arcas into the herb garden and etches letters into the dirt, and then words (and then he backtracks and teaches him syllables, as a friend tells him they do in school), and then sentences. By the time Arcas is six years old, he can read and write at his brother's level, and the lessons end because Pythagoras can teach him no more. They do not own any books – nobody does – but Pythagoras gets his friends who attend school to copy out poetry onto wax-covered boards, and he makes sure Arcas can recite a new poem to him every week. At some point Arcas begins writing his own poetry, something Pythagoras is neither interested enough nor articulate enough to do.
-x-
Pythagoras is eight and Arcas has just celebrated his first birthday. Their father is angry and their mother is crying while she tucks Arcas into his cot.
"Mama, why is Father angry?"
She does not answer, but hugs her eldest son tightly instead. Their father's voice echoes across the street from where he is shouting at the neighbours. Why, Pythagoras doesn't know. Perhaps they said something mean about him. Perhaps they shouted first.
Or perhaps his father is just a very angry man.
Either way, Pythagoras doesn't miss his mother flinch when her husband's yell resounds around the street. He looks at her curiously, and observes the tear tracks on her face. His mother cries a lot now, a lot more than before Arcas was born, and he's never really given it much thought because it's a recurring factor most days. His mother cries. It's a fact deeply ingrained in him, a fact he's not yet questioned.
That night, Pythagoras stays up past his bedtime and peers throughout the crack in his bedroom door. He sees his father's rage first-hand. He's heard it before – oh yes, he's certainly heard it – but this is the first time he sees the fists raining down. It's the first time he sees how his mother purposely bites her lip, which explains why he never hears her cry out into the night.
It's also the first time he slams the door open and tries to prise his father's hands off her.
He is eight years old. His daily physical exercise consists of walking into town and back.
His father is thirty years older. He was the discus and javelin champion at his local gymnasium when he was younger.
Pythagoras bites his lip when he finally goes to bed that night, not wanting to wake Arcas, who is snoring obliviously. He'd like to keep it that way.
-x-
Pythagoras is ten and Arcas is three. Their father is asleep and their mother – well, who knows? Pythagoras hopes she is managing to get some sleep, because he certainly isn't.
He is ten years old and thinks about Death. A large part of his upbringing has involved religion, and he is familiar with the concept of transmigration: the idea that the soul is reincarnated again and again into the bodies of humans, animals, and even plants, until it eventually becomes immortal, like winning some grand prize at the end of a competition. He likes that idea, even if the science behind it eludes him.
When I die, he thinks, I'd like to be some sort of bird. Then I'd get to go wherever I want, and watch whoever I want, and nobody would take any notice of me.
He then thinks it might be nice to become a tree, because trees didn't move much except for a gentle sway in heavy winds. Right now it hurts even to breathe, let alone move, so a lethargic life sounds perfect to him.
His vision blurs and he worries for a moment that he's slipping into unconsciousness, for if he does he might never wake up, but then he wonders whether that's such a bad thing. The tree life is starting to sound far better than his human one right now.
He stretches out, and his back protests. He rubs at a particularly sore patch on his shoulder and registers mild surprise when his hand comes away coated in sticky blood. His eyes go fuzzy again, and for a moment he swears the moon reflects the red of his hand in its surface.
I wonder, Pythagoras thinks, not entirely lucidly. If I paint blood onto a looking-glass, would the moon reflect that too? What if I wrote words? Would all of Greece be able to read a poem I etched into the sky?
With that thought, he drifts into a painless oblivion.
-x-
Pythagoras is twelve and Arcas is five. Their father is visiting his brother on the mainland and their mother is happier than she has been in years.
Her smiles are infectious, and more than once Pythagoras catches himself dancing around the house to a tune only he can hear, much to Arcas' amusement.
That's why it hurts Pythagoras all the more when his friend Galenus falls ill.
Galenus has lived five minutes' walk from Pythagoras for as long as he can remember, and Pythagoras remembers feeling intensely jealous the first morning he watched Galenus trot off to school while he was stuck indoors helping his mother run errands. That envy has dimmed over the years, and Galenus often brings home interesting geometrical facts for Pythagoras and poems for him to read to Arcas.
He visits Galenus on what will eventually become his deathbed, but neither of them knows that to start with. He is himself sickened to see his long-time friend with haunted, sunken eyes and pallid, grey skin. They talk about inconsequential things like the weather, because Galenus doesn't feel up to discussing triangles, and Pythagoras recites a poem he thinks his friend might like (it turns out Galenus has studied it, but he seems to appreciate the thought).
Just before Pythagoras' visiting time is up, his friend clutches his mother's hand and writhes in agony. The shriek he lets out is inhuman, and Pythagoras flees without saying his final goodbye.
Two weeks later, Galenus is dead. Pythagoras feels momentary remorse that he did not return to see his friend one last time, and then feels guilt when he realises he would not have wished to go anyway. Not after seeing Galenus looking so . . . frightening. He isn't looking forward to seeing the body during the prothesis, where Galenus would be dressed in formal clothes and put on show for everyone to see.
He wonders whether they will cover his grey skin with makeup to make it look less ashen.
(They do, but the makeup hue is all wrong compared to Galenus' golden skin. They have made him far too pale and delicate, and Galenus would have hated it.)
Two weeks after Galenus' death, Pythagoras is walking around in a perpetual state of shock, and he barely notices when his name is called.
"Friend, wait up!"
It is Xenophanes, twice as old as he was the last time Pythagoras saw him. He's done well in his age, and looks closer to fifteen than twelve, with flowing sandy locks and well-toned muscles.
They exchange pleasantries, the details of which Pythagoras immediately forgets, and stroll through the marketplace in amicable silence. Ahead of them, a food merchant kicks at a mangy dog who is sniffing around for crumbs, and the animal yelps. Pythagoras freezes mid-step as he is transported back to Galenus' bedroom, and that petrifying scream he let out just before Pythagoras fled (like a coward).
"What's the matter?" asked Xenophanes, concern tingeing his usually excited voice.
"N-nothing. I just . . . I could have sworn . . ." He shakes his head. "Never mind."
Xenophanes does mind, but he does not question it any further. Once they reach the edge of the land and are overlooking the cerulean water, Pythagoras opens up.
"Galenus is dead."
Xenophanes' eyebrows shoot somewhere up into his hairline. He hadn't been friends with Galenus, per se – he hadn't been on Samos long enough, really – but they'd been acquainted, primarily through Pythagoras.
"I thought I heard his cry in that dog's bark," he admits.
They skim pebbles for a while, neither of them willing to speak the first word. Eventually Pythagoras breaks the silence.
"I sometimes have dreams, that I'm not myself. Maybe I'm a beautiful courtesan, or a blacksmith, or something that definitely isn't me. And I wonder sometimes . . . are they actually dreams?"
Xenophanes doesn't meet his eyes, but Pythagoras knows he's listening.
"If transmigration is true—"
Xenophanes snorts. "Transmigration is a myth."
"Maybe so. Maybe not. If it is true, then why don't we remember anything from our previous lives?"
"Transmigration is all about the transference of the soul after death – not the mind. The memories stay with the body."
Pythagoras throws another stone and contemplates. "Maybe that's true. But maybe we retain something from our previous lives. Like, maybe my previous self died in a fire. I'm scared of fire – did I ever tell you that? I've never been in a fire. I've never seen fire beyond as a source of light and warmth. Why would I harbour such an illogical fear with no obvious point of origination?"
"Fire's not an illogical fear," Xenophanes points out. "It burns, and it kills."
Pythagoras ignores him. "Either I dream about my previous lives, or they are fictitious stories my mind has made up to escape reality."
"I'd wager on the latter."
"You're so critical."
"I want to be a professional critic. Being critical helps with the job." He laughed. "All I'm saying is, you can't ever truly know anything. Not for certain."
"My name's Pythagoras. I'm pretty sure on that one."
"What if that's not really your name? What if your true name is Adrastos, or Euryphon, but your parents changed their mind and call you Pythagoras instead?"
He has a point, Pythagoras thinks, but he isn't about to admit it. Admitting that Xenophanes is correct is his equivalent of defeat.
When he brings up the point with his mother that evening, intending to make light conversation while she is making dinner, she drops her ladle and turns to him in surprise. "I assure you, your name has always been Pythagoras. We had the name picked months before you were born."
"After my grandfather."
Her eyes betray her confusion. "Who told you that? Your grandfather's name was never Pythagoras. The Pythian priestess at the Delphic oracle knew I was pregnant before even I did, and she told your father you would be beautiful, wise, and a benefit to mankind. So we called you Pythagoras, because we knew you would speak the truth no less than the Pythian. And . . ." She looks down at him. "Did you really never wonder why my name is so similar to your own?"
His mother's name is Pythais, and no, he has never wondered.
"My father named me Parthenia." She is still looking at him, curiosity in her eyes. "You really never knew? I never told you? I changed my name when I learnt of the prophecy."
"You changed your name because of me?"
Pythagoras wonders about the origin of the conversation, and tracks it back to Xenophanes asking whether knowledge was a certain thing. They'd also been discussing the concept of transmigration, and Pythagoras is no closer to figuring anything out.
He decides he'll leave the philosophising for now and focus on geometry.
-x-
Pythagoras is fourteen and Arcas is seven. Their father has been dead for a year and their mother's cheeks are gaunt and hollow. She has planted asphodel in their herb garden – the 'flower of the dead'. Arcas believes it was planted for their father; Pythagoras knows better. His was not the only life lost that night.
Their mother has been killed, in a way. She's not the same any more, and Pythagoras mourns her more than he mourns his father.
His innocence is lost, irretrievably. At thirteen, he killed a man. Admittedly, it was an accident, but it wasn't entirely a mistake. He strongly believes that, given a few more years of those drunken fists raining down on his delicate mother, he'd have killed the man anyway – in cold blood, as well. Perhaps it's lucky it was an accident. Perhaps the gods will be more merciful on him when he dies.
He doesn't hope to reincarnate into a tree any more. He has returned to his wish to be a bird, so that he may fly away from Samos for good, and leave everything behind.
The island sickens him now.
The third life lost never quite had a chance to live. In fact, he'd been unaware of it until the healer told him what had happened.
He remembers his mother screaming the night his father died. He had assumed at first that she was grieving, and had held his brother tight and whispered consolations. When the screaming didn't stop, however, he realised not all was right.
"Stay here," he told Arcas, who nodded. The brown eyes never left him as he retreated from the bedroom and firmly shut the door.
"Mother?" he called gently, and then spotted her on the floor beside the front door. "Mama!"
She was sat in a pool of her own blood. He knew it wasn't his father's because it had all been dutifully scrubbed away. Had she injured herself? Was it an accident?
"Mama . . . what did you do?"
He didn't mean for it to sound like an accusation, but it came out like it. Her water-filled eyes watched him as Arcas' had done, although they were wary and frantic.
Pythagoras inhaled. "I'm calling the healer back." He went to stand, but his mother grabbed his wrist, leaving a smudge of blood against his pale skin.
"She's gone. It's too late. She's gone."
"I can catch up with her," he said, but his mother kept looking at him and looking at him, and only then did he realise she wasn't talking about the healer.
"Let me get the healer," he murmured, and sprinted out of their home.
When he returned with the healer, his mother was unconscious, but luckily Arcas had obediently stayed in his room.
"She'll pull through if she's strong," the healer told him, three hours later. "She might be too devastated from the loss . . ."
"It's my fault he's dead," Pythagoras moaned, dropping his head in his hands.
"I didn't only mean your father."
He raised his head slightly.
"The baby. She's lost the baby."
"The baby?" he asked, bewildered.
The healer looked pained. "I take it you weren't aware she was pregnant?"
"No . . . She didn't look pregnant."
"She was only eighteen weeks gone, maybe less."
"It was a girl," he realised. "She said "she's gone. It's too late". She wasn't talking about you, was she?"
The healer looked sceptical. "It could have been male or female. But . . ." She hesitated. "A mother can tell, sometimes. I've got three of my own, and I guessed all their genders before they were born."
Pythagoras mourns his baby sister as much as he does his mother's lost character, and his own innocence. He regrets killing his father for Arcas' sake, and for three months he can't think of all that blood without vomiting. He doesn't mourn his father, though. He sticks by his 'burglar' story and pretends to mourn to keep up appearances, but there are times when he accidentally walks mud through the house and flinches, and then realises nobody will clout him across the head or kick at his shins.
Arcas and his mother have never felt worse, but Pythagoras is at a spiritual peak of life.
-x-
Pythagoras is eighteen and Arcas is eleven. Their father has not been forgotten, especially by Arcas, who is determined to wreak revenge on the elusive 'burglar', and their mother is frailer physically, but healthier emotionally.
Pythagoras is packing. He's planning on travelling the world, learning everything he can about geometry and philosophy and all those things he always meant to learn in greater depth. He wants to track down Thales, the man who gave him the triangle necklace all those years ago and got him initially interested in geometry.
"Where are you going?" Arcas asks.
"I've already told you. I'm travelling."
"Yes, but where? Where will I send letters?"
"I don't know you. I'll write to you, and I'll attach addresses for wherever I'm staying." He pauses. "I'm going to Egypt first, because I've heard Thales is staying there at the moment. Then I'm going to travel mainland Greece. After that, who knows? Maybe I'll go east. The Chinese have philosophies I've always wanted to study."
"How about Atlantis?" Arcas says suddenly.
"Atlantis? Nothing ever happens in Atlantis. Not that I've heard of, at least."
Arcas looks embarrassed at having suggested it, and Pythagoras feels bad.
"I'll tell you what: I'll stop off in Atlantis at some point and send you a souvenir."
This seems to please the eleven-year-old, who has grown worryingly obsessed with material wealth. "If you invent anything or discover anything, send me the proofs first," Arcas says. "Then I'll be at an advantage above my classmates."
Somehow, they've scrounged together enough money to send Arcas to the local school. Pythagoras suspects it has to do with the money they're no longer spending on alcohol and gambling. Plus he's been running errands for elderly neighbours, who pay well for simple tasks like gardening.
Everything is so different from when Pythagoras was Arcas' age.
-x-
Pythagoras is nine and Arcas is (a very loud) two. Their father is most definitely alive and their mother stares out of the window at the moon each night, like she expects the stars to come shuttle her away to some better life.
It's a cold winter afternoon and Pythagoras has nothing better to do but sketch triangles on a wax-covered board his friend 'obtained' for him from school. Thales came up with the right-angle-in-a-semicircle rule, and now every (educated) person knows about it. Pythagoras hopes that one day he'll look down at a geometrical problem and just get it. And he hopes that nobody has ever got the problem before, and he's the first person to ever, ever solve it.
"What in the gods' names are you doing?"His father's voice is thick with drink. Pythagoras has almost forgotten it isn't a weekday and his father was at the tavern, not at work. "Your mother's out there, slaving away over the stove and you're drawing? You could be chopping wood for the fire! Or cleaning up the garden! And you're sketching? And where did this come from?"
He snatches Pythagoras' board from under his nose, and examines it with bumbling fingers. "You steal this?"
"My friend—"
"You stole it."
This time it isn't a question, but he answers anyway. "No sir."
"Liar. You think this house isn't good enough for you?" He pauses. "Do you want to go to school?"
"Father," he objects.
"Answer my question."
Pythagoras takes a breath and hopes he's about to choose the right answer. "Yes sir."
His father bends down so that their noses are almost touching. "I work from dawn to dusk to put a roof over your head," he gestures vaguely upwards, "to put clothes on your back," he prods his son's shoulder, "and to put food in your belly." He jabs Pythagoras in the stomach – harder than is necessary – and it's the boy's automatic reaction to slap the hand away.
Bad move.
His father stares at him in disbelief. "Did you just hit me?"
Pythagoras knows it wasn't a hit, but he doesn't argue. Nor does he confirm it.
"Did you just lay your hand on me, boy?"
There's no response good enough, and they both know it.
"You want to go to school?" Mnesarchus sneers. "You want to be like all your little friends?" He lifts his son's chin with one finger. "You will never go to school. You will never learn anything except a trade. You will learn my trade, or otherwise something respectable like carpentry. And you will have no use for," he glances down at the wax-covered board in his head, into which Pythagoras has carved various geometrical theorems with a stylus, ". . . triangles. Triangles aren't going to get you a wife and healthy children, Pythagoras. They won't get you anywhere except the streets."
He raises the board, and for a moment Pythagoras thinks he's about to be hit over the head with it, so he shields himself and tenses his muscles and readies himself for the blow. Instead, his father brings the board down over his knee, splitting the wooden frame in two. He flings it into the fire, where the wood sets alight and the wax drips down off the frame, and congeals at the pit of the fireplace like some pitiful remains of Pythagoras' dreams.
Pythagoras stares longingly after it, certain he'd been getting somewhere with right angled triangles. But now his train of thought has been broken, so perhaps he'll never know.
-x- FIN -x-
A/N: Historical notes:
There are just as many historical truths in this as there are inaccuracies. Thales is often seen as the creator of modern geometry, and Pythagoras was known to have at least met him, if not studied under him. I've taken some liberties with the satirical poet Xenophanes, who, like Pythagoras, was born in c.570BC. Xenophanes wrote in his later life about Pythagoras, which is where I got the story of hearing his "dead friend's cry in the bark of a dog", but there's no proof they actually met, let alone were childhood friends.
Some of the theoretical ideas I've presented were key beliefs of Xenophanes or Pythagoras: the wet/dry theory was developed by Xenophanes, for instance, stating that water is the world's key building block. Pythagoras did believe in transmigration (i.e. reincarnation) and he's also quoted about writing in blood on a looking-glass and it being reflected in the moon. The prophecy regarding his name is also said to be true.
There are some inaccuracies that I can unfortunately do nothing about, beacuse they are canon within the 'Atlantis' universe: Pythagoras was thought to have had two or three brothers, none of whom were called Arcas, but I've overlooked this fact because neither brother mentions or alludes to any more siblings. Pythagoras must also have come from a fairly wealthy family in order to have received such a thorough and wholesome education in those days, but both he and his brother in the show appear to be living close to their means. Their father in historical accounts also seems to be a 'good guy' - he took his son to see the world (no doubt where he picked up the broad range of teachings and philosophies mentioned in the history books), and as fathers named the children in Greek culture, the fact that he chose not to name his first-born after the paternal grandfather, as was tradition, but essentially named him "wise speaker", says an awful lot about the real Mnesarchus.