Author's Notes: This story is heavily inspired by Mary Renault's origin of Bagoas in her book, The Persian Boy. I have a short story, called "Make me once more" that, if you care to read, provides a sort of intro to this Alternate Universe take on Bagoas.

I was fascinated by quantum theory in high school and its close linkage to one of Science Fiction's most interesting concepts: the multiverse. Add to that some deep-dive into Zoroastrian beliefs after reading The Persian Boy, and the plot bunny went crazy on me.

As a warning, if you hated/despised/wanted to slap Bagoas in Renault's book, this story is not for you. I borrowed Bagoas from Mary with the promise to take good care of him, so he's getting the star(or as I call it, "my precious baby") treatment. The story might offer something for the Alexander/ Hephaestion lover, but the focus is not on them. I'm not even sure there's going to be much romance in this and we won't meet Alexander for a good while.

The first chapter rehashes quite a bit of The Persian Boy's first pages, but once we reach the divergence point, there won't be too much in common with the book, although I'll keep some character interactions and plot points.

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Chapter 1

The hand of fate

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My name is Bagoas, and the line which I come from is as old as the ancient fort I lived in for the first ten years of my life. My father was Artembares, son of Araxis of the Pasargadai, King Cyrus' old royal tribe. Three of our family fought for him when he conquered the crown of Media.

Before I left the woman's quarters at the tender age of five, as is the custom of my people, my mother raised me on legends of the Great King. Father taught me about honor, courage and justness, helped me mount my first horse and showed me how to hold and throw a spear. Those were carefree days, full of laughter, spent in the thrill of the hunt and in the joy that young ones find in all the yet to be discovered mysteries of the world. All that changed the summer of my tenth year.

It took me some time to remember everything about those days, a child's mind working in unmapped ways, and sometimes we must forget the past in order to build a future, at least until it comes back to demand its due sacrifice.

We lived in dangerous times, times when my abhorred namesake, the Vizier Bagoas, was rumored by all to be the maker and breaker of kings. After King Ochos died under suspicious circumstances, father was quick to declare for Ochos' legitimate heir, his son Arses. I often wondered where I would be now if Arses had the eunuch removed from the land of the living, but I have learned not to question fate's strange turns. In truth, the game those so inclined play with our empire is sometimes hidden from the common people's view and not even the ones writing down deeds for sons of our sons know everything there was.

What's not to be doubted is that my family was murdered through treachery. My father was preparing to leave for Susa to declare loyalty to the king when, the day before leaving, we received a party of warriors through our gates. It happened fast, one minute I was following my boyish games, the second, the shouts started. My father's body was dragged in the courtyard by the new arrivals. There was blood streaming where his nose and ears had been and I wouldn't have recognized him if not for the boots he was wearing. With a foreign voice, he still found the breath to shout the traitor's name:

"Orxines betrayed us! Orxines, remember the name! Orxines!".

They didn't honor him with a quick death; whether on purpose or by lack of skill, it took them too many sword strikes to severe the head from his body. All the while, I could do nothing but stare at the scene in muted horror.

My mother somehow managed to escape them and jumped to her death from the tower. She landed a mere spear length away from me.

Even now, so many years later, images of father's disfigured face and mother's beautiful hair matted by blood plague my nights.

I was in a stupor when the men finally came for me; they had me bound and on their captain's horse in a blink of an eye. I heard my sisters screaming as we started trotting towards the exit, but memories from that point on are not fully with me. I remember though at some point asking what was to be of me:

"You'll make your weight in gold once gelded boy! Too bad your father didn't choose his companions better." As deep terror settled in my bones, I must've lost my senses for the rest of the ride.

The soldiers sold me on the same day to the slave dealer in Susa, the only satisfaction being that they didn't get my weight in gold. I believe it wasn't even the weight of the body part they were planning on cutting away.

I passed the next days in a tangle of fear and hunger, locked in an open cell with a dirty cot that I could sleep on. I could hear terrible screams coming from the shed nearby, where sobbing boys were going in and quiet ghosts were coming out. I wondered if the Vizier Bagoas had ever been this small and helpless and if the name had doomed me to fall in his foot-steps.

After three days of starving me and barely enough water not to die of thirst – they'd told me it was to make the cutting safer – they took me to the shed. I had kept my pride up until that point, but seeing the table with the knives and the frame that they would tie me to, I threw myself at the dealer's feet and begged him to let me go. They did not speak, nor gave me any compassion, just strapped me down and continued with their gossip. You'd think they were two friends sharing a goblet of wine, not getting ready to cut my life apart. My heart was a bird struggling for freedom in the cage of my chest, and it must have stopped when I felt the knife's sharp bite, my voice breaking into hopeless screams.

There was confusion and loud voices and even though I knew better than to expect them to stop, they somehow did. Through foggy eyes I saw a vaguely familiar face reaching over me. The man's mouth was moving but I couldn't make sense of the words he must've been speaking, and when gentle hands untied and raised me to his chest I finally let go.

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I woke up in the quiet of a warm, soft bed. There was movement near me and voices speaking softly:

"He'll pull through my lord. They only made one incision that I closed back up. I'm more concerned about the lack of water. The boy is as dry as a stick in the desert; he must wake soon and drink."

I tried moving but sharp pain in my groin stopped me. Panic swept as I struggled to get the thick blankets off me. Strong hands stopped me:

"Shhh, shhh, you're fine boy, stop moving. Here, have some water." The cool metal on my lips and the taste of fresh water in my mouth felt like a blessing, so I gulped greedily.

"Easy now, don't spill." Gentle fingers supported my head and I finally saw my rescuer's face clearly. I knew the man's name, Oxyathres, one of the lords that had gathered around my father's table lately. Looking at his kind face, the misery of the past days rushed through me, and I started crying.

He picked me up like a mother would a sick child, careful of my body's pains. I told him through big, chocking tears about my father and mother, about the captain's mockery and the slave master's cruelty.

When I finally settled down he asked me if I knew him.

"I remember you my lord."

"Your father was a good friend Bagoas, you need not concern yourself about your future, I'll be a father to you just as Artembares would if he were still alive. This I promise."

I didn't ask how he'd found me but he told me the story in the following days. He'd been sent to our home after the king's death, to secure my father's support on his brother's behalf. I remembered Artashata as a tall, handsome man, who sometimes used to pick me up and hold me on his knees while the adults carried on with their grown-up talk. As cousin to the deceased King, he was next in line to the Throne and wanted my father on his side. Oxyathres found the fort burnt, with the bodies of my parents and three sisters left outside for the birds to pick apart. He left them with a heavy heart, but something kept nagging at the back of his mind. It was only when he reached Susa that the thing bothering him was finally clear; there was no body for the son of the family. He then told me it was like a foreign force had pushed him towards the slave dealer's court.

Maybe it was my parent's fravashi that guided him that day, or maybe he knew the only place for a pretty orphan was the slaver's business; the only thing certain is that, had he been two minutes late, my father's line would've seen no more sons.

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I healed quickly, with the impatience and vigor of youth. My sleep though was troubled by nightly terrors that I could never fully remember... not that I wanted to. But those too became rarer and forgotten more easily as time passed by.

That same summer, Lord Artashata became Great King Darius III, as he'd intended, and to my great relief, the Vizier Bagoas died not long after. I didn't know if the eunuch had his hands in my family's death, but growing up with stories of his villainy, in my mind he was guilty of all evil.

As for Oxyathres, he made good on his promise to make me a son. It was not uncommon for families to take orphans into their home; there were contracts drawn and in the eye of the law, an adopted son was as rightful an heir as a child by blood. Oxyathres had no male heirs, and although still in his prime, he never took another wife after his first died in childbirth. He had a daughter though, Amastris, five years older than me. But as boys' and young women's station in life is, we rarely saw each other.

With my father, I was used to receiving lessons for the mind and for the young warrior's body directly from him. Oxyathres, as brother to the Great King, had duties taking him away from our home in Susa quite often. I was usually left behind, though there was a veritable army of tutors teaching me everything, from reading and writing Old Persian, Aramaic and Greek, for which I was praised to have real skill at, to learning how to shoot arrows from the back of a galloping horse.

Maybe it was the feeling that I was given a very rare chance when I was saved from a life of service that pushed me, but I applied myself intensely to everything I was taught. I practiced with sword and bow and spear and words until I fell in exhaustion each evening. It was a good life though, and Oxyathres took real pride in my accomplishments. If sometimes I imagined my own father smiling approvingly at me, I never let it known.

It was the spring of my 12th year when the air of change began whistling through our lands.