Atlantis fic: The Place Before Home
Title: The Place Before Home
Fandom: Atlantis
Word count: 3,700
Characters: Jason/Pythagoras, Hercules/Medusa
Rating: PG-13
Trope Bingo: Animal Transformation
AN: This is the companion piece, or more precisely the wraparound story, to a Primeval/Atlantis story I will one day finish. It should hopefully stand alone and work within canon. Thanks to fififolle for beta work. I’ve substantially rewritten and any and all errors belong to me. Hey, deinonychus_1, not the intended story but a finished fic!
AN2: How do you solve a problem like Medusa?
*
THE PLACE BEFORE HOME
Ouch! Pythagoras dropped his needle and watched as a small bead of blood formed on the ball of his thumb. Abandoning the sliver of sharpened bone where it fell, he moved his hand to avoid staining the pale cloth laid out on the table in front of him. There were already several suspicious spots that he was going to have to scrub at later.
If only one could sew by the power of thought or with an instrument that would guarantee small, even stiches throughout. Old Dorcas, the seamstress, would no longer have to labour long into the night, eyes straining by the meagre lamplight, but would have finished her work by noon and could spend the rest of the day resting or chatting to friends.
Pythagoras chewed his lip thoughtfully. That would be good…only then everyone would be able to craft garments and perhaps Dorcas would not have enough employment to live on…not so good…maybe she could concentrate on the delicate embroidery that the ladies of the palace so loved…good again….only this would take as long, perhaps longer, as her original sewing and his invention would not benefit her after all...
Still, he drifted off in his mind imagining how such a sewing machine would work. There would be a wheel, perhaps, and a handle to turn it…
Pythagoras was still contemplating various designs and pondering the use of a foot pump when Hercules blundered into the room and broke the train of thought by barging into Pythagoras’s chair.
“Ouch!” yelped Pythagoras, once again impaling a finger on the forgotten needle. At this rate he would be attempting to sew up himself more than anything else. No wonder Dorcas’s hands were so red and gnarled.
Hercules - naturally - was looking for food and beyond a cursory nod of apology for the collision he was silent until he had chewed his way through most of an apple. Only then did he pull up a chair and settle next to his friend, bringing with him a sudden, sharp scent of autumn fruit.
“Have you ever heard of a place called Neanderthal?” asked Hercules, picking carelessly at Pythagoras’s sewing with one hand while the other once again approached his mouth. The second half of the question was obscured by chewing noises.
“No. Why? Should I?” Pythagoras snatched the cloth back. Hercules’s hands were bound to be filthy and the disgusting way his mouth remained open while eating was just asking for apple remnants to come flying out.
“Jason just said I was positively Neanderthal.”
“Oh,” said Pythagoras. “That is strange.”
Hercules chewed some more and then swallowed loudly. They both considered the matter silently for a few moments before Pythagoras continued, “Perhaps it’s where Jason comes from. He probably meant it as a compliment. You know he always thinks his way is the best way.”
Hercules snorted and threw his apple core towards the slops bowl. It missed and hit the tiled floor with a damp thud rolling several times before coming to rest near the curtained door. “It certainly didn’t sound like a compliment. But then there’s nothing that Jason says that sounds complimentary at the moment. I’ve never seen him in such a snit, hanging around the house from dawn to dusk, sulking and being sarcastic. And all I was trying to do was give him a little romantic advice. The man may know everything there is to know about fighting but it’s clear he knows nothing about love.”
“Oh,” said Pythagoras again, before adding as casually as possible even though he could feel the blood rushing to his face as he spoke, “Ariadne?”
Hercules tapped the side of his nose in a significant gesture. “Maybe, maybe not. Anyway, it’s not just the who, but the how and the why that counts when it comes to romance.”
“Mmmmm,” mumbled Pythagoras non-committedly when it was clear that Hercules was waiting for some kind of response.
Apparently that was enough. Hercules began talking again, warming to his subject. “If you ask me, Jason and Ariadne are in love with the idea of each other - she’s a princess and he’s a hero - as much as anything else. How’s he going to feel the first time she farts or she smells his morning breath? They’re all show and no substance. Not like… Well, at any rate, he didn’t want to listen to me. He’s gone to the Palace now for some more mooning about and eye-batting. I don’t know how Ariadne puts up with it.”
Pythagoras stared down and rearranged his cloth on the table with determined thoroughness to avoid having to reply. He knew how. And why. But that didn’t matter as he was the wrong who. He tried to remember exactly what he was attempting to create and why it mattered and largely failed on both counts. It was ridiculous to even think he could compete with a princess.
Jason had been all-but-flying around the house with happiness that Ariadne had admitted her feelings for him. Pythagoras knew he should be happy for his friend. After all, hadn’t the greater part of the last two years been in pursuit of Jason’s destiny? And Jason’s destiny was clearly Atlantis in the form of its queen, Ariadne. Still, a large part of him could not help feeling that Hercules was right. Jason loved the idea of Ariadne as much the princess herself.
“Grumpy sod,” said Hercules breaking into Pythagoras’s thoughts for the second time.
Despite himself, Pythagoras’s lips twitched in a fleeting grin. Apparently Hercules had never heard the idea about it taking one to know one. He tried to change the subject, or at least shift it slightly, because the truth was that ever since Jason had come into their lives, Pythagoras and Hercules had been shadows chasing his sun. Every action and every idea returned to Jason.
“I think Jason’s homesick, Hercules. You know how usually he clams up about where he came from and everything that happened to him before he came to Atlantis. Yesterday, he was telling me about how they celebrate weddings in his homeland and the type of food they ate and things they did that we don’t do here. He seemed sad in spite of being so happy about Ariadne. I’m making him a gift to cheer him up.”
Hercules gave him a long look that said more clearly than words, ‘Jason’s sad?’ For a moment their eyes met in twinned unhappiness that would never be expressed because they had promised each other to support Jason and that meant burying personal feelings. It was a promise made out of love rather than duress but that didn’t mean it was any easier to live with.
Hercules turned away first, standing up and taking a small step backwards, the better to observe the cloth on the table. “A gift of what? It doesn’t look like any garment I’ve ever seen. For a start the linen’s too thin and the front’s completely open.” His mouth curved up in a lascivious smirk. “Is that some kind of sex garment? I never would have thought it of you! You dog! Jason’s going to be very happy if Ariadne wears that.” His gaze moved from the shirt to Pythagoras. “Oh, no, I get it! Ariadne’s going to be very happy when Jason turns up in it.”
Pythagoras blushed. Sex had been his first thought too on hearing Jason’s description of what he called a dress shirt that was apparently worn by men at weddings in Jason’s homeland. Neanderthal, was it? He made a note to look the city up on a map.
Sex had certainly figured in Jason’s account of so-called Stag Nights. But there was no way Pythagoras was admitting that to Hercules. Pythagoras still squirmed with remembered horror of that one time that a drunken Hercules had felt it incumbent on himself to explain the facts of life to his young friend. It had been a full hour before Pythagoras could escape. Some of Hercules’s information had been distinctly on the dodgy side but there was no way that Pythagoras was revisiting the occasion to offer correct information. Still, if Hercules really believed such things, it explained a lot about why the older man was still single. And...ew…Pythagoras shook his head trying to dislodge the horrid images that had suddenly appeared there.
But that had been before Medusa. Hercules was both a different man and a better man than before he had met her, while remaining himself in all essential ways. Of course, Pythagoras was different too. Who could have imagined that there would come a time when a sword fit as easily into his hand as a ruler!
Meanwhile, Hercules had picked up the cloth and was turning it this way and that trying to make sense of it and guffawing lewdly as he did so.
“It’s a shirt,” explained Pythagoras. “Look, it has small holes that can be laced all the way up on each side. Or unlaced, perhaps. Jason wasn’t too clear and for obvious reasons I can’t ask him to go into too much detail. That would ruin the surprise.”
“It’s a shit,” replied Hercules, bluntly, and then laughed immoderately at his own wordplay. Pythagoras joined in because the shirt was pretty terrible and it was also quite funny although he protested half-heartedly that his efforts were not that bad.
“Maybe I’ll just get him the giant cake and find a lamppost to tie him to,” said Pythagoras as Hercules went to fetch a second apple.
Hercules raised an eyebrow. “Lamppost? You mean like those expensive candles in holders they use instead of oil lamps up at the Palace? No, wait, I don’t want to know. I tell you what, give me the shirt and I’ll take it with me and show it to Medusa. She might have some idea how to make it work. At any rate she can hardly make it worse. It might take her mind off these glittery things.”
“Oh, you don’t have to…” began Pythagoras and stopped because clearly Hercules did have to and was just looking for some sort of excuse. He visited Medusa at least twice a week and usually resisted all attempts to accompany him with the explanation that it upset Medusa for people to ‘see’ her in her altered state.
As expected Hercules quickly cut in to forestall any offer Pythagoras might make in that direction. “I’m just stopping by to make sure she’s all right on her own, and that she’s got enough fuel for the fire and sufficient food for the next few days. She gets lonely.” Hercules looked up then and gave an unconvincing smile. “You know I’ve often said that women should wear a bag on their head to keep them quiet. Who would have thought my dreams would come true?”
“Don’t,” said Pythagoras quickly. “Don’t, Hercules. You don’t need to joke.”
Hercules met his gaze, his expression for once wholly open and vulnerable. “Yes. Yes, I do. Just like you have to make shirts. I joke. You do things. It’s how we get by.”
There was nothing to say to that. Or at least nothing that would do any good. Pythagoras returned to Hercules’s earlier comment.
“What glittery things?”
“Medusa sees lights in her cave. It’s been going on a while. All the time we were away fighting. They come and go and sometimes she hears voices. She’s afraid she’s going mad. I’m afraid she’s going mad. I sometimes don’t know if we left her alone for her own protection or so that we could forget about her.”
Pythagoras raised his hands in a brief, involuntary gesture of protest. “It was for protection, Hercules, you know that. You must know that.”
Hercules sighed and looked defeated. “I do. But I wish I could take the curse for her. We’ve brought her nothing but trouble.”
“Do you wish you’d never met?” Pythagoras could hear the distress in his own voice and made an effort to supress it. He should be strong for his friend.
“I should. It would be better for her, but I can’t do that. I could never wish her out of my life. I don’t care what she looks like because she’ll always look lovely to me. Tell me, honestly, if Ariadne had been disfigured like Medusa that Jason would still be in love with her?”
Pythagoras tried and failed to come up with a reply and in the end produced something between a cough and a snort that could be interpreted as either.
Hercules smiled humourlessly. “That’s what I thought.”
He gathered up the shirt and laid it on the base of a straw basket that was lying in readiness on the floor. He then busied himself for a few moments in the cupboards and shelves loading up the basket with fruit and cakes. This food was meant to last them a week but Pythagoras said nothing. Lastly Hercules produced a small bunch of violets from some unsuspected crevice deep in his tunic and arranged the flowers into a bouquet on top.
“I’ll be off then,” he said, picking up the basket carefully in one hand. His spare hand once again held a half-eaten apple.
Pythagoras jumped up and hugged Hercules as best he could, given the presence of the apple and the basket. “Give her our love.”
“Aye,” said Hercules, voice suddenly husky, and turned away so Pythagoras could not see his face. His last words were delivered as he was strolling out of the door “And you can see if you can cheer up Jason with your cakes and candles. If anyone can it’ll be you.”
A second apple core flew back through the door as he left. Once again it failed to reach its target.
Alone again Pythagoras considered what next to do. Deprived - although secretly thankful for this - of his shirt-sewing project he cast an eye around the room. There was enough dusting and tidying to do to keep him busy and then it would be time to start on dinner. Jason had said this morning he would be home and Hercules would need feeding whenever he came back. He could get on with those while working through some mathematical possibilities that had been troubling him.
He would think about triangles. And not about Medusa. Triangles with their familiar comfort of clearly defined angles. Definitely not about Medusa.
Medusa…
In the still, honest moments in the middle of the night Pythagoras lay awake and wondered if it would have been better if Medusa had been killed the moment she opened the box. It was an ugly idea and one he could never, ever express to anyone. Sometimes as he thought this he could hear Hercules’s stentorian breathing - he completely denied snoring - in the room next door and wondered if Hercules had ever thought the same. But Hercules would love Medusa in any form at all - losing her was unthinkable. Was that a greater or lesser love? To love and refuse to let go?
Pythagoras couldn’t even ask Jason as Jason was consumed with guilt about what had happened to their friend. Medusa’s fate was his fault. Though if it was her fate surely there was no escaping it? Pythagoras thought he would rather die a thousand times than spend his life alone in a cave away from all human warmth. No wonder Medusa was seeing things.
The light was dimmed and Pythagoras hadn’t made a move to do anything when Jason arrived home, bursting through the door with his usual firm stride that was just short of a run. He was immediately brought up short.
“Ew! What’s that I’ve just trodden on? It’s all squelchy. I hope we’ve not got roaches again.”
“Probably Hercules’s apple core,” said Pythagoras. “Don’t move and I’ll come and pick it up.”
“No need, I’ve done it. Where is the big slob anyway? And why haven’t you lit the lamps?” asked Jason, taking care of the lamps as he spoke.
“Gone to visit Medusa,” replied Pythagoras blinking a little against the sudden flare of light. “He said he would be late.”
“Oh.” Jason put a small lamp on the table and sat on the chair that Hercules had vacated earlier. The soft glow showed his face wore the guilty look it acquired whenever Medusa’s name was mentioned. He ran his fingers through his dark hair untangling imaginary knots. “Did he have enough food to take with him?”
“Yes. I saw there was plenty. Whatever else happens, she won’t starve.”
Jason dropped his head in his hands. “Whatever else-- Oh, Hercules told you. I had an argument with him. He said Medusa was going mad, seeing swirling stars, and I said it was just the fisherman lighting their boats. He got angry and said the lights were inside the caves and not out of the water. Then he said I wanted to believe Medusa was fine for my sake not hers so that I didn’t have to feel bad about deserting her. Do you think that’s true?”
Pythagoras didn’t answer. Jason lifted his head and asked the again. “Is it true?”
For once the certainty was absent. Pythagoras laid a comforting hand on Jason’s arm feeling the muscles shift under his touch. Jason’s skin was firm and warm, his arm lightly dusted with sun-gold hairs. Pythagoras smelt roses, Ariadne’s perfume, but then Jason moved and the scent was gone. “That’s just hurt talking. What happened to Medusa wasn’t your fault. It wasn’t anyone’s fault. The truth is we all want to believe she’s fine but we all know she isn’t. And there isn’t anything we can do about it. She was in the wrong place at the wrong time.”
“She was helping us.”
“Yes,” Pythagoras admitted. “But that doesn’t mean what happened to her is our fault.”
Jason breathed out shakily and it seemed to Pythagoras that the muscles under his hand unbunched a little. “But what if she is going mad? What happens then?”
Pythagoras shivered but kept his hand firm as Jason shifted slightly towards him. His own arm looked pale and thin compared to Jason’s muscled splendour. He wondered if Medusa had indeed gone mad. And if she wasn’t mad yet how many months or years it would be before she finally succumbed. And that would be their fault. They had left Medusa alone to suffer. But what else could they have done? There was a war on and they had been needed elsewhere. But, his mind whispered, what if it had been Ariadne who had been cursed, or Hercules, or Pythagoras himself? What would Jason have done then? Something, he admitted to himself. They would have done something. Somehow.
Jason was still speaking, thinking aloud but not as if he was going through his ideas for the first time. It sounded like the end of a conversation he had already had with himself. “What if Medusa really heard voices and saw lights?”
“Smugglers from the mainland?” suggested Pythagoras. “Medusa is her own protection. They would be in more danger than she would.”
“No. Those caves are too isolated. Medusa would be able to see anyone coming and going.” Jason worked through the other possibilities. “What if she’s found a gateway to Tartarus or Asphodel?”
Pythagoras drew a quick, shocked breath. “The Underworld?”
“Yes. No. Maybe.” Jason licked his lips carefully and began to speak slowly. “What if there was a way to a different world with different gods?”
Pythagoras dropped his hand. “I don’t think meddling with gods is a good idea, Jason.”
“Not even if it meant lifting Medusa’s curse?”
Pythagoras paused to pick his words carefully. “Is this….is this something to do with Neanderthal? The place where you come from.”
Jason turned sharply in his chair and faced Pythagoras blankly. The lamp flickered briefly as he moved. “Nean-oh, in a way. Yes. It has to do with where I came from. A place where the curse might not even work at all.” He paused as if considering whether to continue. “But it would be dangerous and mean leaving everything you know. Leaving Atlantis, perhaps forever.”
He stopped. Pythagoras watched his face, saying nothing, knowing that there was more to come. Jason wiped his face with hands that were suddenly unsteady. “There’s…there are things you have to know. When I came to Atlantis there was a storm. A storm with bright lights and voices….”
Jason talked for a long time staring into the flame of the tiny lamp. Pythagoras let him speak without interrupting. Eventually Jason fell silent and looked at Pythagoras. Waiting. For the first time Pythagoras felt that he had been given lead in their relationship and that whatever he decided Jason would abide by. He supposed he should feel angry with Jason: for himself, for Hercules, for Medusa, but he could understand the impulse that had kept Jason silent.
Pythagoras glanced around the room. It was small and shabby but it was home and he’d grown to love it. But there was no choice. Pythagoras faced Jason squarely. “Whatever it takes. We have to try.”
*
Epilogue
Pythagoras wrapped his cloak more firmly around his shoulders against the cool breeze blowing. The moon was full tonight and cast elusive silver shadows on the spray of the waves tumbling over the dark rocks. There were homes nearby but just now Jason and Pythagoras might have been the only two people the world.
“Thank you,” said Jason resting his arm across Pythagoras’s shoulder.
Every nerve lit up and it was all Pythagoras could do not to turn into the embrace. “ What for?” he asked lightly.
“Oh, you know. Being here.” Jason paused. “Being you.”
Pythagoras smiled. “I’ll always be me.”
“And the other?”
He kept the light tone with an effort. “As long as you need me. I’ll always be here.”
Jason rested his head against Pythagoras’s hair. “I’ll always need you,” he whispered.
Now Pythagoras did move, twisting into the embrace and curling his fingers tightly around Jason’s hand anchoring them together. “Jason,” he said, the one word encompassing all the things he wanted to say but could not voice aloud.
“Always,” said Jason, again.
For now that would be enough.
*