Heart, In Twain

by elemmacil

Summary:

Thanatos' heart lies outside his body.

Styx takes Zagreus’ pieces from Thanatos’ grasp and makes him whole once more. It takes longer than he thinks it ought, for flesh to knit and soul to settle into its place; for the woven multicolored thread of Zagreus’ life to be re-spun, knotted over like scar tissue, and the next first beat of Zagreus’ heart to resound in Thanatos’ breast.

Notes:

I hope you enjoy reading this as much as I did writing it, shameless self-indulgent bullshit and all ♥

Beneath muscle and bone Thanatos harbors no beating heart. Golden ichor runs in rivulets under his skin but at his core is only a quiet, coiled dark. Of all the gods, he is singular in this.

Once, young and not yet certain of his own power, he’d sought Mother Nyx’s wisdom.

“You are as you are meant to be, my son.” She said, voice as wide and deep as the darkness between stars. “Even I cannot claim knowledge over all the Fates’ design. Yet, this may bear only such significance as you alone can ascribe it. Does that comfort you?”

Yes, mother, he said, though he remained uncertain.

Which was...disagreeable.

Uncertainties aren’t the sorts of things the incarnation of Death should entertain, surely.

For the time he spent thinking on the matter Thanatos came to no discernable conclusion besides this: it was a tiresome, needless pursuit distracting from his duties—none of which included philosophizing. So he put the matter out of his mind entirely.

For the better part of several centuries, at least. Until Thanatos returns wearied, uneasy after prolonged work on the surface to a House in disarray, its Lord seething with bitter wrath, and its Prince—

Battered and bruised, knuckles bleached white on Stygius’ grip, proudly bearing the marks of his Olympian kin. Bathed in Elysium’s watery glow and wearing an expression Thanatos has never seen on him before, Zagreus seems already impossibly far even as he stands barely out of reach.

Zagreus dies that first time in Elysium’s fields, an arrow catching him in the throat. There is no escaping Death, so Thanatos said.

Except.

Except the drumbeat of Zagreus’ defiant heart echoes through him, so strong it seems a hammer stroke against Thanatos’ ribs. For the first time, but not the last, Thanatos dips his fingers into the well of eternity, immeasurably deep and dark; sees in his mind’s eye the ripples from his touch gently roll outward across its still surface under a faint veil of stars. Plucks from its place among his sister’s weavings the thread of Zagreus’ life, and—

Not if I can help it.

Zagreus heaves a ragged breath.

And Thanatos will not know or understand it until later, but something between them begins, irrevocably, to shift.

-

The ash settles. Zagreus’ breathing comes hard and fast. On one flushed cheek is a splash of gore, remnants of his last kill; dispatched with a lunging sweep of Stygius, blade sprouting curling vines. Somewhere behind him a swirling vortex of wickedly curved blades has reverted to its natural form, that of Zagreus’ own bloodstone. Fights are never...uninteresting, with him. That’s for certain.

Achilles taught Zagreus much, and well, besides. Parries and stances, stratagems and lessons only a warrior such as Achilles had been could teach. But Zagreus’ greatest strength is not in the technical.

Where Thanatos applies the inevitable decay of his domain in slow, sweeping strokes, Zagreus is a force unto himself—wielding wild abandon as deftly as Artemis nocks an arrow, or Athena can cut to the core. All the boons granted by his Olympian relatives are lesser still to this: his relentless determination, his disregard for pain or toil.

His utter gall.

“Made me work for it this time, Than.”

Casually, Zagreus turns his head to spit. His lifeblood burns off the Phlegethon’s surface with a hiss.

“That last one should have been mine.”

“Huh? Did you mark it? Didn’t notice.”

He says this while picking a bone shard from his hair. Eugh.

Disbelievingly, Thanatos scoffs. Zagreus spares him a look over the top of his message as he plucks it out of the air; a rasping battle cry accompanies the ringing of metal, a sword withdrawn from its sheath with Ares’ measured viciousness. The other god does not speak, however, so his gaze must be averted, at present.

“I’ll just let you have it next time, then?” Zagreus says, making his choice of boon with half an eye on Thanatos the whole time. “A pity kill?”

“A pity— I can arrange a pity kill, you know.”

An empty threat, of course. Zagreus knows it. He thinks. There’s nothing but impishness in the gesture of surrender Zagreus makes in reply, at least.

“No, no. Thought I’d try to go all the way this time, for a change of pace.”

“May want to watch your footing, then.” Thanatos says archly.

Satisfyingly, Zagreus blushes. “They’re very, erm, slippery, those barges. Should put in a work order for railings, or something.” As Thanatos rolls his eyes, he adds petulantly, “Like you’d even know, anyway.”

There are some benefits to having wings, it’s true.

With triumph and a little gratitude Zagreus seizes the centaur heart Thanatos offers.

“Needed this,” he says, chewing open-mouthed.

Thanatos grunts. “Don’t mention it. Seriously, don’t. This is all off the books, remember?”

In response Zagreus says something unintelligible that Thanatos supposes he’s to take for assent.

It’s a needless reminder, anyway. Impulsive as he is, Thanatos doubts Zagreus would utter his name to Lord Hades in a fit of pique. No, his real concern lies with the wretches scurrying back to their master hoping to appease his ire at their latest failure with whatever shred of information they can offer him.

The centaur heart, eaten in a few bites, restores a little vitality. Thanatos watches as a patch of skin on Zagreus’ arm, blistered and raw from a splash of magma, smooths over again. The tightness in Thanatos’ chest eases. A moment longer Thanatos spares to look Zagreus over, assessing. Looking only for the concealed wounds he knows he carries, certainly not another bottle of nectar. Ridiculous.

Ah, but there, pinned against his chest: delicate wings of indigo and gold gleaming faintly in the glow of molten rock and fire. Though small, against the black and crimson of Zagreus’ chiton it is stark. That is it, then; the reason Zagreus’ wounds have been mirrored in an uncomfortable prickle along his own skin.

Even slightly feral and distracted as he is, currently, Zagreus notices the direction of his gaze. Of course he does.

“You know, I hate those wretched things. Fluttering all about Elysium, like a swarm of—well, exactly what they are, I guess.” Zagreus gives an exaggerated shudder. “This one, though...” He runs a thumb over the curve of a wing. “It’s beautiful, actually. I hardly take it off.”

Oh. That is a pleasing thought.

“If only it served some function beyond being a fashion statement.”

“That’s not fair.” Zagreus protests. “Alecto is awfully good at what she does and happens to have this obsession with attempting to disembowel me, if you haven’t noticed.”

“I’ve noticed.”

“Then maybe you’ve also noticed that my guts are still firmly inside my body?” Zagreus gestures. The half-dried bloodstain darkening his chiton rather ruins the intended effect.

Thanatos narrows his eyes. “Barely. You understand that if—”

“Than. Believe it or not, I am familiar with the concept of avoiding sharp stabby things thrust in my direction.”

“That’s not what I was going to say.” Thanatos bites out. “Just—be careful, Zag.”

And because he’s lingered longer than necessary already (though nothing, he admits, is strictly necessary—nor even particularly wise—about these rendezvous), Thanatos leaves. Too quickly to catch all of what Zagreus begins to say in reply.

With a single beat of incorporeal wings Thanatos shifts, lands. The searing heat of Asphodel replaced with a deep chill. The oppressive grey clouds, at least, block the brightest of Helios’ Chariots’ rays.

There is time enough to tend to the needs of a few more souls before returning to the House to wait for Zagreus’ return. Should he return.

Always, that thought follows the first; uneasy, persistent. Thus far, Zagreus has been unsuccessful in his attempts to reach the surface. Cut down fatally each time, either by sword or claw or any number of other things. The variety seems as endless as Zagreus’ energy.

A futile pursuit, Thanatos thought at the start. Doomed to failure before it began.

Now he isn’t so sure.

Given everything he now knows, and has a hand in arbitrating, Thanatos would be foolish not to consider the possibility that Zagreus will, eventually, succeed. And what then?

If Zagreus breaches the highest gate of the Underworld, seizes what he wants or finds whatever answers he is so desperately, blindly seeking—what then?

Thanatos doubts even Zagreus has thought so far ahead. Concerned, as ever, only with what is immediately before him.

He materializes in the west hall in his customary spot, ill at ease. Dusa, who had been arranging plush pillows on a recliner Thanatos has never seen before, shrieks in surprise. Whether sounding the toll ahead to herald his arrival would have made a difference, he can’t be sure.

“Excuse me.”

“Oh!” gasps Dusa. She gives her approximation of a bow, bobbing in the air with her gaze lowered. “N, no! Master Thanatos, gosh. I was so caught up in my thoughts about all the—um, anyway, excuse me!”

Before she can disappear into the rafters, Thanatos makes a staying motion with his hand. “Wait.”

Dusa waits. The feather duster clutched in one serpent’s mouth twitches uncertainly. “Yes?”

“What is...all this.”

There can be no mistaking what he means. Since Thanatos’ last visit the southwest balcony has, apparently, undergone renovations. Beneath the recliner set against the wall—its corners adorned with golden wings to match his mantle, he now notices—is a pillow-topped stool and lush carpet, inlaid with fine stitching of gold and purple and grey, the Watchful Eye bracketed by flared wings.

“Prince Zagreus ordered it from the House Contractor. After he returned the last time.”

“Ah.”

“He’s been helping out so much around here,” she continues, her obvious nerves making her somehow more effusive. “Making sure the lounge was cleaned up, commissioning that new stove and rugs and everything...it’s been so nice! Feels so homey, don’t you think?”

“Homey,” echoes Thanatos.

Dusa flees quickly when Thanatos dismisses her, leaving him to stare at the balcony’s new furnishings. It is not unpleasant. Actually, it’s quite nice. Comfortable.

Thanatos places his hand on the high back of one chair where it is arranged with its match overlooking Styx.

It would seem that Zagreus’ gifts have extended from coveted contraband to lavish furnishings, carefully arranged and picked with Thanatos’ own tastes in mind. Whatever pleasure he feels over that is soured by the anger he’s been carrying around with him ever since this whole...misbegotten thing began.

Thanatos scowls.

Once more, Thanatos stands as a sentinel on the flagstones. Waiting in silence for the telltale snap of thread, and for the Styx’s waters to run flush with a familiar soul, wondering bitterly just what it is that Zagreus wants from him. What more, too, he is willing to give.

-

The Prince flits through the maze of the Underworld. Shrouded in darkness, moving with god-granted swiftness, Zagreus is easy enough to track once Thanatos understands how to look.

Pillars reduced to rubble, wretches returned to dust; coffers pillaged of jewels and obols... There is no mistaking the places Zagreus has been. Among ever-shifting chambers, though, that alone is no way to track someone.

Of Thanatos’ many powers foresight is not one of them. Death cannot see all ends, no, but nothing that can die is ever truly beyond his sight.

Practiced as he is, now, all Thanatos must do is turn his thought towards Zagreus: and he follows the drumbeat of Zagreus’ immortal heart to the source. The echo of it more felt than heard; like the thrum of a plucked string reverberating in his chest that—that guides—him—

Outside one of Elysium’s many doors, Thanatos stops.

A long stretch of moss and tangled vines rises before him to a set of Daedalus’ gilded doors framed by braziers of brilliant blue fire. And in every direction, mountains of pale flora topped with aged statuary of past heroes and the homes of exalted shades rising proudly amidst the winding paths of the Lethe.

Ahead, Zagreus’ heart is hammering against his ribs, adrenaline singing through his veins, lifeblood spilling, as he fights his way through his father’s horde. Wounded, weary, but not yet spent.

Nothing stirs beneath the hand pressed to his sternum, but Thanatos feels it—him. Vibrant, exposed, alive; of and apart from him.

Oh.

Oh?

Stunned, half convinced he’s mistaken, Thanatos does not move or breathe. Stares, sightless, ahead of him while he feels—

Just feels.

How long, he thinks distantly, and how deeply had he buried this? Convinced it was something other than what it is? Alongside his own, Zagreus’ existence is nestled, river-stone smooth even as it throbs like a raw, open wound. A hundred questions rise, begging his attention. Overwhelmed, he fights them down.

Quietly, tentatively, awe overtakes the shock.

But then he knows he’s tarried so long that he’s missed the chance to catch up; finding that he can feel it, too, as sure as if it were his own, when the thread of Zagreus’ life is severed.

Thanatos’ wings flare.

When he arrives, Zagreus’ body has not yet hit the ground. Eyes dun, limbs slack, Coronacht clattering to a cluster of moss-covered stone slabs underfoot, Zagreus slumps on the spear that has impaled him.

It was quick. Zagreus did not have a moment to curse his frustration before succumbing, if he noticed at all. A spearpoint cleanly thrust through the heart is, truthfully, as merciful an end as could be found down here.

Even as Thanatos’ form crystalizes, the exalted shade makes to shake Zagreus off his weapon; an automatic, impersonal thing. Learned in the brutal efficiency of their mortal life.

The green pall of Thanatos’ presence remains. Deepens.

Reaching out on some new instinct, Thanatos halts Zagreus’ fall. Utterly graceless; his fingers bunching and pulling the fabric of Zagreus’ chiton as he seeks purchase around his side, before sinking to a knee upon the ground itself with his burden, so bowed by the unexpected weight; and Thanatos realizes abruptly that he has never tended a body before.

There is no question that he will.

What shades remain have dropped their weapons where they stand; heads bowed silently in deference. Some bear marks of Zagreus’ wrath, their shadowed forms waning, flickering.

Thanatos wonders at them. Driven by obedience to Lord Hades, but also by some lustful fascination for battle that has only grown in their afterlife. Wolves, starved for blood and for sport. To them Zagreus has proven a whetstone upon which to sharpen their blades.

And what glory, to have slain a god.

In his gauntleted hand, Thanatos raises his scythe. It is unnecessary; it is vengeful. Whatever mortals have whispered fearfully about him, Thanatos holds no disdain for them. Has never sought to mete out pain or judgment. Rather the opposite, in fact.

Thanatos does it anyway.

-

Styx takes Zagreus’ pieces from Thanatos’ grasp and makes him whole once more. It takes longer than he thinks it ought, for flesh to knit and soul to settle into its place; for the woven multicolored thread of Zagreus’ life to be re-spun, knotted over like scar tissue, and the next first beat of Zagreus’ heart to resound in Thanatos’ breast.

He does not stay to see Zagreus pull himself up the steps, dripping crimson; neither does he wait on the balcony for Zagreus’ approach. Zagreus will not be expecting him this time, and work beckons, besides.

Work. Yes. The everlasting winter’s war on the surface has lives still to claim and Thanatos mustn’t let them languish overlong.

Thanatos leaves the House. Even so far distant the thu-thump, thu-thump of Zagreus’ heart follows him. Ringing like a struck bell in a far, high tower; faint yet unmistakable. Zagreus’ presence is not intrusive, but it does...it is...distracting.

With effort, Thanatos tends his duties on the surface with all the due diligence and care which he expects of himself.

Ares’ war makes more shades than those found wandering upon blood-soaked battlefields. Those that do not succumb to the sword to become prey for the Keres may still find Atropos’ shears poised over their thread as they lie in the care of a healer. And Demeter’s winter steals the warmth from mortals’ blood, sickens them, and buries their crops beneath sheets of ice.

Atropos’ shears hardly seem to pause. Snipping threads by the handful, each one a new shade that Thanatos must visit. Each one loath to leave. Shivering, still, though by the time Thanatos puts out a hand to guide them the bitter cold is only memory.

He spoke true, when he told Zagreus that he considered himself a bearer of good news; it is a small peace he clings to when weariness and personal anxieties bite at his heels. To ease a new shades’ sorrows or fears over leaving the world they’ve known, and to dispel the image they’ve harbored of him—a harbinger of doom not unlike his sisters.

Thanatos thinks uneasily of a handful of exalted shades strewn across the endless expanse of Elysium’ fields. Dust so fine as to never find their like, again.

There are reasons, not all of them borne of misunderstanding, why the gods of Olympus recoil from him or at least regard him with thinly veiled disquiet—all save Lord Ares, at least. Thanatos has never relished it.

Gentling his touch, he takes the misty hand of the shade before him. Slips the obol into their palm. Their shocked fear at Death’s approach having passed, they allow him to draw them under the shadow of a wing as they step softly onto Charon’s boat, unmoved by their weight as it bobs in Styx’s water.

The obol they deposit in Charon’s open coin purse, furtive despite Thanatos’ reassurance. When Charon does nothing except stand, tall and impassive, the shade sits among its fellows with clear relief.

“That is the last of them, for now.”

From his usual place at the stern Charon looks at Thanatos with pitted eyes from beneath the brim of his hat, haloed by smoke drifting up from his slackened mouth.

“Hhhrrhhhh.”

“What?” At first Thanatos thinks he’s misheard. “No. I’m fine. You know as well as I do how much work there is to be done.”

As if on cue, Thanatos’ senses narrow on Zagreus again. It has not been very long at all since he left him in the Pool of Styx, but already he is a streak of velvet dark and flame moving fast on the edges of Thanatos’ awareness. Heartbeat drumming faster, and faster.

Charon’s attention sharpens. Nothing in his face or posture shifts to give it away except a flare of light deep in the pits of his eye sockets.

“Hhrroooohh...grhhh.”

“You’re mistaken, brother.”

“Hrrhhmmm.”

Thanatos frowns uncomfortably. Charon’s unspoken indulgence in Thanatos’ habit of guiding lonesome, rite-less shades to finding passage on his boat is one thing. Outright asking after Thanatos’ wellbeing is altogether another.

“Death is a certainty.” Thanatos says firmly. “I don’t tend to indulge in doubt.”

Though, that is not exactly true anymore, is it?

To that Charon says nothing more, but Thanatos can sense the weight of his disappointment.

With a gesture, Charon’s coin purse closes and returns to his belt. Then he takes up his oar and pushes off the riverbank with unceremonious finality, and, relieved, Thanatos responds in kind with a beat of his wings.

Because it has occurred to Thanatos, abruptly, unpleasantly, that he doesn’t know the full extent of his eldest brother’s domain. Whether threads are veiled to him, or even if something of the connection he bears to Zagreus can be perceived by anyone but himself. Whether Charon meant he could tell that Thanatos was—is—

Thu-thump, thu-thump.

Ixion’s light casts deep shadows in Tartarus’ dusty corners. The air is stale and smells faintly of despair, as it always does. Thanatos senses Zagreus’ swift approach with surprise. Deep in his thoughts, he hadn’t realized what call he’d followed until he’d already arrived here.

“Death approaches?”

Zagreus draws up short as he enters the chamber. He leaves a streak of sparks on the cold stone as he comes out of a dead sprint, breathing hard and staring up at Thanatos with an unreadable expression. Blood runs freely from a gash on his temple.

Without distance between them to dampen it, Zagreus’ presence is loud; no longer a bell in a far, high tower but a hammer stroke on a hot forge.

Schooling his own face, Thanatos gestures with a nod of his head to where summoning circles have already begun to appear upon the intricate tiles of the chamber.

“Got the message you needed help,” he says, nonsensically, drawing out his scythe. “Let’s go.”

-

Before Thanatos can so much as open his mouth, Zagreus grumbles, “I already got an earful from Hypnos, thanks.”

“Wouldn’t want to overstate anything.”

“Ha, ha. It was a fluke, alright? Safe to say you won that contest.” Zagreus’ disgruntled frown fades quickly and he rocks on his heels. That same, odd expression has returned to his face. No less difficult to place now that he can see it up close. “But I, uh. Noticed you brought me back, this time.”

Thanatos crosses his arms more tightly across his chest, the metal of his gauntlet making a low, unpleasant sound.

“I did. I hope it was not unwelcome.”

Zagreus’ face crumples. “What? Than, no. Not at all. Why would it be?”

“I see. Good. That’s...good.”

For a moment, Zagreus just looks at him. Thanatos resists the urge to squirm.

“Yeah. It was...oddly pleasant, actually. Not that I thought it wouldn’t be.” Zagreus hurries on earnestly. “What I mean is, I never remember anything between when I die and wake up, here. But I could tell it was different than being swallowed up by Styx. There was this feeling of, I don’t know. Comfort.” His gaze shifts away, then back. “It was nice. Not the dying part, obviously, but the being dead part.”

There’s a long, awkward pause in which Thanatos tries not to agonize over deciphering every subtle shift in Zagreus’ tone, flicker in his expression, or the pink on his cheeks. Thanatos is Death itself—and all that that means—though he’s always presided personally over peaceful deaths. He has been called gentle before; it didn’t occur to him that Zagreus, unafraid of his domain, so used to dying and waking again, could still find comfort in Thanatos’ touch.

Zagreus must take Thanatos’ silence to mean that he has found this admission disagreeable, somehow, because he winces with obvious mortification, shoulders hitching up almost around his ears.

“Sorry, that was too much—”

“No. Don’t misunderstand me. I’m,” Thanatos searches fruitlessly for the right words. “I would prefer if you didn’t die, in the first place. But I am glad that you...feel...that way.”

Wry, and a little resigned, Zagreus shakes his head. “You know I can’t promise that, Than. Unless you’d like to have a go at convincing my father to let me leave. So, as it stands, if you’re ever in the area...”

Trailing off significantly, he makes a complicated gesture Thanatos generously interprets to be Thanatos floating off with Zagreus’ body in tow.

“It is my job, you understand.” Technically. “But with you it...it isn’t work.” He clears his throat, tugging lightly on his cowl. “But, you know what, that reminds me I’ve got other charges to attend to.”

Thanatos leaves him standing there in the hall to appear in an empty city street under a cold beam of moonlight, breathing heavy as though he had any need of it. Dragging a hand down his face, Thanatos mutters a curse at himself.

Everything was so much easier when he could still pretend he felt nothing. When proof of the opposite didn’t glare him baldly in the face at every turn. Zagreus’ heartbeat sings inside him and it is a kind of agony to bear it.

I comfort him?

Zagreus never asked for him to become involved in all this, to risk his station and weigh the future of the House against their relationship, though he should have expected it. But he has, in not so many words, asked for this. As long as Zagreus is committed to his task, he will be beset by forces that seek to kill him either out of duty or pleasure.

Styx is a truly ceaseless force, ever flowing and grasping for departed souls; its course is fixed and true. Loath as he is to admit it, Thanatos has no control over Zagreus’ fate; but he has control over this much. For this one charge, Styx will ever more defer to Death himself.

-

Whatever Thanatos says to Zagreus about it, Mort’s presence does not meaningfully improve his ability to seek him out in the Underworld. What it does, though, is grant Thanatos a convenient excuse for his apparently instinctive—innate?—ability to know when and how Zagreus has suffered injury, and to shift unerringly to Zagreus’ side wherever he may be simply by willing it.

Not that Zagreus has ever shown indication that he knows, or suspects, anything of the bond Thanatos bears. If Thanatos is a fool, at least Zagreus remains a bigger fool. Each time Thanatos heralds his own arrival with something nonsensical and-or far too revealing Zagreus only smiles back guilelessly. Or distractedly, or pained, depending upon the state Thanatos finds him in. But.

What am I to you, exactly, as of late?

For all that Zagreus wears his emotions on his sleeve, for all that he is driven by impulse in so many things, with Thanatos he has proven...careful. Trying to repair their relationship through gifts and declarations of affection—sincere but tempered.

Zagreus has asked about his work; how he knows when a mortal is Fated to die and how he tends them. What he understands of mortal people—very little, actually—and why they believe the things they do about Death. Even asked, with more grace than he possessed in youth, about his wings and what they look like outside of brief glimpses.

But besides a single, short conversation, Zagreus has never again mentioned this:

Thanatos goes to him when he dies.

Nothing more than the duty of his domain were Zagreus someone and something other than he is. Were he unbound to Styx and his lord father’s House, unlikely to languish between worlds. Were Thanatos not bending, reshaping, the design of his domain every time Zagreus falters and cries out in defiance.

Not if I can help it, he whispers, brushing the encroaching fog of death from across those mismatched eyes with the pass of a hand. Lifting Zagreus back up onto his feet where he’d buckled in the midst of the fray, the flames of his heels flaring white hot.

Thanatos senses the thread, pulled taught and threatening to sever, and he interferes.

Perhaps Thanatos has always had the power to borrow from infinity’s well. To smooth down the frayed edges of a life’s thread, and will the blade of his scythe, Atropos’ shears, dull. He has never had cause to try, before.

Or perhaps, and Thanatos thinks this more likely still, it is something of Zagreus’ own domain that unconsciously guides him. Life; fearsome and unrelenting enough to sway Death and the Fates themselves—for a time.

Get back in there, he says with a firm hand at Zagreus’ back.

For the second time in Elysium’s fields, testily, Focus, Zag.

It’s not your time.

Until it is. Until even their combined powers wane.

Blood bubbles past Zagreus’ pale lips. “No, wait,” he rasps, catching himself against a wall and gasping for another breath that will not come. The Satyr’s poison will run its course, this time. Blistered, bloodied fingers spasm on Varatha’s haft.

“Not this time, Zag.” Thanatos sighs, though Zagreus cannot hear him. “Rest, then. While you can.” And Zagreus’ heart, thumping slow but defiant against his ribs, stops as Thanatos cuts the thread of Zagreus’ life himself.

While none but the Moirai may see the full tapestry on which they tirelessly work, individual threads plucked from their place among the greater picture Death Incarnate holds some sway over.

And Zagreus’ is unlike any that Thanatos has seen.

The velvet purple dark of Nyx’s power is woven through threads that gleam like fire and gold and a hundred shades of green. Shades that belong to the surface’s forests and glades and gardens, things Zagreus has not discovered for himself. Not yet.

His scythe’s blade cuts through the thread in one clean stroke. Briefly, so briefly, then, Zagreus is little more than a soul—although godly, touched by mortality still. In his way. Bundled in thought and power, held fast against that quiet, coiled dark in Thanatos’ core. It is a realm all his own; untouched by Hades, Olympus, or any other force above or below the earth.

That is not, strictly, the duty of his domain.

Thanatos uses his gauntleted hand to arrest the forward pitch of Zagreus’ body. Warm to the touch still, although the laurels in his hair and the molten glow of his feet have faded; ash and coal where fire should yet burn. He is as heavy and ungainly as ever to gather, but Thanatos manages. Arranges his burden so that Zagreus’ head rests against his shoulder instead of lolling back.

“Come along, then.” Even pitched low, Thanatos’ voice echoes in the empty chamber. “I’ve got you.”

Cloaked in transience, that lightless in-between he can occupy when he shifts, Thanatos bears the Prince back to the House of Hades. Lays him as gently as he knows how into the Pool, palm cupped behind Zagreus’ neck until Styx’s crimson waters rise to wash him clean; to reknit soul to flesh.

A lick of flame which seems to give light and draw in dark in equal measure, Zagreus’ soul rests against Thanatos’ own until Styx beckons. Then at last, Zagreus goes; trailing red-green-gold embers like laurel leaves in his wake.

It is only his imagination, Thanatos is sure, that there is any reluctance to the way he uncurls.

-

“You’re exhausted.”

Thanatos turns away from Styx’ rushing waters to look at Zagreus where he stands upon the flagstones, slowly warming the patch beneath his feet. There’s a concerned pinch between his dark brows.

“Chasing after you between my work hasn’t been very restful, Zag.”

It comes out more accusatory than Thanatos intended, but thankfully Zagreus does not take offense or rise to a bait Thanatos didn’t mean to cast out.

“Yeah,” he murmurs.

Absently, Zagreus rubs a hand over a spot on his chest as though recalling any number of old, fatal wounds. Then, strangely, Thanatos senses the quickening of Zagreus’ heart as he drops his hand back to his side.

“Speaking of rest, I did get that for you to use, Than.” Zagreus tips his head towards the recliner. A stray droplet of crimson drips off the end of his hair with the motion. “Father says you’d never do something so indolent as sit down,” it is too mocking to be a passable imitation, “but you’re not on the job right now, are you? Even Death Incarnate needs breaks. But if you don’t like it, I can always ask the House Contractor to—”

“That’s not necessary.” Thanatos blurts. “I like it. I mean, it’s fine.”

A smile curls Zagreus’ lips as Thanatos tugs a little on his cowl, as though that might hide whatever is showing on his face even as they stand in the well-lit hall an arms’ length apart.

“I’m really glad. You’re always standing here, I figured the balcony could use some sprucing up. Make it feel a little more like your own. A place to relax, maybe have a drink while you glare at Styx...”

“You’re suggesting I open a bottle of your contraband right outside the administrative chamber?”

Breezily, Zagreus shrugs. “Father’s too busy with my misdeeds to care about a bit of nectar, or even ambrosia. Besides, you ought to enjoy yourself, time to time.”

Not the first time Zagreus has suggested as much. Thanatos wonders if he is supposed to repeat his invitation that Zagreus show him what he means.

“’Live a little?’” he quotes, instead.

The sound of Zagreus’ laugh is pleasant to hear, and Thanatos is glad to have caused it. Among the halls of Lord Hades, it is something rare indeed.

“Exactly.”

Standing close enough to make out the imperfections in Zagreus’ green iris, emerald and olive flecked with gold, Thanatos often catches himself wondering what it would be like to close the distance between them; to reach out. Feel the warmth of his skin, the curve of his smile against his own. Wonders, too, if Zagreus ever catches himself in the same way. A hairsbreadth from asking.

And then the moment has passed, already. Quicker than the last. Thanatos tries to smother his disappointment.

“I’ve got to talk to Achilles about something, and check in with the good contractor, before I go.” Zagreus says. “But I’ll see you out there?”

Lightly, all too aware that the walls around here have ears, and that he’s been much too free with his words already of late, he says, “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Zagreus taps the side of his nose with a secretive smile.

When he has gone, and Achilles returned to his watch over the empty hall in peace, Thanatos debates with himself the merits of testing the furnishings Zagreus has so generously commissioned. It would please him, he thinks.

Thanatos lowers himself onto the recliner. Hands braced on either side of him, toes brushing against the cushioned stool. Under his weight the downy cushion gives slightly, it’s cover soft against his fingers.

Well. There’s no telling if he’ll make a habit of this, however...

It is, in fact, as comfortable as it looks.

-

“Someone’s been overstepping their bounds, lately.”

Thanatos goes still.

Rarely is he taken by surprise, and the Keres have never been much for stealth or subtlety. Curse Zagreus, really—even when he isn’t present, he remains a distraction; running grooves in Thanatos’ mind the same way he leaves an unmistakable path through Tartarus. Over, and over.

“Sister.”

“Thanatos,” she says, drawling.

When Thanatos turns his head to look Ker’s lips are curled in an unpleasant, knowing smile. She is perched upon his chair on the southwest balcony like a carrion bird presiding over a feast, though the souls that reside in the House of Hades have long lost their luster for her. She is more prone even than he to stay away from the House for long stretches. Concerned only with the cloying stench of mortal fear, the spill of blood at sword point or the slow, tremulous burn of a death prolonged.

It fills him with something akin to dread—wholly unbecoming—seeing Keres now. Here.

“I’m surprised you aren’t trailing Lord Ares. There is no shortage of carnage left in his wake, of late.”

“Mmno, there isn’t.”

Ker watches him as he glides closer. Down the hall, Achilles remains at his post; if he is straining to hear their conversation, he shows no sign—as well he shouldn’t.

The burnished copper of Ker’s iris is keen and gleaming.

“Even Lord Ares’ become a little distracted, lately. How could he not? With such a...curiosity running amok.” She continues, confirming his suspicion. “A lone warrior banging his divine little head against the walls. Spilling warm red blood all over the stones. Miserable thing, isn’t he.”

The word hisses through her teeth in a way that would set a shiver down his spine, were he prone to such things. Instead, Thanatos frowns.

“What do you want, exactly, Ker.”

“Oh, please. Look at you, working yourself up already.”

“The last time you visited the House, you had to be summoned by Lord Hades himself. You don’t make social visits. What else am I to assume?”

Ker concedes that much with a careless shrug. “Fine, then. We’re here because the mutinous brat positively reeks. Did you honestly think We wouldn’t smell it? Wouldn’t notice you flouncing about with your scythe like a bumbling nursemaid.” She laughs full bellied. “Even now, We can see it: your hands are stained with him.”

Around the handle of his scythe, Thanatos resists clenching his fingers. The memory is sharp and immediate. Zagreus, impossibly heavy in his arms, his body and soul tended with more deferential care than Thanatos has ever shown a charge.

Deliberately, Thanatos rests his scythe against the balcony and puts his feet to the floor.

“You ought to know that your opinions and personal insults do not interest me.”

Ker props her chin in hand, fingertips drumming on her cheek. Her long mantle is like folded wings, feathers trailing across the floor. A stain of bile and congealing blood.

“We know you heard what We said.”

“Overstepping bounds.” He makes a soft, dismissive sound. “Surely not yours.”

“Not just, no. Not just Ours. We know you’ve always hated Our work, and that’s fine. You think it ignoble. Cruel. There’s no beauty in it, that’s true enough. But it is Our right, still.”

Keres is no shepherd, nor even a portent; she follows the stench of blood and death to its source to feast her fill. Her charges, if they can be called such, oft grow loathsome; shades who never shake the fears and pains of their last moments. What resemblance she bears to her kin, though, is not as meagre as Thanatos would like.

There is nothing in her accusation that he can rightfully deny, so he does not try.

“I’ve carted the souls of warriors off the battlefield before. I will again.”

Ker wrinkles her nose. “Don’t trouble Us about Sarpedon.”

“And you’ve never taken an interest in the lives of divinity, either,” he finishes, pointedly.

“Mmhm, well.” Ker’s eyes go half-lidded. “Never seen a god die so good, so much.”

As though from far away, as though some force has taken hold of his tongue, Thanatos hears himself speak in a tone he hardly recognizes:

“The Prince is none of your concern.”

Too far, too much, for too little provocation—the stoic veneer he sometimes prides himself on has slipped and there is no seizing it up again. Mortification, though, will come later.

“Isn’t he?” Ker unfolds herself in a swift, fluid motion. Standing, she is nearly eye-to-eye with him. One tooth, sharp and white, flashes when she curls her lip back. “Violence which begets death begets Us.”

“I am Death.” Thanatos hisses. “All who can perish are under my authority if I deem it. And I do.”

Immediately, the strangely playful edge to Ker disappears, replaced by anger. Cold anger, deep and true.

“Do you mean to say,” she starts, low, dangerous, “that We’re given leave to perform Our duties when you see fit?”

“What I am telling you, Keres, is that if you touch him you will answer to me for it.”

Sneering, Ker bites back, “Never took you for the possessive sort.”

“Go, Ker. Go preside over your carrion.”

For a moment, Ker does nothing but look at him. Styx rushes on below, a low murmuring sound. Then in the Great Hall Lord Hades gives his orders to assembling shades, booming voice echoing throughout the House and cutting the sudden, tense silence upon the balcony.

“Careful, O Death,” Ker finally says, saccharine. “Such arrogance will make you enemies you’d rather not have.”

Between one moment and the next, Ker is gone. Nothing left in her wake except the afterimage of her piercing eyes, the tension in Thanatos’ shoulders, and the surety that whatever tenuous control he had over the secrecy of his actions has just slipped through his fingers.

-

“Betrayal.” Lord Hades’ spits the word, eyes blazing. “I would ask you why.”

Never, in all Thanatos’ years of service in the House of Hades, has he ever stood in audience to receive reprimand. Having the chance to explain himself for as serious an offence as Thanatos is accused—rightly—is a courtesy some would not receive, he knows.

“Well?”

“My Lord, he and I...”

One of Cerberus’ great heads lifts off its paws, eyes fixed far down the hall. An ear flicks, tellingly. Even without such a thing Thanatos would know. Anticipation grows in him, sensing that Zagreus has pulled himself from the Pool of Styx already; has crossed the floor, drawing closer to the scene occupying the Great Hall with uncharacteristic caution.

Beneath the two-story mosaic that dominates the hall, high upon his skull-topped throne with an expression darkening further still, Lord Hades inclines his head to keep Thanatos pinned under his stare.

There are things Thanatos fears; honestly, wholly. Cages and chains and being alone—truly alone. That eventually Zagreus will, for all Thanatos’ power and whatever connection they share, go where he cannot follow.

And yet.

“Lock me up in Tartarus, or deal whichever justice you see fit, but,” Thanatos’ resolve hardens impossibly further as he speaks, knowing Zagreus is so close, his presence burning brightly. “My loyalty is not subject to change. And I cannot stand by and watch you two fight. There must be some resolution here.”

There is some genuine astonishment in Lord Hades’ bearing, unless Thanatos is mistaken. Masked by anger it is difficult to tell.

“You dare lecture me? My loyal subjects are too few, of late.”

Loyalty. Whatever else Thanatos has said—far out of line, whether it be called lecture or entreaty—that is the crux of it, isn’t it?

Thanatos is not the first to stand in audience, here. Heart—as the mortals might say—on display. Achilles always encouraged Zagreus’ rebellious curiosity, and Mother Nyx’s authority is no less than Lord Hades’ own, in its way. There are others, too, who have aided Zagreus in what subtle ways they have.

Such divided loyalties cannot sustain the House; it’s future rests upon the edge of a knife.

By Mother Nyx’s example Thanatos has served tirelessly in the House of Hades since even before coming into his power, showing deference and respect where it is due. Believing, despite a temper which flares hot, that his lord and master was fair.

For the sake of his work, for the sake of the House, Thanatos has tried walking a fine line. Juggling the demands of his station and that of his—well. Zagreus is his Prince, though not only that. Fealty is not enough to explain any of what Thanatos feels for him, the lengths to which he’s gone to aid him, nor the bond anchored in his breast.

It has come to this, now. What else could he have done?

Lord Hades draws himself up in his throne, and Thanatos holds his gaze as he awaits his sentencing. It does not come.

“This is your realm, not mine. I’ll not cast you into that wretched pit. It’s not like I have someone to replace you here, besides.” Lord Hades frowns deeply with irritation before taking up his quill again in clear dismissal. “Now then, begone.”

“I am deeply sorry, Lord...”

Though Lord Hades’ attention has already left him Thanatos inclines his head a bare fraction, resists the urge to look over his shoulder, and leaves.

He does not go far.

From a dimly lit terrace high above the courtyard, Thanatos watches Zagreus take up Coronacht. Watches him notch an arrow, muscles in his arms and back flexing as he sights along the shaft before returning it to its place to seize up Aegis, instead. Watches as he spins on his heel, shoulder braced behind the shield, and charges the skeletal form in the middle of the courtyard. With a yelping cheer, its bones jump apart.

There is some odd ritual here, Thanatos thinks.

Only after having beaten the creature into dust and watching it reform again, does Zagreus leave with a bare wave out of the tall window that will lead him deep into Tartarus. Crowned head held high and proud.

How many is it, now? Dozens of attempts; dozens more scars on the thread of his life, broken and re-spun. Scars left by wretched shades and pitfalls and his own lord father.

Some days-or-nights, Thanatos hardly recognizes Zagreus.

Not so terribly long ago, Zagreus’ red eye glowed like a banked fire. Restless, unhappy, despite all that was provided for him. Railing against the duties and expectations laid down by his father. If he wasn’t training with Achilles or buried in histories—tales of adventure and heroics he’d recount breathlessly to Thanatos when he returned home—he’d pace. Endless tracks of warmed stone. Until Cerberus could be goaded into some mischief, or Megara deigned to speak with him, or any other distraction presented itself.

On more than one occasion Thanatos was moved to secret Zagreus out of the House; a peek at the garden, a jaunt through Tartarus. Thanatos told himself it was to keep an eye on Zagreus, lest he do something to give himself away. It never did take much to earn Lord Hades’ ire.

But that wasn’t the whole of it.

Thanatos remembers the wonder Zagreus had about him, then; dipping his toes into the river Styx off a pier in Tartarus, casting looks at Thanatos that made him think one moment longer, until the day-or-night had finally waned.

Such fleeting motes of freedom could never have been enough, not to satisfy Life itself.

As he has been at least since that first encounter in Elysium, Zagreus moves on the edges of his awareness long after he’s left his sight. A beacon of light and dark in equal measure. It is habit, to mark each of Zagreus’ wounds; to listen for the moment of need, though he’s become adept at this part: stretching his power across whatever distance lies between them. The arch of his wing is long, the ripples across eternity’s surface spreading beyond the horizon.

Raising his hand, Thanatos watches as from the golden thread of his own existence a mote breaks away; reforms into a small, violet-winged butterfly that alights on his fingertips. It is more akin to speaking to himself than doing the same to Mort ever was, but.

“He found her. Persephone.” He tells it, low. “He’s barely spoken about the surface, but I can tell he...he is happy. Despite everything. He stops to watch the sunrise each time, I think.”

And fights ever more fiercely against ever increasing opposition for the opportunity to see it, to return to Persephone’s home.

What was once a banked fire now blazes. While Thanatos was not looking, Zagreus found a way to alchemize strength from his discontent. Doubt and anger sometimes cast their shadow over him still, but it does not linger. There is no denying that in the midst of battling through a horde of wretches, ransacking the Underworld for the means to remake it in a shape he likes, Zagreus seems more devastatingly, brilliantly alive than he ever has.

Which has only made the jagged edge to Thanatos’ longing more keen.

“He can’t remain there. Not for all my power and all his stubbornness put together. Neither will he stay here.” A dull, aching pain settles in his limbs. It is not a phantom of Zagreus’ wounds, this time. “Born of two worlds,” he murmurs, thoughtfully. How long will Zagreus content himself to belong to both, and neither?

So Thanatos finds himself coming back to the question he’d asked himself at the beginning: and what then? What then, indeed.

“All the eons of the world I’ll walk the land of the living and the dead,” Thanatos says, voice falling dull on the air, “and still I feel as if I have no time. I wasted so much of it dreading the day Zagreus would find a reason to leave, I never...”

The butterfly does not move or react, except to flutter its delicate wings softly. With a groan, Thanatos hangs his head.

“What am I saying,” he mutters. This was a stupid, self-indulgent idea. With a flick of his fingers, the violet butterfly melts away. Then he turns from the balcony, wings flared.

Mort was a better listener, anyway.

-

In her office in Tartarus, Megara scratches her mark on Thanatos’ parchment with a few quick strokes, and thus the shade he’d deposited is officially in her tender care. The parchment vanishes with a gesture. Immediately, Megara rounds on him.

“It’s a wonder the things you said to Lord Hades aren’t being whispered about in every corner of this wretched place. Your station is what saved you a stint in that pit you mentioned,” her mouth flattens, “for now. You’re playing a dangerous game, too, Thanatos.”

“So I have been made aware.”

“I hope you know what you’re doing.”

Thanatos wishes the same. What he says is:

“I appreciate the concern, Megara.”

“Hmph.” She eyes him a moment longer, hip cocked against her desk. Her whip is, for once, folded neatly and set aside. “What’s the matter with you?”

Megara is Thanatos’ oldest friend, their relationship forged after the Sisyphus affair—an ordeal Thanatos only calls humiliating because he does not volunteer the full truth—and all the stronger for it. It is a testament to his foul mood that he bristles at the question.

“Nothing. Work is as ceaseless as it’s ever been, without Zagreus to contend with. I am managing.”

“You’re really going to pull that shit with me?”

Thanatos frowns.

Irritated, Megara curls back her lip. “Look, I respect you. And you’re one of the few people around here I can say that about without any caveats. Need privacy? Fine. But don’t lie to my face.”

“I—” Thanatos pinches the bridge of his nose. His shoulders drop their defensive hunch. “Our relationship was the only decent thing to come out of that debacle. I am managing,” he repeats, then forces himself to add, “Not exceedingly well, I admit.”

Megara snorts as if to say no kidding, or perhaps join the club. It is fortunate, in some respect now more than ever, they’ve each other to speak to.

“I had an...unexpected visit, recently. It affected me more than I thought. And, yes, I would say I’m eminently aware of the position I have put myself in.”

It passes almost as soon as Thanatos catches it, the weariness that Thanatos knows all too well crossing her face; worry and anger and love and duty wound up in a tangle. She sighs. Raps her knuckles against her desk thoughtfully; once, twice.

“Achilles gossips, sometimes. And I happen to keep apprised of who traipses around Tartarus as they please.” Megara crosses her arms casually, but there is nothing casual about her calculating stare. “Do I need to keep an eye on her?”

Thanatos does not have a moment to decide what he feels about the offer. On the edges of his awareness, Zagreus is deep in Asphodel’s fiery meadows. Twice, already, Thanatos has reached across the vast space between them with a fragment of his power to lift Zagreus onto his flaming feet again. Either he is being exceptionally reckless this time, or too overzealous regarding the Pact of Punishment. With effort, Thanatos refocuses his attention.

“I, I don’t know. Keres is not a harbinger. She does not even shepherd souls,” he says. “She preys upon them. Their agonies and fears as they pass over into my realm. It is cruel, and vile, but she—she is not the source. She just...follows.”

Once more, Thanatos feels the thread of Zagreus’ life poised to break. And once more, he reaches out; ripples on the surface under stars, fog brushed back, thread smoothed into place with one new knotted scar along its length.

Watch it, damn you, he thinks crossly.

“She follows.” Megara repeats. “Death, you mean.”

“What else?”

Her calculating look has not abated. “Zagreus considers pain a necessary obstacle and death a temporary setback. Which it is, for him. Just because Keres is sniffing around... What difference do you think that makes?”

“Irreverence doesn’t mean he can’t—”

“You think he’s going to resent you.”

“No.” Maybe, Thanatos resents himself, a little. “Keres’ interest is troubling to me. That’s all.”

“I swear—” Megara starts, but Thanatos hears nothing more. Because at that moment Zagreus dies in pain; and somehow, Thanatos knows he is not alone.

“Zagreus.”

Megara’s mouth snaps shut as she straightens in alarm. Without sparing a moment to consider what he must look like for her to express honest alarm, Thanatos goes where Zagreus’ thread leads.

-

Zagreus’ body is a ruin. Broken bones and rent flesh. Lifeblood painting Asphodel’s rocky, broken earth in broad, dark strokes.

Beside him, Ker stands in her high-collared mantle, jewels like tears threaded in her long, dark hair; something and nothing like the starlight of their Mother. All the Keres bear neither armor nor sword to do their work; the tools of their trade are lust for fear and agony, and the elaborate adornments on their fingertips: claws wrought of gold that they might feast upon their prey in some mockery of elegance.

Their work has always unsettled him. It is worse still to think of Zagreus’ own suffering being so clearly relished.

Perhaps Zagreus has resolve enough to brush off the harm inflicted on him; Thanatos finds it much more difficult, himself.

Thanatos assuages his temper by clearing the rocky island of the few wretches that have lingered out of some morbid curiosity. A void lined with purple sigils materializes underfoot, scatters them as they skitter away to so much dust that drifts back to the Phlegethon. More wrath than he’s expressed since that first time he’d held Zagreus’ body in Elysium.

Ker does not step away from him, but Thanatos can see the moment the thought occurs to her.

“Keres.”

“Before you accuse Us of anything, he’s leaner than a starved rodent.” Ker’s nose wrinkles in disgust. “Hardly enough to whet Our appetite, as it turns out.”

“Zagreus has never gone quietly, down here.”

And certainly not this time. Thanatos’ eyes stray back to his body. Styx has not yet claimed Zagreus, though her waters have risen: a pool of red indistinguishable from Zagreus’ blood beneath his back. Unseen fingers grasping, but not yet dragging him down. Deferring to Death itself, for the moment, now that Thanatos is here.

“Quiet? No.” She looks down at Zagreus again, head tilting curiously. “Not at all. But there is something odd about—”

Phlegethon’s fiery glow does not reflect off the blade of Thanatos’ scythe; its gleam is something it comes by honestly. Arching over Zagreus’ body like a shield, its great eye blinks slowly at Ker. A silent warning.

Recoiling, Ker bares her teeth. “We said We aren’t interested. Shame, too, given all the trouble We went to.”

Despite every effort, Thanatos can sense no deceit in her. The Keres, he reminds himself, are not ones for stealth or subtlety. Still, it makes no sense.

“You told Lord Hades.”

“Might’ve done. Not that he needed telling. Surely you knew you weren’t going to get away with abetting rebellion under your master’s nose for long.”

No; but he’d hoped to forestall the inevitable as long as possible. For both their sakes.

“What did you hope to gain? A commendation? After all, you don’t need permission to carry out the duties of your domain.”

“Shut up.”

Standing over Zagreus, scythe yet between them and Ker, Thanatos watches as Ker alights on a low, cracked table. Arrayed around her are piles of broken and blackened bones; a skull with mouth agape stares sightlessly up at her, one pitted eye dripping asphodel blossoms. Ker takes her customary position, knees drawn up and mantle flowing past her feet to the ground. The jewels in her hair look molten in the light.

“We won’t come near him again,” she says, strangely flat, breaking their stalemate, “so stop fretting yourself into knots. Believe Us, or don’t. But there’s nothing in it for Us when someone is already so at peace with Death.”

There is some double meaning there that Thanatos does not want to parse. Finally he says, honest, “I wasn’t aware that factored into it.”

For some reason that makes Ker smile.

“There’s plenty you don’t care to know about Us, brother.”

“Well, you are not unique among the Pantheon in that regard.”

“What an honor,” she mocks, “to be counted in such mighty company.”

Something hooks in his chest, then. Pulls. Insistent or impatient. Without thinking, heedless of Ker’s presence, Thanatos moves to kneel beside Zagreus.

There is no peace in Zagreus’ discolored face. Nor in the wounds that are laid bare. He died as he always has within the realm of his lord father: bold, unafraid, whittled down to the last defiant beat of his heart.

Before Thanatos has even arranged and gathered him up, a lick of flame—green and gold and red, sparking embers like laurel leaves—bends and curls as if in greeting. Despite himself, all the tension Thanatos had been carrying sloughs off his shoulders at once.

“Ha.”

Looking up sharply, Thanatos finds Ker still watching him. Far too knowingly.

“The mortals, even those Olympians, think Death is something all bleak and mysterious.” She tips her head, eyes narrowing. “But if they weren’t too frightened to look you in the face, they’d see that’s not it at all. You’re as plain as day.”

The surface of the Phlegethon bubbles, hisses. A haze of heat and ash lies over everything and stings Thanatos’ eyes. Ker does not move or blink.

“They may think what they like.” He says, rising slowly. The rock beneath his feet is uncomfortably hot and jagged. “They will eventually find themselves disabused of the notion, just as mortals are. I am not so concerned with proving myself as you are.”

Ker stares back at him either in shock or disgust. Until, a dismissive grunt catching in her throat, she breaks his gaze first. “Tend your Prince, then,” she says. Thanatos can feel the faint gust of hot air as Ker’s wings flare, heralding her departure. “He was waiting on you.”

-

Beneath muscle and bone, Thanatos harbors no beating heart. But he has come to know and feel Zagreus’ as if it were his own.

No longer young but suddenly uncertain of his own power, he seeks Mother Nyx’s wisdom. When he has finished, voice gone embarrassingly threadbare, Nyx lifts a cool hand to his cheek. Thanatos bows his head.

“My son. I wish to ease your mind, but what you ask of me is not within my power to know or ascertain.”

“Of course.” Thanatos swallows his disappointment. “Thank you, Mother.”

“Thanatos.”

Against his back, his wings settle again.

“When first you came to me with questions about the Fates and your nature, I answered as I thought best. But I fear I hindered more than helped, and you did not carry the same concerns you do, now. So allow me to explain.”

The hall is empty save for a few shades mingling outside the doorway to the lounge, and Orpheus where he sits playing upon the lyre. So involved in his own music as to be deaf and blind to all else. Even so, Thanatos casts his glance towards the Great Hall. Half expecting Cerberus’ head to rise and Zagreus to appear, flaming feet faintly hissing on the cool stone.

Nothing happens and no one appears. Thanatos does not know whether to feel relieved or not.

“You said you believed only I could ascribe meaning to my nature.”

“Yes.” She agrees. “Though, that is not all. While it is not for us to know how the Fates weave their design, their work should not abdicate us the responsibility of choice. What I hoped you would come to understand, in time, was that the power you hold over your domain is not all you can claim for you own. Not all you can have a hand in shaping.”

Thanatos considers that with all the care he should. Mother Nyx’s wisdom is not infallible, nor omniscient, but it is vast indeed. Far more than Thanatos’ own.

“But I have no wish, no—no right, to lay any claim on him.”

“Ah. Perhaps it was a poor choice of words. You fear now that you have done something untoward.”

“I—yes? No. Not exactly.” Thanatos swallows. “We’ve always been close. I have always felt...drawn to him. But the nature of it has changed, now. He says he cares for me, but, I. It’s complicated.”

“Zagreus has needed you more than ever. And you, him, I think.”

He does look away, then. Feels the way his cheeks flush with color. What a strange thing, for Death to want for anything. Stranger still, to need. Yet he does. Keenly and completely.

“This whole ordeal has been...Well, it’s been eye-opening. I’ll say that. There is part of me that is bound to him. Has always been, maybe. Or was always meant to be. I can’t explain it. It isn’t like anything else I’ve ever known.”

Mother Nyx looks at him silently. Her gaze does not pierce or lay him bare, but nevertheless Thanatos is certain there is nothing of his mind hidden from her.

“A bond between souls, if it be true and boundless, is wrought of more power than you yet know or can wield on your own. Speak with him, my son.”

It is an encouragement spoken softly but with clear authority. He catches himself before he can do something so childish as groan with frustration.

“It seems like that’s all we do lately. Talk in circles around what we really mean.”

Her starry mantle shifts, billowing gently behind her as she lifts an arm. Softly, her fingertips brush against the petals of deep blue flowers, overflowing in their vases. A shock of color and life in the hall.

“Sometimes there is no telling how a thing will grow, when it is but thought and seed,” she says, and for once she seems almost to be speaking with someone else’s voice, “but if all we nurtured was exactly as we designed, we should have half the joy.”

“Mother?”

As she looks back to him, Mother Nyx’s expression softens into a rare smile. No less genuine for the way it is tinged with a melancholy Thanatos does not think is meant for him.

“Try.” She says. “If you love him, try.”

-

Thanatos feels Zagreus’ eyes on him as if they were a hot brand. The attention is not, necessarily, unwelcome. Though what might’ve caused it escapes him. Something...on his face? His hair? Ugh, vanity doesn’t suit him.

“Be careful.” Thanatos snaps when Zagreus’ clear distraction almost earns him a swift decapitation from the warrior engaged with him. Zagreus will scowl, but Thanatos raises his scythe to send the offensive shade back from whence it came for good measure.

When Elysium grows quiet again, the Lethe running like ethereal clouds between its high, grassy knolls, Thanatos waits for Zagreus at a pair of gilded doors. Hastily, Zagreus takes up Daedalus’ hammer, barely sparing an admiring glance for the new spearpoint he’s chosen before joining him.

“It’s good to see you, Than. I thought you...I didn’t think I’d see you again.”

Quickly, too quickly, Thanatos says, “What? Why?”

“Well,” Zagreus rocks on his heels, “I spoke to Hypnos recently, who mentioned you’d been by. Only, I haven’t seen you in a while. Half a dozen runs, give or take, and an especially annoying Theseus. Uh, anyway. After everything with my Father, I worried maybe you’d...thought better of all this. Helping me.”

The trouble is, of course, that Thanatos had spent more time away from the House, and their competitions, than has become usual. Lingering unease because of Keres, his subsequent audience with Lord Hades, and finally his conversation with Mother Nyx. He can hardly say as much without explaining why.

But, the thought that he’d abandon Zagreus, now?

Lowering his hand still holding the centaur heart, Thanatos says carefully,

“I’ve made my position rather clear, I think.”

“You mean when you told my Father to lock you up in Tartarus?” Zagreus’ jaw clenches. “Than, you know I’d never allow him to do that.”

“Allow him?”

It is, perhaps, the most treasonous thing Thanatos has ever heard him utter. Zagreus’ expression is hard as stone; as determined in this as he’s ever been facing down an obstacle set before him by Lord Hades and the Fates themselves. Insurmountable tasks, all. Until they weren’t.

“Even for you, Zag, that’s—”

“Maybe you haven’t noticed, but I’ve made a game of breaking out of his ‘inescapable’ Underworld. Fixing contracts. Even got the Eldest Sigil working for Nyx and Chaos. There’s nothing Father could do that I can’t undo, one way or another. Whatever it takes.”

“You know something, I don’t doubt you.”

A sharp smile. “Good.”

“But I’m not afraid of Lord Hades. Not the way you might think.”

“Right. I know.” There, Zagreus hesitates. Ruffles the hair at the nape of his neck before dragging his gaze back up to meet Thanatos’ again. “You probably don’t need me to protect you, either, but, well. There it is.”

Oh.

“Need is irrelevant.” Thanatos says, chest tight. “Isn’t it? After all, I said already I would continue to take these opportunities to help not because you need it but because I...because I wish to.”

Small and beatific, Zagreus’ smile lights his face. He is already as fair a god as the pantheon has known; something about the way he looks at Thanatos, now... Well, he has never needed Aphrodite’s glow about him to leave Thanatos witless with longing.

“And here you are.”

Here he is. Here they both are. Standing close enough he can make out the imperfections in Zagreus’ green iris.

“I must tell you something.” Thanatos’ voice is hoarse. “Come with me?”

Smile fading slightly, Zagreus’ eyebrows disappear into the hair matted to his forehead. “What? Where?”

“Not here.”

Beyond the next door may be another host who will try their hand at stopping Hades’ wayward son. Or it may be respite. Thanatos weighs the odds, finds them wanting, and tries anyway.

Maybe Zagreus is rubbing off on him.

Mute with confusion, Zagreus hurries after him. Daedalus’ doors open at the wave of Thanatos’ hand onto a small, empty chamber. He does not even dare to think thank the Fates.

The mossy ground, speckled with crawling flowers, is untouched save where Zagreus’ tread leaves scorched footprints behind. It is cool and shadowed by a heavy canopy of emerald leaves and branches, sprouting from the wide trees whose trunks pass for walls, here. Twisting vines hang between two tall sculptures’ outstretched spears and noble heads, under whose sightless eyes they pass to reach the central fountain.

Thanatos stands before it, its clear water sparkling in the dappled light. A winged warrior, headless, towers above him as it drives its spear through a serpent. Water flows into the basin from the open mouth.

“What is it, Than? Are you alright?”

Thanatos sets himself down, feels the cool metalwork and stone and soft petaled flowers beneath his feet. Turning towards Zagreus, he catches himself before he can step back in surprise at how close Zagreus has come. Concern in his upturned gaze, weapon set aside.

“Than?”

“I have never needed Mort to find you.” Thanatos admits, heavily. Voice still embarrassingly hoarse. “Not even Mother Nyx’s powers could shroud you from me, not entirely. A...an aspect of being Death itself, or so I thought.”

The concern hasn’t quite gone from his expression, but Zagreus looks at him thoughtfully. “Suppose you’ve gotten your reputation for good reason.”

“I have.” Thanatos agrees. “Not what I meant, though. Being Death Incarnate allows me certain...There are things I can know, and do, if I wish. I know when Atropos has marked a soul’s thread, yes, and I can see them when I choose.”

“But you don’t tend to all of the dead. Personally, I mean.”

“No. By my existence, all things will come to perish one way or another.” Even the form he takes now, eventually. A time so distant Thanatos wonders if the Fates have even woven their design so far. “But my charges are those who pass peaceably. With...with one exception.”

Understanding clears Zagreus’ eyes.

“I, oh.” He says. “I knew sometimes you brought me back home, but. The Death Defiances...that’s your doing, isn’t it? A boon?”

Thanatos opens and closes his mouth. “’Death Defiances’?”

“Aha, well,” Zagreus shrugs awkwardly, “it’s what I call them. Maybe that’s rude? Anyway, there are times I die out here, but I get another chance. I always thought I felt you, but I couldn’t be sure I wasn’t...imagining it.”

This is not exactly the conversation Thanatos imagined having. Faintly, Thanatos says, “You weren’t.”

“You really do have a gentle touch, Than.”

Once the words have fallen out of his smiling mouth Zagreus flushes a brilliant crimson.

Thanatos doesn’t immediately reply. Maybe he should have expected this. But if Zagreus has felt his hand at work during his escape—uses words like comfort, like gentle—has he felt the reverence with which Thanatos holds his life, too? The tightness in Thanatos’ chest becomes nearly unbearable.

“You’ve said something like that before.”

“Gods.” Zagreus rapidly casts his gaze upward, past Thanatos’ shoulder, then down at his feet before rallying himself enough to continue, “I have, yeah. It’s true, and I really am grateful for it. For you. You’ve no idea what it means to me. Which is why I want you to understand, Than, I’d do the same for you, alright? In a heartbeat.”

“This is not an exchange.” Thanatos says roughly.

“Come on, you know that’s not what I meant.” Zagreus hesitates. “Don’t you?”

They’re retreading old ground, now. The flare of irritation Thanatos feels is probably unreasonable. Often, talking to Zagreus makes Thanatos feel buffeted about like a leaf on a blustery wind; emotions wild and fierce and each vying to be expressed all at once.

“You aren’t the only one who doesn’t always know where they stand.”

Zagreus huffs a breath through his nose. “Here I was, thinking I finally convinced you none of this was empty gesture. More fool me, I guess,” he mutters, then he turns, bending to splash water over his head and neck; it washes sweat and blood off his skin, leaves his laurel’s steaming so that he briefly seems haloed by fire and mist that refracts the dappled light.

“That’s not—I’m not explaining myself very well, clearly.”

I feel your heart as though it were mine, he thinks, throat closing up. I am bound to you, willingly and gladly. Death, with Life. Would you—

Wiping water from his eyes, Zagreus gives him a wry look. He sighs.

“Feelings are...a lot,” Zagreus says, which somehow summarizes everything. “Look, you’ve been going out of your way for me this whole time. I’m here for you, too, alright? Whatever...whatever happens.”

Thanatos hesitates. “Whatever happens.”

Thanatos cannot decide if that sounds more hopeful or ominous.

The ever-present, low-simmering impatience to reach his mother is as palpable as Thanatos’ own swirl of conflicting emotions. They paralyze him, in the end. He knows—as he watches Zagreus, healed and refreshed, collect his weapon and cast a last, lingering look at him—he won’t delay him again.

-

Queen Persephone is gently brushing hair from across Zagreus’ pale forehead when he materializes, the green pall that heralds him fading quickly. Dispersed by noon-day sunlight bearing down, bright and painful enough Thanatos dips his head so that his hood shades his eyes.

She sighs, hand shifting to cup Zagreus’ pale cheek.

“We’ve had so little time together,” she murmurs. “My dear Zagreus.”

“I am sorry, Queen Persephone.”

“It is by no fault of yours, Thanatos. I don’t begrudge you your duty.”

Thanatos does not know what to say, so says nothing. A moment passes, Persephone holding her son’s body, before she rouses herself. Subtly, Persephone wipes at her eyes before saying, brusque, “Here, now, I’ll help you.”

It seems to sooth her nerves, though Thanatos would have understood if tending her son’s body was too much for her. Lord Hades himself, even when he has struck the fatal blow, does not look upon Zagreus’ corpse overlong. Whether out of grief or disappointment, however, Thanatos has not been able to decide. In any case, it had made Thanatos’ self-appointed task easier to manage.

When Zagreus has been shifted into Thanatos’ arms and he’s risen back to his feet, Persephone’s hand lingers over Zagreus’ forehead again, smooth and untroubled in death, before she steps back with a strange finality.

“I’ve always known life to be fleeting and fragile, and all the more fearsome for it. All the more precious. To see it personified in my own son, is...” She trails off, then shakes herself as though waking from a dream. “I forget myself.”

Thanatos only recognizes the distress hidden in her expression because it is so similar to the one Zagreus wears, when he has kept some worry to himself too long and is a moment from bursting at the seams. Thanatos finds himself at somewhat of a loss. Already, this is the longest conversation they have shared. If what Zagreus says is true, also, it may be the longest Persephone has had with another soul besides her son, since...

“For whatever it might be worth,” Thanatos says, haltingly, gaze lowering to Zagreus’ slack expression; the remnants of blood crusted along his scalp where he must have tried to scrub himself clean, and the wounds and bruises beneath his chiton, “Zagreus treats death as an inconvenience, but I’ve never found it...so inconsequential, myself. Even being what I am. Or maybe because of it.”

Infinitely gentle, Persephone smiles.

“Somehow, that is a comfort. You tend to him of your own will, don’t you?”

It isn’t a question.

“I do.”

“Every time.”

“Yes.”

Under her scrutiny, Thanatos does not flinch. What she is looking for he does not know, although he can hazard a guess. If she finds him wanting, she shows no outward sign. Finally, Persephone nods to herself—almost solemn—and the tension is broken.

“That is a comfort, too.”

Thanatos inclines his head. “You honor me.”

“Now, I’ve kept you long enough, I think. See him home, and,” she cuts herself off with a small shake of her head. Instead, she squares her shoulders. “Farewell.”

That, too, is full of a strange finality. The flame of Zagreus’ soul burns like a torch in the darkness, calling out a wordless plea.

Hefting her basket in her arms, laden with cut flowers and the fruits of her labors, the knees of her himation stained with soil, Persephone stands in her little garden like a queen in her court, still.

Powerless to do anything else, Thanatos murmurs his own farewell, flares his wings, and bears his burden back home.

The wave of heartache Thanatos feels is, he knows, not his own.

-

Thanatos finds Zagreus bloodied and exhausted in a fountain chamber in Tartarus. Sitting fully clothed and submerged to his chest in one of the chambers’ pools, a cloud of blood floating around him.

“This isn’t like you.”

“Too much heat.” Zagreus tips his chin, slightly. Cuts a look at Thanatos from the corner of his red eye. He smiles, but it is a flat, humorless thing. “Hubris, or something. Right?”

Or something.

“You shouldn’t say that so lightly.”

“As if no one’s thought it. Anyway, I don’t think I’m up to a contest, this time. Sorry to disappoint.”

The thread of Zagreus’ life is taught and frayed, already. On its dais, the healing fountain’s spout drips steadily into its full basin; ripples moving gently across the surface. Zagreus hasn’t healed himself, yet, then.

Gathering the edge of his himation carefully, Thanatos steps down into the pool and sits on the tiled edge. Close enough to feel the heat radiating off of Zagreus’ body. Rather than startle, Zagreus goes very still.

“What are you doing, Than.”

“I’m not sure.” He admits, a little abashed. When he’d felt a tug on the other end of the connection they share he’d gone, without sparing a thought. Expecting to find Zagreus in the midst of a fight, not...this. “But, correct me if I’m wrong, something is troubling you. I would...I would like to listen if that would help.”

Zagreus chews his lip. As he turns his head Thanatos catches a glimpse of his green eye, glassy, the white sclera bloodshot.

“Than, if I ask you something, will you answer me honestly?”

Steadying himself, Thanatos nods.

“Do you think it’s selfish of me? All this.”

You don’t know how good you’ve had it here, rings in Thanatos’ head.

“I did. I thought a lot of things, out of anger. And concern. I regret some of them.”

Humming low, Zagreus nods to himself. “Not wrong, though. Mother’s worried about starting a war and here I go, defying her wishes as openly as I did Father’s.”

A weight begins to settle in his gut. “What do you mean.”

Sinking further into the water, Zagreus lets his head fall back against the tile with a thump. Now he turns his sightless gaze upward, through the skylight overhead that opens onto a view of Tartarus: its vast cluster of tiered walkways, courtyards, and buildings awash in the Ixion’s light. And far beyond, Asphodel, Elysium, and all the rest that lead eventually to the surface. To Zagreus’ mother.

“She...said goodbye.” Zagreus’ voice is hollowed out. His throat bobs as he swallows. “She told me not to come back. That I shouldn’t see her again.”

“Zagreus,” Thanatos starts, then finds he doesn’t know what else to say.

“She’s worried about Olympus finding out about her. About me. And what they might do. I asked her to come back with me but, well. You can probably guess what she said, considering.”

“I’m sorry.”

Zagreus passes a hand over his face. Draws in a ragged breath. Curses, so softly Thanatos almost doesn’t hear him.

“Everything’s all messed up. She’s trying to protect us both. But I just found her. I just found her, Than. I want to know her. I want,” his voice hitches, “to have her in my life. And I—fuck.”

Sitting up suddenly, Zagreus scrubs his face with a viciousness that startles Thanatos enough he reaches out as if to take Zagreus’ hands in his own, to still them. At his touch, fingertips brushing the back of Zagreus’ wrist, Zagreus makes a wounded noise.

When he doesn’t recoil, Thanatos does, carefully, take Zagreus’ nearest hand in both of his own. Twin Fists cast aside, they are bare and raw, the knuckles cut and bruised. Zagreus never bears wounds or scars back to the house, except those that cannot be seen; but Thanatos knows well how Zagreus’ body has borne them, all the same.

Zagreus’ face is a ruin. It bites like a blade, burns like heavy chains, to see it.

“After all of this, everything—Father’s sneering. Nyx’s help. Achilles. You, Than. And fighting, and dying, over and over. She can’t just—expect me to—” The hand cradled in Thanatos’ trembles. Past the tears spilling over, mixing with the blood on his cheeks, Zagreus glares; anger rising above the grief like a tide. Swift, terrible.

“I’m not going to stop.” Zagreus says fiercely. “There has to be something I can do. To fix it. All of it.”

“Zagreus, this seems...much larger than you, or even your mother. Your relatives—”

“I know that, Than.” He snaps. Then, after a steadying breath, “Sorry, I shouldn’t, I didn’t mean to raise my voice. I know. But what is it you said, about running from problems? Seems like that’s all this blasted family does.”

Thanatos also said something about becoming involved in complicated personal matters and making them worse despite good intentions; not that he’s a prime example of the opposite. He doesn’t bring that up again.

“What makes you think they can be convinced to stop?”

“I don't know.” Zagreus shakes his head, a little more of his earlier anger bleeding away. “But, mother said it herself. Nyx’s powers aren’t infallible. She’s just delaying the inevitable! I know I can’t make amends for anyone else, so I’ll just...figure out how to make them do it themselves, I guess.”

Zagreus stares at their hands. Slowly, Thanatos realizes he’d begun soothing his thumb over Zagreus’ bruised knuckles, and stops, self-conscious. Of the two of them, Thanatos has never been the one free with their touch. (He thinks he might like to be, given the chance.) Clearing his throat, he says,

“How?”

A humorless laugh. “No idea.”

That settles between them like an ash cloud.

Matters between Lord Hades and Olympus were always strained. There is clearly more at stake here than either he or even Zagreus fully understand. And though Zagreus’ Olympian kin, it would seem, regard him with genuine fondness, Thanatos knows well how capricious and vindictive they can be.

As for Queen Persephone... When Zagreus first told him about the mother he sought, Thanatos was certain all he’d come to find was the confirmation she’d abandoned him. Thought, with bitterness and some naivete, that that would be the greatest cruelty.

Thanatos has no answers for Zagreus; nothing to ease his pains. Except what he has always offered. Even since the beginning, when it tore him apart to do it and there was no certainty that Zagreus would return when all was said and done.

“If there is something more I can do to help,” Thanatos says, “ask me. Alright?”

Zagreus faces him fully for the first time since he’d arrived with an expression of such open gratitude Thanatos quakes, as though the foundation of the earth has crumbled from beneath his feet.

For a long moment Zagreus doesn’t say anything, though his jaw works like he wants to.

“Would you,” there he falters. “Than, I—Gods, you can say no, but would you just...sit with me, a moment? Here? Just until I’m ready to, to, you know, get back to the grindstone.”

“Is that what you want?”

“Please.”

Zagreus has misunderstood him, but he can worry about that later. For the second time, Thanatos moves without thinking. Water sloshes as Thanatos slides into the pool beside him. Surprise stiffens his limbs when Zagreus turns into him immediately, clasped hands now pressed between their bodies. It passes.

“Shit, sorry, if this is too much—”

“It isn’t, Zag. You aren’t too much.”

Permission given, Zagreus lets his head thump down heavily, body slumping. It can’t be strictly comfortable resting against his gorget, but Zagreus does not seem bothered in the slightest. Thanatos’ cloak and himation have soaked through, sticking uncomfortably to his skin, but he doesn’t move.

The shape of Zagreus is familiar, yet not. Thanatos has felt the weight of his wreathed head upon his shoulder, but not the heat of his breath. Has pressed his palm to the wide expanse of Zagreus’ back, but not felt knotted tension ease beneath it.

He almost says it, but the words catch in his throat. I am here. I’m right here.

The chamber is empty but for the two of them. Quiet apart from Zagreus’ unsteady breathing, the drip of the fountain, and the gentle lap of water at the pool’s edges. As near to peaceful as Tartarus gets.

Ragged, with a touch of wonder, Zagreus’ voice drifts up,

“She said she loved me.”

Oh, he thinks, enclosing Zagreus in both arms as tightly as he dares.

Thanatos was called here to gather a body, after all.

-

Eventually Zagreus rises, washes his face, and is convinced to accept the centaur heart Thanatos offers him before setting out again. Fingers curled tight in the Twin Fists despite the exhaustion and heartbreak still wearing on him. Thanatos flies when he calls as he always has done; his last replenished death defiance spent against Lord Hades himself, who Zagreus finally fights past by the skin of his bloodied teeth.

Helios’ Chariot is at its zenith, rays bright and painful, when Thanatos arrives in Persephone’s garden just as Zagreus’ body fails him. He is kneeling, hands slackening where they’d curled into fists against the grass.

Half-crouched before him, Persephone’s face is broken open with some emotion so raw Thanatos cannot look at her. At Thanatos’ approach she doesn’t startle, nor draw back. But next Thanatos looks, she is stoic under the weight of her thoughts. Whatever they might be.

Silently, with the ease that comes with practice, Thanatos arranges Zagreus’ body and gathers his familiar, beloved soul against his own.

Persephone rises as he does, gaze lingering on her son. Who, but a short time ago, curled into Thanatos’ side as he cried what seemed a lifetime’s worth of frustration and grief, finally spilling over.

It is that memory, fresh in his mind, that makes him bold.

“Forgive me for my rudeness, Queen Persephone.” Thanatos says. “But there is something I would ask of you.”

Regarding him with surprise, Persephone gestures him to continue. “I suspect you aren’t the sort to ask for much, Thanatos. And you’ve done so much for Zagreus. Ask.”

Unlike Zagreus, Thanatos has always made a point of giving such matters a wide berth. Speaking out of turn to Lord Hades, and now to Queen Persephone, with all the evidence of his deepest loyalty on display... It goes against his better instinct.

So Thanatos hesitates. Not out of sudden uncertainty, no. Not exactly. But he must get this right, if such a thing is possible.

Patiently, Persephone waits.

“Since before Zagreus knew of you, he’s been searching for you.” He finally says. “Mother Nyx made sure he wanted for nothing and loved him like her own. But he was always...restless. Then he found out about you, and I’d never...I didn’t know, before, what he was capable of. There is nothing he would not do for you. For anyone he cares for.”

It is impossible not to think of the loyalty Zagreus has earned through his actions and his affections; given, sometimes clumsily, but always freely and gladly and at every opportunity.

“I don’t pretend to understand, nor mean any disrespect. Though he can be heavy-handed about it, Zagreus is...he has a proven track record, in these things. He wouldn’t put it this way, but if you wish as much as he does to be part of his life...”

Thanatos tries to hide a wince as he squints against the sun’s rays shining into his exposed face. He means to keep Persephone’s gaze, regardless of his discomfort.

“Trust in him, please.”

Steadying herself, Persephone breathes deeply, eyes closed. She looks almost pained, and Thanatos swallows down his shame.

“There was a time I was as bold and impetuous as my son, Thanatos. It earned me as much grief as not.” Her tone is calm, even kind, but unmistakably full of censure. “By your mother Nyx’s grace I’ve found some peace, here. To know Zagreus is alive, and loves so fiercely is...” Her expression flickers. “We tempt the Fates to wish for more, I fear. For all that you’ve done for Zagreus, I thank you. Truly. But that is all I can say.”

Persephone is not made of wrath and ruin like her husband, nor of vast, impenetrable dark like Mother Nyx. Thanatos does not know her well enough to read her moods reliably. There is no telling, yet, whether he helped or hurt Zagreus’ cause.

As she has each time he has appeared here, Persephone seems a queen in her court among the fruit trees, grasses, and blooming flowers where they grow bathed in golden light. A kingdom on the edge of nowhere, shadowed as it is by Mother Nyx’ own power; so deep Thanatos would never have found it, were it not for the connection he shares with Zagreus.

He leaves her. Death knows something of inevitability and endings; but he does not know, then, that it will be the last time he visits her there.

-

Next Thanatos sees Zagreus on his burning feet in the House of Hades he’s cutting around the corner from the Great Hall at speed, almost skidding to a stop before Achilles, who startles from his usual placid, attentive stance to faint alarm. Thanatos is not the shameless eavesdropper Zagreus is, but Zagreus’ voice is difficult to shut out completely. He stirs, anyway, at the low sound of a heavy door scraping open. Sees Zagreus disappear into his lord father’s private chambers.

On the balcony, Thanatos tenses. Searches the Styx for some sign of Lord Hades’ return, due any moment. But Zagreus emerges again before the waters have delivered him.

Zagreus slips something back into Achilles’ hand, then looks up. There is almost nothing of Zagreus’ recent turmoil in him when he approaches. But he is out of breath, thrumming with anxiety or impatience, faint color high in his cheeks.

“Are you...well?”

“I don’t know yet.” Zagreus answers, devastatingly honest. “But I think I have what I need, now.”

“That sounds like progress.”

The smile that pulls the corners of Zagreus’ mouth is gentle, if a little mischievous, and Thanatos knows before he sees it what Zagreus begins to reach for.

“Achilles says ambrosia is supposed to taste better when it’s gifted to someone you, um, care for very much.” Zagreus holds out the bottle of amber liquid in both hands. “I hope this is the best one yet.”

“Did he.” Thanatos says mildly. “Last you gave me one of these, you seemed...I don’t know. You suggested we ‘take our time.’”

“I did. Don’t take this the wrong way, Than. I meant what I said. But I realize that might be difficult to believe after I was so presumptuous with you.”

“Presumptuous.” Thanatos repeats.

“I know you’re busy, and I’m sure you didn’t pop into Tartarus just so I could cry all over your shoulder.” He gives a self-deprecating laugh. “But you stayed. And I, um, appreciated it. A lot.”

Thanatos clenches his jaw, pauses, to keep from saying something inappropriate out of the flare of anger he feels. He isn’t angry at Zagreus, exactly.

“Zag. I—listen to me.” A familiar haze of nervous longing washes over him. Soul butterflies beat their wings rapidly against his insides. “You may...I would welcome it, if you were presumptuous with me, as you call it.”

As much an invitation as Thanatos can give him. Surely, it is enough, this time. Enough to make Zagreus’ face light with understanding, for Zagreus to seize what Thanatos is offering him—trying to.

“Thanatos,” Zagreus starts.

There is a commotion in the Great Hall, then. Hypnos’ voice, high and lilting in the way he has, calls out a startled greeting that only barely manages to be deferential in the address. The force of Lord Hades’ sudden presence, at first muted by Styx now presses down upon the House like a weight, oppressive and angry.

Whatever softness was in Zagreus’ expression sours.

“Blood and darkness,” he mutters. “I should go. But I’ll...I’ll see you, right?”

Zagreus is already moving away, face half-turned towards Thanatos as he goes, but mind clearly far distant; already, he is full of fresh anxiety thinking of his next fight through the Underworld, his next confrontation with his father, and whatever plans he has made regarding his mother.

There’s no telling if Zagreus hears him, but as he goes Thanatos stifles a sigh. “Yes,” he says, watching the sparks off Zagreus’ heels as they fade, “I know where to find you.”

-

Charon is who next delivers Zagreus to the House of Hades, whole and hale. Beaming, awash with pride and happiness as Queen Persephone steps into the Great Hall beside him. Never, in all Thanatos’ long years, has he ever seen Lord Hades seem so small as he does looking upon Persephone with a slackened expression and hands at his sides.

There is more to be done, of course, and all of Olympus to contend with before the House of Hades can return to its proper order. But already there is a new mood sweeping through the House; a credit to Persephone’s grace, but a greater one to Zagreus himself, Thanatos thinks.

Zagreus has never shown interest in holding dominion over anything or anyone, convinced his godhood bore no special significance or responsibility. For all that, even as he was fighting to leave, the House had begun to bear the signs of his hand. For all that, the number of gods and shades who turn their gazes upon him gladly only continues to grow.

On the steps of the House, the royal family assembles for a portrait. Dressed magnificently, wearing jewels and bearing flowers, laurels gleaming bright; Cerberus’ fur is brushed, and their heads raised high. They stand together upon the marble among Persephone’s trees and flowers, until the nervous shade—plucked out of Asphodel, being deemed the finest among the dead at their craft—has finished, bowing low.

Almost as soon as it is done, Zagreus gratefully sheds his stoic, princely manner. Returns his father’s bident, turns, and marches through the courtyard to abscond through his window back into the winding streets and chambers of Tartarus as though nothing has changed.

Except, of course, everything has changed.

“And so you see,” Lord Hades continues loudly, from atop his new throne: triumvirate of skulls replaced with delicate sculpture of Cerberus’ heads, each inlaid with ruby gems for eyes. “I would continue in our mutual good graces, if you please. This House can only function if the upper management is in accord. What do you say?”

Truth be told, Thanatos felt some trepidation at being summoned back for another audience with Lord Hades. Especially after the stark, weighted silences he’d been met with when delivering work reports following the declarations Thanatos made, last time.

Despite all that has happened in the past day-or-night, Thanatos never expected to be one Lord Hades would address with something so akin to contrition.

Fully aware the eyes of Zagreus and Queen Persephone are upon him, Thanatos speaks.

“I say, you honor me, my lord.” True enough. “I appreciate you telling me, yourself. And I concur that, for the good of the Underworld, it is imperative that each of us continue to perform at our full strength.”

Lord Hades’ red eyes burn like hot coals, but he appears satisfied by that. Or satisfied that their audience can conclude. Thanatos is dismissed, anyway, without any orders to cease assisting Zagreus in his work. His work. Head of Security, they call it. There will be paperwork for Zagreus to contend with, Thanatos imagines, but Zagreus seems almost...excited. Which makes two of them.

Following the news, Zagreus trounces Thanatos utterly in their next competition and Thanatos finds that he hardly cares.

After, Zagreus having proven his terrifying competence at defeating every obstacle Lord Hades can devise and then meeting an untimely end attempting to befriend a rather startled, venomous surface creature, Thanatos returns to the House to wait for him to awake.

There he finds Queen Persephone scratching behind one of Cerberus’ ears while Lord Hades—clearly newly returned to the house and attempting to return to his work peacefully—casts a surreptitious look at her. Cerberus’ eyes are half closed, tongue lolling out, while Persephone coos adoringly at them.

Politely, Thanatos waits for her attention to land on him before interrupting.

“Queen Persephone.” Thanatos inclines his head; she waves a hand, dismissing the deference kindly. “All of us, we are most pleased you’re back. If there is anything that I can do to ease your acclimation to this House, you need but ask.”

“Why, thank you, Thanatos. I’ll take you up on that if I can think of anything. But my, you’ve grown!” The look she gives him is a little mischievous. The scratching of Lord Hades’ quill has not ceased, though Thanatos suspects he is well adept at splitting his attentions. “I understand you’ve been looking after my son, in the meantime?”

Thanatos doesn’t flush, but they share a smile. He has been freer with those, too, of late.

“Your son, he...is very capable of looking after himself, it turns out. Although I try to be there, just in case.”

Trailing drops of Styx’s waters and with a few of the Great Hall’s ever-falling flower petals stuck in his dark hair, Zagreus draws up short beside them. Softened by awe, Zagreus’ happiness is still clear in his wide eyes and half-smile. It is an expression Thanatos has seen on him before, having emerged from the Pool of Styx to find his mother still present in the hall. But now it is directed at Thanatos, too.

“Mother,” he says, smile growing. “Than.”

“Zagreus.”

“How was the surface?”

“Lovely as ever. As cold, too. And full of all kinds of...deadly surprises.” Zagreus wrings out the edge of his chiton carelessly, passing his foot over the droplets to burn the evidence away. “Lots of firsts to be had. Keeps it exciting, I suppose.”

“’Exciting.’” Thanatos intones.

“Oh, no more talk of that.” Persephone interrupts. She lifts a hand, seems to hesitate, then gently brushes a stray flower petal from her son’s hair. Under the attention, Zagreus jumps with surprise before blushing. As unused to receiving his mother’s affections as she is to bestowing them, it seems. “I never expected to see so many flowers, here, when I returned. Your doing, I’m told?”

Zagreus demurs. “Really, it was the good contractor there. All I did was ransack father’s realm for enough gemstones to fund it. But they’re a nice touch, aren’t they?”

“Yes. We ought to see if you’ve a green thumb, too. Gardening.” Persephone clarifies, when Zagreus only blinks at her, utterly blank. “I have some plans for the east garden, and I could use another set of hands.”

“Oh! Really? I—yes, of course, mother. I’d like that.”

Even if Thanatos did not feel the pull of mortal souls approaching their fate-appointed time, he would have taken his leave. Zagreus fought so hard to have more than mere moments with his mother, after all. He has no wish to intrude any longer.

“I must beg your pardon, Queen Persephone. Prince Zagreus,” he adds. It makes Zagreus wrinkle his nose. “There is someone who awaits me on the surface, now.”

“I know how mortals hate waiting around.”

Warm fingers land on Thanatos’ arm. The touch is not demanding, but Thanatos finds it arrests him immediately, anyway.

“Than?”

Wings poised but not yet unfurled, Thanatos turns to him. Zagreus stutters, eyes gone round and hand retracting, like Thanatos’ attention has startled him somehow even though he asked for it.

“I—er. Wow, that’s different. I mean, it was nice to see you.” He gives a small, helpless shrug. “That’s all.”

It strikes Thanatos, as it sometimes does, that it would be nothing, to grasp his hand. To lift it, press a kiss to his knuckles. Zagreus is standing just there, arms loose at his sides again, smile a little lopsided and genuine. Radiant.

He wants to. Blood and darkness, how he wants to. If Zagreus allowed it, before the whole of Hades’ court he would take Zagreus’ face between his hands to press their foreheads together. To hold him, to kiss him.

His affections have already been more flagrantly displayed in this hall, haven’t they?

Thanatos curls his fingers into his palm.

“You, too,” he says, and leaves.

-

“Zagreus has always been an insufferable romantic.” Megara complains, tossing back a mouthful of nectar with a grimace that can’t be because of the taste. “It’s worse with you.”

There is no use pretending he doesn’t understand what Megara means, given the inelegant manner in which Thanatos had broached this particular topic of conversation when given the barest opening.

“Ah.”

Megara narrows her eyes. Amusement runs underneath, so Thanatos does not take her disapproval to heart. “Turning monosyllabic on me? Really, Thanatos?”

“I don’t know that I know how to be...romantic.”

“If that’s the advice you came here looking for, you should already know you’re out of luck. Better off asking Achilles.”

Thanatos considers it for all of a few seconds. Achilles is as trustworthy a shade as can be found in the House and devoted to Zagreus besides. His recent reunion with his once-mortal lover has, if possible, only deepened said devotion. And it is true enough that to hear Zagreus tell the tale, he and Patroclus ought to be sung about through the ages. The way mortal’s love... I think there’s something to it, is what he’d said to Zagreus, not so long ago. Thanatos’ own rapport with Achilles, though, might not endure the awkward weight of such a conversation.

Megara’s amusement seems to grow, watching Thanatos over the top of the bottle. Ah. It was a joke, then. Thanatos clears his throat.

“No. No, I’m not looking for advice. We’ve...commiserated, in the past, and I...” He frowns at the tabletop; its curling snakes and delicate lines of silver. “I don’t know whether I’m more frustrated with him, or myself, to be honest.”

“I’m sure there’s enough to go around.”

True enough.

From his seat, Thanatos casts an absent look about the lounge. Empty, save for the two of them, the usual staff, and a few shades crowded around the far table; incorporeal forms cast in relief by the light of the hearth and the glittering monstrosity Zagreus recently commissioned. Following his gaze, Megara rolls her eyes with disgust.

“He loves that ugly thing.”

“I don’t want to know what it cost.”

Having spent a moment in silence lamenting Zagreus’ strange, unpredictable taste in décor, Thanatos refocuses.

“There is still something I’ve been trying to explain, and I don’t know how it will affect our...relationship. But every time I think I’ve made my intentions clear, he—he doesn’t do anything. He’s being so,” he almost throws up his hands in exasperation, “careful.”

Megara chuckles; a deep, rich sound that rasps in her throat. “So, what? Death Incarnate tries throwing caution to the winds for once, while Prince Charmless reigns it in? Is that it?”

“I wouldn’t exactly characterize—” his grumbled protest is cut off.

“Zagreus thrives on being a reckless, impulsive brat, but, when he really wants something, I don’t know that I’ve met anyone more stubborn.” Megara uncurls one finger from around the nectar bottle to point at him. “He’ll outlast you, Than.”

That shouldn’t feel like an insult, he thinks.

“And, much as I like watching you both squirm? It does get old. When I’m not the one holding the reins, anyway,” she adds, smirking.

“Believe me, I know. He thinks time is what I need, and maybe that used to be true, but it isn’t, anymore. I know what I want. And, and I will be grateful for our relationship whatever he decides. But I...”

At first Megara says nothing as he trails off, swirling the nectar in the bottom of its glass thoughtfully before passing it to Thanatos. She waits until he’s taken a sip to say,

“You’re nervous.”

He heaves a sigh. “Yes.”

The smile she gives him is almost gentle. Almost.

“Zag’s been pining after you a long time, though it took him a kick in the ass to realize. And, far as I can tell, it’s the same for you.” He says nothing, which is an acknowledgment all its own. “Which makes you a pair of idiots,” she continues, giving a one-shouldered shrug, “but...you’re good for each other. For whatever that’s worth.”

It’s worth enough.

“What about you?”

“What about me,” Megara echoes. She finishes off the nectar and pushes the bottle away from her. It rolls, then stops on its side, the ribbon topped neck halting its progress towards the table edge. “I don’t usually give second chances. Zag is...a lot of things, but fickle isn’t one of them. And if there’s one thing Nyx has taught me, it’s that the heart has no bounds. I think that’s only become clearer, to me, lately.”

A knot of tension Thanatos didn’t realize he’d been carrying eases. They’d never spoken about it, not in so many words, but the guilt Zagreus felt about the way his relationship with Megara ended, and the hurt she suffered, is clear enough. Thanatos wasn’t the only one subjected to coy gift exchanges.

“He’ll be glad to hear that. And I’m glad for you, too, Megara.”

She snorts; it doesn’t quite cover the faintest hint of deep gold high on her cheeks. “Well, slow your roll, there. I’m not about to tell him all that. Not yet.”

“No?”

“No. You’re gearing yourself up, aren’t you?” It sounds more like a demand than a question. “Better not overwhelm him all at once. Besides, like I said,” she leans back in her chair, one leg crossed over the other, “I enjoy watching him squirm.”

-

So much has happened and changed since he and Zagreus last spoke about their...relationship. Such as it is. Since Zagreus handed Thanatos a bottle of ambrosia, fingertips brushing in the exchange, and looked at him with eyes full of hope and longing to match Thanatos’ own. None of that makes standing before him like this, awash with his desires and fears, any easier.

Zagreus crosses the floor to him slowly, until Thanatos can see the flecks of gold in his eye.

“This isn’t some impulsive thing for me,” he explains, earnest. Always earnest. “I’ll wait for you however long it takes.”

A wordless, frustrated noise slips out of Thanatos before he can catch it.

“You have no concept of which impulses to act on, and which to keep in check. You say you’ll wait, well, let me ask you this. What are you waiting for?” Thanatos swallows the sudden lump in his throat, crossing his arms tighter for fear of throwing them open wide as he asks. “What are you waiting for? I’m here, already.”

It is the right thing to say.

“Oh.” A startled laugh, soft and amazed. “You’re right. Than, I’ve been such a fool, haven’t I?”

“Yes. Infuriatingly so.” Thanatos can’t quite work up the annoyance he should feel about that, now. There is a relieved smile fighting to break over his own face, a mirror of Zagreus’. “But...so have I. There is something else we should talk about, too.”

Sobering, slightly, Zagreus nods. “Can I go first?”

“No. I mean, I would prefer—I would prefer not to put it off, any longer.”

Gratefully, though he bites his lip distractingly to do it, Zagreus quiets. Listens.

“That time, in Elysium, I tried to tell you. It didn’t quite go as I planned it. Not that I’d really planned...ugh. Let me put it this way. There are things I never knew I could do, until I tried. The ‘Death Defiances’, as you call it. But it has had other consequences.”

“What do you mean? Are you...it doesn’t hurt you, does it?” For a moment, Zagreus looks so alarmed by the notion Thanatos feels a phantom stricture in his side; the skip of Zagreus’ heart.

“The opposite.” Thanatos reassures, soft. “I said I never needed Mort to find you because I, because I feel—you. Here.” He presses a hand over his chest. “Constantly. Every breath and heartbeat. Understand, it, it was never my intention to bind myself to you, though now that it’s done I would...I would not be parted if I could help it. If you would have me.”

By now Zagreus is staring at him, open mouthed. He looks as if he’s been struck.

“I thought it was all me.” He chokes.

Thanatos blinks heavily. “What.”

He gestures broadly to the mirror set against the western wall, heavy curtain pulled aside to display it; its gold frame is embellished with skeletal forms holding pure darkness. And its black onyx surface provides no reflection, though Thanatos thinks he sees a faint ripple and the glint of stars when he squints.

“Me, and the mirror. My powers were growing all the time, too fast for me to fully understand,” Zagreus admits, in a rush, “and then I felt this—this thing, between us. When I get boons from the Olympians, I always feel a little strange, you know? I brushed it off, ‘it’s Than’s boon, that’s all.’ Except it wasn’t like that.”

“What is it like?”

And Thanatos finds that he is desperate to know.

Zagreus’ hands hover in the air before his chest, hands trembling. They are standing so close Thanatos can feel the warmth of him, radiating out like a hearth fire. He isn’t sure which one of them moved, this time.

“I talked to Nyx about it, you know? She didn’t have the same concerns I did...Now I guess I know why. But I, I still can’t describe it very well.” Zagreus’ brow crumples as he thinks. “It’s like you said, right here. For me, there’s this hollow. Not empty, just dark. Then I started seeing—not seeing like I’m seeing you now, but—”

Thanatos thinks of the velvet dark and flame of Zagreus’ soul, the laurel leaf embers, the colors of his life’s thread.

“I know what you mean.”

Relieved, Zagreus continues, “Right. I started seeing this...little butterfly sitting on a gold thread. Sometimes I tried to talk to it, or, or reach out to it, and then you’d show up and I—Gods.”

Thanatos feels himself flush, as deep gold as he ever has, possibly. “The fountain chamber? In Tartarus?”

Again, Zagreus laughs. Soft and amazed and, and happy.

“Wow.” He says. Then, quieter, “Oh. I’d thought, how much I wished you...” His eyes look liquid, in the light. “Than. I know you just said—about knowing what impulses to act on, but—I want to ask first, before I kiss you,” Zagreus’ voice rises, wavering. “Because I want to kiss you. A lot. For hours, possibly—”

Thanatos lets out a shuddering breath. “Yes.”

There is hardly any space left between them to close. Reaching up to him, Zagreus takes Thanatos’ face between his hands and kisses him. Overwhelmed, Thanatos feels his knees threaten to buckle and the heartbeat in his chest beating as rapidly as it ever has. A relentless rhythm, that hammer stroke on a hot forge, so strong Thanatos worries stupidly if it will beat itself out of Zagreus’ very chest.

Breaking their kiss, Thanatos presses his face against Zagreus’ hair and laurels. They are soft and tickle his skin as they flicker and dance. It is a few long, indulgent moments before Thanatos manages to speak again.

“When I return you here,” he says against the crown of Zagreus’ head, face still flushed, “I hold your soul against my own. I don’t actually...have any idea how this bond works, but, would you allow me—”

Before he’s finished, Zagreus has answered him without words. What had begun to irrevocably shift between them all those days-and-nights ago blooms, full and lush, in an instant. Affection washes over Thanatos, bearing Zagreus’ mark: fire-bright, warm, as deep as the purest darkness. Without needing to gather him up at all, Zagreus’ soul burrows close to his own. Of, and apart from him. In silent reply, Thanatos encloses gossamer wings of gold and violet around him. And in that same instant, Thanatos thinks he begins to understand what Mother Nyx meant.

In all his long years, Thanatos has never felt so humbled.

“If I’d have you.” Zagreus mutters, aghast. His hands wander over Thanatos’ shoulders and then around his back. “If I’d have you? Stay a while, Than, I’ll show you how much I’d love to have you.”

Thanatos does not have any doubts of that, but he allows Zagreus to show him, all the same.

-

Bathed in flickering firelight, skin warm where Thanatos’ hand rests on his knee, Zagreus sits propped against one pillow-strewn corner of Thanatos’ recliner plucking melodies on the strings of his lyre. The sound rings sweetly on the air, lulling Thanatos into an almost drowsy contentment.

The rapid string of notes Zagreus’ fingers pluck out now is elegant, if nothing like Orpheus’ usual melancholic style. Something of Zagreus’ own imagination, then.

“What is that?”

“Oh, it’s not anything. I’m just fooling around, really. Ornamentation, Orpheus calls it.”

“Ah. It’s nice.”

“Glad you think so. I was awful, truly awful, at the start.” Zagreus admits, laughing. “Orpheus was more patient than I was. I think he was just happy to talk to someone else about music. Not that I’m anything like Eurydice. They make music seem so effortless.”

“Well, they have had a lifetime and more to practice. And the blessing of Apollo, was it?”

“Mm. Give me a hundred years, I’ll be worthy of the Great Hall, too.”

“You’re more than worthy of this hall, whenever you’d like to grace it. I’m sure Achilles would agree.”

A note twangs as Zagreus’ fingers falter. Happiness on Zagreus is often blinding in its intensity, no less so now for the softness of the smile that curls his lips. Affection swells in Thanatos at the sight.

“Good. I like playing for you.”

The sound of his playing echoes down the hall past Achilles’ post. The shade stands in a relaxed attention, and Thanatos looks up once to catch him motioning a wandering shade away. It is a small thing, but Thanatos finds his estimation of Achilles rising further.

Low under his breath, Zagreus hums. Long notes that sound rich beneath the high, lilting melody he plays. Thanatos watches him. The movement of his fingers, the bend of his wrist. Rakish black hair that falls across his eyes so that sometimes Zagreus pauses to huff, clearing his vision.

They haven’t done anything more than sit together, though Zagreus looks rumpled enough bare of pauldron, greaves, and leggings; chiton riding invitingly high, one leg bent to help cradle his instrument and the other across Thanatos’ lap.

Idly, Thanatos strokes along the back of Zagreus’ knee. It earns him a reflexive shiver, followed by a kick to the thigh.

“Than, unless you’ve rethought your stance on public indecency—”

“I have not.”

“More’s the pity.” Zagreus sets the lyre aside to reach for him. “Come up here, anyway. I want to hold you.”

With a put-upon sigh, Thanatos acquiesces. Happily, Zagreus draws Thanatos into the cradle of his arms, tips his head to kiss him, firm but chaste, and then shuffles them both to his satisfaction. Until finally Zagreus lays his ear over Thanatos’ chest, legs twined. His weight is heavy, solid; something Thanatos has found he enjoys. Against his instinct, Thanatos relaxes into the soft cushion.

After a few moments, Zagreus stretches, back arching a little before he resettles with a hot huff of breath. Not unlike the way Cerberus sometimes acts on his own bedecked cushions, Thanatos thinks with fond amusement.

Against his skin, he feels the flutter of Zagreus’ lashes as his eyes dip closed.

“Lying around. Who knew it could be so nice? I should give Hypnos more credit.”

Thanatos smooths his palm up and down Zagreus’ arm.

“You’ve always had a penchant for restlessness.”

“And you,” Zagreus squeezes him around his waist. “When was the last time you rested? Really rested. With a bed and sleep and everything?”

“Er.” Thanatos wracks his memory. Finally he admits, “I can’t recall.”

A century, at least. Possibly more.

Zagreus squeezes him again tighter than before. His strength is not inconsiderable. Thanatos grunts.

“I won’t listen to a lecture from you on the subject.”

“Eugh, me? Lecture? Never.” The smile is clear in his voice. “No, I was just going to suggest that we make a habit of this.”

“I agree.”

There is something to be said for the excitement of their sparring matches, stolen kisses, and hurried rendezvous, but Thanatos thinks he prefers this. Would that their work allowed them more time together like this: intimate, untroubled. Zagreus’ weight, the rise and fall of his chest. The thoughts that spill from his mouth, unfiltered, as they come to him in moments of quiet. Such as:

“I like listening to your, um.” Zagreus trails off, uncertainly. “Chest?”

“There’s nothing there.”

With surprising intensity, Zagreus lifts his head up to fix Thanatos with a look. “That’s not true. I can hear it when you breathe. And there’s this...I don’t know how to describe it. It’s a little like Chaos’ realm, maybe.”

He puts his head back down, as though to listen again to what he says he hears but cannot describe. After a beat of thoughtful quiet, he says,

“There’s a little bit of forever inside you.”

Staring up at the high ceiling, Thanatos’ brow pinches.

“...Leave the lyrics to Orpheus, Zag.”

Thanatos can hear the pout in Zagreus voice as he mutters something in reply, before settling again. The noise of the Great Hall is easily dismissed, Thanatos’ attention narrowing on the dancing flames in their braziers, and Zagreus: the body and soul resting against his own.

Long, long years of Thanatos’ existence have been marked by yearning; for what, he hadn’t sought to know. Too dedicated to a perception of himself, meticulously kept. Death itself; a solitary, immutable thing.

What a relief, to be proven wrong.

As they lie together, Zagreus’ hands slide beneath the drape of Thanatos’ himation, fingertips tracing the lines and curves of his body admiringly. Pursuing nothing but a simple, chaste pleasure in being so close.

Warmth lingers in the wake of his touch, leaving Thanatos’ skin faintly tingling. Seems almost, as Zagreus presses a smiling kiss there, to bestow a rapid pulse in his breast.

A boon, perhaps, of Zagreus’ own making. Freely bestowed and gratefully accepted.

-

Standing, he must bend his neck to kiss Zagreus. Against his body Zagreus is pressed flush, back arched satisfyingly where Thanatos’ hand splays out. Not yet fully bare, if only because Thanatos grew briefly distracted by his mouth, by the sweet sounds of pleasure he makes when Thanatos’ teeth mark a plush lip, the taste of ambrosia on his tongue.

The bottle was Zagreus’ latest acquisition, offered up at Thanatos’ suggestion of privacy so hastily he’d fumbled, almost dropping it.

In Zagreus’ chambers they’d reclined together on his klinē, passing the bottle between them with half-lidded looks; laughing softly into the private space they’d carved out, even as they traded idle touches and brushes of lips that belied the desire already kindled in Thanatos’ belly, begging to be slaked.

Yet there was some thrill to it; being so sure of himself and his welcome as to enjoy this moment for everything it was and all it yet promised.

Halted, again, in their progress across the room, with Zagreus sliding his arms around Thanatos’ neck to guide him into a yet deeper kiss—hot and wet and insatiable. And while Thanatos may have no true need to breathe, Zagreus does, in his way. Mindful, he indulges in the insistent press of lips and tongue and teeth, then draws back enough to hear Zagreus gasp for air, eyes glazed, before kissing him once more.

Thanatos slides his palm firmly down the slope of Zagreus’ back, fingers pushing down dark tights to expose him. Shivering, Zagreus rocks himself forward, a muffled whine catching in his throat when Thanatos cups one cheek in his hand and squeezes.

A moment later, he breaks their kiss.

“I like that.”

“Good. Though, if you mean to ask me to be rough with you—”

Zagreus shakes his head. The smile he gives Thanatos is not meant to be sultry, though to Thanatos it seems unaccountably enticing for the way his mouth is bitten red and swollen.

“No,” he says, the hand in Thanatos’ hair stroking absently; Thanatos tries not to feel cross as a flicker of disappointment flashes in Zagreus’ eyes when his silver hair falls away, freshly cut, hardly long enough to be tucked behind an ear. “I mean you could and I’d be very, erm, agreeable. Look, this is still pretty new, between us, and I’m just trying to... I like what you’re doing, is all. More, please?”

In that case, it suits Thanatos perfectly well to roll their hips together using his grip on Zagreus’ bare ass as leverage.

“Fuck,” Zagreus gasps, and then, “fuck, get this thing off, I want to kiss your neck.”

Unlatching the gorget seems beyond Zagreus at the moment, so Thanatos obliges him by absently flicking the clasp and removing it. Almost before he can set it neatly aside Zagreus’ mouth has latched onto his exposed skin, sucking golden-hued bruises fated to fade swiftly at his collar.

Sighing his appreciation Thanatos tips his head back, a little. Allows Zagreus better access to the soft, sensitive skin there he so enjoys lavishing with attention. The scrape of teeth quickens his breath.

Eventually Zagreus is moved to squirm the rest of the way out of his tights, greaves already abandoned almost as soon as they’d crossed the threshold of Zagreus’ chambers, then says with a sigh as he eagerly helps Thanatos strip off his own himation,

“I’ve missed you.”

Surely, he should be beyond the point where such things make him weak at the knees. Thanatos redoubles his focus on his zoster. “Have you?”

“Terribly.”

“Ah,” is all Thanatos can think to say, at first. “I’ve missed you, too. In fact, I, I’ve found it difficult to think of anything else but you. This.”

Almost comically fast, Zagreus’ head snaps up. Blown suddenly wide, his pupils nearly edge out the color of his mismatched eyes; one, a ring of embers among darkness, the other a halo of green.

“Yeah?”

Bolstered anew by the naked desire in Zagreus’ face Thanatos steps forward, feels himself smile when Zagreus moves with him immediately, retreating towards his bed more quickly than before.

“I’m not prone to exaggeration.”

That draws a laugh from Zagreus; bubbling and joyful.

“No, you aren’t. Than, have you—I want to know what you’ve been imagining, obviously—but have you been thinking dirty thoughts about me at work?”

“Death doesn’t take many breaks.” Thanatos reminds him, though he knows better than to play right into Zagreus’ hands. “I do have a reputation.”

“Gods. The next time I see your portrait on that cursed wall again, I’ll just know that you came here on your break to—”

He is still smiling as Thanatos kisses him into silence, smug and infuriating. It fades as Thanatos licks into his mouth, then wedges a thigh between Zagreus’ legs for him to rut himself against. Almost up onto his flame-licked toes Zagreus struggles a little to get the friction he wants; lovely, needy sounds barely muffled by Thanatos’ mouth spill out of him.

Then Thanatos returns his hands to Zagreus’ ass to better crush him close, his own stiff cock finding relief against Zagreus’ belly, leaving smears of precome in its wake.

“Bet you could kiss me to death,” Zagreus blurts between kisses. “Wouldn’t even mind.”

Thanatos closes his eyes. “Zagreus.”

“Mm?”

“Don’t tempt me.”

Whatever witty retort Zagreus has prepared cuts off quickly on a sharp inhale when Thanatos puts a hand over Zagreus’ wildly beating heart to push him back, down, gentle but with complete firmness, and Zagreus—Zagreus flushes a handsome crimson from cheeks to chest, eyes bright and liquid, legs falling open in clear invitation, and—oh. Abruptly, the mood has shifted. Crystalized.

“Than.” He rasps. “Fuck me? Blood and Darkness, please say you’re going to fuck me.”

Somehow, Thanatos was not prepared for what that plea does to him: a white-hot flare of need briefly steals his breath and threatens to make ash of him. Asphodel would seem balmy, by comparison.

“Yes,” he chokes out. “Gladly.”

Inexorably drawn—in this as in so many other things—Thanatos follows after him, one knee sinking into the plush of Zagreus’ bed. At the barest urging Zagreus spreads his thighs wider, unfurling himself. A muscle jumps under Thanatos’ hand as he smooths a palm up one strong thigh; unblemished, though Thanatos knows with all the certainty his domain grants where it has been fatally marked before.

Pressing his thumb there, he can feel the thrum of blood beneath Zagreus’ skin. Fast, strong. Perhaps Zagreus has forgotten already the stab of spearpoint that killed him, perhaps not.

Bowing low, Thanatos kisses him.

Zagreus makes a soft sound. His fingers curl into Thanatos’ hair, nails scraping lightly across his scalp. Turning into the touch, Thanatos looks up.

Luxuriant, Zagreus is splayed over soft sheets and pillows, cock stiff against his belly and his chest rising and falling unsteadily. The fire-bright laurels in his dark hair are slightly askew, casting shadows in the dim light. From the curve of his mouth to the smell of his arousal, Zagreus is stunning.

A Prince of Gods inviting supplication.

Worship is the realm of mortals, and Thanatos is no less a god. Blessings, though, he may bestow as he likes; such as his own are made of gentle repose and oblivion and sometimes of this.

Under his heated gaze Zagreus trembles before making a poor attempt at covering a smile by casting an arm across his face. Bashful is hardly the first word Thanatos would use to describe Zagreus, but it suits him.

“Than.”

“You enjoy being admired.”

“By a stunningly handsome incarnation of Death, who I really, really want to fuck me silly? Oh, yes. Absolutely.”

“Compliments won’t get me to rush, Zag.”

“Oh, believe me, I don’t mind a bit of teasing. Denial. Um.”

“Another time.” Thanatos promises.

“Guh.”

Without saying more Thanatos retrieves the oil and curls over Zagreus’ body, covering it with his own. Zagreus is not small, exactly—or, he has rarely carried himself thusly—yet it is nothing at all to put him entirely in his own shadow. A dark shroud.

Beneath him, Zagreus tips his head back to keep their gazes’ locked. Hitches up a knee to bracket Thanatos’ hips, the other yet turned out wide. There is—adoration, in his eyes. Unmasked and honest. As clear on his face as it is rippling through their bond; an endless loop, bestowed and accepted by them both in turn.

Something in Thanatos’ chest hooks, pulls.

Braced on one elbow, Thanatos trails his other down Zagreus’ body. Over chest and hip and cock, until he reaches the place Zagreus has entreated him to touch. One slicked finger circles, presses, at a tight ring of muscle.

“You enjoy this, too,” Thanatos asks, though he is certain already of the answer.

“Yes.” Zagreus’ eyes flutter closed. “Very—oh—very much.”

It is plainly evident how much by the sounds Thanatos pulls from him, by the eager way Zagreus encourages Thanatos on with increasing urgency (more, deeper, like this, yes). Plainer still by the arch of his back and bruising clutch of his fingers when Thanatos finally pushes inside him. Desire flares as white-hot and keen as ever, as much Zagreus' as Thanatos' own with their bond blown open between them.

Of Thanatos’ flaws, covetousness was never marked among them. Until, he thinks, this: his Prince—’s unabashed pleasure; the hot, wet clutch of his body; the sound of Thanatos’ name in his mouth. Would that he could abandon all else in favor of having Zagreus like this, again, and again, and again.

Digging into his back, Zagreus’ heels seem almost to brand his skin. Pressing hard, demanding, as Thanatos fucks into the velvet heat of his body with deep, languid strokes. Enough to satisfy, if only just. Enough to ride the edge of more; to draw out the pleasure of their bodies. Of being allowed this.

Searing, open-mouthed kisses trail across Thanatos’ shoulder, his chest, his throat, wherever Zagreus can reach. Pinched between wicked fingers, Zagreus twists a nipple before soothing it with his tongue.

Then Zagreus’ legs loosen, and Thanatos reads the intent in him. Eagerly, Thanatos lifts Zagreus’ leg onto his shoulder and cants his hips the way Zagreus wants. Fucks him harder, though not faster, when it makes Zagreus shout with eyes squeezed shut. Like this, Zagreus can hardly rock up against him; he arches, nails digging into Thanatos’ skin, clenching around his cock beautifully so that Thanatos’ moan rumbles deep in his chest. He—

“Ah, wait,” Zagreus gasps.

Thanatos stops. Rather than speak, Thanatos squeezes the hip under his hand gently. Thumbs along one sharp hipbone. Fleeting, warm, Zagreus smiles back.

“That’s lovely,” he says, “but actually, I want to, I want to make you come, first.”

Without further warning, Zagreus surges up. Offering no resistance, Thanatos finds himself maneuvered neatly onto his back with Zagreus sliding astride him. Lip between his teeth, Zagreus lowers himself back onto Thanatos’ cock. It tears another low, guttural groan from Thanatos’ throat when Zagreus’ body opens up so sweetly for him, taken to the root all at once. They are flush, entirely; Thanatos’ hips to Zagreus’ ass where it is split wide. Above him, Zagreus practically glows.

“Do I feel good, Thanatos?”

This, he punctuates with an absolutely filthy grind of his hips.

“Ah,” Thanatos bites back what might’ve been a whimper, were it allowed to pass, “praise, too?”

“Maybe. I am a god, aren’t I?”

Rising on his knees, Zagreus almost allows Thanatos’ cock to slip free before rocking back down. It draws a sighing moan from Thanatos.

“You, though.” Zagreus takes his lip between his teeth again, lashes dark against his cheeks. “You feel good. Perfect, actually. Think I could, mm, sit here for ages, Than, just being full of you.”

Involuntary, Thanatos’ hips stutter up. In his lap Zagreus jolts, mouth dropping open with a sharp sound of pleasure.

“Oh?”

“Zagreus.”

Whatever Zagreus sees on Thanatos’ face must be sufficiently revealing because Zagreus laughs. No less bright and delighted for being a breathy thing.

“Another time,” he quotes. “Maybe the same time.”

With fingers splayed wide across Thanatos’ ribs for added leverage, Zagreus fucks himself in earnest; rising and slamming back down with force enough to rattle Thanatos’ bones. Zagreus’ cock bounces as he moves, framed by chorded thighs that flex mesmerizingly under the demands of the pace Zagreus has set.

It falters when Thanatos sacrifices the grip on Zagreus’ hip to fist his cock, but only briefly. Flushed red and wanting, Zagreus’ cock is scorching in Thanatos’ hand; precome dripping down to ease the firm slide.

Across his brow Zagreus’ hair is slicked with sweat, edges curling. “Than, Than—” His hands rove up Thanatos’ sides, across his ribs, cup and squeeze the breadth of his chest with plain appreciation. “Gorgeous. Oh—fuck—have I, have I told you? Lately?”

Yes, repeatedly, Thanatos thinks but doesn’t say. Enough that Thanatos has grown to expect the compliment but not yet enough to control his response; a golden flush that reaches his ears. Which makes him more lovely still, if Zagreus is to be believed.

Zagreus’ eyes glimmer with lustful intent; he rolls his hips again, twisting, arching. “You’re going to come for me, yeah? Fill me up?”

In reply Thanatos gets his feet under him, bucking with barely-restrained fervor, rising to meet Zagreus’ every downstroke. Zagreus tosses his head, moans turning to rasping, punched-out noises. Every drag of his cock inside Zagreus’ body stokes what is building in him, closer and closer to spilling over.

Zagreus’ hands fall atop Thanatos’ on the sharp jut of his hips as he finally grinds up, buried to the hilt, and comes. Thanatos is not loud in his pleasure; his voice grows deep and resonant, sets a shiver in Zagreus as he rocks on Thanatos’ cock with half-lidded eyes.

A few quick, firm strokes is all it takes to drag Zagreus over the edge after him. “Oh, oh,” Zagreus trembles, mouth slack in bliss. His body is a vice around Thanatos’ cock as he comes, his spirit laid bare for Thanatos to drown himself in feeling, drawing aftershocks out of him that leave his belly quaking, his thoughts a sensuous muddle.

Suddenly Zagreus bends to bring their mouths together; an insistent, messy slide of lips and teeth and tongue. Zagreus’ knees squeeze against his sides as the wandering hand Thanatos isn’t using to hold the back of Zagreus’ neck finds the place they’re still joined. Feels the rim of Zagreus’ hole where it is stretched, and the slick of Thanatos’ come that has begun to leak out of him.

“Unf, you.” Groans Zagreus, pushing himself up. He looks...satisfyingly debauched, and very pleased.

Having spent so much time already lounging about in each other’s arms, they do little more now than trade a few more kisses and clean the mess they’ve made. While Thanatos crosses the room and gets himself into a semblance of order, Zagreus stretches and fills the silence. Plans he has for the west hall, an expansion off the garden, how many bottles of nectar Thanatos supposes they might need to sate the appetites of his family, let alone Dionysus. Thanatos lets his voice wash over him, taking comfort in the familiar rise and fall.

When he turns around, affixing the clasp on his gorget and arranging the drape of his himation with care, Zagreus is still abed. Watching him from beneath a mess of black, sweaty hair, propped on his hand, spent cock resting against his thigh.

“Back to work, then?”

Thanatos drags his eyes back up to Zagreus’; green and red, both sparkling with mirth.

“Mm.”

“Ugh.” Zagreus’ head falls back dramatically. “One of these days-or-nights, mark my words, I’m going to make you stay here and come as many times as I like.”

Thanatos feels his mouth quirk up, fond and intrigued. Thanatos suspects he will soon enough find that his schedule has been arranged to miraculously coincide with Zagreus’—and perhaps Megara’s—own. Not the worst or most flagrant display of Zagreus’ newfound influence, to be honest.

After a moment’s thought Thanatos leans down to kiss him; a lingering thing to the corner of Zagreus’ mouth, lest he become tempted to deepen it. In reply Zagreus only blinks, fresh spots of color high in his cheeks; apparently startled into silence. Thanatos takes a little pleasure in that.

“It was good to see you.” Thanatos says, because he’s come to understand Zagreus appreciates hearing these things. “But, yes. There is a certain wall you expect my likeness to be displayed on, no?”

When Thanatos finally leaves him, Zagreus is still muffling his laughter into a pillow. The sound follows him all the way to the surface.

-

The Prince flits through the maze of the Underworld. Mother Nyx’s darkness is so entwined in the fabric of Zagreus’ godhood it is by now far more his own. It shrouds him well. Even so, under cover of dark and with god-granted swiftness, it is nothing at all to track him. To turn his thoughts towards him, to follow the beat of his heart.

Thanatos appears in the customary way, earning the bright, happy smile he’s come to adore.

“Life and Death,” Thanatos says, “one and the same.”

Impossibly, Zagreus brightens further. “Shall we?”

Thanatos raises his scythe in answer.

They make quick work of Elysium’s exalted forces. Zagreus is not even breathing hard by the time the last of them have scattered to dust, and the statuary settled back to impassive stone.

“Trying to impress me, Zagreus?”

Twirling Stygius in hand in a flashy, distracting manner before shouldering the weapon, Zagreus grins broadly. “Might be,” he says, then reaches out, lightning quick, to hook a finger into his zoster. As though it were nothing, he drags Thanatos close and looks up at him. Expectant.

“A kiss?” Thanatos guesses.

“Or two, or three, if you could spare them.”

“Zag.”

There is no denying him. Not least of all because Thanatos has no real desire to.

So he floats lower, bends, and makes a muffled sound of surprise when Zagreus surges up on his toes to close the remaining distance. Their noses bump inelegantly, and Zagreus bites his lip in his eagerness, so that Thanatos cannot help the soft laugh that spills out of him.

Bathed in Elysium’s watery glow, encircling Thanatos in his arms, Zagreus has tucked Stygius in his own zoster and wears blood on his cheek and the blessings of his Olympian kin proudly. He is beautiful, and however many times he will breach the surface to prove that he can, he will return.

Across Zagreus’ cheek, Thanatos brushes his thumb to clean a fleck of blood.

“That was one.” Zagreus reminds him.

“Didn’t you choose the time constraint, this go?”

He can vaguely sense an hourglass somewhere, steadily losing grains of sand.

“Yes,” he says impatiently. “And I’ll make it up, don’t you worry. That’s half the fun.”

With a sigh that is entirely for show, still smiling, Thanatos bends to kiss Zagreus again, and again. And then once more for good measure.

“Does that satisfy?”

“Oh, for now.” There is promise in the way Zagreus’ eyes dip; the way his fingers drag up Thanatos’ side. “But I need to find Hermes soon. And I shouldn’t leave Theseus on tenterhooks, either. I’m sure he’s got some witty new rejoinders he’s waiting to use.”

“I will not go far, then.”

“So little faith in me? When was the last time Theseus won one of our cheerful little fights to the death?”

(Fourteen runs, or, forty-two defied deaths past; the Champion’s spear tore him open from hip to throat, glancing off Zagreus’ shield. The knowledge is there, without Thanatos having even to reach for it.)

“Before you began calling on me for aid, I think,” says Thanatos, dry.

Before Zagreus can respond to that, wide-eyed with indignation, he leaves.

He pays for it.

Theseus roars, eyes wild, a bloodless vein in his neck bulging. “Death! Now?” he shouts, and almost seems about to throw down his spear in outrage. “Don’t even have the good graces to finish me off yourself, fiend? Bah!”

Mechanically, Thanatos swings his scythe. Theseus has one foot in the Styx already; his golden chariot is broken and upturned, and the Bull of Minos was scattered back to dust before Zagreus called on him. Showing up only to deal the final blow to an arrogant shade who won’t even glare balefully at him rather...takes the enjoyment out of it.

“Thanks so much, Than!” Zagreus calls cheerfully, as Theseus disappears with one last rasping line no one listens to. Zagreus is bruised and breathing hard, and he spares Thanatos a wink before turning to wave at his adoring crowd. “Couldn’t have done it without your support, my good shade!”

Thanatos waits until he is in the privacy of a wintery, shadowed forest somewhere on the surface, utterly alone, to pout.

Fine.

Point made.

-

Between Thanatos’ work, Zagreus’ newfound job continuing to battle through the Underworld, and secretive plans for an Olympian feast, of sorts, what time they have left to spend together is precious. No less so knowing they have the rest of eternity in which to enjoy each other.

So it is with increasing frequency Thanatos has found himself here: curled together with Zagreus in his bed. Sheets in as much order as Thanatos could arrange them, one-armed and repeatedly thwarted by Zagreus vying for his attention even as the day-or-night’s exhaustion begins to claim him. Drags him, reluctant, into sleep.

Thanatos watches as beside him, Zagreus falls still at last. The pale shadow of oblivion that is Hypnos’ domain beckons to him, too; weariness casting its weight over his senses.

Megara lies half-propped against a pillow on Zagreus’ other side, hair loose and the book she keeps on Zagreus’ shelf held open awkwardly in one hand before her face, the other bent beneath Zagreus’ head.

Thanatos was right, in the end, about Zagreus taking liberties with their schedules.

After a moment’s hesitation, Thanatos reaches out. Zagreus’ dark hair is soft and thick between his fingers as he smooths a lock back from where it lay across his forehead. Even gentle as his touch is, Zagreus begins to rouse again. A green iris peers blearily at him, and on some irrepressible impulse Thanatos closes the scant distance between them to press his lips to Zagreus’ forehead, murmuring,

“Rest, dear heart.”

A quiet, surprised breath huffs against his skin.

Movements still slow, languid from sleep, Zagreus presses himself closer. Megara moves her arm away as he does, rolling feeling back into her wrist; she doesn’t turn the page, Thanatos notices, though she’s been staring at it long enough. The leg between Thanatos’ twines, hooking at the ankle; a warm nose and forehead press against Thanatos’ neck. And against his chest, Thanatos can feel the strong, steady thump of Zagreus’ heart in time with its echo.

“What did you call me?”

Softly, Thanatos clears his throat. “Dear heart,” he repeats. “It is what you are, to me.”

“I like that.”

There is a smile in Zagreus’ voice; his pleasure and adoration suffuse their bond. Zagreus has proved as generous in sharing his emotions as he is with his gifts, and boons. For Thanatos’ part, he is grateful for the opportunity to respond in kind. He has always been better with deeds than words.

Thanatos looks up to find Megara slanting a look at him, lips quirked. At ease in their shared bed, duties shed for the time being, Megara is unguarded. Sharpened edges smoothed down. Affection colors her sardonic humor, gentles her expression; it is a look she reserves for Zagreus, and, of late, for Thanatos.

“You were right, Meg.”

She arcs one eyebrow. “Mm.”

“Huh?”

Having turned her page finally she resettles her freed hand in Zagreus’ hair, vibrant pink nails scratching lightly and then petting through in the way that makes Zagreus go boneless. “About being an insufferable romantic.”

“And what does that make Than?” Zagreus retorts, a little dreamily. “Or you, for that matter.”

Megara snorts softly. Over Zagreus’ head she shares a look with him, again.

“What do you think.”

-

“This is not what I expected.”

Zagreus is standing amidst the curling vines, blooming flowers, and lush grasses of Persephone’s earthly garden.

“I know, it’s not exactly thrashing Theseus or saving me from a small vermin with more fearsome rage than a whole horde of wretches, but...” Zagreus casts a look at him. “Do you have some time to spare?”

Batty is tucked into his chiton, beaded eyes peering blankly into the middle distance. Zagreus has never needed Mort to beckon Thanatos to him, or to deliver messages in quiet murmurs and gentle tugs upon the bond they share. That nothing of his intent filtered into Thanatos’ mind means he’d taken care to plan this, whatever this is.

Zagreus is already well aware of his schedule, so he does not bother to point that out.

“To...garden?”

“Yes? And to, you know, take me home after I inevitably die of ‘natural causes,’ but until then, yes. Gardening.”

“Zagreus. It is not in my nature to tend to things still for this world.”

“If that’s how you’re going to be, you can take care of all the deadheading. There’s some shears over there—unless you’d rather use the scythe.”

Thanatos eyes the small, withered flowers on a shrub when Zagreus indicates them.

“There’s no need to mock me.”

Returned to his own work already, Zagreus snorts. It sounds fond, to Thanatos’ now-practiced ear.

For a moment, Thanatos considers him. He’d stepped away at Zagreus’ entreating call expecting to offer aid in the usual manner. A brief interruption of his regular duties—a sweep of his scythe, a reassurance of Zagreus’ continued wellbeing. With the added benefit, yes, of sometimes putting Theseus down a peg.

This is altogether a different sort of interlude.

Under the light of Helios’ Chariot, above the horizon but not yet at its zenith, Zagreus bends his neck toward his task. Almost merrily, the Prince works: pressing new seeds into the ground and gathering water in a pail to pour over the soil, then examining a small insect with open wonder. A flush in his face, fingers dirtied by soil instead of blood and ichor, for once. A quieted cough, here and there.

Thanatos sets aside his scythe, touches his feet to the grass, and takes up the shears.

Morning presses on slowly. The light makes Thanatos squint with discomfort; he is developing a headache, already. Were he at all inclined towards the weather on the surface, he supposes it would pass for a fine day: a mild, dry heat with little wind and clear skies. Persephone’s Earthly garden is lush, clearly well-tended by her son during these frequent, although short, trips in her absence.

At Thanatos’ prompting, Zagreus tells him all he knows; which, Thanatos suspects, is not that much though Zagreus applies himself to his mother’s work with genuine pleasure. The conversation, largely one-sided as it is, wanders easily to other subjects. Broken up by comfortable silences, the exchange of sun-warmed kisses.

When Zagreus is satisfied with their work, they settle on the riverbank where the grasses hang over the rocky edge into the rushing, cerulean waters. With a flourish, Zagreus reveals his surprise; a crystal bottle of ambrosia, and a platter mounded with all manner of ripened things his mother gave him leave to harvest and sample.

They have never...done this, before. Spent time together on the surface. And despite the discomfort growing in his physical form, Thanatos is content.

In the shade, Zagreus leans back on one hand, body angled towards Thanatos while he talks and wipes plum juice from his lips. When Thanatos shifts close enough to allow their knees to touch, Zagreus tosses him a coy look, mouth quirking. The color has faded from his cheeks, though his eyes still gleam as fiercely as ever.

“Want some?”

Thanatos dips his head to accept the fruit Zagreus is offering him, only to find Zagreus’ lips crushed against his own. Indulgently, they kiss for long, languid moments. When they part Zagreus licks his lips in a way that makes the warmth in Thanatos’ belly briefly flare hot.

“Pretty good, isn’t it?”

“Mm,” Thanatos agrees, then winces as his head throbs. His headache has turned into a persistent knife at his temples.

“I’ve tried everything, by now. But I guess, er, there’s some things that shouldn’t be eaten. Found that out the hard way. Hypnos probably told you already. What am I saying, you picked me up, after. Gods.” Mortified, Zagreus covers his face with a hand.

“Yes. And that time with the goat,” agrees Thanatos, mercilessly. “And the rake.”

Now with both hands shielding him from view, Zagreus groans.

“If it makes you feel any better, I’ve seen worse.”

“It doesn’t, actually. But thank you.”

Zagreus leans back against the trunk of the tree that shades them, its roots long and arching, branches heavy with the weight of its fruit; as with all things that belong to the world above, its earthy beauty lies in the imperfections. As he settles, Zagreus’ eyes droop.

Looking for it, Thanatos sees the thread of Zagreus’ life: its multi-colored threads interwoven in an intricate, imperfect pattern. Pulled taught as a bowstring with a notched arrow, held in suspense.

Thanatos can feel the shudder of pain that runs through Zagreus where their knees are pressed together; feels it, too, rippling down the connection they share.

“’Natural causes.’” Zagreus mocks when he has the breath for it. “Ugh. You don’t have to pretend your head isn’t killing you too. Er, metaphorically.”

“I feel,” Thanatos says, with complete honesty, “very sick.”

Apologetic, and a little sheepish, Zagreus knocks their shoulders together. “I admit I thought this would all be a bit more romantic. Picnic in the garden, spending my last moments together...”

Softly, Thanatos snorts a humorless laugh.

“I know, I know.” Absently, Zagreus rubs the palm of one hand over his chest. “I’m glad you stayed, though. It’s nice not to be alone.”

“You will never be that,” Thanatos promises, “if I can help it.”

Zagreus tips his head to look at him fully as Thanatos takes the hand away from Zagreus’ chest and threads their fingers together, Zagreus’ warm palm pressed firmly against his own. The line of Zagreus’ mouth trembles, then turns up. A private smile: honest and sweet and touched by some old sadness that Thanatos has become familiar with.

All he must do is shift slightly, for their bodies to align, knee to hip to shoulder. With a sigh, Zagreus rests his head heavily on Thanatos’ bare shoulder.

“Do you think we’ve...always been connected, like this?”

There is a tug, like fingers on a lyre string, deep in Thanatos’ core to punctuate what Zagreus means. Thanatos shivers, squeezing Zagreus’ hand.

“I’m not sure. I think we’ve had some choice in the matter.”

“We’re gods. It can be both, can’t it?”

Thanatos can think of no reason why it shouldn’t.

“I suppose you’re right.”

“Good.” The finality in Zagreus’ voice seems to settle something into place. “It’s nice, knowing some part of you was always here, with me. And that however far away you were, I was with you.”

It is.

Thanatos smiles to himself and holds Zagreus closer. Against his soft hair and the warmth of delicate laurel leaves, scythe set aside within reach, he says, “Rest, dear heart.”

-

For all his power and the long years of his existence, Thanatos does not—suspects he will never—understand the work of the Fates. Whether everything is truly preordained or if his sisters are making it up as they go along, roughshod, cloaked in enough mystery to mask it.

Whether by the Fates’ design, the godly power they yet wield themselves, or some combination of both, they are bound. Of, and apart from each other. Life, Death.

Beneath muscle and bone, Thanatos harbors no beating heart. It yet resides there: slowing in the cool shadow of a glade. In a moment it will quiet and Thanatos will bear Zagreus’ body and soul to Styx, and wait. For its strong rhythm sounds double, and never truly stops; sometimes the pause between merely grows long.

Notes:

i. This fic is entirely the result of wanting to unnecessarily justify Thanatos calling Zagreus “dear heart.” (‘No regrets,’ I say, collapsing with exhaustion.)

ii. Zagreus implies in-game he can’t stay on the surface long while Persephone no longer resides there, et cetera, but that boy had just died by snake bite, goat, chariot, eating a weird plant... so I’m handwaving on account of those experiences not seeming totally comparable, lol. (Also handwaved other things, because we’re here to have fun, not airtight plots.)

iii. I imagined for this fic that the Keres are kind of like a collective consciousness; the Ker we meet, here, is akin to a Borg Queen in, like, the very broadest sense.

iv. I started writing this in October and with the confirmation that Thanatos was responsible for the Death Defiances, I am feeling very vindicated and fragile right now, oof.

v. Minor edits made 2/1/21, whoops.