Chapter Text
What curse of the Fates is his such that the one thing that will forever elude him is the one thing he can’t ever stop himself reaching for?
Thanatos has chased life as long as he could remember, and he remembered it all. Each time he reached out to brush his infant fingers against petals that looked so velvety soft, each childhood pet befriended at the mouth of the river Styx, they all went the same way. Softly, like a gentle exhale. Their eyelids or leaves would droop, then the rest of them would slump over, unable to wake ever again in the living world.
He hadn’t learned that last part right away, as his twin brother Hypnos’ touch had much the same initial effect. It had taken Thanatos years, an eon maybe, to realize the end result of his own touch was not the same. But who could count the primordial years? He hadn’t understood what death meant to life until he’d grabbed the hand of a boy at the mouth of the river. He’d had wild black hair, was the same height as Zag at the time, and Thanatos only realized his mistake when the human child turned around, life draining rapidly from his brown eyes and baby-round face twisted in alarm. Thanatos had opened his mouth, as if to apologize, but could only watch as the boy slumped like a rag doll, eyes closed as if asleep, his brow contorted with homesickness.
Thanatos had watched him shiver out of the Pool of Styx later that day, or night. He’d been erratic, running and yelling for his mother. The shades had been quick to move him back into line each time he tried to leave. No one cut ahead in Hades' procession.
So much like Zagreus, he thought, upon revisiting this old memory once again.
Thanatos shook his head, eager to leave such thoughts behind. The work beckoned him onwards. To the next one.
~
“Than?”
Hairs rose at the back of his neck as hot breath ghosted over his perpetually chilled grey skin. Thanatos startled, jerking up from a discreet shut-eye at the west balcony to the prince alarmingly close behind him.
“Zag!” Thanatos jerked back and up into the air to float above the stone bannister. “I…I didn’t…hear your approach.” He coughed, clearing his throat to distract himself from the warm glow that always, always radiated from every inch of the prince’s body.
Zagreus bumped his shoulder up against Thanatos’s leg. “Answer me this, Than. How is it that you can look so stressed even when you’re sleeping?” A flash of his grin, a flash of his skin as he leaned back against the stone, elbows supporting his easy slouch.
“Some of us still have jobs to do, Zag.” A chilly disposition helped drag himself back from that useless feeling of wanting.
“Ouch. Okay…well is there something…I could do for you? You work too hard, Than. Makes you grumpy.”
Thanatos had just been about to feel guilty for his offhanded jab, but after sticking out his lip, he called it a draw here. “You want to do something?”
“Yeah. Anything you want. Let me put my princely influence to good use for once,” Zagreus prodded.
Anything he wanted.
The thing happened again. There were patches of…less cold…flushing across Thanatos’s cheeks. It’d been happening sometimes, when his thoughts of Zag- “No - I-I don’t. I don’t need anything. Thanks, though…”
Those flush lips curved into a pout, boyish on the prince’s grown face. “There’s nothing I can do for you?”
How weak he’d always been to any plea made with those mismatched eyes. Thanatos sighed deeply, hand coming up to rub his knuckles against his pinched brow. “I wouldn’t even know where to start thinking about what I could ask of you that would help my fatigue.”
“Hmm. Well, it can be easier to think when you're comfortable, sometimes. Come.” Zag stood and reached up to circle Thanatos’s wrist, tugging gently. “Will you come with me?”
How weak he’d always been for him.
The steps to Zagreus’s room were as familiar as the steps to his own domain. He’d walked them a truly uncountable number of times. He still felt, sometimes, that spike of fear near the threshold that Zag would turn around, would look into Thanatos’s eyes and see the flatness, the numbness, and drop his hand.
That he never had remained one of the Underworld’s many mysteries.
Like habit, Than gathered on the checkered blue quilt across the bed while Zag paced the room, sparks and licks of flame spitting up from his heels. He was recounting stories from his tutor again, talking with so much animation Thanatos could nearly see the players in his mind, acting out the scenes of human battle and tragedy. He liked listening to him; there was so much passion there when he spoke of the Heroes. He’d said before he’d admired their tenacity in the face of impossibility. That it was inspiring. Thanatos had never thought of it that way before. He’d only seen the senseless crashing up against tireless odds, and chalked up their successes to a twist of the Fates. Certainly whatever gossip he’d heard about brash Theseus in Elysium never seemed to match the noble picture the prince painted with his mortal tales.
“Than?”
“Hm?” He fluttered his eyes open. Had he fallen asleep again?
“Shh, you can rest, sorry, I’ll-I’ll go see what Dusa’s up to. Yeah. I’ll ask you later. Don’t worry about me! Just get some rest, okay?”
He hadn’t had proper time to ask what his question was in his sleep-slowed state. Zag was already out the threshold, leaving Thanatos to doze off again, nested into the familiar blue blanket that smelled of him.
~
Thanatos had, over centuries, hardened himself to the pleas of the dying. Most everyone was displeased to see him appear before them, many trying to barter, to bribe, to beg for just a little more time. Many wished to stay for love, but he must give them grief. Some had unfinished business, but he had served them finality with their projects undone. None could ever give him a reason stronger than the Fates’ decision that their story in the land of the living ended here.
Yet occasionally he had the pleasure of easing the pain of those satisfied with their life lived, and were at peace to go with him. He appreciated their perspective, as he shared it: Death meant leaving the pains of living behind, and entering your final place of rest. Whether willing or not, he brought every mortal soul he collected to Charon, who would see them off to a place with no hunger, or isolation, or the need to earn to live.
It had been one of these mortals he’d just seen off, a woman who’d been lucky to see her children grow, her husband pass peacefully, and her final wish to die by the sea fulfilled. The salty earth-breeze had whipped his funeral veils about his body and she had smiled upon seeing him. He’d smiled back, despite himself.
Death bells tolled with their flash of green, announcing his return to Hades as he materialized on the west balcony, per his habit.
“Hey, Than. Welcome back.” Zagreus’s face flickered from a dark scowl into an easy grin as green light receded from the hall.
“Zagreus.”
The prince watched Thanatos float downwards until his toes lightly brushed the floor. How could he smile so much with him, when there was so little that could make the fickle prince happy in his own home?
“You look good. Relaxed. Easy assignment this time?”
“I suppose so. An easy end for her, at least.”
With impunity allowed only to him, Zagreus reached up to brush hair away from Thanatos’s face, tucking the silver locks behind his ear. “You seem at your most peaceful when you return from these jobs, laying the willing to their rest.”
Thanatos jerked back from the tingling sensation left by the prince’s warm fingers. “It’s simply my duty to collect them when Atropos cuts the thread of their mortal life.”
“Sure, but it’s more than that. I admire how you do it. You don’t revel in the opportunity for final violence like Ares or the Keres. You’re kind.”
His nose wrinkled in distaste at the mention of the war god and his own malevolent sisters. “I could not be like them. They use mortals’ ends for their own amusement. Death is…it is hard for mortals. Frightening. I do not wish to trouble them further.”
Zagreus laughs, befuddling Thanatos about the cause. Why did his eyes sparkle like gemstones when he looked at him? Perhaps an aspect of Zag’s divinity. Thanatos pushed it from his mind and narrowed his pale eyes. “Do you mock me? Perhaps you’d prefer that I toy with them before I escort them to the mouth of the Underworld,” he said, a chill in his voice.
“No- no, Than, that’s not what I meant.” Zag’s smile fell, his brows coming together. “I like it. I think…I think what you do is good. Too many have no regard for mortals or their shades, but…they’re not so different from us, y’know?”
Thanatos raised a single curved eyebrow. “I believe they are very different from us. On almost every level. Yet…there is a commonality. In the heart, perhaps.”
“Mm. Yeah. I think so, too.”
Zagreus was coming closer, his lips parting with something heavy in his eyes. Something that set Thanatos’s dead heart beating. He pulled back, mouth gaping like a damned fish. “I-I should go. Duty calls.”
“Than-”
And like that, Thanatos was on the surface once more, slipping back into the comfort of his neverending work.
~
Well that had been a terrible job. Disease was tearing its way across the living realm, taking children and adults alike. He’d run himself ragged fetching them all, wanting to give each a dignified transition into death. He tried to take parents and children together so they would not be separated, but such was not always in the Fates’ designs. The screams of the mother as her shade clung to her baby’s body rattling with its flooded lungs, and how she’d flailed and pushed against him, inconsolable to leave her sickly child behind, haunted him. His attempt to soothe her with knowledge of the small one’s approaching death did nothing to console her, instead sending her into a fit of sobs, leaving her limp in his arms, obligating him to carry her to Charon himself. She’d screamed and tried to flee at the ghoulish visage of the boatman, but once in the barge, she knew, she knew then there was nothing to be done.
The stress must have shown on his face when he blinked back to Hades after handing her off, for Zagreus’s frustrated expression changed to concern as Thanatos landed at the balcony.
“Hey. You alright?”
“I don’t want to talk about it, Zag. Please.”
Zagreus turned back around to stare at the distant collection of artifacts down the hall, blowing an unruly wisp of dark hair from his face. “Yeah. Fair enough.”
This reservation was unlike him, and it was unlike Thanatos to question further. He stood there quietly, not wanting to leave him, for Zagreus always seemed to distract him well from the memories of hard jobs. “Uh, do you…do you want to get a drink with me? Seems we could both use it.”
Rolling his head on his shoulder, Zag dragged his gaze up to his face. Than felt his heart skip at the small flick upwards of Zagreus’s lips. “Why not? Can’t say no to you, Than.”
They settled in, each with a kylix, a shallow and wide vessel filled by servant shades with wine. Thanatos swirled his drink in silence as he grasped for something to say. Zagreus had yet to fill the silence between them and had been absently watching the cook chop up piles of something or other.
“Say, Zag…”
“Mm?”
“Is something… Well, maybe it’s none of my business…”
The look in Zagreus’s distinct eyes was unusually tired. “What? Just ask.”
Thanatos bit the inside of his cheek, feeling a pressure in his head standing between him and his words. But, this seemed important. “It’s just, you seem…preoccupied. Is something bothering you?”
A loud exhale rushed from Zagreus’s flared nostrils and he frowned. “Bothering me? I guess being a purposeless prince unable to meet even a single one of my father’s expectations could be described as bothersome.” He snorted, scowling at his wine. “Fuck, Than, what…what am I doing here?” Zag’s fists dropped suddenly onto the table, startling his friend as their drinkware trembled from the force. “Like…who am I? What am I even the god of?” The prince pushed his kylix away, then reconsidered and downed the dark liquid in a single go, gasping for breath with the last gulp. “And why…why does everyone seem to tiptoe around me? Why bother? Not like I have any power here, anyways. Might as well take up the court jester role at this point!”
“Zag-”
“No! I’m serious! Tell me- tell me one thing I’m needed for around here.”
Mismatched eyes narrowed as Thanatos gaped, unable to answer. “I-” I need you- His jaw clenched shut, pushing the thought away. That’s not what Zagreus wanted to hear, now or probably ever.
“See? Nothing. I do nothing around here.” Zagreus slumped onto the table, muffling his voice as he hid in his crossed arms. “I try to help, to make people’s lives a little easier, but… Well. It’s…it’s not…enough.”
Thanatos winced. He knew. He’d known this. Zagreus was not the type to be satisfied with lounging, not like Hypnos. “Zagreus-”
“...I need to get out of here, Than.”
A tightness bloomed in his chest. “Zag, please-”
“I-” Zagreus looked up from his arms at him, pained. “Than. You-”
His heart was beating again - too fast. It was filling his veins with anxiety. “Zagreus, this- this is your home. You belong here-”
The pale face opposite him twisted again into anger. Zagreus pushed back from their table, the stool screeching under him. “No, I don’t! My father hates me, I have nothing to do, nothing I’m allowed to contribute to. I-I-I’m not even trusted to go into the administrative chamber anymore! What-what sort of insult- He asked me to pay him, can you imagine? Pay him for the privilege of re-entering! Like I’d ever want my old parchment-pushing job again!”
Zagreus had stood up, trembling with frustration. Something about this time, it was scaring him. Thanatos had heard this many times before, but it had never felt so…real. So final. “Zag, I’m sure… There must be something for you here. Something to preoccupy you-”
“I don’t want to be preoccupied, Thanatos! I want- I want something real. I feel like everyone’s been lying to me since I was born! What am I supposed to do with that?” The look in his eyes was blazing.
“Zag, I-”
“I’m sorry, Thanatos.” His voice softened as both green and red eyes dropped to the floor. “I don’t think I can-”
“BOY! GET OVER HERE!” The booming voice of the Lord of the Underworld reverberated through the House, fiery with impatience.
Zagreus’s face contorted in a flurry of expressions, all of them sour. “Well, that’s my cue, I guess. Thanks for the drink, Than. I appreciate it. This. Being able to talk with you.”
Heartbeat slowed but not stopped, Thanatos reached out to clasp Zagreus’s shoulder. “Anytime, my friend. I should be going, anyways.”
He watched him go, a strange hollowness settling into his heart. How long would this last? That he could have these conversations with the prince, who was so hellbent on doing the impossible: leaving their home, the realm of the dead.