Chapter Text
The only redeeming factor in this whole venture was that the light levels were appropriately low.
The mortal world was blindingly bright, and his duties took him across the entire span of the known world. Many of his duties brought him to the world after sunset, after darkness had descended, but humanity had unhitched itself from the natural pendulum of night and day long ago.
These days, his duties brought him to hospitals where LED-lights ensured that the mortals could see every inch of those seemingly-sterile yet plague-ridden halls. They brought him to streets that chased away Nyx’s grasp with humming orbs of luminescence, fixed at the top of metal poles at regular intervals. And in the day, well, Apollo’s chariot was the most egregious offender of all.
The House of Hades, on the other hand – even its surface mirror was well-controlled. Made for the chthonic, and those who respected their much more reasonable preferences.
Even Gaea’s forces had grown accustomed to the Underworld’s dim. It made trailing the demigods, although somewhat beneath him, that much more tolerable.
Oh, this was all Zagreus’ fault.
If they weren’t his Doors, and if Zagreus hadn’t asked so – sweetly – then Thanatos would have left this entirely to the demigods. He’d caught wind of a new prophecy regarding Olympus and its offspring, and though he’d managed to get caught up in the fray a month ago, he would have been perfectly content to never see a giant again.
But Zagreus, his reckless, soft-hearted partner, with his penchant for loving family until one of his own bloody ends, was trying to close Thanatos’ Doors from Tartarus.
Thanatos very well could have let him be.
Despite how Tartarus had shifted over the millennia, parts of it becoming more and more difficult to traverse, Zagreus remained its foremost exploration expert. Even as the mortal souls often ended up in the Fields of Punishment instead, as Tartarus became reserved for the worst of the worst and the chained immortals that Olympus no longer wished to lay eyes upon, Zagreus still ventured through it frequently – plunging into the depths to test his strength against everything and anything.
And yet… and yet, here Thanatos was.
He’d left Hazel’s own partner – that irreverent son of Mars – behind in order to follow the scent of Zagreus’ chthonic companion deeper into the depths of the House of Hades, only to find the god himself standing defensively over the unconscious bodies of the two demigods that had been waylaid in Tartarus.
He found it difficult to put the exact way that Zagreus’ presence felt into words.
Most of the time, he came up short, grasping futilely at a vocabulary that seemed to never be sufficient. Zagreus radiated tantalising heat, like the licking sparks of his laurel crown when Thanatos leaned in too close, and being in his presence was like standing on the banks of the Phlegethon. His cocky smile that had used to irritate Thanatos so, had grown into something he wanted to draw nearer, to see softened and growing more tender in both of Thanatos’ hands, so that he could treasure it as they didn’t have the rest of eternity together.
Yet with the swirling Mist and the giant’s smog combined, any hint of that familiar comfort had been stifled.
Hecate must have taken Hazel under her wing – that witch always did love to move unseen – there was little other explanation for why he’d been able to track the chthonic companion without catching wind of Zagreus’ presence. Thanatos only wished that the witch herself had showed.
For now, he was the only one who’d already broken the Ancient Laws regarding interference in mortal affairs. There was no reason to indict them both.
And as long as Zagreus didn’t need to move to actively defend those mortals that lay behind him on the stone floor, he wouldn’t be. Thanatos was determined to keep it that way.
He could think of it as a trade, of sorts.
His Doors, for his aid.
“You do not understand,” Clytius taunted them both, with Leo’s body and voice. “I devour magic, Hazel Levesque. I destroy the voice and the soul, Thanatos. You cannot oppose me.”
Thanatos raised his scythe wordlessly.
He was classed as a minor god, with the raw power that status entailed; few people prayed to Death. It didn’t meant that he couldn’t lend Hazel Levesque his aid.
Hazel leaped forward once more, her Imperial gold spatha in one hand, shrouded in that selfsame Mist that cloaked her like armour, preventing Hecate’s giant from reaching her. At first, Thanatos kept his distance, but any circles that he tried to create – of glyphs and his own sigils – fell apart before they could take form. There was no way that he was going to be able to inject any power into those, let alone cause Clytius any significant harm with that method.
Hecate was the better sorcerer, between Thanatos and her. It shouldn’t have been that much of a surprise that her giant could dismantle his long-range offense.
The second hurdle came from that black smoke around the giant. Hazel’s grasp over the Mist kept it away from her, and kept it away from Zagreus and the other three demigods, but when the vapour seemed to latch onto Thanatos like he was its personal homing beacon.
It cut through Hazel’s Mist, sinking into his clothing and then his skin, and when it finally reached him, Thanatos understood why.
Clytius must have been involved in the original chaining of his Doors. He’d managed to lock onto Thanatos’ signature; managed to find the connection between Death’s Doors and Death himself, in order to sever it. Now, he used that connection between the chained Doors to try to chain Death once more.
It wasn’t happening again.
Thanatos retreated into the lapping Mist.
The smoke only followed, no matter how much he moved. Scowling, he decided that there was nothing for it but to keep moving forward. As it began to cover him like a second skin, it devoured any of his attempts to destroy it with his own pool of magic, which just weakened him further.
Ceasing those attempts, he tried to push through the lethargy that the smoke was trying to induce. He wouldn’t have Zagreus jumping in – it would defeat the point of Thanatos’ involvement in the first place. So he persisted.
In and out, both of them weaved, bleeding the giant bit by bit. Yet, for all the cuts and shallow gashes that Clytius gradually accumulated, he still stood strong. Zagreus’ shout made him look past the giant, but Clytius still stood between them and the Doors – their main objective.
Even if he’d had access to the full breadth of his abilities, even if moving hadn’t grown so laborious, Thanatos had heard of Clytius before. They needed something more.
They needed fire.
Then, at last, the Mist thickened and grew heavier.
It gradually began to beat back the dark smoke, which slithered away and thinned out as the Mist grew less wispy and more weighty. When at last, the smoke receded from him, he felt his grasp on his usual capabilities return. Between one lunge and the next, he looked around to see what had changed.
…Hecate had always been exceptional at concealing her presence – and arrival.
“Shall we play with fire?” She taunted Clytius, torches held high.
Titaness and giant engaged in a heated verbal exchange, Hazel recuperating from the exertion of battle.
Across the room, Zagreus locked eyes with him.
Thanatos nodded. He had this handled. Though he did let a slight smile show when Zagreus raised one eyebrow, in a way that signalled his displeasure at being effectively grounded from battle.
It would do him some good to finally sit back. Not even that pierced butterfly that Thanatos had gifted him all those centuries ago – the one that would allow him to grow stronger, the longer he remained unharmed – had been able to stop him from throwing himself into battle. Zagreus had simply pinned it to the front of his robes and gotten better at dodging.
Immobilised demigods were clearly better at keeping him out of battle. Thanatos would have to take notes.
He turned his attentions back to the battle at hand – Hazel had just barely managed to doge another hit. Though Thanatos moved to jump back in, she furrowed her brow and shook her head, tightening her grip on her sword as the precious stones still embedded in the walls shuddered.
The Doors, Lord Thanatos. A prayer whispered to him, as clear as polished gemstones with its proximity – and how few prayers he got on the regular.
Few people prayed to Death.
He got the message.
Hecate hadn’t broken the laws, and was unlikely to; she would only step in once Clytius was incapacitated. But they still had two objectives, and with Thanatos back in the game and Zagreus defending her incapacitated friends, Hazel would be able to focus all her attentions on the giant.
“I do not understand why Gaia would find any of these demigods worthy of sacrifice. I will crush them like empty nutshells.” Clytius sneered.
Hazel didn’t spare the breath to bother retorting. She simply snarled as she advanced once more, dashing forward recklessly. Clytius must not have been expecting her to move so quickly and without regard for her own safety, because he was slow to react – and Hazel ducked between his legs and stabbed her sword into his behind.
As he roared in pain, Thanatos blinked past him and drew his own sword. His scythe might not be the best weapon here. He had started out with the sword, and though he kept it on him at all times, the scythe had become his primary weapon and the one most associated with his image.
Gods thrived on belief, and so his scythe had become most imbued with his essence. It didn’t hurt that the extended length made his job a little more impersonal, a natural progression as the number of mortals he had to attend to on the daily had increased over thirty-fold since he’d began his duties in the ancient world.
Thus, the sword that he scarcely used would be ideal for severing chains designed to suppress Death’s power.
For all that getting to the Doors had been a battle and a half, the chains themselves shattered on contact. Oh, they drained the sword of any of his power that it had been infused with over the years, but he’d had it by his side for so long that they couldn’t absorb it all before the sword severed their hold over his Doors.
The headrush was giddying, and he saw his Doors shuddering through half-lidded eyes as he felt their presence return to his awareness – right where they always had been – and pushed them away from modern-day Greece.
There.
Now there was no chance that Gaea would be able to find them.
They would continue to jump around without his direct instruction, but as long as he kept nudging them along, until the war with the Gaea was over, they wouldn’t stay any one place for very long at all. As long as he didn’t get captured again, this would not happen again.
And, well, his job here done – he could leave. He could tell Zagreus that he’d completed his duties, that his job here was done, and that they should both leave before the effect that his closed Doors would have on the barrier between life and death began to affect his partner more acutely.
But there was still the matter of Clytius.
He turned to see the giant growling at Hazel, who’d been batted to the ground and now lay bruised and wheezing, but the air between giant and demigod was shimmering. It rippled, like layers upon layers of heat haze, and then solidified into a misty doorway. The four demigods he’d left behind in the upper levels of the House of Hades stepped through.
Hazel wheezed a name – her partner’s, Frank Zhang’s – barely audible to anyone but the gods in the room, with more relief for his wellbeing than her own.
And, well, wasn’t that the crux of it?
Thanatos could leave. He’d pulled the veil of invisibility back over him, a technique he’d picked up from Mother almost before he had learned how to move around the world, but he had paused short of actually departing.
He could urge Zagreus to leave the demigods behind, to leave his half-siblings and his full-blooded-sister’s teacher to deal with the giant, but Zagreus wouldn’t be himself if Thanatos had ever been able to easily persuade him one way or another. And he was all the more obstinate when it came to family.
When it came to family, Zagreus would fight tooth-and-nail for them, even if the surface would tear him apart that much sooner if he’d actually leapt into battle. Ever since Zagreus had begin to rip his father’s realm apart in the pursuit of his mother, Thanatos had learned one very crucial fact.
Whether other gods were willing or unwilling to aid him, Zagreus’ love for those he held dear would drive him beyond regard for his own well-being. Even if it limited the time that he spent with them subsequently, Zagreus would fight to his own painful end for the opportunity to converse freely with family, or to break others loose from their own binds.
And sometimes, no matter how much he tried to tell himself and other that it was duty, or that it was in service of Lord Hades and his kin, Thanatos’ actions often lacked the ulterior motives he liked to say aloud.
He’d wanted to free his Doors, yes. But by the Fates’ design, they were destined to be released either way.
The only thing Thanatos had really accomplished here was preventing Zagreus from jumping bodily into another fight with a giant; preventing him from expending energy that could be used to keep the Styx at bay for just a moment longer.
…Allowing him to spend more time with his half-siblings.
The demigods and Hecate still had to defeat Clytius, but Thanatos could see the proud smirk on Zagreus’ face even at this distance, as six of the demigods descended upon him at once. He was shouting encouragement, intermittently checking on the two weakened ones behind him, vivacious and full of life.
Nothing like how he always looked, limp and pale in Thanatos’ arms, just before the Styx fully claimed him once again.
Zagreus would be able to keep that vivacity for longer this time.
Thanatos would never admit it to anybody but himself, and even then, only after he’d twisted himself into knots trying and failing to find some alternate, much more rational explanation for his actions, but sometimes–
Sometimes, he just wanted Zagreus to be happy.
If breaking the Ancient Laws was how he’d needed to do it this time, well, he’d survived breaking Lord Hades’ a few millennia ago. And every time subsequently, each for the sake of the exact same god. He could live with this.
As long as Zagreus was happy.