Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

 —Nyx

They are young, and Zagreus is bleeding. Nyx walks into the scene at the height of drama: the shade of Achilles kneeled on the floor before the Prince, the Prince who seems utterly confused as to what the trouble is. Their swords are on the floor beside them and it takes no godly sense to know what’s happened. The blood on the boy’s arm is nearly the color of his clothing, and he seems annoyed by it more than pained.

The only one in the room who looks truly shocked by what’s happened is Thanatos, who is inexplicably standing just inside the door, breathing hard, as if he’s forgotten he has no need for air. 

“Nyx!” Zagreus starts, as soon as he sees her. “They’re making such a fuss.” 

Of course they are. Gods don’t bleed. The only wonder is that it’s taken this long for anyone else to find out. He’s nearly grown and clearly this is no shock for Zagreus or Achilles, but then she recalls what pulled her there—a mother's intuition and the fact that in all his many years she has never heard Thanatos cry out for anything. Even as a child, he would simply shift away from whatever caused him discomfort—often halfway across the underworld, until she had to go hunt him down and find him hidden by the Lethe, face in his knees, being placated by some gentle shades. 

"Yes, I can see that," she says, placing a hand on Thanatos' shoulder as she passes. Easy, all is well. 

Zagreus laughs when she approaches, a little self-deprecating sound. "Really, it's nothing."

Achilles does not look so glib. He meets her gaze with deference and something not unlike concern. She reaches out and wipes her thumb across the wound on Zagreus arm and it seals in the passing, as if it were never there at all but for the smear of red on his pale skin. 

"All better." She smiles and hopes it's reflected in her eyes. "Perhaps that's a good place to stop for the night." 

Achilles nods and Zagreus snorts and steps away, already saying something to her son. 

His blood is hot against her thumb, and it slides between her fingers as human blood does, as any blood does—as mortal blood does—but he cannot be mortal. Even now his feet glow like embers and the rest of him is colored like ash and he doesn’t age as they do—anyway, her son would know. Thanatos would know if the Prince could die.

She turns to watch them with just the corner of her eye. Zagreus looks up at him with a disarming grin on his face and Thanatos returns it like he can't do anything but. His heart is on his sleeve with that one like no other. Zagreus nudges him with a shoulder, and together they make their way out, no doubt headed for the lounge or whatever other mischief they can tempt each other to, and she knows Thanatos will comply with whatever it is by the haunted look in his eyes as he stares back once more at her and the blood on her fingers. 

Perceptive to a fault.

“Zagreus knows something is amiss. He doesn’t believe he’s a god, I think. Not in his heart of hearts.” Achilles delivers this report to Hades in his chambers, Nyx beside him, the three of them making some odd trifecta of unwilling conspirators.

Nyx sighs. “Little difference belief makes.” He’s a god, through and through, but then, the only gods he knows are his distant father, Thanatos and Hypnos who so totally embody their purpose, and the Furies who are hardly allowed in the house anymore. Even the fiction that he was born of Nyx is so laughable they have abandoned it totally. He hasn’t asked more, perhaps afraid to hear he sprang from Hades like Athena from Zeus. 

“What happens if he dies?” Hades asks, and though everything he says about the boy sounds like anger, it can only be a question asked out of love. 

She doesn’t have an answer. “I suppose it would depend where, and how. The River takes all souls in the end. Those my children don't.” And what a concept that is.

He’ll know, she realizes. Thanatos will sense every wound the boy takes, because this is a soul he knows by heart now, and nothing in the underworld bleeds—except its prince, evidently. And now his presence in the room makes sense. It’s only recently he’s started taking up his duties in full and it keeps him so busy they go what feels like seasons without seeing him. Which might explain why Zagreus has been spending almost all his time in the small arena set up for his training, with whoever will meet him there. Achilles, usually. Hypnos only once and with much screaming—he hasn’t had that much exercise in his entire immortal existence. 

Maybe she can speak to Hades about finding other work to keep the boy busy—if they can stand being in the same room long enough to have a full conversation. Perhaps she’d best not hold her breath.

Thanatos is waiting for her by her usual haunt once she’s dismissed. His eyes are still wide, still the slightest bit brighter than even their inner light can account for. “Will he be all right?”

“Yes… Did something seem amiss?”

He looks to the side. "No, but…"

"He's healed. Isn't that enough?" Evidently not, not by half, if the twitch of irritation in her son’s eyes is any indication. “I can say no more, but don’t worry for him more than he worries for himself. You have greater duties, and they will only dog your heels more with time.” She reaches out to brush a lock of his long hair from his cheek, tucking it behind his ear under his hood. 

He will be busy. And, she begins to fear with the foreboding that can only come with certainty, Zagreus will only add to that. 

Thanatos closes his eyes when she doesn’t pull her hand away but cups his cheek. “Do you understand?”

He nods, eyes still closed, and when he opens them again there is some resolve in them. With a voice no greater than a whisper and as grave as his station, he murmurs, “If anyone else finds out…”

Yes. She gives him half a smile, and watches his fast mind work as he puts it together: why Zagreus has never left these halls, why it has been seasons since Tisiphone and Alecto were allowed in, why Zagreus’ listless loathing of every menial job presented to him is taken in stride and without comment by everyone. What else can they do for him? What else can he do? There is a secret in the House of Hades and the day will come for that to change, but when it does, they may never know rest again. Thanatos least of all.

—Achilles

Someone is fighting in the House of Hades. 

Two someones; Achilles pauses in the hallway, leaning against a convenient alcove where the onyx bust of a harpy towers over him, keeping him in shadow. The first voice is familiar, so often is it raised in frustration of late, but the other is a surprise. 

"How can you say that?" Zagreus asks, and it sounds so pleading and young, though he’s all but grown.

"Because it's the truth. What do you imagine is waiting for you out there?" 

"What’s waiting for me here? Every day is the same—" Zagreus cuts off with a groan and the sounds of his footsteps as he paces is so distinctive with that hiss of heat against cool stone. "You can go any time you like. Of course you would take it for granted.”

"Oh, yes, escorting the dead to their eternity. Quite the holiday.”

Achilles inches forward until they are in view and he still in the dark. The pair are stood a few feet apart: Zagreus pacing his circles, arms restless at his side as he waves his companion’s words away, and Thanatos, watching him with all the poise of his station.

“Don’t...” Zagreus starts again.

“You can’t imagine their world, Zag. It is snow and ice and barren land, and starving mortals clinging to life.” The way he hovers gives him height over Zagreus—and he was always the taller anyway, always the quiet and stalwart, always the mature, if he were born a thousand years old and merely waited to grow into it. “Listen to me,” he says in a voice several degrees softer than Achilles has ever heard it before.

At last he comes to ground, the tap of his bare feet on the floor inaudible. He brings up his hand into the bare foot between them and Achilles is momentarily ashamed of his view, of whatever moment this is that he’s trodden into without meaning to.

“That world is nothing but suffering. You have no idea how good you have it here, Zag.” 

He offers up  his palm and Zagreus reaches out for whatever gift is held within it and takes it gingerly between his thumb and forefinger. It’s too distant to make out what the trinket is, but the way Zagreus is looking at it, it can only be some keepsake of the mortal world. The offering cows him for the moment, and oh, what Achilles would give to know that trick. This is Thanatos’ power and no other’s, and even so, it dwindles with each passing day. The Prince’s restlessness leaves a trail everywhere he goes in the House now.

“You belong here,” Thanatos murmurs. With us might as well be spelled out for all it’s implied, and with me is only slightly better concealed. 

Zagreus snorts. “Not an opinion Father shares.”

“You try him too often.”

Achilles flinches. What Thanatos has meant with fond regard won’t be taken that way. The Prince is an open wound begging for salt of late. 

Zagreus rears back. “I try him? And when, pray tell, has he ever tried? He doesn’t want me here. You’re the only one who does, and… you’re hardly here at all anymore.”

Turnabout is fair play, it seems, and now it’s Thanatos’s turn to be bitten. He rises to his full height from the gentle hunch he had been in, though Zagreus is not really so much shorter than him.  “I—have my work.”

“Yes, exactly. And what is my work? What am I supposed to do? Stand around until Father has decided he’s seen enough of me for the day and then go stand somewhere else? What a stirring life.”

He’s said this before—everyone in the house has heard this complaint at some time or another, and for all that it sounded like the whining of a child before, it is starting to sound jaded instead. A man resigned to the eternal boredom of his station. It would drive Achilles mad in a single moon, though it’s not as though there’s a moon here to mark the time by. Endless night noted only by the small changes in light of distant Elysium, coloring the infinite dark in blues and greens, if one’s eye is keen enough, if one looks long enough. Achilles has, many times. 

Something he said has struck a nerve with Thanatos. Several things he said, most likely, and Death’s patience is not infinite. It’s hard to remember sometimes that he’s hardly older than Zagreus and merely too busy to have time to remind anyone. “You’re a prince,” Thanatos says in a tired monotone. “You could try acting like it.”

That’s it. Zagreus’ pained intake of breath echoes through the room and hallway both, becoming larger than itself, and Achilles can see the moment Thanatos realizes he’s said too much too fast and with too little care, and so unlike him it is to be on that side of this. 

“You say it as if I want a vacation or something. I just want to go anywhere, anywhere at all that isn’t here.” With that, he turns, and this might be the first time Achilles has truly seen the Prince upset with someone other than his father.

“Zagreus, wait—” But Thanatos’ voice is quiet, as if he doesn’t expect to be heard and doesn’t believe it will make a difference either way.

Zagreus moves past Achilles’ not-quite-hiding spot without looking in his direction, and Achilles is glad for the moment to compose himself. Thanatos is standing stock-still, his long hair hanging about him miserably, like nothing so much as the draped veil his mother wore for so many years. Achilles pushes off from the wall after a long moment and steps into the room, but Thanatos does not offer him so much as a glance. Instead, he bends and picks something up off the floor. His gift to Zagreus, Achilles realizes, and does a double take when he sees what it is: a tiny, black and violet butterfly, frozen in death, some token of the mortal world’s beauty and turmoil. A romantic gift for Death to make, he thinks with bemusement, and tries to order his words. 

Thanatos beats him to it. “What?” he bites out.

“I am sorry,” Achilles offers. “I hadn’t meant to overhear, but—” He gestures at the door that’s set into the opposite wall, as fine as the rest of the room, banded marble carved with a visage of Cerberus at his gate, guarding one of the more tantalizing vaults of weaponry in the House. The place he was headed before he decided not to intrude.

Thanatos breathes what might be a sigh and straightens himself. “I suppose I deserve a witness to that.” There is a rare bitterness to his words, and what a thing to see Death find something to be unhappy about.

“He’s outgrowing this house, isn’t he?” Words Thanatos will not want to hear but needs to. “But that doesn’t mean he’s outgrown you.”

Thanatos is not looking at him, but off in the direction Zagreus left. “I thought I understood him. I thought I knew everything about him.” 

He might, at that, or at least more about him than anyone else in this house knows. Achilles once thought it was the silent regard of a protector, but that’s not it. Now as he watches he sees the way Thanatos is looking at the empty space Zagreus once occupied, as if he could conjure him back by sheer will, as if he could shape the form of the Prince from memory alone, right there in thin air. 

For this, Achilles has no words. It stretches something within him that was stretched too thin already, the memory of another life and someone and something that seems too much to call simply longing or even love. He shakes it off. It's not the time, and if he says that word, Thanatos might evaporate into thin air. If he knows already, he knows. If he doesn't, he'll find out soon enough. 

“It’s difficult to watch those we care for leave us,” Achilles says instead and can't keep the wryness from his voice. 

“He's not leaving,” Thanatos bites back. “There's nowhere to go.” 

Ah, the words of a god. To Achilles’ once-mortal eyes, there are cracks and open windows and doors with just the right key and escape routes aplenty from the House. Gods are creatures of laws and pacts and so easily offended to find mortals can simply choose the third option between two, but such is the creativity of those who have only one life to live. Zagreus is not mortal but he is not… quite what they are either. He has surprises in store for them yet and escaping this House is not the greatest of them by far.

“So you'd think. I guess wherever he goes, you'll be seeing him either way.”

Thanatos turns to him and it's as if this had never occurred to him. “What do you mean?”

“Didn't you tell him? It's a hard world out there. I’m sure he'll find out, and I don't know anything that can bleed that doesn't wash up here eventually.” The river waits behind them—every hallway opens on to it at some point, its gentle lapping red that is either water or blood or both. Achilles steps past him while Thanatos eyes are focused on the distant Styx, thumbing the key to the door ahead of him, already thinking of who might best use what lies within. “But I suppose you’d know more about that than me.”

—Hypnos

"I don't believe you." Zagreus doesn't do him the basic courtesy of looking at him, instead picking another seed from the half of a pomegranate in his hand and nimbly placing it in his mouth. He’ll go through the whole thing that way and he even eats the seeds. It makes Hypnos shudder. A little rivulet of red stains the corner of his mouth from earlier when he bit into the thing whole. 

Hypnos rolls his eyes. “Why would I lie?”

“Wait—you’re serious? He cut his hair? Why?”

As if Hypnos knows a thing that goes through his brother’s mind. He holds his hands up palm-out, empty. It happened days ago. The quiet sound that accompanies Thanatos wherever he goes had chimed outside the meeting hall as he was dozing, waking him, and when he’d looked on, something was different. Before, his hair hung down from under his hood, floating about him like smoke, and for a moment Hypnos had thought it was merely tied back in an indication of maybe the first change of style Thanatos had ever voluntarily committed to—but of course not. It was simply gone, in a cut so precise it had to be done with his scythe, which was an image Hypnos hadn’t been able to get out of his head since. 

“Well, apparently he tried dying it a nice red to match the decor, and you know how hit or miss that can be. He figured it was easier to start over!” 

That doesn’t even earn him a roll of Zagreus’ eyes. “I’m going to ask him.”

“Oh, good idea. He loves explaining his decisions. A lot like your father, actually.” Of course, if there’s an exception to that rule, it’s for Zagreus. 

Zagreus merely rolls his shoulder, and oh, he knows. “He’s been acting off lately.”

“Yeah, instead of talking to me once a year he’s down to single syllables every other decade.” It’s an exaggeration, but not by much. This does finally get Zagreus to roll his eyes, and that’s something at least. 

“Than isn’t that bad.”

Than.

Something that might have once been jealousy wriggles through Hypnos, but it’s only a passing thing. Their pet names, the way Thanatos’ face gentled whenever Zagreus was within view, the little thread of attention that seemed to tie them together even far apart—it used to be a torment. They were leaving him out and leaving him behind, but all wisdom comes with age. That’s nothing he wants any piece of. Get a room, he wanted to say, as soon as he learned the phrase from Meg.

Between the three of them, Hypnos has it best and easiest, and he and Zagreus have found their own kinship since Thanatos started showing up once a season looking like, well, death warmed over. Once he even convinced the Prince to let him spell the whole house asleep so they could have a night with the lounge and all its barrels of wine to themselves. Actually, it hadn’t taken much convincing at all. It’s not that Zagreus and Thanatos like each other better than they like him, but—okay, well, that part is true, but it’s different, is all. Last he checked he didn’t give a venomous rat’s ass about either of their hair styles and now the pinch between Zagreus’ brows makes him look as though the prospect of Thanatos getting a haircut is a personal loss. 

Zagreus plucks another seed from the pomegranate and considers it before he sighs and tosses it over his shoulder. 

“Don’t let Dusa see you doing that,” Hypnos chides. 

Guilt shades Zagreus’ eyes a moment and then is replaced by something entirely different. Disregard, maybe, like it can’t matter if he makes a mess, and it can’t matter if Dusa gets mad, because nothing does. 

Thanatos, he thinks to himself, isn’t the only one who’s changed lately. 

It’s his luck he’s there to witness the fallout later, which comes fast and sweet. Thanatos is giving his report to Hades as Hypnos listens, only half awake between signing in the unhappy dead. They’re trading words that don’t mean much to him but more work—something about volume and speed and of course, for Thanatos, Hades has no criticism, which is probably fair. Gathering the dead is, well... Hypnos has enough trouble signing them all in, and sometimes even the sheer variety of cause of death can be a bit of a shock. The dreams of men are strange and varied and sometimes horrible, but their acts are another thing entirely. At least he doesn’t have to see it like Death does.

“You’re back!” comes a familiar voice from the hall, cutting Thanatos short as he’s midway through something about a famine. 

“Zag,” Thanatos says with a single breath and too much joy to keep from even his unconcerned monotone. 

Hypnos peeks a glance in time to see Hades look between them and then decide whatever is sitting on his desk is more important. “Yes, someone around here is actually competent at the job they’re given.” 

Hypnos carefully moves the hand he’s resting his face in to hide his grin. Not that Zagreus’ pain is funny, but seeing Thanatos between the very definition of a rock and a hard place is too good to pass up. He’s the God of Sleep, not magnanimity. 

Zagreus ignores his father, which is something he’s getting quite practiced at lately, though it was never a weakness of his. In a way, it’s mutual. He has eyes only for Thanatos, anyway. “You—you really cut your hair?” Zagreus asks, and doesn’t even try to not sound heartbroken about it. 

Thanatos is too dignified to twitch or put his face in his hands, as anyone else would. “Yes.” 

“Oh. Well it—it looks fine. Not that it wasn’t fine before.”

Thanatos shifts and looks at him with what is not quite a glare, but only because with his piercing eyes it's hard to tell one way or the other. “I’m so glad you approve.”

Zagreus scratches at the back of his neck. “Actually I liked it better before, but—”

“It’s good it wasn’t up to you then, isn’t it?” Thanatos never manages to sound good-humored or even friendly, but at least for Zagreus he tempers it on most occasions. This isn’t one of them. This is the voice that could crack steel and freeze blood in mortal veins. “Why do I even bother,” he mutters to himself as an afterthought.

Seemingly they’ve both forgotten their audience: several dozen shades, at least two of Cerberus’ heads, Hypnos, and the Lord of the Underworld himself, all of whom are, by Hypnos estimation, at least trying to appear uninterested. 

“I didn’t mean it like that. It looks good, honest.” Zagreus at least has the grace to look chagrined. 

“And I said I don’t care, Zagreus. I didn’t do it for you.”

But… something about that is off. Something about the tone. Hypnos gives up all pretext of not watching them as they stare at each other right there in the gilded hall. Zagreus looks almost hurt and Thanatos looks almost pissed off. Oh, it's good.

"Perhaps you might have this conversation with my best employee when he's not making his report,” Hades says at last, the Lord of thinly veiled insults as well, it seems.

Thanatos jerks his gaze back to Hades and starts to say something that would probably have been an apologize, but Zagreus beats him to it, stepping in front of Thanatos as if Death needs defending. "He's not your employee. It's not like you pay him."

"Zagreus!'

"Boy." 

Thanatos looks offended, Hades looks tired; Hypnos folds his hands behind his head and slips back in midair, floating in bliss, list forgotten beside him. It's worth it, this job, just for this. 

And Zagreus, it seems, is going for broke. 

"When has he had a break? You're working him ragged. I haven't seen him in months!" Zagreus throws his hand back, waving at all of Thanatos as if he’s one of the sad waifs that Hypnos sometimes has to sign in with a cause of death like walking uphill both ways in the snow to beg for rinds in the market and had never had real food, was gifted a honey cake by a kindly stranger and died of excitement and dyspepsia. In truth, Thanatos looks extremely well fed and the only tragic thing about him is the hair which, surely, they’ll all adapt to in time. 

"I didn't realize Death existed to be your playmate. Should I block out hours in his schedule for your personal amusement?"

That might be exactly what Zagreus wants, actually. It might be exactly what Thanatos wants too, if he weren't too caught up in duty and the stick up his ass to admit it. It’s a little too on the head, almost.

“Zagreus, please," Thanatos begs before the situation can spiral further out of control, but with his clipped voice it sounds annoyed, and oof. It's only been two days since the blow up in the administrative room and tensions are still, well… This is the first time Zagreus has shown his face in the Great Hall since and it’s looking like it might be another week before they see him again.

"Yes, boy,” Hades adds, to twist the knife a bit. “Some of us have real work to get to." 

The air between Hades and the Prince nearly crackles. Zeus would be proud. 

"Am I dismissed?" Thanatos asks, drawing both their attention.

Hades nods and waves at him and he disappears in a flash, without a word or sign of his passing. Gone again. What’s new? 

But then again, maybe there is something new. Hypnos has never seen Prince Zagreus look quite so crushed.

That night Zagreus comes to him with a bottle of nectar and a proposition, though honestly? Hypnos would have copped him the favor for free. Anything for a laugh.

—Charon

He waits beside the fields, boat bobbing gently in the calm water. The Lethe is not his favorite river, but only because it wouldn’t be right to pick favorites. They all ask the same price in the crossing. 

The Prince hasn’t noticed him yet. He’s off in the distance, the contrast between his burning red clothes and feet and the soft tones of Elysium is so marked as he whirls his way across the field. He’s clumsy, his movements clipped, his strikes missing as much as they connect, but he’s doing well. He’s never been so far before. It seems his tutor is worth the money after all. 

Usually Charon would have no time to waste here, but there is no wailing of souls waiting for him to bear them passage across the river yet—perhaps because Death is otherwise occupied. As Charon watches, Thanatos scythe comes down on the shade that was about to drive a sword into Zagreus’ back. Where Zagreus seems almost frantic in his strikes, Thanatos is calm, simply ending whatever tries to get close enough to him to be a danger. 

Neither have noticed Charon’s careful watching. No one does. He’s no more than a shadow on the water, a shift in the light. It gives him full leave to watch this odd display as his brother curses and with a wave of his hand dispatches the shade whose arrow skimmed Zagreus’ cheek. 

Hermes will be delighted to hear of this. Of all their conspirators, Thanatos was one they never thought to account for, yet here he is, seemingly with nothing but time to spare to help their little escapist. 

When the last of the shades are dispatched, Thanatos stands beside the doors that lead outward, to the infinite labyrinth beyond, waiting for Zagreus to drag himself there. The look on his face is impenetrable as always, what Charon can make of it from afar. His shoulders are set proud, and he doesn’t deign to come down to Zagreus’ level but hovers above him. It would seem grandiose but for the way he inclines himself just the slightest, as if to shield Zagreus—though nothing is left in this place that can hurt him.

There is blood on Zagreus now, but then, not in all the sad years Charon has watched him haunt the House’s halls has he seemed quite so alive. 

Charon guides the boat closer, trying to catch his brother’s words. Zagreus hands something to him and Thanatos looks momentarily affronted, like he can’t imagine what the gift is for. Charon will take it off his hands if he’s really that opposed. 

“—I want you to come home,” he’s saying, and Zagreus is still looking at him, utterly unphased, placid, as if they're having this conversation in the lounge over drinks and the splattering of his own blood on his face is nothing at all. It was always this way: only Zagreus could bring out emotion in him, and only Zagreus could take it in stride. “I know you didn’t ask for me to get involved, but, what did you expect?” Thanatos is asking him.

Charon lets a grin split his grim face under cover of his hat. What did they expect indeed?

No one expected this. He probably doesn't realize he's sunk closer to Zagreus and is now nearly in his space. Zagreus’ response is too quiet to hear, but whatever it is has Thanatos raising his arm, eyes aglow with something that ought to be anger but is only simple frustration. He’s never taken out anything on Zagreus but his best intentions. 

“You have no idea how good you’ve had it here,” he murmurs. A pale light washes out his features and all of the field around them. “Maybe someday you’ll come to understand.”

Without another word, he disappears from sight, no more than an afterimage, leaving Zagreus and Charon both stunned in his wake. 

In a way, Thanatos is still as young as the Prince. The older and cannier of them have ways of easing Zagreus’ passage through the world without putting themselves between him and his foes, but then, none of them are in love with him.

Charon does not laugh. He simply pulls the hat lower over his face and navigates onward to set up shop, to stand by his wares, to let Zagreus choose his boons, and to send a message to Hermes at earliest convenience. He loves gossip.

—Persephone 

Persephone has watched her son die a number of times. 

It never gets easier. His face goes pale—more pale, than its total lack of exposure to sun would entail, and his features harden in pain. Each time, he talks through it, as though it’s no more than a slight cough, even as his body fails him. He was never meant to live above the surface and it breaks her heart to see him so. In a way, it makes her love Hades more. Each time, he tries to stop this. He fails, but still. The sentiment is shared. She would do anything to never see this again.

“Oh, Zagreus, you’re fading again,” she says. 

He's still struggling to speak as she reaches out to take his hand, to feel the heat running through him. Just like his father, the very fires of Tartarus running through his veins, though the thought was much less romantic when sharing a bed and being used as a pillow by said incarnation of heat. Zagreus is cooling, his feet burning down to embers. She remembers thinking of that when he was born, after the mismatched eyes, of all the qualities for him to inherit, why that? But then his eyes had shut and his body went cold, just as it is now. It’s not a memory she needed two of.

He slumps to the ground against the iron grip of her hand and teeters over after a moment, right beside the tomatoes. She comforts herself by imagine he's simply tuckered out by the journey. 

The first time it happened, she simply sat there with him until the boat appeared in the little river that edges the farm, the familiar boatman beckoning—but that's not who appears this time.

At the instant she's about to decide if she'd best load him into the wheelbarrow and dump him in the river herself, the air changes. A gust of cold raises the hair on the back of her neck—her mother, come at last, she fears for a moment, but instead the birds go silent. The low buzzing of insects and fluttering of wings stills all around her. A cloaked figure stands at the edge of the garden, just beyond the wheat. He stands, which must be a concession to their situation, because when last she met him he was no more than a child brimming with so much power it seemed the ground couldn’t hold him at all. When he walks forward, the wheat stalks don't bend. How polite.

"Oh, you've grown," she hears herself say.

This makes him stop in his tracks. After a moment he replies awkwardly, "Yes." 

"And I suppose you're here for him."

"Yes," he repeats, gold eyes falling to her son, little beacons. Everything else looks washed out in his presence. Only the red on Zagreus' clothes and skin stands out. 

"How did you find me?" she thinks to ask as he walks closer, still without sound, and kneels.

In answer he says simply, "I didn't," and cups Zagreus' face to turn it toward his own, as if looking for signs of wear other than the fact his heart has stopped beating in his chest and most if not all of the red staining his body is his own blood. 

I didn't. So he found Zagreus instead.

He’s bigger than her son, she realizes as he reaches down and with an inhuman lack of effort that’s striking even in the company of gods, gathers her son’s body in his arms. Her mouth works a moment because this is a sight, even after all she’s seen above the world and below it. Death coddling a corpse. “I wasn’t aware you made special deliveries.”

He darts her a guilty look, a child caught with hands sticky from over indulging. Was Zagreus ever that child? He has the attitude for it, if their brief time together is anything to go by, and her own willfulness passed on to him at all.

“I... don’t. It would be best if no one knew,” Death tells her.

“Ah, my husband, you mean?” she asks before she can stop herself from making the slip. “Don’t worry, I have no one to tell.” How interesting—an illicit delivery then. It warms her for some reason she can’t put her finger on.

He gives her a tight nod and resettles the body in his arms, giving it care like Zagreus can still feel anything at all, before he starts to turn away, and once more she can’t help herself. “Wait—wait. Can I ask you something?” Though he doesn’t really seem like he wants to stay at all, he nods again and she asks, “Is he happy?”

She fears the answer. How happy could he be if he was willing to do all this to escape over and over again? Death looks down at his burden, brow pinched with old lines that look incongruous on his young face, as if he’s had practice not knowing the answer to this question. “Happier than he has been, I think. I hope.”

Her ribs seem to twist in her chest. “You’ll take care of him for me.” Not a question and not a request so much as a plea. Maybe an order, if she still had that authority to command. 

“I try. Between us—he doesn’t make it easy.”

And with that, in no more than the blink of an eye, he’s gone with nothing but the echo of a bell, and suddenly it’s a day exactly as it was before Zagreus came stumbling into her life. For once, the parting doesn’t feel quite so bitter. He keeps odd company, but then, she’s glad it keeps him, too. 

—Cerberus

“Do you think it’s odd that I bleed?”

Thanatos is good at sounding exasperated. “No. I don’t, but then, I try not to think about it much at all.” 

That smells like a lie, and the number of times he’s made his reports dripping in familiar blood would speak otherwise. Good the black of his cloak hides it. Good no one else notices. Nothing else down here smells like that blood. 

Zagreus pushes at him as they walk down the hall. “Leave it to you to be unphased. You’ve seen it all, haven’t you?”

“I’m not—unphased. Actually, I wish you would bleed less,” Thanatos mutters without looking at him or acknowledging the hand that’s lingering on his arm now.

“It’s a bit gross, isn’t it?”

Thanatos turns on him. “No, that’s not—it may come as a shock but I’m not all that thrilled to see you hurt.”

“I don’t mind it,” Zagreus laughs and turns to him. They’ve found a corner that’s almost obscure enough that no one will see them—almost. “Barely notice anymore.”

Thanatos draws in a breath, and now he smells like old graves. like dust, like the coldest corners of Tartarus. “I’m aware. You don’t seem to care at all sometimes.” 

It takes a moment. Two. Three. Zagreus looks at his hands and then at Thanatos, where he stands but a few steps away. They are mostly hidden here in this hall, where they so like to meet, and forget that the gentle waters of the Styx do not hide all sound—especially from a keen ear—and that things born in the dark were also born to see in it. 

“That wasn’t very considerate of me, was it?” he amends. 

Thanatos reaches out and fingers the pin on Zagreus chest—it’s small. A little insect with wings. They noticed it because it smelled of Thanatos, and now they always carry a bit of each other with them—though Thanatos must not notice that Zagreus’ bloody scent never quite washes from his clothes or skin anymore. 

Zagreus catches his hand in his own and brings it to his mouth, setting his lips on the knuckles of it, over the black cloth that covers his skin. After a breath, Thanatos pulls him in by his collar and their mouths meet. Cerberus turns all three heads away, in agreement for once, and the hall fills with the faint scent of happiness. It’s been a long time since Zagreus smelled of anything but anger. 

Sometimes, when Zagreus meets him in the temple, he already smells of Thanatos. Sometimes, he smells of others, strangers, people they will never meet. Sometimes, Thanatos carries him back, his body stinking of sunlight, the Lethe, the fumes of Asphodel, and Death’s own grave-rot fear. It washes out once he lays the body in the water and cradles it as if it were possible for a corpse to drown, until Zagreus slowly comes back to himself. It always ends the same: Zagreus dragging himself from the Pool, Thanatos flitting away as if he might be caught caring. As if his scent hasn’t been full of it for years.

He might hide with Cerberus at those moments—they wouldn't mind, and there's room to spare in their shadow—but he never does. He is always busy, always worried, always torn. Even when they were young and Zagreus would come crying to sob all the injustice in his life into their fur, Thanatos would come with him, holding himself distant and watchful, three steps behind. 

There's room, they would have said, if they had the tongue for it. 

The pair seem to remember where they are a moment later and part with their breath filling the silence. “I’ll see you later.” Zagreus fingers the ends of Thanatos hair—and oh, Cerberus remembers the sorrow that filled the hall when Thanatos cut it, all the anguish. They would have laughed if they had the teeth for it, but it only looks like snarling when they try. 

“Why not now?” Thanatos asks. 

“I assumed you had better things to do,” Zagreus says, humor coloring his voice. He straightens Thanatos’ shroud and the folds of his chiton and steps away—though they didn’t really need straightening. If he wants so much to pet something, Cerberus is but a short walk away.

“Rarely,” Thanatos mutters under his breath. 

Spinning on his heel, Zagreus turns back to him. “What’s that?”

“Nothing. I will see you later,” Thanatos promises—or it sounds like a promise, and smells like one. Instead of disappearing in his usual flare of eerie light, he moves closer to Zagreus once more, standing but a few feet apart from him as he has so many times, as if they are the only two souls that could possibly occupy the hall.  

“What—‘Death is inevitable?’” Zagreus does a fair imitation of his false-calm voice. “So dramatic. Well, maybe I’m inevitable, too.” 

Thanatos draws a breath and reaches out to pull him in once more.  “Maybe you are, after all.”

Chapter Text

— One time, of many

Zagreus is a spot of red in a green field by the time Thanatos finds him. 

Not all souls go with him quietly—even the old, even the weary, even the suffering can find reasons to cling to life, and it’s never in him to make the parting cruel. He sensed Zagreus blood, felt the splitting of his skin as sure as if it were his own. It’s too late now to do more than well, pick up the pieces, as it were.

He had braced himself for it before descending. There are shades gathered about his corpse at a polite distance, and risen heroes still milling about. One has blood on his blade still, shining faintly against the green light of the Fields. Zagreus’ blood. With half a thought, Thanatos waves his hand, and its body disintegrates back to ash, and some of the ache that’s settled into the pit of his stomach goes with it. The other shades disperse at his approach, some with a bow as their cloaked forms fade back to little more than spots of light that dance in the flowing grass.

Elysium is like this. Quiet copses of trees so tall and wide, one could almost be fooled into thinking a sky waited up above them. The dappled light, the quiet flow of the Lethe through it all.

And then, Zagreus. The land about his body is charred with his footprints, slick with— 

Thanatos makes himself look at last, and somehow he isn’t ready for it. 

He’s seen every manner of mortal end. Every manner of mutilation and horrid death. This, by comparison, is tame. In war, this would be a kindness. Ares would spare this man a thought for his noble death and his companions would wreathe him in finery before resting him on a pyre. The only part of Zagreus that’s truly damaged is half-hidden by his chiton, which was already red, and yet something is wrong with it all. Or something is wrong with Thanatos himself, because the wounds on Zagreus feel mirrored on his own body, as if it is his chest that is lying open, and his heart which has ceased to beat. 

As if he’s ever had a heartbeat. How foolish. 

“Hello, Zag,” he says, to hear anything in that quiet. Zagreus is always so loud, the way he bashes his way through Hades and anything that lies in his way. 

No response. Somehow, that’s a surprise. With a sigh, he bends closer. Bodies aren’t his province; he deals in shades and souls and leaves all the mortal bits for the crows and ice or whoever else is interested, but something in Zagreus is still burning. It’s faint, a little spark at the center of him that nothing but Death could sense. 

With time, the river would claim him, lapping over its banks and dragging him back, or bubbling up from the earth itself to pull him down. Thanatos looks at the water, and then back to the body, and the faint life left within it, and makes his decision.

It takes some doing. He has no practice gathering bodies and for all that Zagreus is still in one piece, he’s heavy and cumbersome and by the time Thanatos has managed it, the phrase dead weight has rather more definition than it once did. 

“So heavy,” he murmurs. “What are you eating down here, Zag? I should stop feeding you hearts.”

Still no answer. And still, somehow, he is surprised. The stillness is wrong. The burnt dark of his feet. The scent of blood, not quite so bad as a battlefield, but not better. 

He’s seen the way the living rage at the dead. Mothers who will not part with a child lost to the cold; wives and husbands who treat the graves of their beloveds like a bed; warriors who lose their own lives to defend the corpse of a shieldmate. They say even Achilles would not leave Patroclus’ side to revenge Hector until the gods promised his lover’s body would be kept safe from time and rot while he was gone. 

Only flesh, what a thing to cleave oneself to. But now as he settles the body in his arms, the cold spread of muscle over bone is too familiar. He’s kissed that juncture of Zagreus shoulder and drawn his fingers down that spot just below Zagreus’ ribs where the blood is tacky now.  He begins to understand, he would fight for this body. He would mourn over it, hold it just as he is now, disdain anyone who tried to take it from him. 

It takes nothing but a flash of light and a thought for him to return to the House.

It’s different to move with a body, with anything material, but so much of his attention is already focused on Zagreus, it hardly matters. When his vision resolves, he’s staring at the red Pool of Styx just outside the long hall that will lead to the entrance hall of the House of Hades. The line of shades already waiting spare him a glance. Hypnos is leaned against one wall, snoring softly. Best leave him to his slumber. 

Without jostling the body in his arms, Thanatos descends the steps before the pool and then bows to the water, submersing his burden inch by inch, uncaring as his feet and arms and the hems of his chiton go with it. He was already a mess with Zagreus’ blood; this is nothing.  

Zagreus floats there, unmoving. Once more, Thanatos is unsure what he expected, and what a day for new experiences this is. 

“How long does it usually take?” he asks after a moment, loud enough to reach Hypnos who sputters awake at his words and then takes a moment to compose himself when he realizes who’s talking.

He comes up and peeks over Thanatos’ shoulder. “Is that—did you bring him here?” Thanatos nods tightly. “Well, usually he’s been marinating in there for the whole trip down and then he just kind of floats there for a while, so…” 

"Please never use that word again."

"What, marinating? Okay, sorry, that's fair. It takes a, you know," he flattens his palm and rocks it back and forth, "—a while." Hypnos rolls his shoulder in a shrug, and evidently that’s all the answer Thanatos is going to get. Longer, at any rate, than the roughly ten heartbeats he’s been waiting.

Longer—and too long. Zagreus still isn’t moving, isn’t breathing. His broken body is a contradiction that Thanatos’ mind can’t make sense of, but the worst part is the eyes. Mismatched and charmingly odd in life—grotesque in death. After a moment’s thought, Thanatos reaches down and cradles Zagreus’ head with one hand as he drags his fingers over Zagreus’ eyelids, closing them to the world. He’s watched mortals do this a thousand times, though it rarely works. He takes it as a blessing when they stay closed. Perhaps this is the equivalent of a nap for him, long overdue. 

Once he’s touching, it’s hard to stop. The residual warmth is still there, the only sign a soul still remains within, and so Thanatos sits on the steps with Zagreus' head still held above the rippling water, waiting and watching. How rare to get a moment with him still and quiet. 

Even in sleep, he’s restless, though Thanatos could hardly admit to knowing that.

A while turns out to be a vast underestimation. He’s so behind on work by the time Zagreus begins to twitch that the begging of souls in the back of his mind is an indistinguishable din and easy to set aside. When he feels Zagreus shift against his hand, Thanatos shifts, too, poised. The water seems like melting wax; it drips off Zagreus as he tries to find his feet and breath. Every inch of skin that rises from the pool is perfect, pale, untouched, even as the ruined chiton seems ready to fall from his body.

Thanatos ought let him go, move somewhere else before Zagreus comes back to himself, but it's not quite in him. Not with the image of Zagreus' eyes dull and empty still fresh in his mind.

Death covets nothing—that must be a law somewhere—but Thanatos does. He draws his fingers through Zagreus' hair, pulling the wet from it, letting his touch linger on the strong jaw, the cheek that's still full enough to make him look perilously young in unsuspecting moments. Soon enough he'll be running his way back to fight every odd thing Tartarus can throw at him, a terror to behold, leaving blood on every inch of the underworld between him and freedom. 

He is terrifying. Their whole shared childhood he was listless, but now… Thanatos misses being the only thing that could put a smile on his face in the midst of his bleakness, and what a selfish thought.

“Where are you trying to go?” he asks. 

It’s been on the tip of his tongue once or twice, to make the offer. I’ll take you. But he wasn’t sure which would be worse: watching Zagreus die or watching him live and realize he would never need to return to them again. Zagreus has left him nothing but bad options and he’s running out of even those. His work is unending, and the more time he spares to help Zagreus achieve his goal, the more his work backs up, the more questions it raises. 

At last, Zagreus; eyes open. Bright, clear, so different. So arresting. He blinks, breathes, struggles in the water, already ready for the fight. Thanatos lets himself indulge in one glimpse of them before he shifts, leaving no more than fading light and an after image for Zagreus to blink away.