Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

“You came into my life–not as one comes to visit...but as one comes to a kingdom where all the rivers have been waiting for your reflection, all the roads, for your steps...”

-Vladimir Nabokov, in a letter to Véra Slonim (1923), Letters to Véra

“There you are.”

She kneels with a smile next to Cerberus’ many heads, scratching the hound behind one of his ears. Nyx’s youngest is quite hard to spot in the shadows next to Cerberus. He chews his thumb, one hand gripping the red fur tightly, translucent gold irises fixed on where she has knelt in view.

It is, she thinks, the closest he has allowed her to approach when not held in Nyx’s arms.

“What a clever hiding spot.”

Thanatos remains silent, but his eyes move when she tries to shift a little bit closer. For a moment, his shadow flickers and she thinks she’s frightened him off, that Nyx’s search for him will grow longer—

--and he grows stable, a child shaped void where nothing grows.

It is not hard for Persephone to find him, when he hides in the House.

“There there, I’ll stay here,” she promises, and plants herself by Cerberus’ heads. She gets comfortable before she pulls a pomegranate out and splits it open. She holds the seed up and lets him see it, then breathes on it. A moment later, the aril shrinks, the seed splits, and a tiny white shoot begins to furtively prod its way out.

He watches, transfixed.

She sets the little sprout on the Cereberus' blanket—it is not in Thanatos’ short reach, but that is not the point. It won’t survive very long like this, but it is enough to keep Thanatos content. Not very much grows in the Underworld. She would not be surprised if the plants she tends here are the first he’s ever seen of the sort.

Thanatos has always been like this—quiet and solemn and small. She has been here for some time now, long enough to think she might manage another life here, to not be miserably sick with every day spent in the Underworld, and yet she has never seen him grow. Nyx says he will, in time, but Persephone is... she is not certain he even knows how to grow.

The little sprout finally runs out of energy, begins to wilt. Thanatos’ brows knit tightly, a frown appearing and he chews harder on his thumb, fist twisting Cerberus’ fur. It takes a moment for her to realize the glisten of his eyes is not their gold, but unshed tears.

“Oh, Than, it will be alright,” she says, and wishes she could scoop him up in her arms.

“No,” he says--one of the three words he knows. No, Mama, dogdog.

“I promise,” she says, and picks up the now dead sprout. “Do you want some pomegranate?”

“You coddle him.” There’s displeasure in the words, and a heavy step that draws her eyes away from Thanatos to her husband in the entry to the hall. He is looking at Cerberus and frowning at how tame his hellhound has been made.

“Nonsense,” Persephone replies, and nods her head towards where Thanatos is still hidden.

Hades snorts, but comes close enough to see. The faintest smile softens all his features as he sights Nyx’s youngest son, and he leans in, scooping the boy up without any hesitation, giving a quick spin and Thanatos laughs. It rings through the hall, echoes like so many hundreds of small bells chiming, trips over itself and slides cold over Persephone’s skin, makes her feel heavy and ache and like she did when she first came to the Underworld.

Oh, how she loves his laughter.

“You are in a great deal of trouble today,” Hades says, as serious as he is when addressing a shade’s petition. He settles the boy in his arms more firmly and Persephone... quite likes the sight. “You have evaded your mother at every turn. A most ungrateful child.”

Thanatos laughs at the seriousness, then shrieks as Hades tickles his ribs. Persephone steadies herself against Cerberus discreetly as she rises, and tries to push away the headache spreading from her temples.

“I’ll fetch Nyx,” she says. “Come, Cerberus.”

She looks back at the two of them, Hades settling at his desk to his parchment work, Thanatos nestled in the crook of his arm.

He would make a good father.

**

Almost overnight, Thanatos grows, like all he needed was to see the way of it. He floats around the halls, still silent for the most part except sudden surprised laughter. He had toddled, a little, but after toddling out into the garden left dead grass all around him, he seems rather loath to try that again.

But then, he stops growing, not quite big enough for his first tunic.

A sprout that never finishes growing is not much of an example, Persephone thinks.

**

Thanatos is looking at her, head tilted on its side like an owl unsure of what it is seeing. It is... unusual, to say the least. Thanatos watches her hands dig in the dirt, watches how the grass bends towards her, watches the way she coaches life into a garden so far from the light of the sun, but he does not, as a rule, look at her. Not since he finally started to grow.

And he has grown, a little. He has more words now.

“What do you see, Than?”

Nyx is nearby, sitting at the entrance to the garden, and her head lifts from the scroll she has been reading at Persephone's question.

Thanatos’ face scrunches as he thinks. He chews his thumb, glances back to see Nyx, stops, and shifts where he is floating in the air. The air hums with a tone not quite resolved.

“Thanatos,” Nyx says, voice calm and endless. “You have been asked a question.”

The tone threatening to break stills, like a hand placed on a vibrating bell.

Thanatos points at one of the pomegranates Persephone has picked. “That.” His eyes nearly close, glancing at her--

Not her. Her--

“But like fire,” he finishes, and Persephone places a hand on her stomach and looks the way only a goddess of growth can.

“Oh,” she whispers, and then a smile breaks her face, feeling the tiny stir of life—still so faint she could not notice it without it being pointed out, and yet so obvious now she has.

**

It was not planned. Of course not, and all Hades seems able to do is worry—but then, hasn’t he always? Is that not the way he shows his love?

A child.

She is not like Nyx, a slow goddess born of Chaos and detached from time. She is young, and half human, and the child in her womb is just as eager to grow as she is for them to grow. She cradles her stomach and she sings them songs and remembers the way Hades held Thanatos, and wonders just how much softer he will be when it is his own child he is holding.

**

“No need to hide, Than.”

The boy startles where he has been hiding, briefly touching the grass of the garden. He springs back up into the air immediately, but the brief brush has already left death in its wake. He frowns at it, shoulders curling in, and there is that hum like he is going to flee.

In her belly, the child kicks. They are so restless these days, and she knows it won’t be very long now. They are so impatient, already, like their mother.

She wonders if they will grow faster than Thanatos has, but then, of course they will. Maybe Thanatos will understand the rest of growing by watching them. She’d like that—she can almost imagine the sound of them playing in the halls.

“Why on earth were you hiding?” she asks. “You know you’re always welcome here.”

“Nothing,” Thanatos says immediately, eyes fixated firmly on the grass.

“Is that so? Then it should be nothing to tell me.”

A second, and then he pouts. He starts to chew at his thumb, and then stops.

“Are you worried?” It is a guess. She has noticed his eyes fixated on her swollen belly, the way he chews his lip sometimes, the way the gold of his eyes gleam not with their brilliance but with damp.

“I dun—I don’t know.” A pause. “Maybe.” His relaxes a little, glancing at her face this time. His shoulders have curled in so tight, and that hum is in the air again. “I need to. Go. Not be here.”

He is terrified, she realizes suddenly. It is so subtle—he is so difficult for her to read, even if his presence is impossible to miss—but it is there, in the tenseness of his shoulders, the pauses between already slow speech, how he has so carefully made sure to stay out of arm’s reach, how carefully he is keeping his hands folded. The white knuckled grip and slight tremble. He knows who he is—what. Already, and he is yet so young.

“Oh, Thanatos,” she breathes, voice soft. “You won’t hurt us, we are gods. We don’t die. Look, I’ll prove it. Give me your hand.”

Thanatos looks at her outstretched hand for a very long time. Persephone waits. His brows are knit tight, and even the youth of his face can’t entirely soften how serious he has become.

“It will be alright,” she promises.

Immediately, the air goes corpse cold; it sucks the breath she doesn’t need from her lungs.

“No,” Thanatos says, his eyes snapping up to meet hers’, his voice ancient and certain and old-old-old. There is so much weight in that word. For a moment, Persephone feels wretched, the ground sinking beneath her, a chill so deep that it cuts to her bones, feels—feels like that third day, when the lack of sun and heat and life finally fully sank in. She cannot break her gaze from Thanatos’ eyes: gold, clear, certain.

“It will not be,” and there is a finality to that word, be.

And then Thanatos stiffens. His hands fly to his mouth, covering it. He does not even stammer an excuse like he normally does these days, only vanishes. Slowly, the air warms again.

Persephone sits in the garden, hands pressed to her womb where her unborn child is presently kicking, and feels something a little like doubt creep across the edges of her mind.

**

<There you are.>

Thanatos pulls his legs closer, presses his face tighter into his knees. He wishes he would stop being found.

Charon’s boat bumps against the banks of the Lethe. Thanatos listens to him step onto the grass, the rattle and scrape and brush of cloth and bone settling next to him.

Eventually, Thanatos lets himself uncurl. He keeps his arms wrapped around one leg, lets the other slide out and down into the water. He’s not supposed to. The Lethe is dangerous. The Lethe makes mortals and gods and more besides forget.

He would like to forget. Forget what he said and what he knows and what will happen soon, so soon, after he thought he wouldn't be the only--

He would like to forget.

Charon does not chide him. Charon never does. He simply sits, and he waits, and Thanatos wishes he could be more like his elder brother. Slowly, Thanatos lets himself fall over so he is half leaned against his brother. It is not comfortable, but it is comforting.

<You will leave soon.>

“I told. The—Queen a.” He stops, casts about for the word. There are so many of them, and they are all so difficult to remember, but Mother says he should anyway because he is not like Charon.

Charon will not chide him and Mother is not here.

<Set thing.> He hisses it with shadows, shapes the impression of it with the bits of Charon’s soul that drift mist-like around and through the boatman, holds it up in both hands.

<Prophecy,> Charon supplies.

“Pro-pho-cee,” Thanatos repeats aloud. He keeps kneading the bits of Charon’s soul he’s gathered up. He shouldn’t do this either. Mother says it is very rude, shaping another person’s soul like this, but it is easy and familiar. Charon does not chide him. He is so old, Thanatos is not sure he notices any of himself is missing.

“I told her one. A pro-pho-cee,” Thanatos says. Then, quieter, blinking back tears, “I did not mean to. Mother says I shouldn’t--”

<Our sisters will teach you,> Charon says. He sounds so sure, so final, and it untwists some of the tension twining up Thanatos' spine. <It is not easy, what you are. But you will learn.>

“I hope so.” He keeps pulling and twisting and pushing, until the purple of Charon’s soul flutters around his fingers—a butterfly. “I should. Go back.”

He stands up, remembers that the butterfly crawling over his fingers is not his to take, and offers the bit of soul back to his brother.

<I will see you at the House,> Charon says, allowing the butterfly to crawl across the bones of his hand.

Chapter Text

A bell rings.

Thanatos startles, nearly breaking the thread he is spinning in the process, but no--he won’t drop it into the sea again. He butterflies the thread over his fingers until the spindle, dangling so precariously down the cliff face, is back safe in his hands again. The thread is rough and uneven and not very fine, but it is his. He winds the new spun onto the cop as he makes his way over the hills of his sisters’ island towards their cottage.

He is not sure how long he has been here, only that the light he had fixed in his mind in the Underworld has finally gone out.

He crests the last hill, arriving at the door to the cottage.

“Let me see,” Lachesis says. She is the tallest, with distant seeing eyes the palest gold of them all. She has a hand out.

Thanatos gives her the spindle.

**

<Small.>

“He was smaller,” Atropos says.

“He will be much bigger,” Lachesis promises.

<Let him decide.>

“It is for us to decide,” Lachesis says, firm.

Atropos snorts, and the sound of her knife slicing through thread is vicious and sharp. “Then decide.”

“Not yet.”

Clotho turns her attention to the little void sitting next to her on the chaise while her sisters argue in circles. They have been arguing since Thanatos came. She thinks. Atropos would know.

Thanatos is leaned into her side, ostensibly watching how she spins the thread. He is very quiet, unlike her sisters. She likes that. She does not think most of their guests are quiet, but she does not remember. Atropos would.

<He does not seem to be watching,> Clotho says, ending the argument for now.

“Thanatos,” Atropos says, and the void leaned against her startles, shifts.

Ah. He was sleeping.

<That’s—> he stops that shadow whisper that brushes across Clotho like thousands of wings. His voice is still fuzzy from sleep, “That’s done. Isn’t it?”

Clotho stops spinning.

“It is,” Lachesis says after a moment. “Give that to Atropos.” Clotho breaks the wool and hands the spindle off.

“You’re a natural,” Atropos praises, and the void seems to grow just a few shades more purple.

**

The largest wall of the cottage has a tapestry. It is very big and very, very tall. Thanatos cannot see where it starts, and he is not sure it exists wholly here within the cottage. He does not think it is a very normal tapestry.

The House of Hades has tapestries. He does not know what is on them. They are so dull, and any pattern they might have runs together. They are nothing like this tapestry.

This tapestry is so... colorful. Bright. Like Lord Hades, and Mother, but brighter, brighter, bright like Queen Persephone and her garden and—

It is very bright.

He loves to touch it. Carefully, because he was told to be careful. It feels so... warm, under his hands, and he loves to try to follow threads that weave and vanish and reappear and split off. They all shimmer and lend their colors to each other and it almost feels, sometimes, like the cloth is as alive as Queen Persephone's garden.

There is one spot, especially, he loves to return to. It reminds him of home--the blood red of the Styx and Lord Hades’s hair and the soft teals of the shades and white mists of the Lethe, the greens of Asphodel and the deep, rich, ever present darkness that is Mother’s night.

It is the only spot on the tapestry that is imperfect.

A thread that slowly pulses from red to orange to white then back is there, runs through all the others like a spiderweb. And, right at the base where it was joined to the tapestry, just barely above Thanatos’ reach--he mustn’t float inside the cottage--it sticks out, just a little.

His sisters argue a lot, about that little loop that sticks out. At least, he thinks that is what they are arguing about. He is not so sure, sometimes.

“Thanatos,” Lachesis calls by the door, and he runs a finger along one delicate line of the ever-changing thread before he goes.

**

He hides things well.

Atropos remembers what it was like, when they were children. She remembers the first time Lachesis told the future, and she remembers the first time Nyx was truly frightened of them. She remembers being told not to say what they saw, and she remembers that once, a very, very long time ago, before even the Titans, it was their grandparent who taught them to spin out the futures they held.

And she remembers how very lonely it was. She, at least, has always had her sisters.

She knows her sisters do not remember. Clotho only knows of the now. Lachesis thinks that future born Hypnos will be enough, but that is aeons away for a child who grows so terribly slowly.

“Thanatos,” she says, and gives the boy a chance to scrub his face free of tears before she sits by him under the fig tree. His spindle is in the little pouch he carries his wool in by his feet. “This is not where you usually go.”

She lets the silence settle between them. He seems to appreciate the company; as sure as the sun setting, he has soon drifted and is half leaning against her side. Clotho calls him little void, but to Atropos, he only looks too tired and too sad for a child who has not even received his first tunic.

Atropos does not know the future; that is Lachesis, and yet even Lachesis does not know how things will go because they three have not decided. But she knows what has been, and she remembers how lonely it is to be foremost a Fate and a child only a distant second.

“You did not meet them,” Atropos says. Thanatos does not answer, but she keeps going. “Yet you miss them dearly.”

She lets the silence pool.

“I knew.” His voice is a whisper, and she knows that he is crying again from how his small shoulders shake. “But. But.”

Atropos moves her arm so that he can settle more fully into her side, and wraps it around his shoulders. She strokes his starlight hair as he cries, little sobs that bubble as he tries to smother them.

Perhaps it is because they are both endings, the two of them, that she cares so much for him.

“It will be alright,” she promises.

“No,” Thanatos murmurs, but there is no weight of prophecy in his voice.

“Yes,” she says, “but you will need to do exactly what I say.”

**

You must be quick and you must be quiet and you must not get caught.

Do you remember what they looked like?

**

Atropos takes her knife and cuts the red loop at its center. Carefully, quickly, she threads the edges of it into the tapestry, smooths it over, and smiles. 

**

The soul is in Elysium, in his favourite glade. It is a very good place to hide.

He wonders why no one else has found it already--he felt it catch fire again even on his sisters' island on the surface. It is so bright it hurts his eyes, and it is so hot that the Elysian grass not even he can kill bends away from it. Surely someone has noticed it?

How do I catch it?

You will know. It is who you are.

Thanatos does not feel like he knows, as he watches it burn and twist and flutter, nearly going out with a particularly strong breeze.

But Atropos said—

His hand snaps out, grabbing it tight. It twists and writhes, and he feels dread and knowledge and certainty bloom in his chest

(death, again and again and again and--

He closes his eyes, gripping it with both his hands, then realizes it is no longer struggling against him. Slowly, carefully, he uncurls his fingers.

It sits, almost as if it is looking at him. Waiting.

“It will--be alright,” he says, because maybe the soul is nervous. The words feel false coming from his mouth, but—

Atropos said.

He vanishes.

Chapter Text

“Thanatos!”

“Do not run in the House, boy!” his father scolds as he always scolds, but Zagreus ignores him as he always ignores him, running full tilt down the main hall of the House. It’s not like he’s spent the last eternity bored to tears waiting for his best friend to return home.

Shades scatter, and Thanatos, hovering just a bit off the ground, is very much not hovering anymore as Zagreus crashes into him, sending them both to the floor and very nearly tumbling into the pool of blood the most important of the dead arrive from.

“Zagreus,” Thanatos says, and if he sounds as if he’s only just remembered Zagreus’ name, well, maybe he hit his head when he fell. Zagreus laughs, sitting up, pulling Thanatos with him.

For a moment, because a moment is all he has to spare—Thanatos is home, finally, there’s so much he has to tell him, to show him—he looks at Thanatos. A new pitch black chiton, of course, he always comes back from the Fates’ island in a new one, hair still silver, eyes still gold and brilliant and squinting, just a little, like he is looking at a too bright flame.

“Your laurels fell off,” Thanatos says, and oh, so they have. Thanatos has picked the much abused crown up, and very carefully—Thanatos is always so careful, except when Zagreus can sometimes convince him not to be—moves to place it on Zagreus’ head.

Zagreus, ready to drag Thanatos back to his room and away from his father’s disapproving gaze, uses every ounce of will he has to stay still for Thanatos. Stays still as the familiar weight settles on his head, stays still as Thanatos frowns and tries to fix Zagreus’ hair, stays still until he thinks he might very well die of it because—because—

It’s Thanatos.

Thanatos finally removes his hands and Zagreus shoots to his feet, one hand firmly wrapped around Thanatos’ wrist, dragging him up. He goes tearing back up the hall, sending the shades scattering again, Father yelling after him again. Thanatos laughs as he is pulled along, and finally, there, the sound that Zagreus loves most in all the Underworld, Thanatos’ bell like laughter ringing in the halls.

**

Thanatos is hiding somewhere.

At least, that is the only reason Megaera can think of to explain why Zagreus had been glued to her side for the last several hours. Ever since Thanatos came back from the Fates’ island, she hasn’t seen one without the other. Hypnos had warned her, when Mother Nyx first brought her to the House, that Zagreus’ wouldn’t always be so... around, but she hadn’t really believed him.

But right now Zagreus is talking Hypnos into something that will get the two of them in trouble, which means she’s free to hide herself away too.

Zagreus is exhausting, but. Well. She wouldn’t want it to be forever, not being around him. Just a break.

There’s a balcony that overlooks the Styx. She likes to sit there on top of the railing, watch the creatures that live in it occasionally surface then disappear again. No one else ever seems to be there, not even Hypnos, who has been foolish enough to fall asleep at Lord Hades’ desk more than once.

Her steps falter as she realizes there is, in fact, someone sitting on the railing. She wonders if she should go, but—they are dressed in a black chiton that sucks what little light there is from the air.

Thanatos.

She would have had to leave long before she saw him if she didn’t want him to realize she was there. Only Zagreus seems oblivious to how no one can sneak up on Thanatos.

“Zagreus was looking for you,” she says.

Thanatos does not look at her when she steps up next to him at the railing. He is looking down towards the Styx, evenly drawing wool dyed blood red over a finger and spinning it into a thread so fine that Megaera can only see where it is by the sliver of what she cannot see behind it. She looks over the edge of the balcony and below them, almost touching the blood of the river, is a spindle.

“Was he.”

Megaera watches the spindle sink lower. The moment it touches the surface of the Styx and the water ripples, Thanatos is pulling it up, wrapping thread around his thumb and little finger with a practiced ease. His glance slides over her briefly before returning to his work.

“Yes.” She pauses. The thread is fine enough to weave with, and he is fast enough at it. “That’s for Zagreus, isn’t it?”

Thanatos hands stop for just a moment.

“Yes.” It is so neutral, but she saw how he paused. He did not expect anyone to realize.

“I won’t tell him.”

Thanatos does look up at her then, not one of his sideways glances that he is always using with nearly everyone in the house. The hair rises on the back of her neck and all down her arms as he keeps looking. He does not look much older than Zagreus, and yet his gaze is—old. As endless as Lady Nyx’s but somehow more intense, more knowing, weighing—

Thanatos looks away, and Megaera makes herself relax her grip on the railing.

Thanatos finishes winding the thread on, rolls the end of the spindle along his thigh smoothly to set it spinning again, and starts to draw out more wool. Precise.

She has no idea how Zagreus can bear the way Thanatos’ gaze is always fixed on him.

“Thank you,” Thanatos says, and there is the thinnest sliver of gratitude in his voice. A given emotion, not one tricked out of him the way Hypnos and Zagreus are always trying. It surprises her how much it softens him.

Maybe there’s something to how much Hypnos and Zagreus both like Thanatos after all.

“You can stay.” His voice is neutral again, but a certain tension has gone out of his posture. “This isn’t my balcony.”

“Thank you,” Megaera says because she can tell that it is Thanatos’ balcony no matter what he might say.

**

Hypnos likes to watch his brother.

They are sitting on the banks of the Styx, the House still in sight and Cerberus keeping watch nearby. He and Megaera and Zagreus and Thanatos. Zagreus is pacing circles before them, fire chasing his steps, black hair sticking up as he keeps shoving it out of his face. He is explaining a game that he’s just thought up and that will while away at least a few turns of what passes for day down here.

It seems very complicated.

Moving just as fast and restless around Zagreus are all his daydreams—quick things, fast things, bright and hot and so much passion. Zagreus is very passionate. Hypnos likes that, but he will need to be awake for the game he thinks, so he does not watch them too long or try to figure out which he might be able to make real and which are still too complicated for him.

Megaera is sitting next to Hypnos, and she looks very bored but Hypnos doesn’t think she really is. That’s just how she likes to look. Her dreams are magenta tinted and they are all very solid. Hypnos thinks he could probably touch them and make them real, except they are very, very big dreams—families and homes and security and belonging. Right now, they’re little more than a barely visible mist around her, because she is awake and Megaera doesn’t seem to daydream very much.

And then there is Thanatos, leaning against a bit of broken wall, eyes following Zagreus back and forth, squinting just a little like he’s looking directly at the heart of a fire.

Thanatos is always dreaming. Even Zagreus’ daydreams sometimes vanish, like when he and Lord Hades fight, but Hypnos has never seen Thanatos stop dreaming, not even when he argues with Mother, not when he argues with Zagreus, not when he’s angry or sad or awake or asleep or anything else. Thanatos is always shrouded in dream.

A dream.

At least, Hypnos thinks there’s only one. He can’t make sense of it, and it doesn’t seem to have an end or a beginning or even a middle. If he could make Megaera’s dreams real when he’s older—Mother says he might be able to—but even if he could make Megaera’s dreams real, even if he were a million billion aeons old, he’d never be able to give Thanatos what he dreams about.

Thanatos' dream drifts slowly around him, slow and ethereal like Charon’s mist except Charon’s mist is his soul and everyone can see that while only Hypnos can see the dream that cloaks Thanatos. A shifting, drifting mass that sometimes flutters likes wings and sometimes snaps off with a hiss, like a spark jumping from a fire. And it is so bright, just like fire: red sliding to orange to yellow to a molten white and back again all over. It warms all of Thanatos’ features, and that is the other thing, when Hypnos has touched it, this dream is full of so much—

“Hypnos,” Zagreus and Megaera and Thanatos all say at once, all looking at him and oh.

He was meant to be paying attention.

**

“This is for you.” Thanatos holds out the newly woven cloak with as much disinterest as he can bear.

Zagreus all but yanks it from his hands before Thanatos has even fully let go, shaking out the folds to hold it up and look at it. He laughs, fire trailing after the sound, all of him so bright that Thanatos nearly wants to look away.

He does not.

With a quick flick, Zagreus wraps the cloak over his shoulder and holds it in place with one hand as he rushes to the scattered pins and brooches on his bureau. He digs through them before he finally huffs, selects the one least offensive to him today, and pins the cloak in place. He spins again, sparks flying behind his footsteps as he skids to a stop in front of his mirror, hands on his hips and taking himself in.

“It’s perfect,” Zagreus declares.

The cloak is longer than it should be. Thanatos always remembers him so much taller. And it is hardly perfect—it is dull and gray and very nearly smothers the brilliant white hot glow of Zagreus’ skin. The hem, at least, is more like the tips of Zagreus’ hair—a band of sun bright yellow, woven from a bit of golden fleece Atropos gave him with the rest of the wool.

“It is too long,” Thanatos says.

“I can fold it shorter.” Zagreus is so dismissive. “I need a better brooch for it.” He removes the pin, throwing it on the bureau without looking. Something else crashes to the floor. “Maybe a hound, like Father’s crown.”

Thanatos hesitates a moment, watching as Zagreus takes the cloak off. This, Zagreus does not throw aside. He folds it, smoothing it each time before he finally lays the neat square of cloth gently on his bed.

“The color... is alright?”

“Perfect,” Zagreus says immediately. “Even Father’s cloaks aren’t so bright a red.”

Red?

“Why?” Zagreus asks, looking up from the cloak.

“What did you want to show me?” Thanatos asks, hoping to change the subject.

“Oh! Achilles, you haven’t met him yet, he’s amazing, come on, you’ll like him so much!” Zagreus grabs hold of Thanatos’ wrist as he talks. The touch is hot and searing, but Thanatos doesn’t protest, only lets Zagreus drag him into the halls.

**

It’s time. It’s time. It’s time, come please, pleasecomehere—

“Thanatos?”

He shoves himself together, rough, but it is only Hypnos, Hypnos who knows what he is.

Hypnos stands staring at him, skin all silver and dreams wisping from his curls.

pleasetimeitstime—

“What is it?” Thanatos says, and balls his hands into fists to stop from trying to cover his ears. It won’t help.

“Zagreus has an idea for a game, and you love his games, and I thought..." Hypnos bites his lip. “Are you... really alright? It’s just you never... well, we’re in the House, and you never slip, and I won’t tell Mother! I promise, it’s just—”

“I’m fine,” and if he bites the words out, Hypnos won’t care. “In the hall? Or by the Styx?”

"The hall." Hypnos does not look convinced.

“I’ll be—right there. I just need to—” gather the dead “—fetch something. Go on ahead.”

Hypnos pauses and Thanatos hates him then, brilliant and savage and brittle, but then Hypnos leaves and the feeling vanishes as quick as it flared up. Thanatos lets the divine shape Mother requires in the House drift apart like so much flaking ash, turns back to void and starlight and night-cut wings that itch with the need to block the sun, to carry him to the surface and to—

He manages to vanish to his and Hypnos’ room this time, and pulls the crystal vial he’s hidden from his drawer. The mists of the Lethe leak out as he unstoppers it, slide cool and calming over his hand that is a little too sharp. The last, he thinks. He’ll need to get more. Later, later, right now—

—pleasetimeitstimewe—

He drinks, and the voices vanish. Finally, finally, it does not itch when he shapes himself divine the way Mother taught, ashen skin and silver hair and no wings or claws at all. He sinks down to the floor and presses his head to his knees, vial empty in one hand.

Quiet.

“Thanatos!” Zagreus yells as he crashes into the room. Thanatos startles back awake, blinks against the sight of Zagreus in the dark room, all of him fire and blood and warmth. “What are you doing? We’ve been waiting for aeons.”

“Waiting?” he says, brow furrowing. “Why?”

“Didn’t Hypnos tell you? Come on, I’ve thought of a game!”

Chapter Text

For all the lack of obvious markers, time passes in the Underworld. It took some doing, getting a sense for it. The days here stretch far longer than any back in the world of the living, and certainly there are no true seasons, but something like them still passes when enough of the not-quite-days go by.

Prince Zagreus is late.

And not late the way he always is whenever Thanatos is home from the Fates’ island, but in a way that, should his father find out, will cause another argument.

But Lord Hades cannot be furious with what he does not know, and Achilles will not tell him. Not if he can help it, not if he is not asked directly.

He slows as he hears the prince’s voice—quiet and far sadder than he has ever heard before.

“You are always leaving me behind.”

Achilles stops, not wanting to interrupt. He can hazard a guess as to whom Zagreus is speaking.

“Why can’t you stay?”

But there is no reply and, after a moment, Achilles ventures a little closer.

This hall has not been in use for some time from his estimations, and this far corner lends weight to that. Unused rugs and shrouded furniture weighed with dust, piles of boxes full of old decorations. A very good place to hide, if one is young and looking for a bit of escape.

A single ashen foot pokes out a bit from behind a box.

He should go.

He would, if he could be sure Lord Hades would not notice Zagreus' absence. That the lord of the house wouldn't intrude on whatever this moment is.

"Lad?" he calls before he approaches.

There is a bit of shuffling, but Thanatos' foot does not move and when Achilles finally rounds the stack of abandoned goods that have been shaped into a makeshift place to hide, it is quite clear why.

He is asleep.

The noise, from how red the rims of Zagreus' eyes are, was the young prince trying to preserve some dignity in the way of all adolescents confronted with an adult. Thanatos is lying next to him, an arm wrapped around Zagreus' waist and face buried in his side. Zagreus' hand is running through Thanatos' hair, several bottles of no doubt stolen nectar empty next to the two young gods. For just a moment, it takes everything in Achilles not to think of who he once was, a very long time ago, and a similar farewell before his mother forced him to an island he hated.

"Oh," Zagreus says. "Training."

"Yes," Achilles says. He gives space for Zagreus to think through the haze of nectar he is much too young to have drank so much of, even shared.

"Father is at his desk, isn't he."

"Yes."

Zagreus' face flashes through a rather complicated set of emotions before finally he looks only very, very tired.

"Alright. I'll." He closes his eyes, hand stilling in Thanatos' hair. "I'll meet you there in a moment."

Achilles nods, shifting his way to Zagreus’ courtyard. He only has to wait a little while before there is a rather unsteady toll and then Thanatos and Zagreus both appear, Thanatos clearly only just awake, much of his weight leaned into Zagreus. A clever trick, that.

“Really, Zag?” Thanatos says, frowning at Achilles. “When did you get so... responsible?”

“Maybe I don’t always want to fight with Father.”

“Mm.”

Thanatos lets go of Zagreus. He’s unsteady on his own feet, but Zagreus keeps one hand at his back, even after Thanatos is floating in the air. Thanatos sits in the air, one leg hanging down and other crossed, and rests his chin in one hand. He waves at Zagreus.

“Well. Get on with it. You brag so much.”

Zagreus lowers his hand, grinning up at him.

Achilles raises a brow as Zagreus takes up his practice sword.

“Are you sure you'd want to spar, lad? You had quite a bit to drink.”

Thanatos chuckles, low, and Zagreus flushes all the way up to his dark hair, flames sparking away from his crown.

“Yes,” Zagreus says with a sharp grin, raising his sword with better form than Achilles has managed to instill in him after thousands of bruisings. Perhaps he should suggest Thanatos’ presence in the future.

“Very well,” Achilles says, and strikes.

**

“He should already have started,” Hades says.

“Yes,” Nyx agrees. “But he has always been the slowest of my children.”

She is right, of course. Hades knows well how long it took for Thanatos to even seem to understand what growing was.

Who showed him the way of it.

Hades looks at the petitions across his desk, the complaints and ever growing list of names of those who have not been cut free of their mortal coil yet. Charon and Hermes alone will not be able to keep up with these numbers—they are only meant to guide the dead, and their harvest was only ever meant to be temporary.

“There is something wrong. These numbers are wrong.” He’s calculated and recalculated, had the Administrative Chamber do it again, and yet everything suggests Death should have started his harvest long ago. “He has always known how to be himself, more than any of us. Even as a child.”

“I will look into it,” Nyx says.

That will have to be enough.

**

Megaera is in Tartarus when she hears a bell ring she is not expecting and there is—

“Thanatos?”

Except—

something is wrong. His eyes are closed tight, all of him tight where he is curled on the ground, hands pressed over his ears.

“What are you doing here?”

“Take it,” he hisses. His shadows hiss, a flutter of a thousand wings brushing over her skin. Megaera knows what pain sounds like now, quite well, and it drips from every syllable he manages to push out. “Tell no one.”

“Take what?” she asks but he’s gone, a flash and all that he’s left behind is a—

soul.

**

She should tell someone.

Megaera sits in the lounge, rubbing her palm in a tick she knows will give away that she’s worried about something should someone see her.

She should tell someone.

Tell no one.

She takes her drink in her hand.

They’re not that old, are they? But they are—how else could she know which souls deserve her torment? And Thanatos is a god, is Death, surely he is even more aware of himself than she, considering he is older by far than any of them.

Isn’t he? It's so hard to be sure—he looks younger than Zagreus. But surely that can’t be right?

She should tell someone. She would not be breaking an oath. She barely talks to him anymore, since her apprenticeship takes her away from the house. She did not swear to not tell anyone. Blood and darkness, she barely spoke to him when they were still children and she had no responsibilities at all.

He brought her a soul.

He is so old. Older than her. Shouldn’t he have already started to bring souls to the Underworld?

He brought her a soul meant for her whip.

Tell no one.

She turns her drink, staring at it like she might be able to scry the future from it. She doesn’t owe Thanatos anything, and hasn’t for a very long time.

**

There is a shade in his glade.

He pushes himself upright, looks at the shade. Ocean-dark and miserable and missing a piece of himself, and Thanatos laughs. Fitting. At least it’s not a king, or worse, a hero.

Laughing hurts.

Everything hurts.

They are so loud.

<You did not see me,> he says, or thinks he says. It’s hard to tell. He needs to go, the surface, he needs to cut a swathe through souls caught too long in mortal flesh, he needs to, he needs to, he knows what he needs to do and if he does not he will—

—he pushes himself into the Lethe.

He does not need to breathe. He’s never needed to breathe, but he knows what it looks like, how it sounds, the movement of it.

He’s seen Zagreus do it enough.

The water floods into his mouth, his nose, and he rather suspects there’s meant to be something else to this drowning, but—

—things go quiet.

Chapter Text

“Mother.” Lachesis knew she would come, but she is not sure why. It is not unusual for their mother to hide her intentions from them, and Lachesis is polite enough not to look.

“Lachesis,” Mother says, bowing her head slightly. “I am here for Thanatos.”

“Thanatos? He will not be here until next season.”

“Oh?”

Lachesis frowns, eyes shifting away, looking.

“Atropos!” she snarls.

**

“I wondered if you would come.”

Charon’s hat dips.

Patroclus supposes he should not be on such familiar terms with the boatman, but so few people pass through this glade. The river water still clings to him, and he points to the sleeping god he managed to drag from the Lethe.

He ignores how tempting it was to drink from the river himself while saving this stranger.

Charon steps from his boat and stands to look at the sleeping god. He groans, and Patroclus thinks it sounds a little like thanks.

And then Charon leans down, scooping the god up like a child, almost tender, and steps back into his boat. He lays them down in it, drapes a blanket over them, then turns back to Patroclus.

He lifts one skeletal finger to where his mouth might be.

“Of course,” Patroclus says.

**

“What have you done,” Lachesis hisses, Mother endless and calm behind her, like she always is.

“I chose," Atropos says, smiling sweetly. "I gave him the childhood you never gave me."

It's satisfying, today, pulling her knife through spun fate as she stares Lachesis down.

She's always wanted to be the one that chooses, and not the one that ends.

**

“Hypnos.”

“Y-yes?” Hypnos starts awake. Zagreus is laying next to him. He has a pomegranate and is throwing it up, catching it. Again. The dreams that crowd him are far more soot and nightmare than normal.

He is in a bad mood. How unfortunate for Hypnos.

“You were tossing in your sleep,” Zagreus says.

“Oh. Was I?”

“I didn’t think you had nightmares, mate.”

Hypnos frowns and tries to remember. There is very little. White. Mist. Water. 

“I think I drowned,” he says, surprised. “I’ve never drowned before.”

“What was it like?”

“I don’t know..." He trails off. It feels. Wrong. Like it wasn't a dream so much as a waking. “I didn’t die.”

This is very foolish. He should know this, and asking Zagreus is as likely to send him into a sulk as it is to cause some sort of fight that Hypnos really, really does not want to have. But—

“Zagreus.” Maybe if he is very careful, Zagreus will not get angry.

“Yes?” Zagreus pauses throwing the pomegranate.

“Is Thanatos away from the House?”

There is the scowl and all the idle daydreams drifting around Zagreus vanish. Hypnos braces.

“Yes.” It is clipped and bitter and so, so angry.

“He doesn’t choose to go to our sisters, you know.” It’s not fair, the way Zagreus gets angry at Thanatos, and the words are out of his mouth before he can stop them.

But... but. Thanatos should be here.

There are so many dreams, but there are none as steady and unending as Thanatos’, and Hypnos can always find it when he wants.

“Hypnos?” Zagreus has sat up, is looking at him, frowning at him. Not anger, now. Worry.

“I think,” Hypnos says, feeling very small and very ill-equipped for this, “Thanatos is in trouble.”

He cannot find Thanatos’ dream.

**

Charon waits.

Eventually, Thanatos' eyes open.

<A very clever trick,> Charon says.

Thanatos sits up slowly, pushes the blanket off. He’s shaped younger now, too much forgotten of what age he's meant to mimic. If he has been sipping from the Lethe as long as Charon suspects, then it would explain how he has always seemed younger than Prince Zagreus. And who would suspect Thanatos of trickery?

<You will not be allowed to forget what you are again.>

Thanatos wraps his arms around his legs, presses his face to his knees like he did at his first loss.

<I know.>

Charon pets his hair as his brother cries, keeping him shrouded just a little bit longer. It is a difficult thing, what Thanatos is. There is no fault in his desire to delay the inevitable.

Eventually, Thanatos goes still. He turns his head, and his fingers grasp at Charon’s soul. Charon lets him, watches as he twists it one handed around his fingers, thumb and pinky, until it is a butterfly.

Charon presses Thanatos’ hand closed around the soul, hardens it into a gilt and pretty thing edged in gold.

<Keep it this time, brother.>

“Thank you,” Thanatos says, and Charon knows what he means.

<I will see you soon.> He leans in, presses a kiss to Thanatos’ temple, and sends him home.

**

What is done is done.

Nyx holds Thanatos against her chest, one hand rubbing soft circles between his shoulders. Though they are in the House, she does not chide him for how he tries to hide his darkness in her stars, does not chide him for night-cut wings that sprawl and press around them awkwardly, does not chide him for the silver claws tangled in her peplos.

It is not the time, not now, even if he has long since stopped crying.

She does not let herself tremble with rage at what might have been, at chance lost for Thanatos to explain himself, to soothe his fears born of love, to guide him as gently as she can into what he is.

It is done, her choice made for her.

“All will be well,” she murmurs against his head.

<No,> he whispers, but the only prophecy in his voice is the one he yet bleeds from, the one slipped between his stars like so many knives

She had forgotten how cruel Lachesis can be.

She only hopes her own bid for time will be enough.

Chapter Text

“Sentimental,” Megaera says, like it’s an insult instead of the entire reason she tolerates him.

“Me? I’ve never been sentimental a day in my life,” Zagreus protests. “Have you been overworking yourself? Bringing it home? Seeing faults where there are none to be ha-aah!”

She pushes him off the bed.

He laughs, warm and rich and full. She loves his laughter, loves when it’s only for her. Loves the way it makes her understand, just a little, what he means when he says he loves her.

He sits up, folding his arms on the bed and resting his head on them. His green iris is shining, the color slowly shifting, while a little of his warmth leaks from the red iris, drifts up the side of his face until the spark snaps away. His black hair is an absolute mess, and she doubts he’ll do much to fix it even when she’s gone.

She doesn’t want to go when he looks at her like this, no matter how much she loves her work.

“I love you,” he says, and she’s never been quite sure if he knows how much harder he makes things when he says it, when she believes him.

She shoves him back off the bed and gets up.

“Meg!” he shouts. She can’t suppress her smile this time when he actually gets up, crawling over the bed to sit on her side of it, watching her dress and smooth herself back into being a Fury.

“You’re so cruel,” he pouts when she finally turns to look at him fully.

“You love it,” she says, because it's somehow true, and kisses him.

“That doesn’t mean you should rub it in,” he says once she pulls away. He’s leaned into her hand ever so slightly, eyes almost closed.

She runs her thumb along his cheek, kisses him one last time for no other reason than to feel how greedy he is when he leans in, only to pull back and step away fully.

“I’ll be back soon,” she promises.

**

Hypnos floats by the entrance to the house, parchment and board on his lap, jar of ink floating next to him. He chews the end of his feather quill, eyes nearly shut as he considers the ink already on the page. After a few moments, he adds another curl, small and tight and fading off as it nears its center.

Perfect.

He isn’t sure what the ink that Mother gave him is, but he likes it. It is black and shimmers at the edges, and he thinks it might be a bit of her, but Mother’s starlight is endless while the shimmer that glimmers here fades away, eventually, leaving only a black so dark he thinks he could fall in it, if he tried.

He’d asked, of course, if perhaps he should use it for some special task, because it seems a very special ink. He hadn’t expected her to say however he felt it best, and it had taken aeons of staring at it and testing lines and thinking of everything that such a beautiful and special ink could be used for before he had, finally, decided on this.

Page after page of scrolls and curls and twists, in this ink that slowly shimmers until it doesn’t. Little fancies, that’s what Thanatos would call them.

He misses Thanatos.

He looks up from the page. There are shades lining up to file for petition, Mother watching over the endless file, Lord Hades’ steady and even voice.

**

Zagreus roams the halls. He is looking for Hypnos, though he is purposefully looking in all of the wrong places because at least this way the restlessness that makes his very bones feel like they might vibrate out of his skin eases for a little while.

He stops, looks out a window over the labyrinthine glow of Tartarus. Megaera is out there right now. Close, but not here. It stings a little, but at least she comes back.

He wouldn’t mind trying to find her, but leaving the House has been strictly forbidden for... he’s not sure how long, now. Surely he went as a child? He can vaguely recall playing with Thanatos and Megaera and Hypnos on the banks of the Styx, Cerberus chasing after them.

He isn’t in the mood to deal with the fight that would result with Father when he is invariably caught and brought back. It’s just as likely he’s misremembering ever leaving. He misremembers much, according to Father.

Sometimes he wonders if he misremembers Thanatos’ laughter and joy, too, his smiles, the stolen nectar and how, when Thanatos was drunk, he would catch the flickers of flame from Zagreus' laurels and twist them into delicate butterflies to flutter above their heads.

He shakes his head, tightening one hand into a fist.

It’s pointless to think about.

Thanatos never comes home.

He spins on his heel and heads for the entrance of the House, where Hypnos is waiting as he always waits.

**

There is a plague.

Thanatos rests on the roof of a house, watches the predawn streets. There are already mortals awake, gathering the dead who died in the night to burn the bodies. As if it will make a difference to those already marked for his scythe.

Luckily, or perhaps not, there are no more in this town he needs to cut free. Not today.

He closes his eyes. Just a moment, just to think—

“You will kill him,” Lachesis hisses

—snaps back awake. He stretches his wings wide, shakes his head clear, then pulls himself back in.

There is work to do yet. Still.

Always.

Chapter Text

Nyx studies the most recent of Hypnos’ work, though her youngest does not realize that is what it is. The fact he has begun to use the distillation at last, the evenness of the lines, the smoothness of each curl. Perhaps...

“I, I hope you don’t mind.” He is chewing the end of his quill, a poor habit, but not the worst he could have. “You said to just... do whatever! And that’s so much choice, and you know, maybe I could write poetry or an epic or a drama or I could record the dead or—”

“You have done well, Hypnos.”

“Oh. I have?” He glows silver and smiles widely.

“Yes,” she says, and hands the pages back to him. “You may use the rest of the ink as you like.”

“Isn’t that what I’ve already been doing?” His head tilts, confused.

“Do you know where Zagreus is?” she asks in return.

“Oh yes, his courtyard, he said he wanted to swing a sword around for a bit, he’s been so restless, you know? He told me I could come, but I don’t even know how to hold a sword and what if he slips and—”

“That will be all, Hypnos.”

**

“Zagreus, I have been looking for you.”

He nearly falls over with his swing. It is not like Nyx to come to his courtyard.

“Mother Nyx, I didn’t see you come in." He sets aside his practice sword.

“I have a request for you,” Nyx says. “A selfish one.”

Zagreus can’t imagine Nyx ever being selfish—she’s always given so much. To the House, to his father, to all of them. Even now, she is always finding small amusements for him, though he knows he should be far too old for such, knows she is not truly his mother and has no obligation to do so.

“You may refuse, of course.”

“After all you’ve done for me? How could I?”

Nyx's smile is slight. “It will cause you no small amount of suffering.”

Zagreus snorts. As if always being stuck in a house he cannot leave is not suffering enough.

“It can’t be that bad.”

“I need you to ask your father to work in the Administrative Chamber, and learn how the files are organized. There is a folder I would have you take.”

Zagreus blanches. If there is anything worse than being trapped in the House, surely it’s working in there.

“This isn’t... Sorry, Mother Nyx, but this isn’t something Father put you up to, is it? Though I don’t suppose he’d ever consider trying to trick me into work by suggesting theft.”

“No,” Nyx says. She looks away from him, and for just a moment, her voice goes heavy. “But if you are able, then perhaps..."

“Perhaps?”

He has... never seen her quite so sad. It is only the slightest downward pull at the corner of her mouth, a careful folding of her hands, the shimmer of stars in her hair glistening. The courtyard dims.

“It might bring Thanatos home,” Nyx says, and there—all of a mother’s love, weighing her voice down. She doesn’t show it the way Hypnos does, but she misses Thanatos.

Like Zagreus does, when he feels like there is no running nor fighting that compares to simply resting his head on Thanatos’ shoulder for peace.

“Then there's no choice at all, is there?" He laughs. "Of course I’ll do it.”

**

Megaera looks up as she hears the toll, sees Thanatos appear.

It’s not quite right, how he looks. She’s not sure what exactly it is, but if she tries to remember what he looks like later, it’s all vague impressions: ashen skin darker than Zagreus’, silver hair, gold eyes. But no... features.

“For you,” he says, and he vanishes before she can acknowledge him, leaving behind a rather unfortunate shade. A liar, this time.

She frowns. He always leaves souls like this, never a moment for a word. They are working, so it’s not as if she could ask anyway but--Hypnos misses him and she knows that as much as Zagreus pretends disinterest, he swings wildly between melancholy and fury when his heart turns that direction.

She huffs. It's none of her business why Thanatos does not come back to the House, but it would be nice if he'd at least tell one of them.

**

Working in the Administrative Chamber is, in fact, the most painfully boring thing that Zagreus has ever done in his life. Even more boring than the rare and quickly abandoned impulse to try and organize his room, even more boring than cleaning his weapons under Achilles’ sharp gaze, even more boring than staring at the Styx with Hypnos and waiting for something, anything, to happen.

Mother Nyx was not lying when she said he would suffer.

But, if... if she’s right. If it does bring Thanatos home, even if just sometimes—

Bit by bit, he learns his way amongst the shelves stacked high with parchment.

Chapter Text

Hades scowls at the letter open on his desk. How like Zeus to find a way to intrude on his realm.

“Oh, you’ll be needing these too, won’t you?” Hermes cheerfully pulls a set of chains from his messenger’s bag and drops them on his desk.

Zeus is always so dramatic.

Chains! What does his brother think the Underworld even is? He does not need chains, and Death has even less use for them.

He picks up a length of them, the metal cold even to his touch. They twist in his grip, try to constrict around his hand, and he snorts. Chains for gods and titans, not for some mortal king who has managed to spoil Zeus’ fun.

Unnecessary, just like his brother.

“Fetch Thanatos.”

“Sure thing, boss. Anything else?”

“Tell Zeus he’s a thrice cursed fool.”

“Will do!”

Hermes vanishes.

Hades shoves the chains off his desk with a loud clatter, and if they take Zeus’ letter with them, so much the better.

“Lady Nyx.”

“Yes, Lord Hades?”

“Summon Megaera.”

**

Ah, Athens.

Hermes quite likes his sister’s city, even if it has seen better days, days with considerably less plague and no sieges at the gates. Busy times, to have them both, and boy, does the ragged edges of Charon’s brother show it. He looks like he hasn't had a moment’s rest in at least a century, longer. He’ll get used to it, eventually, or so Hermes tells Charon because that’s what he’s heard. He's never had a problem with the fatigue these other gods seem to get.

Maybe he should teach Death how to step a little quicker, as a favor to his long time associate. Charon is always worrying over his little brother, though he pretends he doesn’t.

Hermes stops just short of the sweep of Death’s scythe as he cuts the threads of an entire household with a precision and speed Hermes can’t help but admire.

“Message for you!” he calls.

Charon’s brother pauses, owl gold eyes focusing on Hermes.

<Yes?>

“You’re wanted back at the house, right quick.”

Night-cut wings tense and the air goes so thin that Hermes is quite glad he doesn’t strictly need to breathe. Hermes can’t blame him for the frustration, considering the state Athen’s is presently in and the heaps of work he has to attend to.

<I see.> Then, as polite as Charon always says he is, <Thank you.>

Hermes gives him a quick little salute, but not quick enough it seems—Charon’s brother has already vanished before he’s finished the movement.

Faster than me, Hermes thinks, impressed, then sets off running again.

**

Just a moment.

He already has to go back to the House.

What is one moment? What could he even do to--it won’t--it will be fine, a moment.

Zagreus has always been so easy to find.

Thanatos appears in the House and for a terrifying beat he thinks he might not remember how to be anything other than void and dying stars and nothingness, that he’s forgotten how to shape himself divine as he is meant to in the House, but there is Zagreus and—

it’s easy.

It’s always been easy, when he sees Zagreus. How could it not be? He knows no one more divine than Zagreus: his heat and his flames and his steady pulse.

“Zagreus,” he says--his voice rougher, he thinks, than it’s meant to be.

“Thanatos.” Zagreus is stopped, wide-eyed.

Thanatos forgot how—beautiful he is, the bright glow of his skin, the blood and gold of his hair, the brilliance of his eyes. And he’s grown up, a depth to his blaze Thanatos wishes he could study longer. But—

A moment. Only a moment.

“I can’t linger,” Thanatos says. “Lord Hades..."

“...called," Zagreus finishes softly.

It is--this. He must go. He can’t--cause anything, if he’s brief.

And yet, it still aches more than it should, turning away.

**

Hypnos is at the entrance when Megaera returns. Early, because she was summoned, and though she knows her work has been without fault, she can’t help her uneasiness. Lord Hades does not summon her without cause.

“Megaera!” Hypnos beams, and she blinks. He is altogether more pleased than she has seen him in... well, since she can remember, thinking of it. “Thanatos is here!”

“Really?”

She’s already turned to look, and he is—there, floating just off the ground before Lord Hades. More solid than the brief moments she sees him delivering souls, defined in a way she hasn't seen in some time.

“Isn’t it great?” Hypnos adds.

“Did you talk to him?”

“Oh, not yet, he’s been speaking with Lord Hades this whole time, but still, it’s so good to see him.” Hypnos is smiling ear to ear, all of him nearly glowing with a silvery white light not unlike the Lethe.

“Well, I’ll try to make sure he doesn’t vanish off before you get a chance to say hello.”

“You would do that? For me? Oh, thank you Megaera!”

It’s not often she gets thanked with such sincerity, and she’s not sure she likes it.

“Don’t make it such a production.”

“Oh, of course, sorry, I forgot—”

Megaera leaves him before he finishes. She bows as Lord Hades notices her.

“Good, you’re here.” Hades hauls up the chains by his desk, throws them onto the floor before it. “You will be assisting Thanatos in retrieving the soul of King Sisyphus. He will explain the details.”

Megaera picks the chains up. They twist alive in her hands, and she gives them the same shake she would to snap a serpent’s neck. They go still.

“A titan’s chains,” she murmurs.

Hades sets the key to the padlock on his desk for her.

“Yes. Zeus is ever dramatic.”

“Ah.” She had thought this rather out of line with how Lord Hades prefers to do business. She takes the key.

“Megaera, a word.” Hades waves a hand, dismissing Thanatos. He vanishes, but not far; she hears that toll echo nearby. Hopefully Hypnos will be brave—or stupid—enough to go after him.

“Yes, Lord Hades?”

“Keep an eye on Thanatos.”

Megaera keeps all of herself still.

“May I ask what I am to watch for, Lord Hades?”

“You will know.” He is going through parchment work on his desk. “And Megaera.”

“Yes, my lord?”

“Do be careful of Sisyphus. My brother might be a fool for wanting to make such a show of things, but the mortal king is clever. Watch your wording.”

“Yes, Lord Hades.”

“Now go, prepare yourself. Do not return until Sisyphus’ soul is in Tartarus.”

**

Zagreus frowns. Why would Father warn Meg to keep an eye on Thanatos? Does Father think that Thanatos is doing poorly at his work?

Thanatos is never home, so he must be working. He looked so... so exhausted, dark circles under his eyes and a slackness to his face that suggests he needed sleep long ago. There was a moment when he appeared, so brief, where it... it was almost like there wasn’t any shape to him at all, just darkness and starlight and gold.

But more than that he looked... Zagreus isn’t sure what the emotion was he saw in Thanatos’ eyes, emotions, too many and too complex, but it was almost as if he were... His shoulders curled in, just a little, almost a flinch when Zagreus tried to step forward, as if he were—

“It is unbecoming to eavesdrop,” Nyx says evenly, and Zagreus very nearly jumps half out of his skin.

“Mother Nyx, you’re looking lovely today.” Zagreus gives her his most winsome smile, because sometimes it actually works on her.

“And you are listening to things better left unheard.”

Not today, it seems.

“Can I be truly blamed? I haven’t seen Thanatos since,” he tries to remember the last time Thanatos was in the House, “since he fell in the Lethe. I wonder, you know.”

“Yes,” Nyx says. Her gaze is even and endless and, finally, a little flicker of guilt starts to twine around his heart.

“I’m... Mother Nyx, I’m— “

“Do not apologize,” Nyx says. “Walk with me.”

Zagreus blinks, then rushes to catch up with her even drift across the halls. They walk past where Hypnos is talking Thanatos’ ear off by the Styx. Neither brother looks up at them, or even seems to notice them—ah. Mother Nyx must have them shrouded.

She leads him to a hall that, a long time ago, the four of them used to play in, and finally stops, turning to look at him.

“Have you done as I asked?”

“Yes.” He scowls. “It’s horrible in there, I feel like I’m going to die of sheer boredom, and Father’s somehow even worse—”

“But you know how the filing system works.”

“Yes.”

She pulls a shroud from the air, darkness misting it at the edges, and offers it to him.

“You will need this, then. Delta-epsilon-theta, lower omega folder. It has only one document. Wait until Megeara and Thanatos have left.”

Zagreus takes the shroud, one he knows will keep him hidden from even Father. It is not something that she would give lightly. A flicker of unease flares in his chest.

“Mother Nyx..."

“Yes, my child?”

“What... what is in this file? To check. In case I... make a mistake, and take the wrong one.” It’s a hurried excuse. “And what should I do with it?”

Nyx gazes at him, and there, that slight sadness to her eyes, her stars. The darkness of the hall grows heavier, presses against him.

“It is an oath your father made. I trust you will know what to do with it.”

“Father? He... doesn’t make oaths, does he? Only the one as King.” It is not what he wants to ask.

It might bring Thanatos home, he thinks, and that emotion, almost like... fear, in Thanatos’ eyes. But... he’s never seen Thanatos afraid of anything. He might have forgotten much, but he wouldn't forget that look.

“He does not, but the circumstances were extraordinary. Do you remember where it is?”

“Delta-epsilon-theta, lower omega folder.” His mouth feels dry, and he grips the shroud in his hands a little tight. “Wait until Megaera and Thanatos have left.”

Nyx smiles then, but the weight of the darkness has not changed.

He leaves, folding the shroud to hide so he can bid Megaera farewell, and, perhaps, if he’s lucky, Thanatos too.

Chapter Text

“You and Zagreus, huh?”

Megaera groans. She had thought Thanatos still speaking with Hypnos, not having a word with Mother Nyx in the main hall—it was the only reason she’d given in and kissed Zagreus goodbye.

“Just find this stupid king so we can both get back to our actual jobs.”

“It’s not as easy as you think.” Thanatos is... smiling? He is, blood and darkness, just the tiniest twitch at the corner of his mouth. She’s never going to live this down. She can't believe he has a personality after all of his brief appearances to deliver souls suggested he didn't.

“And asking me about my love life is helping you so much, I’m sure.”

"Of course," Thanatos says, entirely deadpan, except for a sparkle in his eye.

Thanatos joking, now she really has seen it all. But he doesn’t keep talking, eyes roving the horizon—or not quite the horizon, the look closer to when Mother Nyx turns her gaze out across expanses only she can see.

They are sitting on a cliff. Or, she is. Thanatos is sitting in the air, one leg hanging down and foot a hair’s breadth from a blade of grass. The land rolls out before them, rocky and filled with twisted trees and dry grass. It is warmer than she expected, and brighter even though it is still night.

She looks over the length of chains again. They’re behaving, now that they know she won’t simply let them do as they will. Though she’s unlocked them, the lock does not fall off. She’s never had the pleasure of using titan binding chains before, and is just a bit put out that it is Thanatos who will need to throw them around Sisyphus’ soul.

It’s a rare opportunity, these days.

“You know,” Megaera says, because she knows better than to ask him what she actually wants, “I thought you’d be... more upset about him and me.”

“Upset?” Thanatos’ confusion is genuine. “Why on earth would I be upset?”

Because you used to follow him everywhere, she thinks. Because you love him more than any of us. More than I can.

Or did. He's been away so long, she's not sure if that's still true.

“I don’t know,” she says instead, and chuckles. “Maybe..."

She had thought, after so much time reporting to Lord Hades, that she would have some immunity to Thanatos looking at her, but as he turns his attention from looking for Sisyphus’ soul to her, she realizes how foolish she was. She feels as if she is torn open and Thanatos a haruspex.

“Maybe?” he echoes.

“Nothing.”

Thanatos huffs, looks away, and Megaera pulls in a very quiet breath. Holds it until she feels a little warmer again, and lets it out slowly. Like Zagreus does, sometimes, when he recenters himself.

It helps. A little.

It's the... incongruity, she thinks. Thanatos looks like her or Zagreus, not like he has eyes that see more than even Mother Nyx.

“You are.. happy?” Thanatos says the word tentatively, like he’s only heard of the emotion second hand.

“I think so.”

“And he is?”

She thinks of Zagreus’ laughter, and the times all his attention focuses on her. Thinks of that distant look he gets on his face when his thoughts turn elsewhere.

“Sometimes.”

“Good. That’s... good.”

As she looks up at him, startled at the relief in his voice, he closes his eyes. Immediately he droops, foot brushing the blade of grass. It wilts and he jerks back up, eyes flying open.

He’s exhausted, she realizes. Dangerously so.

“Are you certain about this?” he asks, changing the topic.

“Clever mortals always want to show it off,” she says. “You just have to win.”

“Yes. The easy part,” he says drily.

“Don’t tell me someone has actually managed to beat you at latrons?”

“Of course not.” Thanatos sounds offended. “But he will cheat, if he thinks he can.”

“You’re not certain of the plan.”

“Of course I’m not. It’s too dramatic, too showy, too risky. And chains.”

Megarea startles as Thanatos snarls that last word and everything in three steps of him withers and dies. She knows, with certainty, nothing will ever grow on this spot again. Thanatos looks around, smooths his features back towards neutrality, but his hand is gripping the scythe laid across his lap a little too tightly.

She tries to remember if she has ever seen Thanatos this careless.

Realizes she’s never seen him kill anything at all. Not unintentionally. He was always so... careful.

Keep an eye on Thanatos indeed.

“It’s not as if we have much other choice,” Megaera finally offers.

“When have I ever had actual choice,” he murmurs.

She does not try to interrupt him again as he looks for Sisyphus.

“I’ve found him,” Thanatos finally says. “You have the key?”

“Yes.”

“Then we go.”

There is a wrench, a moment of weightlessness in a void pierced by a thousand distant stars, and then she feels a stone floor beneath her feet.

“Oh, there you are,” a voice calls and a broad and smiling man claps in delight. “I’ve been expecting you, Master Thanatos!”

King Sisyphus.

**

Meg and Thanatos have long gone, and there is a file Nyx needs him to retrieve.

He just needs Father to not be looking.

Hypnos is, of course, sitting near the entrance of the house, and Zagreus supposes that for once, it’s not actually as foolish as it was. After all, Thanatos will have to come back to report when he finishes retrieving that soul.

“You stay out here much longer and you’re going to start giving Father ideas. You know his feelings on idleness,” Zagreus says.

Hypnos startles from his doze, sheets of parchment spilling out of his lap and scattering across the floor. Zagreus snatches a few from the air before they fall, looks them over. They’re... beautiful, covered in swooping and curling lines of ink that don’t make any particular pattern but leave a sense of calm, settle the nervous itch crawling under his skin a bit as he follows their curls.

“Hypnos, these are..." He bends, picks up the ones that fell to the floor he didn’t catch, looks at them. The curling lines feel so familiar, comforting, the ink black and gleaming purple when the light from the torches hits it just so. “These are great.”

“Thanks!” Hypnos takes them back, shuffles them back together.

“I mean it,” Zagreus says. “What are they?”

“Nothing!” Hypnos beams, and Zagreus can’t help but smile back. “Mother just gave me the ink one day, and now it’s mine.”

“Well, can I tempt you to do something else for a bit?”

“Like?”

**

“And that the loser shall go without complaint to Tartarus.”

Thanatos watches Sisyphus repeat the oath after Megaera and tries to shake the sense of unease growing in his chest.

Sisyphus had expected a visit. Had expected Thanatos, specifically. Few souls actually see Thanatos. He cuts what ties them to the surface, leaves the rest for Charon and Hermes to handle.

Sisyphus beams as he and Megaera both finish the oath.

“Well, that’s done, and quite nicely too. Now, what say we get on with this game? I’ve heard you’re quite the strategist, Master Thanatos.”

Thanatos sets the chains next to him at the table, looks at the as yet empty grid on its surface. There are very few ways to cheat at latrons, and Thanatos is very, very good.

Sisyphus is too confident.

But nothing happens. Nothing continues to happen, except a game of strategy and war that Thanatos can see he will win handily, long before it has actually ended.

Why, then, is Sisyhpus’ death still so far away?

He is staring at the king during Sisyphus’ turn. Sisyphus is chattering, he chatters more than the dead, constantly, burbling along, more than all the souls that clammer on the surface, and it is going to drive him mad, he is so tired and he forgot how much it itches to be shaped of divinity, and he simply wants this to be over, to go back to Athens and finish his harvest, to be alone—

“Thanatos!”

He blinks, but it’s—

—metal, hot and blazing and starving over his wrist, chains—the chains, why did he set them—

—too late.

He snarls, lunges across the table for Sisyphus, he does not need chains, he will rend the king’s soul apart with his bare hands, even as he feels the living chains twisting across his limbs, too fast but he is faster, he must be—

falls short, table knocked aside and pieces scattered across the hall, and these blasted chains starving and hot and he cannot think through the agony of them, greedily feasting on every attempt he makes to simply reach out and tear Sisyphus’ soul to shreds, Zeus’ wishes be damned.

“Oh, a forfeit then, what a pity! I guess that means I win by default.”

Megaera swore the oath, too, he thinks in a daze.

“Isn’t that right, Fury Megaera? Wouldn’t do for you to break your own oath, would it?”

<Charon> he hisses, and prays she’ll understand, because he cannot think. She is stood next to him, and she is so—brilliant, in her fury, a glittering refraction of magenta so sharp it shreds the light that tries to touch her. <Megaera, Charon> and before that last shackle can snap around his wrist, before she vanishes, he gives the bit of his brother’s soul he always carries to her.

It vanishes with her.

“Well, that was very exciting.” Sisyphus says.

He closes his eyes.

“But I do need this hall, so we’ll have to move you. It was a very good attempt, though, I must say.”

It will have to be enough.

**

Megaera wants to scream.

She is in Tartarus on the banks of the Styx.

She swore the oath when she had him repeat after her. An oath he asked her to say so he could repeat, and she cannot believe she didn't notice that it would bind her too. A foolish mistake.

But there is no oath that keeps her from returning.

By her foot, there is a gold and purple pin in the shape of a butterfly. Thanatos had given it to her, given, made it hers. But she will not be keeping it long.

She is not well versed in the language of the Nyx-born gods that Thanatos hissed at her, but she can hazard a guess as to who this is meant for. Payment, for her journey back.

It is not long before Charon arrives.

She holds out the butterfly.

Charon takes it, holds it up, then nods for her to board.

Chapter Text

Hypnos knows he should not put the entire house to sleep when Zagreus asks, and he usually doesn’t. It’s just sometimes it’s. Nice, to have everyone dreaming. And to be needed, a little, even if he’ll be in trouble later.

Zagreus is not dreaming, of course. Zagreus is up to something, and it’s more than just stealing nectar for them to share, but Hypnos won’t tell. He drifts at Thanatos’ balcony, watching the Styx, waiting for Zagreus to find whatever it is he wants in the Administration Chamber. Maybe Thanatos and Megaera will come back soon. Or just Megaera. That would be alright, it was good enough, just getting to talk to Thanatos again the once, and surely eventually Lord Hades will need him again—

An oar taps at the base off the balcony.

“Charon?”

His eldest brother tips his hat, standing in his boat just below.

“What, why, I haven’t seen you in so long! How have you been? How is the ferrying? How is—”

Charon is holding up a—butterfly? It moves over the tips of his fingerbones, a pretty thing, and Hypnos squints, because it looks like it should be a bit of Charon, or could be, the color is right and maybe it was Charon’s once, a long time ago but now...

Now it’s clearly a bit of Thanatos.

Hypnos reaches down, leans as far as he can over the balcony until he very nearly spills over. The butterfly flutters, lands on his knuckles, and he rights himself, staring at it and the bits of gold shot through its wings. Gold, like the dream Thanatos used to have, always.

“Oh no,” Hypnos says. “Is he in trouble again?”

<Yes. You must help him.>

“I’m not like you and him, Charon,” he says. He remembers when Thanatos tried to drown in the Lethe, how small he felt then, but at least then no one expected him to do something. “I don’t even know how to hold a knife!”

Charon chuckles.

<Not help like us. Help like you.>

“Like me? What do you mean like me? I’m only Sleep, that’s all, how is that— How is that..." His eyes widen.

He is Sleep!

Sleep, and he has a bit of Thanatos’ dream, and Charon is asking him to help, to find Thanatos’ dreamself, of course!

He just needs—he needs—he needs something to take with him, doesn’t he, just in case Thanatos’s dreamself needs a little protection, that happens sometimes, especially when one sleeps as not at all as Thanatos admitted, and oh, of course, he’ll take—Zagreus’ won’t mind. He starts to rush for Zagreus’ rooms, realizes he hasn’t said a proper farewell to Charon, turns back and nearly knocks himself over the balcony in his haste.

“I know what to do!” he calls. “I’ll take care of him, I promise!”

Charon tips his hat again. Hypnos turns, rushes for Zagreus’ rooms.

It will be a shame, taking the cloak Thanatos’ made for Zagreus’ all those long centuries ago, but it’s not like Zagreus even wears it anymore. And besides, it’s to help Thanatos. Thanatos needs Hypnos, and how can he not try?

**

Megaera can see why Thanatos likes to sit so high.

The view of King Sisyphus’ store houses burning is much better up here.

She still hasn’t found Thanatos. It was too much to hope he’d be left in the hall, but Sisyphus isn’t stupid enough to leave Death chained where just anyone could see.

It’s fine. She doesn’t need Thanatos yet.

She has a king to ruin first.

She considers her options. The horses, she thinks. Sisyphus seems the sort to have a prize horse, and there are so many exciting ways to lay out the entrails of an animal that large.

**

“Here,” Zagreus murmurs, finally pulling out the folder. Exactly where Mother Nyx said it would be. He flicks the folder open—I, Lord Hades, King of the Underworld, and his titles.

He should go now, but...

There are more titles, swearing by the Fates’ tapestry with Nyx as witness, the tedious clauses, how anyone ever has the patience for making a real oath is beyond him. It’s not what he wants to know, where is the bit where his father actually says who the oath is with, blood and darkness—

—Zagreus—

He blinks.

His name?

—swear that so long as Thanatos, son of Nyx, performs his duties as Death outlined herein, I will keep Zagreus, son of Hades, Prince of the Underworld, confined within the halls of my House.

Zagreus stares at the words.

What? No. He must have... misread. Misunderstood the wording. That’s it. These oaths, always so confusing.

He flips through more of the parchment, finally, there, his Father’s signature, bleeding upon the page. Smell of smoke, and oh, he’s—he tries to make himself still, but he can’t stop burning the copy. Swipes a desk clear, puts the oath on it and leans over to read.

“Not Thanatos,” he whispers, fingers digging into the wood, smoke curling up. He is shaking, and his head hurts. He feels like he is going to fall through the floor, or burn through it, one or the other, and the words in front of him are so hard to focus on with his pulse pounding so loudly.

—I swear that so long as Lord Hades, King of the Underworld, honors his oath to keep Prince Zagreus, his son by blood, confined within the halls of Lord Hades’ House—

Surely—there must be a mistake. Or. Father must have coerced him into it, Thanatos looked so terrified, surely Thanatos wouldn’t—Father wasn’t going to—Thanatos knows—knew—no, knows how much Zagreus loved to roam outside the House, how much it meant, how much it means, surely Thanatos wouldn’t be the reason he’s been trapped in this damned house since—

Where is the punishment, he thinks, parchment scorching under his fingers as he flips through the pages. These oaths, there’s always what happens if they are broken and it must be truly awful, he remembers Thanatos' flinch when he tried to step forward—and—and wouldn't have Thanatos sworn this right when—Zagreus saw, a little, two of the Fates and Nyx and Father, and Thanatos, silver hair still wet from his fall in the the Lethe, before Zagreus was sent to his room.

What else did he see? He can’t remember, his stupid blasted memory, but—later, later, he needs to—

Surely Thanatos wouldn’t ask for him to be trapped in the house, would he?

There must be some mistake.

He grabs the oath up, snarls at how the parchment burns, how he can’t stop burning things, rips off part of his chiton, and wraps the pages in it.

This is what Nyx meant about knowing what to do, isn’t it? She won’t stop Thanatos’ work, cannot, but if Father cannot honor his half of the oath, then it will be null and void, he knows that much about oaths. And he can—he’ll ask Thanatos, when he comes back, of course, there must be some mistake. A reason. Thanatos wouldn’t chain him here. Surely it is Father's doing, if it is anyone's.

He leaves the Administration Chamber. Nyx gave him the shroud to wear, and now he knows why—not to be hidden while finding the file, but to be hidden when he leaves.

He just—he needs to hide.

Thanatos will find him.

Chapter Text

“Now,” Hypnos says, making sure Zagreus’ old cloak is properly secured, “lead the way.”

The butterfly turns this way and that on his fingers before finally taking off. It is much faster than he expected for a butterfly, but it is not very hard keeping up like this.

He wishes, a little, that he could linger a bit more. He rarely gets to come to the surface on an adventure, though he supposes technically he isn’t actually—he is dreaming, though that means something very different for him than it does for most people.

For everyone, actually.

If things were the way they used to be, he wouldn’t even need the butterfly to find Thanatos’ dreamself. But then, if things were the way they used to be, Thanatos would not be avoiding sleep in the first place. He does hope Thanatos is sleeping now, or else this will be much, much harder.

He hates trying to slip inside waking dreams.

“Oh, would you look at that,” he murmurs, noticing a murder of nightmares all swarming by a king’s hall or temple, it’s hard to tell the difference from above. “Bad luck, that, don’t you think?”

The butterfly bats its wings once at him in reply, then plummets out of the sky.

“Oh, no! Nonono! Thanatos is going to want you back.” He manages to catch up, only just, and cradles the insect in his hands.

A nightmare brushes past him and he startles, looks up.

He is in a small courtyard. The courtyard he saw from above—except he didn’t see it, did he, he only saw the murder of nightmares in their frenzy.

There are... so many of them. He has never seen so many—mortals almost never attract so many, lives too short and brief, and the gods well, Hypnos knows better than to go searching through the dreams of the Olympians, that’s for sure, and it would be just rude to intrude on anyone back at the house except—

The butterfly leaps from his hands, hurling itself into the swarm of feral dreams.

Oh.

**

You will kill him, Lachesis hisses, hand gripping his chiton in one fist and he cannot look away, you will kill him again and again and again. You will carry him back from the surface, only to let him go so you can kill him once more, endlessly. You cannot save him or stop him because this is what you are, Thanatos, the end to everyone and everything that you hold dear, and you will never be able to forget—

—alone, at the end of all things, and there is only him. His hands are wet with a golden blood that is already turning gray and cold and soon even that will be—

—silent and dark and empty. The House is falling apart, and he is not sure why.

In a corner of the hall, starlight and indigo and purple night.

<Mother?>

He moves closer, and the House crumbles apart under him. This is his doing.

Mother does not answer and she does not coalesce—she simply drifts farther and farther and farther apart. Dissipating.

<Mother!>

He tries to catch her and she slips through his fingers and is gone and it is only he in a crumbling hall, dying stars—

—"You're beautiful, like this," Zagreus murmurs, heat and fire and blood. His eyes are so tender, there is a smile barely touching his lips, and he reaches a hand out to touch Thanatos' face.

He wants that touch, so much, but he cannot, cannot touch and cannot let Zagreus touch him, not like this.

It will end him, Thanatos is sure of it.

<Don't touch me,> Thanatos tries to say, but he cannot remember how to say it so that Zagreus will understand.

He tries to pull away, tries to remember how to shape himself as Mother taught, because if he has more of a pulse, a bit of blood, a bit of the divine that Zagreus exudes, it will be alright, it has always been alright, if Zagreus touches him then, except he cannot remember how.

<Don't,> he pleads, tries to press himself down and away and into nothing.

But Zagreus cannot hear him like this, and Thanatos has forgotten how to tame—

—shape, Thanatos.”

It is so hard. He hardly remembers how he should look, but it’s easier than the last time, and soon he has skin like Mother and a weight to him that itches and he reaches out, to take his brother, and he laughs, holding up little Hypnos but his pulse is dying, fading, and he turns to Mother and Mother is gone and it is only him, and he spills apart and wails, clutching at Hypnos’ body.

<I’m right here> a voice calls in—

—a garden. He is watching the Queen in the garden, and she is so full of life that it spills from her edges, blooms greens and yellows and beautiful around her. Her belly is so full of fire and blood. She sees him, and she smiles, and beckons him over.

He mustn’t. He will kill that soul. He kills everything she touches, though he doesn’t mean to, and he will kill her, too.

But he can’t stop drifting closer. It is as if he has lost control of himself, and he is watching it unfold.

<There you are>.

He freezes—the Queen freezes, everything does.

<I wish—I could have helped, if you only told me. Oh, I wish you had, you always loved to sleep and this so horrible, Thanatos, I—you never come home anymore and you never sleep, I didn't know.>

He falls to the ground. He flinches, tries to catch himself but—

the grass does not die, and slender hands are cupping the sides of his face.

<It’s only a bad dream, brother.>

A very tall and very slender young god is knelt before him. He is—so familiar, though he doesn’t know why, or how. The god is so sad, and yet still beautiful: misting silvers and soft golds and magical indigos, with little fancies that wisp away from his curls.

His eyes are so gold and kind and sure.

And around the young god’s shoulders is the most beautiful cloak that he has ever seen—it shimmers, bleeds red and yellow and orange and warmth. It makes his chest ache with familiarity, but he’s never seen anything like it. He would remember that cloak.

<This will keep you safe, for now. Until you come back home. You have to come home, you can’t—I know you’ve always liked to pretend you’re fine but we’re family. I can help. Please, Thanatos.>

The silvery god pulls the cloak off, and before he can scramble backwards, the cloak is around him, and he is overwhelmed by—

**

The courtyard is finally empty.

Thanatos' dreamself swirls all wings and star-pierced void above his sleeping body, shrouded in Zagreus’ cloak. Hypnos smiles, though not as much as he would like.

It's lucky he thought to bring it.

The butterfly lands on his shoulder, and he picks it up. A moment, and it’s only a pin again. A very pretty pin. Hypnos leans down, pinning the cloak in place.

“There.”

Thanatos is still getting his bearings, but then, Hypnos isn’t very surprised. He hasn’t slept in so long, and then with all the nightmares swarming. It's more surprising his dreamself is half so cohesive at all. He didn’t expect they would get to speak like this, but then--that ink that shimmers until its stars die, that flows so sure into such perfect fancies. Perhaps Mother knew. She knows so much, their mother.

<Thank you,> Thanatos finally manages. <I didn’t expect...> He trails off, the gold of his eyes vanishing.

Hypnos pets one of Thanatos’ wings, and makes himself a little more solid as Thanatos’ dreamself drifts and leans against him. It wouldn’t do to let him fall.

“You have to come home more often. You have to promise,” Hypnos says. “You have to let me help. You can't—do this to yourself."

<You’re always so...> A soft sigh like a dying whisper. <I promise. Or you can have Mother disown me.>

“What, no! I don’t want you disowned, I like you as my brother, I’ll just—I’ll just— I’ll put floating candles all over your balcony if you don’t!”

Thanatos chuckles, silver and bone. It has been so long since Hypnos has heard him laugh.

<Alright. I promise to come home more often, or else suffer the indignity of you decorating the balcony.>

“And say hello to Zagreus? Maybe?”

That gets a much longer pause.

<...maybe.>

It will have to do. Hypnos still can’t quite feel his hands fully and he is still shivering; the icy bite from shoving through so much death and end to find his brother will last a while yet, but he leans down anyway, gathering up his brother in a hug.

“I’ll help you more when you get home. Sleep.”

He pushes Thanatos’ dreamself back into his body before his brother can say anything else, waits just a moment until he’s sure that no more nightmares are nearby, and then leaps back into the air.

He really is going to have to find some way to thank Zagreus for the cloak.

**

It is a rather well hidden courtyard.

Megaera wipes blood off her hands with a cloth, then reaches into a pouch to pull out the key to the chains.

Thanatos is, unsurprisingly, asleep. He’d insisted, before they came, that she make sure they put whatever they caught to sleep because he did not trust Sisyphus to not find a way out of them. Wise, in hindsight. She can't imagine the noon day sun was very comfortable for Thanatos.

“Off,” she orders them, once she’s undone the lock. They slide off slowly, but when she kicks a free length of the chain they move quicker, piling themselves up neatly in her hand.

She frowns.

Zagreus’ old cloak? When did that get here? And—Thanatos’ butterfly pinned at the shoulder.

Ah. Charon’s doing, somehow.

Thanatos opens his eyes, and Megaera nudges him in the ribs with a foot. “Let’s go.”

He sits up slowly.

It is a very rare treat indeed to get to unchain Death himself. She can be patient a little longer.

He stares at her for a few uncomprehending moments, and then his eyes shift to the chains in her hand and he snarls. The divinity of him sloughs off in flakes of ash as he leaps into the sky, his myriad and many wings unfurling, all black and starry and blocking out the sun. The void of him twists into the old death mortals fear so much more: fangs and claws and rabid animal fury.

So that's what he really looks like.

She wouldn’t mind another trip to the surface, if she gets to do this again.

**

Eventually, Thanatos rejoins her in the courtyard with a great deal more composure than he left with.

Mostly.

There is still, when she blinks, the afterimage of dozens of gold eyes and wolves’ teeth in his shadows.

“Have a nice nap?” she asks.

“Yes,” he says. He looks at her for a long moment, but having seen what he truly is, she knows what to expect. She does not flinch. “I believe there is a game I fell asleep in the middle of?”

“Yes. And this time, I’ll handle the chains.”

“Excellent.”

A wrench, weightlessness and void and stars, the floor of King Sisyphus’ hall. And the king, finally silent.

“The game,” Thanatos says, strolling ahead, the red of Zagreus’ cloak at his shoulder so much spilled blood, “is not finished.”

Chapter Text

“It has run its course.”

“So you would simply throw it away.”

“I will not have my son used to excuse your fear of losing Zagreus.”

“Excuse! It is what your son wanted—”

“—after Lachesis tore him open to spite her sister.” Nyx pulls herself back in and up, and the candles in the hall slowly brighten once more.

Silence, the stones of the hall glowing red as Lord Hades stare at her.

“Where is my son?” he asks again.

“Where he needs to be.”

Hades stares at her. Nyx does not look away. She is not his subject to command as he does all else in the Underworld.

“Let the oath break cleanly. It was only ever a bid for time to heal. Or else why would breaking it cost you both so little?”

Hades does not answer her.

“You loved him, once,” Nyx says, and finally Hades sits back, face going dark. It is dangerous to bring up to this lord so allergic to love after the loss of Persephone, so afraid of losing again. “If you still do, then trust me in this matter.”

**

“I will report to Lord Hades,” Thanatos says. “Unless...?”

“No.” Megaera gives Sisyphus her sweetest smile. “I think I’ll be busy a while yet.”

He chuckles, and if it’s a little more feral than he’d normally allow... Well. Megaera did not flinch, though she has seen what he is.

“Then I’ll leave you to it. See you at the House.”

He twists into shadow and nothing, and heads... homeward. He feels so—light. He does not know what Hypnos did, only that the terror that has clawed up his throat at the very thought of stepping foot in the house again is gone. That when he closes his eyes he does not see any of them die, only stars and darkness. It feels like he has woken up from a very long and very bad dream.

It will be good to see the house. To linger. He promised Hypnos, and there is a cloak he needs to return. Not... yet. He is not sure he could bear to right now. But—it is not terrifying.

Only embarrassing.

He can’t believe Zagreus kept the gray and ugly thing after all this time.

**

Hades sits at his desk, one hand pressed to his mouth, and waits.

If you still do...

Damn Nyx.

He remembers when he first came to this realm. How calm Nyx was Thanatos as twisted around her shoulders, a serpentine soul all dying stars and hunger that only she and Charon were able to tame. Who saw Hades and for just a moment seemed to grasp what it meant to hold a shape.

He remembers how Thanatos would float after Persephone into the garden, careful to touch nothing, but fascinated with her work. How she taught him to grow, how much she looked forward to Zagreus growing up with him. Persephone loved him so dearly, for all he made her ill.

He remembers the way Zagreus and Thanatos would both laugh as boys, one chasing the other through the halls, fire and shadow. How Zagreus gave Thanatos a little life, and Thanatos gave Zagreus a little stillness.

He remembers Thanatos before them, Atropos and Lachesis divided and Nyx pressing one hand to her son’s back to keep him upright. How he was ready to undo himself entirely if it meant not harming Zagreus.

Nyx is not wrong.

The oath should not have been made. But he had known there was no other choice that would keep the boy from falling apart completely, and there was no time to wait for another to take his place when his harvest should have long since started.

The oath is already broken.

There is a toll, and finally, Thanatos appears. Hades waits, lets him take in the silence and emptiness of the main hall, but he is still so professional. Still so cautious.

Always cautious.

“King Sisyphus is in Tartarus, as ordered.” Thanatos says.

“Good.”

Thanatos will hate him for this, he suspects. But then, he is used to being hated these days. He has a great deal of practice enduring it from Zagreus. Perhaps now the oath is gone, that might fade a little.

He sees it, the moment Thanatos cannot find Zagreus within the House. A flare of panic, quickly stifled.

“Lord Hades..." He is still looking, attention only half there. He hasn’t realized yet.

“I have broken our oath, Thanatos,” Hades says. He will take the blame for this; it is the least he can do. “Zagreus is in Tartarus. Go find him, if you wish.”

It hurts more than he is expecting, watching the betrayal break across Thanatos’ face. But he does not let himself look away.

It was an unjust oath.

Thanatos’ vanishes.

**

He finds Zagreus in a small room: a lone fountain, broken statuary. He is wrapped in one of Mother’s shrouds, but then, Mother must have known it would not hide Zagreus from him if he was truly looking.

Only dimmed him a little.

There is torn parchment and ash at Zagreus feet.

Zagreus looks up, and pushes the hood of the shroud off.

He is brilliant, and so very, very furious. Thanatos has never seen his skin burn so brilliant a blue white. He can’t look at him like this, and yet he knows from watching thousands of mortals and their tragedies that to look away will not be taken well.

He looks away, and the after image still blurs his vision.

“Do you not have anything to say to me? Did you really despise my attention so much you’d lock me away and never once look back? Maybe you should have given Orpheus some pointers before he tried showing Eurydice out.”

“No.” He looks back, tries to look, because he needs Zagreus to understand, but it’s so hard and his eyes sting, ache, at the blue white fury of Zagreus. “It wasn’t that, it was to—”

“—but you initiated the oath.”

Thanatos swallows

Of course Zagreus would read every damning word of the thing.

Zagreus stands, walking closer. It hurts to stay still, and yet Thanatos does.

“I didn’t know better.” It is flimsy, so flimsy. “I wanted to keep you safe.”

I will kill you, again and again and again.

“You know how much I love to roam.”

“I didn’t know what else I could do.” Still does not, even if he can see how flawed his attempt to keep Zagreus safe was.

He is going to shatter. He does not know what Zagreus will say next, but he knows it does not matter, because he does not deserve forgiveness. He knew even then how much Zagreus loved to roam the banks of the Styx near the House, and yet Thanatos was the one that begged to keep him inside the House anyway, begged as if it might manage to keep Zagreus from wandering further afield, wandering up to an inevitable doom at Thanatos' own hands on the surface.

How he begged.

I will kill you, again and again and again.

“Why? What could you have possibly been thinking?”

He cannot say it, not exactly.

He closes his eyes.

“Please, Zag, please come home,” he whispers. “Please. I don’t—” want to kill you “—want to lose you.”

“You have an awful way of showing it.” It’s spit out, fast, irritated, chased by a white hot spark of focused fury. Thanatos flinches. “Do you think showing up now and an ‘I didn’t know better’ is going to fix just being gone for—how long? I haven’t even seen you since you went off to be Death.”

“I know.”

“Don’t you—blood and darkness, Than, don’t you cry on me, that’s cheating. You never cry. I’m not the one who locked my childhood best friend in his own home! Dammit, look at me!”

Zagreus grabs his wrist; it burns straight to his core and oh, he forgot how it felt for Zagreus to touch him. He opens his eyes against his will, tries to squint through his eyelashes so he has a chance of not going entirely blind.

But it seems some of Zagreus’ fury has receded, at least for now, the blue white of him fading to cooler reds and oranges, and he can almost make out the blood red and gold of his hair again, the white hot tip of a laurel in his crown. Zagreus’ other hand presses against Thanatos face, thumb brushing away a tear not immediately dried by the touch.

“I am sorry,” Thanatos says. He should have started there, he thinks, but he hasn’t had very much practice at these things.

Zagreus is silent, only looking at him.

“I don’t know if that’s enough.” Zagreus frowns, thumb still stroking a vivid line across Thanatos’ cheek. “I thought we were friends and then you just—weren’t around anymore, and Hypnos was always miserable, and I was trapped in that blasted House, do you have any idea how boring it is there? I... I wish you hated me. At least I might be able to understand that.”

“I could never hate you.” He reaches up, grabs Zagreus' wrist to pull his hand away. He can still feel the warmth of Zagreus’ touch on his face, the steady pulse beneath his skin, and makes himself let go though he does not want to. “I will... try. To be around more. I promised Hypnos.” He pauses, adds carefully, “If you want to... If you would be willing to try to fix things.”

“I don’t know,” Zagreus says, then before the words have entirely died in the air, “Maybe. Yes. I—how could I ever not? It’s you.” 

They stand there, quiet, and finally Zagreus sighs, letting go of Thanatos' wrist as well. It aches, the loss, but.

“Is Megaera back too, then?” Zagreus asks.

“Busy, but I can’t imagine she’ll stay away long.”

“Alright.”

A pause, then, Zagreus rubs a hand through his hair awkwardly, “I don’t suppose you could take me back to the House, could you?”

Thanatos smiles, just a little.

“You won’t even need to pay me.”

**

<I see you finally slept,> Charon says.

“Shut up,” Thanatos says. Then quietly, “Thank you for sending Hypnos. He is very good at mending things, isn’t he?”

<Sleep is very good medicine.>

There is a shift in the darkness behind Charon. Charon and his brother both feel it, turn to look—

<You,> Thanatos snarls; Charon flashes to his brother’s side, buries his hands into and through his brother’s darkness and grasps his soul. <Let me go—>

Thanatos’ soul is a slippery thing, but Charon has had practice. He adjusts his grip, tolerates wings that beat at his head, claws that scrabble across his face and shoulders as Thanatos twists in his grip, all pained fury.

<You should go,> Charon tells the eldest of his sisters.

“I would apologize,” Lachesis says calmly.

Thanatos goes still.

<With what?> Charon asks.

“A true prophecy,” Lachesis says. “The one I should have given.”

Charon very nearly loses his grip on Thanatos as Thanatos shrieks, the light vanishing. He digs fingers tight into his brother’s soul with one hand as he grabs and pins a wing with the other, then shoves his brother to the floor under a knee. He gathers and presses all the weight he has down, down, down, as he used to when Thanatos was only greed and hunger, ever eager to eat the newly arrived dead whether they had fare or not.

<I do not think he likes your prophecies, sister,> Charon says mildly. The brilliant light of her futures slowly brightens the chamber, but Charon cannot quite contain Thanatos enough to stop how his brother tries to stretch out so he can devour all her futures and her.

“I do not care,” Lachesis says. “Will you listen, Thanatos?”

The silence and lightless void stretch long. Longer still until Thanatos goes still again beneath Charon’s grip.

Charon does not let go.

<Speak,> Thanatos rings.

“You will kindle the prince with blood, and sacrifice,” Lachesis says. “He will always return to your side. You are counterparts.” She pauses and then sighs, a crack showing in her violent certainty. “I am sorry I hurt you. My quarrel was with Atropos, and you were the closest knife to hand.”

Thanatos’ brilliant gold eyes close, soul trembling under Charon’s hands.

<You should go,> Charon says, and this time, Lachesis does.

It is very quiet. Slowly, the dull light of Tartarus returns, Thanatos’ stars close enough to glitter and gleam and die in view.

<I hate her,> Thanatos echoes. <Is she lying?>

<No,> Charon says. Lachesis does not lie.

<I hate her,> Thanatos repeats. Then, <Let me go.>

Charon finally does, and soon his brother is only a small divinity, ashen skin and silver hair. He sits, arms around one leg, forehead pressed to his knee.

“I am sorry about your hat,” Thanatos says.

Charon laughs.

Chapter Text

“He is going out,” Hades says.

“Lachesis swears Thanatos will kindle him.”

“Do not speak to me of Lachesis.” The walls of the house shake, gleam red and fury, before stilling. “Her spite has delayed all of this far too long.”

“You do not need to remind me of her cruelty,” Nyx says evenly, and if her darkness is a little deeper. Well. Hades is not the only one furious that they are running out of time. “She has given Thanatos the prophecy as it was meant to be told. It will be enough.”

“It had better be.”

**

Zagreus is bored.

It took so long to realize--it is not what boredom usually feels like. There is no itch crawling along his bones, no desire to wander. He doesn’t even particularly want to try and talk Hypnos into a prank.

He does not lack for anything. Thanatos visits when he’s able and things are... good with him. Not what he wants, but he thinks Thanatos might run if he tries to push. Megaera is still her wonderfully sharp self that he loves to cut himself on; Hypnos, full of dreams and tall tales and mischief. But they are all working, now, while Zagreus very much is not. He does not miss working in the Administrative Chamber, and he certainly isn’t surprised Father barred him entry after that stunt with the oath.

But still.

He is bored and tired and sometimes... cold. He thinks that is what the feeling is. He cannot recall ever being cold.

He is laying by the Styx, leaned against Cerberus, watching it flow by. Alpha head pushes against him, and he reaches up, scratching behind one ear.

“It’s alright, boy,” he says.

Gamma head growls; Zagreus looks up and startles to see Hypnos looking down at him.

“I found you! I’ve been looking everywhere, oh, no, don’t bite me! I won’t touch you! Let me just—” and Hypnos carefully flits over before Gamma head makes the attempt anyway, settling just above the ground in front of Zagreus, a bright and extremely rumpled cloth held to his chest in both arms, edged in brilliant gold.

Zagreus jolts up as he recognizes his cloak.

“That’s mine!” He snatches it from Hypnos, and he hears something fall out, but it doesn’t matter, Hypnos has wrinkled Thanatos’ gift. “I’ve been looking everywhere for it!”

“I know!” Hypnos says, beaming from ear to ear. “You never wear it!”

“That’s--that’s not the point, why do you have it!” Zagreus shakes it out over his lap; fortunately the wrinkles shake free of the wool easily. He smooths it as he folds it properly.

He’s been looking for it for aeons now, unsure how he could have lost it when he has always kept it in the same place, always takes it out to air it properly and makes sure it does not need mending. He’d almost decided to tell Thanatos he lost it, and then realized that would justifiably make Thanatos never to speak to him again, then decided he was just going to need to spend the rest of eternity never ever mentioning the cloak again.

“That’s--oh that’s such a long story, you won’t want to hear it all, but here!” Zagreus looks up at the bottle of nectar Hypnos has held out--what fell out of the cloak. “I just wanted to say thank you! I borrowed it because I needed to take it in a dream, in case Thanatos needed it, and he did, and I thought he would just give it back—”

“Thanatos had it?!”

“--but I think he just got so embarrassed and he didn’t want to explain, you know how he is! But really, it’s yours, so I finally told him last time he was at the House to give it to me and I’d take care of it and here we are!”

Zagreus stares at the nectar Hypnos is still holding out.

“And you are giving me nectar because?” he finally sighs, letting the rest of... everything Hypnos just said go.

“Because it was really helpful, you letting me borrow it. I’m glad you kept it even if you never wear it! Thanatos made it especially for you, you know, and he never makes anything for anyone. Well, he made his own clothes, but I remember, he had to hide he was spinning it from you and he kept asking me if the color was right and—”

“Thanatos... made this?”

“Oh. Whoops. I don’t think I was supposed to tell you.” Hypnos laughs, rubbing the back of his head. “But it’s so obvious!”

Zagreus looks at the cloak folded in his lap, runs his fingers along a bit of its golden hem.

“I won’t mention it,” Zagreus says quietly.

“Oh, thank you! I really should be going, I didn’t expect to be gone so long, you know, and maybe someone important might arrive.” Hypnos stands, or as close as he ever gets considering his floating.

“See you at the House, Hypnos.”

Zagreus stays leaned against Cerberus, then slowly unfolds the cloak again.

It’s so warm, and he has been so cold of late.

He has nothing to do and nowhere to be.

He pulls the cloak up, rolls over onto his side, and lets himself drift off, wrapped in warmth, the sound of the Styx a soothing song.

**

There is a war on the surface. Sometimes, Thanatos wishes he could find Ares and strike the god down.

He wants to go home, not tend to battlefields.

He settles for slipping back down in the between moments.

Zagreus is dozing on his chaise this time, and it is... odd, he thinks, Zagreus was never one for sleep—that was always him. There’s less glow to his skin, the blood red of his hair a darker shade than he remembers.

But then, he does not remember how Zagreus’ looks sleeping, and Zagreus has always been like a fire. They dim a little too, sometimes.

He moves Zagreus’ legs enough he can sit beside him. The movement wakes Zagreus; he blinks, spots Thanatos, and a smile breaks his features and all that heat returns, bright. Except his hair—still too dark for blood, and hardly any gold.

“Not long,” Thanatos says.

Zagreus sits up, moves so he can settle a leg across Thanatos’ lap.

“More or less than last time?”

Thanatos listens for a moment, but—

“Less. I just—wanted to see you.” He feels vulnerable, horribly so and wishes he had the safety of nectar’s glow like when they were young, but Zagreus leans in and rests his head on Thanatos’ shoulder. He wraps an arm around Zagreus’ shoulders, presses his face against his hair.

He missed... this. The closeness. The sound of Zagreus’ pulse, the warmth of his skin. It is not what he wants, but. It is enough.

“Come back when you can?”

“I promise.”

**

Achilles moves through the halls quietly, looking for Zagreus. He is expecting that he is distracted—the fury Megaera, or Hypnos, or perhaps even Thanatos. But instead, he finds Zagreus sitting on a window ledge, staring out over Tartarus. There is a cloak, red trimmed in gold, draped over his lap, and he is rubbing the trim between his fingers.

"There you are, lad."

Zagreus turns his head.

"Your father is looking for you."

He can't quite make out Zagreus' features in the dim hall with Tartarus' soft blue-green light behind him.

"Is everything alright?"

He steps closer, stopping next to him. Zagreus is... dim, he realizes. The crown of laurels on his head is not even glowing. He's not sure he's ever seen it without at least some spark.

"Yes," Zagreus finally answers. He sighs, presses the heel of his hand to an eye. "Only tired. I'll go."

Zagreus pushes himself off the window ledge, landing lightly on his feet. There's a brief spark, but then the glow of his feet dulls.

Embers, Achilles thinks.

"Are you sure you're alright, lad?"

Zagreus smiles at him.

"Yes. Just need to move a bit. Thank you, Achilles."

Achilles watches him go, watches how he pulls the cloak over his shoulders, and the briefest spark that does not leave a bit of ash behind his steps.

**

"I'm sorry, Meg."

Megaera crosses her arms.

"If you're bored of us, then just say so."

"No! No, it's not that." He wishes her arms weren't crossed, so he could take her hands, settles instead for touching her cheek. She moves her head away. "Please, Meg, believe me. I love you," and for a brief moment he feels... awake, warm, like he doesn't need the cloak draped over his shoulders. "I do, it's just..." He trails off, searching for the right words.

"Just?"

"I'm so tired."

Megaera continues to frown at him, but she relaxes enough to know she's at least not angry with him anymore.

"I'm so tired, and I don't know why, but it's—so hard. To stay awake, once I sit down, and all I want to do is sleep."

"Have you talked to Mother Nyx?"

He blinks. He hadn't even thought of that.

"You should," Megaera says firmly. "It's not—normal. You, like this."

"I know."

"Tell her."

"I will."

Megaera gives him one last long stare, then sighs and leans forward. It's a soft kiss, softer than any she ever gives him, and she pets his face with one hand.

"I mean it."

She leaves.

Megaera is right.

He sits down on the edge of the bed, pulls the cloak Thanatos gifted him tighter around his shoulders. When he runs his fingers over the gold that edges the hem, it reminds him, just a little, of a very bright fire.

He will tell Nyx, just after he sleeps.

Chapter Text

"This isn't very good," Hypnos murmurs. He chews on the end of his quill, looking at Zagreus sleeping.

"He didn't wake up, even when I hit him," Megaera explains.

"Well of course he didn’t.”

"Hypnos," and oh, Megaera is mad at him now.

"Don't hit me! He just doesn't have—much left. Can't you see?" He points to Zagreus, the barest and vaguest of dreams that do not move quick at all. "He's saving himself up."

"Not all of us see whatever you Nyx-born do," she says irritated, and oh. She's right. He forgets, sometimes. "Can you wake him?"

He chews his quill again, thinking, but it would do more harm than good if Hypnos tried.

"I can't fix this but... Thanatos can. I think."

"If he's half undone, how do you think your brother could possibly help?"

"Because he loves Zagreus. Isn’t it obvious?"

"I fail to see how that changes your brother is Death."

“His love keeps Zagreus alive, even though, well. He should have already gone out. It’s not good, being a god with no point.” Hypnos points to the cloak Zagreus is curled in. It shimmers and shifts, warm and red and gold, the love woven in it banking Zagreus against a lack of purpose.

"Hypnos, if you don't start actually making sense—"

"Just. Can you get him? He'll know what to do. I'm sure of it."

"Do as he says.”

“Lord Hades,” they say at the same time.

“Go, Megaera,” Lord Hades says. Megaera bows and leaves.

He looks at his son, and Hypnos looks at the few dreams and nightmares that twist around Lord Hades. Not close enough to see what they are, he’s not that foolish, but enough to know how unhappy Lord Hades is.

Hypnos tries not to fidget.

“Keep his dreams pleasant,” Lord Hades finally says, and leaves.

**

Megaera checks one last time that the hall is clear.

The drop of darkness in her hands lacks any temperature at all, despite how the act of simply holding it is already making her fingers go numb. Unlike Mother Nyx’s darkness, no starlight shimmers in its depths. It casts no reflection—if anything, it sucks the light into itself, greedy. It is meant for emergencies, when she and Thanatos work together on the surface. She's never had cause to use it, but if this is not an emergency...

She smashes it apart with the butt of her whip.

Every candle in the hall goes out at once as all the air in the hall vanishes. A bell crashes so loud her bones vibrate and it sets her teeth on edge, but she does not step back, even as two brilliant gold eyes appear, more beast than deity. There are wings pierced with dying stars, and a wicked crescent at her throat, just barely stopped short. She can feel her blood leaking, and Thanatos’ eyes follow the wet line.

Megaera keeps her gaze steady, and does not allow herself to flinch.

“Thanatos,” she says evenly. “This is the House.”

It takes a few moments, before the light-eating void in front of her starts to pull in, the wings folding in and then vanishing, gray ash and starlight coalescing into, finally, Thanatos the divine dressed in the black and gold of his office.

“I told you to break it for an emergency,” he says. His voice is rough and broken, and she can almost hear a growl running through it. His eyes are still half feral and all hunger.

She called him back while he was mid harvest.

“It is. Zagreus—” she’s barely said the name when his head turns, looking towards Zagreus’ rooms, and then he’s gone.

She hopes Hypnos is right.

**

<No,> Thanatos whispers, and climbs onto the bed, takes Zagreus’ sleeping face in both his hands. <No no no.>

This isn’t meant to happen. What—happened? He didn’t, he should have sensed it, if Zagreus was meant to die, but—the Underworld, he doesn’t take the dead from here, and there is a battle on the surface to distract him except—

Hypnos won’t stop talking, but it's all words and there are too many and they are too hard to remember and he cannot think. Zagreus is asleep and has nearly flickered out, is as dull and washed out as the tapestries in the halls, as the blankets, as the cloak around his shoulders.

He gathers Zagreus’ in his arms. Zagreus stirs, just a little, flickers a little warmer, but then goes dim, again. He needs—

You will kindle the prince with blood, and sacrifice.

Thanatos vanishes, and they are deep in the belly of the Styx. This will not harm Zagreus, cannot, not the very life blood that nourishes all the Underworld.

But oh how it harms Thanatos, sears through the skin of him and leaves him only void and darkness in seconds.

Then that too begins to burn.

Thanatos clings to Zagreus, half out of shock, half desperate not to lose him in the tug of the river's current. It is— so fast, Charon always warned him, but Thanatos didn’t—it is like—like—like the agonizing heat of when he was chained but worse, so much worse. He cannot feel the edges of himself and all his thoughts are scattering but he—he has to—give, sacrifice, sacrifice to rekindle divinity, and he only hopes what little he has to give is enough.

<Zagreus,> he hisses, and there is barely anything left of him to whisper.

Zagreus kicks, but it’s not waking and there is no time.

<Live, damn you,> and he bites Zagreus’ lip, shoves all of himself he can scrape together into the cut, and finally Zagreus’ eyes open, brilliant and aflame and perfect. Zagreus chokes on the Styx’s blood as he tries to breathe in, his skin is finally glowing again, finally bright, finally alive.

**

Zagreus breaks the surface of the Styx, drench in blood, and gasps in the cool air of Tartarus. He drags himself onto the bank and simply kneels there on hands and knees, awake and mind racing but he cannot stay long.

He needs to move. There’s—there’s—His bones itch and he thinks they might vibrate free of his skin if he stays still a second longer.

He gets up.

He paces a little. He needs to go back to the House, which means he needs Charon which means—

Which means he has to wait.

Charon knows when he is needed.

Chapter Text

Charon prods with his oar.

Here.

He leans down, plunges his arm deep into the river, and grabs hold of a soul that has no business being in its flow. He does not flinch as Thanatos’ serpentine soul writhes in his grasp, a panic of dying stars and endless emptiness seeking sustenance; he simply holds his brother’s soul at arm’s length until finally he ceases to struggle.

Then, slowly, Thanatos’ soul begins a blind seeking.

Charon relaxes his grip and sits down. He lays his oar aside as his brother’s soul twines around his wrist, ventures out a little ways, comes back. Searching for something to eat.

Charon tears free a bit of his own essence. It will not fix what the Styx has burned away—he is not Mother, to spare endlessly. But it will be enough, for now, to sate him.

He offers the morsel to Thanatos’ starry spirit. A moment, two, and then greedy—Thanatos has always been greedier than even Charon, though he was taught to hide it better—Thanatos’ soul snaps out, twists around the offering, and swallows it whole.

Thanatos curls back around his wrist, slithers up to his open palm, and waits.

<Stay,> he says, and carefully places him at the bow. A moment, and then his brother's soul has half buried itself in his bag of gold obols offered for passage. <Do not eat those.>

Thanatos twists around one petulantly, gnawing at it, and Charon smiles a little. It has been a very long time since Thanatos has been only instinct.

Mother will come, when she is able.

He picks his oar back up, and pushes them against the flow of the Styx, back towards where Thanatos drifted from.

**

Zagreus has lost track of how many circles he’s paced, but the Styx is quiet and still.

He remembers—very little of before, but the sting of too sharp teeth. He licks his lip: a cut.

He waits, pacing, watching for anything, listening, but it is only him and the river and then—

Charon.

“I don’t have payment,” Zagreus says.

Charon shakes his head and points at the boat; Zagreus steps on. Zagreus’ own cloak is folded and drenched in the blood of the Styx on a bench. The one he tore off because it was so much dead weight trying to reach the surface before he drowned.

Charon points to the bench.

Zagreus hesitates.

“Are you sure? Don’t you always ask for payment?”

Charon shakes his head and begins pushing them down the river and back towards the looming presence of the House. He groans, but Zagreus’ has never been able to do more than guess what it might mean.

Zagreus sits.

He leans over to look at the Styx, and then sticks his hand in it because it is something he can do. The blood of the river is hot and warm and soothing.

Familiar.

He closes his eyes, tries to remember again. A sharp pain in his lip, the flood of blood up his nose and down his mouth. Gold eyes, terrified and pained and nearly swallowed up in the red.

Thanatos?

He is being watched. He opens his eyes, but it is not Charon, who is focused only on guiding the boat. No shades linger on the banks. He looks again at the contents of the boat and—

a small serpentine soul. It does not have eyes, but—it is looking at him, it must be, he can feel the weight of its attention. He’s never really seen a soul like it—the shades at the House are all mortal sized, all tend towards soft glowing greens and teals and blacks and shrouds, or they are legends like Achilles, whose shapes cannot be forgot.

It’s beautiful, he thinks. Blacks and indigos with stars that shiver through it, burst and then fade, endlessly dying. Little streaks of gold that pool and then vanish, bloom up again. It is half twisted around an obol—half an obol, he realizes, half of it gnawed away. He didn’t think souls could truly eat.

It is so familiar, and he has no idea why.

The boat glides to a stop. They are at the House.

He picks up his sodden cloak. His eyes linger on the soul another moment, but Charon taps his oar, impatient. Zagreus can understand that well enough.

“Thank you,” he says, and steps off the boat onto the narrow pier.

He needs to... speak to Nyx, or Father, or someone, he thinks, but...

He watches until Charon’s boat passes around a bend and disappears from view, first.

**

A velvet purple mist slips across the surface of the Styx, shrouds his horde, and finally, there is their mother, starlight and silver.

<He will not stop eating my gold,> Charon complains.

Mother leans down and offers a hand. There is a clatter as Thanatos’ soul drops the newest obol he has been chewing at to twine around her arm, nearly vanishing into the darkness of her before she catches him, gently, and pulls him back.

“He is your brother,” she says.

He is not surprised by the answer.

“Have Zagreus pay you back.” She gathers up some of the night that drifts around her, offers it to Thanatos.

It’s not a terrible idea.

“Slowly,” she tells Thanatos’ soul. There’s a little shape to him already, abstract strokes that suggest the idea of wings. She gathers more darkness, offers again.

<Prince Zagreus has no gold.>

“I have reason to believe that will soon change,” Mother says. Tiny and sharp claws tangle around her fingers when she goes to pull her hand away. She adjusts her grip, setting the quickly growing mass of night-cut wings and shadow down before her. She bends, offering starlight.

At least Thanatos knows how to grow, this time.

<You like him best,> Charon says.

“Petulance does not become you, Charon,” she chides gently, and Charon smiles.

**

The hall is quiet.

Thanatos stands before Hades and Nyx, feet planted on the ground. He keeps his gaze steady on the solid black and red of Lord Hades, the fiery gaze that Zagreus inherited.

"And you are certain what you ask, this time?" Hades asks.

He cannot bear to ever see Zagreus so near a final undoing again.

"Yes," he says. "I am sure."

Lord Hades sighs, and Thanatos cannot tell if it is relief or sorrow.

"I will contact Athena on your behalf," Mother says. He can't quite bring himself to meet her gaze.

She knows... she knows, still, how terrified he is of needing to cut Zagreus down on the surface.

"She would be best, yes. The most sensible of them by far." Lord Hades looks back at Thanatos, frowning again.

"There is a limit to your mother’s aid, and I will try to stop him," Lord Hades says. “I must. No one escapes this realm, not even my son.”

He will always return to your side.

"I pray for your success," Thanatos says, even and sincere and certain that not even the full might of Lord Hades will be able to stop Zagreus.

**

Achilles pauses.

He is not the only one in the treasury.

His grip shifts slightly on his spear, and he recenters his weight. There should not be anyone else here.

“Don’t,” a voice says, low, and two wolf gold eyes focus on him.

Thanatos.

“You should not be in here,” Achilles says, frowning.

The shadows in the treasury finally take shape. It is unsettling, watching Death become human-like, and he has seen his fair share of unsettling.

“I needed to talk to you in private,” Thanatos says. “On Zagreus’ behalf.”

**

“This is contraband,” Megaera says.

Chef looks incredibly aware of the fact, and points at the note carefully affixed to the neck of the bottle of nectar.

“I’ll dispose of it,” she says. Another of Zagreus’ sentimental gifts, trying to apologize for his melancholy spell yet again.

She sits down at a back table, unties the ribbon, and opens the tiny fold of parchment.

Apologies.

There is an unfamiliar scrawl under the word, three jagged black lines. She touches it, jerks her hand back as it bites into her finger.

Thanatos’ seal.

Apologies for what?

“Oh, Megaera! Lord Hades is looking for you, you better go, like, right now! He made it sound really important!”

Megaera looks up at Dusa, feather duster clutched in one snake’s mouth, and realizes she is about to find out what, exactly, Thanatos is sorry for.

**

“Charon, mate, what are you doing here?”

Zagreus is bruised and covered in his own blood and he feels so—so—he feels like he hasn’t felt in ages. Meg is going to be furious with him, he’s sure, and he hates to think what Cerberus will do to the House, but—

(—but there is a butterfly pinned over his breast, purple and gilt and gold, given with a press of lips to his forehead like a blessing. Bring your mother home, Zagreus and he knows what he needs to do—)

He wipes sweat from his brow, following where Charon points to look at blessings and boons and scattered darkness laid out.

“Are you sure?”

Charon groans, and Zagreus is almost willing to swear the boatman is laughing.

“Thanks!” he calls, then races for the door, lets himself run in a way he has never been able to in the House. He doesn’t even need to close his eyes to feel the pulse beneath his feet, leading him ever upward and through the underworld like yarn showing the way.

I’ll be there soon, Mother.

Chapter Text

“You’re the one who tried caging him here in the first place.”

Thanatos frowns. “I didn’t tell you that for you to use it as a weapon.”

“Too bad.”

It still stings. The physical hurt is gone, but she remembers Zagreus’ sword running her through, the kiss pressed to her temple, the See you at the House, Meg and then he was gone and she was waking up in the pool of blood and Hypnos of all people giving her advice on how to not get stabbed next time when he doesn't even know which end of a knife to hold.

"He needs to do this,” Thanatos sighs. “Megaera.”

She crosses her arms, but does not interrupt.

“Please. Trust me. I swear it is for the good of the House.”

“You could have warned me.”

“Would that have been much better?” He blinks, surprised.

“Sometimes, Thanatos, I think you’re actually still a child.”

He scowls at that, and it makes her feel better. Teasing him always does. He takes it so well.

**

Hypnos looks at his list, and oh, look, flaming wheels this time.

“You know,” he says brightly as Zagreus shakes the last off the blood off from the pool, “I hear if you simply move out of the way, they can’t explode in your face!”

“Thanks for the tip,” Zagreus says drily.

“But wow, Elysium! That’s the farthest you’ve gotten, isn’t it?”

Zagreus grins, and if his teeth are a little sharper and eyes a little brighter than usual, well, of course they would be, he’s been coming into his own so well! Much faster than Hypnos, and certainly much faster than Thanatos ever did. He just knew Thanatos would know what to do.

“I bet you’ll reach the surface in no time! Just remember what I said about those flaming wheels!”

“Thank you, Hypnos.” Zagreus waves, walking away.

**

He finds Megaera in the lounge. Zagreus grabs a drink of his own, slides onto the chair next to her.

“Mind if I join you?”

“What makes you think I want to talk to you right now?”

“You weren’t there, last time, surely you can’t be mad at me for not killing you?” But then, maybe she is. Megaera seems able to get mad at him for all kinds of things, even if it’s rarely true anger.

“You got my sisters involved,” she spits.

“Oh?” Zagreus takes a sip of his drink, realizes he doesn’t want it, and pushes it away. He bounces his knee, drums his fingers on the table. “They can’t be that bad. Though, ah, Tisiphone certainly is. Interesting.”

“Mm, that is one way to put it.” Megaera takes a sip of her drink while she looks at him. He rests his hand on his chin, looking back.

He’d kiss her, but they’re in the lounge and it would spark real, genuine anger if he does. He’d learned that the hard way.

“You seem..." She thinks, and Zagreus, as much as he wants to interrupt, makes himself wait. “Better.”

He looks down at himself. He’s still got a bit of blood under his nails, but he otherwise looks the same as ever when he hasn’t been slowly ground down by what feels like half the wretches of the Underworld.

“Are you sure about this?”

“I have to find her,” he says.

“Sometimes family isn’t worth finding.”

“I..." He stops, looks away. How to put this? He’s never been good with words, not like her. But he has to try. He doesn’t want her to hurt because of this. “It’s like. It’s like—I finally know what I’m supposed to be doing with myself, Meg. Even if she ends up being the worst goddess in all existence, I... have to find her. I have to know, for myself.” He finally looks back at her. “You understand, don’t you?”

Megaera doesn’t say anything at all for a moment, but she doesn’t look angry. Just thoughtful.

“Yes,” she finally says. “I think I do.”

**

<Thanatos.>

"I need to go back to the surface," he says.

<Are you not going to help him?>

He scowls at Charon.

“What, so he can run even faster towards the deaths Lachesis promised I would give him?”

<You are why he can even run at all.>

“Because it’s what’s best for him. That does not mean I have to help him further.” He starts to leave again, but Charon has always been able to predict him, and snags hold of his wrist before he can.

<It will be alright, brother>.

Thanatos stares at the ground, waiting for Charon to let him go. Zagreus is nearby—he can feel it, his pulse and heat, and it will not be long until he stumbles onto Charon and, if Thanatos does not leave, him. He watches Charon’s soul drift purple around his arm and tries, very hard, to ignore the feel of Zagreus’ impending death.

At least when it is in the Underworld, Thanatos does not have to cut Zagreus' life short.

He still... he still does not know if he really believes Lachesis.

Charon pulls him into a hug. Thanatos closes his eyes and leans against his brother. Not comfortable, but comforting.

<He will always come back.>

“You don’t know that,” he murmurs.

Charon laughs, old and grating, a slosh of water and bones.

<But I do. What is life, without a little death?>

Charon lets him go.

Thanatos hesitates, just a moment, but Zagreus is so close and Thanatos does not want to be seen, not here. Not yet. Charon tips his hat.

He hears the gears of the labyrinth begin to grind and vanishes.

**

Hades looks at his son, snow melting with his steps and steam rising from him in the depths of winter. There is a confidence to him now, not born of petulance, but of surety. Of knowing himself.

It’s a pity that they must fight.

“You will not be leaving,” he says.

Zagreus grins at him, all teeth and fire.

“I rather think I will.”

**

“You were right about Zagreus.”

Megaera looks over the unfortunate shades that Thanatos has brought her today. Oathbreakers, but then war makes many of those, doesn’t it.

“He’s more himself than he’s ever been.”

More passionate, too, even if he’s always in far more of a hurry than he ever was before. She isn’t ashamed to admit she’s a bit greedy for his attention, the way his skin is so much warmer to the touch these days, the quickness of his laughter.

It’s fun, in a way things hadn’t been in a long time.

And he still cries very pretty in bed, the rare occasion he lingers.

“Mother said he would be.”

She looks at where Thanatos is sitting—up high, atop a statue, one foot hanging down. He’s curled in, chin in one hand and eyes following the line of souls he brought her.

“Why haven’t you helped him more?”

“Why is everyone always asking me to help him more?” A flash of irritation. “I’ve already sent him off to let him die over and over and over. And who are you to talk, you kill him half as much as he kills you!”

She snaps a hand up, grabbing his ankle, and yanks him down. He shouts as he falls, landing in a heap on the stone floor, and she steps on his chest before he can get back up.

“Don’t yell at me while I’m working,” she says, brandishing her whip in his face.

He blinks up at her, slides his gaze to the shades very studiously trying to pretend disinterest.

“Apologies.”

She steps off him, turning away while he sits back up.

“I kill him because it’s my job.”

“Do you like it?”

The question startles her. It’s... blunt, for Thanatos. He’s looking at her, she can tell, but she's long since grown used to his scale.

“I like fighting him,” she admits. “Not many down here pose much challenge. And I like winning.” She does not look back at him. “I like my job.”

“Don’t you worry?” Fragile.

She’s not sure she’ll ever get used to how much Death trusts her, even after all this time.

“No.” She turns her head to look over her shoulder at him where he still sits on the ground, lost in the shadow of the statue. “I don’t.”

**

It won’t be much longer, now.

What is life, without a bit of death?

Megaera is not afraid.

He will always return to your side.

Mother keeps helping Zagreus. Mother thinks this best.

The House gleams these days, pulses with warmth. He can feel its animal heat against the soles of his feet when he looks out over the Styx. The residents of the house are—well, these days. Happier. Even Orpheus' songs are whole again, Achilles' depths returned.

Zagreus is happier.

Happier than Thanatos can remember him ever being.

This time, he thinks. Zagreus will make it to the Queen this time. He can feel the sureness of it, the way he always knew when Clotho should cease spinning a thread.

“Are you certain what you are asking, this time?”

Chapter Text

There.

Thanatos appears just behind Zagreus, just before the Exalted notice that Zagreus is here. Takes in the bruise that’s bloomed across his ribs, the cuts and scrapes that leak down his skin, the sheer—

—life of him.

“Thanatos!” Zagreus says, all of him lighting up, all of his focus on Thanatos, pressing on him, nearly forcing him to the ground.

“Pay attention,” Thanatos snaps, knocking an arrow aside before it can reach Zagreus and his stupid, horrible smile.

“Race you,” Zagreus says with a laugh.

Then he’s off, rushing ahead, flipping his grip on his spear and throwing it, chasing after it, careless and open. It takes all of Thanatos’ focus, to guard Zagreus’ without slipping, because as he sees another of the archers knock their bow, a fury roars in his chest that threatens to shatter the divinity of him.

He has his scythe and his sword. It will be enough.

It must be.

Thanatos misses one—a spear blow slams into Zagreus, sends him reeling.

Thanatos lunges.

His gauntleted hand digs deep into the Exalted’s soul and twists, and he wishes he could simply tear their throat out with his teeth and eat them raw for daring to harm Zagreus, but this shape is not well suited for the task.

Zagreus laughs, already back on his feet, already rushing ahead, wound forgotten.

“Stop being so careless,” he snaps, chasing after him, and Zagreus only grins at him, all teeth and fire.

“What’s life without a little pain, Than?”

**

“That’s the last of them,” Thanatos says, surveying the chamber. He feels... out of sorts, thin. He doesn’t remember the last time he had to fight like this, pressed down into a shape that is meant for appearances.

Zagreus stops in front of him, head tilted up to look at him. There’s a cut on his face, and without thinking Thanatos reaches out, runs his thumb over it to soothe it shut so at the least he does not bleed.

Zagreus is still looking at him, quiet.

“Zagreus?”

“You came,” Zagreus finally says. He smiles; it makes all the flames that curl around his laurels spark. There is such a soft and tender pleasure in his words. “After all this time.”

“I... yes.” He cannot handle this look, not now, not while he feels so brittle already. “You should—”

Zagreus grabs his hood and yanks, pulls him down, and then—

oh.

Oh.

Heat. Gentle, so gentle, and Zagreus’ lips are soft. His grip tightens on Thanatos’ hood, pulling Thanatos down further, and Thanatos can’t help it, mouth parting, just a little. He can’t—think, there is so much heat, Zagreus moving a hand to cup the side of his face, slow and unhurried and the only reason he has not collapsed to the ground.

Heat and soft and there is a noise, thudding in his ears, filling up his chest. He feels so—dizzy, heady, as if he’s drunk all the nectar and then some in the Underworld, but he wants... more, so much more, greed nearly splitting him in half, has always wanted this and never dreamt he might—

He grabs hold of Zagreus' wrist, pressing deeper into the kiss. He’s never felt so alive, and under his fingers he can feel that pulse, beat, he, oh, that’s the—

sound.

In his ears, his chest, twisting through all of him, a steady beat he would follow to the ends of existence.

Zagreus pulls away. Thanatos opens his eyes, dazed, looking at him.

His chest is tight and he is dizzy and Zagreus is there, smiling, so beautiful Thanatos thinks he might cease to be if he looks at him a moment longer.

“I have to go,” he whispers, thinks he whispers, and vanishes, but the pulse beating in his head, at his temples, in his wrists, his chest, through all of him, keeps thudding so loudly, and he is going to collapse, he feels so weak and undone and horribly, horridly alive—

**

Butterflies.

Dozens of them, where Thanatos was just a moment before, and they swarm him. Zagreus tries to dodge backward away from them, only for them to follow him and land on him, crawling all over him.

“You could have just pulled away!” he shouts at where Thanatos was.

He swats at one of the butterflies, but they don’t. Hurt. Not like the butterflies usually do here, and as he takes a closer look he realizes they’re all the same as the pin Thanatos gave him, purple wings streaked in gold.

Eventually, they’ve all crowded on his laurel crown. He can feel their wings flickering, tickling his hair. He must look ridiculous.

Maybe he shouldn’t have kissed Thanatos, but just—he came. After all this time, finally, and Zagreus could think of nothing else but to push into Thanatos’ space, drunk on adrenaline from the battle, from how much he loves Thanatos, by Thanatos trying to help him despite the fear in his eyes when he told Zagreus to find his mother, and Zagreus just—

Couldn't help himself.

“Onward,” Zagreus mutters, listening to the pulse beneath his feet, and chooses a door.

Theseus is going to be unbearable.

**

Megaera is sleeping when there is a crash against the bureau, dozens of pins and brooches scattering across the floor, a hand mirror shattering. She springs up, whip called to her hand, and then freezes.

“Thanatos?”

“Help. Zagreus--he--” He starts to pick himself up, slumps against the bureau and down, hands pressed over his ears and eyes squeezed shut. “Help.”

He’s breathing, Megaera realizes. Short and fast and shallow, clearly unaware of it. She lets her whip vanish and crouches down before him. His eyes slide open, looking at her through his lashes.

“Help,” he whispers again.

His skin has color, rich and brown and not even a little ash, lips a bruised plum. She touches his forehead, ignores how he flinches. Hot.

“Zagreus kissed you, didn’t he?”

She’s not expecting an answer. Thanatos has squeezed his eyes shut again, all of him curled in taut. She presses her fingers to his neck and there.

A pulse. Rapid and rabbit quick.

“I can’t believe this,” she mutters. It shouldn't even be possible, but then, Thanatos divine is closer to live than not and if anyone could, of course it would be the god of life. “Thanatos.”

An eye opens, just slightly, gold stained a bloody red.

“Don’t kill me.”

“No,” he promises. “Just. Make it—stop. Please. I can’t—”

“I will.”

She grabs his neck and squeezes.

There’s a moment he grabs her wrist but he is not meant to even have a pulse—the instinct that would make a mortal struggle is nowhere to be found, and the hand on her wrist relaxes. He watches her until, finally, the pulse stills under her grip and the bit of Zagreus’ divinity caught in him dies.

He does not start breathing when she removes her hand.

“You shouldn’t let him push so much of himself on you,” she says, sitting back on her heels. “You woke him fully in the Styx, didn’t you?”

Thanatos only lays against the bureau, eyes closed. Relieved. His skin is already fading to its dark ash.

“I wasn’t. Expecting it. He's never... before.”

“And you’re greedy.”

He smiles, just a little.

“I have to go. He’ll—die soon.”

“On the surface?”

“Yes.” He opens his eyes, irises clear gold again. “I’ll pay you back. Thank you.”

“You better.”

He vanishes, leaving the absolute disaster of the bureau behind. Megaera looks at it for a moment, then decides it’s simply not her problem—it’s Zagreus’ room—and goes back to bed.

**

Zagreus stumbles into the Temple of Styx, a trail of butterflies chasing after his crown, the fire of it winking as their wings flutter open and close.

“No,” Zagreus says, “I did not kiss Thanatos, I do not know why anyone could possibly think that, and no, I don’t know where they came from.”

<It’s about time,> Charon says, smiling.

“Thank you, I think they make me look very pretty too.”

<Hermes will be irritated how much money you cost him.>

“Father is going to be unbearable, you’re right. You always are about these things.”

Charon smiles wider, leaning against his oar, and watches the Death-blessed god of blood rummage before he sprints off to find Cerberus a bribe.

**

“Yes, I know they bring out my eyes,” Zagreus says. “Theseus already told me all about how good they look, can we get on with this?”

“Go,” Hades says.

Zagreus stops, frowning.

“What, that’s it? You’re just going... to let me go?” His eyes narrow, brows drawing down. “After us killing each other how many times?”

“I cannot stop you.” Not with Thanatos’ boon to turn aside any weapon crowding his son’s crown, that his son is too much a fool to realize is a boon, and Hades is not eager to fight an impossible fight. “Tell her—tell her that Cerberus is well.”

“All of this, and you want me to tell her about the dog?”

“Go, before I change my mind,” Hades says, puts threat enough into it that Zagreus will believe him.

Zagreus stares, but then Varatha vanishes from his hand and he bolts.

It's only a moment before Thanatos' shadow sweeps through the clearing.

“Thanatos.”

Thanatos stops short, takes shape.

"Lord Hades.”

“You should consider your boons more carefully, if you want him to actually be stopped.”

Thanatos looks at the ground, only just stilling his hands before he can give his embarrassment wholly away. “I will do my best, my lord.”

Lord Hades waves him away.

Love.

He has parchment work to do. And if he smiles just a little as he works, well, there is no one to see it.

Chapter Text

Ending Zagreus’ life, Thanatos discovers, is not nearly so terrifying as the prophecy he was first given made out.

It is barely any different than any other death.

The queen and Zagreus both cannot see him, just as mortals cannot when he arrives for this purpose. They talk, though he does not listen to what they are saying. He focuses, instead, on the feeling, the same he had hundreds of times sitting next to Clotho as a child as she drew out fine threads for a fine tapestry that took up all of the largest wall and then some.

That’s done, isn’t it?

He cuts Zagreus’ brilliant red shimmering thread just as it begins to unspool, just the way he was taught at Clotho’s side, and the only thing different is…

There is no soul that flutters up. Zagreus’ soul stays in him, brilliant and irritated and beating at a body that no longer lives, restless to move again.

He thinks of a tapestry with a thread that shifts from red to orange and back, a thread that disappears and reappears and spiders through all the Underworld like a promise.

He never had anything to be afraid of at all, did he?

Thanatos debates appearing and collecting the body, but Persephone has pulled out a card and is already calling for Charon.

Maybe next time.

He leaves; he needs to thank Megaera still for making sure he wasn't late.

**

Persephone cradles her son’s body in her lap; he has not been dead long.

Charon will come for it, she knows. He did the last time, and the time before, and the time before. She has begged Zagreus to stay away, and yet he still keeps coming.

Still keeps dying.

She brushes his hair from his face.

There is a toll, soft and silver, and it makes her feel ill to hear it.

She looks up, and her eyes widen as she connects the sound to the god before her.

“My goodness, I can hardly recognize you. You’ve grown so much.”

Thanatos smiles ever so slightly, a far cry from the nervous and shy boy-shaped void she knew, that drifted after her in the halls and watched her in the garden.

“A little,” he says.

“You’re so tall now. And handsome.”

“You are too kind, Queen Persephone.” He crouches down before her, the grass beneath his bare feet wilting but not dying. Not quite. How gentle he has shaped himself. “My brother says he is too busy to fetch the body this time, so. Here I am.”

Persephone shifts Zagreus’ weight into his arms, and watches how he takes Zagreus as if Zagreus might wake if he is not careful. She rises to her feet again as he does.

“I can... bring you too, you know,” Thanatos says quietly. “I--miss you. Your garden. You were... Mother misses you, too.”

“I... I don’t know if I can bear the both of you begging. I’m not sure I would even belong there, anymore.”

“You would,” Thanatos says, firmly. “But I will not force you.” He looks at Zagreus, love plain on his face, and she wonders what she has missed by not being there to watch them grow together. “I’ve learned my lesson there.”

“I’m glad,” she says. “That you—I always hoped you two would get on well.” Perhaps not this well, but. It is good to know Zagreus is loved so dearly.

Thanatos cannot blush, she does not think, but he still looks away, still curls in just a little.

“If you change your mind,” he says instead, looking up at her askance, cautious. Still cautious.

“I know who to call on.”

He smiles then, and oh. She’d never thought he might give it to her, one day.

“Until we meet again, Queen Persephone.”

**

Zagreus goes back. Again.

Again.

Again.

“He has your portrait! Why would he keep it, if he didn’t still love you?”

He stares at her, pushing as hard as he can against the darkness swimming at the edges of his vision.

“Please, Mother, we’re—family. We—that’s what we do, we will find a way to fix this, together.”

“Alright! Alright. I’ll come. Just—just stop dying in front of me.”

He smiles, and wishes it didn’t hurt quite so much. But what does it matter? She’s going to come home, finally. At last. He tries not to let all of his weight fall into her as she helps him stand upright.

“Do you—how will we get home?”

“Charon. He gave me his calling card, when I left.”

“That was—nice of him.” It’s so hard, staying conscious.

“Stay with me Zagreus, just a little longer.”

A brush against his temple, like the flutter of wings. A little bit of the blackness recedes.

“As long as you need, Mother.”

He looks, but there are no butterflies here. And yet it feels—familiar. The shadows, the coolness at his temple.

And then Charon arrives. He collapses into the boat, feeling better already as he drops a hand into the Styx.

“Take us home, Charon,” his mother says.

**

<I told you,> Charon says to the shadows flitting over the surface of the Styx behind the boat, <that you would learn.>

Epilogue

Zagreus walks through the House, dragging his fingers along one wall.

This hall is old and dusty, and the only people who ever came here never do anymore, all of them grown. But they used to play here, a long time ago. It is where, he thinks, maybe the House began to have a pulse again.

He’s not the god of anything, but if he were...

He is following a pulse so quiet and slow that he only knows it by the spaces between the beats. If not for the Styx and golden eyes and a cut on his lip, if not for hundreds of deaths trying to leave this place, if not for being let go at all, he is not sure he would even be able to find it.

At the end of the hall, their carefully crafted hideaway is nearly gone. There are very few boxes of old decorations left and much of the furniture has been taken away and put back out, but there are still a few rugs, rolled up, and one that is not, and they make a decent enough place to rest.

And there is the source of that fragile languid pulse and Thanatos, shadow and silver, a dozing star-strewn darkness cast by life's fire.

He’s... beautiful. Zagreus hasn’t seen him like this, except—he has. Glimpses, from the corner of his eye, the darkness at the edge of his vision before he dies on the surface, the burst of shadow when Thanatos leaves. A familiar soul full of dying stars twined around an obol, attention fixed on him.

Thanatos is always so careful, except when Zagreus can sometimes convince him not to be.

Zagreus simply looks. It takes focus, to keep his own pulse from jumping at the sight of his... he’s not sure what he and Thanatos are anymore, exactly, only that he loves him, that he misses him so terribly when he cannot find him.

Has always missed him so terribly, when he’s gone.

Shadow and silver, and Zagreus remembers a kiss that turned Thanatos’ skin hot beneath his hands, gave him breath and pulse, the blush of life and eyes stained red. Zagreus does not know very much about how Thanatos has always presented himself to Zagreus, but he thinks, maybe, he shouldn’t have been able to do that.

He thinks he wouldn’t be able to even if he tried, if Thanatos stays like this.

He would like that.

“Than,” he says softly. He crouches down next to him on the rug. If he squints, he can see the outline of Thanatos, and he brushes his fingers along his jaw; gold trails after his touch, fades. “You don’t make finding you easy, do you?”

Thanatos stirs, and Zagreus realizes some of that star-strewn shape is wing as one stretches out, jagged feather-like edges cutting the blackness of the hall before settling again.

“You never told me you had wings. Or you look like this.”

Thanatos’ eyes open slowly, gold and brilliant against the deep and impossible indigo black of the rest of him. It takes time for him to wake, but it always has, hasn’t it.

Zagreus has always loved watching Thanatos wake.

Shadows murmur, and there is that familiar brush of butterfly wings across Zagreus’ skin. A pause, then, “Zagreus!” and Zagreus nearly falls over as Thanatos sits up, scrambling backwards, and he is—Zagreus feels it, the air getting colder and that thin slow pulse speeding into something almost life-like and the edges of Thanatos more defined, the wings starting to vanish, and it is certainly not the most elegant Zagreus has ever been, but he lunges after Thanatos, grabbing for him.

He is not the god of anything, but if he were—

“Don’t,” Zagreus says, hands half on Thanatos’ neck and half cupping his jaw, fallen across him in his attempt to close the distance, and it is so hard, to play out a pulse as slow and quiet as Thanatos’, so unnatural to him, but he tries anyway, because it’s Thanatos, because he has always tried when it is Thanatos. He keeps his eyes closed tightly as he concentrates. “Please, Than.”

It’s silent in the hall except for Zagreus’ breathing. Thanatos has not moved under him.

Eventually, Zagreus feels Thanatos slow to that distant star beat. He waits, just to be sure, but when it carries on without Zagreus needing to slow it, he lets out a long sigh and opens his eyes.

Thanatos is staring at him, terrified.

“You shouldn’t—” and there is an echo to his voice, and it reminds Zagreus of Chaos, just a little, except where Chaos is multitudes, the echo of Thanatos’ is lone and lonely, like a bell “—be here. I need to. It’s.”

I don’t want to lose you, Zagreus remembers, and realizes finally what Thanatos truly meant was I don’t want to end you.

“You haven't hurt me, Than,” Zagreus says, rubbing his thumb along Thanatos’ jaw. He pulls himself up so he's not half-sprawled, straddles the stars and darkness that only just hold shape. “You won't. I know you won't."

Thanatos has still not moved, but Zagreus can feel the air beginning to vibrate.

He kisses Thanatos.

Not soft, not like in Elysium, but hard, demanding, trying to push every last bit of warmth and life and love into it that he can, shoves a pulse at him just as loud and demanding, because he needs to prove to Thanatos there is nothing to be terrified of, not like this, not when Zagreus is all of himself, not when Thanatos is himself, and—

there, and he gasps as Thanatos finally moves, wrapping around him and pulling him in so they are flush. Thanatos is not cold, but he still leaves Zagreus’ shivering, like when he bleeds a little too much from a wound, and it is—

perfect.

He tangles his hands in Thanatos, digs his teeth into Thanatos’ bottom lip greedy, and Thanatos growls, wings curling in around them, around him. He can’t get enough air, but he doesn’t want it, he just wants—this, Thanatos, a raw edge of need as Thanatos starts to kiss along his jaw, down his neck, too sharp teeth that—Thanatos is always so careful—don’t break his skin and he can’t—

“Stop it,” he hisses, greed and fury making the words burn. “I want you, I've always wanted you, let me have you.”

—which he might regret later, but later isn’t now, isn’t Thanatos biting and breaking skin, isn’t Thanatos’ greedily drinking up all the heat Zagreus presses into him. Later isn’t the broken sound Thanatos makes when Zagreus digs his fingers into night-cut wings, leaving blood swirling in the wake of his touch. Later isn’t the sound of his pulse drowning out everything else or the fire burning through him, meeting the blackness at the edges of his sight with more light, more heat.

And maybe he can’t give Death life, but oh, isn’t it wonderful to try.