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The god of death has few memories from his infancy. Such is the nature of immortality: early memories are lost to the ebb and flow of time, replaced by millennia of duty and responsibility. But he remembers one day or night very clearly: he is awake in his mother’s chambers, and she is standing the doorway, murmuring to someone he cannot make out.
The figure leaves. For a brief moment, Thanatos thinks he sees green, but isn’t sure where it would come from – Nyx’s chambers are all in the rich, velvety purple she favors, the color of night itself.
She turns, sees him awake, and rushes to his side. “Hush,” she says, but she doesn’t need to – Thanatos has always been quiet, unlike Hypnos, who chatters while awake but slips into slumber as easily as breathing. His brother is asleep now, unmoving in his own bed. Thanatos looks at him then back to his mother. There is a whiff of pomegranate in the air.
“Do not fret, child,” his mother says. He cannot help but think she looks worried, but her sonorous voice lulls him back to sleep. “It is of no concern to you yet.”
He does not understand these words until much later.
For a while after this, things are a little different. Nyx is secretive where Lord Hades is on edge, stalking up and down the quiet halls, Cerberus at his side. Hypnos asks why the Master is angry, and nobody can answer him.
Yet there is always work to be done, and so it passes. Thanatos moves into his job as Death seamlessly as gods do. Gods are borne out of necessity, it seems; mortals are fated to develop some new need or aspect and it falls to primordia and ichor to fill these voids. He learns to sense the Fates’ threads in mortals – see where gentle Clotho spins, follow where wise Lachesis leads it, and know when it begins to thin and inflexible Atropos readies her shears. It becomes routine to arrive at the time of a mortal’s expiration and send them on their way. A grandmother of old age here, a young man of illness there. Faces and years and places begin to blur together. Time means little to gods. Immortals such as they have no threads – they shimmer through the veil of life. Nyx likes to caution that they are no less bound to the Fates, but even that is easy to forget in the day-to-day.
So this is why the boy he meets in the gardens on the surface is so memorable.
It is, otherwise, a completely ordinary day.
He’s just collected the soul of a man in a secluded temple when he feels eyes on him. He reaches for the scythe on instinct before he spots the boy by the rosebushes, peering at him with strangely mismatched eyes.
“Hi,” the boy says. He’s physically only a little younger than Thanatos; something about him is familiar, but Thanatos is sure he’s never seen him before. But that’s not what rattles Thanatos – the boy’s lifeline is something he’s never seen before. It’s not quite the golden veil of the divine, nor is it the simple thread of mortality. And yet he’s sure this boy is a god. Something is off, but he’s not sure what it is.
“…Hi,” he finds it in himself to respond. He does not often talk to others while on the surface.
“I’m Zagreus,” his companion introduces himself, in the strange accent belonging to those from the surface. Thanatos tries to take him in; finds himself staring at Zagreus’s dark hair, tan skin, and eerily mismatched eyes. In his cropped dark hair, tiny blooms flitter about; Thanatos tries not to watch their movements.
“My name is Thanatos,” he mumbles, still a little taken aback.
“Nice to meet you,” Zagreus says. “I don’t think I’ve seen you before. Do you live on Olympus?”
“No,” Thanatos replies. “I am the god of death. I reside in the Underworld, down below. I come to the surface to collect souls.”
“Huh,” Zagreus hums. “That’s kind of grim. But pretty cool.”
Thanatos feels the pull of threads that are on the verge of getting cut and knows he has to leave, but finds that he cannot stay away. “…What are you the god of?” he asks, to make conversation.
“I don’t know yet,” Zagreus responds. This, to Thanatos, is surprising; he and Hypnos had known that they were to be Death and Sleep for as long as they had existed. But perhaps it is different for surface gods, who bask in the sunlight and hymns of Olympus until they are needed. And Zagreus is still talking. “My mother is a goddess,” he says. “We go around tending to the plants. Do you have plants in the Underworld?”
It's something that has never crossed his mind. There are no plants in the Underworld; Lord Hades prefers a certain sterility that seems drastic compared to the lushness of the surface. He vaguely remembers a garden, but he considers this odd. Perhaps a failed attempt at redecorating by the master. “No,” he finally says. “I’m not sure anything could survive down there. We don’t get sun.”
“That’s too bad,” Zagreus says. “They are pretty.”
“They are,” Thanatos agrees.
Zagreus reaches out. “Here, take one,” he says, gesturing towards the roses. He reaches out, and –
“Ah!”
Thanatos blinks.
Blood is pooling on Zagreus’s index finger, but it’s not the golden ichor that runs in the veins of the gods – it’s red, like mortals, and Thanatos stares at it for far too long before worriedly looking around for anything that might help. “Here,” he says finally, taking a piece of cloth from his pockets. “Let me.” Without thinking, he takes Zagreus’s hand and presses the cloth down on the cut, belatedly realizing that Zagreus feels warm.
“Zagreus, there you are,” a woman’s voice says. Thanatos looks up. She, too, feels like someone Thanatos should know. “What has happened here?”
“I pricked my finger,” Zagreus says. “Thanatos helped me.”
The goddess tsks. “Oh, dear boy, come here,” she says, rubbing her hands over the small wound. It shimmers before closing. “I am not a goddess of healing by any metric, but I do have a little of Mother’s power over life,” she continues. Thanatos feels a surge of fondness; he thinks of his own mother and how she is as caring as she is regal. “You must be Thanatos, Death incarnate. It is good to meet you. I am Persephone, goddess of verdure. My son, Zagreus.”
He recognizes the name – they are Demeter’s daughter and grandson, then, heirs to the surface’s bounty. The man whose soul he came to collect must have been a priest or a temple attendant, and they are here to pay their respects. It explains the blossoms in the air, the life magic, so antithetical to everything Thanatos is and has known.
“I like Thanatos,” Zagreus declares, snapping Thanatos out of his train of thought. “Can he visit sometimes?”
“Of course,” Persephone says. “We are anything but hidden here. But I would imagine Thanatos is very busy, both here and in the Underworld.”
“I am,” Thanatos blurts out, looking at Zagreus’s crestfallen face. “But I’d like to…keep visiting, if that’s all right.”
Zagreus beams and Thanatos cannot look away.
The next decision comes so instinctively Thanatos does not even think. “Here,” he says, pulling Mort out from his robes. He has long outgrown the need for comfort from him but has always felt like there would be a purpose in carrying him around – and now it seems that he has found it. “This is Mort, a Chthonic Companion. I can find you more easily if you have him with you.”
Zagreus takes the toy. “I will take great care of it,” he says. “Thank you. See you around?”
Thanatos nods, curt. “See you around.”
It turns out Zagreus is easy to meet, even taking Mort out of the equation. Thanatos knows how to find him and cannot explain how his head and heart know where to go. Usually Zagreus is at the temple where he first met; other times he is in the lush gardens by Olympus; rarely he is with his mother, traipsing around the islands. Thanatos can never stay too long – he pops by during the rare free moment. Sometimes Zagreus is alone; other times Persephone greets him. He sees Demeter less often; the elder goddess always regards him coolly.
“Hey, Than,” Zagreus says this time. The nickname is not new; Zagreus had come up with it the second or third time they met, but its usage warms Thanatos’s heart every time. The folks down below are not much for nicknames, and so the usage here, with his surface friend, feels like a secret. “Busy day today?”
“It always is,” Thanatos replies. It’s the truth. The work has been getting harder – mortals learn to live longer, slowly, but with this knowledge always comes new ways to hurt and kill. Persephone’s garden is a respite, brief as it is.
“Would you like some loukomades?” Zagreus asks. “Mother has just made some. Ambrosia-infused.”
The offer is tempting. Like all gods, Thanatos does not need to eat, but the thought of ambrosia makes his mouth water like a mortal’s. “I must refuse,” he settles, with much difficulty. “Ambrosia, it – Lord Hades forbids it. He considers it surface contraband.”
Zagreus’s smile turns a little devious. “Oh, come now. You are on the surface! It’s not contraband here.” He takes Thanatos’s hands and drags him to the temple’s insides. “Grandmother and Aunt Hestia developed the recipe.”
Thanatos, never one to deny Zagreus, allows himself two of the pastries. They are sweet and warm, and the ambrosia makes them slide down his throat. “These are delicious,” he says, meeting Zagreus’s expectant eyes. “Thank you.”
His friend grins. “Hey,” he says, as if coming up with something else. “Did I ever show you this?”
Zagreus slips off his sandals and Thanatos sees for the first time that his feet are glowing. “They’re fiery,” he says. “I always have them covered because it hurts the plants if I walk barefoot.”
“That is interesting,” Thanatos says. “Your mother and grandmother bring life, and you…burn it.” It is an odd juxtaposition – how the Fates could have given Persephone’s child feet of death must be a riddle for the ages.
“As godly skills go, it is not the most useful,” Zagreus says, chuckling. “It does mean I can visit Uncle Hephaestus in his forge, though.”
Thanatos, too, has to chuckle at that. “Better than nothing.”
“Zagreus,” Ares says, tilting his head in recognition. They two of them are meeting again on some battlefield, yet another aftermath of the mortals’ endless warring. Eris and Nemesis have already been sated and the Keres have already gone ahead to collect most of the souls; Thanatos comes after them for the few peaceful deaths that remain. “He is my youngest brother. The son of my father, Lord Zeus, with the Lady Persephone.”
“I see,” Thanatos replies, willing his voice to remain neutral. “I think I may have met him. What is his domain?”
The war god shrugs, his attention captivated by the sight in front of them. Smoke is still pluming in the distance, and Thanatos thinks the healers and women may be on their way to salvage what has been left behind. This is a fundamental difference between the two gods; for Ares, these aftermaths are leisurely, a reward for the work he has put in, urging on the war. For Thanatos, they are more and more work for himself and the rest of the Underworld: more souls to be collected, threads to be cut, and punishments to be doled out.
Zagreus, Thanatos thinks, could not be like the rest of his family, toying with mortals for their amusement.
“We don’t know yet,” Ares says, interrupting Zagreus’s train of thought. “It’s odd, no? For us gods our responsibilities are immediately clear. They say our sister Artemis laid out the exact terms of her domain on our father’s knee when she was but a girl. But neither my father nor Persephone have confirmed anything of the sort, nor has Zagreus shown any inclination towards one.”
Ares trails off, marveling at a freshly decapitated mortal. The wound is not clean; Thanatos surmises that the man must have bled out painfully and slowly, but of course this is to Ares’s liking. Thanatos can only think of the way Zagreus’s blood had pooled into a drop on his fingertip, so unlike the gods’ golden ichor that he could not look away.
“I would have to have a domain, right?” Zagreus muses when they next meet. “All my family members have one.”
“All gods have one, I think,” Thanatos replies. “I have death, my brother Hypnos has sleep. We are both born of the Night herself, and our domains are extensions of hers.”
“I don’t know what mine would be,” Zagreus says. “My father is the god of the sky and thunder, my mother the goddess of vegetation. How do those intersect? Or,” he continues, “Could it just be something related to my mother? My brothers and sisters don’t always have to do with the sky. I know my grandmother hopes I’ll be a harvest god like her and mom.”
This, too, stumps Thanatos. Everyone in the Underworld has their roles, even Lord Hades’s three-headed hound and the shades they enlist as guardspeople. “Is there anything you are particularly good at, perhaps?”
Zagreus shrugs. “I follow my siblings and aunts and uncles around sometimes, but I can’t be better at their stuff than they are,” he muses. “Heracles himself is teaching me how to fight for now. My father tried to put me to work managing Olympus, but my sister Hebe pretty much fired me soon after. I was too disorganized for her.”
That pulls a chuckle out of Thanatos. “Unsurprising,” he says. “Look at you, all forested and brambly.”
“Hebe definitely did not like those scorch marks on the precious marble floors,” Zagreus adds. “I’m fine helping my grandmother and mother out with the harvests for now, but it’s something that I should think about, probably. There must be some vision about it that Apollo can foresee.”
“At least you are surrounded by family,” Thanatos points out. “Although I am sure the Olympians are not the happiest bunch, if you’ll forgive me saying so.”
Zagreus throws his head back and laughs. “No, definitely not. I don’t believe Hera has ever forgiven me for existing. It does get a little lonely, though.”
“Does it?” Thanatos knows loneliness, has felt it in his solitary journeys across the surface, and the weight of each death he must bear. He has gotten used to it, but it’s still a little comforting to know Zagreus feels it, too.
“Yeah.” Zagreus is quiet for a few moments. “But it’s not so bad. I have my mother and grandmother. And I have you too,” he adds, interlacing their hands.
“Yes,” Thanatos says, a little dumbstruck. “You do.”
They are silent for a while. Zagreus does not let go of Thanatos’s hands, and Thanatos tries not to let his gaze wander to their linked fingers, tries not to revel too much in the feeling of Zagreus’s rougher hands on his.
“Is it fun, being Death?” Zagreus asks.
Thanatos blinks. “It’s…alright,” he says. “It is necessary work, and irreplaceable to the House. I hadn’t really thought much about whether or not it is fun.”
Zagreus hums, dropping Thanatos’s hands. “I thought about it, and I didn’t think I’d like it at first. Seemed rather grim,” he says, and Thanatos wants to shake him. Why would Zagreus enjoy death? Zagreus, who has grown up on Olympus, surrounded by verdure and feasting, and has a smile brighter than anyone down below? “But,” his friend continues, “I figured it’s probably not more unpleasant than Ares and Athena, dealing with war. Or even Artemis when she hunts. Even Demeter, my grandmother, inflicts winter sometimes so she and my mother can make things grow again. It’s all just cogs in the cycle of the world, no?”
“That is how my mother sees it,” Thanatos says delicately. “But I like the way you see it better.”
“At least someone here appreciates my opinions,” Zagreus jokes.
Thanatos rarely speaks of his time on the surface to those in the House. Lord Hades dislikes hearing of the surface from whence he came, Hypnos is too easily distracted, Nyx is as dutiful and dedicated to the House as he, and Megaera has little patience for what she calls his “trifling attachments”. They all have their roles to play in keeping the Underworld running, and Thanatos is content with keeping his head down and doing his job.
“You know,” Hypnos comments one day. “Something’s different about you.”
Thanatos freezes momentarily. Would Hypnos take note? Could he know? “I feel much the same,” he says after a moment.
His brother shrugs. “I dunno. You seem a little lighter. Did Lord Hades give you time off?”
“No,” Thanatos says, a little relieved. Lord Hades rarely asks after his work, not when Thanatos provides him with a steady stream of souls entering the House. He does not press, and Thanatos likes it that way. The Master has never liked dealing with the surface. “I don’t recall him giving you time off, either.”
Hypnos pouts.
Later in the training room Thanatos asks Meg about it. She smirks. “You have been like this for a rather long time,” she murmurs, assuming a combat stance. In a way, he figures, she is right.
Thanatos wonders what it is about Zagreus – how he is the only surface dweller with which he has really gotten on, how he occupies Thanatos’s thoughts endlessly, how he wants nothing more than to idle in Persephone’s lush gardens, to lay in the grass and speak of everything and nothing, to playfully spar by the streams. How he aches to hear Zagreus laugh, or how every moment Zagreus is in his sights is a balm to all the dead and dying. He wonders if mighty Aphrodite knows of it. He wonders what would happen if Lord Hades knew of it. How terrible it must look: one of the Chthonic gods going weak for one of the Olympians.
“Hi, Than.” Zagreus himself does not help matters. He has grown as Thanatos has, and now he stands before him, muscular and handsome in the sunlight. There are little blossoms behind his ear. Thanatos thinks he favors Persephone strongly in all but hair color and his bright red eye, but there is something alluring and mysterious about him that his mother does not share. Heracles must be training him well.
“I got you this,” Zagreus is saying, reaching into his robes. Thanatos’s eyes widen when he recognizes the nectar. “You probably don’t get a lot of these down in the Underworld, but they’re dime a dozen here, so... have one on me? As a thanks for all the time we’ve spent together.”
Thanatos’s first instinct is to say no, Lord Hades’s grim countenance and discipline ringing in the back of his mind. But before him is Zagreus’s hopeful face, and Thanatos has never considered himself infallible. Not for him.
“Thank you,” he says, and savors the sight of Zagreus’s respondent smile. “But I – I have to go. Mortals to be fetched, and all.”
And he does. The bottle burns in his robes until he next returns to the House. Alone in his chambers, Thanatos stares at the golden liquid. Even in the dimness of the house it glows a little brightly, defiant of the death and darkness. He wonders if it would taste like looking like Zagreus feels, honeyed and warm.
Abruptly, he stashes the bottle away and stalks out of the room.
The nectar bottles keep coming and Thanatos cannot bring himself to refuse. They are only presents; he rationalizes. Why must Thanatos refuse such gifts upon Lord Hades’s whim? He keeps the first one for himself, but he gives a bottle to Nyx in secret, and she kisses him on his cheek to thank him. He shares one with Meg, who does not ask questions, and another with Hypnos, who does. But it is no longer difficult to hide it from them, when he has loved Zagreus for so long.
Finally, something changes, and Zagreus is holding a different bottle under Thanatos’s nose.
“Zagreus,” he says. “Where did you even get something like this? T-this is–”
“Ambrosia,” Zagreus says, and his voice is serious. “Thanatos, if you – if you don’t want this–”
“Want what?” He croaks.
Zagreus clears his throat. “Let me start over,” he says. “I wanted to apologize for not making my intentions clear. Than, I like you.”
Thanatos stares at him. “Really?”
“Really.”
Briefly, Thanatos considers many things: the nature of immortality, the danger of love, the fickleness of the Fates. Gods were not made to love forever, not with duty and immortality intertwining with emotion, and many do not. Even Lady Aphrodite has never confined herself to her husband. And yet here he is, wanting nothing more than to have Zagreus in his arms.
Then and there, Thanatos makes a decision. He crosses the distance between them, slotting their lips together.
Zagreus smells of lavender and ambrosia. Thanatos is reminded of the good earth, full of life and possibility, and hungers. If this is love, he thinks, then he understands why mortals are so willing to throw everything away.
After what feels like an endless moment, Zagreus pulls away. Thanatos chases after him. “I’ve wanted to do that for some time,” he murmurs.
“As have I,” he replies. “But – what now?”
Zagreus looks conflicted. “If you would like to take it slow, take our time, we can.”
This warms Thanatos. “We could,” he says. “Or we couldn’t.”
Zagreus smiles again and takes his hand. “Then we shan’t.”
It does not last.
It could not have, Thanatos thinks. Not with the Fates and their ever-present prophecies threading around all of them. Thanatos realizes this when he feels Mort reaching out to him for what must be the first time in eons, and he arrives to find Zagreus, wide-eyed and panicking.
“Whatever is the matter?” he asks when he alights.
“Than,” Zagreus says, rushing to him. His voiced is hushed and he grabs Thanatos’s wrists. “Than, I have to tell you–”
“Calm down,” Thanatos says. “What’s going on?”
Zagreus takes a deep breath, as if steeling himself. Finally, he says, “My father is Lord Hades, not Zeus.”
The words hit Thanatos like a ton of bricks. “What?” he stutters.
But Zagreus is still talking. “I have to find him, Than. I have to know why I’m up here and not down there.”
Instantly, it all comes together. Thanatos remembers that night in the House – his mother’s low voice in the night, the green eyes that look so much like Lady Persephone’s. How Master Hades had soured so quickly and so early in Thanatos’s life. Zagreus’s odd life force, his burning feet. The hesitance about his domain. And damningly, Zagreus’s glaringly red eye, so much like the Master’s that Thanatos cannot believe he did not realize it sooner.
“Your mother,” he begins, trying to reconcile events. “She must have spent time in the Underworld. I – I think I remember her, down there, but–”
“She left,” Zagreus says. “And she will not tell me why. Thanatos, my father. How do I enter the Underworld? Can you take me?”
Thanatos’s mind is racing. “Not with me. He will not let you in,” he says. “He prides himself on the Underworld’s security.”
“Heracles himself trained me,” Zagreus says, his voice insistent. “He himself has entered the Underworld and returned. It can be done.”
“Even if you do, you will not be the same,” Thanatos says. There are but a handful who have descended and ascended, all of them the finest of mortals, and none of them left unchanged. Thanatos knows because Lord Hades ensured it and he cannot bear the thought of Zagreus bearing death’s mark on him.
But if Zagreus’s father truly is Lord Hades, then perhaps the Fates meant it to be.
“What of your family, Zagreus? Of your mother?”
“They will help me, too,” Zagreus says. “My mother was unhappy when I told her I knew. But she understands that I must find out where I came from. My father – no, Lord Zeus – agrees. They will aid me how they can.” He looks upwards, as if glancing towards Mount Olympus. “My sister Athena has given me a way to channel my powers, and Apollo says this may be the key to discovering my domain.”
“That makes sense,” Thanatos says carefully. “I do not doubt Apollo’s peerless foresight. If Lord Hades is truly your father, then understanding your heritage will aid in finding your purpose.”
Zagreus turns to him. “Then help me, Than.”
Here Thanatos freezes. He knows he is one of the House’s best servants and that Lord Hades relies on him in a way he does not rely on Hypnos. He knows that the deaths will not stop. He knows that at best Lord Hades would be displeased with such an indiscretion, and that alternatives are much worse.
But it’s Zagreus. I have you, too, Zagreus had said long ago, and Thanatos knows in his chest that it is still true. “I will help you,” Thanatos says. “The gods and monsters of the Underworld will stand in your way. I cannot fight by your side at all times, but I can tell you what to expect, and come to you if I can.”
Zagreus’s eyes light up, and the sight is dazzling. “You would do that?” he asks. “For me?”
I would do anything for you, Thanatos wants to tell this beautiful boy with blossoms in his hair, unlike any other immortal Thanatos has ever met. He thinks of the bottles of Nectar, tucked away in his chambers, thinks of Zagreus’s hands encasing his. He wonders if he had meant to be drawn to Zagreus in some way, remembers the way he has always known how to find him, the certainty guiding him like a compass, and of Nyx’s gentle voice in the night. It did not concern me then, he realizes. But it does now.
“I will,” he says again, and the way Zagreus beams at him, so similarly to the way he had done so all that time ago when they had met for the first time, makes the certainty in his heart sing.