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Chapter Text

It has been many years since the Olympian last spoke to him. Time is an unnecessary marker to Charon, beyond the time shades need to pay wandering his shores if they have no tribute to him. So he cannot say precisely how long has passed. It's never mattered to him before. It doesn't matter to him now.

Still, he has not forgotten the sound of the Olympian's voice. Every time they meet, he tenses, wondering if this will be the time the little god speaks to him again.

That time never comes.

It's a blessing and a curse, in its own way. The quiet has been a balm – it is as close a return to normalcy as he can get as long as the little Olympian remains a psychopomp. And with the apparent ceaseless multiplying of the mortals, that doesn't look likely to end any time soon. So their silent interactions have been quite tolerable, really.

Except he finds he is always waiting for when that silence will break.

He has no interest in modifying his rituals. The introduction of the little Olympian into the equation has been frustrating enough. But he is disturbed to find that the uncomfortable tensing in preparation for chatter, and subsequent relaxing when it invariably does not come, has gone on for so long and become so reliable that it, too, is becoming part of the routine.

As usual, the Olympian does not speak today as he delivers his latest string of souls. The surface is recovering from the aftermath of a particularly well-stocked war, which is often when mortal deaths spike. Deaths directly from war abound, but there is far greater impact on the mortal population outside of that immediate slash of the sword. Warriors, too wounded in combat to return to the battlefield, are made listless and useless without war to guide them, succumbing to disease and waste. Abandoned erastes and eromenos are left overcome by grief, unable to move on. Widows. Orphaned children. The feeble elderly then have no one to care for them. Too few hands left to tend and harvest the crops kill off those that remain.

As such, this is the little god's second delivery in what can only have been a day. Thanatos has been working diligently, as this is his domain, and he's been unable to keep up. What moments he takes to talk are to complain of Lord Ares' impact on their work, and to sing exhausted, embarrassed praises of Lord Hermes. Apparently the great Lord has been gathering shades outside of his purview, all because Thanatos mentioned offhandedly that he was tired.

Thanatos has been steadfastly avoiding the illustrious Lord Hermes ever since, too embarrassed to look the Olympian in the eye.

Charon loves his brother, inasmuch as he can, but his devoted mutterings have become a nuisance.

"Hhh uuueohhhh," he tells the Olympian, as he begins untying the thread at his waist once again.

"Hmm?" the god says, whipping the thread loose and relinquishing his shades. "Wh – oh. Uh… sure? What does he want to talk to me about?"

He gathers up the thread and opens his satchel, busies himself putting it carefully inside, and all Charon can do is stare at him. Behind the armour of his neckpiece, he feels his jaw slacken.

The Olympian, now quickly and efficiently done, as always, gives him a thin, wary look. "Uh… Right. Well, I'll do that, soon as I see him. Um. Bye!"

And the little god goes.

Charon stares at the golden afterimage he leaves behind, unmoving even as the first of the shades shambles forward.

The Olympian had understood him.

---

When the Olympian returns again, he does not speak.

Charon doesn't either.

He leaves.

Charon holds out his hand for the first shade's payment.

---

"Why did you do that?" Thanatos hisses, all but days later.

Charon gives him an unmoved look, hand still open. The procession of shades is steady. Payment is handed over. His skiff always has room.

"I – ugh." The skin of Thanatos' cheeks darkening, he fusses with his hood. "I said I'd – I wouldn't – I stopped talking about him! In front of you! And you still –" He lets out an agonised groan of sound, sounding more like the ferryman than he would likely care to admit. "I don't have time. There's never time. Don't –" But of course, he knows there are no threats that he can use on Charon. Coming up short, he huffs. "I won't speak of it again. I will never be able to look Lord Hermes in the eye, I swear. Ugh. See you."

He vanishes in a flash of light. Though he has always had a natural knack for teleportation, the crack of matter disappearing and air rushing to fill the space is something he's never been able to control. The exception is that when he is frustrated or embarrassed, it becomes even louder. It's a sharp blast of sound, rattling the stalactites and sending bats screeching out from their crevices. It could deafen a lesser being. Charon does not even need to hold the brim of his hat in the wake of rushing air.

Now alone, inasmuch as one can be alone with a throng of explosion-dazed shades, Charon looks out at the gateway to the Underworld.

So the Olympian really had understood him.

---

The little god again does not speak when he arrives.

This continues for many years. The number of delivered souls even out after a time, and then another major war occurs, and the escalation of deaths starts all over. This eventually evens out too, as it always does, and the cycle continues anew. The ebb and flow of this cycle is only made clearer by the ebb and flow of the Olympian's presence. He is always fast, always efficient, always silent. As reliable as Charon could have ever hoped for in a psychopomp. Just sometimes he comes by often, and sometimes he is barely seen at all.

As promised, Thanatos never speaks of the Olympian again.

After a time, Charon accepts that there will always be a faint tension about him whenever the little god arrives, and makes peace with that. He becomes accustomed to it. It even becomes something of a comfort. Another reliable inevitability in his ritual of inevitabilities.

Years pass. It is… good.

And then there is upheaval.

The Olympian returns with his string of shades one day, and this time, his attitude is… off. Or rather, there is a return of attitude. He hadn't exactly forgotten what the loquacious god was like before, but he has become used to the numbness of personality he has had in his presence. He has learnt to expect the still mouth, the efficient lack of flair in his movements.

This time, there is a light about him. A sort of frenetic energy, as obvious in the way his winged feet flit about as the way he chews the inside of his cheek. He fumbles, his movements lingering, as he unties his thread.

He wants to say something.

Charon considers it for a moment, but decides to ignore it. He's uninterested in humouring any Olympian, let alone this one, and potentially opening the floodgates to all the drivel the little god might have been holding in these many years. He's found peace and comfort in this new rhythm they've acquired together, and he won't jeopardise that to sate a momentary curiosity.

As it turns out, he doesn't need to ask. The pieces come together by themselves. The little god doesn't fly away as he normally does, pretending like he's struggling to find the right place in his satchel for his thread. An absolute farce, of course. Isn't he meant to be the god of trickery? Even a mortal would see through his movements. Especially with the way his eyes constantly flicker away from his bag, towards the line of shades.

Charon takes his fees and allows the paying shades on board at his normal speed, but keeps his eye on the little god. This procession has full payment. This has been a relative time of peace, with most people dying attended to in enough way to offer Charon his tribute. Where the shades don't have coin, they have some material means, and it's not unexpected to have shades pass him inscribed golden tablets, fine clothes and jewellery, food and drink. Good fabric is particularly interesting, both to collect and to sell on, but though Charon has a lust for wealth and appreciates what goods he can sell forward, all payment is equal. He will take a thin bronze obol with the same gravity as he will take a gold necklace.

In this instance, a shade passes him a wrap of dyed wool, and he sees now why the Olympian lingers.

The wool is a shock of colour. Fiery red at one end, bleeding into a bright orange, and ending in a vibrant yellow. Though it isn't the best work Charon has ever seen, blotchy and imperfect, the colours are rich and rare, fit for a king. The red reminds him intensely of Hypnos. The yellow of Thanatos' eyes. Already his mind rushes with ideas for what to do with it – he could sell it, but he could also offer it as a rare gift to his brothers. Hypnos enjoys sewing in his spare time, a weaver of thread as much as dreams. He could do quite a lot with this.

All payment is equal, but Charon covets the wool all the same. And from the looks of it, so does the little Olympian. It is a strange moment of… not kinship. But a recognition of mutual desire. It's… he cannot explain it. It wells up in his bones in the same way he had first heard the little god understand his words.

And then discomfort suddenly rings across his senses.

His head shoots up from regarding the wool, this strange little tie that momentarily binds them, and he sees a coin shimmer in the Olympian's hand.

"Ah –" he starts, flinching back as Charon flies towards him. "Associate, I was perhaps…" But no, the coin vanishes into his satchel, and whatever he was thinking to say dies in his mouth. The discomfort alleviates. "You… you sell wares, on occasion, don't you?"

Ah.

He regards the little god. Certainly, the wool befits him also. To a T, in fact. He has chosen deliberately to ignore the Olympian as much as possible, even when the half-dead form of him lay across his lap, but yes, he sees now the way the colour matches his wings in every way. That same yellow to orange to red, at his head and his feet. It's even matched by a procession of little coloured earrings in both ears, something Charon has never noticed before. Have they always been there? Or have they been added just for this occasion, as a way of showing Charon how much he wants the wool? He's obviously known about the shade's offering this entire time, from his unusual energy entering the Underworld. Who's to say he didn't quickly add some accessories to sway the boatman? To… beguile him, somehow. Certainly the sight is aesthetically…

He stops that thought, jaw tight behind his neckpiece. He cannot be swayed by anything but payment.

He considers it for a long moment. Though he stands visibly unsure, the great Lord Hermes doesn't cower before his steady regard. It is both infuriating and faintly, faintly amusing.

"… Ghhhraaaahhhhhhhh," he says, in the end.

He has the satisfaction of the little god's eyes widening in horror. "You -!" Yes, the little Olympian certainly understands him. "You -! Gah!" He throws up his hands, defeated. Either Charon's reputation as a creature who cannot be bargained with has preceded him, or the god isn't half so stupid as he'd previously thought. If he wants what Charon has, then he has no choice but to accept the terms.

Charon, despite himself, laughs.

"I," the little god starts, and then narrows his eyes. "Oh, haha, yes, hilarious. Bully for you," he complains, but there is a dangerous flickering of good humour in the twitch of his mouth. "Fine. But know I will stew over this for all eternity. I hope you're happy."

Oh, but he is. He chuckles little puffs of vapour as Hermes makes a dramatic show of rifling in his satchel, bringing out a fine silk purse. Like the bag, it seems this too is capable of holding more than its outward appearance would suggest, as he painstakingly counts out coin after coin after coin. Charon takes great pleasure in the fierce glare the Olympian throws his way as he parts with his fee.

He also takes great pleasure in painstakingly re-counting what has been handed to him.

"Oh, you fiend," the Olympian curses, and laughs. It is a melodious thing, not like the brash, raucous bray of noise he'd assaulted Charon's senses with in the past. No, this laugh is mellow and musical, a pleasure to hear. The laugh that swayed Apollo to spare him. The laugh that so delighted the Olympians that they welcomed him as one of their own.

It's…

"Well," Hermes says, hands on his hips. "I have to go. I'd say it's been a pleasure, but my coin purse suffers greatly, and inside I am weeping. My wool, if you please."

He realises then that he is still holding the wrap of fabric, his exorbitant payment long since closed in clenched fist and vanished to Erebus. Feeling strangely wrong-footed, he passes it over.

Hermes grins, mouth pink, teeth sparkling. "I'll be seeing you, boss."

And he zips away.

Charon stares at his afterimage for long, long moments.

Chapter Text

When next they meet, the wool is nowhere in sight.

As usual, Hermes is wearing his light brown chlamys and his short chiton. Charon has ransacked his mind for what he used to wear whenever they met, but he never committed his appearance to memory properly before. All he can clearly recall is the adornments – the chlamys and chiton, Styx-soaked and dishevelled, all those years ago. He recalls also the seemingly bottomless bag and the sandaled feet that had once burnt their imprint into his chest. He vaguely remembers the shape of a metal hat, either on top of Hermes' head of strung across his back, but he is reasonably certain that it wasn't a mainstay like the rest were. Likewise, he remembers some kind of staff. He cannot recall its decoration at all. It must have had one – he doubts any surface god would deign to use something so plain as a walking stick. It wouldn't have been a weapon, like a spear or javelin. But he just did not commit it to memory.

He had assumed any prideful god wouldn't be able to wait to wear their new prize. Had assumed likewise that Hermes would take great pride in deliberately wearing it in front of Charon, in visibly 'getting his money's worth' after Charon's outrageously overpriced demand. He's been reluctantly ruminating on what exactly Hermes might use it for. Most obvious would be a scarf, as it would require very little in the way of modification. There wasn't quite enough material in the wrap for a chlamys, though as he understands it, Hermes' sister Athena is the goddess of weaving, and could probably extend the base fabric outwards with relative ease, if they're on good enough terms for him to ask. The fabric could also be unravelled and used as accents for other things.

But no. Hermes returns, and there is no wool.

There's no hint of it even when he flies in, chlamys flapping behind him, revealing its undersides and the full expanse of Hermes' chiton. There is no hint of red about his sandals, no glimmer of orange at his waist. There is just his ordinary clothing, and the bright yellow of the thread he uses to guide his shades.

And those wings and fine little earrings which mock him endlessly, now he knows their colours well.

"Greetings, boss!"

Oh, no.

Charon tenses. Has he truly opened the floodgates to that withheld ancient chatter as he'd suspected he might? He watches the little god with wary eyes as he goes about untying his thread, oar creaking beneath his grip, and is… relieved… when Hermes speaks no more.

It is relief. Isn't it?

Hermes shoos the shades towards him, and with nary a nod, flies away.

Charon opens his hand for the first shade's payment and thinks very deliberately of nothing at all.

---

Again, the wool is nowhere to be seen.

And again.

And again.

Despite himself, its whereabouts is beginning to grate on him. The curiosity is becoming sickening. He is tired of carefully documenting every facet of Hermes' body looking for a hint of it. Little afterimages of Hermes linger behind his eyes long after he has left, mocking him with their painstaking clarity. He finds he is drinking in the sight of him, as insatiably as a dying mortal at an oasis, and he is mildly horrified that he, greedy god that he is, has swiftly become dissatisfied with just a surface look. He sees the lines of Hermes' muscular arms beneath the chlamys and wishes to see it lifted. At first just to check further for hints of red, of orange, of yellow that is not the warm golds and reds of the plain adornment on one of his forearms, somehow hidden away as some kind of mockery. Perhaps he is wearing the wool in plain sight, but subtly hidden so as to irk Charon, to make him look where he had not looked before. To keep his whole self chattering away in Charon's thoughts, without any words ever being spoken. It would be a quiet, insidious means of revenge, and just the sort of cleverness one could expect of a trickster god, or Hypnos. And one which, were it not quite so maddeningly directed at him, might gain Charon's grudging admiration.

Once he became certain the chlamys alone hid nothing, the chiton called to him next. He has seen all the ways in which it shifts with Hermes' movements, revealing flashes of hidden skin and muscle. The flashes too quickly became insufficient. He wants somewhere beneath. Deeper. Further inside the layers of him. To see Hermes stripped down to parts. Hold his still-beating heart in his rapturous hands and –

He is close to cracking and just asking him where the wool is.

Thank the Fates, it does not come to that.

He doesn't notice it immediately. Or rather, he is… vaguely aware, on the edges of his senses, that something is different. When Thanatos comes by with his shades, he finds his regular, reliable complaining has waned somewhat. As usual, both he and Thanatos do not speak of Hermes, and where before there was the clear shape of Hermes in the ways Thanatos' monologues curled and eddied around him, never quite touching, the shape has slowly become muddied, the flow of Thanatos' words seeking less vital paths. Everything else he speaks of seems to be getting to him less. He isn't relaxed, as such. But there's something easier about him.

And then Charon realises that it's been quite some time since he last complained of being late.

Thanatos loves punctuality, as Charon does. Hypnos' lackadaisical nature is their antithesis in all ways. If anything could drive a wedge between the devoted twins, as much as Thanatos might pretend distance, it would be that. The overwhelming number of mortals has forced Thanatos into a constant battle with lateness, and he complains of it often and loudly.

He is still late, sometimes. Often, even. But not as often as he used to be. Where even the onslaught of words is insufficient to force his anxieties out of himself bodily, a temporary exorcism, he would always make up for it with incessant fidgeting. His anxious fiddling with his hood, his clawed gauntlet, his scythe, his sword, whatever he can get his hands on… it has all lessened.

Swapped, instead, for aborted motions to his neckpiece.

With hindsight, he should have noticed it sooner. While Thanatos honours decorum, he's always been fairly open with his feelings around Charon, who he knows will stop him if he ever does something deemed too much of a nuisance. If Charon doesn't protest, then Thanatos knows he has free rein to do what he will. This includes, but is not limited to, fiddling endlessly and complaining to the heavens about their jobs.

That he keeps stopping himself from touching his neckpiece is suspicious. Charon never told him not to do that. After the third aborted gesture in as many minutes, Charon scowls and asks him.

Immediately, Death Incarnate chokes on pure air and splutters.

"Why would you -!" he starts, looking wildly around them like he thinks someone might be listening. Curious. "I – ugh. It's nothing."

It clearly isn't nothing. Feeling that first curl of anger, he tells him so.

Thanatos flusters. "It's not – I'll stop. I mean, I've been trying to stop. We don't need to –"

He holds out his hand.

Huffing like a scolded child, which he is, Death Himself dutifully brings both hands up under his neckpiece, and passes something over.

"I'm not speaking of it."

It's a little feather. About the size of Charon's thumbnail, it's a downy little thing, mostly yellow with just a hint of orange at its tip, clearly carefully plucked from the gradients of a fire-bright wing to best match Thanatos' eyes. Looped around the end of the feather's shaft is a little thread, apparently there to help affix it to something beneath his neckpiece, safe and secure.

The thread is yellow. Not the yellow of the thread Hermes uses to pull his shades, which shimmers with latent power, unbreakable, sparkling. No.

It's from that wool.

"Eeoohhhhhhh," he says.

Thanatos blushes, and snatches the little feather back. "It's helping. Me. It's helping me. We're not speaking of this."

A crack of light and deafening air, and he vanishes.

---

Hindsight mocks him.

Thanatos has been doing well. Exceptionally, in fact. The little feather is certainly doing its job as boon to the god of peaceful death. The surface is in its normal cycle of peace, strife, war and recovery, with smatterings of plague, in no way unusual from all the cycles before it. Shades come to him all the same, and Thanatos has in many ways returned to his heyday, when the mortals were at a more manageable number and just beginning to take advantage of the blessing of fecundity Zeus had granted them, in that fortuitous time when the Titan Prometheus was walking the earth, passing on his teachings of fire.

He is doing so well, in fact, that where before Hermes brought all that were not guided by Thanatos, Thanatos is now the one bringing them all, wielding a suspicious glimmering yellow thread.

It takes him far too long to realise he hasn't seen Hermes in quite some time. It was too easy, perhaps, to suspect the lack of presence as being due to a lull in death above. He sees now that it is a testament to his brother's competency, now boosted.

Thanatos does not speak of it. Will not, even when Charon demands it of him. If he truly pushed, he would get an answer out of him, but it seems the discovery of Hermes' blessing has already fractured Thanatos' initial promise to never speak of the Olympian, and now Thanatos' mouth is shut tight. Like all of the Chthonic gods, an oath is considered utterly sacred. It seems now that his younger brother considers his offhand promise to have become an oath proper. He would never be so cruel and gauche as to jeopardise the sanctity of that, no matter how frustrating, so ceases asking.

Besides. If Hermes was never coming back, someone surely would have told him by now.

The sparkling threads mean that Thanatos and Hermes are certainly in contact. Or, at least, that Hermes is rounding up shades. Where Hermes would normally have brought in one line of souls at a time, leading Charon to believe he had but one blessed thread to guide them, his brother comes by with two or three much shorter lines of shades in one go, harried but more capable than before. Clearly, Hermes is rounding them up where he can and leaving them tied together in places for Thanatos to find and deliver.

The logical conclusion then, is that Hermes is simple too busy to do his job properly.

It grates on Charon, makes him grind his teeth and hold his oar a little too tight every time Thanatos comes by with those threads. Why did the great, illustrious Lord Zeus designate his little son as psychopomp, intrude on the Underworld's rituals – on Charon's rituals – if he was just going to end up shirking his duties?

His bones ache with the warring of feeling. He is proud of Thanatos, as pride plagues all gods in all manner of shapes. And he is enraged, every time his brother appears in place of the little god that mocks him. It is odd and dichotomous and cannot possibly last. One will win in the end, and he cannot say which it will be.

And then Hypnos comes by with an errant shade who had passed in their sleep, with a little red feather hanging from the string of his eye mask, by a thread of that accursed red wool, and Charon is incensed.

How long has Hypnos had that feather? Was it given to him in this time that Hermes has not been coming to the Underworld? Did Hermes come to the Underworld only to see Hypnos, and not to the docks, to do their endless and inevitable work? Has Hermes been fraternising with his brothers, and not coming to Charon?

And even more infuriating: Why does Hypnos even require Hermes' boon? He has never needed to do anything at speed, casting the blanket of sleep from the comfort of his own bed. If those that die in their sleep become trapped in a dream, he has but to pluck them out of it, all of the land of dreams available at his fingertips. He has nowhere to go. Nowhere to be. All of existence that has the capability to rest is within his easy reach. So what could he possibly need such a boon for?

The answer comes to him easily. Hypnos does not require such a boon.

The little god must be using the feathers to spy.

He has infiltrated them. He must have used his wiles, his clever hands and lovely eyes, that dazzling laugh, to sway his brothers to lower their guards. Placed trinkets on them in the guise of boons, where he can look outward from them, or at least feel their presence, therein knowing precisely where the twins are at all times. Once planted, why would he ever need to return to the Underworld? To Charon?

What spying could achieve, he isn't sure. But he will find out.

Hypnos does not move with speed. He still floats at leisure, even his teleportation a sort of languid sprawl of energy, giving the illusion of a slow manifestation rather than the instantaneous pop in and out of existence that it truly is. Certainly, even as he comes close, holding the little shade in his hand like a baby bird, he is all languorous smile and sleepy eyes, and there is no tinge of foreign speed about him.

Jaw clenched so tight his bones ache with it, he holds out his hand. All shades pay, and though being plucked from a dream leaves no physical trace, no connection to the earthly body, its happenstance is so rare that there is an unspoken agreement between himself and Hypnos that Hypnos will be the one to pass tribute instead. There is always enough room on his skiff, even mid-journey, and having his brother deliver a new shade at the midway point between the Lethe and Phlegethon is no trouble at all.

Those taken by Hypnos are always transported to the House proper, categorised and documented and all but dissected in Hypnos' ledgers. It is perhaps the only time he ever really pays careful attention, unless they are one of his cultists, or sometimes doctors and Dionysian revellers, as purveyors of hallucinogens and sleep aids both. So carefully considered as this shade will be, Hypnos knows that its place is not further back in Elysium, where Charon will need to deliver it on the way back up.

Sure enough, as Hypnos relinquishes the almost unmoving shade, its consciousness still somewhere between sleep and wakefulness, he feels its destination in his bones. Yes, it is not far. Asphodel it is.

Normally he would not allow any shade on his boat without payment first, but this is an extenuating circumstance, and Hypnos would never withhold tribute. Sure enough, when he looks away from the settling shade, Hypnos' pale hand is reaching out, and –

Something soft tickles his palm.

He jerks, and before his instincts can close his fist and send his tribute to Erebus, to his home, he looks down and sees that feather. Hypnos' – the little god's feather – untied from his sleep mask, a downy red twin to Thanatos' yellow one, complete with its red thread.

"Looked like you wanted it," Hypnos says, smiling.

"Kahhh!" he shouts, and the waters rumble and roil threateningly beneath them, even as his other hand continues to steer his boat, constant and eternal. He is tempted to stop entirely, to jam his oar against the tide and disrupt everything he's ever built, every ritual he's ever adhered to for his own sake and nobody else's, all to spite this one moment in time when he has been so disrespected by his brother.

He had almost sent the spying mechanism down to his domain!

Already his force tightens somewhere unseen, severing the ties that bind Hypnos to that place. Only he and Thanatos can ever visit at leisure, inasmuch leisure as they are able, and he sees now his error. If both of them are wearing the boons, and either were to come to his home, then the Olympian would become aware of that space. Possibly see that space. Know more than Charon is willing to give, hold a power not earned, and the thought is repugnant. Thanatos has not been to his home since acquiring the little feather, but it is only a matter of time, and Thanatos wears the boon always. His power clamps down on Thanatos' hold also.

"Come on now, you don't need to do that!" Hypnos protests, fluttering about like the little Olympian does, a buzzing fly. He hopes the severing of connection hurts. His brother's face screws up, more telling of his feelings than perhaps it ever has, so unused to physical pain as he is. A pampered, languorous, idiotic - "It's fine! I'm sorry! It was just –" He goes to take the feather back, but Charon is – he is –

"Don't!" Hypnos squeals, his normally still white wing thrown up to the sky, and Charon crushes the boon to dust in his palm.

Hypnos stares at the red remains. Before Charon, every shade sits in terrified stillness.

Charon, disgusted, brings up a thin well of power, just enough to burn the final glimmer of it to ashes, where no power can possibly remain, lingering and malignant. He would not throw the remains to the Styx, where any power might somehow diffuse out in the water, spreading through the entire sprawling magnificence and malevolence of the Underworld. He would not return the dust to Hypnos, where it could continue to wreak its quiet havoc, even without ties to Charon's domain. It burns in his hand, and it is good. The flame is a good colour, revealing no hidden magic in the dust.

"Hkkahhhhhh," he tells Hypnos, who stares at him with horror in the turn of his mouth, and without another word, the god of sleep goes.

---

When Thanatos returns the next day with a pitiful handful of shades, so few he does not even need the little god's thread to aid him, he holds out his hand. He knows his fury radiates from him as thick as the dark fog that spills from between his clenched teeth, sinking from his overflowing neckpiece and down to the dock.

"Why did you –" Thanatos starts.

"Kkhh," he says. Yes, Thanatos felt the severing of his ties.

The god of death can be many things. Shivering, twitchy, miserable, a perpetual fidgeter and complainer. Naïve. But he is not stupid. He feels the gap in his senses where Charon's permission once sat, and he puts two and two together.

"It was helping me," he says. 'Was', at the very least, is good. It means he understands that the separation is inevitable, even as he falters, keeping a wide berth of Charon where normally he would draw closer, talking about his day. He imagines the shapes Thanatos' hidden wings might be making in the aether, agitated and restless. He doesn't need to know, though. Thanatos' eyes and jaw and drawn in hands tell him enough.

He keeps his hand held out.

"I don't believe it's a trick," Thanatos says, in an unusual act of defiance. Still, before Charon can open his mouth he sees both pallid hands reach beneath his armour, untying the unseen evil.

He does not move, will give no ground. He doesn't need to. Thanatos goes easily, and hands over the little feather. He does not cry out as Hypnos did when it is reduced to ash in Charon's palm. It is a burnt offering to no one.

Thanatos says no more, and when he goes, the blast of sound from his disappearance parts the Styx right through to the other side of the Temple, for a moment.

Chapter Text

It is only a day after that Hypnos satisfies Charon's order. He did not mandate such, but Hypnos is not stupid. He is clever enough to have orchestrated the Olympian's arrival to tie immaculately with the end of Charon's latest delivery, so that he is unburdened at the shores of the Temple when he arrives. The little god likewise is equally unburdened, carrying neither the mundane thread of his accursed wool, nor the magicked thread that binds his shades.

Though he also did not order such, he knows Thanatos will not come. Hypnos will have told him so. It is not lightly he allows the dead to accumulate in the absence of any psychopomp to fetch them. It is a testament to the grave error that the little god has made, here. Their rituals – his rituals – are everything. Will remain everything.

He takes a petty sort of pleasure out of not looking at the little god who has so plagued his mind, when he finally arrives. He does not sweep his gaze across that body he knows so well. He does not look into those eyes. He yearns to drink from the Lethe and destroy the afterimage of him entirely, blot his shape from memory forever. He makes do with looking everywhere the little god does not stand.

His hands itch for his oar, for the rhythm of the waters reverberating up his arms, through his feet.

The little god, who no longer deserves a name in the sanctity of Charon's thoughts, keeps an even wider berth of him than even Thanatos did. He wonders precisely what it is that Hypnos might have told him. Did he only pass on the message? Or perhaps did they fraternise a while, two chattering gods at ease in one another's spaces, lamenting the loss of that token of their shared affections? No. That spying device, in the guise of a token of affection.

Did they speak of him in tones of derision, or did they forgive him, bearing no grudges? Did they speak of him at all? Were they wrapped up in one another, two spirits cheerfully linked, smiling and laughing, understanding one another in a way that Charon…

They stand, for a moment, in silence. The thick cloud of fog that aches to unfurl from his mouth stays painfully swallowed, where it cannot reveal any vulnerability to the Olympian spy. His jaw throbs with it. He burns inside.

"So."

Charon burns.

"I don't have purple feathers."

His eyes whip from the delicate shell of the little god's ear, with those tinkling earrings that forever haunt him, to the little god's face. When had his gaze drawn to it? To those adornments? How undisciplined is he that he cannot even resist –

The little god's soft pink mouth is curved in an unreadable moue.

"You might have noticed that about me," he says, with that hint of teeth and tongue that makes Charon want to bite, to rend the layers away until there is nothing left he has not seen. He has looked upon the little Olympian so many times and yet he finds he still cannot fully satisfy himself with what he has seen, has memorised. He is the same as when he left. Immortal.

"Or not." Those unchanging eyes of a god are narrowed, but not angry. He knows the Olympian's anger. This is not it. There is no cheer in them still and yet…

"But yeah – no purple feathers. I could dye them. I thought about it. It's not like I can't get my hands on some, not like you didn't rob me blind for the wool in the first place, what's a little more spent on ridiculous dyes that fade in the blink of an eye? Though I understand tributes are imbued with a degree of immortality, no longer of the mortal realm as they are, I don't know how well a mortal dye might work on it after the fact, or for how long it would last. I could've asked Athena for help, or Hephaestus, but they've been busy. But what's the point if I don't do it myself, is what I thought."

Charon stares at him. It is the most he has heard Hermes speak in what suddenly feels like eternities.

"It's not like the colour actually matters," he continues, almost blithely. The wings on his head make a little ruffling motion, strange and hypnotic. "It's the thought that counts, don't they say, and well, plucking isn't exactly comfortable for me. Which is weird, right? Don't know why Hephaestus ever gave them sensation, but I suppose pain is the greatest motivator.

"But there's something about a colour that fits, I think, and you Chthonic gods are all about your blacks and your purples – not that that's a problem – but it makes things harder if I give you something that doesn't fit the theme, you know? Got lucky with old Thanatos' eyes, and Hypnos' choice in fashion. Not so much with you. And I don't know about you, but something would feel out of place if it didn't go."

Charon's jaw audibly creaks as his teeth unclench, mouth slackening. This is… not what he expected.

"So. If you're wondering why I left you out. It wasn't on purpose. I was getting around to it."

Beneath his neckpiece, Charon gapes.

Hermes – the little Olympian – thinks he burnt the feathers because he was jealous?

"Kk –" he starts to say, starts to feel the immutable fury rise up in his bones and in his lungs, starts to feel the very earth rumble beneath his feet –

"So, it's a bit rushed. But. Yeah."

The little god reaches for a little leather pouch hitched to his waist, for whatever reason separate from his bottomless bag, and begins to –

He is going to pull out another spying implement –

Charon moves rapidly forward and –

"Tada," Hermes says, weakly.

He holds the pouch in his hand.

With only a couple of feet separating them now, Charon falters, and stares. The air beneath his palm flickers with power, ready to manifest his oar, but the order sits incomplete, and he feels the energy begin its reluctant, halting dissipation.

If the little god is frightened by his approach, as quickly stopped as started, he gives no hint of it. Except in all the ways that his voice, god of diplomacy and eloquence that he is, shivers around its intent. "It's… well. Here."

He watches, as close to dumbstruck as he can ever be, as Herme – as the little god uses his quick, nimble fingers to turn the pouch inside out, revealing at first a flash of red, and then orange, and then yellow.

The wool.

What has he done to it?

It is truly abhorrent work. The wool has been curled in around itself to make a rounded shape, its sides sewn together crudely, the gradients not quite matching as they touch each other either side. The bottom is a fat, crude panel of red sewn over the base, presumably as a means of… padding? In any case, the threads traipse a drunken ants trail wherever they will, and the edges are furled over oddly, sewn thickly into the leather.

A coin purse.

"It's a coin purse," the Olympian says, redundantly. He tilts his weight onto one foot, hip cocked jauntily. He looks for all the world the sprite of joyful youth, the laughing trickster who begat Pan. And still the moue of his mouth, the darkness of his eyes, speaks of maturity. Eternity. "I – look. I know it doesn't fit what I had for old Thanatos, or Hypnos. But you – well. They're gone now, so I guess it doesn't exactly matter. In any case, you should know how this works. Took me a bit of time getting the charms to work, really rushed the actual product after this whole situation."

This whole 'situation' being the little god thinking Charon burnt those feathers in a fit of jealous pique.

He opens his mouth, indignant, but Hermes talks over him. The audacity alone stuns him to silence.

"This way round, I thought I should make it be bottomless, like my bag. But even though you liked the wool as much as I did, I know my work isn't great, and the colours don't quite go with your whole…" Hermes waves one hand vaguely towards all of him, the other pulling the bag's hideous innards back inward, "Your whole you, so it's bottomless when the leather's on the outside. It's treated, of course, so the damp air won't crack it or damage it at all. Did my best to make sure it won't age at all, either. That way it's – well, do you want to try?"

He stares, as Hermes pantomimes plunging his hand into the bag, and he is horrified by his boldness. That he would stick his hand anywhere the little Olympian, likely spy, would ask. The little Olympian who knows he's burnt his spying implements, who has in the past been struck by him with the intent to kill. That anything the little god offered could possibly be taken in good faith after everything they've been through, is at once laughable and completely mad.

If the little god is perturbed by Charon's unwillingness to go along, he doesn't voice it. There is a little furrow at his brow, but it has been there this whole time, in the constant and irresistible gaze Charon has cast to that face he knows so well, despite all his best intentions. He keeps meaning not to look. And yet he looks. And looks. And has not stopped looking.

Still. He will not put his hand in the bag.

The little god doesn't do anything so base as sigh or show some hint of disappointment. He only puts his own hand in the bag, barely able to fit two fingers in past the knuckles, alongside his thumb. He wiggles his fingers in the pouch, then removes them, revealing nothing at all.

"It's just a shallow little purse when I do it. When anyone does it, actually. You can't give permission to anyone, either, so it can't be coerced out of you. Not that I think anyone can coerce you to do anything, associate." Here, Hermes smiles, and again, Charon burns inside. And it is a burning. Thick, untameable. The feeling crowds his lungs and his mouth, suffocating. The gleam of teeth makes him want to bite down on something.

"If you use it, then it's bottomless for you and only you, forever. If you turn it back to the coloured side, then it – well. I wanted to play around with the idea a bit, but it seemed a bit far-reaching, and you'd maybe not take it well if I asked you to take me on a tour so I could scoop up river water, you know? You'd probably have questions, or just be angry. Suspect nefarious plots, and probably rightly so."

Hidden, Charon's throat tenses.

"In any case, I'm reasonably certain the charms work, but since I never got to try it myself, I'm afraid this is very much the realm of the abstract, my associate."

He has the audacity then to wink, dark eyes shimmering with mirth, like they are in on some delightful little joke of his, and Charon's insides twist with – something. Something aches inside.

But then Hermes… his expression. He looks…

Contrite.

"If you dip the purse into the Styx, then, theoretically, it should draw in any tributes that fell in the water," he says, face pink.

For a moment, Charon is confused, baffled even, and then he is both angry and confused, and that makes for a poor match. Surely the little god did not get to bring his spying implements to Erebus before Charon had realised his deception. Surely he had severed the ties for Hypnos and Thanatos before the boons could descend there. There is no reasonable way the little god could have bested him and somehow seen inside that secret domain, where coins land haphazardly where they will, sometimes into the water proper, though never to float away on the currents. Always the tributes sit comfortably where they fall, unmoving, part of the immutable perfect count that sits in Charon's bones, even if they sit unseen beneath the river surface. Surely he could not know.

But then he remembers. The obol which Hermes threw, so long ago.

"I was trying to help you, you cretin!" the god screams back at him. The shades around them have vanished into the crowds thronging the shores. All the better. It gives Charon room when he watches the Olympian pick the obol up in trembling hand and throw it into the Styx.

He lifts his oar, and strikes the god with the intent to kill.

"Theoretically," Hermes insists, and his face now is darkened with the blush that has been slowly stealing its way across his features, burning at the tips of his ears. "Theoretically this will work. And – we'll be squared away then, I think? I know that's quite presumptuous, associate, but I know you've never quite forgiven me, and perhaps I do not deserve it in your mind, but I see it only fit to try to rectify things where I can. I got to wondering that perhaps you could feel the coin, lost down there in the water, and that… I had angered you further, through the action of throwing it into places unreachable. I don't know, but you obviously felt its presence when I had barely drawn a coin out, both from that time and when I tried to purchase your wool, so maybe there's some kind of inherent discomfort I've caused you. And if so, then I'm sorry. I hope this purse will fix it."

Charon, as he had before, stares in silence.

That coin. It vanished into the Styx back then, blotting out, much more a symbol of Hermes' godly defiance than Charon's perfect count, and in fact Charon has not thought on it for many years. Not part of his count, it had effectively disappeared from memory.

But it has stayed in Hermes'. This entire time. All of these years.

All these years, he thought he was causing Charon tangible, physical suffering, and has sought to fix it.

Hermes lets out a thin, shivering sigh.

"I would really very much appreciate it if you said something now, associate. Literally anything at all."

His lovely face is pink.

He continues to stare. He feels his throat work heavily behind his neckpiece, the burning remains of his fury-thickened smog having nowhere to go, rolling around helplessly inside of him. Wisps of it eke out between his teeth, barely there, thin enough to betray nothing. He wonders how he must look to Hermes now, silent and impenetrable.

Likewise, was not Hermes equally silent and impenetrable all this time? The little god, compelled not to speak, quiet and efficient in all ways, and all this time… all this time, he had thought that silence a deference to his superior power, or perhaps a childish strop. But… had it been penance? Penance for what the little god perceived to be Charon's continued pain?

Did Hermes… care?

Were the boons just boons?

His mouth opens, and the held-back fog explodes from him.

He has never held it for so long. Has never needed to, each breath steady and constant and reliable as the tides, always and forever, older than almost all things. Even in anger his breaths stayed true, the vapour seeping from some bottomless well within him.

Now it billows. Fat, anger-dark clouds of it first, sinking and spreading like wildfire across the dried grasslands shades whisper of in fearful tones to him at his docks. He sees Hermes flinch, a startled noise coming from him at the sight he must make, disappearing inside a thick plume of his own making. His own emotions. From it then spills a bright and glittering cloud as the fog thins at its edges, in all his confusion and agony at how the little Olympian interloper plagues him in all ways, and sparkling wisps rise and rise, wafting among the stalactites like eddies of water.

And then he breathes in again, and his breaths return to normalcy.

They stare at each other as the fog slowly dissipates.

"Um," Hermes says, finally.

And takes a step forward.

He does not know. Cannot know, what has just happened to Charon. He hardly understands it himself. He can only imagine how it looked, and all the same Hermes comes closer. Even startled and knowing that Charon has struck him before, sought to kill him, he comes closer. His eyes are bright and deep and his brow is furrowed and still he comes closer.

"Is that… is this okay?"

He holds up the coin purse. That ridiculous, ugly pouch, with its ridiculous, ugly insides. A peace offering. A trick.

Charon doesn't quite know which, even now, but he feels his hand rise. Some secret energy flitters around his fingers, calling for his oar, but it is not to strike. It is for a tactile comfort, for he is unmoored, unsure, standing in the thin wake of his own confused and agonised breathing, and never did he think he would need it for such a juvenile thing. But he cannot bring it out of the aether, the darkness, Erebus, those spaces he hides. He cannot bring himself to do it, when it could make Hermes think he intends to strike again.

He cannot bear to see fear again now.

His hand rises, palm open.

And Hermes' smile is like the sun.

It is… There are no words to explain the sensation that Charon feels. This creature that so hounded him, beguiling him ceaselessly, cruel in his machinations, looks upon him with glimmering immortal eyes. He holds his ugly little gift, so thoughtfully crafted, a means of placation or simpering flattery or pure malicious malintent, or of a tentative attempt at brotherhood, and the smile he wears is all for him, for this moment. He places it so gently into his palm, so softly. Reverent. Their fingers do not touch. But the leather is warm.

The wound Hermes left on his torso when he kicked him has long since healed over, but the space behind it aches desperately. Unable to name it, he swallows, throat dry, tongue heavy in his mouth. He does not understand what is happening. To him. Perhaps to them. Bonded through the act of trade and purchase is no bond at all, certainly not when only performed the once. But a gift. A gift. A gift is…

For now, he turns from that smile, those eyes, those tinkling earrings and vibrant wings, and goes to the edge of the dock. He holds the pouch in both of his hands, the leather buttery-smooth on his fingertips, and –

"Welp. Gotta go, associate! See you!"

Before he can even begin to turn, mouth opening to say – anything at all, anything, anything – Hermes is gone, and even his afterimage does not linger.

---

Thanatos falters, since the feather was burnt.

Still, Hermes does not come, but still, Thanatos wields those many yellow threads. Still, Charon does not know if this means the two of them ever cross paths on the surface, or if Thanatos simply finds the bundles of shades wherever they may be. He aches to ask. He knows he cannot.

He aches, wondering.

He aches, wondering if Hermes misses the work. Misses –

He comes to the docks and he waits and he waits and always it is Thanatos. Those transported directly to the House by other means are of course outside his purview and his consideration, inconsequential, but he knows all the same that deaths come and come, and all the while there is no Hermes. He frequently thinks of no one and nothing at all, peaceful and perpetually alone, but at the docks and in his rituals he is now… disrupted. Where before he knew the reliable tensing and releasing of anticipating words that did not come, and made peace with it, now there is the tensing and releasing of anticipating a person who does not come. And he does not know if he will eventually become accustomed to that, too. Fears, almost, that he will.

Likewise, and more maddening still, Thanatos has become shy. Oh, he understands Charon's motivations to burn the feather, of that there can be no doubt. Charon knows hatred, and fear, and all the malevolent emotions of both mortals and gods. All of them have been directed at him, in some fashion. He knows the face and eyes and mouth of his brothers even better. And he knows that it is not hatred that darkens Death Incarnate's cheeks.

It is embarrassment.

"Hh ahhhheuhhhhh?" he asks, after a dozen times of coming and going and perpetual, fidgeting silence. When Thanatos looks up at him, with the plaintive eyes of a child fearing punishment, he holds out his hand, and dutifully, carefully, Thanatos takes it.

"I cannot speak of it," he says, pained. "But… I. Yes. It will be me. I'll be…" He sighs, and frowns, and then, slowly, relaxes. "It's just me."

"Hraaaahhh ouhhhh," he says, and nods.

Thanatos' smile is not a beguiling thing, but it is lovely all the same. And Charon, finally, relaxes as well.

---

He does not apologise to Hypnos. He does not apologise to Thanatos. He… does not know… if he will apologise to Hermes, if ever he sees him again.

He does not dip the pouch into the Styx. He is still unsure of its meaning. Perhaps it truly is a kindness, a gift of brotherhood and apology for a perceived act of metaphysical injury, but he doesn't quite understand the purpose of Hermes flying away. Was it simply a truth? Certainly gods of all sorts are busy in many ways, and something certainly has been keeping him away all this time, away from their work, away from him. Perhaps he truly had to leave in that moment, and there is no further insight to be found.

Perhaps it was not fully true, but instead an excuse to leave, out of embarrassment. Charon remembers well the times when the twins were small, born as children, capricious and impertinent in many ways, but also kind, seeking to share the things they enjoyed. Thanatos in particular would give a gift, perhaps of flowers found on the surface, or a precious tribute handed to him by a desperate mortal seeking to bribe him, small and immature-looking as he was. And then he would immediately dash away without looking the receiver of his gifts in the eye.

Perhaps instead Hermes' leaving was out of fear that Charon would throw the pouch into the waters, a rejection, to fall alongside the lost coin in an act of mirrored anger.

Into darker theories, perhaps he left so quickly out of fear of whatever cruel punishment the pouch would wreak, the moment its fabric touched the waters, its hidden curse activated. Taking himself effectively outside of its blast radius. The little god did ask him to try while he was there, which would speak of innocence, but Charon was about to, wasn't he? And that quicksilver god, faster than almost all others, he left anyway, didn't he? Then that it could be a ploy… would it not still stand?

And then, if not out of fear of the curse touching him, it could very well be that he absconded from fear that Charon would survive the agonies the pouch might inflict, where he would take immediate vengeance. Certainly he knows the pain of Charon's strike, and knows that even at his speeds he cannot necessarily avoid its range.

There are too many possibilities. Too many theories. And though Charon wishes, deeply, arrestingly, loathsomely, for the simplest reason to be true, for so long as Hermes is not here… No. For so long as Hermes is the patron of tricksters, thieves, liars, the god whose first act upon his birth was to steal Apollo's famous cattle, his being present to plead his case would not be enough. No. There are too many possibilities, some too dangerous to potentially bring into reality.

Still, he finds he cannot burn it.

He knows he can. So fine a curse that can withstand the crushing and burning of Charon's power has not been made, and certainly could not be made by a god so young as Hermes. He could set it alight in his palm, watch the bright wool darken and coil inside the flame, watch the threads peel and the leather crack. See the curse colour the fire. See no colour at all. It would be so easy, to set the pouch to his flame and get closure from the way it burns.

But… he imagines the acrid stink of the wool, the feeling of the leather coming apart on his palm, and his insides roil. He imagines. And he cannot do it.

He cannot burn it. He cannot give it away, potentially dangerous as it is. He certainly cannot send it to his domain in Erebus. He cannot carry it on his person. He cannot put his hand into it, or dip it in the Styx.

He does not know quite what to do with it, so after many days of rumination, he slips it quietly into the aether, and decides to think of it no longer.

He will not speak of it. Of any of this. Not for so long as Hermes is not here.

Chapter Text

He spends more than two hundred years in a return to his original peace.

He knows this, because a century splits the times in which shades wander the shores and make up for their missing tributes. Time has a rapidly depreciating value when eternity awaits, but the first hundred years, two hundred… they are worth much to a shade who has only just tasted the endless days and nights sprawled out before them. Time has always meant little to Charon, to immortals. What has consequence and what doesn't mean anything to a god may seem incomprehensible to a mortal. But eternity weathers the edges of that lack of understanding, after a time.

Perhaps a mortal would wonder why Charon does not think of Hermes more longingly.

Perhaps a mortal would wonder why Charon thinks of Hermes at all.

These two hundred years are the closest he's come to tasting the length of time. He has spent so many unfathomable years working with Thanatos, their meetings mostly brief, sometimes lingering, always inevitable. Certainly his memories with Thanatos have been steady and tolerable, and in many ways good. His work with Hermes, foisted upon him unwillingly, was a brief and uncomfortable wound, which become a scab easily peeled away to bleed anew. To return to Thanatos alone, is that not a blessing? He has confirmed that it will be him alone that comes, so now Charon knows the comfort of expectation renewed, the easy anticipation of the face of his brother, confirmed with every visit. Is this not good? Is this not precisely what he had wanted?

But he sees the way Thanatos falters, sees him try not to complain in such a way that would invoke Hermes' name, and so Hermes' shape remains. The little god's afterimage lingers in many ways, behind his eyelids, behind his ribs, in his ears with every careful word Thanatos does not speak.

But also, he is calm. He knows what will come, and will come, and will come. Thanatos is reliable, as efficient as he can be, and when they part and he is on the water, he thinks of nothing. There is silence. It is good.

Is this not exactly what he wanted?

He doesn't know.

He is… conflicted. He is riddled with a strange discomfort that he cannot quite explain. He knows Thanatos' embarrassment, can almost taste it, and he finds there is something horrifyingly similar in what it is he feels now. There is a prickling along the back of his neck, a tightening in the space where Hermes once kicked him.

It is the awareness of being wrong.

And oh, to be wrong. It is an agony. A sensation he knows not, and does not take lightly. He has the blessing and curse of hindsight, and now there is a discomfited reason to avoid the thought of Hermes, if only to save himself from that wrongness. With or without Hermes present, the discomfort lingers.

It is the awareness that he had thought he knew Hermes. And it is the subsequent realisation that he did not.

When they last met, he had seen Hermes in a new, and at once old, light. Hestia in memory. That body and face he knew so intimately, categorised and dissected under the lens of an eye… the guise of knowing, that thin façade, all of it made strange and unfamiliar just by the novelty of Hermes speaking.

He had spent many years hounded by the afterimage of that face, those eyes, and yet when Hermes had spoken it was as if he was seeing some puckish sprite inhabiting that well-documented body. When Hermes had spoken, with more words than he had heard in years, he had not recognised the way his mouth, his jaw, his throat moved with the cadence and rhythm of his speech. He had not recognised the movement of those hands, the playful tilt of the hip, the shifting from foot to foot that spoke of barely bridled energy. That smile was new.

But none of it was truly new, was it? He had spent so long in his annoyance not looking at Hermes when he spoke. Once he had begun paying attention, Hermes was silent. He had missed the opportunity to know that version of him.

Hadn't he dampened Hermes' spirit, whether by the submission to power or the childish strop or the secret penance? Charon had been the gorgon, turning a man to stone. Was not the shape he'd known in his mind only a shadow cast upon the wall? Where was the god that had delighted Olympus, who'd stolen Apollo's cattle, who'd slain giants and brought scared mortal shades gently into the hands of Charon?

All that drowned to silence, made into an efficient automaton, beautiful and unreadable.

Who was it that had beguiled Charon?

It is a dash upon his pride to recognise it for what it is, but he has had time, now Hermes is not here to cloud his mind. Now he has seen Hermes speak. He'd seen a stranger, then. The person he'd ‘known’ was no person at all. The Hermes of his mind's eye was the cold stone of Galatea, awaiting Pygmalion's prayer for life.

And isn't that a strange metaphor. Is he Pygmalion? Enamoured of the statue, concocting realities in his mind? Does he seek to breathe life into him?

Would Hermes be half so beguiling if he returned to who he had been? Who he is? It's an alien, uncomfortable thought. Has he not been satisfied with the shadow of Hermes in many ways? Certainly he has. He has no need for the extra details, the baggage, the chatter. The work is, was, and will be everything, and had been done competently by that silent automaton… at least, when he was there to do it.

Even Charon himself needs no details, only to be the boatman, the silent automaton of his own.

But then… that means acknowledging that his dressing up his duties with obols and one hundred years of reparation is a folly. Those details don't matter, either. But he does them anyway, doesn't he? He allows personality in, doesn't he? Certainly he could bring more mortals to their perpetual rests more quickly if he did not demand tribute. Every shade, even those dead where other mortals cannot find them, would go gently to their eternal night, if Charon did not let his personal tastes get in the way.

He will continue as he has done, of course. He may be introspective at this time, but he has not gone mad. As any god is imbued with the intrinsic detail of personality, Charon's detail is 'greed'. Certainly his actions are not meaningless – he sees and hears the tearfully relieved sighs of shades feeling an obol in their hands and on their tongues, knowing they are loved and attended to. Though he cannot fathom death the way a mortal does, he knows humanity is elevated by their rituals in death. He may not care for them as intimately as a surface god, may not temporarily immerse himself in their lives and then scamper away back to his ambrosia and mountaintop, but he knows them in the end of their final moments. The beginning of their new ones. The anointing of the dead, the obol, the dressing… they all speak of memory retained, of love and duty given a form and action. To carefully dispose of the corpse through burning and burial keeps the air clean and returns the living clay's essences to the earth to feed new life. Society thrives through how it treats its dead. Humanity persists to greater heights because of how they honour their gods. How they honour him.

But also, all these facts are just a happy coincidence. He doesn't do any of this for mortals. He enjoys his tributes. He desires the lustre of gold and lapis lazuli. He could be faster if he didn't do anything but ferry, but would he have tired of this bone-deep duty if he was not enriched by his passions? Would he be slower for it?

Did he not just remark on the way two hundred years can pass in a blink? All shades are brought to their final resting place eventually, whether that is delayed by a hundred years or not. Once they are here, at his docks, he could leave them for a thousand years and it would not matter by immortal standards. Would he feel such a way if the folly of his tributes did not spur him forward? Do they not give him his own time constraint? Immediate transport, if an obol is given, and a one hundred year delay if not? He knows he would continue the work, regardless. It is his purpose. But it's curious, wondering how he would act without such enrichment.

Thanatos too obeys his own intrinsic duty, but he was faster for the blessing of Hermes' affections, for the enrichment of a kindred spirit, a fellow psychopomp. Could Hermes be faster were he enriched by being just a little more himself? Enriched, perhaps, by… enjoying the work… with Charon?

But also, is 'faster' even what he wants? That Thanatos despairs for his lateness is only a matter of shades being left on the surface, where they can cause trouble to living mortals. If quicksilver Hermes were to remain on the surface, binding shades safely away from mortal dwellings for Thanatos to pick up at relative leisure, then would the work not be just as good? Times have changed. Mortals multiply. Death Incarnate is no longer sufficient alone to shepherd every mortal under his purview. Thanatos only does so well as he can with Hermes' aid, and that was made even better when he had Hermes' boon. Regardless, Hermes' boon may have helped Thanatos' body, but Hermes' very self is a boon to their work.

Perhaps Charon would have taken it better at the beginning had the arrangement of Hermes' participation been as it is now – with Hermes on the surface, where Charon cannot see or hear him. What happens on the surface only matters to Charon insofar as it pertains to the death rate, and even then, has he not described the ways in which the death rate does not matter at all? He will get to every shade eventually. Taking many at once or only a few, it does not matter.

In any case. Is this not the perfect scenario? It is better that Hermes is psychopomp. It would have been better to have Hermes never descend beneath the earth at all. If things were to stay as there are now, wherein Charon were to never see Hermes again, would this not be perfect?

In only a blink of an eye, in only two hundred years, Charon decides that the answer is no.

The work would function the same. But even so… he feels in his bones that the answer is no. He cannot explain it. Perhaps he is… different, now. The same, perpetual, immortal, but he has changed for meeting Hermes, in ways that he never expected. In ways he cannot even fathom. Certainly Hermes has unwittingly catalysed a wave of introspection on Charon's function and methods, but did he require that? He feels strangely freed by his revelations, but did he not function just fine before? He did not feel in any way restricted before by comparison. He does not look back and pity who he was before.

He cannot explain it. But no. The work is not better.

The work will always function the same for him, no matter what. That he thought his rituals a necessity was a folly, a prideful foible. He could cease tribute tomorrow and the work would be the same. He could never see Hermes again and the work would be the same.

He could see Hermes tomorrow, smiling at him, and the work would be the same.

He can see now that Hermes did not intrude on anything. The work was still performed. The tributes were still passed over, or they weren't.

He admits to himself, finally, that Hermes was just annoying him.

He puffs out a fat cloud of smoke now, ruminating on that epiphany. How embarrassing. How childish! Thank the Fates Hermes no longer comes below – he needs time to even contemplate looking him in the eye again. He feels as Thanatos did, embarrassed and caught out.

But also, he feels… new. Renewed. Three is a powerful number, and he is intrigued to find that he is… almost excited by how his feelings have changed.

First, he battled with anger, and annoyance, and juvenile bitterness in regards to Hermes, the chattering new psychopomp, the little Olympian who did not deserve to be considered either by name or by face. He was heard, but not seen. And even then, what did he hear? Noise, when if he had just paid attention, was it not the delivering of tales, inquiry into his life? Were not the last words before Charon tried to kill him just asking him about himself?

"I'd take you, sometime, but I imagine you like your boat and your rivers well enough. There's comfort in familiarity. What about a surface river? There's a lot to see out there, and the Styx doesn't appear fully formed here, does it? I see it span out further than the gateway of the Underworld. Have you travelled upstream? Do you like it?"

Heard, but not listened to.

Second came silence, and intrigue, and what he can detestably describe as obsession. Hermes the automaton, seen only as a shadow of his former self, an idealised shape.

Seen, but not understood.

Third… what? Hermes is not here. He has broken through his pettiness – inasmuch as he hopes he has – and he wonders what it might be that he could see or hear in Hermes now. Perhaps he will only be annoyed again. Perhaps they have passed an unspoken point, and things cannot go back to what they were. But he is intrigued to think where that new place will be, if they cannot go back.

Now he has heard the sound of Hermes' laughter, melodic and charming. Has seen Hermes' smile.

He is greedy for more.

---

His plan is a simple one.

It's embarrassing, in fact, how simple it is. He doesn't strictly regret his actions, even now, but it embarrasses him all the same to find such a simple solution to the matter of Hermes' boons.

He goes to his realm in Erebus, and he fashions himself a door.

It is non-physical, though he does briefly toy with the concept of manifesting one proper. But he does not want Hermes, potential spy even now, to know of this place even in abstract. Placing the door within the Underworld will lead passers-by to speculate on where it goes. Placing the door within his realm will defeat the purpose of hiding that space from unwanted eyes.

The door is within himself. As his will acts as the proverbial key to access it, his will too becomes the… security, as it were, to what and who is allowed in. He need only fashion a door, a scanner of foreign energies, and choose what is and is not permitted to pass through it. Either the foreign body is disintegrated to ash, or the wearer removes it and tries again.

It's so simple. It takes but moments.

He gives his brothers their permission back as soon as the spell is done.

Hypnos comes by but hours later, moving faster perhaps than he ever has. He is holding valiantly onto a wiggling shade. It is so clearly not one of his, so energetic as it is, that he has to stifle a laugh inside his neckpiece.

"Got one for you," he says, tone blithe despite wrestling the shade to stillness in both hands like a particularly squirmy fish. Thanatos, as expected, blasts through the barrier of the Underworld like Cerberus is at his heels.

"Where is -!" he starts, hair and eyes wild, his strings of shades left reeling and dazed behind him. He stares at Hypnos, who struggles heroically with the shade.

"One of mine," Hypnos says easily.

"It is not," Thanatos says.

"Well, we're at an impasse," Hypnos shrugs, and Thanatos' gauntleted hand twitches like it means to throttle him. "Your word against mine. But I'm here now, all shades accounted for. You're welcome," he adds grandly to Charon. He makes to hand over the shade, and it leaps from his grip. It is only by Thanatos' instinctive grab that it doesn't fall directly into the Styx, and it goes still and relaxed in Death's grasp.

Charon regards this with amusement.

"Ghhh ouhhhh… haahhh," he says, as they continue to bicker childishly with each other.

The two of them look buoyed with jubilant energy, but all the same Thanatos' expression cringes. Still, Hypnos is bound by no such oath, and his grin gets impossibly wider. "Truly?"

As if he would lie. He nods slowly.

"Well, not that I don't believe you, esteemed brother of mine, but I think this calls for some rigorous testing. Wouldn't do not to be thorough."

With that Hypnos grins and pops away into his realm immediately, likely to do some small bit of mischief. Sure enough, he feels him immediately pop back out of it, and then return with something foreign. Likely some demigod trinket from a dream, harmless, but he chuckles into his neckpiece as he feels Hypnos chuck it into the door, fizzling to nothing inside it. He shoos the sensation into the back of his mind. He knows Hypnos will be having some fun there a while.

Thanatos regards the glittering plumes of smoke with a faint smile.

"He really is testing it, isn't he?" When Charon nods, he almost grins, before tamping the reaction down to a small, quivering quirk of his lips. "Forgive me, but I won't be doing the same. I… If for whatever reason, I obtained…"

Charon nods, slowly.

"… I would. Remove it," he finishes, stilted. "I… It's not like I intend to ask for… I…"

Charon nods, again, although he feels that space Hermes kicked him tighten again.  Is that an admittance that they do correspond, above? That Thanatos has the capacity to ask Hermes, in person, for a new feather?

He cannot ask. Thanatos cannot volunteer the information.

It matters not, for Hermes comes blasting through the gates to the Underworld like the world is ending.

Chapter Text

He and Thanatos spend long seconds looking at Hermes as he leans forward, hands on quivering knees, out of breath. The god of swiftness. Exhausted.

His thighs tremble, shining in the Light of Ixion with sweat, and Charon realises then that he is barefoot, wings at his ankles battered but whole, held on not by those sturdy boots, but by a frayed cuff of leather alone.

Blood seeps from cracks in his soles. The ichor will seep into the marble and become an offering to the Styx.

“I…” Hermes starts, trembling, and sags forward. It is an odd feeling to see Thanatos lunge forward to halt his fall, his damp forehead pressing to Thanatos’ chest, before Charon can even consider moving himself. Frozen. He has to force his next breath to steady itself.

“What happened?” Thanatos’ gauntleted hand holds Hermes' waist as he runs his other through Hermes’ hair. Whether the gesture is meant as a gentling caress between brothers, companions, lovers, or simply a means to lift Hermes’ head to make eye contact, Charon doesn’t know. Hermes’ eyes seem unfocused for long, raw seconds, dilated with the pain of the tortured, the pain of a man who has endured for far too long, even if it is not an explicitly excruciating pain, before they finally achieve clarity on Thanatos’ face.

He makes no attempt to look at Charon.

“Is this what you have been doing for two hundred years?”

Charon feels his hand clench, just for one revealing moment. He forces it to relax.

‘Two hundred years’? The time in which they have been apart?

The question would imply then that Thanatos has had no contact with Hermes, this entire time. What is it that has occurred, then, to have Hermes so exhausted, without shoes, feet bloodied? What mundane earth could tear up the skin of a god when Charon’s own blow, so long ago, had left the skin unbroken?

Perhaps the earth is as mundane as it has always been. Perhaps it is just that no godly flesh can weather two hundred years of running.

“Lord Hermes?” Thanatos asks, as Hermes leans in to him, eyelids fluttering.

“Apologies,” Hermes says, with a sad facsimile of a smile. “I am… tired.”

The words feel painful and private, a secret not meant for his ears. And yet though he desires, suddenly, to give them a privacy he would not normally care to provide, he finds himself unable to move.

“What has happened?” Thanatos asks again.

“Work,” Hermes obfuscates. Just like a god. He wobbles to a stand, though Thanatos makes a noise of protest, arms out to catch him should he need it. Nevertheless he remains resolutely on his bleeding feet. Charon did not know a god could look so thin without having lost any weight, skin taut with the same sickly pallor as a man who has not drank in many days. And yet his stature remains unyielding, determined, and proud. One who has not been pampered and preened by surface gods and their servants, but who was worked and toiled and bled for a craft few outwardly appreciate.

He looks, suddenly, Chthonic.

Hermes, psychopomp, laughs then. It is that strangled, grating sound that Charon remembers from before their era of silence. Beautiful, perhaps, to the untrained ear. Ugly to those who know the desperation and deceit of the dying and dead.

“I apologise for the entrance, but once I was heading your way, I’m afraid I’d quite forgotten how to slow down.”

“’Forgotten’…?” Thanatos echoes, incredulously. “How long must you run to forget how to…?”

Whatever he sees in Hermes’ eyes must give him his answer, for he does not finish that question.

“What do you need?”

Finally, finally, Hermes deigns to look Charon’s way, and whatever thing it was that Thanatos saw disappears from his gaze, expression turning genial and blank as Hypnos’ indecipherable grin. Or perhaps the thing remains there, and it is Charon’s own lack of skill to read it that hides it from view. The god Hermes returned to the silent automaton, even with trembling muscles and ichor seeping from cracked heels.

“I am sorry, my associate, but may I take your brother’s attention from you for a moment?”

He opens his mouth, to… what? Protest? Give his permission? He is not his brother’s keeper, and Thanatos only gives him a terse bow, hand coming to Hermes’ back to support him. It is by Hermes' Olympian nature that he walks with head held high towards the entryway, moving away from that steadying hand with a firm pace only betrayed by his sweat-damp muscles trembling in the candlelight.

He pretends he does not see it when Hermes collapses, and Gentle Death sweeps him up in his arms.

And so ends their first meeting in two hundred years.

---

He cannot stop thinking about it.

He cannot stop thinking about it.

There are no souls to ferry, and there continue to be none for over three days. A blip in time, but an eternity when humans multiply so rapidly as they do. Hypnos quickly grew tired of the predictability of the burning of his misplaced offerings, and left only a few meagre hours after Thanatos and Hermes did. He has been left alone.

Three days.

Three days is nothing.

But two hundred years.

Gods, he cannot stop thinking of it. Two hundred years. Again but a blip of time, but to run. To run at the speeds of which Hermes is so capable and so famous for, to the point where the sheer momentum must have carried him in his most exhausted moments. To the point he could no longer recall how to command his muscles to stop. What could have happened? What is, perhaps, still happening? That Thanatos is gone for so long would imply the issue requires him, and persists in requiring him. After all, he is as much a god as any of them, bound deeply to a duty that calls out to be met. He would not stop delivering the dead for anything that did not necessitate it.

Charon does not return to his hidden domain in those three days. Instead, he stands where they left him. He does not move, has no need for it. His thoughts loop and loop, compelled to return to ruminating on those two hundred years no matter how hard he tries.

At first, the closest shades watch him. Only for a day, perhaps slightly less. Moments. Then, his wandering shades watch him and murmur and hold an odd sort of vigil around him. He stands, and does not move, and where they once lined the shores they now slowly come to him, following each other, until they are ebbing and flowing around him as a tide around a single lonely islet, his shore marked only by the thick cloud of black fog that sinks to his feet with every steady breath. His dock does not creak beneath their insubstantial weight, feet invisible and pacing, always pacing, orbiting around him in a new, rapturous quiet.

---

The one to bring him news is Lady Artemis.

He knows, in the vaguest possible sense, that Artemis has carried messages when required in the past. She is perhaps swifter and more reliable than all the gods but Hermes, not for her speed, but for her sheer force of will and ability to track her quarry down. Her focus. In the absence of Hermes she has been called upon before, but by other gods than he.

Presumably there were no messages she could possibly be required to pass on, when Hermes was working so desperately, running for two hundred years. Unless, of course, the work was linear in its pursuits, a task so great and singular that Artemis had to carry every message he could not.

She certainly has never carried his thread. He cannot imagine any Olympian taking on the mantle of psychopomp, certainly not one of Hermes or Artemis’ status in that Most Exalted Twelve anyway, though they would likely be the only ones capable. Though perhaps that is a folly, the propaganda of surface gods, that the Exalted are on their pedestals because they deserve it, because they are simply more powerful and important than anyone else. After all, no Titan sits upon those thrones but Aphrodite.

Even so capable gods as Charon’s own ilk did not come to take the title. He does not know if this was because they were too tied to their duties, or because they were simply unconcerned. Perhaps they are of the opinion that he since ruminated on – that the work will be done, inevitably, whether in moments or days or thousands of years, and it is inconsequential when or how it is performed. Why join the work when the humans who die will all come to their finally rest eventually, one way or another?

But then, he has not seen many of his siblings since their births, and some he has never seen at all. They are not as the Olympians are, dabbling in each others’ affairs at every opportunity. Most likely many of them are not even aware of what is occurring. Perhaps some would come if they knew.

Perhaps they recognise that six days is nothing, and that he is simply being too narrow, too proud of the importance of his work. Too… ridiculous. Though the restless dead may, as he has heard rumours, make nuisances of themselves when allowed to wander, he does not know the surface well. Human memory is short. Catastrophic war can become myth in only two mortal generations. Six days of shades wandering where they ought not will become much the same.

Artemis has not come to take up the mantle, but she has come to bring him news.

She does not cross the threshold of the Underworld. She is very much an Olympian. What Olympian would wish to step through the gate and feel their powers washed away on the Styx, every power not inherent to their bones and marrow left behind? What lion would wish to become a lamb?

Likewise, to step through, declawed or not, would be as good as trespassing to try, and she is no idiot. Well-used to handling beasts, or perhaps more noble and decorous than her other pompous brethren, she must perform some kindness or respectful gesture to Cerberus unprompted, for he does not cleave her in two. He may be loyal to Hades, inasmuch as he plays role of Hound and Hades of Master, but he is not only a hound. He is no more bound to Hades’ petty pact between himself and the Olympians than Charon is. He would protect the Underworld first and Hades second, always.

But, for whatever reason, he does not kill her. She could not treat him as a mortal hound, for though he is not as proud a creature as many of them, he is still a Chthonic god, one of Charon's own. Charon has little respect for the Olympians, but from all he has heard, he doubts Artemis would be so foolish with Cerberus. Her actions, whatever they were, are enough that Cerberus turns his back on her and enters the gates, which is what alerts Charon to her presence at all.

It is that fierce, intelligent gaze that breaks him from his vigil over his empty skiff. As two beings tied by their respective singularness of language, their tongues spoken by no other, they understand each other well. Though he may have stood quietly, and perhaps could have continued to stand quietly for many more days, Cerberus chuffs, and Charon dutifully goes.

His feet uproot from where they lay planted, his dark fog flowing back as he takes his first step in six days now. His praying shades bow, and gently part for him, sliding back as a tide does, each one behind taking steps back to bring the next back with them. None need to shiver and vanish and reappear elsewhere. In sync, they give each other room. They part and flow backwards, and do not follow him, but watch him carefully as he goes.

It is strange. He knows the space each shade occupies, and the time each one owes before they can board his boat. And yet, there is new… awareness. He feels their eyes upon him as he goes forward. He knows prayer and exaltation. He has little in the way of direct cult worship, all his mortal devotion spread out through the act of death rites, supplanted into offerings. He hasn’t known prayer except by the prayer that his boat remain steady and true, delivering shades to their rightful place in eternity. Why pray to him when an offering lies upon the eyes or tongue or breast and guarantees travel? For those who have no offering, who living is there to even pray at all? Those with no offering have died alone, unknown, unseen. No, prayers go to Thanatos, or Hermes, for swiftness of travel into the Underworld. To Hades and Nyx for the kindness of their judgement. He hears tale of mortal kings made into judges of the Underworld, who may be prayed to for kind judgment also, but this feels folly to him. If Hades gave the right of judgment to any mortal, then he is a fool. He doubts their legitimacy, and suspects these are only tales woven by pathetic mortal kings to spread amongst their subjects after death, to elevate them into a mythos they do not belong.

But now? Now, he feels worship.

He does not know if they felt such a way before, and simply did not care to feel the prayers wash over his skin, or if these six days of silence have changed them, but the wandering shades are now his followers, and they are no longer as restless as they once were. Perhaps that will change if – when – things return to normalcy. But for now, they are still but for their swaying, gently disappearing from view and reappearing behind him as a wake as the untethered islet moves through the unearthly waters.

Only a handful of times has he ever crossed the threshold, and only ever on his boat. Certainly he never expected that the first instance he would do so on foot would be for the goddess of the hunt. Although, no. He would not go at all, were it not for Cerberus’ approval. He would go and go and go for Cerberus, forever.

It is rare he even moves so far away from his rivers, even with so few steps as these. The throngs of shades behind him increase their murmuring. Where for he and Cerberus the gate is open and the surface world visible, but for a gauzy, colourless film that slightly warps the view, the gate appears as a void into the darkness for both shade and man. A man viewing from the outside would see a dark entrance within a beautiful temple or solemn cave, pitch black and sinister, radiating unease and primal fear to stay away. Likewise a shade looking out sees the world past the gate suddenly end, as if not only their life snuffed out from the surface, but all the world with it too.

He is unsure, and does not care to find out, if shades feel the same unease looking out at that darkness as living men feel looking in. They have never spoken of it to him, not a one. More shades have tried to escape than living men who have tried to enter, so the aura it exudes must not be quite so powerful. Or perhaps shades simply feel they have less to lose, when they are dead.

In any case, it is for the best they do not see Artemis beyond the veil. Humans lose themselves in the presence of gods. He can easily imagine his shades pouring out towards her, praying and grasping at her for some perceived salvation. Cerberus would have no problem keeping them back, of course, and has on more than one occasion fought back upstart kings and their armies who seek to subdue and conquer Death and all its facets, but the inconvenience is still an inconvenience.

Artemis is hazy, but clear enough that it is easy to see the trepidation on her face as he begins to step through, and Cerberus crosses back in to the Underworld. Though Cerberus is more than enough to keep shades in, there is no strict guarantee that this unusual action of Charon leaving the Underworld might stir them up into some odd frenzy. He keeps guard well.

And yet Charon knows that they will not frenzy now. They are his. They held vigil over him in his weakest moment. He does not look back, but he feels them swaying, gazing, praying.

The first step through sends a lurch of deep, existential wrongness through him. He holds firm and shows none of it, but it claws at him from the ground up. It is as the sensation of an immortal god upon his boat. A wrongness. A wrongness. No immortal thing should be upon his boat, and the ferryman of the dead should not be on the living surface.

It is at once a ringing of bells in his bones, as much as a low rolling ache, a thunderstorm looming across the wine-dark sea. It is how he imagines the aura of unease the gateway exudes feels to mortals.

He expresses none of this, of course, but his mind alights briefly on the thought of if Hermes would notice it. Certainly he would recognise the darkness of the vapour that spills from his maw, how heavily it sinks. He thinks, traitorously, of how Hermes would react. With concern? With discomfort?

Lady Artemis, goddess of the hunt, bows her head to him and does not look him in the eyes. He suspects that she too would keenly see his reaction to the outside world should she deliberately look for it, not through understanding and time spent together, however silently, but by her clever eye. The part of her that is as Hermes is.

But she does not look at him.

“Lord Charon,” she says, like the words are foreign in her mouth. Which, of course, they are. “Thank you for deigning to see me.” Her stilting language speaks of lines rehearsed. He wonders who told her to speak so humbly. Certainly not any Olympian.

Although perhaps a god of diplomacy might.

“I bring you news,” she says. She holds no scroll in her hands, her quiver and bow over her shoulder, so she must have memorised the words. He knows little of her abilities, so does not know if this means she has carried the message for those six days, or if it is fresh in her mind, dictated to her moments before she chased him down with single-minded focus. “Lord Hermes sends his apologies, and his regards.”

The hidden place behind his ribs aches suddenly, fiercely, almost to the point he can’t breathe. It passes as quickly as it came and no revealing stutter in the fog occurs.

“There is trouble above,” she recites, and then, remarkably, turns a deep, blotchy red. “Here, I mean. We’re on the surface, so it’s not above. Not on Olympus. Sorry, I – that was –“ She coughs, and goes for the dagger at her hip. In any other instance this would mean danger, however foolish it might be for a god like her to try anything against an entity as ancient as he, but he is, unfortunately, now quite intimately familiar with the concept of needing a tactile comfort. He sees her awkward twitch, the softening of the muscle of her arm as she grasps it. She breathes in, and out, slowly.

Normally, he would be impatient, infuriated even. Now he finds he has all the time in the world.

She starts again. “There is trouble here. A war amongst humans, at a scale previously unheard of. A cold war, maintaining a tenuous peace only by a continuous and carefully gilded sharing of words. Suffice it to say the god of diplomacy and messages is intrinsically tied to the peace.”

How like an Olympian, to talk themselves up like this, even when not in person.

“It seems Fate too has a hand,” Artemis says, and spares a quick glance at the gate. Does she suspect his sisters lurk within, that they turn their singular gaze upon her from beyond the darkness? Even he knows not precisely where they reside. “Peace is not necessary, as you know. But it seems Lord Hermes’ lot is cast, for now. He does not know when he will return, but he sends his regards and his apologies, again.

“Thanatos will return to you shortly. And in fact –“ Here, Artemis cannot resist rolling her eyes, “If I suspect correctly, and I do – good Gods, Hermes,” she curses, “Then Thanatos shall return in –“

A crack of air, and the God of Peaceful Death appears, sword and gauntlet raised.

“- Well, about now really,” she quotes, looking disgusted, and turns away.

Thanatos lurches, his motion aborted, and gapes.

“He sent me back!” he shouts, like he cannot believe what has just occurred. For a moment, Charon is confused by this. How did Hermes send him here? Surely teleportation is not within his bag of tricks. “He, that –!“ He closes his mouth abruptly as he realises just to whom he is in the presence of, and blanches, sheathing his sword. “Lady Artemis,” he says, on a gust of air. “… Brother.”

Artemis turns, only enough to bow her head tightly to the both of them, before she walks away into the dense, frostbitten brush. Presumably her chariot lays out of sight, perhaps deeper in the forest where her nymphs can protect it. Though what damage she could possibly suspect might come to it here, he is unsure. Perhaps it is that she despises them so much that she feels being in the very presence of their realm taints her material belongings.

Or perhaps it is simply that her next quarry is close enough to track on foot and she is off to have a little frivolous godly fun.

When the last of her shape disappears from view, Thanatos abruptly bursts into motion, wrestling under his neckpiece and muttering curses. Hair and eyes wild, he looks like a victim of Dionysus’ curse. Aggrieved, he throws something yellow to the ground.

It catches the air and flutters pathetically on the breeze, alighting daintily upon the frost.

A feather.

A replacement boon.

He realises, then. Hermes, multifaceted Hermes, god of many shifts, is also the god of safe and swift travels. With what powers he had, he did not cast a teleportation spell. He simply returned Thanatos home. But not to the Underworld. To outside of it. Because that is all he can do.

To the gate. Never past it. Only the Chthonic gods and Hades have that right. Had he not just remarked that Artemis would be defanged were she to step through? Hermes, though psychopomp, never gained the rights given to Hades. He came too late, the oath already cast long before his role was formed.

Hermes' powers, bar those most intrinsic and most benign, do not extend once he steps foot through the gate into the Underworld. It is a promise amongst the Olympians, bound in ichor and burnt offering and ancient fealty to Nyx, the oath strengthened when inherited by bitter Hades. One he never saw in person, too incensed, too furious to attend. One he felt deeply in his bones once cast, and cursed his mother and Hades for planting in the very core of his earth and river.

Perhaps Hermes would know where he sent the recipient of his boon, but not precisely. The closest he could get is the gate, and with the Underworld, Darkness and aether all sprawling far further than the material Gaia, the gate was hardly any clue at all. Why, it was practically nothing.

The boons would never have revealed Erebus, or his domain within it. No weapons drawn nor spells cast within the Underworld would do anything. His bag and coin purse would be an exception, as benign as they are, all spells dampened and made inert but the one to increase their size, as the god of commerce and messages would require such room for carrying.

There is a rising sickness behind his ribs, that sense of foreboding that he knows now is that loathsome emotion called embarrassment.

Hermes would never have seen anything, and he almost certainly had known that was the case all along. He would never have placed a spying mechanism on the boons, because he was as much beholden to the oath as all surface gods were. Why bother with the effort? It wouldn't work.

It was why the flame burnt so cleanly in his palm. There was no hidden curse in the dust, because there was no hidden curse in the feather. It would be a waste of effort.

And almost certainly, his precious gift, that ugly purse, would likewise never have been able to draw a coin from the Styx, its finding magic made inactive.

Did he know? Is that why he left when he gave his gift? Carried away with his intentions back on Olympus, with all his powers intact, forgetting what would happen once he descended beneath the earth? Wasting effort?

He must have been struck by embarrassment, having remembered his power would not work. Feeling himself made lame, and too drawn into the pit of his intentions to admit he had failed in his venture to ease Charon's perceived suffering? Realising, as he talked?

He had been tongue-tied, hadn't he? He'd turned red, and kept insisting the word 'theoretically'. 'Theoretically', he'd said, over and over. The god of eloquence and diplomacy, stumbling over his words, turning pink. He hadn't thought much of why, at the time, or perhaps had assumed that Hermes only struggled with his shift as god of eloquence because he was so struck by the awe and might of a being so strong as Charon. But now, why, wasn't that the same stumbling and flushing he recognised in Thanatos when he was ever embarrassed or unsure?

He can only imagine, a prideful god being so heartfelt in his desire to cause an action, only to then be proven wrong by Charon dipping the purse in the Styx and having nothing sent into his hand. The same as Thanatos, desperate to award his eldest brother a careful gift, suddenly doubting how worthy the gift was once it passed from his hand. Disappearing in a crack of light and sound. Fleeing.

Why, any god would flee to save face. Certainly Hermes could not have taken self-pitying vengeance as a god might, taking out his shameful feelings on those around him as his brethren would to a human. With what powers would he take out his fury? And onto whom? Certainly not so powerful and ancient a deity as Charon. The only sensible recourse, because no god is so clever and humble as to actually apologise and admit they simply forgot and were incorrect, would be to run and pretend it never happened. To flee.

To never speak of it again. As Charon had intended with the gift also.

Fools, the both of them.

He does not know how long he has been thinking, his body slow but his mind capable of speeds unknowable, because when he returns from this awareness Thanatos still looks incensed, lifting his sword to cast judgement upon that gift that betrayed him.

It cannot have been long. Thanatos is kind and softspoken, but his fury, when kindled, burns bright and hot and swift. He does not hesitate.

As Thanatos swings, he reaches down, and he trusts completely Death's strike. The blade catches the sunlight and then stops, inches from the brim of his hat, the cut wind setting his coins tinkling. The brim protects the shivering feather from the blast of air, and he tips it solemnly into his palm.

He cups his other hand over it, shielding it, as he stands.

He is unsure what his brother sees, when their gazes meet. But whatever it is that burns behind his eyes and teeth, douses out what burns behind Thanatos'. His sword swings elegantly down and back into its sheath, and Gentle Death is calm when the Ferryman reaches for him.

He lifts Thanatos' neckpiece, forged from gold born in the same vein as where Charon's neckpiece also originated, so long ago. He finds the hidden thread, broken but still attached, and though his power lies not in repair, or weaving, it takes no power at all to thread the feather back onto it and tie it in a firm knot.

Thanatos' chest is fiery hot beneath his chiton, his heartbeat born of eternal burning essence the same as Charon's, only hidden by a thicker wall of bone and flesh on Nyx's more educated try at manifesting offspring. Though the twins do not breathe fog the same way he does, their cores are the same. His skin is cool at his hands and feet but burns unseen nevertheless. The same.

The feather rests against that heat, unseen when he places the neckpiece back down against Thanatos' breast.

"Brother," Thanatos says, and bows to him.

They walk back towards the gate, together, and all three of Cerberus' heads regard them knowingly as he steps back out.