Chapter Text
Zagreus stops at Aphrodite’s, where the Olympians and sycophantic nymphs and lesser gods are gathered today. Ambrosia flows freely from a fountain in the courtyard, over which stars glint and glimmer like the gold that adorns him, rings and necklaces and bracelets collecting starlight and throwing it around the room as he walks. Demeter stands before the fountain, holding her glass in a loose grip, a chill surrounding her, as though to ward off interlopers.
He feels goosebumps rise along his arms as he passes into her space, snowflakes falling onto his skin and melting instantly. “Grandmother,” he says.
“I didn’t expect to see you here today,” she says, her voice low. She stares ahead, at the courtyard entrance, where a pair of nymphs clutch each other, laughing too loudly. The air around her is a touch too cold.
Zagreus holds back a shiver. “I actually came to see you. I have some questions. Perhaps we may sit?”
“Perhaps not,” she says. “I find the touch of death upon you to be… unwelcome. Perhaps you may stand in the sunlight for a few minutes to dispel it. Or drink some ambrosia, as I suspect this touch goes a bit deeper than skin deep.”
He raises his eyebrows. “Interesting,” he says.
It’s her turn to raise her eyebrows. “What is, child?”
“Your reaction. You told me before you have nothing against the Chthonic gods but you can barely stand to be in my presence after I’ve been to see Thanatos.”
Her lips press together into a thin, pale line. It’s all the confirmation he needs to keep pressing.
“You do have something against them,” he continues. “And I suspect it’s to do with my mother living among them before I was born.”
Demeter sighs deeply, her breath visible in the air. Snowflakes form from her exhale and melt before they drop to the ground. “Yes. Although she has been back on the surface for a long time, I still harbor some… resentment.”
Zagreus bites his tongue to keep quiet. More frost forms in the air, falling onto his shoulders, catching on his bright red chiton. Any other god would have deserted the scene out of discomfort, but Zagreus has already died three times today. And he wants answers.
“Persephone’s flight from Olympus nearly destroyed this place,” Demeter says after what seems like an eternity of silence. “And I nearly destroyed the world when I learned she had fled. Between Zeus and Hades’s already fraught relationship, and my own grief that my daughter who loved verdure had ended up in the dark and miserable Underworld, we could’ve caused cataclysmic damage to everything anyone knew. And then you were born, my little miracle.” She touches his face, her hand like a block of ice. She doesn’t smile but the lines around her mouth soften somewhat. “And she had to come back, because of you.”
He takes half a step back. Demeter’s hand drops back to her side. “But why did she leave? What took her down to Hades in the first place?”
“I can only guess,” Demeter says with a delicate shrug.
She raises the ambrosia to her lips and drinks deeply. The edges of the glass have completely frosted over. Zagreus looks around again, at the nymphs falling over each other, at the ambrosia fountain, at the gold shimmering on his own body. Excess and opulence that hits the eye but as soon as he tries to look deeper, he sees the nymphs are faking their laughter, ambrosia covers the sense that something is missing but never completely, and gold can feel heavy on his hands and around his neck. In their homes, at their parties, drinking their ambrosia, listening to their music, he has always felt out of place. He can easily see, in his mind’s eye, a younger Persephone standing exactly where he is now, thinking the exact same things, and once having the courage to do something about it.
Something he spoiled, albeit unintentionally. Something he can still fix.
Demeter could only guess, but Zagreus has felt it his entire life, this need to run away, away from these gods and their pointless games and their never ending revelry.
“I’ll be going now,” he tells Demeter.
She surveys him over the rim of her glass with a neutral expression, but the grip on the stem of her glass gives her away. “Very well. I wonder if you’ll listen to me if I tell you not to play with death.”
He gives her a scandalized look. “Me? Play with death? Never.”
A smile breaks across her face, breaking the frost in the air. “Ridiculous boy. Would that we could bottle up this power your boredom gives you. It would get these fawning nymphs off of us for good.”
.
Zagreus feels Thanatos’s presence at the threshold of his home. Before he died, he wouldn’t have said he was a “feeling” type of god. Things happened to him, drunk on ambrosia and floating from party to party, falling into bed with nymphs or lesser gods, falling back out to another big, shining home in the clouds of Olympus. He did not have very much awareness of the world around him. He didn’t need it. There was nothing to it but to drink and dance and hear the jingling of his jewelry clinging together in the always perfectly mild Olympic air.
And then he died. And then there were… feelings. Or perhaps, a lack of numbness that provided more awareness of feeling. As soon as Thanatos arrives on Olympus, Zagreus feels a pull on the edge of his consciousness, as though a thread is being tugged. A thread of fate, maybe. He lets it pull him up off his bed, through the courtyard of the house he shares with his mother, the only home he’s ever known. But walking through it now, seeing the glittering ivy creeping up the familiar walls and the fountain at the center of the courtyard playing softly, the water flowing like the soft strum of a lyre, he suddenly feels out of place. Like this isn’t really his home, or these things aren’t really his things.
Thanatos has his arms crossed, standing in the threshold, his head ducked, his hair in his face as though to cover it. When he sees Zagreus, a smile plays at his lips, small but still there.
Zagreus takes his hand and pulls him into the house. “Wow, you actually came,” he says. His heart is pounding. He takes a steadying breath. “I didn’t think you’d actually come up here.”
“I said I would.” Thanatos’s pale eyes dart around, taking in the decadent surroundings, the glittering furniture, the soft light cast by glowing torches that flicker against the walls. Overhead, the stars are bright, a clear night. Zagreus sees the stars reflected on Thanatos’s eyes and has to take another quick breath to ground himself.
“I know. I’m just… you’ve never been on Olympus before, have you?”
“My work doesn’t bring me up here.”
Zagreus realizes he’s still holding Thanatos’s hand. He starts to let go but Thanatos’s grip on his fingers tightens just a little. He’s still looking around at what he can see of the house.
“Your living conditions explain a lot,” Thanatos says.
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It means there is as much opulence here as I imagined based on how you dress and act.”
“I bet you have a pile of skeletons in your room. And that you don’t have any lights whatsoever.”
“I guess you’ll have to see for yourself.”
“Oh yeah?” Zagreus tugs Thanatos’s hand and pulls him a little closer. “Are you inviting me back to your place, Than?”
“Than,” he repeats, the familiar flush rising up his neck. His fingers twitch in Zagreus’s hand.
Zagreus’s next breath catches in his throat. “Come on, I want to show you my room.”
Although they’re alone in the house, Zagreus still closes his door behind Thanatos. There’s a party somewhere, there’s always a party, and his mother is over there lounging on a couch with a glass in her hand. He can hear the faint sounds of the crowd and the music if he focuses. But if he lets his focus drop, he can only hear Thanatos walking around his room, his arms crossed, looking around at all of Zagreus’s things, posters on the walls, the massive bed nobody ever sleeps in, the mess of clothes and jewelry strewn around the floor and poking out of his wardrobe. It feels as though they’re the only beings in the universe, just the two of them in this room, unseen, unknown.
Zagreus sits on the edge of his bed. “Like I said, I didn’t know you’d actually come otherwise I would’ve tried to clean up a little.”
“Somehow I doubt that.”
“Yeah, you’re right, actually.”
Thanatos pauses by the vanity, his fingers trailing over a string of shining pearls. “Do you ever spend any time in here?”
Zagreus is suddenly very aware of his position on the edge of the bed, his hands propping him up, sinking into the soft blankets spread around him. “Uh, sometimes.”
Thanatos looks at him, then quickly averts his gaze, back down at the pearls. A touch of gold settles along his cheeks again. Zagreus’s blood feels hotter than usual. He thinks he must be flushed too, the skin around his chest tightening as he tries to take a deep breath.
The sound of the pearls settling back onto the vanity’s glassy polished surface is the only sound in the room. “All day today, I was thinking,” Thanatos says suddenly. “About that first time you died. When I felt that pull, I was. Um. Afraid.”
Zagreus can feel his own pulse in his ears, behind his eyes, under his fingertips as he digs them into the bedsheets around him.
“I didn’t know what was happening,” Thanatos says haltingly, as though unsure of his own words. “The threads of fate usually tug me where I’m needed, but this was more of several threads, perhaps a rope, dragging me. And after that second time, I thought maybe I would get used to the fear, but it didn’t go away. It’s here even now.”
“Come here,” Zagreus says.
Thanatos comes to a slow stop a few steps away from him. For a moment, they just look at each other. The very air seems to shimmer between them, glittering with possibility.
“I’ve never felt anything like this before,” Thanatos whispers.
“I feel it too.” Zagreus is surprised by how easily the words come out. Between them, there is no frame of reference for this, whatever this is, this unprecedented feeling that floats like a bubble and expands in his chest.
Thanatos puffs out a sigh, looking relieved. “Oh. Good. Good.” He clears his throat. “Did you, uh. Talk to your mother?”
Zagreus fidgets with his rings, twisting them around and around his fingers. “Yeah. Kind of. She didn’t really tell me much, just that I couldn’t live in the Underworld for some reason and that she had to give up her life down there to live up here with me.”
Thanatos stares down at Zagreus’s hands. “Oh,” he says. “So you. You can’t go down there.”
“I don’t know. She didn’t reveal much. I have to corner her again. Do you… remember her?”
Thanatos nods, his hair sweeping along his cheeks. “Yeah, I do remember her down there at some point. I must have been very young because I can’t remember much.”
“Do you remember anything about what she was like there?” Zagreus tries to keep some of the desperation out of his tone but it comes out anyway.
Thanatos takes a step closer to him. “Just a feeling. I just remember warmth. From her. It’s a strange thing to feel in the Underworld. But her presence was warm.” Another step closer. Zagreus reaches for him, pulling him ever closer by his chiton, until he can press his forehead to Thanatos’s cool chest. “You’re warm too,” Thanatos says in a low voice. “In the same way I remember.”
Thanatos’s hand touches the back of Zagreus’s neck, almost hesitantly.
“You realize this makes you the son of my lord and master?” Thanatos asks.
A laugh bursts out of Zagreus’s mouth, hitting Thanatos’s skin. “Yeah. That’s. Well. How bad is that, exactly?”
“It’s definitely not completely good and problem free.”
“So, um. Does this mean you aren’t going to let me kiss you again?”
He leans his head back, his chin pressing into Thanatos’s chest, and is surprised with a kiss, Thanatos’s mouth cool on his, and soft, and unexpected. Zagreus makes a sound, it slips out past his lips as he tries to take a breath, and Thanatos only presses closer, stepping between Zagreus’s legs, his hands cradling his face, his skin almost icy in contrast to Zagreus’s feverish flush.
Thanatos pulls away and Zagreus is almost dazed for a moment, blinking up at him.
“No, that’s not what it means,” Thanatos says with a laugh that Zagreus feels as much as he hears.
“You have such a nice laugh,” Zagreus whispers. The familiar buzz in his veins can’t be explained away with ambrosia. He pulls Thanatos onto the bed beside him, the plush cushions that surround them sinking into the cloud like bed as they settle around each other. Zagreus’s jewelry provides a soft song in the background.
Thanatos takes one of his rings off, then another, placing them on the silky sheet between them. “I’ve gotten the feeling a few times that you don’t feel as though you belong here,” he says.
Zagreus watches him tug two more rings off, light bouncing off their glittering gems and shining onto Thanatos’s gray skin, reflecting and scattering light. “Maybe,” he says.
Thanatos pulls off his bangles next, and then his armband, his fingers cool on Zagreus’s skin, moving with intention. His left arm is completely bare now. He lifts it experimentally, moving it this way and that, feeling the lightness, the emptiness, the silence of the movement.
He lays on his back, exposing his right arm, and Thanatos removes the jewelry from there too, tugging off the rings, the bracelets, the armband. Hs takes off the necklaces next, the golden chains that adorn his neck, and the glittering laurel in his hair, and his earrings. Thanatos disappears for a moment and touches his ankles, then comes back holding the golden anklets that Zagreus had forgotten he was even wearing. He props himself up on his elbows, hearing no jingling for once, no gold hitting gold, and the silence of his movement is as decadent as the jewelry had been.
Thanatos looks at him, his eyes moving around his body. Zagreus stays still, waiting. His lungs burn. He realizes he’s holding his breath and inhales, taking in the smell of old flowers he’s come to associate with Thanatos.
“I feel like I’m seeing the real you now,” Thanatos whispers.
Zagreus runs a hand through the soft white hair. The way it moves between Zagreus’s fingers, no rings in the way, is almost obscene. A shiver runs through his entire body as the sound of hair slipping through skin fills the air, uninterrupted by jewelry clinging together.
“You are,” Zagreus whispers back. “You are seeing the real me. You’re the only person who ever has.”
.
Zagreus walks silently through the house, feeling Thanatos trailing behind him more than he hears it.
“Oh!” Persephone almost drops her bottle of ambrosia as she turns from the front doors, starting, the sound of her jewelry jingling as she brings her hand up to touch her chest. “You startled me! What a light step you have today.”
Her eyes slide past Zagreus and catch Thanatos, going wide.
“Oh,” she says again.
More silence. Thanatos shifts behind him, uncomfortable. Zagreus wants to take his hand but decides against it. One thing at a time.
“Mother, I think you already know Thanatos,” he says.
“Yes, of course.” She recovers quickly, all smiles. “Wonderful seeing you again. Please, sit. I hope Zagreus has at least offered you something to drink.”
She lifts crystal glasses out of thin air, splashing ambrosia into them, the liquid glowing and glittering in the dim torch light and star shine above. Zagreus takes a seat on a chaise facing her favored armchair. Thanatos takes a seat beside him and accepts his glass with a polite nod.
“It’s good to see you again, my queen,” he says.
Persephone gives a breathy laugh. “I am nobody’s queen, Thanatos. Please just call me Persephone.”
Zagreus puts his glass down on the table before them. “Mother. I have something I need to say.”
“Well, let’s have a drink first before getting right down to it,” she says hastily. “Thanatos is our guest, there’s no need to rush him—”
“Mother.” Something in his tone stops her protests. He holds his hands on his lap. His heart beats in his throat. He swallows it down. Out of the corner of his eye, he can see Thanatos watching him, his golden eyes narrowed, trying to figure out what he will say. It all comes out in a rush. “I think I’d like to visit my father and see the Underworld. I need to know where I came from. And I’d like you to come with me.”
Persephone takes a sip of her drink. He can see a faint quiver about her fingers. “Why, I have already told you why you can’t stay there.”
“I didn’t say I wanted to stay there. Just to visit. I’m sure between the three of us here and my father himself, we can find a way for a short visit.” The more he speaks, the steadier his voice becomes. He sees Thanatos’s hand twitch in his direction and then still.
“Zagreus.” She puts her glass on the table. “I don’t know if I should.”
“But we—”
“I didn’t say we.” Her eyes meet his suddenly, green as the summer, but different from how she usually looks at him. She seems sad. “I said I don’t know if I should go with you.”
He looks at Thanatos then, unsure of what he’s trying to find, but finding it anyway in the pale eyes on him, in the way his hand twitches toward him again, in the tiny, almost imperceptible smile he gives him, and Zagreus feels his spine straighten, fortified.
“Mother,” he says, leaning forward, forcing himself into her field of view. “You hate it here. On Olympus. You don’t care about any of these parties or these gods. You ran away to the Underworld and started a life there. You came back here because of me. And I’m grateful to you, for saving my life and for taking care of me for all these years. But you deserve to be happy.”
Persephone stares down at her lap. A tear falls from her face and drips onto the shining yellow of her dress, the tear like a diamond, catching all the light in the room as it drops. Thanatos’s hand twitches toward him again, and this time he reaches for Zagreus, his fingers brushing Zagreus’s wrist, his thumb pressing gently onto Zagreus’s racing pulse.
Zagreus glances at him. There’s a soft look about the turn of Thanatos’s mouth, a small smile that he doesn’t seem to be aware of. The sight of it fills Zagreus with a light and airy feeling in his chest, as though a bubble is expanding, expanding, lifting his shoulders back and keeping his chin up.
He turns back to Persephone. “Talk to me,” he says gently.
She swipes at her eyes with her glittering fingers. “Zagreus, it’s so complicated. My life with you has been wonderful. I love my family. But… Hades was my family once. He was my family too.”
He places a hand over hers. She always feels as bright as sunlight, her skin warm to the touch, almost as warm as his. “Come with me. Let’s see him together.”
“Oh, you wild boy,” she says, sighing, but a smile breaks across her face. “My wild boy. Very well. I will help you get to the Underworld to meet Hades. A short visit. And I will follow you shortly after, but let me take my time. That’s all I will insist upon. Alright?”
“Yes, yes,” he says quickly. “Of course.”
She just looks at him for a moment, tears caught on her eyelashes shimmering exactly like morning dew caught on a spiderweb. Her hands are clasped together under his on her lap. They have always seemed weighed down by the rings that adorn her. He should’ve known that she never belonged here either.
.
Thanatos’s fingers slip into his hair, his nails scratching lightly at his scalp.
“You’re distracting me,” Zagreus says, trying to keep his voice level.
“My apologies, prince,” Thanatos says.
“Gods. Please don’t call me that.”
“Alright, Zag.” Thanatos’s nails scratch his scalp again.
Zagreus can’t stop the groan that escapes him as Thanatos steps closer behind him. The sunrise they came here to see is quite forgotten. Zagreus glances down the cliff and watches the pale rosy light of dawn paint the waves as they crash against the sheer drop. He tries to focus on the water but Thanatos’s fingers tug slightly at his hair and another sound slips past his lips.
“Call me Zag again,” he whispers.
Thanatos presses his lips to the back of his neck, a feather light touch that sends goosebumps skittering across his skin. “Are you ready, Zag?”
Zagreus refocuses on the cliff. The drop seems more formidable during daylight. The water churns, waves rising and falling against each other. He leans back against Thanatos’s chest, and cool arms encircle him, holding him close.
“I think so,” he says. “I’m… nervous, I think. I’ve never been nervous before.”
“I’m nervous too,” Thanatos says. “But you should trust your mother. And trust me. One more death.”
Zagreus has died a few times by now, but never with Thanatos there, watching him. He finds this time colored by a trace of fear, a hazy feeling that obscures his excitement just enough to be noticed. He lets his weight rest on Thanatos, and Thanatos takes it with ease, holding them both as the sun rises ahead of them and the water turns pink and orange, bouncing the light back onto the sky.
“I think this might be my favorite place in the world,” Zagreus says.
“Wait until you see my room.”
“I doubt utter darkness and a pile of skeletons in the corner could beat this, to be honest.”
Thanatos’s chuckle reverberates through Zagreus’s back and into his chest, settling by his heart. “Bold words for someone with death literally hanging onto them.”
Zagreus turns to face him. Thanatos is smiling. It’s something Zagreus can’t seem to get used to, seeing it for the first time every time, and always accompanied by a drop in his stomach, the same sensation he feels every time he falls to his death.
Over Thanatos’s shoulder, the sun begins to shine on the ruins of the dilapidated house by Persephone’s old shrine. A house once well maintained, a house she maybe even lived in. There is so much more to her than being a bored Olympian. And so much more to Zagreus.
Thanatos kisses him suddenly, cradling his head with his cool hands. “Sorry,” he says, pulling back just a little. “You had this look on your face. Thinking.”
“You like when I think?” Zagreus asks, dazed.
Thanatos laughs again, a delicate sound. “Maybe you should do more of it.”
“Hey. I think a lot. I’m a thinker.”
“Uh huh.” Thanatos kisses his neck, his lips almost icy against Zagreus’s jumping pulse. “Also, I don’t have any skeletons in my room. And it isn’t dark. I have no idea why you keep saying that.”
“No skeletons at all? Not even a skull?”
He can feel Thanatos’s smile against his neck. “You’ll see for yourself. Let’s go home.”
Home. Zagreus clutches Thanatos close to him. A sense of nervous anticipation pools in the back of his mind. Olympus has never been home to him. Even before any of this happened, he was always sure of that. And the Underworld is shrouded in mystery, unknown, maybe even dangerous to him, Hades’s figure drenched in darkness in his own mind. If home is a place, it’s a place Zagreus has never been to. But if it’s a person….
He puts his hands on either side of Thanatos’s face and holds him in place, looking closely at him, at the smile, at the golden eyes that catch sunlight, at the white hair that seems to glow in the pale morning light. Behind him, the ruins of Persephone’s old house loom. He can feel her presence here in the morning, in the dew on the grass he stands on, in the birdsong and the leaves rustling on the trees around him and the smell of ripe fruit in the air. If home is a person, then he has been here all along, he thinks.
“Alright, Than, take me home,” he whispers.
Thanatos holds his hand. Zagreus takes a deep breath and leaps over the edge of the cliff, and the fall is as familiar as falling in love.