Chapter Text
Ending Zagreus’ life, Thanatos discovers, is not nearly so terrifying as the prophecy he was first given made out.
It is barely any different than any other death.
The queen and Zagreus both cannot see him, just as mortals cannot when he arrives for this purpose. They talk, though he does not listen to what they are saying. He focuses, instead, on the feeling, the same he had hundreds of times sitting next to Clotho as a child as she drew out fine threads for a fine tapestry that took up all of the largest wall and then some.
That’s done, isn’t it?
He cuts Zagreus’ brilliant red shimmering thread just as it begins to unspool, just the way he was taught at Clotho’s side, and the only thing different is…
There is no soul that flutters up. Zagreus’ soul stays in him, brilliant and irritated and beating at a body that no longer lives, restless to move again.
He thinks of a tapestry with a thread that shifts from red to orange and back, a thread that disappears and reappears and spiders through all the Underworld like a promise.
He never had anything to be afraid of at all, did he?
Thanatos debates appearing and collecting the body, but Persephone has pulled out a card and is already calling for Charon.
Maybe next time.
He leaves; he needs to thank Megaera still for making sure he wasn't late.
**
Persephone cradles her son’s body in her lap; he has not been dead long.
Charon will come for it, she knows. He did the last time, and the time before, and the time before. She has begged Zagreus to stay away, and yet he still keeps coming.
Still keeps dying.
She brushes his hair from his face.
There is a toll, soft and silver, and it makes her feel ill to hear it.
She looks up, and her eyes widen as she connects the sound to the god before her.
“My goodness, I can hardly recognize you. You’ve grown so much.”
Thanatos smiles ever so slightly, a far cry from the nervous and shy boy-shaped void she knew, that drifted after her in the halls and watched her in the garden.
“A little,” he says.
“You’re so tall now. And handsome.”
“You are too kind, Queen Persephone.” He crouches down before her, the grass beneath his bare feet wilting but not dying. Not quite. How gentle he has shaped himself. “My brother says he is too busy to fetch the body this time, so. Here I am.”
Persephone shifts Zagreus’ weight into his arms, and watches how he takes Zagreus as if Zagreus might wake if he is not careful. She rises to her feet again as he does.
“I can... bring you too, you know,” Thanatos says quietly. “I--miss you. Your garden. You were... Mother misses you, too.”
“I... I don’t know if I can bear the both of you begging. I’m not sure I would even belong there, anymore.”
“You would,” Thanatos says, firmly. “But I will not force you.” He looks at Zagreus, love plain on his face, and she wonders what she has missed by not being there to watch them grow together. “I’ve learned my lesson there.”
“I’m glad,” she says. “That you—I always hoped you two would get on well.” Perhaps not this well, but. It is good to know Zagreus is loved so dearly.
Thanatos cannot blush, she does not think, but he still looks away, still curls in just a little.
“If you change your mind,” he says instead, looking up at her askance, cautious. Still cautious.
“I know who to call on.”
He smiles then, and oh. She’d never thought he might give it to her, one day.
“Until we meet again, Queen Persephone.”
**
Zagreus goes back. Again.
Again.
Again.
“He has your portrait! Why would he keep it, if he didn’t still love you?”
He stares at her, pushing as hard as he can against the darkness swimming at the edges of his vision.
“Please, Mother, we’re—family. We—that’s what we do, we will find a way to fix this, together.”
“Alright! Alright. I’ll come. Just—just stop dying in front of me.”
He smiles, and wishes it didn’t hurt quite so much. But what does it matter? She’s going to come home, finally. At last. He tries not to let all of his weight fall into her as she helps him stand upright.
“Do you—how will we get home?”
“Charon. He gave me his calling card, when I left.”
“That was—nice of him.” It’s so hard, staying conscious.
“Stay with me Zagreus, just a little longer.”
A brush against his temple, like the flutter of wings. A little bit of the blackness recedes.
“As long as you need, Mother.”
He looks, but there are no butterflies here. And yet it feels—familiar. The shadows, the coolness at his temple.
And then Charon arrives. He collapses into the boat, feeling better already as he drops a hand into the Styx.
“Take us home, Charon,” his mother says.
**
<I told you,> Charon says to the shadows flitting over the surface of the Styx behind the boat, <that you would learn.>
Epilogue
Zagreus walks through the House, dragging his fingers along one wall.
This hall is old and dusty, and the only people who ever came here never do anymore, all of them grown. But they used to play here, a long time ago. It is where, he thinks, maybe the House began to have a pulse again.
He’s not the god of anything, but if he were...
He is following a pulse so quiet and slow that he only knows it by the spaces between the beats. If not for the Styx and golden eyes and a cut on his lip, if not for hundreds of deaths trying to leave this place, if not for being let go at all, he is not sure he would even be able to find it.
At the end of the hall, their carefully crafted hideaway is nearly gone. There are very few boxes of old decorations left and much of the furniture has been taken away and put back out, but there are still a few rugs, rolled up, and one that is not, and they make a decent enough place to rest.
And there is the source of that fragile languid pulse and Thanatos, shadow and silver, a dozing star-strewn darkness cast by life's fire.
He’s... beautiful. Zagreus hasn’t seen him like this, except—he has. Glimpses, from the corner of his eye, the darkness at the edge of his vision before he dies on the surface, the burst of shadow when Thanatos leaves. A familiar soul full of dying stars twined around an obol, attention fixed on him.
Thanatos is always so careful, except when Zagreus can sometimes convince him not to be.
Zagreus simply looks. It takes focus, to keep his own pulse from jumping at the sight of his... he’s not sure what he and Thanatos are anymore, exactly, only that he loves him, that he misses him so terribly when he cannot find him.
Has always missed him so terribly, when he’s gone.
Shadow and silver, and Zagreus remembers a kiss that turned Thanatos’ skin hot beneath his hands, gave him breath and pulse, the blush of life and eyes stained red. Zagreus does not know very much about how Thanatos has always presented himself to Zagreus, but he thinks, maybe, he shouldn’t have been able to do that.
He thinks he wouldn’t be able to even if he tried, if Thanatos stays like this.
He would like that.
“Than,” he says softly. He crouches down next to him on the rug. If he squints, he can see the outline of Thanatos, and he brushes his fingers along his jaw; gold trails after his touch, fades. “You don’t make finding you easy, do you?”
Thanatos stirs, and Zagreus realizes some of that star-strewn shape is wing as one stretches out, jagged feather-like edges cutting the blackness of the hall before settling again.
“You never told me you had wings. Or you look like this.”
Thanatos’ eyes open slowly, gold and brilliant against the deep and impossible indigo black of the rest of him. It takes time for him to wake, but it always has, hasn’t it.
Zagreus has always loved watching Thanatos wake.
Shadows murmur, and there is that familiar brush of butterfly wings across Zagreus’ skin. A pause, then, “Zagreus!” and Zagreus nearly falls over as Thanatos sits up, scrambling backwards, and he is—Zagreus feels it, the air getting colder and that thin slow pulse speeding into something almost life-like and the edges of Thanatos more defined, the wings starting to vanish, and it is certainly not the most elegant Zagreus has ever been, but he lunges after Thanatos, grabbing for him.
He is not the god of anything, but if he were—
“Don’t,” Zagreus says, hands half on Thanatos’ neck and half cupping his jaw, fallen across him in his attempt to close the distance, and it is so hard, to play out a pulse as slow and quiet as Thanatos’, so unnatural to him, but he tries anyway, because it’s Thanatos, because he has always tried when it is Thanatos. He keeps his eyes closed tightly as he concentrates. “Please, Than.”
It’s silent in the hall except for Zagreus’ breathing. Thanatos has not moved under him.
Eventually, Zagreus feels Thanatos slow to that distant star beat. He waits, just to be sure, but when it carries on without Zagreus needing to slow it, he lets out a long sigh and opens his eyes.
Thanatos is staring at him, terrified.
“You shouldn’t—” and there is an echo to his voice, and it reminds Zagreus of Chaos, just a little, except where Chaos is multitudes, the echo of Thanatos’ is lone and lonely, like a bell “—be here. I need to. It’s.”
I don’t want to lose you, Zagreus remembers, and realizes finally what Thanatos truly meant was I don’t want to end you.
“You haven't hurt me, Than,” Zagreus says, rubbing his thumb along Thanatos’ jaw. He pulls himself up so he's not half-sprawled, straddles the stars and darkness that only just hold shape. “You won't. I know you won't."
Thanatos has still not moved, but Zagreus can feel the air beginning to vibrate.
He kisses Thanatos.
Not soft, not like in Elysium, but hard, demanding, trying to push every last bit of warmth and life and love into it that he can, shoves a pulse at him just as loud and demanding, because he needs to prove to Thanatos there is nothing to be terrified of, not like this, not when Zagreus is all of himself, not when Thanatos is himself, and—
there, and he gasps as Thanatos finally moves, wrapping around him and pulling him in so they are flush. Thanatos is not cold, but he still leaves Zagreus’ shivering, like when he bleeds a little too much from a wound, and it is—
perfect.
He tangles his hands in Thanatos, digs his teeth into Thanatos’ bottom lip greedy, and Thanatos growls, wings curling in around them, around him. He can’t get enough air, but he doesn’t want it, he just wants—this, Thanatos, a raw edge of need as Thanatos starts to kiss along his jaw, down his neck, too sharp teeth that—Thanatos is always so careful—don’t break his skin and he can’t—
“Stop it,” he hisses, greed and fury making the words burn. “I want you, I've always wanted you, let me have you.”
—which he might regret later, but later isn’t now, isn’t Thanatos biting and breaking skin, isn’t Thanatos’ greedily drinking up all the heat Zagreus presses into him. Later isn’t the broken sound Thanatos makes when Zagreus digs his fingers into night-cut wings, leaving blood swirling in the wake of his touch. Later isn’t the sound of his pulse drowning out everything else or the fire burning through him, meeting the blackness at the edges of his sight with more light, more heat.
And maybe he can’t give Death life, but oh, isn’t it wonderful to try.