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When Thanatos was a child, the world was too. Mortals were proliferating, their habits and beliefs strengthening the gods, imbuing Love and War with presence and power – but their deaths remained haphazard and unpredictable and sloppy. Appropriate work for the young Death, who was still learning and experimenting. His sisters the Keres attacked their work with gusto, tearing souls off the mortal plain with slaughter and disease, but Thanatos preferred the company of Hypnos. Together, the brothers could offer humans the gentlest end possible.
They had a different approach to the work, however. Hypnos lazily trailed their Mother Nyx so he could spend daylight lounging around, until humans couldn’t not sleep at night. Thanatos couldn’t afford to rest, not that he truly needed it, but the routine Hypnos wove into Nyx’s darkness offered mortals a quiet time for intimacy that piqued Thanatos’ curiosity.
When he approached bedsides, he found people entwined with each other and thought it dangerous. Humans selected those they were closest to but then willingly sank into their most vulnerable state while holding them. Mother animals had the right idea, to stay awake while their precious cubs slept, to watch over them.
Nyx combed his hair back with cool, soothing fingers and said he would come to understand mortals during the course of his work, but she was too busy to explain everything then. Tartarus was shifting around them to accommodate the banished Titans and the realm’s appointed Lord. Hades began his reign and the Underworld filled with new beings.
Thanatos was wary of Megaera at first, born of blood and saltwater as she was. The Furies’ lust for punishing mortals rivalled his sisters’ lust for mortals’ violent ends. But it didn’t take long for the two to recognize they shared the same alienation from their siblings and the same serious work ethic. Thanatos found his first friend in her.
Neither were much for fruitlessly filling silence. So, when Megaera brought up the subject of love not long after the Lord of the Underworld took a bride, Thanatos knew it wasn’t a topic to be treated lightly.
They sat on the bank of the rich, red Styx in a rare moment of quiet, two adolescent immortals whose roles and reasons for existing grew firmer by the year. Her whip and his scythe lay on the cold stone of Tartarus at their sides.
“Shouldn’t you know more about love than me?” Thanatos asked. “You were the one born at the same time as Aphrodite.”
“And we have so much in common,” Megaera drawled, husky and sarcastic.
“I don’t have much use for the feeling, or any feeling really,” Thanatos said after a moment of thought. When Megaera scoffed, he added, “I do appreciate the company of some over others, of course, but love only concerns me because of its unpredictable effect on how mortals respond to me. Sometimes, they are content to go, knowing they were loved. Other times, they cry and scream, despairing that they must leave their lover behind.”
She didn’t respond, but Thanatos knew she was contemplating what it would be like to feel that kind of Fate-fighting passion for another. Gods and humans could love, that was certain. But whether chthonic beings like them could as well, it was impossible to determine. Their sisters definitely couldn’t, the Erinyes and the Keres with their fixation on gory endings and gorier epilogues.
Persephone’s arrival marked the beginning of a great deal of change in the House of Hades, unsurprising for the Goddess of Spring. Everyone, even Hades himself, was charmed by her. The messy minutiae of the realm got tidied away by her strong hands. A garden grew where no garden had ever thought to exist before. And she birthed the least predictable creature in the Underworld: a child whose apparent death sent her fleeing to Greece, a quarter-mortal that Night herself revived, a godling that bled.
Thanatos couldn’t say how long it took for the fire-footed infant to grow into the adult form he appeared destined to remain in. Immortality wasn’t a straight line, and time contracted and expanded in strange ways beneath the earth. Thanatos and Megaera had existed for centuries but were also scarcely a few years older than Zagreus, and all of them were impossibly young compared to Nyx.
Thanatos found himself considering his existence before Zagreus as colorless. The prince’s vibrance and energy were like nothing else that inhabited the Underworld. Thanatos had never really noticed how cool all their bodies were until Zagreus was there throwing arms around their shoulders and pulling at their wrists, his skin hot as sunshine against theirs. He had all the unpredictability of a blaze as well, which made him well-liked in spite of the trouble he caused. Because there was nothing so precious to an immortal as a creature that could continue to surprise.
Unlike the rest of them, Zagreus seemingly wasn’t born bound to a purpose. He seemed almost mortal in his aimlessness and his demands to choose what he wanted to do. Hades set him to training with Achilles just to keep him busy.
Megaera grumbled about the prince’s audacity, which might have signified her dislike of him had Thanatos not been keenly aware that she had never complained about anyone other than her sisters before.
The first time Zagreus died was, incredibly, a complete accident. The pillars of Tartarus were unstable and Zagreus was reckless. The chamber collapsed, the ancient stone ruthless.
Hades sat like a statue at his desk despite Nyx’s assurances that she could still sense the prince. The whole House held its breath until Zagreus clambered out of the River Styx, rivulets of primordial blood dripping off his otherwise perfectly normal body.
“Huh,” Zagreus said, inspecting his hands with his usual casual curiosity. “So, I can die but dying doesn’t stick. That’s good to know.”
Megaera fucked him senseless not long after that, as though she had been waiting for the Fates to send her a sign, some sort of proof that Zagreus could handle her.
“Zagreus hasn’t used his bed for sleeping in a rather long time, but it’s certainly getting used for something else,” Hypnos giggled to a startled Thanatos. “Which is fortunate, considering Lord Hades restricted him to the house from now on.”
Thanatos felt a cold kick of fire in his gut. It was a sensation he didn’t recognize. Not quite anger. Not quite sadness. However, Demeter’s cruel winter triggered another famine and kept him too busy to fully define the feeling. It was easier to put it out of his mind. At least until when he next delivered a batch of oath-breakers to Megaera, when it again erupted like winter in his lungs.
Thanatos watched her deft, strong hands and wondered how she touched Zagreus, whether she bruised him, the sounds he might make—
Thanatos’ train of thought broke off when he noticed the desolate expression on Megaera’s face. She’d never display anything but wrath in front of those she punished, so it wasn’t until later that Thanatos had a moment alone with her. They stood side by side, looking out over Tartarus from the west balcony.
“That conversation we had about love once…” She began, eyes on the burbling Styx. “…it’s bullshit.”
Thanatos glanced at her, distracted by the uncharacteristic note of anguish in her steady voice. Had Zagreus broken her heart? He didn’t seem capable of it.
She shook her head before he could ask. “I thought if I could…with anyone, it would be with him.”
And Thanatos understood. If he’d been capable of falling in love, he would have fallen for Zagreus too. But he supposed that wasn’t what the Fates had in store for chthonic gods. They were creatures made of endings and eternal darkness and endless obligation.
It didn’t surprise him to find Zagreus pouring out his sorrows to Achilles while they sparred. The legendary warrior was far more a father to the prince than Hades, and Zagreus received his advice far better.
“Matters of the heart are tricky business, lad,” Achilles said, sounding weary even as he expertly blocked the thrust of Zagreus’ blade. “Sometimes, it’s kinder to leave them be.”
“I just wish I knew what I did wrong,” Zagreus said, barely dodging in time.
“Nothing,” Thanatos said.
The spar paused as the two combatants looked at him. It wasn’t like Thanatos to interrupt, and now that he had, he was reluctant to explain that Megaera, like him, simply couldn’t feel things the way Zagreus did. Zagreus with his vibrancy and his bright red blood and thread of mortality – he was unique among them.
“She cares a lot about her work,” Thanatos finally said. “Unlike you, she is inextricably bound to her purpose.”
Zagreus seemed annoyed by that. “There must be some way to release her from—”
“No, Zagreus, there isn’t. No more than you could separate me from my duties. I am death. She is vengeance. Try to understand that. Coming between her and her work will not end well.”
Zagreus, being Zagreus, tried anyway and, as Thanatos predicted, all it did was sour Megaera’s attitude. She stopped speaking to him, relying on time to snow over the salted distance between them.
To Thanatos’ relief, the patient counsel of Nyx and Achilles eventually reeled Zagreus’ spirits back up to normal. He returned to tearing up the enormous halls and cavernous rooms of his home, burning footprints into the carpets that promptly rewove themselves. When Thanatos could spare a moment, he and Zagreus competed in games in the courtyard or chatted in the lounge.
Then, one day, Thanatos returned to the House of Hades to discover Zagreus was gone. Achilles admitted this wasn’t the first of Zagreus’ escape attempts, that the prince was pretty determined to make it to the surface and that with the assistance of Nyx, Charon and his relatives on Olympus, there was a fine chance he’d make it.
And Thanatos’ heart – the heart of Death Incarnate, the heart that wasn’t lonely, the heart he was sure was incapable of love – broke with such violence that he gasped.
Zagreus was leaving. Permanently. And he hadn’t even said goodbye.
With that cold fire licking at his ribs again, Thanatos followed the trail of smashed pillars and ransacked troves through Tartarus. He didn’t want to neglect his work for too long, not because it wouldn’t get done, but because the Keres wouldn’t be kind about it. If he wasn’t there to gift a mortal their peaceful end, the responsibility quickly shifted to their less-peaceful purview.
And yet, he couldn’t just let Zagreus walk away.
It was irrational, he knew, but if Zagreus was going to abandon him, Thanatos wanted him to say so to his face.
The confrontation wasn’t as satisfying as he hoped. It didn’t surprise him that he couldn’t change Zagreus’ mind but what was surprising was how Zagreus’ mismatched eyes slid sideways in remorse, as though this was the first time Zagreus had permitted himself to think about what he was doing to the people in the House who loved him.
…loved him?
Thanatos’ blood caught fire in response to the thought. He escaped into cold green light, leaving Zagreus in the stinking heat of Asphodel.
Of course. Of course, the son of a goddess able to summon a garden in a lightless realm and the Lord of the Underworld would be the one capable of planting a heartbeat — a wanting yearning aching heartbeat — into Death Incarnate.
And of course, Thanatos thought wryly, he’d realize he was in love with Zagreus the instant Zagreus was determined to leave him behind forever. The Fates didn’t give their siblings any special treatment. Or so he believed.
When Zagreus, breathless with success, dashed to Thanatos at the west balcony to announce that he’d found her, he’d found Persephone at last, Thanatos hadn’t understood.
“Then, why are you here?”
Zagreus’ face fell. “I can’t linger on the surface for more than an hour or so, it seems. But I’ve got to get back there. There’s so much I want to talk to her about.”
“You’re going to keep attempting to leave even though it means inevitably dying every time?”
Zagreus wet his lips and caught Thanatos off-guard with a grin. “I can think of worse things besides meeting Death over and over.”
Thanatos’ heart leaped into a gallop he was sure Zagreus ought to be able to hear.
And it occurred to Thanatos, for the first time, that all those unnecessary bottles of nectar might not have been given out of remorse.
“I…guess I’ll be seeing you out there then,” was all he could manage to say, unable to tear his eyes away from the glittery warmth in Zagreus’ gaze until shyness drove him to vanish.
The possibility of Zagreus was a living, burning sun inside Thanatos. He could barely breathe around it. The blurred, undefined emotions that erupted when he’d learned of Zagreus’ departure were now clarifying into a keen, undeniable desire.
Thanatos knew that he wasn’t the only recipient of nectar, that Zagreus tucked contraband into everyone’s hands, Megaera’s included. And though Thanatos pondered the slow rebuilding of their relationship (which appeared to be more healed by Megaera’s free reign to repeatedly murder Zagreus than the supply of liquid bribery), he noted that the cold fire of envy was no longer present.
Loving Zagreus was like loving air – it was absurd to try and keep it all to yourself – and now that it was impossible but somehow possible that Zagreus just might love him back, Thanatos had no use or need for envy.
However, as in the beginning, he was wary of Megaera. Her very name meant jealous. She couldn’t physically harm him, of course, but Thanatos was old enough to know the injuries to the heart lasted longer than broken skin. Lasted longer than the afterlife.
But again, Thanatos found instead a kindred spirit.
“Hmph,” she said with a smirk. “Go to him.”
“I’m not used to feeling things like this,” he admitted, the closest he’d come to confessing his nerves.
Megaera’s sardonic expression thawed into something almost warm. “He needs us both. What I can give him…It’s not what you can give him. I’m not…gentle. It’s not in me to be. And you’re not possessive – even when you wanted him to stay, you couldn’t stop helping him leave. I can make him feel owned, like he belongs to someone. But you can make him feel loved.”
It was the most she’d said to him in decades. He gave her a smile that made her roll her eyes in discomfort. She wasn’t in love, he realized. But she was happier than she’d ever been.
Choosing to submit to her over and over, choosing to succumb to death over and over – could Zagreus compose a clearer love letter to them both?
“Any tips?” Thanatos asked.
“Tsch,” she scoffed. “Not any you should use.”
Thanatos waited in the prince’s bedroom and relished the pleased blush that sprung to Zagreus’ cheeks when he walked in. He asked Zagreus what he was waiting for – for once teasing him about his patience rather than his impatience – and listened as Zagreus endearingly checked that he and Meg were alright with each other.
Zagreus drew closer, that smile on his face, and hesitated just a moment before sliding his palm over the exposed side of Thanatos’ ribcage, burning a trail around to the small of his back. Thanatos closed his eyes at the radiant heat, which grew as Zagreus pressed in and brushed their lips together.
Zagreus coaxed his mouth open with his own and warmth spilled through Thanatos’ veins, sweeter and thicker than ambrosia. He dragged his gauntlet off so he could trail his bare fingertips over Zagreus’ face, wanting everything and remembering all at once that he had never actually done this before.
He’d observed humans, listened to Hypnos’ pornographic gossip, and knew enough to know the order of operations expected of him here — but in this arena, it was sheltered, bratty Zagreus with the more experience. And Thanatos was content with that.
He found himself memorizing every detail. The more they kissed, the more he sensed life in a way he never had before. He felt fragile and powerful at the same time. Being in control was meaningless next to experiencing how Zagreus could pause and deepen eternity by tilting his head to slick his tongue over Thanatos’ own. The heated velvet of his mouth and the dry burn of his fingers explored the cool dips and curves of Thanatos’ body until it was Thanatos aching for haste.
A soft noise escaped him and Zagreus surged into it.
“What do you want?” Zagreus breathed, his eyes intense on Thanatos’ flushed face.
“More.” Thanatos swallowed to clear his throat. “Teach me what you like.”
Zagreus grinned in a way that sent a white-hot hook through the center of Thanatos.
Doubtless, this wasn’t the way Megaera went about things. Being ravished by a Fury must have been a thrilling, erotic whirlwind but likely one where Zagreus could only hold on for the ride. He was clearly eager to see what kind of person he was when he was leading this dance instead of being led.
And Thanatos was ready to follow him.
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