Chapter Text
Boredom, Zagreus sincerely believes, is the most powerful force in the universe.
The glass of ambrosia barely hangs on to his loose grip, the edge of it tilting downward toward the cloudy and ephemeral floors of Olympus. Golden, glowing liquid pools at the rim. He moves his limp wrist back and forth, toying with the moments before the drink spills, leading to a momentary lapse from the chatter of the endless party around him and the sound of surprise as the ambrosia spills, from the gods that surround him at yet another feast.
Beside him, his mother sips her drink and says, “You’ll spill that.”
Zagreus looks over at her without moving his head, seeing her face framed by his dark eyelashes. “If it spills, the floor will just eat it up. And I’ll have had a moment of distraction.”
She takes another sip of her drink. Her skin is as golden as the ambrosia in her glass, her hair as bright. The light of Olympus has always favored her. It only draws attention to their contrast, Zagreus’s skin pale as marble where hers is sunkissed, Zagreus’s hair black as night where hers is a shining and glorious blonde. His mismatched eyes, a source of interest and comments in Zeus’s house, is always more noteworthy when Persephone is close by, where other gods can glance between them and pick out her green eye on him, green as the verdure she treasures, and the mysterious red on black that he can never quite place.
He looks back at his drink. His wrist dips again, and a single drop of ambrosia breaks past the rest of the liquid and splatters on the floor. The sound of it slapping against the surface of the polished marble is the only indication that a mess has been made. It disappears, absorbed by the marble, almost instantly. A fraction of a second of something that ripples under the heaviness of the boredom he’s trapped under. He goes back to balancing the liquid on the rim of his glass.
“I thought Dionysus was looking for you earlier,” his mother says.
“The last thing I need,” Zagreus mutters. His cousins and their endless reveling, this pointless party included, were boring enough. But Dionysus’s reveling always included a hint of regret the following morning. Not that Dionysus himself ever felt anything but the desire to drink and dance. Zagreus is only ever aware of the sensation of blood rushing through his peculiar veins when Dionysus is plying him with wine just to see what would happen. “I’m not in the mood to drink today.”
His mother, ever the problem solver, looks around the room. It’s connected to the main hall through an elaborate archway, close enough to the rest of the family that Zagreus can clearly hear their booming chatter, glasses clinking, gods laughing, but still with some distance between them. His mother has never been one for too much mingling. Something he inherited from her, although he has always suspected that his reluctance to mingle too deeply with his divine family also comes from somewhere else entirely.
“Perhaps you could visit my altar then,” she says, drawing him from his thoughts.
Zagreus straightens up at this, finally holding his glass of ambrosia level. “Oh?” he says.
“Yes, I meant to go today but now I’m here, and Aphrodite may take offense if I leave her party early.”
Aphrodite’s party, is this why they’re here? Zagreus can hardly remember who set up what feast, whose name pops out of his mouth as they toast, whose house they sit in now, boredom obscuring the details of every moment of his life. Except when he’s on the surface, looking at humans. Their dull skin, their temporary bodies, their tired eyes offer a welcome break from the mundanity of eternal life. A trip to the surface is just what he needs.
“Alright, I’ll head down,” he says.
“Don’t—” Persephone starts.
“Don’t walk along the cliff, I know,” he says, heading her off before she can finish her familiar warning. He hasn’t been to her altar in a while but she gives the same warning every time. He gets to his feet, draining his glass. The ambrosia buzzes pleasantly in the pit of his stomach.
His mother sits back, resting her golden head on the back of a fluffy pink pillow. “Alright, Zagreus. I’ll see you at home.”
.
There are no mortals at Persephone’s altar today. Not that Zagreus had been expecting any. The light on the edge of the horizon is dimming, orange only on that thin line where the sun meets the sea, just before it dips below the surface, chased by stars. There is a briskness to the air, a bite in the soft cold that feels good on his always too hot skin. He brushes a long string of ivy off the stone altar, letting it drop onto the grassy floor around him. There are some offerings, coin and flowers and bowls of what once must have been berries before the birds got to them. Zagreus cleans it all up, tucking the dull metal coins into his chiton, upturning the bowls so the seeds drop to the grass where they will eventually be eaten or turn into trees. Once the altar is clean, he looks around, bored again.
The altar’s location has never made sense to him. Other gods have their temples in a place that has some thread that can be followed, to significance in the god’s life, before divinity perhaps, or the site of some event that mortals remember in their shared histories. Persephone keeps her altar on the edge of a cliff, by a house that looks like it hasn’t been occupied for hundreds of years, surrounded by wildflowers and tall grass and the sounds of animals sleeping and dreaming. There are no people around as far as Zagreus can tell. Even if he stays perfectly still, extending his hearing, all he can hear is his own heartbeat, and the sound of his breath in the air, visible in the cold.
Once the altar is clear, he sets off to the edge of the cliff to see the sunset. There is only a sliver of sun left on the horizon. The ocean slams against the foot of the cliff. The sound reaches Zagreus through a filter of hazy thoughts, dulled by the sharpness of ambrosia, the divine drink as demanding as the gods, demanding to be felt acutely above all else. The waves crash against the cliff wall. The sun dips below the water and stars glitter and shimmer over his head. The altar behind him is empty. His blood is always too hot in his veins.
He isn’t aware of the fall, only of the impact, the rush of heavy water over his head, the coldness of it cutting through the comfortable numbness of the ambrosia stupor he’s in, knocking the wind out of him, and the burn of it in his lungs as he drowns.
.
Dawn has broken, rosy on the bottom half of the sky as he shoots up into a sitting position and empties his stomach, golden ambrosia spreading through the mess of salt water he coughs up onto the sand. He coughs for a long time, until his chest aches and his nostrils burn. A chill has set in, his teeth are chattering. He tries to clench his jaw to get it to stop but his entire body feels weak, heavier than usual, too heavy to stop shivering.
“You’re alive.” A voice nearby, low and steady.
Zagreus looks around but sees nothing, only the cliff wall beside him and the endless water on the other side, reflecting the pink in the slowly lightening sky. It’s when he looks up that he sees the figure looming over him. A dark cloak, a hood that casts the face in shadow, except for a pair of pale golden eyes that reflect the light from the slowly rising sun, eyes that flash as they survey Zagreus, looking closely at him.
The figure is a god, that much Zagreus can tell despite his diminished capacity, the shock of death still clouding his mind. There is a stillness to the figure, an otherworldliness that betrays its divinity. Zagreus coughs again, pulling his knees up to his chest, making himself small so that his dependable warmth has less places to chase out the cold, but he shivers anyway.
A heavy cloak falls over him, thick enough to almost instantly cut off the cold. Zagreus shivers again, this time in relief as warmth from his body is trapped under the cloak. The cloak itself smells strange, not like anything Zagreus can place. It smells old. It smells dark.
“Thanks,” he says.
Pale morning light shines on the figure’s equally pale hair, cut short, framing the sides of his gray face. His chiton is dark, almost blending in with the slowly brightening air around them, and light glances off the sword at his side and the massive scythe at his back. Zagreus’s awareness slowly returns to him as he sees the scythe. The ambrosia in his blood, dulling his senses. The edge of the cliff. The fall.
“Oh, shit,” he says. “I died. I died and you came to get me.”
It must be Thanatos, then. Zagreus takes a closer look at him, wrapping the cloak more tightly around himself. He’s never met Death before, but the paleness of the eyes and the stark white hair is unmistakably him, this much Zagreus has pieced together from an eternity listening to the gods gossip on Olympus. Zagreus starts to get to his feet but stumbles and almost falls again. Thanatos’s hand touches his elbow, cool against his always too hot skin. As soon as Zagreus is upright, Thanatos pulls away his hand as though burned.
“Yes,” Thanatos says into the stillness that follows. “You died.”
“And you couldn’t collect me,” Zagreus says. He can’t stop his teeth from chattering. The cold seems to have sunk deep into his bones, a chill he’s never felt before. “Well. Thank you for fishing me out of that water.”
Thanatos narrows his eyes. “You died,” he says again.
“Yeah, and you saved me. Thanks for that. Would’ve been very annoying to stay in that freezing water until my mother found me. She did warn me to stay away from the cliff, so I must say, I did deserve that.”
Thanatos glances up at the cliff wall, his eyes following the trajectory of Zagreus’s fall. His eyes snap back to Zagreus, golden as the ambrosia he’s been sipping all night. A coil of heat makes itself known in the pit of his stomach suddenly. He looks away, out at the ocean, trying to breathe.
“You’re an Olympian, but I felt your death,” Thanatos says.
Zagreus clutches the ends of the cloak, gritting his teeth through another wave of shivers. “Say, Thanatos. Can we light a fire or something? I can’t seem to get warm.”
Thanatos raises pale eyebrows. “You… can’t get warm?”
“Just a small fire and I’ll be fine. If we could get back up to my mother’s altar, there are all the tools we need up there.”
Thanatos presses his lips together in a fine line. Then he moves quickly. One second, Zagreus is shivering quietly on shaky legs. The next, there are a pair of strong arms around him, as solid as marble, and just as cool. Zagreus’s feet leave the ground. They cut suddenly through the light air. And then Zagreus’s feet are back on grass and soft earth, the arms around his waist are gone, and he finds himself back on the edge of the cliff before his mother’s simple altar.
“Where are these tools?” Thanatos asks briskly.
Zagreus’s mouth catches up with his mind. “Did we just fly up here?”
“I see some wood. Wait here.”
.
Zagreus’s strength returns to him slowly. He sits close to the fire, a small but bright thing that sends embers flying into the air, disappearing into the early morning light. His hands are close enough to burn, heat spreading from the tips of his fingers to his elbows, up his shoulders, down his back. He rolls his shoulders. The cloak drops into a puddle of fabric on the ground around him. Across the fire, Thanatos sits on his heels, watching with narrowed eyes, the gold flashing and flickering as they take in the scene.
“Ah, that’s better.” Zagreus rolls his shoulders again. Thanatos’s eyes drop to catch the movement. Zagreus is aware of his ridiculous party clothes, the gold that hangs from his neck, his armbands, his glittering laurel. As the sun continues to rise, it bathes them in more light, making the red of his chiton stand out as much as the black of Thanatos’s does.
“I have questions,” Thanatos says.
Zagreus plants his palms against the soft earth and leans back. He doesn’t miss how Thanatos’s eyes flicker down again, to his chest, then quickly back up to his face. “It’s the least I could do, to answer some of them,” he says.
“You are an Olympian.”
Zagreus waits, but no more words spill into the cool air between them. “Yes.”
“And you can die,” Thanatos continues.
“Yes. I suppose I can.”
“You suppose…” Thanatos trails into silence. He turns his head, looking toward the edge of the cliff. His profile is illuminated by the orange glow of the fire, his long nose, his pale eyebrows, eyebrows drawn low over his eyes. “So you’ve never done that before? Died?”
Zagreus pretends to think about it, tapping his chin with his finger. “Do you think you could come across me and forget it?”
Color rises in Thanatos’s cheeks, a pale smudge of gold. He keeps his eyes on the cliff. “No, I don’t think I could.”
“Then no, I haven’t done that before. Died.”
“And do you often jump off cliffs in the middle of the night in the middle of the wilderness by yourself?”
Zagreus purses his lips to keep back a smile. “It gets boring on Olympus. I thought this would break up the tedium a bit.”
Thanatos snorts. The sound is so unexpected that Zagreus drops his cool facade for just a moment, a smile bursting across his face. He refocuses on the fire, feeling Thanatos’s pale eyes on him again.
“I take it you are recovered?” Thanatos asks. He gets to his feet in one fluid motion, sitting in one moment, looming over the fire and over Zagreus the next.
Zagreus leans back on his palms again, craning his neck to look up. The sunlight hits Thanatos’s face pleasantly. When he bows his head to look at Zagreus, his hair falls slightly to brush his cheeks, softening his expression. Zagreus feels it again, the unfamiliar heat coiling in his center, a curiosity, something brand new, something not… boring.
“Leaving already?” he asks. “We only just lit this cozy fire.”
“I lit the fire, you watched,” Thanatos corrects.
“I was shivering! I could’ve helped if my hands weren’t shaking.”
A smile flits across his face, disappearing almost instantly, and Zagreus would’ve missed it entirely if he wasn’t so focused on Thanatos’s mouth.
“I need to get back to my work.” Thanatos steps around the fire and puts his hand out. “My cloak, if you please.”
Zagreus’s hands sink into the thick fabric that pools around him on the ground. “I’m still a little cold. Would you let me borrow it?”
Thanatos’s jaw works silently, but he doesn’t speak. After a moment, he nods, then takes a step back.
“Wait,” Zagreus says impulsively.
Thanatos raises an eyebrow, waiting.
The sun has popped out from below the line in the distance where the sky meets the sea. In the sudden brightness, Zagreus becomes aware of Thanatos’s eyes, previously a pale gold, now glimmering like the ambrosia he had spilled onto the floor earlier in the evening. And just as that momentary distraction had sated him for a fraction of a fraction of a fraction of his long and boring existence, so too does the feeling of Thanatos’s eyes on him, a break in the boredom, a light glint of something in the darkness of eternity. Zagreus opens his mouth to say something, perhaps give his name, perhaps to ask where he may return the cloak, when Thanatos turns and disappears abruptly in a flash of green light.
Zagreus releases a breath he wasn’t aware he was holding on to. The fabric is thick and heavy in his hands. He brings it to his face and takes a breath, smelling old things, dead flowers, old wine, a hint of the murky darkness of the Underworld, utterly foreign but still, somehow, familiar.
.
“Have you met a god called Thanatos?” he asks.
His mother’s hand stills halfway to her mouth, the glittering crystal goblet in her hand tilted, ambrosia collecting light from around the room to shine like a beacon on her face. She only pauses for a moment before bringing the glass to her lips and taking a small sip, but Zagreus notices and his interest in her answer, which had previously been mild, is sharpened now with her reaction.
“I have,” she says evenly.
He waits for more. The sound of chatter around them is like ocean waves, now rising, now falling, as this god or that tells a story and another tries to outdo them. Everything is a competition amongst the Olympians, even conversation. Zagreus leans closer to her on the chaise they lounge upon and says, “And? What can you tell me about him?”
Persephone takes another sip of ambrosia. “Why the interest? You barely care about the gods you do have access to.”
“I care about them as much as they care about me,” Zagreus says. His voice sounds steady to his own ears, but he can tell his mother has picked up on the latent resentment that seems to touch every conversation they have about their divine relatives.
Persephone doesn’t push. She reaches for the bottle of ambrosia at the table before her, pouring a splash into his empty cup, which he holds in his usual limp wristed and careless grip.
“Well, I do know him,” she says. “Back when I spent more time on the surface, before you were born, I would run into him often. His work doesn’t bring him up to Olympus, you see.”
Of course not. What business would Death have amidst deathless gods? And besides that, Zagreus has difficulty imagining Thanatos here, wherever here is. Zagreus looks around to remind himself whose party this even is. All the homes on Olympus look the same, and ambrosia is ambrosia no matter what they’re celebrating.
His mind wanders briefly to the sight of the early morning sunlight reflecting off Thanatos’s skin and hair, the way it seemed to bounce off of him rather than be absorbed into him, as though he was more real, more solid than the gods that surround Zagreus here in their home. He looks down at his own hands, always just a shade more dull than his mother’s. Light reflecting off them too.
He has questions. Has always had questions, and doubts, and thoughts about Olympus, and a feeling deep in his chest that he’s never belonged here. And for a moment, on the cliffside before the fire Thanatos had built for him, he wasn’t thinking about the gods or Olympus or his mother’s endless attempts to help him connect with his divine relations. It was… nice. Almost comforting. And not boring.
“Why are you asking about Thanatos, my son?”
He feels her eyes on him but doesn’t look up to meet them. As far as he knows, his mother’s divine gifts don’t extend to mind reading but there are times when he feels that she’s lifting words right out of his brain. He takes a careful sip of his ambrosia. It tastes floral today, but a little dusty. As though the flowers have been sitting out in the sun for too long after they’ve been picked, half dead.
“Just curious about the other gods,” Zagreus says in measured tones. “I’m bored.”
“I know.”
“Anyway. I’ll visit your altar again today. The sunrise looked pretty over the water there. I’d like to see it again.”
He finally meets her eyes. Green eyes, green as grass. He tries to keep his mind blank but can almost feel the grass under his palms as he leaned back before the fire to see Thanatos.
“Very well,” his mother says. “Stay away from the cliff.”
“Alright, alright.” Zagreus drains his glass. The floral taste clings to the inside of his mouth. After a beat, he grabs the rest of the bottle on the table by the neck. His mother makes no comment. She’s already leaned her head back, her yellow hair conspicuous against the decadence of the purple cushions of the plush chaise, and has closed her eyes.
.
Zagreus gasps as he shoots up into a sitting position, clutching his chest. His heart pounds against his palm, almost bursting out past his sternum. The air is cool and feels good in his deflated lungs. There’s a prickle of numbness at his hands and feet. Tree branches surround him, still holding onto green leaves, casualties from his fall. He takes a few more deep breaths and realizes he can smell flowers too, sweetly decaying.
He looks up. Thanatos looks down, his hair casting his face into shadow, making the gold of his eyes pop like the ambrosia Zagreus left by the remnants of the fire from last night.
Zagreus lays back on the ground, snapping a few twigs as he shifts his legs around. “Ow,” he whispers, his voice hoarse.
Thanatos’s jaw is clenched, Zagreus can see it in the light of the moon, pale white touching Thanatos’s gray skin pleasantly, alighting upon the muscle that twitches where his back teeth press together. “Did you fall off that tree?” he asks. He jerks his chin to his left, at an olive tree that sits low to the ground, its branches trailing ghostly shadows in the moonlight.
“No,” Zagreus says hastily. “No, no. That would be insane. I fell off that tree.” He points helpfully past Thanatos’s shoulder, to the cypress that looms over them like a monolith. From this angle, laying flat on the ground, Thanatos is as tall as the tree, imposing, the black of his chiton blending into the dark surroundings, and only his face and arms are visible, reflecting the moonlight.
Thanatos blinks. “What the hell,” he mutters, almost to himself.
Zagreus props himself up on his elbows. His hands are still tingling, blood rushing through his body to repair the damage caused by his fall. He wiggles his toes experimentally. Runs a hand through his hair and pulls out a few leaves. Slides his tongue over his teeth to check that they’re all still there. “That was—”
“Insane,” Thanatos finishes for him.
“Well. Yes. Hi,” he adds, with a small smile.
Silence. Thanatos is still, only his hair moving as a cool night breeze brushes between them. The sounds of his hair shifting over his face sends a wave of goosebumps skittering across Zagreus’s skin, an unexpected reaction. How novel.
Thanatos tilts his head back. His hair falls from his face, and moonlight touches his cheeks, the slope of his nose, catching on the gold of his eyes. Zagreus realizes he’s staring but can’t seem to stop.
“Hi,” Thanatos says without looking at him. “Um. I’m assuming you need a fire. To get warm?”
Zagreus is about to politely decline when he meets Thanatos’s eyes. His is a steady gaze, but there is something uncertain about it. Some hesitation in how Thanatos looks at him. As though he isn’t entirely certain what to do.
“Do you…?” Zagreus bites his tongue, reworking his thoughts even as they start to poke out of his mouth. He never has trouble speaking ordinarily, but this strange god has him tongue-tied. “A fire would be great. I brought drinks.”
“Drinks?” Thanatos repeats blankly, his expression unchanging.
“Yeah. Ambrosia. Not sure how much opportunity you have to drink the stuff in your line of work. It’s over there, by the fire.”
Thanatos looks past him, at the remnants of last night’s fire, near the edge of the cliff he fell from. A smudge of gold touches the apples of his cheeks. It’s a moment before Zagreus realizes he’s blushing.
“Let me just—” Thanatos takes a breath. One of his hands, the armored one, grips the handle of his sword. The sound of the armor against the metal of the sword cuts through his words, as though to emphasize them. “Let me just work through this, and perhaps you may help me fill in the blanks. But you’re an Olympic god, you dwell in utter ease in Zeus’s domain, drinking ambrosia all day and doing little else. And one day you realize you can die. And so it becomes a game to you. Meanwhile, I am dragged from my important work to take your soul to the Underworld, which I cannot do because you cannot stay dead, disrupting my duties for the day, and now you want me to drink ambrosia with you. Do I have this right so far?”
Zagreus runs another hand through his hair, dislodging more leaves. He catches Thanatos’s eyes following the movement, sharp, reflecting moonlight. “There is just one thing you’ve missed.”
Thanatos’s laugh is sharp and sudden, a single “ha!” that almost startles Zagreus. “What’s that?”
“My name. You don’t know my name.” Zagreus slowly gets to his feet, taking inventory. Numbness is gone, his heart seems to be beating normally again. All clear. When he’s at full height, he’s about as tall as Thanatos, their eyes meeting easily as Zagreus straightens up. Standing before him, Zagreus can clearly see the gold on his cheeks, matching his eyes, the color softening the otherwise severe look about him.
“You’re Thanatos, that much is clear,” Zagreus continues. “But you don’t know me.”
“I don’t.”
“You don’t. But you would like to know. My name, I mean. And I’ll gladly tell you, over a drink.”
Thanatos looks away suddenly, at the ground, the snapped branches Zagreus dragged down as he fell. “Fine,” he addresses the crushed leaves. “But I don’t have long. There’s work to do.”
Zagreus isn’t sure whether he prefers firelight or moonlight on Thanatos’s face. Both touch his cheeks in a way that catches Zagreus’s attention. The soft orange glow of the fire seems to diffuse the harshness of him, softening the edges, making him seem so much less imposing and strange. He looks almost like an Olympian this way, glowing. On the other hand, moonlight gives him more of an otherworldly feel, bouncing off his skin in a familiar way, bringing out the gray of his complexion.
Thanatos raises the bottle of ambrosia to his lips and takes a sip. Zagreus watches the liquid slide down his throat, his throat working as he swallows. There it is, that tight coil of heat in his gut, twisting inside him like a snake.
“I’ve never had this stuff before,” Thanatos says, passing back the bottle.
Zagreus takes it. Their hands brush during the exchange, Thanatos’s skin is cool to the touch despite his proximity to the fire. Zagreus, on the other hand, is burning, his skin hot as flame, his insides twisting against the relentless heat of his always too hot body. He quickly takes a sip and lets the sensation of buzzing warmth flood him, along with the floral taste of this bottle.
“What does it taste like to you?” he asks.
“Hm. Sweet and kind of old. Like dying flowers.”
“That’s how it tastes to me too,” Zagreus says, trying not to sound too eager. He takes another sip and passes the bottle back, his fingers touching the back of Thanatos’s hand again. “Each bottle is supposed to taste a little different.”
Thanatos brings the bottle to his lips. Although they have passed the bottle back and forth a few times by now, Zagreus suddenly realizes that Thanatos’s lips are touching the exact place where his own lips were just pressing. He clasps his hands tightly together on his lap. A ridiculous laugh is stuck in his throat. His composure hangs by a very thin thread.
“I don’t get out much,” Zagreus says quickly, trying to preempt his strange behavior with an excuse. “Not as much as you do, I’m sure.”
Thanatos regards the bottle thoughtfully. It’s about half full, the liquid collecting firelight and glowing with it, the same color as Thanatos’s eyes. “What would an Olympian need to get out for? Your endless revelry keeps you busy, I’m sure.”
“You just seem very worldly,” Zagreus says quickly. While he can’t deny that endless revelry really does keep him more or less busy albeit a bit bored, he wouldn’t want to admit it in present company. “I’m a little jealous.”
“Jealous?” Thanatos takes another sip. The ambrosia sloshes in the bottle as he rests it on his knee. “Of my duties? You’re an odd one.”
“So my cousins won’t let me forget,” Zagreus mutters.
Thanatos passes the bottle back. Zagreus places it on his lap. Ambrosia pushes through his veins, lacing his blood with gold, buzzing through his newly restored system. It emboldens him. He looks directly at Thanatos and says, “What does it feel like? When I die? What does it feel like to you?”
Thanatos’s hand comes up to touch his chest, his palm pressing, the sound of his skin slipping over his chiton conspicuous in the quiet night air. “Why would you…?” he trails.
Zagreus waits, nervously anticipating another flash of pale green light, for Thanatos to disappear again, leaving him alone clutching his pathetic bottle of ambrosia. He feels foolish thinking he could lure such an interesting god, untouched by the tedium and brainless revelry of Olympus, with such a typical Olympian gift. It’s on the tip of his tongue to apologize, to take back his invasive question, when Thanatos speaks.
“It feels different,” he says, haltingly. His gaze is steady on the flickering fire, bright as they reflect the flames. His voice is also flickering, in between a whisper and a breath, so quiet that Zagreus leans closer to hear, closer to the warmth of the fire. “Usually, a death is something I feel like a tug. The threads of Fate pulling me where I’m needed. I only need to follow. But… you’re different.”
Zagreus leans in more, his head and shoulders almost too close to the fire, feeling the heat lick at his exposed skin. “Tell me. Different how?”
Thanatos falls silent again. The wood in the fire cracks and embers shoot out, brightening the area for just a moment, just enough for Zagreus to see Thanatos’s eyebrows pulled together in the middle, the lines on either side of his mouth as he frowns. He sighs, and Zagreus can almost see his breath blow between his lips. A shiver runs down Zagreus’s spine, although the warmth from the fire dispels all the night’s coolness.
“I don’t feel a tug when your soul calls to me,” Thanatos says. “I feel pushed. Thrown. Kicked. With an urgency I can’t… place…” he trails again. His shoulders hunch forward. He seems to withdraw within himself.
Zagreus passes back the bottle. Thanatos takes it. His hand is still cool as it brushes Zagreus’s. They lock eyes for a moment. Another shiver passes through Zagreus. Thanatos brings the bottle to his lips, then pauses, the bottle close to his mouth, the golden liquid within almost at the point of spilling.
“Your name,” Thanatos says.
Zagreus watches him take a sip, watches his throat move as he swallows, imagines the liquid sliding down past his chest and into his belly. The fire cracks and flickers. Thanatos’s eyes are on him, hot as the fire between them.
“If I tell you, will you disappear again? Like last time?” Zagreus asks.
Thanatos narrows his eyes. “Like last time?”
“Yeah. Last time. I wasn’t finished speaking with you, yet you disappeared as soon as you let me take your cloak.”
“And where is my cloak, by the way? I don’t see it anywhere.”
“Don’t change the subject,” Zagreus says quickly.
Thanatos stares down at the bottle in his hand. It’s almost finished now, the dregs of ambrosia clinging to the bottom of the crystal, glittering in the firelight. Zagreus feels it humming in his veins, buzzing in his stomach. He wonders what it feels like for Thanatos, whether the gold of the ambrosia mingles easily with the golden ichor that courses through him. The other gods on Olympus get rowdy when they drink, but Thanatos seems to settle into more stillness. Everything about him is so different, so novel, so refreshing against anything Zagreus has ever seen. He’s leaning forward again before he even realizes it, his thoughts pushing him as Thanatos is pushed to him every time he dies.
“I won’t,” Thanatos says, his voice low.
“I don’t believe you.” Zagreus reaches forward and takes the bottle, draining the last drops, the flavor of old flowers bursting on the tip of his tongue. He’s used to such decadence but it feels more decadent to have Thanatos watch him drink it. The ambrosia in his body seems to buoy him, lifting him from the ground, stepping around the fire, and plopping back down beside Thanatos.
Thanatos turns his head to look at him. They’re close, close enough that Zagreus can smell the ambrosia on his breath, can feel the coolness of his skin.
“Do you think that’s fair?” Thanatos asks. “You know my name but I don’t know yours. I don’t know how to refer to you.”
“Why would you want to refer to me? Are you planning on seeing me again?”
“Are you planning on jumping off a cliff or a tree again?”
Zagreus laughs. A smile spreads across Thanatos’s face. The corners of his eyes wrinkle a little when he smiles. The sight of it feels like a secret, mingling in Zagreus’s memory along with the warmth from the fire and the ambrosia, and the softly glittering stars overhead. In a dreamlike state, almost, he leans ever closer, and whispers, “Is there some other way to summon you that you would like to share with me?”
Thanatos makes a sound like an exhale covering a soft laugh. “You’re insane.”
“Maybe a little.”
A moment passes in silence. Zagreus shifts a little closer. His chiton catches on a root or something on the ground. He glances down, distracted. Pale green light flashes suddenly. Zagreus looks up quickly but he’s alone, the space where Thanatos was just sitting conspicuously empty, his absence as physical as his presence had been.