#Zag is just floating in Styx he's just floating there. | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

funkzpiel · 3 years

Text

Today on this episode of "I promise I didn't disappear off the face of the earth I've just been busy and totally lacking creative energy (or brain cells, for that matter) it's terrible, but hello, I did a thing" - I present this:

The Little Deaths of the Pining Flowers

For the Hades Big Bang, in collaboration with kowaiyoukai (their beautiful illustration featured here).

Fandom: Hades Game Pairing: Zagreus/Thanatos Featuring: Pining, Off-Brand Hanahaki Summary: “Does it ever get easier?” Thanatos finally asked one day.

“No,” Achilles said, the gentle hush of his words like the breath of the breeze through meadow reeds, “But it does get easier to hide.”

Death cannot die. No blade can pierce him, no hand strong enough to steal a final breath from the powerful column of his throat, no disease potent enough to mar his flesh. Death, like Time, was fathomless and unending. So long as there was Life, there was Time to observe it and Death to spirit it away.

And so long as there was love, there was pining – and all of its little maladies that follow. Death knew of them, these maladies, these “little deaths” that come before the final breath. Some fleeting, some spanning decades. The gods, in all their brilliance, creativity and cruelty, created love. Love, the painful precipice between life and death. Knit tightly between the two so that from the depths of it might bloom a beautiful, wretched thing: pining flowers . Life sprung from the ashes of despair, fertilized in love and hope unrequited. In doing so, pain became love and love became pain, death and life a reflection of one another more intimate than the eternal dance of the sun and moon itself.

Thanatos had watched these slow, curdling little deaths before. Had watched them ferment into heavy, cloying things that stole the breath from mortals’ chests. Flowers making beautiful wreaths of their lungs, thick with life borne from a love so fierce it could suffocate. Thanatos had watched men and women alike grow frail with it, their bodies made into gardens as they coughed fragile bulbs and blooms from their lips. Thorns were always the worst: roses and the like. Lips turned red, and yet these mortals who simply loved and feared too much could not find it in themselves to cure their aching chests. Could not simply let go of that impossible love – or confess it – to end that prickling, weed-like pain.

He had heard, once, that the gods could fester such illnesses; though flowers could not create homes of their flesh as they did in mortals. Rather they instead bloomed from the excess of the wealth of their power made unstable by their want. Made helpless to the source of their own gifts. But Thanatos had never seen such a thing. Thanatos had never understood. Not until Zagreus left without so much as a word of warning. All at once, it was like the Underworld had been snuffed of some great light. There was no sun beneath the surface of the earth, and yet the darkness and chill felt suddenly so much sharper, keener, without the warmth of Zagreus’ smile. Everything darker, every mercy suddenly harder to reach for, every hope dashed across the rocks like the surf wrecking a ship to ruins against the coast.

Zagreus was gone. His home, his family, his friends – Thanatos – none of it had been enough to keep him here. Thanatos had not been enough.

When the next death bell tolled, Thanatos did something he never did: he hesitated. Struck suddenly frozen by the realization. He had not been enough. Of course, he hadn’t. Zagreus was born of the Underworld, but he was also born of the surface – of life and blood and all things that breathed . Of course, death and darkness had not been enough.

Of course, Thanatos had not been enough.

He slipped from the Underworld to collect the soul the death bells tolled for and as he did, he felt something slip deep into his chest. Some foreign, alien thing; so unfamiliar as to be written away as imagination. Like a seed splitting the soil and roosting beneath.

*:–☆–:*:–☆–:*:–☆–:*:–☆–:*:–☆–:*:–☆–:*

Thanatos did not know what was worse - trying to cast Zagreus from his mind, or being constantly reminded of the man every time the death bells tolled for him. For every toll, whether Thanatos went to him or not, was another failed escape attempt and the beginning of yet another. He knew Zagrues must think his plight for the surface cursed - it was he after all who kept experiencing the relentless grip of the river Styx - but it was Thanatos who felt truly cursed. For every escape attempt was another reminder that Zagrues desperately wished to be free of them: his home, his family, Thanatos.

But the bells tolled and tolled, singing a symphony that drew Thanatos a little nearer and a little nearer each time. Like the moon, he found himself in Zagreus’ orbit - at first not at all, then from a distance, and finally passing him by, feeling the warmth of Zagreus’ being shining upon him, lighting him up. Even now, lighting him up.

He watched from the edge of the clearing as Zagreus dodged the molten depths of Asphodel, his weapon of choice - this time Varatha no doubt to spite his father - cleaving through the various shades hellbent on keeping him here per Hades’ bidding. The prince was tired. Not yet strong enough to survive his fight with Megara and continue on at full strength. But it would come, Thanatos suddenly realized with the same casual understanding of fact as one might recognize that the lava around them was hot .

But he would not survive this run much longer. And unassisted, he might not even survive this chamber. With a weight growing in his chest, Thanatos realized he might witness Zagreus’ fall for himself this time. Not second hand through rumor or one of his brother’s reports or the tolling of the bells, but first hand with his own eyes.

Thanatos couldn’t have said what made him step forward to help - not because he didn’t know, but because he couldn’t admit it. He blocked all thought out, pursuing just one goal: I can’t watch Zag die...

All he knew was that when the death bells tolled his reveal from the shadows of death into the realm of awareness in which all could now see him, the sound caught Zagreus’ attention and time stopped for just a moment - giving Thanatos the luxury and agony of seeing first the surprise on the prince’s face, then the relief that followed. Relief, as though Zagreus had been waiting at some fathomless horizon for centuries, simply hoping for Thanatos to rise above its edge and greet him.

“Zag,” he growled - voice rough around a strange feeling in his throat. He couldn’t find it in himself to dig for any other words. He barely pried the man’s name out as it was. It was easy to hide that fact between a cleaving swing of his scythe, cutting the battlefield down into a group of straggling shades that were much more manageable between the two of them.

“Than,” Zagreus wheezed, the name cut short beneath another shade’s attack.

Zagreus sounded bad. Even with Thanatos’ help, this particular escape might not last much longer, Thanatos mused. He could hear the man’s breath. A thready, wheezing thing that slowly but surely worsened. Loud, almost in Thanatos’ ears, in his very chest and he could not take it. Not here. Not from Zagreus, who would have been safe and whole if he had simply stayed home. He ground his teeth, cleaving shades with a growing eracticism unbefitting of the quick, efficient stroke of Death. Felt every swing release a little of that anger and confusion into the depths of Asphodel and the flesh of its shades.

His gaze tore to Zagreus as the last shade fell, the fire-tongued soles of his feet simmering against the punishing stone floor of Asphodel as he leaned against his spear like a crutch and caught his breath. Those feet duller than they should have been. In that moment, Thanatos felt an urge to follow Zagreus to the end. If he saw the surface, would it slake his thirst of the unknown enough to satisfy him? To draw him back? It was a weak thought, one that made Thanatos bristle madly at himself. It was becoming increasingly obvious it had been a mistake to draw this near to Zagreus. Death was obviously not as strong - or as unbiased - as he thought he was.

Zagreus had just managed to turn to Thanatos with a smile and a thank you when that expression fell - like sunlight disappearing beneath a cloud - for Thanatos was gone, a bell moaning in his absence, and in his place: a centaur heart.

“Oh Than…” Zagreus murmured softly, eyes locked upon the heart.

Alone, Zagreus hobbled his way to the heart, stopping short of grabbing it when he saw something strange on the ground beneath its floating weight. Here - in the fiery grip of Asphodel - a single petal simmered on the ground, curling fraily against the heated stone. The prince grabbed it with shaking fingers, thumb brushing over petal’s delicate length. Red as blood, thin and reaching. Soft as velvet and utterly lost here in this world of fire and death.

How in the world had anything grown here, Zagreus wondered, as he slipped it into his tunic above his heart, red like his eye and his feet and so much of his namesake. Flush against his skin, as though it had belonged there all along.

*:–☆–:*:–☆–:*:–☆–:*:–☆–:*:–☆–:*:–☆–:*

Persephone walked amidst her garden as she often did, greeting the great flush of her gift upon the soil with gentle hands and a smiling heart. At her touch the foliage seemed to bloom all the brighter. As she neared, it appeared to lean toward her like a flower reaching for the sun, following it’s daily axis.

Everything was much the same. The trees, the bushes, the crops, the flowers. Everything, she realized, but one. A new bloom, there much without her design or intention. Slender stalks rising up from the ivy and shade of a nearby willow, unfurling into magnificent red tongues and curling petals.

“My, my, what have we here?” She mused, tender and kind as she greeted this new bloom, just as she would have an old and familiar friend.

A spider lily, she realized with raised brows. Here, in her garden. Slim fingers stroked the nearby bloom - only a few and yet startling all the same. She had not planted these. Had it been her heart that drew these lovely blooms? Her unrequited regrets beneath the simmering hurt of her past? The red spider lily - the final goodbye. A blossom said to guide the dead. No, this wasn’t hers. It had been too long, the scar of that time too old, for it to have suddenly appeared by her doing.

Strange, to say hello to the final goodbye here amongst her carefully tended garden. She watched it shiver in the spring breeze, frail somehow in its little wind-drawn dance. With a frown, she felt something heavy stir within her heart. A longing and a worry.

Somewhere, she realized, someone was mourning. She watched a petal drift upon the wind and disappear. She wondered who the goodbye was for or if, like many things, it was even a goodbye at all…

*:–☆–:*:–☆–:*:–☆–:*:–☆–:*:–☆–:*:–☆–:*

The first full blossom that appeared grew in the hair of a young man’s corpse. It had not been there when he arrived. It had not been placed by the loving hands of family or kin. It had not been until he reached for their soul that it grew, crimson petals splaying out like a corona - thick and full. There, among death and the dying, Life grew as Life often did: against all odds, rebellious and unapologetic.

He wondered if this human had been watched or favored by some god or goddess. It was easy enough, back then, to think nothing of it.

Easy to miss that it had not grown until he had thought - quite by accident - how similar the man’s hair had been to the prince’s.

*:–☆–:*:–☆–:*:–☆–:*:–☆–:*:–☆–:*:–☆–:*

Death’s chamber - moreso a place of enforced rest rather than necessary rest - was a cool, dark place carved out of the fabric of reality. A place made for him by the Night herself, speckled with twinkling starlight and furnished with all the trappings of comfort any entity might desire. It was not, however, a place of light or Life. There was no facsimile of sun, no warmth. It was a reflection of his very identity, and therefore the opposite of Life; and yet when he opened his eyes after a short, restive doze, it was to petals on his pillow. Not just petals individually, but a blossom. Stalkless, and yet full and lush. Large enough to fill his palm with curling petals, reaching like red tongues from its core. Death blinked and rose upright, staring down at the bloom.

The same bloom that had wreathed that corpse.

What might have been the favor of a god upon that human felt decidedly less possible now. Had it been a trick from Hypnos? From some other shade or god or goddess? But from the bloom, he could sense himself . As though it were a part of him as much as his room was a reflection of himself.

Which just… couldn’t be.

Death could not make Life .

He brushed the flower away with a faint, confused frown, only to turn to rise from his chaise and find more blooms. One atop a nearby book. Another on the floor, in a blanket, on the rug, beside a goblet. Flowers. Life. All grown here in the dark grip of Death.

This, he finally accepted, was a problem.

*:–☆–:*:–☆–:*:–☆–:*:–☆–:*:–☆–:*:–☆–:*

It was definitely a problem.

Death did not know who’s idea of a sick joke this was, but he found the flowers blooming positively everywhere now - slight at first, but growing. It had begun as something almost ignorable. A blossom tucked in the crag of a stony wall. Red petals peeking out from the centerpiece of a table. Once, appearing what would have been a shade’s hair, were they alive.

But now they trailed him in obvious patches, suddenly crowning the heads of nearby shades and growing atop the slender rails of passing balconies. No one suspected him. It was a miracle, but it was hard to assume Death had any hand in Life. Yet still, the sudden growth of spider lilies among the courts of the dead was on everyone’s lips. Where were they coming from? Why had they appeared?

Was Persephone somehow responsible? How could she not be? Yet… she was not here.

It made the Lord of the Underworld more brittle and eruptious than before, a feat no one truly thought possible. It fostered an even greater divide between father and son as well, for the more the court wondered about how the flowers might be tied to Persephone, the more Zagreus asked after her. And the more he asked, the more the prince realized he needed to leave if he was ever to get answers.

The more he tried - and died - in the pursuit of being anywhere but among the dead, the more the flowers grew.

*:–☆–:*:–☆–:*:–☆–:*:–☆–:*:–☆–:*:–☆–:*

Even knowing that every attempt took Zagreus further from him, Thanatos found he could not stop thinking of it - the attempts, Zagreus’ failures, the repeated destruction of his- His prince. That was a safe term, yes. His prince.

He laid awake in his rooms, crimson flowers rising like the depths of the river taking Zagreus all too often, and found he could not spare his mind of thinking of him. Zagreus bleeding, pale flesh bruised like soft fruit, yet so determined to be gone.

Just because he was no longer part of the equation of his prince’s happiness, could he truly continue to just watch this happen? Or perhaps true devotion, true service, was assisting even when it reduced his existence in the man’s life to irrelevance.

He’d help, he decided, because Zagreus was his prince, and Death was nothing if not faithful and reliable. No sooner had he decided it, a blossom appeared over his heart. Large and heavy, every petal weighted like stone, driving the breath from his lungs.

Yet he didn’t have the heart to move it.

*:–☆–:*:–☆–:*:–☆–:*:–☆–:*:–☆–:*:–☆–:*

The prince of the Underworld was special in many ways, no one could argue that except, perhaps, his father. And one such way was that when the bell of death tolled for Zagreus, it was rarely with the intention of taking him away. Thanatos arrived, his motives hidden beneath a well placed challenge of who can kill more shades here in the depths of Asphodel?

A game, just a game. No one could get hurt, if it was just a game. And goodbye would not hurt so much, if it was on Thanatos’ terms… Or so he hoped.

Death’s blade swung, cleaving shades in two. Souls upon souls, ushered back into the depths by his hands, just to spare one man the journey home. It was illogical. It went against his lord’s wishes. And yet, Thanatos knew there was no other option, not for him.

He could not be an instrument in caging Zagreus if it meant having him near would only make him unhappy. He cleaved men from their families, wives from their children, mortals from dreams left unspent and unfulfilled. Here, he had a choice.

Now, he wanted to see someone grow.

“That was something, Than,” Zagreus said as the last shade fell, wiping his sweaty brow with the back of a one bloody hand - making the mess on his face worse. Yet it did nothing to diminish the sheer Life of his smile as he turned to him. That smile - so full and unapologetic - was like the sun turning its face upon Thanatos, reaching his skin in a way it never had topside. Warm, making his belly flutter. Foolish and childish, he scolded himself. Made worse when that smile suddenly faded before Thanatos could answer and Zagreus said with a soft, perplexed frown, “What’s that?”

He followed the gaze of his prince to the ground at his feet - or rather below his feet - and there mere inches beneath the floating drape of his toes, a bed of flowers began to bloom. Spears of grass rising and charring in tandem to the merciless heat of Asphodel, and yet the flowers heartily remained untouched among the thicket of rising and dying green. Bloody red flowers, reaching up - not to Thanatos , but to Zagreus - as though he were the sun.

Lost in his grasping for explanations he simply didn’t have, all Thanatos could do was quickly retreat a few floating steps when Zagreus suddenly started forward and, using his blade as to help himself down with a grown, knelt to observe them better. He had one thick, tanned finger delicately beneath one of the lilies reaching tongues as his brows raised and he mused, “I’ve seen these around my father’s court but I didn’t ever imagine I’d see them out here . What could they possibly be?”

But when he looked up, Thanatos was gone. Gone, leaving nothing but a sudden crown of blooms in Zagreus’ hair to remember him by. Gone, because that touch - so delicate and gentle beneath the petals’ reach - had felt as though Zagreus had touched him.

And it hurt down to Thanatos’ very bones, stealing the very breath from his lungs, to know it was a touch he’d never feel for himself. Not when Zagreus wanted nothing more than to leave.

*:–☆–:*:–☆–:*:–☆–:*:–☆–:*:–☆–:*:–☆–:*

It got worse. Much worse. He stopped visiting his brother after Hypnos once woke - bewildered - in practically a carpet of red blooms, right in plain sight of their lord. He made his reports as brief and efficient as possible after he once saw Zagreus dash by during one of them and the feeling that had arisen in his breast at the sight of him caused Cerberus - right at Hades’ side - to suddenly tilt each massive head as all three were suddenly crowned in thick, growing lilies. Hades had erupted, his gaze cast upon the shades, looking for a culprit. It was luck alone, or perhaps the heat of the god’s rage, that prevented those blooms from growing on him as well. But Achilles had seen.

With eyes so old, and so lonely, he had seen.

*:–☆–:*:–☆–:*:–☆–:*:–☆–:*:–☆–:*:–☆–:*

“If I may be so bold, Master Death, I am here if ever you need a sympathetic ear,” Achilles once said, somehow managing to sneak up on him at his balcony. By the skin of his teeth, Thanatos managed not to startle visibly. But he could not hide the spider lily that was in his hands, the very cause that had left him so lost in thought as he had braced himself over the balcony that hung above the river - waiting, though he refused to admit it, for Zagreus’ return.

“There is nothing to be sympathetic for,” Thanatos forced himself to say simply, turning back to the river.

“There is always something to be sympathetic for,” Achilles had said in that soft way he said most things - so soft in death for a man so coated in blood in life - and came beside Thanatos to deposit something on the rail before he left with a gentle, “The offer stands, when you’re ready.”

Thanatos waited until the warrior’s quiet footsteps receded before he looked. There, upon the glittering marble of the balcony, was a tiny flower. Purple and plain, easy to hide.

A forget-me-not.

“Does it ever get easier?” Thanatos finally asked one day.

“No,” Achilles said, the gentle hush of his words like the breath of the breeze through meadow reeds, “But it does get easier to hide.”

*:–☆–:*:–☆–:*:–☆–:*:–☆–:*:–☆–:*:–☆–:*

“Than, wait!”

The pleading urgency in those words were the only thing that stayed Thanatos’ retreat. More and more, Thanatos realized he could deny the prince nothing. His only hope was to remove himself before Zagreus could ask anything of him. Today, he failed.

He turned only so much as to peek at Zagreus from over one cloaked shoulder, waiting. It was much as he could offer without that telling pang marching through his heart and wreathing them all in flowers. But he was learning, at least, thanks to Achilles.

“Yes, Zag?”

“I… I know there’s a lot unsaid between us. A lot to make up for. I… I know,” Zagreus said, elegant, and yet stammering. Endearing in that earnest way of his, so much so that Thanatos could not prevent the single bloom of red that began to grow in a nearby crack in Elysium’s walls, hidden in plain sight by the moss and tiny fragile flowers already native to the place.

Zagreus’ words slipped to silence, broken only by the sound of glass settling gently atop a nearby grassy, broken pillar. Thanatos turned slowly to regard it. A bulbous bottle, bottom heavy and filled with glittering amber liquid: Nectar. His gaze turned from the bottle to Zagreus, a frown so easily slipping onto his face to hide behind as he said, “Really, Zagreus? Nectar? As though that suddenly fixes all that lies between us? This is, what… a parting gift? The goodbye you never bothered to give me?”

His scorn made Zagreus wilt - the soft sunshine of his demeanor fading as though behind thick clouds. In the craggy wall, the spider lily wilted somewhat, shivering delicately.

“No, of course not. I simply found this and thought of you. Think nothing of it,” Zagreus said, his tone carefully masked and distant now. Further from him, just as Thanatos had planned, and yet this climb to their eventual final goodbye felt hollow, forced. Forced, because Thanatos had forced it.

“I never do,” he said, the death bells tolling his retreat as the flowers he left behind - spotting the walls of that chamber Zagreus lingered in - mournfully wilted around him.

*:–☆–:*:–☆–:*:–☆–:*:–☆–:*:–☆–:*:–☆–:*

“You are hurting, my son.”

Nyx’s voice was always a balm to him. Gentle and cool, like twinkling starlight. Not too harsh, not too loud, as living things were. Cold and distant, like himself, because he had been carved from her.

“I am fine,” he longed to say - but when had he ever been able to lie to her. But he couldn’t admit it, either. He merely looked away, hiding his grief behind sideways looks and long lashes. She reached for him. Her hands chill and welcome against the stony arch of his jaw and cheeks. Nyx’s thumb ran a smooth line over his cheeks, her face still and poignant, but her eyes telling.

“Just because you are Death, does not mean you cannot host Life within your heart, dear one. None of us are spared from feeling. It is perhaps the strongest force on this world - the bit of Life that nothing can wring out.”

“I do not wish to feel it, when it changes nothing,” Thanatos croaked, furious as his lashes grew misty without his consent. He had accepted what was to come, damn it, so why did the grief still feel so smothering?

“Grief changes nothing,” Nyx nodded solemnly, “But… It lets us know that if something can be changed, it is worth trying to change it.”

Thanatos leaned his jaw into the cup of her hands with a conflicted little frown.

“And if that change is not good for everyone?”

Realization bloomed in Nyx’s face like the flowers he could not prevent from growing to crown her starry head.

“Ah,” she said softly. “I see… Sometimes love is letting go…”

He wilted in her hands. A final confirmation, until her fingers went to pinch his chin lovingly and draw his gaze up to hers. Her eyes long and fathomless like the night sky, twinkling and watching.

“But usually... love is asking first, before those pains that go unsaid smother you both.”

Her pale hands rose to pick a red-tongued blossom from the crown that had grown in her hair and placed it delicately in the bowl she made of his hands; as though it were a baby bird. It glittered with fresh dew, with the tears he couldn’t quite stop from falling. Not here, in the safety of his mother’s arms. His tears were always safe in the cloak of night.

“Spider Lilies… It is said they grow at the site of final goodbyes,” Nyx intoned gently, “Others say they help Death guide spirits that have just passed into new lives.”

“The death of the past,” Thanatos said, each word carefully clinical and cold, as though distance could blunt their meaning.

She curled her own hands beneath the bowl of his and said, “They are also a symbol of rebirth, my child. Or perhaps more importantly, they are an opportunity, as everything is.”

Thanatos frowned lightly, his gaze rising to meet hers once more.

“I don’t understand.”

Nyx smiled a soft, tiny smile - as bright as any moonlight - and leaned forward to kiss his forehead tenderly, lips brushing against his skin as she spoke onto him, “Life, and all its decisions, are merely a matter of perspective, my son. It is not too late to change yours.”

*:–☆–:*:–☆–:*:–☆–:*:–☆–:*:–☆–:*:–☆–:*

Before, it felt naive to hope. Hope was a foolish, mortal feeling; Thanatos knew better. Hope always faded in Death, so how could Death ever possibly foster it? And yet, his mother had never once lied to him. Beneath the light of her moon and her stars, all was made plain.

So when he tolled the bells to go to him, Thanatos allowed himself to look at Zagreus the way he had not allowed himself to before. With hope.

Zagreus had grown. As they faced off in the halls of Elysium in a quest to one up the other in battle, Thanatos found himself willingly distracted by the developed grace in Zagreus’ fighting. His posture had changed. He no longer zipped blindly across the field in a rage, trying to win by brute force. He was calm, calculated. He had changed.

Zagreus marked every trap in his mind. Every swing of his blade - new, now, one he had unlocked and partnered with - brought the shades of the underworld to heel. He marched them where he wanted them, whether that was to a swift death beneath his swing or onto a trap. He fought with a tactician’s coolness. He no longer wasted his energy. He no longer showed up to these battles covered in foreboding wounds.

He was growing. Getting closer to his goal. Which meant Thanatos, of course, was running out of time. And no one understood the gravity of the hourglass’ shifting sands quite like Death. Time, as always, was of the essence.

“Zagreus,” Thanatos said, hovering near the heart that he normally tended to simply leave behind as a parting gesture ever since Zagreus’ attempt to treat him to a gift. It was obvious the prince had not been expecting him to stay, reaching as he had been immediately for whatever god’s boon had been promised in this chamber. But the moment the prince heard his voice, the man had all but sprinted to him, and the eager warmth that had inspired in his chest caused a red blossom to bloom at Zagreus’ feet when finally he stopped before him.

“Than? I wasn’t expecting you to stay,” Zagreus said, all eagerness. Always eagerness to move on - to the world above, to a world beyond their fight.

“I wasn’t either,” Thanatos agreed, overwhelmed by the discomfort that immediately began to rise in him. He had known it would come. It had fueled many of this retreats. But nothing would ever change, if he continued to allow it to smother him. He just had hoped knowing that would make it easier , somehow. Yet he felt he could barely breathe, let alone cherrypick the words he wanted. Silence hung between them. Flowers pebbled the ground that separated them. But patiently, Zagreus simply waited. As though time were no burden to him. As though the hourglass of fate was not an enemy, but a friend.

“I know you intend to go to the world above,” Thanatos said, searching desperately for the words and finding every single one lacking. “I… I know you intend to stay there. You need answers, I know that… But before you do, I just wanted to say… She abandoned you, Zagreus. But we never have. We are your family, if you ask me. I won’t stop you from going, but… I just felt it needed to be said.”

“Than,” Zagreus started slowly, and Thanatos waited for the blow: you are not my family. You are not important. You are my past. This is not my home.

He had told himself to hear Zagreus out. He had told himself that this closure - however painful - would make everything easier. Clearer. Yet faced with this final stroke of fate, he found he couldn’t bear to hear it. Before Zagreus could collect his thoughts, Thanatos placed a crystal butterfly upon a broken stone pillar just as Zagreus had once done and said in a quick murmur, “Let it never be said that I don’t repay my debts,” before he left, like a coward.

Death, cowed by the thought of love spurned. Or perhaps, cowed by the thought of living. His offered keepsake framed in a lush bloom of red spider lilies, kept company by Zagreus’ soft, regretful sigh in Thanatos’ absence.

“Oh, Than…”

*:–☆–:*:–☆–:*:–☆–:*:–☆–:*:–☆–:*:–☆–:*

Zagreus made it topside. Thanatos could feel it in his bones, a soul that had forever been below the earth suddenly above - in his domain, among the fields of souls he was meant to reap. He felt him there, fragile after his fight with his father and yet soaring like an inferno with his victory.

Thanatos pulled down the bottle of Nectar he had kept for this moment. It had felt right to save it for this occasion, the gift a goodbye and yet also a salute to his prince’s victory. A victory he had helped the man achieve. He poured an ample glass, the liquid shimmering like a child of sunlight and starlight both, but as he rose the glass to toast Zagreus’ achievement, a soft and confused frown began to mar his lips.

Above, with every step and every second spent there, Thanatos felt that fire waning. The glass of nectar trembled lightly in his hand as his gaze became distant, his awareness fully above. Zagreus, stumbling through the world of Light and Life. Zagreus, reaching another soaring source of power - Persephone. Zagreus, waning. Zagreus, yearning, straining. Zagreus, breath stuttering.

Zagreus, dying.

The glass crashed to the ground without a hand to hold it, shattering, Nectar pooling.

*:–☆–:*:–☆–:*:–☆–:*:–☆–:*:–☆–:*:–☆–:*

Dead, as the boy had been dead. Thanatos did not wish to go to him. Did not wish to see him dead, here, among the place his prince had so dearly dreamed about. Did not wish to see him still and pale as only mortals deserved to be. Zagreus was a being of light and power and determination. He could not bear to see him beaten down to nothingness, just a husk of flesh and nothing more. Not here. Not in his mother’s garden, so close to the answers he had sought for so long…

But to love was to suffer.

He went to him. Kneeled beside the prince, allowing his own body to touch the earth, unheeding of how it killed the very grass he touched. His fingers went to cup Zagreus’ face. To prepare him for the journey home again, and as he did, the man’s body became haloed in deep, crimson flowers. Sprouting, uncontrolled and thick. Thanatos could not stop them, could not be bothered to stop them. It was effort enough to see him like this, let alone hide his own weakness.

He had forgotten there were still eyes there to witness it.

“Thanatos,” Persephone said, appearing from around the corner of the house with a death shawl for her son and coins for his eyes. She froze, her eyes not on him or her son, but on the flowers that surrounded them.

“Oh Thanatos ,” he whispered thickly, brows twisted. Looking upon them mournfully - she, the woman who had abandoned her son and then somehow enticed him away from his family below.

“Don’t worry, I won’t touch your garden,” Thanatos said stonily, thinking she feared the spreading of the dead grass from his knees.

“Thanatos, wait--”

But they were gone, he and Zagreus both, leaving nothing but a patch of dead grass and the outline of her son in bloody, crimson flowers. The blossoms trembling in tandem with the spatterings of red that had begun to grow uncontrollably throughout her garden.

“It was you,” she whispered to no one. “They’re yours.”

*:–☆–:*:–☆–:*:–☆–:*:–☆–:*:–☆–:*:–☆–:*

Once, of course, was not enough. There are still questions that need answering, and Zagreus has nothing but time to throw himself at the mercy of the gauntlet between the Underworld and the mortal realm above again and again and again. Every victory means only one thing: another tragic death so close to his goal above. And yet, Thanatos cannot help but assist him. Even if it means cradling that larger-than-life body suddenly made so small by death and escorting him back down below. Even if it means being the very vessel that takes his prince from his goal, he will help him get there once more, once more, once more.

The hourglass has been refilled, if only for a while more. If anyone can figure out a way to stay among the Living, it will be Zagreus. Zagreus, who did the unthinkable and escaped the underworld. Zagreus, who found the mother that had abandoned him. He’ll do it, Thanatos knows it just as keenly as he knows the last beat of a mortal’s fragile heart.

But he’ll gladly cherish every extra grain of sand in the hourglass he’s been given.

*:–☆–:*:–☆–:*:–☆–:*:–☆–:*:–☆–:*:–☆–:*

“I’ve missed this,” Zagreus says after one of their dual bloodbaths in the halls of Elysium. This level of the Underworld is his favorite one to go to Zagreus in. It means their momentary glimmer of peace after the fight is flush with soft grass and pleasing greens and all the Life that Zagreus deserves. And perhaps, when Zagreus is gone, Thanatos can enjoy a sip of the river to forget. He never will, he knows. It’s selfish, foolhardy and probably impossible for someone like him. But sometimes, he likes to entertain the idea that he could forget, and be free of the blossoms that constantly remind him of what he cannot have.

Thanatos turns to him, taking his time to take in the lines that make up the nostalgic expression of Zagreus’ face as he catches his breath there, sitting among the white flowers of Elysium’s fields. White and nearly like his own.

“Missed what? We do this all the time, how could you have missed this?” Thanatos asked.

“Not the fight. This . Us,” Zagreus said. “This just reminds me of how we were before I began my escapes.”

“Simpler times,” Thanatos frowned, unable to swallow the bitterness that suddenly rose in his throat. “But you chose to complicate them, Zagreus.”

He understood why, now; but that didn’t mean he didn’t resent it in his weakest moments. He waited for Zagreus to defend himself. For that bitterness to rise in Thanatos to ruin the moment, as it often did. He’d flee, and he’d waste his precious remaining grains of sand - he could see it all already, unfolding, until Zagreus brought a halt to his spiraling thoughts as only he could.

“I don’t know why this has turned into picking who I love, Than. Wanting to find my mother doesn’t mean I love anyone else any less. Everyone acts as if I’m choosing my mother over everything and everyone else. Even you.”

“Are you not?” Thanatos asked, dreading the answer.

Yet Zagreus simply looked at him, red flowers blooming in his hair, and said, “If you’re asking me who I’d choose between you or my mother, Than, my answer is this: I never intended to settle for one at all.”

Thanatos blew out a frustrated breath even as his heart soared in a way he hadn’t thought Death’s heart could, trembling like a rabbit against his ribs.

“That’s naive to say, don’t you think, Zag?”

“Says who?”

*:–☆–:*:–☆–:*:–☆–:*:–☆–:*:–☆–:*:–☆–:*

It’s all a matter of perspective, my child.

*:–☆–:*:–☆–:*:–☆–:*:–☆–:*:–☆–:*:–☆–:*

One day, Zagreus went topside. Thanatos prepared to go to him, to collect him, but the moment never came. Death felt the prince’s heart begin to flatter as mortal hearts did, and yet the final throbbing beat never came. In fact, it stabilized. It stabilized and grew nearer. Nearer and nearer still, adrift on the river with his brother. Not just his brother, but another too. Life was flowing down the river to the Underworld.

The Queen was returning.

Thanatos leaned bonelessly back into his lounge, feeling shaky with stunned, overwhelming relief as spider lilies rose around him like a cushion because Zagreus was coming home with Persephone.

Zagreus was coming home of his own free will.

*:–☆–:*:–☆–:*:–☆–:*:–☆–:*:–☆–:*:–☆–:*

Life in the Underworld improves. As though Persephone were a sun and the Underworld a withered garden without her, things steadily improved with her return. Cerberus pressed eagerly into the touch of her hand. The halls seemed brighter, warmer. Even Achilles seemed a little less sad, and Hades - oh Hades - it was as though he were steadily becoming a different man altogether. A softer man, gentled by her touch. His thorns shorn short, his rough and callous words turned to roses lush and hearty; though suddenly kind was a stretch to say, he was certainly safer to speak to now.

The court was alight with how Persephone’s presence was changing everything for the better. But all Thanatos could think was that none of this would have been possible if not for Zagreus, who had lassoed the sun herself and brought her back to them against all odds.

If Persephone was the sun, Zagreus was the lifeblood of this place.

*:–☆–:*:–☆–:*:–☆–:*:–☆–:*:–☆–:*:–☆–:*

The hourglass had been halted. There was no beginning, no end, and once again Death was no longer shackled by the wasteful ticking of time. But the flowers did not lessen, did not disappear. They trailed after him, and though he had gotten better at hiding it, he knew that Persephone knew. Flowers were her children, after all; how could she not know?

“You should talk to him, Thanatos. If nothing else, Zagreus has taught me this: what you assume will happen is never definite,” she said to him one day, cradling a wayward spider lily that had suspiciously grown in her garden - startlingly white. He wondered when that had started or why.

“Perhaps I will. Thank you, my lady,” Thanatos said gently.

She smiled at him, her thumbs so gentle with the bloom’s petals, making the little flower shiver happily, and said, “I hope you do.”

*:–☆–:*:–☆–:*:–☆–:*:–☆–:*:–☆–:*:–☆–:*

Thanatos had paced the length of his balcony many times now, each with a stumbling aborted attempt to head in the direction of Zagreus’ chambers. He tried to ignore the knowing weight of Achilles’ watchful gaze by the mirrors. Tried to ignore the thunderous fear of his heart or the way the lilies just kept blooming around him in fitful bursts.

Go to him , his heart said.

But what if you ruin everything , his mind howled, Now, when things are finally peaceful.

But is peace the same as happiness? His heart asked. Is that all you wanted? Could it be enough?

It certainly hurt less than being wrong, his mind said.

If that were true, then why are the flowers still blooming?

Little Deaths, the Pining Flowers. Could he truly be content, if they still found the soil of his heart so rich to bloom in?

*:–☆–:*:–☆–:*:–☆–:*:–☆–:*:–☆–:*:–☆–:*

“Take it from a fool who waited,” Achilles said as a tiny purple blossom grew in the tuck of his hair behind his ear, “Nothing risked, nothing earned.”

*:–☆–:*:–☆–:*:–☆–:*:–☆–:*:–☆–:*:–☆–:*

This time, when Thanatos went to Zagreus in the fields of Elysium, he cleaved the souls of the dead down in one impatient stroke - knowing that if he did not act fast, he would not act at all.

Zagreus let out a startled huff of a laugh, his hand son his hips as he turned to Thanatos with a confused, if amused, “Well that was hardly sporting, Than! Have you been going easy on me all this time?”

But that expression fell, muted and worried, when Zagreus finally caught sight of Thanatos’ face.

“Than?” He asked.

“Please, don’t--” Thanatos said, holding up a hand to halt the prince’s words, “Just… listen. I… I’ve been trying to figure out how to say this for some time, but the words elude me, even now.”

Zagreus brought his blade down into the grass and let it rest then, his full attention him upon Thanatos in a way so direct, so overwhelming, Thanatos felt that urge to run rise in him again.

It was the memory Achilles’ gaze - heavy and knowing - that held him fast. Sympathetic, envious and frustrated. Frustrated, because Zagreus was within reach, and Thanatos risked nothing.

He did not want to have eyes like Achilles had. He wanted to Live.

“I hate you, when you first left,” Thanatos blundered forward. “I thought you were done with me. That I wasn’t good enough. I didn’t blame you either. What could I offer you, that you couldn’t have up there? What’s Death to Life?”

“Than--”

“Please, Zag… Let me finish or I never will,” Thanatos whispered. “I hated you. Or I thought I did… but these… All of these?”

He held up a hand, a red lily immediately blooming at his call to hold between them.

“These are yours, Zagreus. All of them, every single one. Because I missed you. Because I could not stop thinking of you, worrying for you, wanting you.”

Zagreus stilled, and something akin to paleness stole over his tanned flesh. Thanatos knew, then, he’d never have him. How could Life love Death? But he continued onward, if for nothing but closure. If for nothing but to say he risked it all, he tried.

“It’s childish, foolish, reckless even - but I… I’m utterly helpless, Zagreus. You’ve made me, made Death , helpless in want for you. In loving you, I…” his breath left him in a soft, rattling wheeze as finally he admitted - with the certainty that the sword cleaves flesh - “I love you, and… I’m glad you came home.”

He waited for the blow. Waited for the moment that would wring that last breath of hope from his lungs, and he wondered if this is what mortals felt like, waiting for him. For Death.

But he waited, and waited, and it never came. Zagreus merely stood dumbfounded, something wet growing on his sooty bottom lashes, before finally he stepped forward and did what Thanatos had always been too afraid to do.

He kissed him.

Perspective, his mother had said. He had thought she meant decisions, but it was so much more than that. This moment was a perspective he thought he’d never have - could never fathom . Life, warm and bright against his lips. Flowing through him in a circle, like a cycle that never ended, life and death and life and death. He closed his eyes and Zagreus reached up to bring him down, closer to the ground - to him - and wound gentle fingers into silver hair.

Around them, flowers bloomed in the hall of Elysium - blood and bone, red and white, cascading in a sheet to cover the chamber around them. Pushing out and out and out until nothing was left but the Spider Lilies singing brilliantly in the breeze around them. Zagreus drew Thanatos down like an anchor, floating feet brushing finally against petal softness, but nothing wilted from his touch. It was as though those flowers had always been waiting for both of them, every petal glimmering and shining now that the cycle of Life and Death had finally been made whole.

“I love you,” Zagreus said between desperate presses of chaste lips, speaking against Thanatos’ surprised mouth as though the words might possess them both, “And I’m so grateful you waited for me.”

Without Life, Death does not exist. Without Death, Life is not Life at all. For one is needed for the other to exist. Otherwise, there is Nothing.

*:–☆–:*:–☆–:*:–☆–:*:–☆–:*:–☆–:*:–☆–:*

Zagreus had hidden all of his blooms in his chamber, of all things, knowing that no one went there. Not even Dusa, who was not allowed to clean Hades’ “ungrateful mongrel of a son”’s room. So there, they had remained safely hidden. Bone white blooms, ivory tongues drooping in such familiar ways to the crimson petals that followed Thanatos everywhere.

“Why did you never say?” Thanatos asked one day, as they lay side by side in a carpet of their flowers, fingers entwined together, nearly nose to nose.

“I did not want to frighten you away,” Zagreus laughed.

“And how did you prevent them from growing on me? I can’t stop the blasted things from appearing everywhere?” Thanatos asked.

Zagreus laughed again and repeated, “Because I did not want to frighten you away.”

Thanatos turned to him, arm braced so he could hover over Zagreus face with a gentle smile.

“And now that I am still here?” He asked warmly.

Zagreus reached up to brush a lock of silvery hair behind Thanatos’ ear, held back with a white lily to keep it in place, and said, “I’m glad that I was wrong.”

Thanatos smiled as red lilies bloomed to frame his prince’s head in a crown. Thick and regal, as he deserved. His mark upon the man. His prince, his love. It stirred a primal satisfaction deep in his belly as he leaned down to kiss Zagreus and say, “I’m glad we both were wrong.”

So they were reborn, there in a bed of white and red spider lilies - flowers that had guided them to new Life.

#thanzag #hades big bang #zagthan #zagreus #thanatos #hades game #pining #hanahaki #my writing #long post

39 notes · View notes

dogboy-willgraham · 3 years

Note

Drabble challenge 47. “Dogs don’t wear clothes!”

(Zag, at any given moment: *Does a little bisexual thing that pisses his father off* The rest of the crew is having a fucking time listening to this, minus Hypnos he’s off doing something else.)

“Dogs don’t wear clothes!”

Zagreus pretended to look confused. “He’s not wearing clothes though, it’s a hat,” And it was, a little brown thing he’d found somewhere in the pits of Elysium, perched on one of Cerberus’ heads. Zagreus was prepared to debate his father for hours over what counted as clothing if it meant pissing him off and wasting a few hours and not getting beaten by shades.

“It still counts Zagreus,”

“No it doesn’t,” Zagreus responded, rubbing the snout of one of Cerberus’ heads.

“I am not arguing with you boy, it counts,”

Achilles was at his post overhearing this, Thanatos floated beside him, a small smile cracking on his usually stoic face. Achilles felt the same, Zagreus was prone to doing things that made his father upset, but this time he chose to make it funny.

“Do you think he’s going to see it to the end?” Thanatos asked Achilles.

“If it riles him up, then I wouldn’t be surprised if he did,” Achilles responded.

“I feel this is more grating to Master Hades nerves than most of Zagreus’ acts,” Thanatos smiled fully. “This is just annoyance, not outright defiance. Might be worse than anything else. The Furies should be taking notes,”

Achilles laughed. “Maybe. Though that would be worse than even Tisiphone’s whip I would think,”

“Utterly,” Thanatos said.

“Well you are arguing with me father, and it doesn’t, hats are not clothing so much as jewelry isn’t either,”

Hades groaned. “Will you be keeping this up all night boy? Or...day, whatever blasted time it is. There’s more important things to be doing,”

“What? I thought you liked proving me wrong? So do it, prove me wrong,” Zagreus dared, knowing his father couldn’t resist even having the littlest edge over him.

Megaera sat with Dusa and Nyx in the lounge, a bottle of nectar between them, almost empty.

“Zagreus is going to get himself kicked back into the Styx at this rate,” Megaera mused. “Won’t even have Hypnos to tease him for it,”

“Hahah yeah,” Dusa agreed. “I just cleaned up the last splash of Styx that got on the carpet,” Dusa quieted under Nyx’s glare.

“I do wish he were more thoughtful about provoking him, it serves no purpose to anger him,” Nyx said.

“Come now Nyx, nothing truly bad can happen to Zagreus, not really,” Megaera said. “He can’t really die,”

“That’s not the only bad thing that can happen to him Megaera,”

Meg knew that, but that wasn’t quite the point. It was amusing to see Zagreus piss off his father and waste his time, to see Hades fall into such an obvious trap. Hades had earned every second of it, Meg knew it.

“Oh, nectar’s done,” Megaera said. “Well, I best be going, shades to torment and before long Zagreus is going to be roaring down Tartarus so I better get there before Alecto or Tisiphone,” She started walking away. “Thanks for the company,” She called over her shoulder.

No one knew just how much time had passed, but it was enough that a few dozen shades had piled up and Hypnos was back. Hades finally gave up.

“See what you’ve done boy?” Hades asked, knowing Zagreus didn’t care. “Leave,”

“Gladly father,” Zagreus took the hat from Cerberus and scratched the third head’s ear. “Thank you for being patient boy,” He set a bottle of nectar down for him and ran off, ready to go fight through Hell once more.

#hades game #megaera #zagreus #thanatos #achilles #nyx #dusa #hades #ficlet #zag pissing his father off #hades is a bad dad and i stand by that #thanzagmeg #prompt

63 notes · View notes

cinnawrites · 3 years

Text

Blood and... Comfort?

Summary: Zagreus goes overboard during an escape attempt. Thanatos isn’t very fond of this. He decides to pay Zagreus a visit back at the House of Hades.

A/N; Another Thanzag piece! Expect a lot of these coming!!

Zagreus wiped the remainder of the exalted champions blood off his face. His clothing was ruined, blood soaking near to every inch of it, some even his own. He fixed up his hair and adjusted his wreath, keeping a cool expression on his face despite his exhaustion. I could at least keep my face presentable, Zagreus thought.

He looked up at the doors leading to the next chambers, making his decision carefully. Nectar or gemstones, a hard decision. He decided to take the door leading to another bottle of nectar. He thought of who he could give this to as he stepped through the door, but it was quite obvious who it would be. The same person as always.

A few steps into the room, his vision went green and a bell rang. His eyes lit up like the embers of a flame. It's almost as if the Fates read his mind and have decided to present him with the person he was just thinking about.

"Death approaches," The both of them said at the same time, they have gotten used to this. Thanatos faced the prince with shock at his current state.

"Than, it's about time isn't it? I've been waiting for you!" Zagreus said, breathing heavily. He didn't expect speaking to be such a difficult task. Exhaustion slowly started to take over him, but yet still kept the same flare in his eyes as he had when he jumped out the window.

"Zag, why are you still trying?" Thanatos asked Zagreus. The prince's expression slightly faltered at his comment.

"What do you mean? I will continue trying no matter how many times it takes. You know this already, do you not?" Zagreus straightened his posture and kept his hands at his hips. Thanatos sighed.

"That isn't what I meant. You're all beat up, I would dare say even already dead. Why are you still trying when you are in such a condition?" Thanatos gestured to Zagreus' appearance. He wasn't wrong, the prince was a mess despite having tried touching up.

"I don't have a choice Than," Zagreus let out, his expression softening.

"You could just try again-" Than said, but realized how it rang strange to Zagreus' ears. After all, Zagreus would never want to miss an opportunity to go up to the surface yet again, "You know what? Forget it. Let's beat up some more of those exalted champions."

Zagreus didn't need to be told twice. He readied himself, brandishing Stygius whilst holding up his fighting stance. Thanatos blinked to the other side of the chamber, reading his scythe just as Zagreus did his weapon. Slowly, but surely, the champions emerged from the ground, ready for what's to come. The prince dashed towards a Longspear and began slashing his sword wildly. He was used to this type of battle, dash to dodge a strike and find that sweet, sweet opening. He’s done this countless times, some being less smooth and successful as other attempts. Nevertheless, he beat the Longspear with much ease.

The usual exchange between the exalted champions and the two boys went the same as usual after that. Zagreus dashing in, whilst Thanatos remained at a safe distance, striking enemies down with his powers and the occasional swing of his scythe. They would steal each other's kills, Thanatos scoffing when his circle of death went off way after Zagreus had slain the Strongbows. Zagreus smiled wide, the rush of battle entering his veins, empowering each of his moves. The prince stood still for a split second, catching a sharp breath, before being struck right in his shoulder by a Brightsword. His blood rushed like a flame to his head, before hitting the ground, a thud echoing out through the lands of Elysium.

“Zagreus!” Thanatos yelled, voice straining ever so slightly. It has been long since Zagreus died while in the company of Thanatos. Seeing him fall now hurt more than it should have. Thanatos conjured up a large circle under him, surrounding the entire chamber, killing the remaining foes instantly.

Thanatos made sure each of the foes were dead once more before heading over to Zagreus’ side. The light in Elysium basked his body, which was laid turned away from Thanatos. Blood had settled on Zagreus’ shoulder, trailing down his spine. It was horrific to look at so intensely, yet Zagreus made death seem beautiful. Thanatos picked him up and brought him over to the river Styx in a moment’s notice. Thanatos let go of Zagreus’ corpse, his touch deprived of the ever so little warmth it had left. His body was engulfed by the blood of the Styx taking him away further and further away from Thanatos.

☾ ⋆*･ﾟ:⋆*･ﾟ:⠀ *⋆.*:･ﾟ .: ⋆*･ﾟ: .⋆ ☾

Zagreus’ eyes opened to chatter amongst shades and the strong smell of blood. He felt the blood soaking his skin, he knew for certain that he was in the pool of Styx. The wound on his shoulder felt as though it never existed, completely healed up. He remained floating atop the pool of blood, enjoying the feeling for a little while longer. He eventually grew bored of floating around in the Styx, getting up and out of the pool. He slicked his hair back, feeling the remainder of blood trailing down his neck. He pulled Stygius out of the pool with him and put it to his side.

“Welcome back, prince!” Hypnos waved excitedly to Zagreus a bright smile covering his face, “Let’s see… You died to another one of those Brightswords! Must’ve sucked, huh? Maybe next time try moving aside when they swing their swords around? That should help!”

“You’re right. I’ll do that next time.” Zagreus sighed. He had gotten used to Hypnos’ snarky remarks, but he was much more tired of them today. He walked away, heading straight to his room without going to see Achilles. He wanted to lay down, for once.

The prince entered his room and was greeted with Thanatos facing away from the door, observing his belongings. Thanatos let out a soft chuckle and turned to face the boy.

“I can’t say I was expecting you, Than,” Zagreus said, approaching the other boy. Thanatos had his arms crossed, with a smile tugging at his lips.

“Well, considering how you died while in my presence, I felt like I had to pay you a visit,” Thanatos moved over to be closer to the bed, leaving Zagreus standing in the middle of his room all alone, “You need to rest and stop pushing yourself too far out there, Zagreus.”

The prince looked down, unable to meet the other boy’s eyes. He knew he was right, he was always going too far to reach his goal. He always faced his mother drenched in blood from head to toe; she always cleaned him up afterward. What else could Zagreus do? He wanted to see his mother over and over again, one time wasn’t near enough. With Thanatos presenting him with this much concern, coming to see him when he’s almost dead in Elysium and seeing him when he’s back at the House of Hades, how could he turn Thanatos away?

“Just lay with me for a moment. It could even be as short as a second, but do not go back out there yet, please.”

Zagreus was sold by that alone.

He walked over to his bed as quickly as he could and dragged Thanatos down to the bed with him. The sudden movement had Thanatos looking at the prince, eyes wide, but his expression softened immediately at the sight of Zagreus’ sweet smile. The both of them moved closer to each other still, Zagreus resting his head on Thanatos’ shoulder. Thanatos wrapped his arms around the prince, which made him do the same. Zagreus let out a muffled chuckle, to which Thanatos smiled. Zagreus couldn’t see the way Thanatos’ eyes were shining bright with the warmth of his lover taking over his usually cold body. Zagreus found comfort in his cold embrace. He’d always been surrounded by the scorching hot embers of the underworld, but Thanatos was there to provide him with a new feeling he grew to love over time.

Thanatos had his head resting on the prince’s, stroking his hair gently while caressing his back all the same. The warmth reached his hands with even the faintest touch. He would flutter his hands along Zagreus’ back, which made the prince shiver, but he was quick to laugh it off. He gently removed the flaming wreath off the prince’s head. He placed it onto the bedside table. Thanatos ruffled Zagreus’ hair, smelling the sweetness of what he could only think to be the smell of Pomegranates. Of course that’s what his scent was; Zagreus loved those. Thanatos loved that. Thanatos loved everything about Zagreus.

Thanatos laid there for long over a moment, noticing Zagreus’ slowed breathing. He’s fallen asleep, he thought. And he was right; Zagreus was fast asleep in his arms. Thanatos shifted slightly to get himself more comfortable and allowed himself to doze off as well.

Zagreus could always try escaping later, he thought before shutting his eyes and drifting off in his dreams.

[date posted; 20.12.20]

#hades game #hades #thanzag #thanatos #zagreus #olympus #gods of olympus #game #writing #fanfic #hades fanfic

71 notes · View notes

sugarmusewrites · 3 years

Text

Cold & Alive

Read here on AO3!

Summary

Zagreus had fought through the layers of hell without batting an eyelash. Greeting his first taste of spring, he was completely overwhelmed. It felt...mortal of him. At first he felt his chest tighten, but then it was more like a dislodging. Years of calculations, grit, and a determinedness to win melted away from his heart, as just one fleeting feeling remained. He wondered if this was how Hope felt when it looked around and realized it had room to fly again with all the evils of the world now out of Pandora’s box.

There was something about the cold on the surface of the earth that felt alive. The cold of Tartarus was stale, eternal, unmoving. The cold of earth came with sensation. The shiver that moved up his spine as his bare feet touched the freshly fallen snow. The sounds of wild life--of any life--rustling through the evergreens. The delicious sting of his cheeks burning when the winter breeze whipped at his face consistently.

Zagreus had an eternity of lifetimes ahead of him, but here in this clearing he understood why mortal life was precious. It was as though its brevity forced every little bit of energy and passion it possessed to each and every moment it existed.

He had never made it this far in his escapes before, but greeting the winter on the surface felt like greeting a distant friend. One that he had been nervous to see again, anxious as to whether he still deserved their friendship. But as soon as his father had fallen for the final time, the scene before him was so expansive, Zagreus allowed him the sentimentality of believing it was like arms spreading wide just for him. To accept him. Thanatos’ warning to him rang in his ears.

“Whatever you’re doing, it had better be worth it.”

If greeting winter had been like greeting an old friend, then being introduced to the sensations of spring were like coming home to something. Another shiver wracked his body, undoubtedly not from the cold this time.

While breathing for the immortal was more a luxury than a necessity, Zagreus swore that the breath he took of this warm, sweet air was surely the deepest he had taken in all of his existence. Briefly he wondered if his infant body had felt half as lit up when Nyx breathed life into it. It was starting to become a cliché in his head, but truly the only way to describe how he felt was alive.

Zagreus would always remember the first time he held his breath, gazing upon Persephone at last. She was radiant. Her existence seemed to defy the reality of the rest of the world around her. Demeter, with her frigid blessings and boons, had seemed in synchronicity with the wintery scene that he had been first greeted with on arrival to the surface. But Persephone...it was like she transcended what the earth expected of her. In this realm it was apparent that nature followed Persephone’s call, not the other way around. His mismatched eyes stung, having never experienced such deep vibrant hues of green.

They locked eyes.

---

Once more cold grasped at him. This cold was not alive, but it was frustratingly more familiar. Zagreus grunted in pain, falling to a knee beside Persephone, beside his mother. He gritted his teeth and glanced up at her, eyes narrowing at her lips as it was already becoming difficult to hear what she was saying.

It wasn’t supposed to be like this.

“Mother…” He fought back the heaviness behind his eyelids, struggling to continue to look at the goddess. Persephone’s radiant glow softened, her perfect hands coming up to his face. He hadn’t realized a tear had escaped his eye before feeling her brush it away. Zagreus wheezed, giving in to the desire to shut his eyes as he leaned into his mother’s embrace.

He would go and find answers, she asked of him.

He would return, he promised her.

With a final exhale, Zagreus’ body went still. The embers of his feet extinguished. In an instant, Persephone’s son lay dead before her once more.

---

Zagreus had become woefully familiar with the feeling of being submerged in the Styx. He imagined that this was how a shade perpetually felt. Floating and yet heavy at the same time. Aware of a consciousness, but not quite aware of concrete thoughts. Yet this time he sensed a presence. It was both with him and not with him. Sluggishly he reached out his arm, and soon his entire being was thrust out of the water and onto the cold steps of the Underworld.

Zagreus coughed, red sludge pouring out of his lungs and onto the floor. Breathing in the stale and cold air around him, he was reminded of how dead this place was. This cold was ancient, still, one that reflected millennia of absence of true life. It was nothing like the paradise he had been graced with above.

He shook out his hair, his robes. He patted down his sides to ensure his weapons and trinkets had made the trip back with him. Zagreus had a method to this madness of returning to life. He opened his eyes for the first time in this rebirth, unconsciously flicking to the banister above him.

Than.

The god of death floated along the railing, arms crossed as they often were. Thanatos’ hood was down, revealing the golden white locks that reminded Zagreus of the sun reflecting off of fresh snow. Too soon he was brought back to the memory of his brief escape, and Zagreus forced himself to look away. He wiped at his eyes, blaming the sludge of the Styx for the sudden stinging and moisture that was collecting there.

Had he always been this sensitive? Something long buried within Zagreus had finally sprouted at the surface. He had always been filled with passion, with anger, with drive. But these new feelings that kept overtaking him--the longing, the despair--for the first time Zagreus believed it really were possible for a mortal to die of a broken heart.

He was grateful to see Hypnos pretend to remain asleep, no energy left in him to tell the tales of his success turned utter failure. He wandered down the hall, the red velvet curtains and half lit chandeliers not nearly doing enough to make Zagreus feel like this was a home. Nyx cast her eyes down, seemingly knowing better than to address this return. Orpheus looked up from his post, a sad yet acknowledging smile on his face.

Did every damn god in this Hell know better than him?

Zagreus clenched his fists. Though each rebirth came with a revival of his vitality, he had never felt more tired. He acknowledged no one. He kept his wet eyes focused on a point far away from him as he slowly made his way to his bed chambers.

---

“You look like you’ve been dragged through Hell.” Zagreus was surprised by Thanatos beating him to his chambers, and irritated by the god’s poorly timed sense of humor.

“What are you doing here, Thanatos?” The god in question raised his eyebrow at the use of his full name. He released his magic, feet coming to stand on solid ground. Even without floating, Thanatos stood a full head taller than Zagreus in stature, a fact that Zagreus was even more aware of given their proximity.

The god of death kept up his usual silent routine, eyebrow still cocked, arms still crossed over his broad chest. Zagreus stubbornly looked off to the side of Thanatos, realizing that looking straight at him would require looking up at the god. He had faced enough humiliation for one day.

The silence was broken not by either of them, but from the sounds of the clumsy Dusa outside of the room. While she was likely just dusting as usual, Zagreus’ hand was already at the hilt of his sword. He jolted at the sensation of icy cold fingers wrapping over his own. Losing at their game of chicken, Zagreus finally glanced up at Thanatos, swallowing tightly when he saw the pity in the god’s eyes.

“Zag--” Zagreus slapped Thanatos’ hand away on reflex, casting his glance away once more. He expected the god of few words to silently leave. Instead, he heard Thanatos release a deep sigh.

“Zag,” he tried again. “You look like shit. Would it kill you to get some rest before you go out there again?” Well, just about everything else in these realms had killed him so Zagreus couldn’t be sure. He released the hilt of his sword, arms crossing in front of him so as to mirror his guest.

“You know I can’t, Than.” He chewed at the inside of his cheek. “Resting would feel like accepting defeat.” His eyes now lingered at his own reflection in his mirror, for a brief moment mistaking his gaunt appearance for one of a shade’s.

“Well you sure look like you’ve already been defeated.” Damn mind reader. Thanatos’ tone was flat, so why had it felt like the words pierced into Zagreus’ chest more harshly than Theseus’ lance? He scrubbed at his eyes with the backs of his hands, not recognizing that the pathetic little whimper echoing in the chamber had come from him.

“Stop.” He whispered harshly, slapping away the icy hand that had just barely grazed his shoulder. “Enough of your pity!” Zagreus stared up at Thanatos with purpose this time, ignoring the way his own eyes swirled with tears and self-loathing.

“Zag.” Did this damn god know any other words? Zagreus froze in place at the weight of that single syllable. Thanatos approached more deliberately this time, gently tugging at Zagreus’ wrists to pull his hands away from his face. “You know I’m incapable of feeling pity. I’m...death.”

This time the joke did warrant a small chuckle from Zagreus, though it was a hysterical one. A sensation overcame him not unlike how it felt to sink into the Styx. He was at once floating and heavy, aware and yet unaware. Thanatos was still staring at him.

“Okay.” Zagreus fell forward, allowing his head to be caught by the bare part of Thanatos’ chest. The other god’s skin was so cold Zagreus swore he could breathe it in and feel it in his lungs. It was absurd, to lean against something that simultaneously felt so cold and yet so alive--

Zagreus’ sorrow burst out of him in earnest. The dots connected so quickly that he thought he might die again just from the shock of how quickly his sobs came barreling out of him. Thanatos continued to say nothing, arms wrapping around Zagreus, holding him to his chest as he cried.

“I met her, Than. She was beautiful. So beautiful, so alive--”

His recountings and ramblings of meeting his mother at last poured out of Zagreus until he was out of breath. He only realized that they had moved when he felt Thanatos lower down, the god of death sitting on the edge of the bed with Zagreus now being pulled up and onto his lap.

Zagreus allowed himself to be held, allowed his god to wrap up him and offer the chilling, utterly alive comfort that only Thanatos could provide.

They might have stayed like that for hours, it could have been days. At the moments when Zagreus felt tempted to ask Thanatos about work, he would feel the faintest press of lips to the top of his head and the question would disappear. During one of these insistences, Zagreus felt bold enough to tip his head up and give those lips a different target.

Breathing for gods was a luxury. But Thanatos was generous enough to not question his prince each time he seemed to purposefully wait for Thanatos’ exhale to kiss him. Zagreus hummed, filled over and over again by his own living winter.

The surface could wait.

#fanfiction #fanfic #hades #zagreus #thanatos #thanzag #thanzag fic #hades video game

25 notes · View notes

demonprosecutor · 3 years

Text

WHEN YOU HYPERFIXATE ON HADES

“you really don’t need to be here for it.” night had fallen and darkness shrouded the overt violence that had occurred that day, the stars trembling and looking away at the savagery of death inflicted so callously. zagreus holds a torch, the flames casting a ghoulish glow over both your features and illuminating the bodies piled on pieces of kindling - a burial pyre.

are their mothers grieving, waiting for them? are their fathers sharpening their spears for vengeance? are their wives and children left without a piece of their family?

such a carelessness in burial, in ritual makes you shudder, guilt curdling your stomach so viciously that you near expel the contents of your stomach. zagreus, of course, did not understand the rituals of man, did not understand what needed to be done in order for them to cross the river Styx by the boatsman Charon and to find home in the underworld.

yet, he does not complain when you press a golden drachma into their calloused palms, scared and roughened by combat. only to be slain by someone whom they believed would aid them.

lord zeus and lady hestia would cast curses upon you...

you scatter dirt on their forms, cinching your pouch of coins tightly and taking a step back. “ok, i’m ready.”

zagreus offers you a sidelong look, lingering in slightly concern. even he could tell that you were not made for combat, not made for war like he was. you could only watch as he tosses the torch onto their bodies, erupting into flames and sparks floating to join the stars above before being kidnapped by the telltale breeze.

the prince does not say anything much as you offer prayers towards their safe journey and for forgiveness for the both of them, desecrating the sanctity of home. you pour libations onto the ground, a blessing and offering to the Chthonic gods.

the words come easy, come familiar. After all, you were the one to hold funerals for your town that all perished, the temple’s priestess murdered at the steps of her patron’s temple. Blood had run that day like the ocean that lapped at the shore.

you fall silent, crossing your arms tightly, jumping when zagreus places a hand gently on the curve of a shoulder - thumb rubbing exposed skin sweetly. “are you ok? this was... i’m sorry, i didn’t--- they were going to hurt us, hurt you. and i... couldn’t let that happen.”

and the tight ball of pain eased into something warm, the tightness of your shoulders loosening. because in the short time you’ve known him, there’s a steadfast loyalty in him that settles the fear in your heart.

a sigh brushes your lips, staring at the pyre until spots danced before your gaze. “i know. i appreciate that.” your words is weary, bone-tired, something that you haven’t felt in a long time. you were never exactly the most verbose of individuals, especially concerning words that betrayed your true inner self. you were always so used to hiding behind a mask crafted from necessity.

he squeezes your shoulder lightly, heat lingering when his hand falls away.

you think your eyes are tricking you, but as the flames begin to die down, blackened ash settling as smears upon verdant ground, something ghostly rises from mound. eight shades that stand, corporeal forms shuddering, turning to consider them carefully.

it makes you take a step back, hackles lifting in alarm at the sight of something so unnatural. after all, one does not see shades unless they were close to death themselves.

“he should be here soon.” zagreus mutters to himself softly, features drawn in faint anguish that it makes you want to reach out - but in your infinite cowardice, you hold back.

he does not take long to arrive, the air ringing with the ominous clang of something stricking metal and before you, in a flash of blue comes a being so ethereal, so awe-striking, you cannot help, but stare. reaper cloth drapes his form, golden pauldron curling from his right shoulder and right arm encased in a clawed gauntlet. his eyes were of melted gold, hair and lashes as white as the virgin snow and skin the colour of pallid, dead flesh.

yet something about him was familiar, in the moroseness that surrounded him, in the grief that seemed to linger at his feet.

the thought strikes you at the same time zagreus breathes out, “Thanatos”

impassively, death incarnate’s gaze sweeps over you as though you were nothing more than a bug before settling on zagreus. the corner of his mouth curled downward. “zagreus, you made it.” even if the words were monotone, it was enough to make the prince wince slightly. “you do realize that you are setting things into motion that you do not understand. i hope you’re happy.”

zagreus frowns, gaze firmly pinned on the god, “you know why i had to come up here. my mother is here and there’s just... so many things i don’t understand yet, so many pieces missing. are you really going to begrudge me for wanting to know myself more?”

the words were harsh, yet you can sense a history between the two of them. something deeper than association of godhood. while you couldn’t boast much, you are someone who knows the character of individuals fairly well, and you can tell - there was a fondness between the both of them.

lord thanatos scoffs loudly, “know yourself? don’t make me laugh, zagreus. you had everything down there and you gave it all up for this?” he sweeps his hand in a wide gesture at the empty fields, crickets chirping their melody sweetly. “there’s nothing here. nothing of worth, anyways.”

you couldn’t help, but feel as though it was a sort of back-handed comment to you. careful to keep your gaze pinned firmly on the ground.

“stop it. stop it. what are you doing here? if father sent you to get me back, i won’t. not without a fight.” even if his words are brave, there’s a weary tone that underlaid it, and you know that if anything, he wanted to avoid fighting the other god as much as possible.

“would you believe me if i said that i was going to harvest these souls?” he swipes his scythe lightning-quick through the eight shades, their forms flickering before wisping away. zagreus tosses him an unimpressed look, brow arched and arms crossed over his chest. “fine. that and i wanted to see y--- where you were. what the place was like.” lord thanatos looks around curiously, nothing sparking in his gaze that indicated that he truly cared about lady persephone’s fields.

(although you are indignant on the goddess’s behalf, her lands were the most beautiful of them all)

you feel the prick of metal claws underneath your chin, tipping your head back to meet the golden eyes of lord thanatos, brow arched as though to say: are you a part of the reason he wants to stay? “and who’s this?”

“Than.” you hear zagreus say in warning, light threat that lingers in his voice.

Lord Thanatos laughs slightly, “relax, zag. i won’t do anything to hurt your little mortal toy. now tell me, who are you?”

there’s a defiant part of you that wanted to seal your lips and stare back, but such impunity was something that was not welcome by any deity and if you wanted to keep your head - you would answer.

“I-- I am the servant to lady persephone. i have been here for a while...” you feel your hands shake, palms start sweating, and for some reason, you cannot look away from Lord Thanatos’ eyes, so magnetic, so hypnotic, it’s as though you were falling. until the illusion was shattered with the way death incarnate pulled back, claws tickling the underside of your chin almost-playfully, satisfied with the truth in your words.

nonetheless, you feel like a pet. your cheeks burn as you stumble forward, sure-footed legs wobbling enough that zagreus reaches forward to curl an arm around your waist to make sure you didn’t fall. “what did you do?!” even if there was fondness between the both of them, zagreus looked ready to punch lord thanatos.

he quirks a slight smile, teasing and playful. “i didn’t hurt them, i just want to see the truth in their words. and they were telling the truth.”

you manage to find your bearings, brows furrowed and with minimal struggle (zagreus had tightened his grip, thinking you were going to collapse), managed to extract yourself from the prince’s embrace. “i don’t make it a habit to lie.” you valued honesty and in the short life that you have ever known, you do not ever recall a time you ever lied to anyone.

“all mortals do. eventually.” the words were dismissive and it seemed that your interaction with the god was over, considering the way he turned his floating body to face zagreus. “i came to tell you this. what you are doing, what you have done... it roused something.” something unsettled crosses death incarnate’s features. “unnatural things are happening. mortals that should be dead still walk among these lands, monsters cease to die---” he shakes his head, hair whispering against his hood.

“what do you mean?” zagreus, at this, straightens, worry evident. “things aren’t dying?”

that makes something in you chill, half-remembered rumours of travelers that wander through these lands. but ... those were just rumours, right?

Lord thanatos shrugs, “whatever it is, it’s no longer your concern ever since you left.” it’s cruel what he says, enough that it seems to wound zagreus. but nothing more was said. in a flash of light, radiant wings arching before lord thanatos disappears, leaving you both with the smoldering ashes of the pyre.

it seemed that zagreus was too shocked to do anything much, staring off into space thoughtfully. you sigh, pouring a bucket of dirt over the remaining embers and stifling them with a soft hiss.

you watch the prince, swathed in ember, eyes that reflected both of his parentage, stand there - looking more alone than ever. “was... were you and Lord Thanatos close?”

zagreus blinks, startled by your voice, turning his head to take in your form - clutching the bucket at your hip and knees smeared with grey. “I--- we--- we are. were. I don’t know.” he runs a hand through his hair in frustration, “it’s just... ever since i left, i think i hurt him.” there’s true regret in his tone, rocking back on his feet before flopping to the ground and staring at the night sky.

he misses them, you realize with clarity.

quietly, you set the bucket to the side, and gingerly lower yourself to lay on your back next to him. “i think you did too.” you say quietly, honestly as ever. you try to be gentle, but still, you see him wince.

“ouch.” he crosses his arms and turns his head, so that you couldn’t see his face. “i didn’t mean to hurt him.” a whisper.

you don’t respond for a few seconds before sighing slightly, “sometimes, we hurt the people we love whenever there is a desire for change. we never really mean to, but it happens. maybe you should apologize to him.” zagreus looks over at you, opening his mouth to argue. “not because you wanted to leave the underworld, but because you hurt him by leaving.”

the prince stares at you, shifting his gaze to the stars. “i guess, it’s a complicated situation.

“that’s life.” you laugh, pushing yourself up so that you were sitting. “complications.” you make the move to stand; however, the hand around your forearm stops you. zagreus props himself up on an elbow, brows drawn together in pleading.

“stay with me for a while?”

oh. oh. how could you ever deny your prince anything?

you smile at him, barest hint of teeth before laying back down - “of course.” and you both laid there, staring up at the stars until... until the darkness fell over you, until hypnos cast his spell over you.

---

when you rouse at the rooster’s crow, you smell the scent of morning dew tickling your nose and groan internally. great, this is inviting sickness... yet the chill you had anticipated from sleeping outside never sunk into your bones. you felt warm, unnaturally so.

you open your eyes, squinting at at the sun peeking above the trees, on your back - before looking down at the source of the warmth.

suddenly, your whole body seems to go through a flash of heat, blushing so intensely that you wondered if you were going to burst into flames.

it seemed that prince zagreus, the scourge of wretches and a personal pain in his father’s backside, was... cuddling you. he had thrown a possessive arm over your waist, basically molding his body against yours and staving off the chill of the night and the morning. oh gods, i never thought that your whole body can blush, but here i am.

you try to wiggle free, but zagreus huffs unhappily, plastering himself firmer against your side and grumbles against your shoulder. that was it - you were doomed to be a god-prince’s cuddle pillow for eternity.

(a punishment you didn’t seem to mind)

at this point in time, you would be already waking up to feed the animals or to prepare breakfast, but being trapped so thoroughly meant that escape was nigh impossible.

resigned to your fate, you offer a few grumbles before settling back down to sleep some more. it was a hard day yesterday, you figured that you deserved some semblance of rest.

it must be some time later, you roused once more. trapped in the nebulous space between awake and asleep. you murmur sleepily, turning your head slightly and you see... zagreus above you, studying you carefully, face soft and fond and open - in the way that the land could only bring out. he brushes his hand on your forehead, sweeping hair away from your face carefully.

a dream, perhaps?

you wake up again, this time tucked carefully in your bed, blanket pulled to your chin and tucked tightly enough to feel as though you were a baby being swaddled once more. how did you... oh.

“he carried me up here and tucked me in...” you managed to worm a hand out to smack your face in embarrassment before allowing the limb to drop back onto the bed listlessly. you were feeling lazy and content enough to want to lounge in bed.

well, that is until you smelled something burning.

“what the---” you scramble out of bed, legs tangled in the blankets, and tripping over them and rushed down the hall and into the kitchen where zagreus was frantically attempting to kill the flames from the fireplace where he was attempting to cook food.

fear ran through your mind and you grabbed the pitcher, tossing water over the cauldron AND zagreus in turn.

the flames flickered down into a sad death, the pitcher held in a death-grip, as you looked over to zagreus who... looked like a sad, wet puppy.

you couldn’t help yourself, you promptly burst into loud laughter, setting the pitcher to the side so that you could lean on the table, snorting and cackling hard enough to bring tears in your eyes. soon enough, zagreus follows suit, placing the pan to the side. “what are you doing?” you manage through wheezes.

zagreus snorts, smiling hard enough that his cheeks hurt, “i was trying to make you breakfast, but as you can probably tell, i failed miserably.”

“ok, first of all, too much kindling. the fire got out of control.” you compose yourself, smiling all the while, walking over to the fireplace, poking at the wet kindling. “how about we get some more kindling and i could teach you how to cook.”

“but i wanted to cook you something.” you can hear the pout in his voice, as you both retreat to the back to dump the wet wood and grab new pieces to replace it. “just as a thank you, you know.”

oh. the smile turns a bit shy and you can feel yourself softening, “well, you can’t cook me anything if you don’t know how to. how about i teach you first and then you can cook me something. tomorrow’s breakfast is on you, deal?” you hold out your hand and zagreus takes it without hesitation, the joy reaching his eyes.

“deal.”

#hades the game #hades supergiant #zagreus hades #zagreus #thanatos #thanatos hades #my writing #aku writing #whew this was a long one!#but YES! we meet than #AAAAAND have some interesting tidbits #and softness for flavour

24 notes · View notes