Chapter Text
Thanatos didn't know how long it took him, but eventually he realized that what he was seeing was… red.
Similarly, he didn't know how long it had been there by the time he did notice. He'd been empty, filled with nothing and now that nothingness had something with quality in it, and he found that now that he'd seen it, he couldn't pull his attention from it. It didn't do anything except gently radiate a pleasant, glowing redness that pulled at something in him he hadn't realized had been there. It enticed him to keep looking. To let it in and be comforted by it.
And strangely enough, he was comforted.
It was the first thing he'd felt in a long time.
He couldn't remember why he hadn't felt anything in a long time, but now that he had something–this beautiful, comforting red–he found he didn't want to let it go for anything. For so long there had only been nothing, the steady, gray nothing of oblivion, and now… this.
The color was beyond precious.
It took even longer to realize he had hands with which to hold it, and to his astonishment that he also had a body. The sensations were so distant that he almost forgot, and forgot, and forgot but the red in his hands also emitted a warmth he couldn't bear to ignore. He was cold, but he hadn't… realized he was so cold and slowly he drew that soothing red warmth closer to his chest. It was gentle in a way he didn't think he'd ever felt before. Had he felt… anything before?
He held it to his chest and felt a soft sorrow and longing and appreciation ease out of him, like the first faint bubblings of a new spring reaching for the surface. A bittersweet ache filled him as he continued to hold the red light in his palms, close to his heart. It was doing something to him, calling something out of him, and he shuddered and didn't know why.
What was all of this? And why was it so… important?
Slowly, he realized the light had a shape and was firm in his hands which was why he could hold it. It was a point in his awareness he could cling to and grow around, pulling away from the nothing bit by bit as he grew again, or perhaps for the first time, he wasn't sure. As time passed, he felt more of his form, a body that housed thought and this ache, shrouded in something soft and dark to keep out the faint light from beyond. As he noticed the physical world around him, he also began to hear sounds too, distant but growing. Water. Soft, familiar, impossible sounds of a place that was meant to be calm and pure.
For a moment, it was actually… nice. Had he ever experienced anything so peaceful before? Hanging in the air as he was, he curled around the light and warmth of the stone in his hand. It would be… nice to fall asleep like this. When was the last time he slept? Did he sleep? What had he been doing before?
He didn't know and with his slow thoughts also couldn't be bothered to care. Whatever this was, this faint, gentle experience, it was nice. Nicer than before, in the nothing. The red light and the warmth were a blessing in comparison to what he'd been experiencing. Like he was… alive now, just a little, after an eternity of death.
The peace made him close his eyes. He wanted this moment. Everything else could wait, if there was anything else.
"Than?"
The sound was so solid and real that for the first time he was compelled to look at something other than the red glowing stone in his hands. He turned his gaze downward to encounter another form. A man with black hair and distinctive red and green eyes.
He stared at the figure, the well of emotions in him moving as he tried to understand what he was seeing. He held the stone closer to his chest as something shifted. Tilted his head as he continued to stare. Did he… know this person?
Pained hope and a raw edge tore out of the man as he called again. "Than? Please." The man's voice was ravaged with pain. "It's me. Please, come back."
And then the dam of his emotions broke, and Thanatos remembered.
The full-body flinch ravaged a body unaccustomed to movement anymore and he darted away as he remembered who he was looking at, knew who he was, and knew why he'd been so close to the nothing.
"No," he said with a whisper-thin voice he could barely recognize as his own, but he couldn't care as a waft of desperation, anger, and fear flooded into him. "What have you done?"
"Than?" Zagreus said, his voice bright and filled with hope as he darted after him, snatching a wrist that had just barely been within reach and refusing to let go. "Thanatos, you're you, right? You can see me? You can hear me?"
"Let me go," Thanatos said, voice stronger as the reality of what was going on was hitting him harder. He was remembering. He was becoming himself again.
And this was Zagreus.
But not his Zag.
"No, please Than, you have to listen—"
"What have you done?" Thanatos said, trying to shake Zagreus off. "Why did you—"
"Thanatos, look at me!"
He didn't want to, gods knew he didn't want to. But there was something in the desperate tone of Zagreus's voice that refused to let him do otherwise. Bracing himself for pain, because what else could there possibly have been otherwise, he couldn't help but look at the Underworld Prince. After all this time and all this work, he'd have thought he'd buried all of his emotions so far that he wouldn't ever be able to feel them anymore–not the hope or the pain–but they were there again, fresh and as real as ever. This was punishment. Punishment for being drawn out of the nothing. After this he would never let anything pull him out again. All it would take was this one final look.
Thanatos looked into mismatched eyes and expected to see a stranger.
He saw Zag.
All he could do was stare as his throat tightened and his eyes watered because now he frantically searched for the lie. After all, this… this had to be a lie. He'd failed. Zagreus's memories of him were completely gone and that meant his Zag was gone.
But the way the Underworld Prince looked at him like he was dying of the same desperate and fearful hope, like he was looking at Thanatos and seeing him again… he froze. It couldn't be right, he knew that, he'd failed so thoroughly, that look wasn't real. It was impossible.
And yet he stared into eyes he hadn't seen in a long, long time. Eyes he'd prayed for and dreamed of and could find no hint of a lie.
It seemed it was the opportunity Zagreus needed because as he stared, frozen and trying to understand, the prince made his move. Before he could move away, strong arms wrapped around his body and refused to let go as a dark-haired head buried into his shoulder.
"Don't go. Please, don't go again," Zagreus begged. "Please, don't leave. I'm here. I swear I'm here. It's me. Just please—"
"Zag?" Thanatos whispered, terrified this was all just a terrible, cruel dream.
"I remember you, I swear, just give me a chance to explain."
"But you don't," Thanatos said, because he couldn't. They hadn't filled the final bloodstone. It had been destroyed. Zagreus's memories of the two of them had literally crumpled to dust in front of them. "Why are you doing this?"
"I had a fourth bloodstone. I secretly gave it to you the day I was poisoned by the Lethe when we met right before I went to the arena," Zagreus said quickly like he was afraid Thanatos might leave before he had the chance to say anything. Which was probably a good idea because Thanatos had been an instant from reaching for his power to leave. "It was meant as a keepsake to you. I was going to surprise you later that evening and tell you. The bloodstone was why you couldn't charge the others. It was why you felt so much more than you usually do and why you became the way you did when you gave it back to me before you put me in the Styx."
Thanatos shook his head. "I didn't have—"
"You did!" Zagreus's shout was so startling Thanatos couldn't do anything but stare as the other god lifted his head with a snarl so strong he thought for a moment he was looking at Lord Hades. "You did, I swear upon my mother and yours, Thanatos, that this is the truth. You couldn't fill any of the other bloodstones because you had already completely charged the one I'd secretly given you. I needed three and although the third was destroyed, you gave me back the fourth one you had before you let the Styx take me, and it was filled with you." Zagreus's hands on his shoulders were tight and the look on his face was desperate. "It's me Than! It's completely me. You didn't fail. You didn't lose me. I'm here and I'm real!"
"Zag," Thanatos breathed, unable to bear the possibility that this was really happening.
"Don't go. Don't leave," Zag kept going like he couldn't stop. "Don't forget me because I can't lose you. Not like this. Not again, and not when you did nothing wrong." Hands swept up to hold his face. "You didn't fail, Than! Even at the end when there was no possibility of hope, you saved me. You didn't know it, but you did." Zag's voice broke. "Please, let me save you!"
A shuddering breath jolted out of Thanatos, and he wanted to believe. He wanted it more than anything, but this didn't make sense. None of what Zagreus was saying made sense and the pain he'd endured since his failure was nothing he wanted to ever relive.
But… what if Zagreus was telling the truth? What if… what if there had been a fourth bloodstone? What if he'd had it all along? What if it was exactly as Zagreus was saying? After all, hadn't Ares mentioned something all that time ago? About how there was something of Zagreus that burned in him? That he'd meant it literally?
What if that had been the fourth bloodstone he'd sensed?
What if he hadn't lost Zagreus at all?
Hope, Thanatos hated it more than he could ever say, but it grew in him against his will as he stared at the mismatched eyes in front of him in a face he'd known and loved more than anything. Because what if it was true? What if all of this was true and this was his Zag?
It was more than he could bear.
Slowly, he lifted a hand and touched Zagreus's face.
"Zag?"
"It's me, I promise! I promise, please, just–remember when you came to me in my room, and you asked me what was stopping me? That you were right there. Well, I'm right here, Than! I'm right here. It's me. Just please, don't give up. I'm asking one last time, don't go."
Even though there was a part of him that still wanted to go and that didn't want to get hurt again, hearing Zagreus recall the moment when their relationship changed–that he knew and he was fighting so hard for it–wasn't enough to stop or overwhelm the sudden flood of emotion that had just been waiting for him to let in. The hope won out, and if this was a horrible trick or a lie, he knew he'd never be able to recover from it.
But if it was true?
"Zag?" he said again, but this time the hope was real in his voice and it called to the desperate hope that sat in Zagreus. "It's really you?"
"Yes, I swear," Zagreus promised, a broken smile spilling across his lips. "You saved me."
The flood of emotion was too much and suddenly Thanatos had Zagreus clenched in his arms as he shook and prayed this wasn't going to be taken from him again.
"I thought I'd lost you," he admitted. "I've never felt anything like what I felt when I thought you were gone and I'd never get you back."
"I know, I'm sorry," Zagreus said. "I tried to reach you before you left when you placed me in the pool, I tried, but I was too slow. And then when you wouldn't react to any of us, and then when we couldn't find you, I didn't know if I'd ever be able to reach you again—"
Thanatos clenched Zagreus harder, silencing him because he was feeling too much. He was always feeling too much when it came to Zagreus, and all he wanted was just to have this moment. To hold and be held and to know that this was real, and it wasn't a dream.
"Thank you for not giving up on me," Zagreus continued. "Everyone told me what you did and what you went through. I'm sorry for all of it, I'm sorry for how I was—"
"You didn't know."
"But it didn't make it any easier for you. I didn't give you any hope. You carried it all on your own."
The shake in the prince's voice tore at Thanatos and he pulled away, face twisting. "And then you carried it when I had none myself. I wouldn't be here with you like this if it wasn't for you. You didn't give up either, even when I did."
A broken laugh ripped out of Zagreus before he pulled Thanatos into a desperate kiss that was so familiar and so new with all the hurt they'd both endured Thanatos wondered if he might reach a new type of death just from this. Zagreus was so filled with life and it was flooding into him, pushing away the nothing he'd sunk into, pulling him back out and it was leaving him overwhelmed and breathless.
The bloodstone in his hand pulsed and Thanatos couldn't help but pull away to stare at it.
"Why did you give this back to me?"
"It was the only thing left we could think of to get you back," Zagreus said. "You were unresponsive. Nothing any of us could say or do was reaching you. We tried everything over the years. Nothing was working."
"Years?" Thanatos asked and Zagreus gave him a tender smile before reaching forward to lift shining locks of silver into his view.
"Your hair hasn't been this long in a long time, Than. I've missed it, but not as much as I've missed you. I had to visit your cousin, Mnemosyne. She advised developing a fourth bloodstone again so that I could give you this one back. She thought it might be the only thing that could pull you back because you had kept it for me and it amplifies your emotions. We were getting worried because you kept coming to Patroclus's glade to stare at the Lethe. I've spent all this time trying to develop a new one so I could give this one back to you."
For the first time Thanatos realized that, yes, this was Elysium, and this was Patroclus's glade.
"I came here?" he said, bewildered.
"You were in Erebus for a while when you weren't working, but then you started coming here. Patroclus thought it was because you were losing hope. He thought being here was your way of trying to stay hopeful, but it was also where you could crave to forget. We didn't know, we were just so worried—"
"I think that's true," Thanatos said as he considered the situation. "I didn't want to remember, and I didn't want to live without you, but I'm Death and I cannot die. So, I think I was trying to get as close as I could."
The shudder that ran through Zagreus was painful but all it did was cause the prince to hold him close again.
"Enough with the memory loss. No more Lethe. No more near-death," Zagreus breathed and Thanatos gave a soft, relieved laugh before he pressed his brow to his prince's.
"Absolutely no more Lethe. Or near-death. Though even if it happened again, I guess I have a failsafe to revive you."
"You do," Zagreus said with a bright smile as he took the bloodstone in Thanatos's hand and pressed it against Death's chest, and they watched it sink in. Thanatos gasped as everything became stronger, heightened by the bloodstone, and he groaned realizing the difference between the intensity of his emotions without the bloodstone and then with them.
"No wonder I was so on edge the whole time," he said. "I thought it was the situation."
"It probably didn't help, but yes, apparently that's what my keepsake does for you." Zagreus paused. "You don't have to keep it. After everything that happened, I understand if you wouldn't want to—"
Thanatos covered Zagreus's mouth with his hand before he could finish.
"I am never giving you back the bloodstone. Not unless you need it."
A smile crawled across Zagreus's face and Thanatos couldn't help but match it. The reality of it was starting to settle and although Thanatos was worried about what might happen next or that this was still just some impossible dream, he let himself have this.
Because right now Zag–his Zag–was here in his arms. He knew him. He was real and himself.
And it was all Thanatos had ever wanted.
"I love you," he said, the words flowing out of him like he'd wanted to tell them since the day they'd come together. "I have always loved you, Zag."
"I know," Zagreus said as he drew him closer, body relaxing like it was the only place in the world he wanted to be. "I love you, Than. More than anything. It was what I'd wanted to tell you." His eyes opened and he gave a small smile. "Let's not try to forget each other again, all right?"
"Deal," Thanatos said with a smile of his own before he melted and pressed Zagreus against him, basking in the rightness of it all after everything they'd endured.
Because finally, finally, everything was right again. Real and sure and alive. No missing pieces in either of them to feel and miss and grieve. Just everything they had. Love and life and each other together.
And Thanatos couldn't be happier.