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Thanatos heard the cries of the dying, but he could not reach them. What had started as a murmuring - a mere ache in the back of his head - now thundered into a crescendo.
A thousand rapid heartbeats, where there should be silence.
A thousand lethal wounds, survived.
The number would only grow. How many would think it a miracle? A blessing from the gods, Thanatos thought bitterly. Death defied! But it would be agony. He supposed the mortals had Ares to thank for that. Who died a peaceful death these days?
Comfort was not in Than’s nature. Zagreus told him he was cold, distant; Thanatos ached at the words but he accepted them. He had to be, didn’t he? How else could he separate soul from body, spirit from flesh, and stay sane? He found the dying, with their broken bones and failing organs, surrounded by wailing families, and he guided them to the underworld, as gentle as he could. It was a lonely, thankless job. It was poignant; it was hell.
Whatever it was, for now, it was a job undone.
Thanatos groaned. He lay on a cold floor, shackled, stripped of his armor and weapons. Nothing to do but listen; no company to keep but his own.
The chains binding him were imbued with Olympian magic, which made escape exceedingly difficult, perhaps impossible. He knew this because he had brought them to Ephyra himself, on a missive from Zeus: bind the king, Sisyphus, and drag him to Tartarus.
Damn Olympians and their dramatics. Of course they wanted him to make a show of it. Even Hades - usually ill-tempered when his brother commanded denizens of the Underworld; a gross overreach, he would seethe - had been pleased at the idea. The chthonic god relished the opportunity to punish such a noteworthy mortal in the depths of hell, for it lended strength to his own name. Meanwhile, the Olympians kept their hands clean.
Everyone got what they wanted.
Except Thanatos.
Thanatos hated it. He hated spectacle. Death was personal, intimate. This was a mockery.
So when Sisyphus had knelt with sorrow in his eyes, weeping lover behind him, and asked why death approached him with weapons and chains, Thanatos could not answer. When the king begged him to say farewell to his family, Thanatos allowed it. And when he asked, innocently, what is the significance of these chains? How do they lock, with no clasp? Thanatos opened a shackle to show him, as he considered throwing the damn chains out and escorting this man to the Underworld with the same respect and grace he offered to others, orders from Olympus or no. But then something in the king’s face changed; his energy sharpened.
Sisyphus wrested control of the shackle, snapping it shut around Thanatos’s bare wrist.
Soldiers burst into the room. The king and his immediate family stepped back, allowing a clattering of men to surround Thanatos, who felt a profound and sudden weakness. He sunk to one knee, struggling to remain upright while the soldiers tore the gauntlet from his free hand, then divested him of his remaining armor.
“What - why?” Thanatos asked.
The question earned him a backhand across the face; his vision whited out and he was on the ground, head ringing.
With the king’s guidance, the soldiers fit the remaining manacles onto Thanatos’s other wrist, then ankles. He was rolled into - oh gods - some box, crammed into its rigid edges and against rough wooden sides with the delicacy of a bull. A lid slammed shut, plunging him into darkness, and he felt himself being lifted and carried away.
For the next several hours, Thanatos breathed stale, hot air; he ached in his shoulders and hips as he shifted positions in the restrictive box; he panicked. He tried to escape even though he knew that the chains were unyielding - even to a god, even to magic - and could only be opened by another.
He heard voices outside the box, then laughter.
“Hail, King Sisyphus,” someone cried. “For he has outwitted death!”
Music and merriment assaulted Thanatos’s ears as he was tipped and released, to cheers. He squinted against the light. Hands grappled him, pulled at his limbs and his chains, and Than found himself wishing for the dark solitude of the box, despite its misery.
They brought him before the king. Sisyphus was certainly different now: a large, confident figure whose wicked smile had been absent earlier. He dined at the head of a grand feast table, an extravagance of wealth on display. Thanatos guided souls from the best and worst of places, from palaces to whorehouses, soft beds to filthy streets; he had witnessed the bleakest lives stutter, starving, to their end. This king’s opulence enraged him.
“Death,” Sisyphus boomed. “Not so terrifying, after all.”
“Why are you doing this?” With difficulty, Thanatos kept his voice low and even.
“Isn’t it obvious? I don’t want to die.”
“You are mortal,” Thanatos said. “Regardless of your want.”
“Says who?” Sisyphus said, mirth evident across his face. “The gods?”
At a gesture from the king, one of the soldiers swung his fist into Thanatos’s side, while another kicked the back of his legs. Than fell to his knees, doubled over and heaving. The soldiers beat him until Sisyphus gave another unspoken command. Until Thanatos lay on the ground, pain a heavy blanket around him, not sure when exactly he had fallen.
“The gods don’t scare me,” Sisyphus sneered.
Thanatos would have laid on the floor longer, but the guards dragged him up again. Someone produced another length of chain and attached it to the one between his wrists, then paraded him about the grand hall as its patrons feasted. Like he was a spoil of war - a display of the king’s conquest.
Where were the other gods? Where was Hades, who surely would miss him in the Underworld; where was Zeus, who sent Than here in the first place, who supposedly wanted this king dead?
Thanatos bit back a curse as one of the mortals tripped him. Heat blossomed in his cheeks, behind his eyes - his head had started to ache by now, voices a distant rumble, though he hadn’t acknowledged their source yet - as he fell into a waiting throng of mortals. They touched him: hesitant, fearful curiosity at first, then emboldened when they realized Than did not fight back.
The chains’ enchantment suppressed his strength, but Than’s spirit despaired; he was not sure he would have fought, even free. There were so many of them, and he was not in the business of hurting mortals, despite his reputation.
The rest of the evening had passed in a miserable haze, until Thanatos found himself alone, thrown in a cell, with the voices of the dying hammering against his skull, and he realized the true cost of his absence.
By mid-morning the next day, the mortals knew it too. Sisyphus’s hubris grew with the discovery, as did his boldness, and the festivities of the previous evening became a large affair: a multi-day celebration of human triumph over death.
Only this was no triumph. Thanatos told the king so - Olympus will not stand for this defiance, and besides, I am not the only god who can take souls to the Underworld; you risk a visit from someone far crueler - but for his words he was gagged, and Sisyphus ordered a man be brought before them and stabbed through the ribs.
The king leaned in close, coiling his fingers through Thanatos’s hair as he forced him to watch. It was a heart wound - quick and devastating, a mass of blood - but when it was all done, the man remained upright.
Thanatos felt the soul struggling within the man’s body - a candlelight flicker against hurricane winds, screaming to let go - but it was trapped. Thanatos could not free it, and no other god approached. The man tottered off, pale and haunted, breathing in vicious gasps, but alive. Thanatos shared his misery. Every mortal that was brought before Sisyphus and brutalized was another agony in his spirit. Fatal wounds were met with cheers and toasting, as if it were all a great thrill, and not a monstrous excuse to inflict suffering on others. As if it was a fun game, and not a perversion of the natural order.
Thanatos wanted to shrink away and hide, but they kept him on display. As days passed, he despaired of rescue; he wondered if the other gods had intended to punish him, rather than Sisyphus. Or perhaps worse - that they simply did not care for his absence.
He was not a major god. He was no Zeus, Poseidon, or Hades, but Thanatos thought he had a place among the pantheon. He accepted the frequent isolation of his role, acknowledged he might not be beloved, but he was necessary. Respected.
This captivity among the humans revealed the truth: the world moved on without him. Whether intentional or not, the other gods, collectively, would let him suffer. And the mortals - well, they seemed to rejoice in it.
People had screamed at Thanatos before, yelled and cursed and even hit him. He appeared at their most vulnerable time: some met him with quiet acceptance, but he understood when others despaired. He knew their rage and he could endure it, he had to - you can be so cold and distant, echoed Zagreus’s voice - but Thanatos had never experienced such collective, vindictive hatred. And he had never been caught.
It was a horrid, helpless feeling.
As a god, he could subsist without food or drink, without bodily needs. Sisyphus could keep him in a box indefinitely; he could throw Thanatos, chained, into a well and drown him again and again. If no god was coming to claim these undying mortal souls, which numbered now in the thousands, why would they look for him? It was only a matter of time before Sisyphus and his men grew more creative - already they beat Thanatos frequently - they would invent new torments for Death Incarnate until he would beg for death himself.
At night, on the cold cell floor, Thanatos tried to sleep. He didn’t need it, but it invoked his brother. Surely Hypnos noticed his absence by now? Surely he missed Thanatos. They did not always see eye-to-eye, but they were family - even friends.
But when he did sleep, Thanatos found only nightmares, and he knew that Hypnos could not see him. Likely the god was deep in his own realm; he could pass days, weeks without waking, flitting into mortals’ dreams - always pleasant ones - without any knowledge of outside events. Thanatos could not hold Hypnos’s own nature against him, lest he be a hypocrite; he may as well join the mortals in the celebration of his own capture.
When Zagreus began to appear in the nightmares, his face twisted into a mocking grimace as he berated Than - you drove me away - did you think I loved you? - no one here misses you, we were glad the mortals took you - Thanatos gave up on sleep altogether. He spent his nights with his back against the wall so the guards couldn’t surprise him, fiddling with the cool metal chains, and tried to shepherd his thoughts towards calmer pastures.
He caught the occasional glimpse of his reflection in the gilded mirrors of Sisyphus’s palace or in the armor and shields of soldiers. His pale yellow eyes were weary, his light hair lank. Bruising mottled his skin, which had taken on a more pallid shade of gray than usual. When he wasn’t gagged, he saw bloodstained, cracked lips that felt as raw as they looked.
His captors seemed to enjoy his ragged appearance, and rarely gave him the means or materials with which to clean himself. No bandages, either - he bled into his thin tunic.
The sounds of the almost-dying - the pull of their souls - had become such a resounding force that Thanatos trembled from it. He forced the cries from his mind, but it was like trying to restrain a rising tide; it overcame him eventually. If he was in the cell, he would curl into himself until the intensity lessened; if he was in Sisyphus’s presence, serving as some spectacle for the masses, he would have to close his eyes and square himself and bear it.
Maybe it would get better, with time. It had to. Maybe he could figure some way to escape, or someone would take pity on him. Maybe, in some half-mercy, one of the other gods would take up his mantle and escort souls to the Underworld. Charon could do it. So could Hermes. Even Hades, if he got pissed enough.
But the god who rescued Thanatos - who opened his cell door one night with the point-blank force of an invading army; the bars bent, the lock was sundered and flew across the room - was Ares.
The God of War took in the scene with a rapid flick of his eyes, his face unmoving.
“Get up.”
Thanatos had been sitting as he usually did with his head against the wall, legs bent to his chest, arms propped awkwardly across his knees. He stood, chains rattling.
How many days - had it been weeks, now?
Was this another nightmare?
“My battlefields are overrun with undying, miserable soldiers,” Ares said curtly. “And this is where you are?”
A weak flame stirred in Thanatos. “I am here under duress,” he said. “Is that not obvious?”
Ares’s lip curled. “It’s obvious that you let a mortal trick you into wearing Olympian chains. Do you care to explain that one, Thanatos? Or shall I just get you out of here?”
Than had to lean against the wall for support; the room felt fuzzy. In answer, he extended his arms to the other god.
In two quick strides, Ares crossed the room. He cut through the chains with his sword, breaking their connections with a sharp clang. Ribbons of red flame licked along the blade with each strike.
Thanatos could walk freely again, he could move his limbs unimpeded, but the cuffs still drained his strength as long as they held him. “Can you-”
“Move,” Ares spoke with the harsh formality of a military leader. “We have work to do.”
Thanatos noticed for the first time that Ares proffered his scythe in his off-hand.
“I will,” Thanatos said softly. “Of course I will - their souls cry out to me - but let me gather myself.” He wanted to bathe; he wanted to guide souls to the Underworld with whatever remained of his dignity intact.
Ares put the scythe in Thanatos’s hands. His eyes narrowed to slits, as if his own face was a mask. “You can earn that privilege soon enough.”
Ares’s hand moved to the back of Than’s neck - as if he was the next weapon to be wielded - and squeezed, so that Thanatos knew it had not been a suggestion.
“Thanatos, oh fuck.”
Ah, insult to injury. Of course Zagreus would be the first to find him, crawling out of the Styx, dripping blood that was still partially his own.
Thanatos looked and felt like shit. Even opening his eyes produced pain, as he squinted against the twitching firelight of the House; he just had to get to his quarters, they weren’t far - or were they? - and then he could rest. He could put this dreadful ordeal behind him, where it belonged, and never speak of it again. Not to anyone, certainly not to Zag - so you admit you are being distant - and it would be like it never happened.
That was his intention, at least, until he collapsed only three steps from the riverbank.
The last thing he remembered was the hiss of flame beneath Zag’s running feet, the smell of the embers left in his wake. And then Thanatos felt no more.
Thanatos awoke to Zagreus’s hand in his. It was only for a short moment, a brief squeeze, then Zag’s fingers drifted to the broken shackles on Thanatos’s wrists, unlocking them. The ankle cuffs went next, and a wave of relief washed over Thanatos. It felt like coming up for air after being held underwater; he couldn’t help but let out a small gasp.
“Am I hurting you?” Zagreus’s face swam into view, bent over Thanatos, full of concern. He almost looked scared.
“No,” Than whispered. “Not at all.”
He was in a room with high ceilings, a beautiful, gilded mirror covering most of the near wall. Thanatos recognized the decor: the tasseled curtains, the books, the wall-scroll of Achilles. He lay on a familiar blue and gold recliner, cocooned in blankets, and Zagreus had dragged his scrying pool closer to them and was now dipping a washcloth in its pale blue water. Thanatos felt the blood rushing to his face; he was a wreck, he didn’t need anyone to see him this way, least of all Zag. He didn’t need to be tended to; he needed to rest and maybe drink some ambrosia, then get back to work.
Only, he’d just finished the soul harvest of the century. So many mortals in one day. Weeks of latent deaths finally realized, put to rest under Ares’s watchful eye. So what was there to do?
Time passed differently in the Underworld; Thanatos was not needed on the surface again, not immediately. He could come and go, flit between the worlds like a butterfly, choosing when and where he wished to appear. Though he felt a panicked flutter in his chest, there was no urgency. Good. Good, he didn’t want to return to the surface, not now, not -
“Than. Than.”
Thanatos dragged his gaze back to Zagreus.
“Let me clean you up. Please.”
“I’m fine,” Thanatos managed hoarsely.
“Bullshit,” Zag hissed, and for a second Thanatos saw his father in him, burning hot, commanding, and yet somehow it didn’t scare him; he knew the young deity’s passion was on Than’s behalf, not at him.
Thanatos nodded mutely, and allowed Zagreus to bring the cloth to his face, to remove the blood and grime with gentle movements. It was the kindest touch he could recall in some time.
“Do you want to go to the baths?” Zagreus asked, after a while. “This is - this is a lot of blood, Than.”
“I would rather not.”
Too many bodies - too close.
“Alright,” Zagreus said. “Well, I can’t promise a miracle on your hair. I’m not Aphrodite’s son.”
Thanatos almost smiled. “That’s okay.”
Zagreus offered him a fresh tunic, and another washcloth for the areas he preferred to clean himself. Than stripped off his bloodstained clothes, groaning with the movements, which hurt. Zagreus had turned aside - to give him some semblance of modesty, Thanatos supposed - but evidently he did not try very hard to look away, because he twisted back with a sudden, rekindled fire in his eyes.
Thanatos glanced up at Zagreus, confused, until he followed the man’s gaze to his own torso: the mass of bruises, the half-healed cuts.
“Oh. It’s not that bad, Zagreus. I’ve seen plenty worse.”
“That’s not reassuring,” Zag said thinly, “coming from the god of death.”
Thanatos dressed, then sat again amongst the blankets. He felt his fingers trembling as he dabbed the cloth around a raw wound that coiled from his back to his abdomen: he recalled the snap of the whip that put it there.
“Who did this to you?” Zagreus’s voice was a controlled burn, one stray spark from becoming a wildfire.
“The mortals… found a way to cheat death.” Thanatos sighed, put down the cloth. “And I had an astounding lapse in vigilance. It won’t happen again.”
Zagreus stood abruptly, crossed the room. There was a crash, a clattering of metal on metal as he rifled through his belongs on the other side of his bed. When he returned, fury writ across his face, he held an assortment of weapons: a spear, a shield, at least two swords - was that a pair of gauntlets?
“Which kingdom? Which mortals?”
“Zag,” Thanatos said softly. “That won’t be necessary.”
It was foolish, too. No one left the Underworld without Hades’s explicit permission; Zagreus would have to fight his way through three layers of hell before he could break the surface. It was suicide.
A flurry of emotions passed over Zagreus’s face before settling on somber resignation.
“Stay in the House for a while. Get some rest.”
Thanatos stared down at his hands.
Get some rest.
How could he, when he closed his eyes and nightmares choked him? When pain seized him with every movement, and he twitched at any unexpected sound?
He couldn’t stop the burning in his eyes, but maybe he could stave away the tears if he stared hard enough into the torchlight from the wall sconces - if he dug his nails into his thighs - if he wasn’t so fucking weak that a mortal man could cage him -
“Thanatos. Than. I’m right here. Will you look at me?”
Zagreus crouched in front of him, voice soft, as if he approached a wild animal. He raised his hands, fingers splayed wide so Thanatos could see them, could track every slow, deliberate movement as Zagreus made it, as if he expected Than to push him away. Than didn’t, and Zag’s hands settled gently overtop his. He squeezed, coaxing Thanatos’s fingers from his legs, away from the tiny red divots he’d driven into his skin.
Thanatos met Zagreus’s eyes, and everything poured out.
The missive from the top of Olympus. Zeus’s damn chains, the palace. The tragic - insincere - look on Sisyphus’s face. Thanatos’s pity, and then his despair.
“It was Ares, in the end,” he said bitterly. “Ares finally released me, because war isn’t as thrilling without death. Not out of any concern for my wellbeing.”
After he had been there for weeks. After the bruising settled over him like a blanket; the skin on his wrists chafed; the ache sunk deep into his bones.
“Oh, Than,” Zagreus whispered. “I’m sorry.”
Zagreus hugged him, and it was humiliating - to be this weak, this vulnerable - and it was everything. The warmth of his skin, the protective ring of his arms. Thanatos held close and sobbed.
“I’m here,” Zagreus mused. “For as long as you want me.”
Thanatos could only nod silently into Zag’s tunic. Tears stung hot against his cheeks - subsiding now, gratefully - and he needed to compose himself, to gather his crumbling, panicked thoughts and put them away, far away. But the longer he clung to Zagreus, the more he found that what he really wanted was to be held.
And it was hard to be too distant, for that.