Chapter Text
Curled up in bed, his head on Thanatos’s bare chest, Zagreus could almost believe he belonged here. He was warm and content, drowsy in a way he rarely experienced during his endless existence. If there could be peace in his father’s realm, Thanatos’s bare skin against his was the very definition of it.
He’d asked Thanatos here to talk, not fuck, but that never lasted long. Within minutes they’d settled on the bed, fingers tangling.
It’d always been like this, some fragile attempt at conversation that meandered off course into accidental touches, wandering eyes, barely suppressed smirks. Then Zagreus’s gut would tighten, his body going hot, his stomach clenching with anticipation. There would be mouths and hands, rasping breaths brushing over hot skin frantically bared, bodies thrown against walls to stop the momentum before they gave in and tumbled back onto the bed.
It was a fever, an urgent madness. Zagreus’s mouth retraced past mistakes, past conversations gone breathy and incoherent, just as this one had, just as they all had. Then the spaces between them shrank, until they were one writhing, clutching body, their voices as intertwined by passionate pleas as their bodies were.
Every time, Zagreus swore he would resist; every time, he did not. Even the memory of Thanatos inside him made him ache with yearning all over again.
Thanatos’s chuckle rumbled beneath Zagreus’s cheek.
“Ready to go again already?” Thanatos said. “Even for beings like us, that’s impressive, Zag.”
His arm was around Zagreus. Thanatos squeezed him tighter for a moment, kissing the top of his head.
“I hate to admit it, but I might need a bit of a rest after that last round,” Thanatos said. “‘The little death,’ indeed, and I should know.”
Zagreus laughed. It was so rare to hear Than so light, so unburdened. Zagreus cringed as he contemplated shattering that. Yet it was why he’d come here. The words that had been swallowed by kisses and drowned out by moans were still lodged in his chest, waiting for the right moment.
“It’s not that,” Zagreus said.
Thanatos must have heard the shift in his tone. His arm tensed around Zagreus.
Zagreus swallowed, digging for those words trapped in his chest. He had to say it. There was no point being here otherwise. He’d put this off for as long as he could, but the pressure was building. Thanatos probably wouldn’t even be surprised. Zagreus knew his father already had his suspicions. This was a mere formality.
“You’re leaving,” Thanatos said.
Zagreus should have explained. He should have expelled the confession huddled around his heart. He should have told Thanatos how much he needed this, how inevitable it was, how desperately important it was.
“I’m sorry,” he said instead.
Thanatos did not ask for an explanation. He did not say anything, not for the rest of the night, not even when they died that little death together a second time.
#
That had been months ago, years, perhaps. Time was strange down here, but Zagreus knew the distance had been long and unkind. He hadn’t seen Thanatos again and he hadn’t dared to ask. It would be cruelty for cruelty’s sake.
Instead, he trained as long and as hard as Achilles would indulge him. He worked every moment he could, growing bolder as the truth of his intentions became a secret well-known among the denizens of the House of Hades.
Then, he ran.
#
He was still running now.
Zagreus panted before the door of the final chamber of Tartarus. He might not have known it was the final chamber, aside from the skull affixed above the door.
“Father always did have an eye for subtlety, didn’t he?” Zagreus muttered.
He’d come this far on his own, with nothing but his sword and raw determination. No one had helped him along the way, not a single tormented soul in this accursed place, but Zagreus could not say he was proud of that. He was ragged and bleeding. He set his palm against the door, but lingered there, bracing himself for whatever lay beyond. Achilles said he was ready, but in that moment he truly questioned his teacher’s confidence.
The door shifted of its own accord. Zagreus had no choice but to follow, stepping forward into the darkness beyond.
The room he entered loomed cavernous around him. He paced in slowly, the hairs on his arms prickling. Columns marched in two long rows along the periphery of the chamber. If there was anything adorning the cold stone walls, he could not pick it out among the darkness.
He knew she’d be here even before her boots echoed through the chamber.
“So, you made it,” Megaera said. She unwound her whip, letting it trail to the floor. Her single leathery wing flexed.
“Meg,” he said.
She stepped closer, hips swaying with her approach. Her whip dragged along the ground, but that didn’t make it any less threatening. “Turn back. Go home, Zagreus.”
“I can’t do that.”
“I think you will find that you can and must.”
She glared at him, cracking the whip against the stone. It sent twin shivers through him, fear and anticipation both, sweet memories clashing against the stark threat of her body language.
Perhaps she remembered, as well. Perhaps that flicker at the corner of her scowl was more than it appeared.
Either way, she did not waver. Zagreus only just had time to dodge out of the way as she screeched and dashed forward.
He rolled to his feet, but a second later dodged again as Megaera flew across the room at him. Her attack missed him, but struck one of the pillars, sending stone tumbling down in a thunderous cascade.
“Aid me,” she called.
Shades oozed up out of the floor, beasts of the underworld rushing to her command.
“Shit.” Zagreus barely had time to bite out a curse before projectiles flashed toward him. He dodged, but this time it wasn’t away. He dashed closer to the beasts Megaera had summoned, cutting them down as quickly as he could.
They shrieked as they fell, leaving him with only Megaera again, but he stumbled even as the last one faded away. They’d done their jobs and left him reeling, leaning on his sword to steady himself.
The next time Megaera lunged at him, he did not dodge. He could not.
She grabbed him by the throat mid-dash, slamming him against a wall. Zagreus winced but could not even manage to scream as she lifted him off his feet, pinning him against the wall and crushing the breath out of him.
“Why?” she said. “Why are you doing this? Why are you making me do this?”
He could not manage to choke out a response. She released him and he slumped to the floor, gasping in a rattling breath. His head was light from the momentary lack of air. It felt lighter still when Megaera crouched down over him.
“You know if you do this I have no choice,” she said. “I have to meet you here. I have to try to stop you.”
“I know,” he managed.
“Yet you will not cease this madness?”
He shook his head.
“Damn it, Zag. Why?”
He swallowed. It burned his ravaged throat, but he owed her at least this much. “I’m sorry, Meg. I really am.”
She watched him for a moment, terrifyingly still, face unreadable. Then she lunged, pressing him against the wall again, this time with her mouth. Zagreus could do little but endure as she climbed into his lap, still smothering his mouth with hers. He set his hands on her hips, moaning against her.
She broke away panting for breath. “Zag, don’t ask this of me. Please.”
“I have to.”
“He will make me come here every time. I will kill you over and over and over.”
“I know,” he said.
“Then my sisters will come and they will not be so gentle.”
He shuddered at that. One word he’d never use for Megaera, inside the bedroom or otherwise, was “gentle.” That had been the impetus of their heated affair and he hadn’t regretted it for a moment, not until now at least. The type of violence she promised here was not the sort mingled with pleasure.
“Do whatever you must, Meg,” he said. “I understand, but I must see her. I must reach the surface and see my mother.”
“I know,” she said, stroking a hand along his face. “Have you told Thanatos?”
“Not the details, but...”
“I see. You know he will take it even harder.”
Zagreus’s whole chest clenched. “I do.”
“I’m merely doing my job, but for Than...”
“For Than it’s personal,” Zagreus said. “I know. Believe me, I know.”
“Oh, Zag,” she said.
She kissed him more gently this time, hands cradling his jaw. He wrapped his arms around her, pulling her in close.
“I have to kill you now,” she said.
“I know.”
“Get stronger.”
“I will.”
She kissed him again, swifter but no less soft, then wrapped her whip around his neck. He should have fought it, but he couldn’t, not least of all because of the way her thighs trapped him under her. Even as he began to choke, she rolled her hips atop him, kissing him as the breath squeezed out of his throat.
“Zag,” she moaned, grinding down harder.
His hands wandered down to her ass, gripping her even as she clutched his shoulder to press down against him.
He couldn’t resist a parting shot.
“Technically,” he choked, “not doing … your job.”
Her mouth trailed to his neck, where she sucked and bit, sharp, bright pain to contrast the steady pulse of his thinning breath. He wondered if those marks might linger after he crawled out of the Styx.
“If you die,” she said, “I’ll have still done my job.”
Hard to refute that, not least of all because that whip was so tight around his neck, even as she lifted onto her knees to fumble with their clothing. Zagreus got a brief reprieve when she shimmied out of her pants and tugged his leggings down. The breath he drew was sweet and cool, but raked down his throat. He hardly realized Megaera was stroking him until she squeezed.
“Don’t die yet,” she said. “I have uses for you.”
Then she went on stroking, getting him hard, rubbing her thumb over the head to smear a bead of pre-cum down his length. Even knowing what she was about to do, he moaned, hips arching up into her hold.
Or perhaps he moaned because he knew what she was about to do.
The whip tightened, strangling the air out of him. He gasped into the sensation, head tilting back. Her free hand gripped his shoulder as she stood up on her knees. She let go to position his cock at her entrance, grinding down until it pressed inside her.
Their voices intertwined as the heat and pressure closed around them. Megaera worked her way down him until she was almost sitting in his lap, yet the hand tugging the whip tight never relented.
Zagreus reached blindly for her. Spots of color obscured his vision, but he managed to find her hips. His fingers dug in as he helped her rock atop him, swaying up and down his cock. She set her own pace, bucked as hard as she liked, and he groaned in gratitude.
The lack of air was making him feel light. He could have floated out of that seated position beneath her, though he desperately wanted to stay tethered to the stone at least a little longer. He knew he wouldn’t last very long, but each moment of her hot and tight around him, pounding down onto his cock, jolted his whole body with shocks of pleasure.
“Fuck, you’re good,” she rasped.
He wasn’t sure how much he was actually contributing to that assessment, what with Megaera both riding and choking him, but Zagreus wasn’t inclined to complain. The combination of her pussy tight around his cock and her whip tight around his throat shoved him to a delirious high, a plane trembling on the verge of life and death. He knew any moment it would be too much and his body would succumb, but every second until then was a new landscape of sensation, a dazzling, sparking, brilliant world of overwhelming stimulation.
She rocked harder. Her body tensed. That made the whip coil tighter, forcing the last sips of air out of his throat. His fingers dug into her skin, even as he wheezed for breath.
Megaera smashed her lips down onto his mouth, so hard their teeth clacked. Her kiss sucked the last of his air away, even as something gushed warm around his cock. She moaned into his mouth. The sound shivered down his throat, into his chest, warming his whole body, making his cock tremble, pulling everything within him as tight as her whip.
Zagreus could hardly make sense of his body. He was weightless, drifting away, even as everything pulled in close. His mind meandered off, adrift on a current of pleasure, while every muscle, every bone and tendon and drop of red blood ached and cried out. He couldn’t stand it another moment, neither the pleasure nor the pain. It was going to explode out of him. It was going to annihilate him utterly, leaving behind so little not even the Styx could put him back together.
Then she jerked the whip, a sharp, brutal tug.
His neck snapped.
Zagreus gasped in the warm red water of the Styx, shuddering as he came.
It took him a moment to realize what had happened, to put together the fractured pieces of his ravaged body into something coherent. He was in the Styx. He was alive again, as alive as anyone got down here. His cum was also somewhere in the river, absorbing into the thick water.
Zagreus lingered there, only his head above the surface, sucking in breath after breath through a throat rebuilt and whole. His body still remembered the way the air had scraped and torn, though. An echo of pain burned with each inhale.
Finally, he crawled out of the river. Zagreus paused on the steps, staying on all fours, watching the water run red as it dripped off his skin and hair.
As his mind cleared, a new ache replaced the pain of Megaera’s whip. She’d conquered him so easily. It was nothing to her, a game, a job, so easy she could take her pleasure from him in the meantime.
Was this what he’d betrayed Thanatos for? Was this why he’d left Thanatos? So he could be flicked aside like an insect in the very first layer of Hell? If he couldn’t get past Megaera, he shuddered to imagine what other horrors lay ahead. He’d let himself get distracted and it had turned his escape attempt into an utter failure.
Zagreus clambered to his feet. He was steady despite the ordeal. The main hall of the House of Hades stretched before him: Hypnos asleep with his list of the dead, Cerberus dozing beside Hades’s desk, errant shades drifting through the halls to their tedious tasks.
Nothing had changed. Not a gods damned thing.
Zagreus scrubbed a hand through his hair. He’d try again. And again. As many times as it took. He’d defeat Meg and whomever else meant to stand in his way. He’d reach the surface, no matter what it cost.
He owed Thanatos at least that much.