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Thanatos wandered aimlessly through the quiet battlefield, waiting for his cue. In his periphery, Hermes greeted the soul of a man who had been skewered through. Farther away, the shadow of Ares admired the aftermath of his work. Thanatos ignored them, casting his gaze across the carpet of bodies. Most of these men were dying of mortal wounds, but here and there, he knew there lay some whose sickness had overwhelmed them in the heat of battle. Or their starvation, maybe. Those so-called “gentle deaths” of his were ones often-aggravated by the effects of war. Such was its nature: all-encompassing, and total in its destruction.
Then, a pulling sensation, centered somewhere below his left shoulder. There. Thanatos turned, identifying the hapless soul whose death now approached.
He did not need to guess at the nature of this peculiar sense of his, where each soul’s hour was signaled to have come by a tugging someplace on his body, different each time. He had seen the source of it himself; the only way to describe the phenomenon was as if, when Clotho spun the thread of each soul’s existence, Lachesis drew the thread out and fastened it to the body of Death, prepared for Atropos to someday sever it.
Thus, Death drifted through existence with his thousand golden threads which dripped from every inch of him. They trailed behind him on the marble floors of the House of Hades, disappearing into the distance, where he assumed they eventually led to the soul that was tethered to him.
Wars, especially, were difficult. With so many threads pulling him at once, it felt as if his entire self was being torn open from this direction and that. The threads behaved like living things, in their own ways, and perhaps they were, as extensions of living souls. Sometimes they floated in ethereal masses about his head. Sometimes they lay heavy and slack on the ground, pooling around Thanatos. Other times they faded, so thin, light, and dull that he could barely see them himself.
He preferred those times. Though Thanatos knew by now how to ignore the threads, forget their brightness and look through them as if they weren’t there, it took effort. Even then, when he did try, so much of their blinding gold still clung to his skin that he could not make out his own shape or features.
The stranger thing was how they forced themselves visible again when Zagreus was around. These strands, these lifelines, were attracted to Zagreus, drawn in by the one whom the shade in the West Wing believed to be the god of lifeblood. It made sense, then, that they would drift to him while their respective souls still lived and breathed. Zagreus was life, while Thanatos was only the end, the inevitability that loomed over each soul for the duration of its mortal existence.
The prince, for his part, was the sole being in the House of Hades with a singular golden thread still floating behind him. The shades had long lost theirs, and the other gods had their own sorts of thread; those, Thanatos was not yet privy to, but Zagreus’ was visible enough. It attached to him at the back of his right hand, and when Thanatos met him in battle, the thread, agitated by his motion, would swirl about him like a halo. Then Zagreus would die, Thanatos would feel the familiar tug, and the prince would climb out of the Styx, thread having knitted itself back together again.
Zagreus had died enough times by now that Thanatos barely registered the sensation. It pulled at him from the top of his abdomen, in the very center. Thanatos had seen enough decaying skeletons to know that it was the precise spot where the cage of his ribs opened up, and hard bone gave away to soft, vulnerable innards.
Thanatos believed he was the only being who could see the threads. He had never mentioned it to his mother or brothers; he knew, instinctively, it was something that was to remain between himself and the Fates. But subsequently, he had little real idea what he appeared as to others. In a mirror, Thanatos saw himself as no more than a roiling mass of gold filaments.
And he’d asked before. Hypnos had cheerfully launched into a detailed description of his uncanny ghoulishness. His mother had looked at him silently with an expression of smooth bemusement on her face, before telling him he looked just as he should. He’d actually gone to Chaos once, but they had described Thanatos’ true form rather than his physical one. Hades and Meg wouldn’t even humor the request, and Cerberus, well… He had just flopped his heads onto his paws with a whine.
It was selfish, maybe, something rather below him as Death Incarnate, but he still wished to know what this physical shape of his resembled. He suspected, instinctively, that of all the people he could ask, it was Zagreus who would give him whatever answer he actually needed. But it was an odd question, and one that was long put off in favor of more pressing conversations: confrontations, consolations, confessions.
At last, the chance came in what must have been a moment of peace up top, when Thanatos felt no urgent calls for his presence. It was a moment of peace down here, too - Zagreus was still asleep, all but draped over Thanatos, face buried in his collarbone and right hand resting on his chest. The threads lay uncommonly still about them, spreading themselves over Zagreus so that he appeared covered by a blanket woven of the finest, brightest material.
Thanatos took hold of the thread fixed to Zagreus’ hand, absently coiling it around his finger. He, too, possessed the ability to sever these strands, though he knew it was never truly of his own volition. His sisters would have already seen and decided that it was time the thread snapped, Thanatos merely carrying out the fate that they had predetermined. Sometimes, though, when Zagreus was fighting his way up, the Fates allowed Thanatos a small measure of autonomy, permitting him to wrench back together the frayed halves of Zagreus’ thread. It was not so much Death defying the Fates as it was the Fates intentionally looking the other way. They could take a great deal, but they gave as well.
“Zag.”
The prince stirred almost immediately at hearing his name. His eyebrows drew together, and he shifted, nestling further into his pillow (Thanatos). After a pause, he exhaled, clearly resigned to waking up. With a groan, Zagreus stretched, catlike, and then he finally opened his eyes. “Morning, Than,” he mumbled into Thanatos’ skin. “If it is morning.”
The surface had more than one time of the day at any given point, but Thanatos had long since decided not to confuse Zagreus with the explanation. Instead, he smoothed a hand down Zagreus’ back, helping him to wake up.
“You never stay around this long,” Zagreus commented, face still sleepily burrowed into gold.
“It’s quiet up there right now,” Thanatos replied simply. “Even I, rare as it is, can afford to rest.”
“That’s good.” Zagreus finally roused himself, pressing a brief kiss to the underside of Thanatos’ jaw before rolling over onto his back. “I guess you’ll be going now. I should get back to it, too.” He made to sit up, but Thanatos’ hand on his chest stopped him.
“Wait,” Thanatos said. Zagreus’ gaze flicked down to his hand, then to his face, confusion apparent on his features. “Wait.” It was now or never, really. “What do I look like?”
“W-what?” Zagreus huffed out a laugh. “What do you mean, what do you look like?”
How to explain it away? “Gods are perceived differently. It’s always been that way, but especially for Death.” There was, at least, some veracity to that. This was the truest, most neutral physical form he possessed - short of dissolving his shape entirely - but mortals, especially, looked upon him with their gazes colored by fear and pain. Zagreus, at least, should see him as he was. “What do I look like to you?”
“Ah.” Zagreus nodded. “Well,” he said, a dopey grin spreading across his face, “you are so very lovely to me, Than.”
“Stop it, Zag. I'm serious.”
Zagreus’ eyes widened, and he shifted again, propping himself up on one elbow. “Do you... not know? At all?” Thanatos remained silent, and Zagreus frowned. “You really don’t. I won’t ask why. You’re allowed your secrets. But I can tell you.” He studied Thanatos, his gaze appraising without being prying. Thanatos had always liked that, among all the mortals and gods he’d met, Zagreus was one of only a handful who never looked at him as he was trying to open Death up and learn all his secrets. “You have the same eyes as Hypnos and Nyx,” Zagreus began. “The color is a little different - the gold of your eyes is, I don’t know, chillier? Your hair is exactly the same color as Hypnos’ hair, though. Except straighter. Shorter. But you know that, don’t you?”
(He did. Thanatos’ hair was the only part of him that went untethered, and he used to wear it long enough for himself to touch and see. But the strands liked to tangle themselves with the threads, creating a confusing mess and eventually driving him to chop it all off in a rare fit of pique.)
“And your skin is...” Zagreus sighed. “I'm not sure. Somewhere between brown and a warm gray. That’s the thing, actually - you have the warmest skin of your whole family. More so than most down here, even. Warmest-colored, I mean,” he corrected himself. “You’re still quite cool to the touch, Than.
“As for your other features. Hmm.” Zagreus cocked his head thoughtfully. “They’re all very sharp. Very solid and there. Sometimes when you’re standing still, you look like you could be carved from stone.”
“I see,” Thanatos said, more to himself than to Zagreus. “Thank you.” He had received a similar impression from Hypnos’ description, though Zagreus framed it differently. He spoke of Thanatos’ features with a kind of gentleness to his voice, as if they were ones very dear to him.
“Hey.” Zagreus nudged him. “What brought this on?”
“Nothing in particular.” Thanatos rose from the bed, readying himself to leave.
“…Okay. But listen, Than.” Zagreus rolled out of bed, a few golden strands wisping after him. He spoke while mirroring Thanatos’ preparations with his own. “I know you know that your appearance frightens people. I know that most of the gods up there don’t even really like you.”
“A comforting thought, to be sure,” Thanatos said dryly.
“Oh, just listen for a moment,” Zagreus said impatiently. “It doesn’t matter, Than. You could look like anything at all, and your family would still care for you. I would still love how you look. You must know that.”
Zagreus might have misunderstood Thanatos’ motive for asking, thinking that it was out of some sort of insecurity, rather than simple curiosity. In truth, Thanatos had already cared little about his supposed fearsomeness. But he softened, because the earnestness in Zagreus’ tone was hard to resist; he was so frank and so open with his sentiments. “Thank you, Zag. I’m afraid I have to go now.” He really did; the threads were beginning to tug again, increasingly insistent.
“Wait a second.” Zagreus skirted the bed to approach him, taking a fistful of his (just-straightened!) chiton to pull him down. He pressed a kiss to Thanatos’ lips, short but heavy, with a familiar weight of feeling behind it. When Zagreus pulled back, he grinned. “For the record, that’s my favorite feature of yours.”
Thanatos stared down at Zagreus, speechless. Astonishing, and frankly embarrassing, how the prince still had that effect on him. “See you out there,” Thanatos eventually managed to mutter, and he vanished, Zagreus’ laughter echoing after him, to chase down the threads that pulled incessantly on him.
Tending some time later to a broken mortal body, Thanatos felt the faint tug at his abdomen that signaled Zagreus was dying. Without much thought, he caught the severed strand falling away from him and rejoined it to its other half.
Not yet.