Archive of Our Own

“Loving me takes patience.”

For my friends - King Princess

~ - ~ * ~ - ~

Perfection was easy. For Thanatos, it was borderline effortless. Especially as one of those Gods who had a considerable amount of magic at his disposal.

Divine bodies, however, were among those inconvenient sort of things which refused to be holden to the laws of magic. As was the relentless march of time.

Death had never cared much about how it was perceived by others. As such, when he was little, Thanatos had paid his own reflection limited mind. But at some point his body became that of a teenager’s, and a few other creatures around the House of Hades became teenagers also, and for some reason he started to care about how they perceived him.

Thanatos often wondered why Death decided to make itself manifest. No one really wanted to meet death, and the act of existence brought about many inconveniences. Among which were horribly unpredictable distractions known as ‘desires’. Around the same time he had started caring about how he looked, he also experienced an onset desire to be liked - and learned that the two desires were often perplexingly intertwined. But unlike perfection, being liked did not come effortlessly to Thanatos. In fact, he found it rather elusive.

Luckily, looking good wasn’t quite so hard. As an adult, Thanatos had a mostly professional regard for his self-image. He was a God who operated among a pantheon of legends. As such, the baseline standard he held for his own appearance was ‘immaculate’. Especially the parts of himself he was obligated to keep visible to others for convince’s sake, like his clothes, his skin, his scythe. While he’d been informed that no one else could see his bell, the resonant toll which announced his arrival was quite pivotal to his image, so he always kept it well-polished and free from tarnish.

Though he’d never admit it out loud, the causal disregard Olympian Gods held for their Chthonic counterparts perhaps played some small part in his attention to vanity. Otherwise he had one self-indulgent habit, painting his fingernails. He also perhaps toiled a little longer over the physical details he knew to be of particular interest to his lovers, like his biceps, his hair and the shape of his extremely rare smile.

But wings were another matter entirely. On top of not really needing them, they took a lot of work to maintain. Even before The Incident, he’d tended to keep his wings tucked away in the aether space as they were frankly rather obnoxious.

He had four of them. One pair was too-wide to fit in most rooms, even when one lived in the palace of the King of the Underworld. Their presence was borderline untenable - Intending to spar in the courtyard? Too bad, the arena was now filled to the brim with feathers. What about a quick drink in the taverna? I hope you enjoy keratin powder sprinkled in your cocktails. And knocking things over whenever he turned around did not at all serve the veil of perfectionism he toiled so meticulously to maintain.

The other pair, while considerably shorter, were still twice his arm-span.

It was a good thing that Zagreus had an ostentatiously large bedroom, as it let Thanatos’ wings stretch out to their entire inconvenient magnificence. He couldn’t stand the feeling of them crumpled against his will, not anymore.

However, there was also something rather terrible about Zagreus’ room. The Mirror of Night. Even when he sat parallel to it, a giant fuck-ass mirror made it rather hard to ignore the full extent of disrepair he’d let his wings fall into. In the metaphysical realm he could still feel his wings in a cursory sort of way - the pull of unkempt barbs clumped together, the occasional itch. But at least he didn’t have to look at them. Omnipresent, sure, but pushed to the very edges of his periphery where he could pretend he’d simply forgotten about them, like broken chains left at the bottom of a storage chest he never used.

As he organised his assortment of grooming tools, fidgeting with the orientation of a comb he’d just be picking up again in a matter of seconds, he realised that this was the first time in the span of their entire relationship, that he’d ever been nervous awaiting Zagreus’ arrival. Even though this whole ridiculous affair had been his idea, of course.

“How long has it been since you last used your wings?”

Thanatos had barely even thought about physically flying for a very long time. It’s not like he needed his wings. He could float, teleport, at desperate times even walk. All perfectly functional forms of movement.

“Why do you ask?”

“Well, seeing as you can’t shift me anywhere without turning me into a puddle of goo, I was wondering... if you used your wings to fly, maybe you’d be strong enough to pick me up in your arms, and we could fly together?”

“Oh, so this line of questioning is for your own benefit is it?” Thanatos tisked, crossing his arms.

“Not entirely!” Zagreus pouted. “I thought it would be nice, seeing the Underworld and maybe even some of the Overworld from up high...” He kicked at the floor tiles with a firey heel. “Okay fine, maybe I’m a little jealous. Everyone I know can teleport, float, fly, and whatever it is Hermes does with his weird winged shoes... and I’ve only got my stubby little legs to get around with. So... do you think it would work? Could you carry me?”

Thanatos felt something cold and constricting in the space in his chest where a mortal might’ve had a beating heart. Dread - familiar and expected, but not at all welcome. He wanted to extract the feeling from himself. Extract the weakness and destroy it as he might an errant soul. But feelings were also stubbornly non-beholden to the laws of magic.

“It’s not a matter of strength...” he began.

“Then what’s the issue?”

“They... haven’t been preened in a very long time.”

“Preened?”

“Brushed. Tended to. They’re in a state of disuse.”

“Oh. How long has it been?”

Thanatos swallowed thickly. “About ten years.”

Spoken aloud, truth made manifest was a painful thing. What memories of shackles had settled to dust were becoming weighted once more, sharp irons binding his wrists and soul.

“Let’s preen them then,” Zagreus said, as though it was the simplest thing in the world.

“It’ll take hours.”

“Oh no, hours spent in your exclusive company? Sounds awful.” His lively sarcasm was always a panacea to most any emotional wound.

“Zagreus, you’ve never sat still for anything in your entire life,” Thanatos said, as he tried to ignore how the fingers of one of his hands had instinctively started encircling the wrist of the other. The lacerations had long since healed.

“Well if we have to do it sitting down then I’ve changed my mind entirely,” Zagreus said, still without a hint of sincerity.

Thanatos hesitated, but felt something obstinate and determined push him forward. Whether it came from within or without, or a mix of the two, he couldn’t place. But while the binds which had held him had been unyielding - he decided then and there that he refused to let the memories be so as well.

Ten years. Ten years since he had stretched his own wings and flown. Confronted with the reality of it, Thanatos found it made him angry. Furious, even.

And while it frightened him, there was of course one final piece to the puzzle of courage he suddenly found himself in - Zagreus. If not he, there truly was no other being in all of existence he could trust with the worst of his dirt. Figuratively, literally.

“Tsk, fine.”

“Fine?”

“Fine, I will show you how to preen my wings. And after several weeks of tedious and meticulous brushing and oiling and plucking and dusting... then I will take you into my arms and we can take flight together.”

And having said that out loud, the idea of holding the love of his eternal afterlife close in his arms, showing him all of his favourite secluded glades in the emerald hills of Elysium, the grandest mausoleums and coliseums the surface world had to offer, all from the view of the Gods... well it did sound incredibly sappy and romantic. Almost sickeningly so.

The sickening feeling only grew stronger as he waited for Zagreus to arrive, cursing the Prince for having yet again unearthed one of those insidious and inconvenient distractions known as desires. Death as a concept didn’t have desires and Death the manifestation had gone a significant portion of his life with considerably few. But Zagreus always had a way of disrupting the natural order of things.

When he finally arrived, Zagreus halted at the doorway and slack-jaw gawked at him. It made him feel like some sort of exotic bird on display, and he supposed in a way he kind of was. It made him double-question why he trusted Zagreus, of all beings, with this.

Maybe he’d expected some measure of comfort to come from Zagreus’ ignorance. He didn’t know anything about feathers, having only seen birds in paintings and extremely short-lived and far-distanced encounters on the surface. No point of comparison for the state of disarray his wings were in. But maybe that was worse, actually. Maybe it meant he’d be less braced for the blow. Certainly there were signs of neglect which transcended even the language of ignorance that he’d pick up on. That would disgust him.

“They’re brown?!” Zagreus blurted out.

Forcibly rended from his anxious musings, Thanatos felt his mind pull a somersault. “Yes they’re brown! Why, what did you expect?”

“I don’t know? Black, grey, more ‘angel of death-y’. White like your hair?”

“Well they’re brown. Is that alright with you?”

“It’s fine,” Zagreus said. Then, half mumbling, fidgeting where he stood, he added, “...they’re just really beautiful is all.” He looked sheepish, a rare sight on him.

“Just sit down will you,” Thanatos muttered, patting a space beside him. “This is going to take long enough as it is.”

He introduced Zagreus to the accoutrement of grooming tools - namely a cloth, a bowl of thick oil, and a hook-shaped comb made from bone. He pulled one of his shorter wings into Zagreus’ lap, and described the different types of feathers.

“Just focus on the secondaries and primaries,” he said, applying oil to the comb. He took one of the long feathers in hand, trying to ignore how distastefully brittle it felt under his fingers, and then brushed along it. “One swipe is all that’s needed to oil it and realign the barbs, fix the hooks.”

He passed the comb to Zagreus who applied a reasonable amount of oil to it. He took the next feather with gentle hands and pulled a languid stroke down its length. Not that it was a terribly complicated task, but to his credit Zagreus was always a quick learner.

“How’s that?”

Thanatos, for his part, felt dizzy. On top of the not unpleasant sensation of knots untangling and barbs re-hooking, he found he was acutely aware of exactly where each of Zagreus’ fingers pressed into the tufts of his short fluffy covert feathers. When Thanatos didn’t respond, Zagreus’ hand shifted slightly, and to his extreme chagrin, a shiver ran up Thanatos’ spine and an unscrupulous sound hitched in his throat.

“Than?”

He felt his blood run cold.

“...are you tickl-”

“NO!”

Thanatos, Death himself, infamously had a stare that could kill. Unfortunately Zagreus, who had been dead his entire life, was quite immune. A hell-borne look crossed his face. His hand slid along the wing’s radius, ruffling feathers and curses to all the heavens above, Thanatos choked trying to suppress a giggle - a giggle! No one made Death giggle!

He summoned his scythe, undecided on how much it was in jest. Despite being an extension of his very being, Thanatos struggled to keep a grip on the handle while his hell-spawn of a partner wriggled his fingers into feathers which hadn’t seen manifestation in a decade, let alone felt the touch of another in aeons.

“Stop it!” he shouted, between laughs extricated very much against his will. “I’ve reaped greater beings for far lesser slights than this!”

Overcome with the dreadful, tingling sensation, it was not long before he resorted to violence. He jabbed the pommel end of his scythe into Zagreus’ face while his larger wing smacked him over the back of the head. However, Zagreus was obstinate and very strong. He truly was the worst of all beings to ever exist.

“Unhand me this instant!”

Laughing his own head off, Zagreus eventually relinquished his grasp, having either entertained himself enough with his sadistic torture, or having suffered enough blunt force trauma to make it no longer worth the effort.

A final shudder ran up Thanatos’ spine. When Zagreus tried to press in close for a kiss to his cheek, he was far too flustered and frustrated to melt into the gesture, so much as tense and grumble against it.

“Can we get back to the task at hand now?”

Zagreus pulled the wing back into his lap and Thanatos tensed. “Don’t worry, I won’t tickle you again,” Zagreus said picking up the comb. “At least, not on purpose.”

“Good.”

Distractions cast aside, it was time for Thanatos to finally take his own opposite larger wing in hand. Starting from as close to the base as he could reach, he began by inspecting his lesser coverts. Instantly, he spotted several sticking out at odd angles, brittle and dried. Dead. They should’ve shed, or rather been plucked, a very long time ago. He gripped one and pulled. There was a prick of pain, but it was oh so very satisfying. Like plucking a weed from Persephone’s garden.

One down, about five hundred to go, but maybe it wouldn’t be so bad. Maybe it could even be pleasant. And, if he was feeling particularly hopeful, he thought there was a chance it might even be ‘fun’.

And while it might have been quite some time since he had last preened his wings... So what? Thanatos was always on top of his work, which was far more important. It had been ten years since he’d last made a mistake on the job, and he was determined to ensure it was a fluke. He would not allow one incident, no matter how devastating, to stain his otherwise flawless reputation. The records of The Incident had long since gathered dust in the bottom cases of the administration chamber. And now, after preening his wings, he’d be cleansed of the last evidence of the event he carried bodily. The whole thing could finally be laid to rest, dead and buried, once and for all.

It was like scratching an itch... speaking of which, there was a substantial buildup of powdered keratin nestled amongst his feathers. He puffed them up, stretching out stiff joints for the first time in a decade. As weary joints cracked, he felt several barbules down each of his wingspans re-hook into place, other feathers unsticking from where they had twisted together.

Right as he dug his fingernails into the gaps between his plumage to scratch away the abundance of white dust, Zagreus took in a sharp breath, dropping the comb and wing in shock. “What did I do?!”

“Don’t worry, that was me,” Thanatos said. “Like this.” He flourished his wings again, puffing up his feathers to smack Zagreus in the face.

“Bleh.”

As Zagreus unburied himself from the mess of feathers, the sight of white powder clinging to his jet black hair made Thanatos feel rather dreadful in more ways than one. On the extremely rare occasions The Incident was mentioned, those strange beings known as his friends and family were quick to tell Thanatos that it hadn’t been his fault. They were, of course, wrong. While it may not have been by his own hands he’d been bound in chains, it was his own naivety which had led to his imprisonment. Incapacitated, he’d not the strength nor ingenuity to escape his confinement. His salvation instead came from another God to take notice of his absence and act to set him free.

But even if he granted that none of that had been his fault, the extent of this neglect was entirely his own. Despite being freed years ago, he hadn’t even taken stock of the damage, instead choosing to ignore the problem and shove his wings to the aether space. For such a melodramatic reticence to tend to his basic needs, there really was only himself to blame.

For a moment, he thought of the darkness. He felt pain twinge in his neck. Felt an urge to draw his wings in close, feel them crumple against his body, but the sound of Zagreus’ raucous laughter pulled him right back into the light of the present moment once more.

“What?!” It came as a snap, not entirely of his own accord, and much to his personal regret. Though, Zagreus had never paid his coldness much heed, and didn’t seem to now. Instead he pointed at that insidious mirror.

“Ha, you look like a pinecone!”

Thanatos had done an immaculate job of avoiding his own reflection up to that point, not quite ready to confront the full extent of his disarray in one large visual. But he turned to it now. He saw his wings, all puffed up and hazelnut brown, and a laugh snorted its way out the back of his throat because Zagreus was right, he really did look like a pinecone.

With a shared smile, they settled back into the barely established routine, Zagreus slicking the comb and tending to the secondaries on Thanatos’ shorter wing while Thanatos inspected feathers for removal on his large opposite wing.

“So these things are sensitive then?” Zagreus asked.

“Feathers? Sort of,” he said. “Some more than others. It’s like hair, in a way, I feel where they connect at the base more than anything.”

Zagreus brushed down a feather, the comb catching in its journey. He tugged once, pulling through the knot and completing the swipe, allowing the barbules to separate and re-hook into place. “Does it feel good when they’re brushed?”

“Somewhat. More like, the removal of discomfort, it feels nice after.”

In his own ministrations he found one dead feather lodged in fairly tight. He was just about to draw it to his mouth, pull it out with his teeth, before social courtesy caught up with his instincts. He closed his parted lips, choosing instead to wind the small feather around his finger a couple times and yank it hard. His eyes fluttered through the wince of pain.

“Does that feel good?” Zagreus asked, watching him.

“It does in a way,” he said. “It would just hurt if you did it though.”

He scratched where the feather had just been pulled, easing the pain and spreading the powder around.

“What about that? Would it feel good if I scratched you? Like, it feels so nice when you scratch the back of my head after I’ve been wearing my crown and sweating into my hair all day?”

“Uh, probably,” he said.

Zagreus reached out to where the base of his wings just connected with his back. His short nails wriggled under the feathers to scratch gently at the roots, and curses above it made Thanatos shudder. His feathers perked up and the hair on his arms prickled too.

“It’s... not bad,” he said, trying to hide just how much the touch had affected him, though the wry smirk on Zagreus’ face made him doubt his level of success. He feared he may even be blushing.

“Have you ever had someone else preen you before?” Zagreus asked, moving on to brush the next feather.

“Yes.”

“Oh?” The single syllable was loaded with considerable intrigue.

“Nyx and Hypnos.”

“Ah.” The curiosity instantly quelled.

Though, that had been a rather long time ago, having grown reticent to the touch of others while he was quite young. However, as he and Zagreus toiled he kind of wished he’d worked harder to suppress his distain for being touched by others, as unsurprisingly the task of preening went twice as fast with two pairs of hands at work.

The coverts he could most easily reach having been tended to, he moved on to inspecting the secondaries - massive feathers which were almost as long as he was tall. Most of the feathers had patches of missing barbs, and what barbs there were, were incredibly dry. He figured they’d require multiple sessions of oiling for the moisture to properly sink in before they’d be operational again.

“You wouldn’t believe how many fish I caught in Asphodel last week,” Zagreus said, just when the silence had started to grow comfortable.

“How many?” Thanatos asked, taking a cloth in hand and dipping it into a bowl of warm soapy water he’d set in front of him. He hoped Zagreus’ musings about fish would distract him enough to not take notice that Thanatos was tending to a large patch of dried blood at the base of a feather.

“Come on, guess.” Zagreus oiled his brush and ran it along a feather.

“I don’t know, three?” He rubbed at the scab, but it remained stubbornly in place.

“Seven!”

Thanatos jumped at Zagreus’ volumed enthusiasm. Then, with a sigh, he continued, applying a lot more pressure in his efforts to dislodge the dried blood.

“Two of them were Slavugs that were stuck together. I think that means they were mating? Is that how they mate?”

“I don’t know,” Thanatos said, throwing the cloth aside with a huff. Instead, he picked at the scab with his fingernails, ripping it clean off.

Zagreus re-oiled the brush and ran it along the same feather he’d already tended to.

Thanatos inspected his next feather, running his fingers down its length until they caught in a knot. He tugged, and instead of brushing through, the barbs came out in a clump. They stuck to his wet palm and crumbled into fragments as he tried to wipe them off on his chiton. It made his head spin, the cold stone walls of the bedchamber seeming to shift closer. A world which should be comforting in its stagnation was instead becoming more nebulous by the second.

“Then I caught a Chrustacean and you wouldn’t believe how long it was...”

Zagreus’ words seemed to come as if from another realm, reverberating about Thanatos’ mind but struggling to find purchase in his consciousness. Instead, he focused on how Zagreus re-oiled the comb, knowing exactly what was about to happen, and feeling powerless to stop it. Worthless to try. He felt oil slick on oil as Zagreus brushed along the exact same feather.

“Four metres! Isn’t that incredible! I don’t think I’ve ever seen one longer than two. And it weighed an absolute tonne! Okay, that’s an exaggeration. I weighed it, actually. Just over two talents heavy!”

Thanatos took one of his primaries in hand and felt a sharp pang run up his wing. With a wince, he twisted it around to inspect it.

“Then in Elysium I caught a Charp, and I swear it had three whiskers. I didn’t know they could have three?! Did you?”

The top portion of the shaft was still pink with life, but further along there was a clear snap, after which it was hollow and clear. The connected barbs were so brittle they snapped to the touch. And there was years-old blood under his fingernails, and keratin powder stuck to his wet palms, and Zagreus was now prepping the comb ready to assault the same feather which was already three times heaver with oil than it should be, and this whole entire thing had been a huge waste of time, because even if they spent months and months and months oiling all of his ridiculously numerous feathers, he still had a primary which was twice as long as he was tall in his hands which needed to be ripped out at the root which he couldn’t fly without, which would take possibly years to regrow-

“I tried to catch a Chiton but the damn thing was stuck to a rock. I almost fell into the Lethe trying to reel it-”

“Will you shut up and focus on what you’re meant to be doing!”

The words crackled through his body. A thunderous release which left him feeling nothing but empty in its wake.

“Oh.” Zagreus fell quiet and still. He stared down at the feather in his hands. It made Thanatos’ heart absolutely ache.

He knew he should apologise, but it felt pointless, when what he most wanted was to unmake the mistake. Prevent the harm from having happened in the first place.

He was no lord of time however, such powers were not his to command. Instead, he clutched the base of his large wing with one hand, and pulled at his primary feather with the other.

It hurt. He didn’t care.

He pulled harder, gritting his teeth as sharp pangs jolted up his limb, stabbing like a spear tip. He squeezed his eyes shut, unwilling to permit the indulgence of tears. He lasted only a couple of seconds however, before some inconvenient thing akin to a survival instinct kicked in and the pain overwrought his ability to maintain a grip on his wing and feather. Stifling a scream of pain and frustration in gritted teeth, he dropped the limb.

What was even the point of his body experiencing pain? Death couldn’t die, and pain was a tool of survival. The suffering was unnecessary. It was simply just cruel.

He pulled his knees to his chest, burying his face in that all comforting darkness. Cold fingers interlaced, he focused on the unyielding pressure of his finger bones crushing together.

Death also didn’t need to breathe, yet the lungs in his ribs wouldn’t stop quivering. Fluttering in panic, like a butterfly caged and pinned.

He felt himself teeter on the brink of blinking away. In his youth the impulse to disappear had been out of his control when he’d been overwhelmed. And of course the one time he’d needed such an instinct for the actual purpose of survival, he had been unable to use it.

So, why shouldn’t he do it now? With a simple flourish of magic, he could be in the deepest, darkest pit of Tartarus, where no one else could see him fall apart. Where he could pretend he couldn’t see it himself. Push it to the very periphery of his notice.

He was vaguely aware of movement outside his self-inflicted cage, feeling a gentle pull at a too heavy primary feather on one of his smaller wings. He braced before confronting life outside the comforting darkness - tilting his head, just a fraction to peek out the corner of one eye, as Zagreus drew a dry brush through the feather, removing the excess oil and wiping it clean with a cloth to do the same again.

Zagreus worked silently.

In the back of Thanatos’ mind the chorus of the dead was steadily growing louder. He’d worked extra hard on his latest shift to get ahead of work, to have enough time off to do this. And it was all meaningless. It was all for nothing.

“This was a mistake.”

In response, Zagreus shrugged. Though cognisant to Thanatos’ emotions, Zagreus had never paid his coldness much heed. “We can stop whenever you’d like, but, this looks like progress to me,” he said, stretching out the wing. He tilted it slightly, the candlelight reflecting a sheen off the oil along the limb. “You’re the expert though.”

It... it did look better than when they’d started. It certainly felt better - good, almost. It didn’t itch anymore, likely thanks to the considerable mound of powder now on the ground and nestled in Zagreus’ lap, dislodged through the process of preening. More so, Thanatos noticed the absence of discomfort. When Zagreus had stretched out the limb, he’d subconsciously braced for the subtle pangs which came from mismatched barbs pulling at each other. It had been an omnipresent pain he’d grown so accustomed to, that until this moment he’d entirely forgotten it wasn’t meant to be there at all.

“It’s good,” he said. He drew in a breath, his lungs still fluttering as it went. “Better than good. I... thank you. Thank you, for everything, I mean.”

“I’m not a total idiot you know?” Zagreus said. “I thought talking might help distract you from... you know... but I’ve never been that good at multi-tasking.”

Thanatos stared at Zagreus, watching him fold the wing back into his lap. He thought on everything Zagreus had said and done since they’d sat down together - pinecones and tickles and far too many details about fish. Distractions. Intentional.

“Did you pay particular attention to your fish today, so that you’d have something to talk about tonight?”

“I always pay attention to my fish,” Zagreus said nonchalantly. “Though, I don’t always weigh and measure them I suppose... Sorry I messed it up.”

“Do not apologise. It was kind of you to try.” Thanatos ran his fingers down his broken feather, letting himself feel the twinge of pain through the journey. “If anything, I should be the one to apologise. This whole affair is my fault after all.”

“If by this whole affair you mean the preening, then I’m pretty sure it was my idea,” Zagreus said.

Thanatos sighed. “No, I mean all of it. I should’ve…  I shouldn’t’ve… let things this get out of hand. Or, at all, really.”

“This better not be you blaming yourself for The Incident again,” Zagreus said with a tentative furrow of his brow. “Because you know I won’t stand for it.”

“I... hadn’t meant it that way, but maybe... well maybe it goes back even further than that. To the first mistake I made.”

“What mistake?”

“Maybe... ugh. Maybe Death should’ve just remained a concept. I mean, not everything needs to be a God. No one wants to meet Death anyway. There can just be forces of nature, which aren’t Gods with bodies and absurdly large wings wings, who are susceptible to... lapses in judgement. That way, nothing would go wrong with the natural order. Everything would always be on time. Death would always happen when it’s meant to. Then, no one would be left wondering where Death is, why he’s late to do his job. No one would be... stranded. Waiting for him.”

In the back of his mind, he could hear the creeping of the chorus. The relentless march of time cutting more and more strings, turning lives into souls awaiting his arrival. More duties to tend to. Burden, never ceasing. Omnipresent.

“Wouldn’t that be simpler, Zagreus? Wouldn’t it all be so much… easier… if I’d just never…”

The bedchamber fell silent for one long moment.

“I don’t know about easier, but things are certainly more fun this way,” Zagreus said, brushing the slicked comb through a new feather. “And, personally I’m quite glad that you’re a manifestation I get to meet.”

“Well as long as you’re happy about it then I guess that’s all that matters,” Thanatos sighed.

“It really is,” Zagreus affirmed. “Dying was the first thing I ever did, so I guess I literally could not wait to meet you.” Zagreus flourished the wing in his lap, Thanatos suppressed the shiver from the tickle. “I even like your absurdly large wings too, if you hadn’t clued onto that?”

“My inconvenient and utterly useless, absurdly large wings.”

“I don’t know, they’re serving a fairly important purpose right now.”

“Which is?”

“Making you spend time with me,” he said with a grin that was as smug as it was warm. He seemed genuinely pleased. “Plus, they are really pretty.”

“My divine purpose is death not beauty.”

“And yet you personify both so well,” Zagreus said. “I won’t tell Aphrodite if you don’t.”

“They’re inconvenient.”

“Inconvenient and pretty,” Zagreus said. “Now you’re stepping into my divine purpose too.”

Thanatos scoffed, the exhale of which made way for a sigh. A long shuddering thing which expelled a tremendous amount of tension in its wake. It relinquished his lungs of the duty of quivering.

“Come over here,” Thanatos said, reaching for his primary feather. Zagreus abruptly pulled him into a hug. He hadn’t been expecting it, at first tensing at the touch. But then the familiar warmth of Zagreus’ infernal body heat and his burning laurels seeped into Thanatos’ skin and he found the comfort to be far too inviting to refuse.

He returned the hug. Palms leaving the dust of dead powder feathers on the back of Zagreus’ red chiton, Thanatos instead focused on the gentle pressure of their cheek bones pressing together. He felt fingers dig into his shoulder blades between the base of his wings, holding him tight, as though the body of death itself was the most precious jewel in all the Underworld. It made him consider, for a moment, that if Zagreus thought so, then maybe it was a worthwhile endeavour - being manifest.

That maybe, even with all the inconvenient distractions, it was worth the effort.

That maybe, the inconvenient distractions known as desires, were the very things which made it worth the effort.

Thanatos freed himself from the hug.

“I uh, need your help with a feather,” he said.

“Of course.”

Zagreus shifted across the floor to sit in front of him. He stared unblinkingly. With the stress of the whole ordeal of the night they’d had, Thanatos found being stared directly at to be rather confronting. When he finally drew enough strength to meet Zagreus’ eyes, he found within them no judgement, not even the shadow of frustration. Only patience, adoration and curiosity. The absolute bastard.

“I need you to take this feather and pull it out. I need you to do this, no matter how loud I... scream.”

He knew he was asking a lot. Despite being an adept and rather brutal combatant, Zagreus was no masochist. Though, he would do anything he was asked of to help someone he cared about.

Explanation was the small mercy Thanatos could offer in asking Zagreus to inflict pain. “It’s broken beyond repair. It needs to be torn out so a new feather can grow.”

“You’ve been plucking feathers this whole time without trouble, why is this one different? Other than being really big?”

“It has nerves which are still alive.”

“Oh.”

Thanatos guided Zagreus’ hands to grip above the point of the break. “Take it tight,” he said. “I’ll hold onto my wing.”

“Okay on the count of three,” Zagreus said. “One, two-” he pulled. To the credit of his strength, it came out in one go. It still hurt, a lot. Thanatos pulled the collar of his own chiton into his mouth, stifling a scream into the fabric. 

“Breathe,” Zagreus said, rubbing his shoulders. “I know you don’t need to, but do it anyway. It helps with the pain.”

As Thanatos took a deep breath in, a deep breath out, each exhale provided a small moment of reprieve from the pain. He had to concede, Zagreus knew his stuff. No doubt the expert from his experiences with so many exotic wounds.

“There you go, not so bad,” Zagreus said.

“Not so bad,” Thanatos echoed, pulling the shirt from his mouth and sitting upright. He took a cloth to apply pressure to the bleed left in the feather’s absence. “I am sorry, Zagreus. It will be quite some time before I can fly you anywhere.”

Zagreus shrugged. “It’s no bother to me.” He twirled the broken feather in his hand, swishing it through the air. Thanatos was acutely aware of every which way it incorrectly bent currents of air around its bent form and missing barbs.

“Can I keep this?” he asked, the logistics of flight entirely lost on him. “Or would having it around bring up bad memories?”

“Do whatever you want with it,” Thanatos said.

Zagreus reached for the comb, slicked it with oil, and brushed it through the broken feather. He then stood and made his way over to an amphora in the corner of his room, where he slid the base of feather inside, before standing back and admiring his new keepsake.

It was that combination of actions, which made it all start to finally click for Thanatos. Why he trusted Zagreus, of all beings, with this. Despite his ignorance of wings and feathers. Despite his inclinations for mischief and tickling.

Paying his coldness little heed, Zagreus instead seemed to always find something to adore and cherish amongst all the insidious and inconvenient things that comprised Thanatos’ being. Even that which he himself could barely look at, imperfect as they were. Broken and decayed.

As though liking Thanatos was easy. As though loving him was borderline effortless.