As Life emerges and triumphs and overcomes, so too must Death relent. This, too, is the Cycle.
Zagreus approaches him in the Hall, at his usual station. The Prince's chiton encloses him like a king's mantle, a vivid-red sweep dashing toward the railing. Hasty, a zephyr, whistling on air, halting in place at the last possible instant before his body can make impact. Zephrus must feel it, just as Thanatos now feels the Anemoi take up his heart-strings, pulling him one way from every limb. Something deep in him rustling like the four winds.
The bottle is already there, of course, in Zagreus' hand.
This time, Death accepts it without protest, and Zagreus lights up like Earth's sun. (Thanatos wonders, in flare of caprice, whether Helios feels envy.)
In greeting, he rattles the only thing that comes to mind. "You took Lord Hades down." That whistling wind supplying the rest.
You really did it.
And you're still here.
All of a sudden, that light is blinding. Thanatos lets his eyes fall shut.
Zagreus pfffts, a scoff not unlike a vibrating spring. He taps his foot, sparks flying. Such a maelstrom of emotion, in one tiny sound. Consternation. Rebellion. Amusement. Pride. "Seemed only fair, in the grand scheme of things. He slew his own parents at some point, right? I think the Fates enjoy this sort of thing."
(Somewhere, some unknown place in time, Death knows that his sisters are laughing.)
Modesty doesn't become him. "Come on, Zag. Take some credit where it's due."
But Zagreus is uncharacteristically silent. And when Death opens his eyes again, all he sees is red: red eye, red blood, red heart, red life.
(And that begs the question: when had it began? This fury, this folly, this fervent, ardent, libidinous want?)
His own way of warring has little to do with words (preferring intimately the fine art of fleeing from all conflict), so he's a bit stunned that Zagreus would shy from these—head pointed downward, too abruptly deflated. Almost looking like he'd prefer a strike, or a handful of punches, instead of an honest stab at kindness.
"I—I met my mother. She's alive and well. She is...wonderful, beautiful, so soft-hearted, so unlike Father." He shakes his head. "Ah, Than. I'm truly sorry, for all of the trouble I've caused."
Zagreus' face is half-cast in darkness; Zagreus' face dispels his anger with a glance. It's not haughty, or teasing—it draws him closer, closer like always, closer to his limit, to the upper bound of what Thanatos can bear.
Then, just when he feels like he's about to burst, Zagreus closes their distance and pauses, one hand held to the meat of his shoulder. He lets that hand linger there, feeling the muscle shift taut and tense, and Thanatos lets him do it for one long moment. Thanatos closes his eyes again, one small concession of surrender: trying to memorize what he can of it, of everything that surrounds him. The clack-clacking of Zagreus' sandal, now slowing. The hush thundering in his ears. The featherlight, unbroken line Zagreus traces from his collar to his arm.
Then, like a tolling, the next wave of death—so loud, louder even than the pulse of his heart. The sound of souls beseeching, calling. Shattering the spell.
Rescinding from that touch feels like being tossed headfirst into the Styx, like a drowning, like water filling up his insides just to wash right out again—leaving Thanatos vacant and aching. His mouth opens slowly; the emptiness hangs him, a drip on his tongue.
"You'll forgive me if I keep my distance for a little while." Death's voice is weak, but he holds himself upright and firm. "I think you have some issues to resolve." Gestures listlessly to Zag's sleepless eyes; because this time—drenched with the impulse, the longing, the stab-ache as he is—he cannot bring himself to ask, or offer.
As to you, so unto me.
Zagreus, mercifully, seems to understand; but something mercurial still lingers in those eyes, something hostile and volatile and beautiful, too. A squall seizing Death's throat. "Yeah, I do. I'll try my best for you, Than."
"Try your best for yourself. And watch yourself out there, Zag." His lips form the rest in the shapes of the words (very nearly a prayer to Hypnos himself).
Beyond each of their fields of view, at the far end of the Hall, an ever-cognizant Achilles stands still as marble, silently observing, and thinks a scattering of fragmented thoughts; sadness in his eyes, dark and inscrutable behind his hair, obscured by gold locks. Though he makes no move, and betrays not a sound, his eyes and ears transport him elsewhere: to the roiling waters just outside that tent, the glistering fleet of Achaean ships, the far-off gates of Troy, Patroclus' adoring face as Achilles played the lyre for him. The entrenching sorrow of memory, and a heart across stars—something forever beyond his reach.
Now I know how to make you follow me everywhere.
(Love and loneliness pierce like an arrow; in this anguish, there is solidarity.)
The prayers of the faithful bring him no relief.
The mortals invoke feelings that Thanatos can't contemplate, emotions too painful to entertain or even to commit to study. Even if he knows their titles from a glance, the swells of sensation that arise from Death's soul are foggy and phantom. They writhe, like figments, shadowed and shapeless. Not like the contents of his own heart, the ones he casts down and away—the feelings, their figures, seem to warp and waver in him, as though manifesting a violent struggle. As if they are foreign agents. As if they do not belong.
Unlike those complex emotions, the words the mortals choose form a simple soliloquy that Death knows well. A stream of pretty invocations and intercessions, rotated with blasphemy and sworn resentment. Their offerings, however charged, help him become himself again; they tether him back to his course and creed. Death. Demise. Departure. Deliverance. From the mortals' prayers, and from the dying's wails, Thanatos forges his purpose.
The Surface air bites his hands, cracking as it freezes. Hurry, his mind urges, as Demeter's icy hand rains down. Falling snow dots teardrop burns to his skin. Winter settles into his bones.
The souls are as restless as he. The new dead are screaming, shrieking, even now searching, their memories and feelings ringing clear and sharp as bells—profound indignation, unrest, confusion, destitution, and deep, deep longing. He inhales the sharp tang of Earth's mulch and metal, the all-eclipsing kiss of frost; he feels, rather than hears, the static of Zeus in the air, the crack of it against his skin.
"Hurry, please," Thanatos says, aloud this time, and thrusts his scythe into the ground. He leans heavily against it, trembling. "Follow on, now. It's all right. I'm here to take you." Each word is an effort, the attempt at a kind tone a greater one still. Even the extension of a single arm, the come-hither flex of the fingers.
(The hands of Death Incarnate are a unique sort of grotesque, with ashen skin and long, crooked fingers that would, in a mortal life, never have known the sharp edge of a blade. He puts them to work now toward the service of men, who outstretch theirs to him in kind. Through his creative vision, and with assistance from Charon, life drifts off into the realm below, peacefully fading into its different shades. The once vibrant faces of the mortal humans droop with a ghostly pall; hair turns to clumps and coils, bodies stretching long as shadows, punctuated on all borders by a distinct chatter—broadband, white noise, endless buzz. The color schemes always struck him as strange. An odd, sickly gossamer, no retention of the natural pigment; yet their relative sizes remain as they were on Earth. And now, as from the beginning, all of the men and women and the young ones and old ones follow Death's beckoning fingers to form a long chain: teal-shifting marionettes, clumsily queuing, coming to grasp the reality of their new Unlives, growing more and more disconnected from the old way of living. Accepting him incrementally; drifting from desperation to calm, cold detachment.)
Earth's night swiftly approaches; Thanatos begins to feel unwell. For one disorienting second, he looks all around in a frenzy for his mother, who abandoned this realm a long, long time ago. Instead, his wild eyes meet Charon's bony face, and a swirling plume of purple smoke.
Thanatos departs without a word.
Night comes to Death in the courtyard, in a rare moment of disquieting calm; even the punch-bag of bone has not yet reanimated. When his mother comes to him, he's overlooking the balustrade, peering down at the grim tongues of green licking at Tartarus' austere interlocking walls: those climbing, chemiluminescent flames. Though the ever-ticking whirs and whines of the residing shades compete to hold his attention—and doubtless Mother Nyx can hear them as well—Death steps to his side and nods his acknowledgement, accepting her presence without protest.
It oughtn't refresh him now, to listen to the far-off screams of the damned in place of the animate prayers of the faithful (not any more so than the mess of his own mind). It oughtn't bring any shade of relief, the handing off of these damned, the inevitable outcome. But there is a strange sort of comfort in it. Souls relinquished to their natural outcome, their natural consequence of being. Though Death still can hear them cry, or whisper, his onus to them ends with their lives, and with this, there is peace—a slivered stretch of borrowed time, returned. And yes, Thanatos had learned long ago that they—indeed, their entire world—were all living on borrowed time. Unlike him, so like him, warden and ward, questioning still—what is existence, if not time bought and bartered?
Thanatos stands in silence at his mother's side, each heralding the other, and wonders again whether he is now, as ever, doomed to live out this eternity with so maudlin a psyche. The quiet never lasts, here or in the mortal world, and even just beneath him monsters are calling for rest. Tartarus will already be burning by the time the creatures leap for him. Endlessly cycling, endlessly dutiful, and Zagreus there in the center of it all. Alive. Beaming.
There is no escape.
It's only once his migrant thoughts have progressed to the finer points of that face (swallowed by shadows for hair, and lit aflame by that one burning eye) that Nyx's ghostlike hand touches his shoulder—a whisper that nonetheless seeks to exorcise Death right out of his own skin.
"Thanatos, my son. Though it is true enough that I cannot discern their contents, the restless fury of your thoughts reaches me even from the farthest corners of the House. What ails you, child?"
"You need not concern yourself on my account, Mother." The response is automatic, a variation on a theme; his eyes remain cast firmly forward, though he does not shy from her touch. "I am only taking a moment to rest."
"Yes, and to witness this I am pleased, for often I fear you work yourself too hard. But forgive my meddling, though you seem quite unrested even here."
"It's nothing other than work." Nothing that you need let worry you. "I don't like or mean to cause trouble for you. Please, pay me no mind. There are many important matters in the House more deserving of your attention."
"I see. Then I hope you shall honor your mother's meager request for you to take care of yourself." Nyx's face seems to loom even where his eyes can't see, heavy-hanging and white like the mortal moon, drawing his thoughts like its servant tides. As enigmatic and haunting as darkness itself, and as all-knowing. Death's thoughts flash all at once to the Prince's mirror. "And pray, how fares Zagreus?"
Though he had half-expected this query, Thanatos turns his body, too, from her then, as the sun from night encroaching. But where Nyx is concerned, this too is something inevitable: words, spilled from Death's mouth like flowing water, a glut. "He has not yet returned, as you surely know. You humor his vagrancies, Mother. I had the mind to avoid the subject entirely, as it is not my station to question you. But if you are so inclined to aid him as I have suspected, you could at least enlighten me as to what you might hope to accomplish in it."
"Oh, my son, but you forget your place. Though you may roam where you please, I am not ignorant to the comings and goings of my children. Zagreus has always enjoyed my full support, this much is true. But his journey is his own, and he has others besides me who would help him along." And Death, beleaguered, turns back again to face his mother—and in so doing, his shame. "Is it not so, Thanatos?"
"Mother—"
"Do you know, my child, that Zagreus did approach me not the last I saw him, and with a litany of questions—some among them invoking your name?"
Anger, forked and white-hot, flaring in his throat like flame. "What did he ask, then?"
"I am not at liberty to say much of it, I should think. However, it may be of interest to you that he expressed concern about your temperament of late. He seems to fear for your distress, as do I, and wished that you might rest more."
"That fool has no awareness—"
"Yes, and this we did discuss. I do sense your weariness, my child, as plainly as I would suspect Chaos your thoughts. But hear, Zagreus asked of me many questions. He also wished to know why it is you will not face him."
"Oh, is that so? And I suppose you had a lovely chat all about the pleasures of running?"
(And there, swiftly rising like racing feet, before he can stop them: thoughtforms, shaping in the looking glass that is his mind, running just as fast—running as Thanatos runs to where whim and whimsy can scarcely follow, running simply to fend for a few stolen seconds in which Death might believe that everything is as it should be and nothing aches. Running like they had done when they were children, about the gardens and through the halls, either scant seconds or eons ago depending on how one counted, chasing Zagreus or being chased by Zagreus and…
—memory, a flood, liquid glass in his head fogging: Thanatos running, running just to run, running for the necessity of running, running for the feeling of fleeing on a fleeting wind, an agent of the nothing dark, running to duty, running from duty, running from himself, running and running and—)
"Mother," he chokes, his voice breaking, black dark enclosing: the night-mirror, winking. "Are you—?"
"Ah…fear not, my ever-ruminating child." Nyx grants her son a sly, slanted smile that instantaneously melts his fleeting thoughts and clicks something in his chest—a key slotted into a lock. "I told him that one who runs is merely hoping to be found."
(In the breath of the chaos that amplifies her words, the cries of mortals-once-lived race through the courtyard, calling to him; but of course, Death is already gone. All that is left to find there is Night Incarnate, coyly smiling, and the still-jumbled skeleton: prone, and stained red with the vestiges of Zagreus' blood.)
(Memory becomes a flood.)
Death, as a babe, never had a friend. His mother spoke kindly, in a far-off manner, rifling her hands through the small boy's pale hair; she gave him wings and bangles and bracers like the ones she once wore, in that time long ago when she still hung the moon. He knew no father, but the gruff moaning Boatman taught him every artform of ferrying the dead, while the most civil of the punishing Furies taught him the gravities of mortal sin. And his dope-faced twin brother, whom he looked after—he taught Death the curse of caring. And from that initial well came the blood-spring of emotion, and with it the need for efficiency: how to hear without heaving and field without reeling, and how to carry shrieking souls to and from the red-dripping river without spilling a drop, or ever falling in.
So it was, and Death learned to be diligent. Until the time when Life appeared.
Life was a thing Death could not hope to understand. He couldn't breathe when the infant in front of him gasped for air, flopping and choking for the right to exist. He was forever marked when Life emerged unscathed, when Life reached for his hand with those tiny, wriggling fingers. He wanted to reach out, too, and trace the chubby pink line of Life's cheek, to feel the velvet skin there. To protect Life's vigor. He couldn't have known what that meant, and the few words that his mother spared for this were never really enough.
It was like he'd been branded from the very start. There were so many qualities that made Life so beguiling. Keen contrasting eyes and a quick clever grin, a playful toss of hair as it fell into his face. His playful way of speaking; his love of provocation. As younglings they would wander by the gurgling crimson Pool that expelled new souls, and Death would come to wonder at Life's like-colored blood. Life urged him to eat when Death grew too absorbed in his study of human cultures; Life dragged him to the gardens when Death became too sallow. They exchanged words simple and leisured, hummed an energetic back-and-forth, tensed anticipation in them. Antithetic. Diametric. Life and Death each chased about the other, sharing secrets and smiles.
Of course, this was a while after the lessons had begun. They each had their tutelage: history, warfare, repose. Life needed no training as to emotion; life was emotion, raw and untempered. Only to channel it proper—such was the Warrior's way. But Death, that conduit of profound mortal pain—he required the explanations behind his own power.
He canted his head in thoughtful contemplation when Nyx told him that 'joy' was a sweet-bubbling rush that swept through the body and left one giddy, and hung it when she said 'sad' was a great lump that burned in the throat. He took meticulous notes, committing every detail: of how 'fear' filled the mortals with a displacing numbness that threatened to turn them to statues, and how 'boredom' warped and distorted the whole world, so that every moment dragged on like eternity.
One morning or evening, in the chilled, tranquil air of the former Queen's prettiest garden, Death came to Night like a tremulous whisper (shifty, jumping, like he'd rather be anywhere else), and asked her what 'love' was.
Nyx told him of an invisible cord, as strong and unbreakable as steel, that tethered living souls to each other; and from that cord unraveled a plethora of other feelings: joy when the souls are together, sorrow when they are apart, deep pain when one of them suffers, and hope for one another's safety. She explained to him how those cords yoked together couples, and brothers, and families, and friends, no matter how far apart they might be; and how this was something so powerful, so overwhelming, so divine, that mortals would do anything for it. Including die.
"I have never experienced it for myself," Night had said with a detached air; but Death, with his young wisdom and discerning heart, knew her words to be false, for Mother Nyx did so love her children.
(Memory becomes a flood. Thanatos pulls himself, soaking, up and out from Mnemosyne's mouth; and lets the mortal voices, their emotions and their whims, carry him back to the Lethe.)
Thanatos doesn't see Zagreus at all in the House, nor suffer a single call from him for sleep, yet this does not surprise him; if anything, he's more surprised that it doesn't. No sooner does he emerge from the Pool than does he plunge right back into the Underworld's depths. Zagreus, too, lives and breathes for but a handful of stolen seconds—for the promise that he might see Lady Persephone once more.
(Thanatos feels it, that stab-become-ache, every time that the Styx brings him back.)
And so memory, that fast flood, becomes their charted course. Their encounters rotate, always harkened by some exchange of sharp sounds—scythe slicing and sandals scraping harshly on paved stone, iron biting flesh and iron flowing from it, weapons at the ready. The spectating shades, encroaching ever closer. And that familiar, frenetic voice, that still (always) rings out each time that they meet:
"Thanatos."
(Ahh, a pearlescent glow to his skin now, grotesque—plain to the eye of one who dwells half in darkness, half not.)
And so it continues, for so it must do. Only now, where before he'd never had more than two possibilities to mull, Death must now withstand a full hostile spectrum. Zagreus goes to the Surface; Zagreus returns Underground; Zagreus dies by fire; Zagreus dies by air.
(It aches. How shall they die, on this revolution?)
Memory haunts him, a collection of words, exchanged like a clashing of blades. He cannot remember when they had been said. He can't keep the revolutions straight anymore.
Even I'm beginning to fear you, I think. Seems I don't know you as well as I thought.
There is but one denominator—pain, and the eternal lack of sleep. Entwined one and the same, burden to them both.
(Memory, a flood.) Life and Death. One and the same.
What are you doing back here, Zag? You made it out.
So, you're only going to keep going back, then?
Thanatos remembers when it was different. When the constraints that bound him were but absolute.
Well. At least that poisonous Surface air can ensure that this chase will be constrained to one realm.
Home is never going to be the same for me, Than. There's no use trying to pretend.
All that either of them ever does is pretend. I know you didn't ask me to get involved, but—
(What did he expect?)
This time is no different, yet is not the same. The ice in Zagreus' voice reeks of Surface air. From the spot where he lingers in Elysium's vibrant fields, by any depiction a hero, he has never looked less like himself. Standing with that puffed-out chest like he has never lost a war.
(Memory. Time. The cycle. A flood.) And Zagreus, eternally fighting.
This time... Thanatos is really not in the mood.
"You don't fight fair," he breathes as they spar, not to his heart but to the one who holds it—he can feel the fingers curled around it, their prying and tugging around the phantom pains that haunt his chest, winter-cold and calloused and achingly familiar. Familiar as breathing, familiar as longing, familiar as death. Zagreus, by his face, doesn't hear, though maybe he sees. Still, he pushes on (faster). Life emerges the victor.
And how strange, how cruel, that Thanatos would still feel himself moved, pulled so taut by something he cannot see. An anomaly without shape, or color—only a vividest crack in the monochrome (and one that could hardly be classed as an anomaly at all, for how can it be when it's been there from the very beginning?)
He should probably recognize it as an epiphany or a revelation or something, but this is nothing Lady Athena would smile upon. (And all of a sudden, just as all along, the insight is clear: he is following his heart, and it's doing a better job at outrunning him than Zagreus is).
"Good bout, Than."
(Memory. Time. The Cycle. A flood.) And the two of them, eternally running.
That triggers something. "Still running from yourself, I see. How's that working out for you so far?"
"I have to see my mother, Than, as long as she's alive. Even if it's temporary...even if I can't stay." He pauses. "You are fortunate to still live at home with yours. You don't know what it's like."
(Memory.) Mother Night, in the courtyard. Cold ire. "Mother Nyx was like—is—a mother to you, too. And this is how you repay her." (A flood.) One who runs is merely— "You should be ashamed of yourself, and learn your place."
(Time. The Cycle.) "Wait—"
When the whirling voices start to thread and weave together in Thanatos' ears it's only for the worse, because they still have no component of sense; just nonsense tones, nothing inflections, and words so incomprehensible it makes him want to scream, as well. He knows those voices, knows those feelings, just like he knows the hands caging his heart (like the flutter of red that sparks up to greet him at such times as these, when his efforts at control so spectacularly fail).
The world shatters again in slow motion, and Thanatos is hurtling away, disappearing on a breath from the beautiful opaline fields where Zagreus' flame still flickers, faltering as if in threat to burn out.
And Asphodel is somehow cold and lonely and every shade there is crying; and if Zagreus ever does manage to take his own advice and wait, Thanatos can only hope that he can summon strength enough to keep the mercy to a minimum, because another eternity of heartbreak is more than he can stand. Only to end the Cycle, a billion million lifetimes of nothing but Earth-shaking noise and soul-crushing sound, doomed to haunt him in this realm and beyond. Only to end the perpetual throbbing of hollow-pointed thoughts, pricking, puncturing, always hurting, and never fully realized. Sound and a still-shaded world all around him, rustling and flame-cold like the contents of his chest. A better god than he might find power and purpose there, but here there's only purgatory, and eternal pain. (He'd choose fire and brimstone over this hell every time.)
But then, he dares not think, though insight still bubbles a spring inside him—what else is there to expect from Life? Time passes, here and in that world above—summer becomes autumn becomes winter becomes spring becomes summer. Life emerges and Death gives chase. And Lady Demeter rages on, leaving me to the aftermath.
And so it is; and so it must be; and so, no one rests, and least not the dead.
