Canon Temporary Character Death, POV Thanatos, Angst, just emotionally torturing thanatos
Zagreus's words can only make it so far out of the Underworld. They linger here at the surface, losing strength until they die out, long before reaching Olympus. A bit ironic, really.
And what better place for Zagreus’s voice to meet its end than in the ears of Death.
(read on AO3 or on Tumblr below)
“Olympus? I accept this message!”
Thanatos hears these words once again, barely intelligible in the muffled, far-away sound of Zagreus’s voice.
As he does every time, like an idiot, Thanatos scans the snow-white terrain of the surface around him, squinting into its blinding light, searching for a wave of red robes or the glow of fire-hot footsteps.
Of course, there’s nothing to be found. Zagreus is far below him, shedding his blood somewhere in Tartarus as he attempts once more to escape the House.
Thanatos wouldn’t have thought so at first, but it turns out that his duties on the surface happen to be the worst place possible to ignore Zagreus. Every time one of the gods on Olympus sends their powers down in aid, Zagreus attempts to communicate with them.
But his words can only make it so far out of the Underworld. They linger here at the surface, losing strength until they die out, long before reaching Olympus. A bit ironic, really.
And what better place for Zagreus’s voice to meet its end than in the ears of Death.
It feels like a curse, every time Zagreus begins another climb toward the surface and starts babbling to every god he encounters. Thanatos has already been struggling to keep up with his duties without Zagreus distracting him, with more mortals dying than ever before due to the endless winter. He must remain attuned to the song created by the end of mortal life, thousands of pin-prick notes like a string being plucked for each soul he must attend to. Zagreus’s rambling is an unwelcome disruption.
The worst part is how Thanatos is able to follow the slow unfolding tragedy of each of Zagreus’s futile journeys.
“Much thanks, Dionysus mate. I’ll certainly be able to send a few Shades to madness with this blessing.”
Zagreus starts out hopeful, energetic, cheerful. He enthusiastically greets each god with his uniquely peculiar mix of politeness and cheekiness, eager to connect with the faraway entities he views as his long-lost family.
It’s been a long time since Zagreus greeted him. It’ll be a while longer.
“Lord Ares, you understand battle like no other god. You’re right, I could use a bit more bloodlust…”
Then, as Zagreus starts to feel the pain of his injuries, a subtle change. He is still cheerful, but his focus increases. He steadies himself by tightly gripping his devotion to his mission, in a way Thanatos has never seen him commit to anything before.
Not his duties, not his distractions…not even the bond he once thought they shared.
“Lady Athena, I am grateful you’ve come to guard me with your wisdom…Just have to make it…a little farther…show you that your favor is not wasted…”
Next the part that becomes agonizing for Thanatos to listen to.
Zagreus’s wounds are now dire. His voice loses strength, growing quiet and breathy, yet as he approaches death, Thanatos can hear him all the more clearly, can’t help but to concentrate on the sound of him slowly dying, to listen to what the Fates have chosen for him to never miss a note of.
With Zagreus’s voice in his ear, Thanatos floats across the vast plains of snow, bringing final rest to soldiers wounded beyond saving by another mortal war. Crimson blood shines in the bright white snow, the blood of mortals that Thanatos must attend to, but all he can think about is that it’s the same blood that Zagreus is spilling somewhere below.
What a strange thing, for life to depend on this tiniest flow of liquid that can be so easily depleted. That Zagreus’s vivid presence, even as a god, can be snuffed out when too much of it is gone.
Perhaps that’s why he was always so fickle. Or used to be.
Then again, he can’t really say who Zagreus is nowadays.
“I…can’t…I—”
A snip like a thread being cut right beside Thanatos’s ear, soft yet sharp.
It’s no different than the sound of any other mortal life ending, but Thanatos knows it’s him. Can’t stop himself from fixating on it, from replaying it over and over in his mind until it blends with the patchwork of other lives to be taken, muddying what should be a clear path from mortal to mortal, if Thanatos could just do his job right.
He’s imagined all the different ways Zagreus might die, and each possibility opens a deeper pit inside him.
Thanatos, who has seen death in every form, who knows death as just another swing of his scythe, who is Death—
There is still one death in the world that makes him sick to his stomach.
* * *
(Thanks for reading! if you enjoyed this, I would appreciate it so much if you shared this post and left kudos on AO3!)
Jiang Cheng & Song Lan (can be interpreted as platonic or romantic)
Rated: T | Wordcount: 6.2k
Post-Canon, POV JC, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Bonding, Holding Hands, Late Night Conversations, mostly follows novel timeline
“Song-daozhang…”
Jiang Cheng stops himself, but in the end he can’t hold back his selfish curiosity.
“Did you know what would happen when you went to Baoshan Sanren’s mountain?”
for Song Lan Rarepair Week 2025 -- thank you @yicityrarepair for running this event!
Every so often, Jiang Cheng goes on a night hunt alone.
He had originally picked up the habit to look for Wei Wuxian, hoping to find him while on a hunt. In the years after Wei Wuxian’s death, he’d had the foolish idea that maybe if he was by himself, Wei Wuxian was more likely to appear.
No surprise, he’d been wrong.
Since when did that imbecile care about an audience? Of course, the day he finally did come back, it had to be in front of a crowd—even in front of Jin Ling. Wei Wuxian always did have to create the maximum social and political destruction. No doubt he would turn up under exactly the right circumstances to give Jiang Cheng the biggest headache of his life.
Now there’s no need to go looking for his brother. He knows Wei Wuxian’s general whereabouts from Jin Ling, who might not tell Jiang Cheng directly about his uncle’s doings, but he can usually tell when there’s a Wei Wuxian-sized hole in the plot of one of Jin Ling’s stories.
No, there’s no need to search for Wei Wuxian anymore.
Now Jiang Cheng’s solo night hunts are simply for clearing his head. They’re so helpful that his second-in-command all but forces him to go if it’s been too long since his last night hunt alone. And he’s experienced quite a buildup of frustration before this one.
For tonight’s hunt, he doesn’t have a specific target in mind. He patrols Yunmeng territory for half a shichen, but he doesn’t find any monsters to fight or spirits to quell.
Too bad he can’t punish his disciples for keeping Yunmeng so safe and peaceful that there are no beasts for him to unleash his pent-up frustration on. If he doesn’t find something soon, he’ll have to wake his senior disciples for a midnight sparring session. Otherwise, he won’t be able to stop himself from hunting down Sect Leader Yao, whose incessant trade agreement demands have been the main source of his aggravation, and dueling him then and there.
A dark, fearsome presence slithers through the forest like smoke tendrils, snapping Jiang Cheng out of his thoughts.
He’s found a demon to track down.
He changes his path to follow the murky trail left by the demon’s spiritual presence like a chasm in the forest until he notices something strange—another creature of resentful energy seems to be tracking it, too.
A signature of resentful energy that always brings back bad memories.
If Jiang Cheng’s perception is accurate…this new creature’s energy seems an awful lot like that of a fierce corpse.
But why would a fierce corpse be tracking a demon?
His first thought is of Wen Ning. But the Ghost General only night hunts if he’s guarding Jin Ling or the Lan boy, and to the best of Jiang Cheng’s knowledge, all three of them are in Lanling right now for a discussion between the Lan and the Jin on regulations for the use of musical instruments as spiritual weapons. Although Jin Ling shouldn’t be in any danger, other than from boredom, Jiang Cheng is secretly grateful that Wen Ning is nearby to protect Jin Ling if anything does happen in Lanling.
But that means that this fierce corpse can’t be Wen Ning.
But an ordinary fierce corpse does not possess the intelligence to track another creature across such a large distance.
Just as Jiang Cheng is about to close in on the demon, he hears a piercing shriek and the sound of a sword colliding with a hard shell, of trees snapping and wood splintering. He slices through the undergrowth to enter a clearing, where a gigantic spider demon is locked in battle with a dark-robed figure wielding two swords, one dark and one light shade of gleaming silver.
Could it be…
Song Zichen?
Before he can begin to wonder why the Distant Snow and Cold Frost is here, Jiang Cheng leaps into the fray, joining him in battle. They quickly fall into a rhythm, providing opportunities for each other to strike at the spider’s massive black carapace.
The pivotal moment arises when they both have the chance to strike at the same time.
They simultaneously fly up from underneath the spider’s body and—
A dark veil shimmers down, surrounding them. Their swords collide with a black barrier and bounce off the dense woven surface with a hard metallic clang.
Confused, Jiang Cheng lands beside Song Zichen.
It’s nearly pitch-black, save for a few angry crackles from Zidian on his wrist. He lights a talisman, but it doesn’t do much good. He can’t see farther than a dozen paces in any direction, where the barrier allows the faintest hint of moonlight to enter through the many layers of strong threadlike material but obstructs his vision of anything outside its boundary. They are cut off from the rest of the forest, enclosed inside this webbed black bubble.
“What just happened?” Jiang Cheng says. “Are we trapped?!”
Song Zichen doesn’t reply.
Jiang Cheng strikes the dark barrier again with Sandu, but it bounces off just as before.
He tries with Zidian.
A loud crackle and a bright flash of violet light as it hits the barrier. The energy spreads through the web along a front of electrified purple threads, leaving a faint glow in the web that lights the area he and Song Zichen are trapped inside. That’s useful, at least, to have some light, but the barrier remains unbroken.
He whips at the web again—
Nothing.
“What is this?”
Another futile try with Sandu.
When he still doesn’t hear a word from Song Zichen, he looks over to see the rogue cultivator watching him impassively as he hacked at the web, and then he remembers.
Song Zichen can’t speak.
Song Zichen inclines his head toward the ground, where he has written words into the dirt. I had suspected that this demon could create a web to trap its prey. Hadn’t realized it could make one so fast.
“It didn’t seem powerful enough to produce a barrier this strong.”
Possibly my fault. It’s reinforced from the inside by my resentful energy.
“How do you know?”
I can feel it.
Jiang Cheng sighs. Just his luck that he’d get trapped inside a demon spider’s web that is impenetrable only because one of the two sentient fierce corpses in the world is trapped inside it with him.
Though, in a list of people Jiang Cheng would least like to be stuck here with, Song Zichen doesn't rank so high. Not exactly a stroke of luck, but it’s something.
“If it feeds off your resentful energy, then that rules out using our combined power to break out. Releasing your resentful energy would only increase the web’s strength.”
Song Zichen nods.
“Well, if we’re in here as prey, it must enter the web to eat eventually.”
Likely by morning, Song Zichen writes. We attack at that time.
“So you’re proposing we just wait in here and sit around doing nothing until then?”
Unless you have another idea.
“Hmph.”
They exchange several more ideas, and Jiang Cheng tries just about every talisman on him. Song Zichen’s ideas are quite crafty, drawing a hint of admiration out of Jiang Cheng, not that he would admit it. But despite their exhaustive attempts, nothing puts so much as a hole in the web.
Their options depleted, Jiang Cheng pokes at the spider’s web with Sandu a few times just for spite, then lets out a heavy sigh as he resigns himself to a night spent trapped here.
He doesn’t like the idea of waiting at the mercy of a spider demon’s appetite. What if it doesn’t open the web by morning? Jiang Cheng has things to do tomorrow, clan business to take care of—disciples to train, river tradespeople to meet, contracts to review.
He crosses his arms, shooting a sidelong glance at Song Zichen.
For the first time since tonight’s unexpected encounter, Jiang Cheng gets a good look at him.
He looks very different from when they last met, long ago. In those miserable early years after Wei Wuxian’s death, their paths had crossed several times. Jiang Cheng had seen Xiao Xingchen and Song Zichen in action at the peak of their fame, slaying a great beast.
Then the successes the two rogue cultivators had achieved started to collapse. Xue Yang went on a murdering spree, exterminating the Chang Clan and, later, Baixue Temple. Xiao Xingchen and Song Zichen were caught right in the middle, unable to bring an end to Xue Yang’s atrocities with the Jin Clan protecting him, unable to escape Xue Yang’s eventual revenge for trying to.
During that time, Song Zichen came to Lotus Pier twice for Jiang Cheng’s help: once to hunt down and apprehend Xue Yang for murdering the Chang Clan before harm befell Xiao Xingchen, and once to find Xiao Xingchen after he had gone missing following the Baixue Temple massacre.
In neither case had Jiang Cheng been able to help.
He is reminded of the guilt that gnaws at him for his failure to be of use to Song Zichen, another tickmark in a long list of his shortcomings.
Now Song Zichen, once a promising young cultivator with an air of invincibility, bears the marks of his anguish, his skin now pale and threaded with dark lines coursing with resentful energy. He had always had a certain melancholy to him, but now he possesses a weariness that only death can bring.
But what Jiang Cheng notices most are Song Zichen’s eyes.
Now that he knows, it only takes a bit of imagination to see Xiao Xingchen staring back at him…
An owl hoots, breaking the uncomfortable silence, its sound muffled by the web surrounding them.
“Song-daozhang, may I ask what you’re doing in Yunmeng?”
On the way back to Yi City.
Back to Yi City? When Jin Ling had told him that Song Zichen left to wander the jianghu, Jiang Cheng had assumed that he would want to get away from the place that had caused him and Xiao Xingchen so much pain. Why walk right back into it?
“Why are you going back?” asks Jiang Cheng, never one for dancing around a delicate subject.
I feel that there is…something left for me to understand there.
“Understand about what?”
Song Zichen hovers Fuxue over the ground, looking hesitant.
“About the spirit pouch you’re carrying?” Jiang Cheng offers, too impatient to beat around the bush.
Song Zichen looks up at him in surprise. Xiao Xingchen’s spirit pouch is presumably hidden in his robes somewhere, but Jiang Cheng knows the whole story, knows what he carries. The man wields two swords, for heaven’s sake, one of which is incredibly recognizable.
Jiang Cheng can’t help but be reminded of the three months he spent carrying Wei Wuxian’s sword during the Sunshot Campaign…
It seems that you are aware of more than I thought. As a fierce corpse, Song Zichen’s movements are stiff, preventing Jiang Cheng from deciphering if this fact relaxes him or tensens him. Yes, I am returning for Xingchen’s sake. Perhaps I missed something in Yi City that will help restore Xingchen and A-Qing’s souls.
“...I see.”
Jiang Cheng suddenly feels uncomfortable. Song Zichen and Xiao Xingchen have a complicated history. He isn’t sure how to discuss something this personal with him, or if it should be discussed at all.
He looks away, but his gaze is drawn back to Song Zichen’s eyes. Xiao Xingchen’s eyes.
Song Zichen must have known the truth as soon as he saw his reflection.
Why hadn’t Jiang Cheng noticed that his golden core belonged to someone else? How had he not recognized the cultivation essence of his own brother?
“I’m sorry I couldn’t help you,” he finds himself saying. “Back then.”
After the Yueyang Chang massacre, Song Zichen had come to Lotus Pier, confiding in Jiang Cheng about his worries for Xiao Xingchen and requesting help in bringing Xue Yang to justice. Song Zichen sought help not solely out of a desire to apprehend Xue Yang for his crimes. Instead, he was driven by concern for what might happen to Xiao Xingchen if he became too embedded in the clan politics that surrounded Xue Yang and his crimes like a Spirit-Trapping Net.
Xiao Xingchen hadn’t understood the extent of the Jin Clan’s power and corruption. Hell, Jiang Cheng had firsthand experience and he hadn’t fully understood the extent of it until the revelations of Guanyin Temple. The Jin Clan’s authority had been especially formidable back then, the rest of the Great Clans still struggling to recover from the Sunshot Campaign. Jiang Cheng was drowning in the fight to restore his clan. The Lan were still rebuilding the Cloud Recesses after it was burned to the ground. The Nie had retained some influence, but Nie Mingjue was unstable, poisoned by the malice of his own saber, ready to snap any day.
At the time Song Zichen came to Lotus Pier, Jiang Cheng was still under the Jin Clan’s oily thumb. He couldn’t afford to directly oppose the Jin Clan with the control they had over Jin Ling.
Given his pitiful position back then, he doesn’t understand why Song Zichen had sought him for help in the first place. Maybe Song Zichen had been just as clueless as Xiao Xingchen.
There was no chance Jiang Cheng would’ve been able to help. He had no power to. Not when it came to two rogue cultivators whose entire goal was to spurn the clan system. Who forged a path directly against the headwind of politics and tradition. Who pursued justice until they backed themselves into a corner.
Jiang Cheng knew how that story ended.
He feels a fresh pang of sorrow on Song Zichen’s behalf, sharp and resonant. He understands what it’s like to lose his clan and home.
“If you had come to me today, I would be able to advocate for you,” Jiang Cheng continues. “But not back then.”
Song Zichen bows his head. Your clan has become strong enough to exert its own influence.
The subtle praise catches Jiang Cheng off guard. “The Jin Clan is still a pit of vipers, even for me. They’ve lost some foothold because of Jin Guangyao’s scandal, but many are scrabbling to claim unofficial power.”
Such dangers must be watched for in every sect. In the Jin Clan, it has just been allowed to grow unobstructed. There are years of corruption to be undone.
Even years ago when Song Zichen visited Lotus Pier to ask Jiang Cheng for his help, the man was full of ‘worldly’ advice like this. The only reason it doesn’t annoy Jiang Cheng that much is because, on the few brief occasions they had met, Xiao Xingchen did it much more often, and because Song Zichen was usually right.
“Are you…still planning to found your own sect?”
As soon as Jiang Cheng asks, he regrets it. Who would join a sect led by a fierce corpse? Moreover, the jianghu has all but forgotten the once renowned Distant Snow and Cold Frost.
Song Zichen makes a noise that sounds something like a sigh. First I must heal Xingchen’s soul. Then…I don’t know.
Discomfited by how freely Song Zichen reveals his sadness, by how directionless he seems, Jiang Cheng probes at the faintly glowing web with Sandu again, desperate for something to do. In a normal situation, he wouldn’t press Song Zichen about something personal, but since they’re stuck here…
“But you still want to?” he asks.
Song Zichen looks at him with a hint of incredulousness that could only mean, Of course I do, why would you think otherwise?
“Even after all of the harm the clans have caused you and Xiao Xingchen?”
All the more reason to. That didn’t stop you from building your sect, did it?
“I didn’t have a choice.”
I have less choice than you think I do.
Jiang Cheng sits back on a rock. “What do you mean?”
I have no choice but to spend my life walking the righteous path. Especially now, to atone for my sins. As you can see, I have already failed in following the righteous way.
Jiang Cheng frowns, unnerved by this statement. Song Zichen looks up for a moment, sharply holding Jiang Cheng’s gaze, then swipes over the writing in the dirt with his foot and continues.
Now that my ‘life’ has no end in sight…what can I do but try again?
Jiang Cheng finds himself speechless. It is rare that a cultivator as powerful as Song Zichen admits that he has failed.
Song Zichen stares at him. Xiao Xingchen’s eyes, boring into him. A knot forms in Jiang Cheng’s stomach. He looks away and adjusts his vambraces, suddenly self-conscious.
“I wouldn’t say it was you that failed,” he says carefully. “The cultivation world failed you.”
I was the one who turned away Xingchen. The one who blamed him. The one who failed to find him in time to save him. Yes, his actions led Xue Yang to take revenge by targeting me and my former clansmen. And that still hurts me.
Song Zichen’s hand trembles.
But was it really his fault? In the aftermath, I was the one who let him down. I let down my clan, too, as I failed to protect them from Xue Yang.
The words in the dirt at his feet seem to burn, searing into the earth. Searing into Jiang Cheng, stinging him.
Xiao Xingchen had been foolish, but he had also been innocent.
Wei Wuxian, on the other hand…
It wasn’t the same. It wasn’t.
You have asked me many questions, Song Zichen writes. May I ask you…
Song Zichen trails off.
“Ask me what?”
…Did you believe the report that Xiao Xingchen killed Chang Ping?
The sudden question catches Jiang Cheng by surprise. “No. I even had my disciples look into it. Unfortunately we found nothing conclusive.”
So there had been a true investigation? Song Zichen writes.
“Well. I kept it small, and hidden from the other clans. But…we did look—for evidence that could point to the murderer’s identity, or at least prove Xiao Xingchen’s innocence.”
Song Zichen seems both satisfied and disappointed. Thank you.
“What are you thanking me for? We didn’t find anything. And don’t forget that not long before Chang Ping’s murder, you had asked me for help finding Xiao Xingchen, a request I was unable to fulfill.”
The second time Song Zichen came to Lotus Pier had been during his search for Xiao Xingchen, a year after the massacre at Baixue Temple. Although Jiang Cheng had tried to help, providing a few tenuous and questionable leads, the most he’d known for certain about Xiao Xingchen’s whereabouts was that he’d been missing for a year.
“When soon after your visit,” Jiang Cheng continues, “Xiao Xingchen’s name was thrown around as the identity of Chang Ping’s murderer, was I supposed to ignore the case after you had practically begged me for help finding him?”
Despite the trouble it might have caused him, Jiang Cheng had felt obligated to clear up Xiao Xingchen’s supposed crime, clear the clouds darkening the name of Bright Moon and Gentle Breeze. He hadn’t been able to turn a blind eye. He couldn’t.
Not that his effort resulted in much.
You did what you could, Song Zichen writes. Perhaps if Jiang-zongzhu hadn’t been the only one to investigate, it wouldn’t have taken so many years to find the true murderer.
“You were raised in the cultivation world,” Jiang Cheng says. “You must know that the lack of investigation wasn’t because everyone believed that Xiao Xingchen murdered Chang Ping. Xiao Xingchen was a rogue cultivator who had already stirred up political trouble and then vanished for over a year. Publicly clearing his name wasn’t exactly at the top of the Great Clans’ list of priorities. And then there was the Jin Clan’s protection of Xue Yang…”
Song Zichen grips Fuxue tighter. I know.
Jiang Cheng feels compelled to keep talking, even though he isn’t sure if this is what Song Zichen wants to hear.
“Like I said. If you had come to me today with the same request…to apprehend Xue Yang, before everything else happened…”
Fuxue’s tip falters. Perhaps we were beyond saving, anyway.
Jiang Cheng doesn’t know how to reply to that. He looks away, toying with Zidian’s ring.
An agonizing eternity of silence falls between them, filled only by the weight of Song Zichen’s words and the knowledge that there is nothing to do but wait.
Then the gentle rustle of sleeves gets Jiang Cheng’s attention. Song Zichen is writing again.
You should sleep.
Jiang Cheng scoffs. At his cultivation level, he can go at least a week without sleeping. Song Zichen’s own cultivation level would have been similar during his lifetime. The gesture of solicitude should offend Jiang Cheng, but instead it makes him feel…strange.
He could sleep. But he doesn’t want to actively rub in that he is alive and able to sleep, unlike Song Zichen. If Song Zichen cannot rest, why should Jiang Cheng shirk his duty to sleep while they are technically on an active mission?
And does he want to sleep with a fierce corpse hovering over him?
Yet…the idea of being near a fierce corpse doesn’t bother him the way it does when that fierce corpse is Wen Ning. Doesn’t anger him the same way. Doesn’t instill the same deep, visceral discomfort in him.
But if there is something to examine in that line of thought, Jiang Cheng does not want to do it now.
“I don’t need to sleep,” he replies.
Slaying the spider will not be easy. It will benefit both of us if you don’t expend unnecessary spiritual energy to stay awake.
Jiang Cheng clenches his jaw. Irritatingly, Song Zichen is right, again. “Will you keep insisting if I refuse?”
Perhaps a few more times.
That gives Jiang Cheng a small chuckle. Throughout the cultivation world, Song Zichen was said to have no sense of humor. Turns out his humor is just so dry that the cultivation world must have never noticed it.
In Jiang Cheng’s opinion, the cultivation world missed the full picture with regard to Song Zichen. Although Xiao Xingchen and Song Zichen’s names were always spoken together, they weren’t truly treated as an equal pair. Xiao Xingchen’s reputation as Baoshan Sanren’s disciple always preceded Song Zichen’s less remarkable origins.
* * *
The first time Jiang Cheng met the two rogue cultivators, he had found them vanquishing a four-headed watersnake demon just outside Yunmeng territory. He had brought his own disciples to subdue the beast, but Song Zichen and Xiao Xingchen had beaten him to it.
At first, he had viewed the two rogue cultivators as a set.
Their fighting skills were astounding to watch. And Jiang Cheng isn’t easily impressed, given that he had grown up watching Wei Wuxian easily accomplish the impossible.
Fighting the demon in the shallows of the river, Song Zichen and Xiao Xingchen had used spirit thread to restrain the gigantic snake-like demon, with four heads each the size of a fisherman’s hut. They seamlessly dodged its four sets of jaws while landing another hit for every one of its attempts to bite, coordinating their movements to be most confusing to the demon. At the same time, they rescued villagers’ boats from the fray.
Despite the chaos, they appeared tranquil, every action seemingly effortless.
Maybe it was effortless for them.
Before witnessing them himself, Jiang Cheng had known that they were powerful, but what he had not understood was how perfectly they worked together, to the point of becoming a single entity in battle.
There was no substitute for a close connection between two powerful cultivators—a connection that bordered on spiritual and became instinctive.
This is what Wei Wuxian and I were supposed to be, he couldn’t stop himself from thinking. The Twin Prides of Yunmeng.
A flare of many different emotions burned in the hole that had been gauged into Jiang Cheng on the day his parents died. In the end it all just felt like anger.
Those two rogue cultivators are nothing like you, he reminded himself.
Xiao Xingchen was from Baoshan Sanren’s mountain. He and Jiang Cheng were not even of the same world.
Although Song Zichen was trained in a sect, it was not one of the Great Clans, nor was he an heir. He’d never had to shoulder the responsibility that Jiang Cheng did. Wasn’t bound to duty to the scale that Jiang Cheng was. Had the freedom to slip into the jianghu and roam with Xiao Xingchen without leaving a power void in his clan the way Jiang Cheng would if he disappeared.
Song Zichen too, was of a different world. A world where tradition and convention didn’t shackle him.
Jiang Cheng could have never turned out as idealistic and righteous as them.
“Jiang-zongzhu, should we…should we help them?” one of his disciples had asked as they stood at the river’s bank watching Xiao Xingchen and Song Zichen subduing the water demon at what must have been a record speed.
Jiang Cheng scoffed. “Do you have eyes?”
“They’re truly incredible…” the youngest disciple murmured.
Even Jiang Cheng felt his amazement grow at the scene, as he shifted from feeling begrudgingly impressed by the two rogue cultivators to genuinely respecting them.
Although at first his gaze was naturally drawn toward Xiao Xingchen, with his bright white robes and unparalleled grace, by the end of the battle, he found himself fixated on Song Zichen.
Song Zichen shared Xiao Xingchen’s agility, but he was distinguished by his steadiness, diligence, and cleverness. While Xiao Xingchen faced the challenge head-on, Song Zichen’s movements were crafty and calculated, miniscule strategic actions that created opportunities for either of them to attack that weren’t obvious even to an experienced cultivator like Jiang Cheng.
As he watched them battle the water demon, he thought to himself that if these two had been working miracles around the jianghu when he was a boy, he would have admired them above all other legends, done everything he could to witness them in action. It was hard to believe that instead they were a few years younger than him, making their skill and cultivation level all the more impressive.
After the two cultivators defeated the demon, and the huge watersnake fell into the water with a giant splash sending waves rippling to the shore, Jiang Cheng and his retinue joined them in purifying resentment from the river.
Now that Jiang Cheng could see them up close, he noticed that there were more differences between the two cultivators than the colors of their robes and their fighting styles. Xiao Xingchen had a delicate and gentle appearance, exactly what came to mind when imagining an immortal. However, Song Zichen’s appearance would have been unassuming if not for his obvious power and the quiet confidence in his bearing.
Strangely, Jiang Cheng found himself more intrigued by Song Zichen’s humble strength than by Xiao Xingchen’s attention-grabbing otherworldliness.
Throughout the process of cleansing the resentment in the river, Song Zichen kept everyone focused, while Xiao Xingchen lifted everyone’s spirits. Xiao Xingchen kept up a steady chatter, befriending the Jiang disciples and laughing at every one of their jokes. Jiang Cheng wondered how he didn’t drive Song Zichen crazy.
And yet, although he couldn’t explain it, Jiang Cheng quickly determined that he could trust Xiao Xingchen. The man was as transparent as rice paper, his thoughts and emotions easy to read.
However, this guileless sincerity made him vulnerable.
Xiao Xingchen was the type who just couldn’t help himself from getting mixed up in affairs he shouldn’t have been involved in. A trait which, thanks to Wei Wuxian, is all too familiar to Jiang Cheng.
After this encounter, he recognized that, in the tales told about them throughout the jianghu, Song Zichen’s skill was unfairly overshadowed by Xiao Xingchen’s reputation and near-legendary status.
He then understood how Song Zichen completed Xiao Xingchen not just in battle. If left to his own devices, Xiao Xingchen would dig his own grave without guidance from someone more seasoned in the complexities and cruelties of the jianghu.
So it was no surprise that just a year later, when the Bright Moon and Gentle Breeze separated from the Distant Snow and Cold Frost, both disappeared from the world.
* * *
Now, Jiang Cheng is trapped in a spider’s web with the Distant Snow and Cold Frost urging him to go to sleep.
“I suppose there’s nothing else to do anyway.” Although Jiang Cheng feels a bit resentful of being told to nap like a child, he gives in and lies on the ground.
To his surprise, Song Zichen joins him, lying on his back beside him.
Jiang Cheng raises an eyebrow. “Are you able to sleep?”
If Song Zichen is just putting on an act to make him more comfortable, his attempt is just increasing Jiang Cheng’s discomfort.
Song Zichen traces words above them with his finger, which Jiang Cheng follows the outline of with some difficulty. I can’t sleep, but I can rest, similar to meditation.
“How…different is everything? Not being able to sleep, and all?”
Song Zichen’s hand is still. Jiang Cheng immediately realizes he’s overstepped. Why would he ask a question like that? What does he care about Song Zichen’s personal life, anyway…?
Song Zichen holds his hand out to Jiang Cheng.
“Huh?”
He repeats the gesture, motioning for Jiang Cheng to give him his hand.
Uncertain, Jiang Cheng slips his hand into Song Zichen’s. Gently, Song Zichen turns Jiang Cheng’s hand over, exposing his palm.
Easier to talk this way, Song Zichen writes into his palm. Is this alright?
The soft touch sends shivers down Jiang Cheng’s spine. The feeling of Song Zichen’s cold hand cradling his, and his finger carefully tracing words on the sensitive skin of his palm.
He gives a hesitant hum of acceptance.
Everything is different, Song Zichen writes. You can think of my existence as an absence. An absence of feeling, of sensing, of experiencing.
Jiang Cheng feels frozen, fixated on processing the words etched into his hand.
For example, I used to abhor physical touch. Now I can tolerate it because I can barely feel it. In fact, not only do I no longer mind physical touch, I find myself…not exactly wanting it, but…it reminds me that I can experience any sensation at all.
Somehow, Jiang Cheng has unintentionally opened the floodgates of conversation from Song Zichen.
It does not escape him that Song Zichen has probably had no one to properly speak to in years.
I was once blind , Song Zichen continues. For a short time. Being a fierce corpse is the opposite of losing one’s sight. I am blind to every sensation but what I can see. Even my hearing is distorted.
To think that, in the end, the only part of me still alive is my eyes…
Song Zichen’s fingers curl, and the writing stops.
Having finished his explanation, Song Zichen rests his hand atop Jiang Cheng’s. The silence spreads over them like a mountain stream, flowing around them, drawing them together in its current. Neither pulls their hands away.
“Song-daozhang…”
Jiang Cheng stops himself, but in the end he can’t hold back his selfish curiosity.
“Did you know what would happen when you went to Baoshan Sanren’s mountain?”
Song Zichen’s hand tenses. I knew that I was taken there for my vision to be healed. I did not know…how that was to occur. Baoshan Sanren does not share her secrets with outsiders.
A complicated tangle of emotions constricts Jiang Cheng’s throat.
So if Jiang Cheng truly had climbed to Baoshan Sanren’s lair, rather than an unnamed mountain with Wen Qing waiting for him, perhaps he still would’ve been given Wei Wuxian’s core. Still would’ve been deceived. Still would feel Wei Wuxian’s core humming inside him, never allowing him peace.
Even if the outcome wouldn’t have changed, at least Wen Qing and Wen Ning wouldn’t have been involved. One less scar from the Wen Clan on his body. One less debt he can’t pay.
“I once thought I was also healed by Baoshan Sanren,” Jiang Cheng finds himself saying.
His breath quickens, becoming shallower. He hadn’t planned on confiding in anyone about this. Especially not here, not to Song Zichen, of all people.
The darkness, the solitude, the connection to Song Zichen through touch alone, somehow it frees him to speak.
Song Zichen’s hand twitches slightly, as if the change in Jiang Cheng’s breathing has caught his attention. But you were not healed?
“I never arrived at her mountain. But I was healed. If you could call it that.”
What happened?
“You could say that…I also have a part of me that feels like…like it’s the only part of me that’s still alive. And it is not mine.”
He expects Song Zichen to ask him to explain further, to define what does not belong to him, to speak that horrible truth aloud.
But there is nothing written on Jiang Cheng’s palm.
Instead, Song Zichen gently closes his fingers around Jiang Cheng’s hand, pressing palm to palm, as if this touch alone says everything he wants to.
Perhaps it’s all Jiang Cheng wanted to hear.
“Did you forgive him?” Jiang Cheng asks. Is his voice shaking? He grits his teeth at the show of weakness.
For hurting me? Song Zichen writes. Or for saving me?
Jiang Cheng gives a single bitter laugh. “Both.”
I’m not sure that I have.
Yet Song Zichen’s self-proclaimed sole purpose in his second life is to heal Xiao Xingchen’s soul. At this very moment, his spirit pouch probably sits tucked against Song Zichen’s chest. And yet he maintains that he hasn’t fully forgiven Xiao Xingchen?
These rogue cultivator daoist types…
I think the more important question is whether he will forgive me.
Jiang Cheng’s chest tightens. “I…I wish you the best in healing his soul.”
It will be a long journey.
“You know, you shouldn’t give up on founding a sect,” Jiang Cheng says, eager to change the topic.
Given what I am, I can scarcely see willing disciples in my future.
Jiang Cheng can’t believe what comes out of his mouth next. “You should talk to the Ghost General. Somehow he’s managed to become a mentor for the next generation of Lan cultivators.”
Song Zichen’s fingers twitch, his eyes brightening. …We shall see. At this stage, taking on disciples would only be a disservice to them. I need time before I am ready to become anyone’s master.
Jiang Cheng sighs, shifting his body against the earth beneath him. “I can understand what it’s like to not feel ready for that.”
You did well, given your circumstances. From what I’ve heard, these days the Yunmeng Jiang are more guided by principle than by blood. Why do you think I sought you for help back then, out of all the sect leaders? It is not easy to reshape a sect as you have.
“I…” His fingers tighten around Song Zichen’s hand.
When was the last time he heard words like this from a peer?
From anyone?
Jiang Cheng tries to put together a fitting response, but in the end all he can think to say is a quiet, “Thank you.”
Song Zichen squeezes his hand.
At last, Jiang Cheng sleeps, Song Zichen’s voice in his palm.
* * *
When it is time for the spider demon to open its web, Jiang Cheng senses the vibrations in the ground as it approaches, waking mere minutes before it enters the web. Song Zichen is already standing, two swords brandished, preparing to attack the beast.
The web opens, sticky black threads tearing apart to reveal monstrous bulging eyes and grasping pincers.
They easily defeat the spider demon, with a new level of teamwork. Once the spider demon is dead and its resentful energy is suppressed by Jiang Cheng’s talismans, he uses a final strike from Zidian to disintegrate the corpse. As the ashy dust settles to the ground and slowly fades away, Song Zichen gives a curt nod of approval.
“I guess this is where we part ways,” Jiang Cheng says. “So you’re off to Yi City?”
I’d rather not, Song Zichen writes with Fuxue. But I have no choice. Something is calling me there. Maybe I will finally be one step closer to healing Xingchen and A-Qing’s souls.
Jiang Cheng nods. “If you wish to visit Lotus Pier after…you would find yourself well-received.”
Song Zichen bows in thanks.
When Jiang Cheng turns to leave, Song Zichen suddenly holds out his hand. Jiang Cheng hesitates, then rests his hand atop Song Zichen’s. Song Zichen gently grasps his hand, steadying it, taking his time with their parting touch.
May your journey home be safe, Song Zichen writes.
The words of farewell are simple, an unnecessary sentiment.
But somehow Jiang Cheng finds that they comfort him all the way back to Lotus Pier.
* * *
thanks for reading! if you enjoyed this fic, i would love it if you head to AO3 and leave kudos!
Songxuexiao Three-Way Bodyswap | Rated T | Wordcount: 8.1k
Set a few years after XXC's death, Alternating POV, Angst, Dysfunctional Relationships, CW: Major Character Death, CW: Suicide
The sound of footsteps in the dirt as the two daozhang walk off, leaving Xue Yang in the coffin.
“Hey! What did you say?” he calls after them, but there is no response.
Doesn’t matter. They need him if they want to end up in their own bodies. They’ll be back. They’re probably just deciding what to do with him.
Once he’s sure that Xiao Xingchen and Song Lan are far away, after a good struggle, Xue Yang manages to hoist himself over the side of the coffin. He scoots over to where Xiao Xingchen had written in the dirt. Fighting against his restraints, he maneuvers himself until he can find the strokes of Xiao Xingchen’s writing.
He tries to read by following the outlines of the words, but in the act of tracing them, he erases the words.
He sneers. Who cares what Xiao Xingchen thinks anyway?
Canon-Typical Violence, Canon Temporary Character Death, Grief, Established Relationship, Light Angst, POV Thanatos
But Zagreus looks at the sea with awe. The sight of it brings him wonder, causing his soft lips to part and his eyes to brighten with a hopeful shine.
Thanatos doesn’t understand. But there are many things he doesn’t understand about Zagreus.
Or: How Thantos feels about Zagreus dying on the surface.
(read on AO3 or on Tumblr below)
Cloaked by his veil of darkness, Thanatos is perched on a cliff overlooking the snow-covered clearing where Zagreus and Hades stand facing each other, weapons brandished for an imminent battle.
It is not yet dawn. The surface seems to be suspended in stillness, waiting for Helios to draw the sun into the sky with his chariot. But also, it seems, waiting for battle to break out between the God of the Dead and his son. To find out which side of this conflict the Fates will favor this time. For the standoff to reach another final, bloody end.
Hades’ voice thunders up the cliff face to Thanatos. Zagreus answers, and though the words don’t reach Thanatos, even from this distance he can recognize the glint of determination in Zagreus’s green eye.
Thanatos holds a breath he doesn’t need to take, dread churning inside him. He should not hope for Zagreus to win. It would be a betrayal against the House.
Worse, if Zagreus wins, it means he may stay on the surface forever, never to return.
Thanatos cannot wish for such a thing.
But the dread claws at him, sinking into a part of him that hopes for Zagreus to finally win this battle.
Because, if he loses, Thanatos must deliver his death and carry him back to the House.
When Zagreus dies below the surface, the River Styx claims him itself, with no need for Thanatos to interfere. He feels Zagreus’s deaths at the periphery of his awareness, but it fades into the background, another drop of water in the vast pool of lives that Thanatos feels the ebb and flow of.
But up here, where the Styx no longer flows and instead the streams of cool clear water cut through the earth, where Helios and Selene bathe the world in the light of the sun and moon they carry, where Zagreus’s burning feet melt the snow and the living grass beneath its white blanket—
Up here, on the surface, Thanatos must treat Zagreus’s death as if it were any other mortal’s.
And when Zagreus dies, he is like any other mortal.
When Zagreus dies, he lies motionless, eyes closed, bleeding red mortal blood rather than the golden ichor of the gods. His borrowed powers from the Olympian gods dissipate, and the flames on his feet sputter out, blown out with the candle of his life.
When Zagreus dies, he is fragile. Helpless. Mortal.
Thanatos feels an instinctive tug inside him at each of Zagreus’s deaths, another time duty calls for him. As if it’s just another job.
It's not. Not when it’s Zagreus.
Thanatos detests how the first sensation he feels, the first thought in his mind, upon each of Zagreus’s deaths on the surface is mechanical, an automatic response. Only afterward does he feel the sharp pain, the grief, the longing.
On these occasions, when Thanatos approaches Zagreus’s lifeless body, dreading the sight of whatever horrifying condition he’s ended up in this time, his chest tightening upon finding crimson blood spilled over white snow, he cradles Zagreus in his arms, all the way down to the depths of the Underworld, and deposits him in the Pool of Styx.
He lets Zagreus think that, all this time, the Styx has been carrying him home from the surface. He doesn’t want Zagreus to know what he’s been putting Thanatos through these many last days or nights. Prefers for Zagreus to think they meet only in chance encounters in battle and brief exchanges at the balcony, and not that Thanatos spends what feels like an eternity clutching a version of Zagreus who is dead.
Below the cliff where Thanatos watches the battle, Hades swings his massive spear and shoots white-hot lasers in every direction, taking Zagreus’s life force in chunks at a time, rather than the slow chipping away of life that the other enemies perform. Still, Zagreus fights on, undeterred by his defeat close at hand. Instead, he is spurred on by the dire situation, growing more determined the closer he gets to death. The closer he gets to Thanatos’s mournful embrace.
But this time, something is different.
Hades has been weakened, his attacks more frenzied, but Zagreus is still standing.
Then, the unthinkable happens.
Hades falls.
The Styx bubbles up from the earth, swallowing the God of the Dead whole.
As if waiting for this moment, the sun rises, shining its warm light on the forest, imbuing everything with a reddish-pink glow, a wine-like haze.
Zagreus seems frozen, staring at where his father has disappeared into the earth. Then, as if thawed by the sun, he sprints up the rocky terrain, approaching Thanatos’s cliff, leaving a bright trail of blood in the snow like rose petals that shimmer in the new morning’s light.
Thanatos sinks into the shade of the trees, hiding as Zagreus ascends to the top of the cliff and continues onward, rounding the corner, reaching where the cliff overlooks the sea.
Zagreus stops in his tracks. Pauses there, gazing out at the sea.
It shouldn’t surprise Thanatos, but somehow it does. That Zagreus, always moving, always shifting, always changing, would stop his constant race to admire the sights of the surface. He finally made it past his father. Of course he would savor the moment and learn all he can of the surface.
Thanatos had intended to hang back, never letting Zagreus know he was here, but there has always been a thread connecting them, pulling him toward Zagreus, and it tugs again inside him, compelling him to reveal himself.
What if Zagreus never returns home again? If Thanatos can have this moment with Zagreus, he best well take it.
He dispels his cloak of darkness, floating out from the cover of the forest to approach Zagreus at the cliff’s edge.
“Congratulations,” he says, and Zagreus turns abruptly, taking in a small sharp breath.
One side of Zagreus’s face, the side with his green eye, faces the sunrise, tinted with soft hues of pink and gold. The other side of his face holds a cold blue shadow, his dark eye only half-touched by the sun. Thanatos finds himself fascinated by the sight, by the surface already working its transformation on Zagreus.
Zagreus breaks into a grin, and it warms Thanatos, much more than the heat of sun or fire can warm him in this frigid snow-covered world.
“Than,” Zagreus breathes softly. “Can you believe it? I’m finally able to meet you on the surface!”
“I don’t know how you’ve done it, but…it’s good to see you here.”
“I’m finally going to find my mother.” The relief in Zagreus’s voice mixes with a hint of disbelief, sounding raw and…rather mortal.
The expression of emotion pulls at Thanatos, and bittersweet happiness swells inside him, mirroring Zagreus’s joy. Thanatos does not know what it’s like to be missing a family member, to be missing a part of himself, to be missing a purpose. Thanatos is, was, and always will be Death, and the workings of the Underworld have never been incomplete where he’s concerned. But he has tried to understand Zagreus’s desperate need to follow this destructive path.
Maybe Thanatos’s understanding still falls short. But then, there is the simple fact that if Zagreus is happy, he can’t help but feel a hint of happiness, too.
“Isn’t it amazing?” Zagreus says, turning to look out over the cliff again. “I didn’t know the sea would be this beautiful.”
Thanatos follows his gaze, taking in the vast expanse of the sea, stained red by the sunrise as the glowing half-circle of sun emerges from the water on the horizon.
He looks again at Zagreus, studying his expression of wonder.
Looks at the sea again, trying to understand what Zagreus finds so beautiful about it.
To Thanatos, there is little marvel in the sea. The sun’s rays reflect off it in a way that stings his eyes, amplifying the light in a world that is already too bright. As for the water itself, it is cold and salty, unpleasant to touch or taste. Many mortals die at sea, and Thanatos is long tired of plunging into its frigid depths to retrieve them and bring them to the calmer, more suitable waters of the Underworld.
The sea is not a water of life and death, the way that the rivers of the Underworld are. Instead, it is indifferent to the flow of life, creating its own currents, taking and giving life with seemingly no order or reason. Unlike the chthonic rivers that hold a quiet power in their slower, calmer flow, the sea always seems to be in a fury, windswept and tormented, loudly proclaiming its power, like the god Poseidon who oversees it. Even now, during this peaceful moment, on this cliff high above the sea, Thanatos can hear its waves beating against the rocky shore.
But Zagreus looks at the sea with awe. The sight of it brings him wonder, causing his soft lips to part and his eyes to brighten with a hopeful shine.
Thanatos doesn’t understand. But there are many things he doesn’t understand about Zagreus. It’s part of what draws him to Zagreus, and what enables Zagreus to unfurl emotions from the depths of Thanatos’s soul that he hadn’t known could exist there.
“Well, I suppose I should be off,” Zagreus says. “My mother is out there somewhere.”
“Zagreus,” Thanatos calls after him, causing him to halt his swift departure. “Will you ever come home again?”
Zagreus gives an apologetic smile. “I don’t know. But you’ll be able to find me up here, won’t you?”
Thanatos is quiet for a beat. His expression tightens. “I suppose.”
“That’s good. This isn’t goodbye, then. See you soon, Than.”
Zagreus runs off, melting his footsteps into the snow.
﹏⊹﹏⊹﹏
The next time he meets Zagreus is sooner than he expected.
He feels it from leagues away, the faint snip of a thread, and immediately transports himself to its source.
Zagreus is dying in his mother’s arms.
Persephone grieves, clinging to him, mourning the death of her son a second time. More than she should have ever had to mourn him.
Thanatos should know. He has watched Zagreus die many more times.
Persephone looks up sharply at Thanatos’s arrival, a wild panic in her eyes, and then a slow acceptance, a painful understanding of what it must mean if the God of Death is here.
Zagreus’s skin is pale, his eyes closed, his feet burnt out. He looks like any other mortal.
“He will return,” Thanatos assures Persephone, because he knows it to be true.
Persephone lets him take Zagreus, and he cradles him against his chest.
And so begins another long, slow descent to the Underworld, another eternity for him to spend enduring Zagreus’s death.
﹏⊹﹏⊹﹏
This becomes routine. Zagreus dies on the surface again and again, and each time Thanatos carries him home, depositing him in the Pool of Styx.
And each time before his death, Zagreus admires the sea.
Thanatos has come to know every detail of the expression of wonder on Zagreus’s face. The way he looks when he gazes at the sea.
To his surprise, he begins to recognize this expression elsewhere.
He notices it when he appears to Zagreus in one of the chambers of the Underworld, arriving to help him in battle, and Zagreus regards him with a mix of relief and pride and…that expression.
He notices it when he takes the first sip from each bottle of nectar that Zagreus offers him.
He notices it when they lie wrapped around each other in Zagreus’s bed.
Zagreus looks at Thanatos the way he looks at the sea.
“Why do you like the sea?” Thanatos asks him during one of those coveted moments in Zagreus’s bed, his entire body warmed by Zagreus pressed against him, his chest buzzing from the giddy pleasure of being this close to him, his lips still tingling with the taste of Zagreus’s kiss. He holds Zagreus close, never shaking the feeling that at any moment he could slip away.
Zagreus chuckles. “What made you think of that?”
“I’ve been thinking about it for a while, actually. You’ve seen the sea plenty of times now. Why do you still seem amazed every time you reach it?”
“Because it’s beautiful,” Zagreus says, as if this is the simplest, most obvious thing in the world. “Because it’s…it’s special.”
“That’s all?”
Zagreus puts his chin in his hand, lying on his stomach, pondering. “I don’t know. It’s just not something I’ll ever tire of. Some things you just want to relive over and over.”
“You mean, die over and over for the sake of?”
A glint of humor in Zagreus’s green eye. “That too.”
Maybe this is why Thanatos is willing to shoulder Zagreus’s death over and over. Why he witnesses Zagreus’s mortality time and time again, never speaking a word to Zagreus of it, never wanting him to know, lest he find some way to die on the surface that doesn’t involve Thanatos.
Maybe the privilege of delivering death to Zagreus is beautiful. Special. That Thanatos can personally ensure his safe return home, can hold both the living and dead sides of Zagreus in his embrace, can be the first step in Zagreus’s path to rebirth each time.
“You get it, don’t you?” Zagreus asks.
Thanatos kisses him. “Maybe.”
﹏⊹﹏⊹﹏
The next time Thanatos shifts to the surface, gazing out over the sea, the wind fluttering in his hair and his robes, the salty spray misting his skin, he thinks of Zagreus, pictures the awe on his face, the reflection of the sea’s wonder in his mismatched eyes.
The way he looks when he sees Thanatos.
Maybe there is a bit of beauty to the sea, after all.
﹏⊹﹏⊹﹏
(Thanks for reading! if you enjoyed this, I would appreciate it so much if you shared this post and left kudos on AO3!)
Three-Way Bodyswap (what could go wrong?), set a few years after XXC's death, Alternating POV, Angst, Dysfunctional Relationships, CW: Major Character Death, CW: Suicide
"So, what? Are you going to kill me now?" Xue Yang taunts.
"You're going to return us to our correct bodies," Song Lan says. "Then, we'll see."
for Songxuexiao Love Week - thank you @sxx-love-week for running this event and inspiring me to finally try this fic I've wanted to write for a long time :)
* * *
The first thing Xue Yang notices is that he has all ten of his fingers.
Must be some trick of his perception as his consciousness slowly fades back into awareness. A phantom sensation from childhood. A piece of his spirit that hasn’t properly settled after the ritual.
After all, he’d expected that something would go wrong with the ritual.
These things are never perfect. Not with demonic cultivation.
He’d hoped that if one of them had to take the collateral damage to bring Xiao Xingchen back, it would be Song Lan. What good was Song Lan to either of them, anyway? Not to mention that he was the reason Xiao Xingchen’s spirit had been slumbering these last three years. He deserved to bear any unintended consequences of the ritual.
But as more time passes, as Xue Yang tries to recover from being knocked unconscious by a burst of resentful energy during the ritual, the more he wonders if he’s been the one to take the fall.
He still feels the unsettling sensation of all ten of his fingers. This fact doesn’t seem related to the ritual, but somehow it’s important. He just doesn’t know why.
He moves his fingers and looks down to count them, but there’s nothing there.
Thanatos never seems to take any damage while helping Zagreus in battle.
Or at least that’s what Zagreus thinks, until he finds Thanatos at one of the healing fountains.
(read on AO3 or on Tumblr below)
Zagreus is once again on the brink of death.
His eyes are teary, his vision blurry, his cheeks streaked with red from wiping his face with his bloody hand. Magma bubbles beside his bone raft, everything in sight bathed in the deep red of the River Phlegathon. Glowing molten skeletons reach their bony arms up from the magma toward the raft, and Zagreus clumsily beats them back. At least they’re easy to keep at bay, compared to the rest of his enemies.
He tries to recover his strength as the bone raft floats along, a short lull to catch his breath as he heads for the next island. But this brief respite won’t be enough to get him through the next battle. One especially fierce strike from a Wave Breaker and he’s done for.
Although he’s grown stronger since the first time he fought his way through Asphodel, a Witches’ Circle can still nearly send him back to the Pool of Styx. Those Dire Spreaders battered him badly this time, leaving him clinging to his last thread of life like he is now.
Blood and darkness. I was so close to getting out of Asphodel…
Just before Zagreus met the dreaded Witches’ Circle, Thanatos had stopped by to help him again, despite Zagreus’s insistence that he doesn’t need to get involved.
Not that Thanatos’s assistance isn’t welcome. In fact, a visit from Thanatos lifts Zagreus’s spirits like nothing else. He craves fighting side by side, craves catching sight of Thanatos in the House afterward, craves their clipped conversations despite the complicated state of their relationship.
But Thanatos has made it clear that he’s sacrificing his position to assist Zagreus, that he thinks Zagreus’s efforts are futile, dealing him as many icy reproaches as he deals fatal blows to enemies. Yet if Zagreus suggests that Thanatos leave him be, it only offends him.
Well, if Thanatos is going to help him anyway, Zagreus owes it to him to make it as far as he can. To at least make it to Elysium.
So close…
The next island comes into view. Zagreus’s vision fades in and out as he struggles not to pass out, making it difficult for him to assess the island. But as far as he can tell, it looks…quiet. Then again, the infernal islands always look quiet before Zagreus sets foot on them.
Once the bone raft has drifted close enough for him to see the island’s terrain in more detail, he breathes a sigh of relief. There won’t be any foes here. There is only a healing fountain.
If Zagreus had any energy left, he would cheer with joy. This is exactly what he needed! A visit from Thanatos and he’s happened upon a fountain, all during one trip through Asphodel? One of the boons he’s received from Olympus must’ve had a side effect of luck.
Even with this new hope invigorating him, he can barely move his muscles. He just needs to make it to the fountain…
He prepares to dock the bone raft on the shore, nearly losing his balance and falling into the magma, when he notices something abnormal about this island.
A shadowy figure hovers beside the fountain.
Zagreus blinks, trying to clear his vision.
A glimmer catches his eye, the metal gleam of a scythe and a wisp of silver hair.
“Than…?”
The figure vanishes.
As Zagreus limps toward the fountain and drinks its cool water, feeling life rush back into him, he is left wondering if Thanatos was really here, or if his imagination had only conjured him in its feverish haze.
* * *
The next time Thanatos appears, Zagreus is on a more successful escape attempt, having reached Elysium.
“Let’s see if you’ve gotten any faster,” Thanatos says, his voice tinted with both disapproval and humor. He’s sounded like this since their first encounter after Thanatos’s return to the Underworld, and Zagreus never knows what to make of it.
“I can guarantee that I have,” Zagreus replies, letting a touch of arrogance color his words. This time Hermes is backing him. He truly is faster.
But, as usual, Thanatos outpaces him, slaying entire armies of Exalted at once. It’s a marvel to witness.
One day, I’ll be able to beat him at his own game, Zagreus resolves.
The last Exalted falls, and the lush green field falls quiet, the cacophony of battle replaced by the trickling flow of the Lethe and the hushed, incomprehensible voices of Shades carried along the breeze. Thanatos waits for him near the massive golden doors, his scythe tall beside him, his expression dark and brooding.
For a moment, Zagreus studies him from a distance, wondering if the sight before him matches the specter he'd seen at the fountain in Asphodel. He quickly realizes there’s no point in pondering it. He’s had Thanatos’s form memorized for a long time now, the way his hood sits over his bangs, the way he grips his scythe, the way he floats with one foot slightly higher than the other. If Zagreus had only imagined Thanatos appearing at the fountain, it’s likely he got every detail accurate. There’s no way to know for sure if Thanatos had been there without asking him.
Zagreus swipes blood off his forehead and hurries toward Thanatos.
“Still not fast enough,” Thanatos says flatly. “What do you even think you’re running from, doing all of this? You’re always going to end up back in the Pool of Styx.”
Zagreus huffs. “If that’s what you think, then why are you still helping me?”
“Considering that you’ve never made it past Elysium, I don’t think you can claim to have received my help. I just happened to be passing through and wanted to give you some friendly competition, since it must be awfully dull, killing Shades until your last breath.”
“Says the god who spends all his time killing mortals.”
“You’d do best not to poke fun at my duty. I’m risking everything I’ve established to give you a bit of entertainment before your death, you know.”
Zagreus hums. “Much obliged.”
He wants to ask Thanatos about the fountain in Asphodel. Why had he been there? Had he been there at all? Is…something wrong?
But the air is tense between them. Zagreus never knows what insignificant remark might send Thanatos shifting off, like a puff of breath sending a butterfly off its course.
He wants Thanatos to stay here. Wants to soak in his presence, speak with him, see him. Each time Thanatos suddenly disappears, his absence becomes more difficult to withstand, especially since Zagreus can never manage to get more than a minute-long conversation out of him. He doesn’t want to provoke him and send him off again.
But apparently, Zagreus has already said the wrong thing—maybe it doesn’t even matter what he says—because Thanatos pulls his hood down, the way he does when he’s about to leave.
“Anyway, I have business on the surface to attend to.” Thanatos lowers his chin, his black hood shading his golden eyes. “Try not to die again.”
The air distorts around him, collapsing into a black disk. Thanatos vanishes with a flash.
Zagreus hurries to the door. If he moves fast enough and gets lucky enough, maybe he will make it to the next fountain chamber soon enough to find Thanatos there.
He unlocks the massive golden door, watching its mechanism tick methodically and willing it to open faster. Once it reveals a hole large enough for him to fit, he hops through and sprints across the field into the throng of enemies.
The countless Exalted and ferocious chariots make it difficult for him to pass, but with powerful crashing waves from Poseidon’s help and a shining shield of protection from Athena’s blessing, and especially quick-footedness from Hermes’ favor, he hopes he isn’t held up too much.
The gears turn on the next golden door as it slowly opens, revealing a fountain chamber.
Sure enough, at the foot of the fountain’s headless statue, Thanatos is cupping the shimmering blue water in his gray hands.
Thanatos jerks his head, looking over his shoulder at Zagreus, alarm in his eyes. Water drips from his hands into the basin.
“Than, wait! If you shift away, you won’t hear the end of it next time I see you!” Zagreus runs toward him, then stops abruptly, leaving a distance between them.
Blue butterflies flutter around them as they stare at each other, the only noise the sound of running water and the hollow breeze.
Thanatos releases the water from his hands, letting it fall into the basin. He turns to face Zagreus, frowning as he shakes droplets of water from his fingertips. Tension dispels from Zagreus’s shoulders once he realizes Thanatos isn’t going to leave. At least not right away.
But…he really is at the fountain. Drinking from it, too.
Why is he here? Why would Death himself need to drink from the healing fountain? He barely gets so much as a scratch while fighting Shades. Nothing can get past the impenetrable field of slaughter that surrounds him in battle, and there’s definitely never been an enemy that could get close enough to harm him.
“What, did you hunt me down for another round?” Thanatos says. “I thought you didn’t need my help.”
Zagreus ignores the jab. “So you do come to the healing fountain.”
Zagreus slowly closes the distance between them, the grass soft under his feet before it burns to char beneath his steps. He studies Thanatos, searching for an injury, a show of fatigue, any sign of weakness, but he looks as lofty and untouchable as ever.
“I’d thought that was you in Asphodel a while back,” Zagreus continues, “but you’d shifted away so fast I wasn’t sure I could trust my eyes.”
Thanatos watches him carefully. The moss-covered marble statue towers over them, quietly offering its elixir.
“Why are you here, Than? You just told me you were heading to the surface.”
“I have many responsibilities that you’ve never bothered to ask me about,” Thanatos says, his tone measured. “You can consider this another one of them.”
Zagreus raises an eyebrow. “Checking how well the fountains are functioning doesn’t sound like something in your wheelhouse.” He points to the basin. “Do you mind if I…?”
A disapproving “tch” and crossed arms is Thanatos’s only reply.
Zagreus stoops down to the basin and splashes the cool water on his face, then drinks a generous mouthful, feeling his energy surge back and the wounds on his chest and forehead close up. He lets out a heavy sigh, then turns back to Thanatos, a few droplets of water still sliding down his jaw.
“Why are you really here?” Zagreus asks. “You’re not…hurt, are you?”
“I’m not hurt.” Thanatos straightens his posture, but his voice belies a hint of fatigue. “But…is it so inconceivable to you that every once in a while I might find my…strength…lacking?”
Zagreus tilts his head, considering this. “To be honest—kind of. I’ve never seen you weakened in the slightest. Sure, sometimes you seem tired from your work bringing mortals to the Underworld, especially as of late. But I’ve never seen you sustain any true physical harm. Which is why...”
Thanatos tightens his grip around his scythe. “What’s your point, Zagreus?”
“I just…” Worry gnaws at Zagreus. “You’re not here because you hurt yourself helping me in battle, are you?”
Thanatos sets his jaw. “You know what, Zagreus? I have to go. I didn’t set aside time to be subjected to an interrogation. I have work to do.”
“Than, wait—”
The air rips apart to become a dark gaping fissure. Then the darkness disappears, and Thanatos is gone.
“Ugh.” Zagreus kicks weakly at the moss-covered base of the statue. If Thanatos really was hurt, Zagreus hopes that he at least drank enough from the fountain before he vanished.
Why is he like this? For all he complains about Zagreus trying to leave the Underworld, he is incapable of sticking around long enough for Zagreus to be satisfied with the time they’ve spent together. It feels a lot like Thanatos is the one who is always leaving.
But of course, Thanatos doesn’t owe him anything. Zagreus is surprised that he’s been helping him at all. The first time they’d crossed paths in Elysum, he’d assumed that his father had sent Thanatos to fight him. Turns out Thanatos was helping him for reasons Zagreus still doesn’t quite understand.
When Zagreus had first resolved to find his mother, he hadn’t thought much about how it would affect Thanatos. By that point, Thanatos had been away for a long time, and Zagreus had begrudgingly grown used to his absence. He’d simply hoped that, when Thanatos eventually learned of his new ambition, he would understand.
Now that Thanatos’s work has subsided enough for him to reappear in the Underworld…
Now that Zagreus has started to see him somewhat regularly, to expect his presence, to look forward to their encounters—
He finds that these moments are not enough.
It wasn’t until Thanatos returned that Zagreus realized how much he missed him.
Strangely, he misses Thanatos even more than he did during his long absence.
Shaking himself out of his thoughts, Zagreus approaches one of the giant swords embedded in the Elysian meadows. Stares at his blue-tinted reflection in its crystal blade. Studies his mismatched eyes, recognizing a hunger behind his own gaze that he can’t name, can’t satisfy.
It’s just…it so much to ask for a proper conversation? For Thanatos to explain what’s happening, and whether or not he’s hurt? For them to just keep each other company, to spend time together like they used to, instead of confining their only interactions to short exchanges in the House and battlefields cleared in haste?
The giant blade shimmers, Zagreus’s reflection momentarily swallowed in the glare.
He takes a breath. This is the path he chose when he decided to forge his way to the surface. Nothing will be the same anymore, not even him and Thanatos.
But if they must change…
Why must they change in a way that carves an empty cavern inside of Zagreus?
When his decision to escape further deteriorated his relationships with his father and with Meg, he’d been able to accept it. Those relationships had already been rocky. If they had to further erode, so be it. He would do his best to patch things up in the end.
But this distance between him and Thanatos…he wasn’t prepared for this. Or its effect on him.
At least, thanks to the healing fountain, he is prepared for the next chamber of Elysium.
But although his body has rested enough for him to push forward, his mind has not been set to rest at all.
* * *
“Meg, can I ask you a question?”
Sitting at a lounge table, Megaera examines her bright pink nails on one hand, while her other hand curls around her drink. “You tell me. Can’t say you’ve taken my advice lately. What’s the point of asking?”
Lately Megaera has been just as difficult to talk to as Thanatos, but for a different reason. Whereas Thanatos is always fleeing Zagreus, Megaera is always sending Zagreus away. Talking with her hasn’t gotten any easier since he’s started defeating her in Tartarus on the regular.
But just as he knew that if he grew strong enough and tried enough times, he could defeat her, he also knows that if he keeps prying her hard shell open with small conversations, he’ll get past her prickly exterior, just as he did long ago when their relationship first began. Beneath her spiked pauldrons, there is a softer side to Megaera still lurking.
He tries to reach for it. “I’m not looking for advice. I’m looking for…help, I suppose you could call it. It’s about Than.”
“Hm. And what does that have to do with me?”
“Because I’m hoping you have an answer, of course.” Zagreus takes the seat across from her at the table, causing her to narrow her golden eyes. “What I’m wondering is, have you ever known Than to use the healing fountains?”
She gives a short, clipped laugh, then takes a draft from her drink. As Zagreus waits for her to reply, the silence is cut through by chopping sounds from the chef in the lounge corner, presumably slicing onions again. The Wretched Broker stops polishing gemstones and watches their table, not even trying to hide his obvious eavesdropping.
Megaera sets down her drink. “I know Thanatos inside and out. And one thing I know is that you should ask him this yourself. If he isn’t willing to tell you, then it’s not my place to answer for him. If you want his trust, you need to earn it.”
“But Meg, is he hurt? Is it because of me? I need to know.”
“If you need to ask that question, then you truly don’t understand anything about him.”
* * *
On Zagreus’s next escape attempt, he fights his way to the farthest chamber of Elysium yet, leaving a trail of his blood ascending toward the surface until the River Styx finds him and brings him home. Or, what he used to think of as home.
The whole way, no sign of Thanatos. He doesn’t show up in the House afterwards, either.
Zagreus knows that Thanatos won’t help him every time he heads for the surface. But this time his absence feels particularly significant, digging under Zagreus’s skin like a thorn.
He passes by the balcony overlooking the Styx one more time, but it’s still empty. Will Zagreus spend the rest of his endless nights in the House waiting for these fleeting encounters?
He heads over to Achilles.
“Achilles, can I ask you something?”
“Of course, lad.” Achilles gives him the same warm smile as always, one that forms crinkles under his eyes yet maintains a touch of distant melancholy. “What’s on your mind?”
“It’s about Than.” Zagreus keeps his voice low, worried his father might overhear. The last thing he needs is to incriminate Thanatos. “I saw him at one of the healing fountains after he helped me in battle. I’m…I’m worried that he’s hurt himself because of me.”
“Well, I can’t say I know much about the limits of a god’s power. But I would caution you against assuming that Thanatos is as invincible as he appears to be. I know the incident with Sisyphus back then had him pretty shaken up.”
“I’d heard about that, but somehow I didn’t think that…ugh.” Zagreus toys with one of the red bands around his arm. “What should I do, Achilles? He won’t speak to me, not about anything serious.”
Achilles clasps Zagreus’s shoulder reassuringly. “Just approach him with sincerity, and if he’s willing to open up to you, he will. In the end, you can’t control his choices, even if you don’t like them. I think Thanatos is facing a similar dilemma with regard to your drive to escape the Underworld.”
“Alright…” Zagreus sighs. “Thanks, Achilles. You always know what to say.”
“Take care, lad.”
Rather than refurbish the House, or chat with the chef, or lounge about his room like he usually does while recovering, Zagreus heads straight for Tartarus, eager to find Thanatos somewhere in the maze of the Underworld.
* * *
Zagreus dies two more times before he finally runs into Thanatos in Asphodel.
Death approaches.
He hears Thanatos’s voice as if it reverberates from every direction. Then all at once, Thanatos is floating in front of him, dark cloak billowing, the purple eye in his scythe looking down at Zagreus cunningly. The fiery heat of Asphodel casts a warm glow onto Thanatos’s smooth, cool skin.
“I see you’re faring as pitifully as ever,” Thanatos says. “I’m shocked you’re still alive.”
“You know that by now I’m perfectly capable of making it much farther than this.”
“And what good has that done you?” Thanatos turns toward the sound of bones rattling. “Well, let’s see if you’re capable of outpacing me yet. Here come the enemies.”
As if emerging from the magma itself, countless Bloodless and Infernal Bombers and every other horror of Asphodel close in on them. Zagreus pierces their skeletons with Varatha, swinging and throwing the mighty spear at enemies on all sides of him.
But his progress soon comes to a standstill, as he puts up his worst competition yet against Thanatos.
Not because of weakness. Because he spends the entire time watching Thanatos, his focus always on the god of death’s dark, looming figure in his periphery, trying to catch any slightest threat to Thanatos’s safety, the moment he takes the smallest bit of damage, the instant an enemy even comes close to him. But he appears as invulnerable as always, felling slews of enemies at once with a single swing of his scythe.
Taking advantage of his lack of focus, a Bone-Raker nearly slashes Zagreus’s arm off.
“Are you even trying?” Thanatos complains.
Guilt springs up inside Zagreus’s stomach, churning his insides like one of Ares’ spinning Blade Rifts. If Thanatos really is hurting himself by helping Zagreus, that means he’ll be in an even worse state after this battle if Zagreus doesn’t take down his fair share of enemies. By using this battle as an opportunity to study Thanatos, he’s placed most of the burden on him. What was he thinking?
He sets off on a frenzy, calling upon Ares’ Doom to imbue his spear, killing as many enemies as possible.
At last, the island falls silent except for the sound of magma bubbling at its shores and the rocky plates of the terrain shifting in the heat. Zagreus runs up the uneven stairs to find Thanatos waiting for him on the upper tier of the island. To his relief, Thanatos appears unharmed, but then again, Zagreus had thought the same when he saw Thanatos at the healing fountain. Who knows what scars he keeps hidden?
“You made it all the way here when that’s how you’ve been fighting? I hadn’t thought you were one to get caught in your head,” Thanatos says. “Although you saved some of your dignity at the end there.”
“I’m sorry, Than, I just—”
Thanatos curls his lip. “What are you apologizing for?” Then a hint of softness enters his voice. “Seems like you actually needed me this time. Anyway, I have to go.”
He vanishes.
“Argh!” Zagreus groans. Why does he always do this?
And what did he mean by Zagreus ‘actually needing’ him? Does he not realize that Zagreus always wants Thanatos beside him, always needs him there, always longs for his presence? That he’s speedrunning attempt after attempt not just to reach the surface sooner, but also in hopes of meeting Thanatos, since it’s the only way he knows how to make him appear?
Zagreus is about to set off, ready to race toward the next fountain chamber if luck lets him find it, when an idea makes him pause, one foot on the bone raft and one foot on the island.
Thanatos clearly doesn’t want Zagreus to see him at one of the fountains. Now that Zagreus has run into him there twice, he’ll surely try to prevent them from crossing paths again.
And what type of fountain would Thanatos never expect Zagreus to show up at?
One behind him.
To the confusion of his Olympian relatives lending him strength, Zagreus retraces his steps back into Tartarus.
* * *
Sure enough, he finds Thanatos in a fountain chamber of Tartarus, sitting at the edge of one of the shallow baths.
At the sound of Zagreus entering, Thanatos springs to his feet.
“Don’t you dare shift away, Than!”
Zagreus runs over to him, steam rising from the wet floor under his scorching feet. He grabs Thanatos’s wrist, trying to assure himself that he won’t leave. Not that this would be able to stop him. If Thanatos wanted to, he could fade into another realm even as Zagreus holds him.
Thanatos glances down at where Zagreus’s hand is wrapped around his wrist, eyebrows raised. Then his gaze hardens. “Shouldn’t you be in Elysium right now? Have you finally seen reason and decided to come back home?”
“I knew it,” Zagreus says. “You are getting hurt. Why else would you come to a fountain every time after you help me in battle? Why didn’t you tell me, Than?”
“I don’t have time for this. I have to go.” But he doesn’t shake his wrist free.
“You can’t leave yet—are you even done healing?”
“That’s none of your business.”
Zagreus tightens his grip around Thanatos’s wrist. “How can you say that? You’re here because of me! And even if I wasn’t responsible, I would still care. I would still want to make sure you’re alright.”
“Did you really think your actions would have no effect on anyone else? Are you so foolish that you needed to give up your progress toward the surface and catch me at this fountain, just to prove it to yourself?”
Zagreus feels like there’s a block of ice in his stomach, growing colder as Thanatos continues to push him away.
“Was I supposed to just ignore that you’re hurt?” he says. “I never asked you to help me. Yet you did, and now you’re here, needing to heal yourself, and you would have said nothing to me if I hadn’t discovered it. In fact, even now you won’t say anything to me!”
“Why should I, Zagreus?” Thanatos locks gazes with him, glowing golden eyes searching him as if pleading for something. “Tell me, why should I?”
Zagreus slides his hand down to hold Thanatos’s, pressing palm to palm. “Because I care about you. Is that not enough?”
Thanatos freezes, silent and motionless as he stares at Zagreus. He slips his hand out of Zagreus’s grasp, then looks away and sighs, shoulders dropping. “You should have asked yourself that question before you decided to leave.”
“I haven’t left yet, Than.”
Thanatos’s face is still turned away, the muscles in his jaw working. “Why are you really here?”
“I want to make sure you’re okay. I want to know what I can do to help you heal. And honestly, I just want to talk to you for more than thirty seconds.”
“...Fine. Let’s talk, then.” Thanatos sits back down beside the fountain pool.
Finally convinced that Thanatos won’t shift away at a moment’s notice, a mountain of tension leaves Zagreus’s body, the block of ice in his stomach beginning to melt. He sits next to Thanatos, missing the feeling of holding Thanatos’s hand in his.
They sit there, side by side, watching water drip into the pool and listening to the gentle echoes reverberate through the chamber. A collection of candles burns a few paces away, casting their dim light on the stone surfaces and mingling their warmth with the cool green glow from the water. Normally, faceless Shades float through these corridors and pools, but Zagreus notices that this time, there are none. They are completely alone.
“There is nothing you can do,” Thanatos finally says, and for the first time Zagreus hears the extent of Thanatos's fatigue in his voice, now that he is no longer hiding it.
Zagreus’s heart sinks. “What do you mean?”
“My main attack…killing everything that surrounds me…there’s a price I pay for that.”
Zagreus swallows, but it sticks in his throat. “What kind of price?”
“I take the rebound. And it’s…steep.”
Zagreus thinks of all the times Thanatos has used this technique to help him, clearing out a whole field of foes at once. He performed this attack as if it was as easy as lifting a finger. How could it be anything but effortless for the god of death himself?
This whole time, it’s been hurting him?
“But how?” Zagreus asks. “You’re the god of death.”
Thanatos stares down at the pool of water, his bangs falling in his face. “I preside over the kind of death that mortals face. It’s beyond my jurisdiction to change the fate of those already dead. Megaera and her sisters handle such things. Not me.”
“I...didn’t realize it worked like that.”
“There’s a lot about this House that you’ve never paid attention to, Zagreus.”
“I know I’ve been neglectful and self-centered in the past. But I’m paying attention now.”
He tries to catch Thanatos’s eye, but Thanatos is still staring down into the pool, trailing his fingers in the cool water. Zagreus follows the outline of Thanatos’s profile, the droop of his bangs, the sharp contour of his nose, the slight pout of his lips. Features he has memorized, yet still could admire endlessly.
“I want to know everything now,” Zagreus continues.
“That’s great and all, but what I’m struggling to understand is why any of this matters to you when you’re desperate to leave it all behind. To the point that you’re dying repeatedly to achieve it.”
“I need to find my mother—I can’t just forget about her now that I know she’s out there. You were helping me, so I thought…I thought you understood.”
“I get that part. Why you’re leaving. But the rest of your actions…” Thanatos shakes his head. “You know what, forget it.”
“No, Than,” Zagreus says, bringing his hand to Thanatos’s bare shoulder.
He feels Thanatos shiver beneath his touch, then finally those glowing golden eyes meet his own, sending an electric jolt down his spine.
“If you’re going to take such drastic rebounds from your attacks, just to help me out here and there, I can’t let you tell me to forget it, or that it’s none of my business, or that I wouldn’t understand. Or that you’re too busy to tell me about it.” Zagreus removes his hand from Thanatos’s shoulder, hugging his knees to his chest. “Unless…unless that’s really what you want.”
“So all this interest in me is because I’m injured on your behalf? Thanks, but I don’t need pity, or guilt.”
“Blood and darkness, Than!”
Zagreus shifts onto his knees, kneeling beside Thanatos and grabbing both of his arms. Thanatos breathes in sharply.
“Of course I don’t want you to be hurt on my behalf,” Zagreus says, “but I would be telling you this whether you needed to heal at this fountain or not! From the moment you first found me in Elysium, I wanted to see you again and again, wanted to talk to you, wanted to know things about you I had never thought to learn.”
Like a gear in the automatons that control the golden doors of Elysium, something clicks into place, opening a new chamber inside Zagreus, and suddenly he understands what should have been obvious. What he should have realized as soon as Thanatos returned to the Underworld.
He had been so caught up in just trying to pin down Thanatos, trying to find a moment to speak to him, trying to decipher his behavior, that he hadn’t noticed what was growing inside himself.
“I want you, Than. Everything about you.”
He watches Thanatos’s throat move as he swallows, a dark tint blooming across his gray cheeks. Slowly, he takes Zagreus’s hands from where they tightly grasp his arms. But he holds on, keeping both of Zagreus’s hands in his embrace.
“You…want me,” Thanatos echoes, as if testing how the words feel in his own mouth.
Zagreus can sense a restlessness emanating from Thanatos, a desire to flee, fluttering like the colonies of bats that fly around the Underworld. Dread fills Zagreus at the idea of Thanatos shifting away now, just as they’ve started to get somewhere, just as Zagreus has laid his feelings bare. Just as he needs Thanatos more than ever.
“Not that I expect the same in return,” Zagreus says carefully. “But I want you to know.”
“You…I…” Thanatos takes a small, shallow breath and squeezes Zagreus’s hands. “Me too.”
Zagreus’s pulse quickens. “You feel the same?”
“That depends.” Thanatos leans towards him. “Is this how you feel?”
Thanatos leans closer, until their lips nearly touch, and instinctively Zagreus meets his lips with his own, his warmth blending with the chill of Death’s kiss. Zagreus drinks Thanatos in like a draught from the healing fountain.
Thanatos pulls away, leaving Zagreus blissfully hungry for more, gazing up at Thanatos with his lips parted.
A smile tugs at the corners of Thanatos’s mouth as he turns his face away, running a hand through his hair. “You’re a fool, Zagreus.”
Zagreus gives a low chuckle. “No objections there.”
“You really…you really are…”
All of Zagreus’s sensations are heightened, even the feeling of his voice vibrating in his throat, as if every part of him is waiting to feel Thanatos’s touch again. “I meant what I said, Than.”
“Well.” Thanatos kisses him again, and Zagreus meets his lips eagerly. “I kind of have to believe you now, don’t I?”
Zagreus grins, leaning forward and deepening the kiss. Thanatos cups his chin in his hand, steady and precise, smooth cold fingers sinking against his skin. Death is a marvelous thing, Zagreus thinks, a gentle and loving death, like the waters of the Styx rising to meet him and carry him away in its arms. Unlike other gods, Zagreus has the chance to experience death in its fullness. To feel it across his entire body.
But unfortunately the moment comes when Thanatos pulls away. “Duty calls, Zagreus. I can’t stop the flow of mortal life even for this.”
Zagreus lets out a contented sigh. “I understand. But…what now?”
“What now? Hmph.” Thanatos rises, floating tall over him, scythe in hand and robes slightly disheveled. He hastily fixes them, trying to look serious again. “What’s next is I’ll see you at the House.”
Zagreus can’t contain his grin. “I’m looking forward to it. But, wait.” He takes Thanatos’s hand, hoping to keep the god of death to himself for just a bit longer. “If you happen to find me battling my way to the surface again…will you keep using that attack? Despite the harm it causes you?”
“Yes.”
“But—will you be alright if you keep—”
“Stop acting like my entire existence is threatened by this. All it means is that afterward you might see me at the next fountain along your path.”
Struck by an inspiration of mischief, he kisses Thanatos’s hand. “I suppose I can live with that.”
“Right. Good.” The color of Thanatos’s cheeks darkens. “Just, trust me, I’ll be alright. I can take a hit, Zagreus…especially if it’s for you.” He pinches the bridge of his nose. “Blood and darkness, what are you turning me into? Anyway, I’ve got to go. See you at home.”
Thanatos disappears with a dark flash.
Zagreus hums with pleasure, the taste of their kiss still on his lips. “See you at home, Than.”
* * *
Thanks for reading! If you enjoyed this fic, I would appreciate it so much if you leave kudos on AO3!
Canon Compliant, Character Study, Past MegZag, Introspective and a Bit Angsty
Megaera knew how she felt about the old Zagreus.
The new Zagreus…she doesn’t have him figured out yet.
(read on AO3 or on Tumblr below)
Jealous one.
Grudge.
Envy.
Such was the meaning of Megaera’s name.
After eons spent punishing oathbreakers, Megaera has witnessed, caused, and prolonged every negative emotion possible, and has experienced her own share of those emotions. By now, she has a handle on them.
Ironically, despite her name, jealousy and envy were the easiest emotions for her to master in herself, and the easiest for her to punish in others. The rest followed almost as easily.
All except humiliation.
Humiliation, the one negative emotion she has never mastered.
But Megaera is good at her job. She hasn’t been humiliated since Sisyphus’s days of trickery, and she’s made sure to put him in his place for what he did. The Sisyphus disaster marked a turning point for her, teaching her not to let her guard down. Since then, she hasn’t struggled so pathetically or felt walked all over.
Until now.
Until she started losing to Zagreus again and again. Until he sent her to the River Styx over and over using powers that the Olympians and Nyx gave him. Until he gave her contraband like a pity prize and she accepted it.
It’s humiliating.
The House has been struggling ever since Persephone left, and Zagreus is only further weakening it. But Megaera can’t stop him from creating a wreckage of the House and what it stands for—can’t do her job—because she is no longer strong enough to defeat him.
The fact burns through her like the river Phlegethon. Although she has mastered jealousy such that it would not matter to her if Zagreus started a new relationship, this searing indignance at his newfound battle prowess might be the closest to jealousy she’ll ever experience again.
Now, for the thirty-fourth time, Megaera steps out of the Styx into the House, blood dripping from her armor and her wing. The pain of her latest battle with Zagreus has already faded, but she feels tired, heavy, beaten down. Humiliated.
“Miss Megaera, you’re back!” Hypnos calls. “Did Zagreus get you again? You should really try out my advice! You won’t lose if you don’t let him attack you!”
The urge to snap at him lunges inside her like a hydra head, but she can’t bring herself to be cruel to him. “Thanks, Hypnos. You’ll be the first to hear when I try it out.”
Hades doesn’t even acknowledge her undignified returns to the House anymore. Occasionally, he’ll give her a stern reminder of her duty, she’ll reassure him that her loyalty to the House will never falter, and he’ll curtly acknowledge that he respects her commitment. But they both know there’s nothing more she can do.
Lately Zagreus has been barreling through all the way to Elysium. Megaera hasn’t even been to Elysium before.
She makes her way to the lounge, which Zagreus has been steadily improving with new decorations, some of which are rather tasteless, but some of which actually make the place seem livable, an impossible concept in the Underworld.
She doesn’t understand him anymore. He used to be young, naive, arrogant. Predictable on all fronts—in combat, in his interactions, in his decisions.
Now nothing he does makes sense.
Now he claws his way out of his home, only to return and decorate the place he is so desperate to leave. Only now that he’s committed to leaving, he’s tying up loose ends, patching up problems, making new connections that won’t matter to him after he’s gone forever. Trying to improve the House while causing it to crumble. Even reaching out to Megaera again, searching for peace and closure between them.
Why couldn’t he have done this eons ago? Why now? These empty actions won’t fix the destruction he causes, won’t hide the fact that the House is falling apart at the seams.
But…his actions aren’t truly empty. He possesses a new maturity, a new self-assurance, a new concern for others. It imbues him with a magnetism Megaera has not seen in him before.
He is trying hard to mend old relationships, and it’s working. It’s working surprisingly fast.
Megaera can’t pretend it doesn’t sting that meanwhile, she hasn’t made any progress with her sisters over a span of time longer than Zagreus’s own existence. Another humiliation.
How and why is Zagreus doing all of this?
Things used to be simpler before he underwent this transformation. She knew how she felt about the old Zagreus. A nostalgic fondness, buried by indifference. The new Zagreus…she doesn’t have him figured yet.
But he’s trying to figure her out, coaxing her into letting her guard down.
Blood and darkness…it would be so much easier to pretend that they didn’t care about each other.
What Megaera is certain about is she cares how often she loses to him in battle. She cares so much that she can’t keep it to herself.
“Your wins against me count for nothing,” she tells him the next time he finds her in the lounge. “I know your power comes from Nyx’s mirror.”
“I’m fortunate to receive Nyx’s help,” he replies.
“If you understood anything, you wouldn’t have accepted it. Nyx should not be involved in your own mistakes.”
“I know you don’t agree with my actions. But I need to do this, Meg.”
All of their conversations go something like this. Megaera jabs at him, he offers up his soft underbelly instead of fighting back, and despite this, she can’t manage to land a blow that causes him to waver from his new path.
She used to know where they stood. She was more powerful, and he was weaker. She was focused on her duty, and he was derelict in his duty. She hates to admit it, but she needs that power imbalance back. He used to be so fragile and devoted to her before they parted ways, but now he can strike her down without much effort.
If escaping is truly this important to him...Megaera won't obstruct him. Not beyond what is part of her duty.
She vents her humiliation by torturing shades, but her strength will not increase. She has reached her peak and she knows it. She will stay at this level for eons while Zagreus continues to surpass her, climbing up and up until he reaches the surface and leaves the House behind.
And Zagreus thinks that if he bugs her enough, they can find closure between them.
When will he understand that Megaera does not need or want closure on their past?
What she needs closure on is the future Zagreus is creating—a future where he outgrows her.
(thanks for reading! if you enjoyed this fic please leave a kudos on ao3!)
Fluff and Humor, Getting Together, Quasi-Enemies to Friends to Lovers, Canon-Typical Violence, Animal Death, Aroace Themes, zagreus is a relationship counselor even when he doesn't realize it, dionysus is just here to party man
Artemis is immune to Aphrodite’s powers and happy about it, despite the goddess’s confusingly persistent attempts to sway her.
But when Zagreus calls for help in the Underworld and Dionysus stirs up trouble on Olympus, Artemis finds herself not only working together with Aphrodite, but also being inexplicably drawn to her.
