jelly

The scent of laurel and iron is familiar when Megaera finds you first. She is leaning against a cold obsidian pillar where you turn a corner in the hall, caught in your daily wandering of the House of Hades. Her whip coils lazily around her hand, and you have felt the touch of those fingers too often to worry about what that hand is capable of against your beloved prince. You know Zagreus well enough to understand that even he takes some pleasure from their semi-daily spats.

Her golden eyes are alight with amusement when she catches you.

“Looking for someone?”

Her voice is smoke and steel, the kind of teasing only she can pull off — sharp enough to wound, sweet enough to make you crave more. It's a delicious rasp, one that pulls you in.

"I thought you were working," you say softly, meek even in your approach. Under Megaera's gaze, you feel like a deer caught in the headlights. It's a delicious feeling, like flames licking at your skin.

"Tisiphone is dealing with your fool of a husband, sweetling," she muses, reaching out to brush your hair out of your face. Her fingers drift, pinching your chin playfully. "Had it been me out there, Zag wouldn't be coming home in time for supper."

Before you can answer, a weight settles against your back, a touch cold as the space between stars. A hand, deathly pale yet soft in its tenderness, trails over your wrist before curling around your fingers. Megaera raises a brow as she lifts her gaze to the newcomer.

Thanatos does not need words. He never does. His presence alone speaks volumes — the weight of inevitability, of endings — pressing into you like the certainty of a final breath. And yet, there is warmth in him, one you have come to know intimately—a paradox of comfort in the arms of Death himself.

“Zagreus is coming,” he murmurs, voice quiet as the rustle of the Fields of Asphodel. “He was waylaid.”

“Waylaid,” Megaera echoes, smirking. “That’s one way to put it.”

You tilt your head up as you feel Thanatos shift, his golden eyes gleaming under the torchlight. He is beautiful in his quietude, just as Megaera is beautiful in her storm.

"Were you helping him again, Than?" you inquire.

It has been a long time since aiding the Prince of the Underworld in his escapades was seen as some form of treason by Hades. Even then, Thanatos still averts his gaze, his grey skin flushing with a dark shade like the murky waters.

"Helping is a generous term, dear," he mumbles.

Megaera snorts.

Their bickering is dry, almost entirely deadpan. There is none of that theatrical flair of Zagreus arguing with his father for eternities, but it is no less entertaining for you to watch. You've learned to take delight in the sharpness of their words, the furrow of their brows. In a way, it is strangely domestic.

You cannot help the little grin that tugs at your lips as you watch them in front of you. The laugh that tumbles out of your mouth is entirely accidental, and you squeak as two pairs of golden eyes snap to you.

"What are you laughing about, little flower?" Thanatos muses, his voice soft and utterly smitten.

"Isn't it obvious? They're laughing at you," Megaera scoffs, though it lacks in her usual malice.

Suddenly, the scent of wine and pomegranate blossoms floods your senses.

It comes before you even see him. You close your eyes, basking in the scent of it as if it were the spring that you have not felt in a lifetime. Beside you, Megaera and Thanatos fall silent.

Then, there he is: breathless, grinning, battered from the inevitable chaos that follows him everywhere, the floors of hell burning under his feet. His underworld-forged armor bears fresh scrapes, his knuckles bruised from the skirmish, but his smile—his smile is for you.

For all of you.

"There is your husband," Megaera drawls.

Zagreus is panting when he reaches you, still dripping in the blood from the River Styx. You have learned to disregard the viscera, delighting only in the way his hands reach—finding yours, Megaera's, brushing against Thanatos's in an unspoken promise.

“Sorry to keep you waiting,” Zagreus breathes. “Got a little distracted.”

"Distracted, he says," Thanatos deadpans.

Megaera rolls her eyes, but she lets him pull her closer. Thanatos sighs but does not resist the touch.

Death, treachery, rebirth; how odd for a maiden of the Earth to surround themself with. But you have learned like the goddess before you that love tends to find creatures like you in the strangest of places, like a stubborn dandelion blooming through the cracks of a cobblestone path.

You beam, lifting yourself up on your toes to press your lips against your husband's cheek, then your two other lovers. Their hands are cold like the touch of Death and unbearably warm like the flames of Asphodel, and you stand at the very center of it—something that was once warm and breathing and now is not; beloved in your death as you were in life.

"Shall we have our supper together now?" the bride of the Underworld asks.