Archive of Our Own ^beta

Zagreus, as with all Underworld denizens, doesn’t waste much time questioning the Fates. Nyx’s daughters will do as they will, and if Zagreus is lucky, they might send Nyx a cryptic message about it. 

When he emerges into a small private glade in Elysium, he doesn’t question why he doesn’t see Patroclus. The field is empty of the Exalted but full of white and purple crocus flowers, delicate heads bobbing in the shadow of a statue of some hero or another, and Zagreus slowly picks his way around the flower beds and the broken pottery. He practically flew through Asphodel, so he isn’t worried about the timing, and he gets the distinct feeling that this is important. He has another job to do here, he thinks, one that has nothing to do with the House’s security.

On the other side of one of the River Lethe’s tributaries is a man in full armor. It doesn’t look like any armor that Zagreus has seen before, though he knows that he’s hardly seen the full breadth of war’s tidings. Chaos created a vast space of possibilities, and time has only exponentially diversified the starting seeds of the universe’s colorful beginnings. The armor is as white as the Lethe’s foam, though scuffed and scarred with use and battle. The armor has orange details on the shoulders, elbows, and knees, and the chest pattern is decorated with lines that resemble what Zagreus can now recognize as a sunrise.

The armor’s wearer has removed his helmet. He sits with his head bowed over his knees and his arms resting on either side of his hips. His hair is cropped short, close to his skull, and it’s all Zagreus can see of him until he looks up.

The man doesn’t say anything, but he does uncurl his body and casually reach for something Zagreus thinks must be a weapon.

“Hello, sir,” Zagreus says. It’s rare that a cheerful salute stops anyone on his journeys through his father’s realm, but it’s rarer still to find someone who doesn’t attack him on sight.

“Hello,” the man says, and it comes out as rusty as it is wary. Zagreus can’t help but wonder how long the man’s been here, to be so unused to speaking and so unwilling to fight. “What do you want?”

He reminds Zagreus so much of Patroclus, and not just because he’s in Patroclus’ glade. Defeat is written in every curve of the man’s shoulders, and even his defensive stance is half-hearted at best. Here is another man for whom Elysium has been its own kind of torture.

“Just passing through, sir, and grateful for a respite,” Zagreus says. 

“Oh.” The man relaxes a bare inch and rests his weight on his hands as he jerks his head to the doors behind him in a clear gesture of dismissal. “As you were, then.”

And Zagreus would, he really would, but he had sort of been hoping to run into Patroclus for a Kiss of Styx. Dying to Theseus is always humiliating, and if he has to suffer through it, he wants to have a better reason than a brief hello. Plus, he can’t quite place the man’s accent. It sounds like a surface accent, but not one he’s heard before.

“If you’ll permit me another minute to catch my breath,” he hedges, and the man looks annoyed but not terribly so. 

Zagreus leans against the leg of the statue casting its shade over the armored man and looks up, trying not to seem too interested when he asks, “Not interested in fighting?”

The man snorts and levels him a look that says, very clearly, that he isn’t fooled by Zagreus’ nonchalance. 

“Had enough of that for a hundred lifetimes, and two hundred clone lifetimes,” he says. “Can’t imagine why anyone would spend their life fighting and then want to keep doing it in their afterlife. It wasn’t—it wasn’t something we ever did for fun.”

“I see,” Zagreus says, wondering what a clone is. Is the man a clone? Is that why his accent is so strange? The shifting underworld has always taken him through what his mother tells him is the section reserved for the Greeks, but he wonders what other sections exist. Sections with whatever clones are? Then how did this one find his way into the Grecian zones?

Still, as taciturn as the man had seemed at first, he clearly hasn’t spoken with anyone in a long spell. The words have the bitter tang of the often-rehearsed and never-said.

“If it helps, I’d prefer not to fight at all,” Zagreus says. “I’m Zagreus.”

“Zagreus,” the man repeats. “Hm. Strange name.”

“Is yours any less so?” 

But the man shakes his head. “Sorry, but I had very little worth having before, and now I have even less. My name is the only thing worth keeping, so I’ll keep it to myself for a little longer. But you can have these, if you want.”

His offerings are the same as those Patroclus had had. Zagreus takes the Kiss of Styx he needs with a word of thanks and heads towards the doors. He hopes he’ll see the man again—he’d like to know his name.

It takes a few more runs through the Underworld for Zagreus to find him again. 

“Hello, sir!” Zagreus says. He’s doing much better than he was last time, and he’s run into both Meg and Than along the way, so he has something to look forward to however he finds his way back home. It’s rare that the three of them find time to be together, and Zagreus cherishes every second. To see the strange man again after so long is just icing on the cake.

“Zagreus,” the man says in that curious accent of his, though the pronunciation itself is perfect. His memory must be very good or his days very empty.

“I brought something for you,” Zagreus says before the man can dismiss him again. He pulls out the bottle of nectar he'd been saving for just this occasion and jogs over the bridge closest to him, spinning the bottle in his hand so it catches the ambient blue light.

The man doesn’t look excited or curious, just wary. “What is it?” 

Zagreus doesn’t think he’s ever seen someone not recognize nectar for what it is, so he stumbles over his words slightly. Nectar is usually a near-instantaneous method of making friends in the Underworld, but perhaps it isn't as universal as he'd thought.

“Just a friendly gift,” Zagreus explains. “It’s a bit of a delicacy down here, and, if you’ll pardon my saying so, I thought you looked as though you could use some cheer.”

The man’s warm brown eyes are creased in a frown that is more suspicious than Zagreus has ever seen directed at a nectar bottle, and Zagreus is beset with the unfamiliar urge to offer to drink some first. Even Patroclus hadn’t been wary like this; Zagreus wonders what had happened to this man in life that haunts him now in death.

At last, the man reaches for the bottle.

“It won’t make me forget?” the man asks, and he raises the bottle as if towards a sun that he hasn’t seen in who knows how long. 

“No,” Zagreus says. “No, it. It isn’t magic. It’s just… delicious. I promise."

“Hm. Okay.”

The man uncorks the bottle and then lifts his eyes, surprised at himself. “Wait, should I—sorry, I don’t know your customs.”

“Try it,” Zagreus says, oddly charmed. He doesn’t think anyone’s ever opened the nectar in front of him before. The man had said he’d had little in life; perhaps he'd had to seize what was given to him quickly. “I hope you like it.”

The man glances at the bottle again then shrugs. 

“Can’t die again,” the man says, and sips from the bottle without another second’s hesitation.

The change in his expression is a marvel, a slow widening of his eyes and a little drop of his jaw, until he blinks in surprised delight at the bottle he’s holding. 

Zagreus can’t help but grin. “Good?”

“Yeah. Yes. Thanks,” the man says. He takes another sip before tucking the bottle away. “I—I’m sorry. I don’t have anything to offer in return beyond what they give us, which isn’t really even mine.”

Zagreus shakes his head, simply pleased to have earned a smile. “Oh, sir, don’t worry about that. It was a gift.”

“Cody,” the man says, holding out his hand. “Not ‘sir’. Not anymore.”

Zagreus takes the hand. It’s calloused in strange places, with a particularly large patch in the webbing between his thumb and forefinger. They look a bit like the ones Zagreus gets when he’s wielded Exagryph for too long.

“Cody?” he asks. 

“My name. It’s the only thing I can give you in return,” Cody says. “Use it well.”

Zagreus tries to hide his grin. That hadn’t taken long, he thinks. 

Zagreus runs into Cody one, twice, and three more times. He misses seeing Patroclus, but Achilles gives him general updates when Zagreus returns to the House. There isn’t much to talk about; Cody won’t accept more nectar without having something to exchange for it, and he doesn’t count the piles of cyclops jerky and hydralites that are given to the Exalted as their due.

He doesn’t seem inclined to chat, and Zagreus isn’t inclined to force him into it. But on the fourth pass, Zagreus is taking it easier than usual. He’s turned the Pact’s timer off, and he’s been experimenting with different sets for his cast. He has some time, he thinks, to push a little. 

“Hello, sir!” he calls out, slowing down as he crosses the River Lethe.

“I’ve told you, it’s ‘Cody’,” Cody says, rolling his eyes. “You’re like a goddamn shiny sometimes.”

“Is that a bad thing?” Zagreus asks, curious. It’s one of the first hints that Cody’s given about his personal life or his history, but the word doesn't really mean anything to him as a noun. 

“I—no,” Cody says. It sounds like the truth. “No, no, it’s. It means you seem young, that’s all.”

Zagreus is young, as best he can figure it. Than and Meg are both well into their thousands, and Zagreus just cleared his first century. In comparison, Chaos must be in their billions, if they saw the start of the universe.

He wonders, again, how old Cody was when he died and how long he’s been here. The shades in Elysium rarely appear as they were when they died, but rather as they see themselves. Patroclus died in Achilles’ armor, after all, but he has always worn his original Myrmidon armor down here. It makes it impossible to guess a shade's true age.

“Then you’re right on the mark there, sir. I'm younger than most,” Zagreus says to be cheeky, and he laughs when he earns another eye roll. “You’re less shiny, then?”

“Doesn’t take much to wear the shine off,” Cody says.

When he doesn’t say anything else, Zagreus tilts his head and gambles a little. The Fates have brought him here for a reason, he thinks, and he needs to find out what it is.

“Perhaps you earned some shine of a different kind,” he says. “You made it to the land of heroes, after all. You must have done some great deeds.”

Zagreus knows, immediately, intrinsically, that he has put his foot in his mouth yet again. Cody closes off completely; his expression becomes a brick wall, a solid and impenetrable fort.

“The last thing I did that made any difference was kill the man I loved,” Cody says. “And I wouldn't call that great."

Cody turns his head away, staring with agonized longing at the splashing river behind him. He doesn’t seem to be aware of Zagreus; he doesn’t seem to be aware of anything.

"He was the hero, not me. But now I’m here, and he’s… somewhere else. But what is paradise without him?” Cody asks, lost in thought, and Zagreus’ heart sings a mournful symphony in his chest. 

Ah, he thinks. That’s what it is. That’s why Cody seems so much like Patroclus before he found Achilles.

That’s why Zagreus must be here.

He leaves a bottle of nectar near Cody’s patch of crocus flowers and, bowing his head, takes his leave. He’ll try again until he gets it right, even if he has to try and try and try.

It’s what he’s best at, after all.

Art drawn by the author. ID in alt text.

Cody appears to have forgiven him when Zagreus next appears. The nectar bottle is gone, hopefully accepted as an apology, and Zagreus doesn’t mention it. From this distance, the roars of the Colosseum can barely be heard. The River Lethe winds its way in slow meanders behind Cody, and the gentle burbles provide a peaceful counterpoint to the exuberant tumult of the crowd. Still, a particularly loud cheer makes Cody look over his shoulder towards the doors before turning back to Zagreus.

“Hey, do you come through here to fight?” Cody asks. “You have that look about you, that pre-adrenaline bounce. Our shinies used to do it, too.”

There’s that word again. Zagreus grins. “Yes, I am. It’s, well. It’s sort of my job.”

“To fight?”

“No, though I must admit I do a lot of that. I’m a security specialist, you see. It’s my job to make the House more secure against an attack.” 

It’s an odd thing to say, even now, even after decades of carrying the title, and Zagreus can only hope no one tells his father about the glimmer of pride he can’t keep out of his voice.

But Cody hardly seems to notice. 

“Ah,” he says. His smile doesn’t reach his eyes. “Yes. I, too, once thought I knew the difference between defense and violence.”

A protest rises in Zagreus’ throat, but he swallows it. He got to the surface by never once giving up, but he managed to pull his family back together by listening. He moves to the patch of unadorned grass beside Cody and folds his feet beneath himself as he sits.

“What do you mean?” he asks, as openly and curiously as he can.

“Oh, I didn’t—” Cody stops, then steels himself. He clearly wants to backpedal, but he also isn’t going to back away from what he’s said. 

Stalwart, Zagreus thinks. He's a stalwart man.

Cody continues. “Just. Be careful. My whole life, I trained for and fought a war to protect the people I loved. But… that wasn't what I was doing at all. I wasn’t made to protect them; I was made to kill them.”

He looks away. “Or get them killed.”

Elysium’s ever-present spring breeze winds its way through the hanging branches of the willows, rustling their ever-green leaves. The crocus flowers bob their head hello, and the grasses glint in a mix of dew and river-spray. Zagreus swallows. No beauty can heal a soul rent in two.

“I’m sorry,” he says. It's a paltry offering. “That's awful."

“No, it’s. Look, I know the souls here are dead and can’t be killed again,” Cody says, reining in the agony he had let slip. “But we fought things that weren’t alive, too. For years. And all it did was numb us to violence so that, when we were told to, we could kill the living. Be careful, shiny.”

His words remind Zagreus all too clearly of the fear he’d had once he’d made it to the Temple of Styx and had started killing vermin. He’d felt sick, then, killing living things, but he doesn’t any more.

Maybe that isn’t a good thing.

Zagreus pulls another bottle of nectar from his pocket and tucks it into Cody’s hands.

“Thank you,” he says before Cody can protest. “For your wisdom. I’ll be careful.”

Cody closes his eyes, face tight with pain.

“One of us should be,” he says, and Zagreus bows and moves on.

Zagreus takes the quick way home this time. He’d been tempting the Fates by turning up the Heat and activating Extremer Measures, and he crawls out of the pool of Styx still wincing from his father’s vicious backhand. 

He  often feels like Hades fights with a double-bladed axe instead of a spear.

He waves hello to Hypnos, blows a kiss to his mom and Cerberus, and finds Thanatos waiting outside the administrative chambers.

"Than!" he calls out. “Than, good to see you.”

“Oh no,” Thanatos deadpans. “What are you up to now, Zagreus?”

Is he really that obvious? Zagreus puts on his most charming smile and says, “Oh, you know. Trying to help a friend.”

Thanatos sighs and pushes himself away from the wall. “Of course you are. What do you need?”

And Zagreus would usually prevaricate a little more, try to defend himself and his motives, but he knows Thanatos’ time is precious, and he has a lot of questions to get through. 

“Do you know anything about the underworlds for, uh, other worlds? Other universes? There’s a man in Elysium who isn’t from around here,” Zagreus says. “Any here, I think. Are there others?”

“Huh. I mean, yeah, of course,” Thanatos says. “You think I cover the dead and dying across the whole universe? You’d never see me at all. Blood and darkness, Zag, I don’t even cover all of this world.”

Zagreus gets the feeling that this was something that his father had covered once or twice and that Thanatos is disappointed but not surprised that Zagreus has forgotten.

He moves on. “Is it hard? To cross from underworld to underworld, I mean?”

“Extremely,” Thanatos says. “He must have been desperate. Is he looking for something?”

“For someone, I think. But I don’t know who they are.”

Thanatos shrugs, and he gets that twitch in his shoulders he always gets right before he has to go fetch some mortal or other from the surface. “If they’re someone from my jurisdiction, I might be able to remember them. But if not… we’d have to go digging. Listen, Zag, I’m sorry, but—”

“I know,” Zagreus says. “Go on. And I’ll get you a name.”

It takes another few whirlwind runs through the underworld before Zagreus sees Cody again, and another few after that before Zagreus can do more than wave tiredly and take a hydralite. He hates to forego the Pact of Punishment to give himself an easier path to and through Elysium, but he’s about to reduce the Heat to a middling simmer just to more quickly see Cody again.

Fortunately, he doesn’t have to. Zeus and Ares must be in good moods, because Coronacht has never felt lighter or more powerful in his hands. He’s making Hermes-worthy time when he arrives at Cody’s glade at last. Zagreus slows to a walk and waves, and Cody gives him a tired two-fingered salute in return once he lifts his head from the cradle of his knees.

“Well met, sir,” Zagreus says.

“Shiny,” Cody acknowledges. “You seem to find your way here quite a bit.”

Patroclus had said the same thing, and so had Eurydice. Zagreus thinks Sisyphus, at least, had known that the Fates were guiding Zagreus’ flaming feet.

“I find my way everywhere eventually,” Zagreus says. “I’ve run through the whole underworld, oh, hundreds of times.”

“Yeah?” 

“Of course,” Zagreus says. He tries not to let hope seep too obviously into his words when he continues, “So, if there’s something you’re looking for, I can probably help.”

Cody smiles at him again—that awful, pained smile he’d worn before—and Zagreus bites his tongue. Somehow, Cody always manages to see right through him, too.

“Thank you,” Cody says. “But no. If I haven’t found him yet, it’s because he doesn’t want to be found.”

His words, soft as they are, cut like the wings of a soul catcher’s butterflies. Zagreus’ heart clenches again. Cody’s dedication and love are obvious; it seems impossible that anyone could turn their back on something like that.

“He might not be here,” Zagreus says. “He might still be alive, or—”

“No,” Cody interrupts, but gently. So gently, like the slow glide of a very sharp knife. “He’s dead. I shot him off a cliff. And I saw him fall.”

It doesn’t make any sense. Zagreus knows love when he sees it; he knows longing, and he knows desperation. He’d seen it on Patroclus' face, of course, but he’d also seen it on Orpheus’ when he sang of Eurydice. 

He’d seen it on his father’s, when he remembered Persephone.

Cody wouldn’t have wanted to kill this man, no matter what Cody says.

“Cody,” Zagreus says. “Why?”

Cody's spine caves beneath new weight, buckling in the shell of his armor, and his warm brown eyes dull with old and worn out pain. He closes his eyes against the onslaught, but he answers.

"It's hard to explain. I was being controlled by something… evil. But there was no way he could know that. No one knew about the chips.” He looks down at his hands, one of the few parts of him that are unarmored. “He must think I did it on purpose. Must blame me. And I can’t blame him for it.”

Zagreus doesn’t think blame is useful in any quarter, though it’s clear that Cody blames himself.

“You just have to find a way to explain,” Zagreus says. “Cody, you’ve come so far. Don’t give up on him, and don’t give up on yourself.”

Cody turns his head away, back towards the Lethe. “No. No, I'm starting to think that this is what was always supposed to happen. You call this paradise, but at least in Hell I would’ve had company. This is the worse punishment, I think. And, maybe, it's the one I deserve.”

Zagreus bites back a dozen protests; he knows when arguing will do more harm than good, no matter how much he wants to. He reaches down for a single second, wanting to clasp Cody’s shoulder, but pulls his hand back when Cody winces.

He swallows instead. “Will you at least tell me his name? Let me see if I can help.”

“I am beyond help,” Cody says. “Now, please. Let me be.”

Zagreus isn’t able to pull much from Cody after that. Cody still offers his little two-fingered salutes and the unused array of items given to help the Exalted in their battles, but he doesn’t offer much in the way of conversation. He doesn’t accept other bottles of nectar, either. Zagreus isn’t going to give up—he isn’t; he wouldn’t; he won’t—but even his creativity is being tested here.

So, when Cody sits up the instant Zagreus enters his glade, Zagreus can’t help but be more pleased than anything else.

“Hello, sir,” he calls out. “What’s—”

“Zagreus,” Cody interrupts. Not ‘shiny’ today, then. Something must be up. “Does this place give you dreams?”

But Zagreus has never been dead, not permanently, so he doesn’t know what Elysium does to the Exalted. He’s never asked any of the shades, and although he’d do a lot for Cody, he’s not sure that includes asking Theseus about his dream journal. Cody seems on edge, antsy. He’s hunched over his knees as if prepared to weather an explosion instead of his usual tired malaise.

“I don’t know,” Zagreus says honestly. “Sounds like you had a strange one. Will you tell me about it?”

Cody scowls. “If I tell you, I’ll be doing exactly what I was told to do.”

He can practically hear Cody’s teeth grind from here, and he blinks in surprise until Cody sighs.

“No, sorry. I know my body’s gone and the chip with it, but. Weird dreams were the first sign of the chips. I don’t like being told what to do, and I don’t like anyone messing with my sleep,” Cody explains. “I always said I could sleep when I was dead. If not now, when?”

'Chips' again. He'd mentioned them last time, too, as whatever it was that took Cody’s control from him. Zagreus wonders if they’re like what Aphrodite does when she charms the lost souls. Still, it doesn’t seem like the time to ask.

Instead, Zagreus folds himself down on the grass next to Cody and tilts his head. “It was a message, then? For me?”

“For your sword, oddly enough. But the dream was very insistent.” 

Oh. Oh. 

"I've been sent  messages like this before," Zagreus says hurriedly. "I've got some… cousins… who are terrible at long-distance messaging, and I'm sorry they interfered with your sleep. Cody, you don't have to, but I'd appreciate hearing the message. It might help me."

And still, Cody hesitates. It's as if he can feel how the willows lean towards him to wrap their long tendrils through his words, how the Lethe quiets its gentle laughter to listen, how the crocus flowers turn their silken heads to catch the sound. 

But Cody, stalwart, stubborn Cody, forges ahead. “Okay. The message is, I see you fall in the light to pull your brother from the dark.”

Even the twin fists shudder in Zagreus’ hands at the words of a waking phrase. The echoes of it bounce around the glade, reverberating through the wild flowers and the ancient pottery, coming to rest at the foot of the tall door on the other side. It calls Zagreus onward; it calls Zagreus home to Stygius.

At his side, Cody is looking more and more concerned. I watched him fall, Zagreus remembers Cody saying, and he scrambles to reassure him.

“Thank you,” Zagreus says. “I'll remember it. And, you don't have to worry; it isn't about me. Usually, these messages are about another warrior, from the past or the future or both."

“The future? Hm.” 

Cody doesn't look convinced, but at least he's stopped looking nervous. Zagreus looks at him out of the corner of his eye, curious. Why did the Fates send the message through Cody? Is it a hero from his world? Would he know?

Asterius had known all of Gilgamesh’s tale when he had relayed the Fates’ message for Malphon, but Achilles hadn’t known anything about Guan Yu. The Eternal Spear itself had had to tell Zagreus the tale of the man who had—or will?—wielded the Frost Fair Blade.

Zagreus asks, "Do you know who it might be referencing?”

But Cody shakes his head. “No idea. For a second I thought—but no. I know something of brothers, Zagreus, but all I know of light and dark is pain.”

The tiny vermin is waiting for Zagreus at the end of the Temple, and then Hypnos is waiting for him at the end of the Hall.

“The tiny vermin got you again, did it?” Hypnos says with his usual sleepy cheer. “Have you tried, I don’t know, stepping on it?”

Zagreus laughs. Technically, he hadn’t. 

“It’ll be first on my list when I see it again,” he promises, and he dashes past his father’s smug look and Nyx’s fond smile to his training courtyard. The Infernal Arms hover above their pedestals, pulsing and impatient. They hunger, Zagreus knows. They don’t look kindly on peace.

“Up to something, boyo?” Skelly asks, bouncing on the rough bones of his metatarsals, and Zagreus waves him off.

“Just the usual, Captain.”

He makes his way to Stygius, his first and best-loved weapon, and it hums in anticipation. It’s been through many forms, and it knows them each in a way that even the Fates cannot. From what it’s told Zagreus, it stayed—or will stay?—in the form of Excalibur for centuries before being taken up again. It is hungry for change of any kind. Every other weapon has only earned one waking phrase; Zagreus thinks it’s fitting that Stygius is the first to earn a second.

He leans forward. 

“ I see you fall in the light to pull your brother from the dark,” he repeats, and the sword shivers, stills, and then, all at once, it disappears.

In its place is a metal cylinder about the length of Zagreus’ hand, silver and black and bronze. It doesn’t look like any sword Zagreus has ever seen, and he has to stretch the very limits of his imagination to consider the object as, quite possibly, a hilt. The metal sides are as smooth and polished as the burnished surface of a Myrmidon shield, but Zagreus doesn’t think he’s ever seen a silver quite like this. The black, too, shines as bright as a metal, but Zagreus doesn’t know what metal it could be.

He reaches out to grab it from the air, overwhelmed with curiosity, and it fits into his palm with warm welcome. There are a few circular nubs extending from the chassis, and Stygius, in its way, shows him which one to press.

The room fills with light—blinding, brilliant, blue—and oh, Zagreus thinks, squinting through the glare. There’s the blade.

“Whoa, whoa, whoa!” Skelly says. “Get a load of that! Whatcha got there, boyo?”

Zagreus turns towards him, blade humming in his hand. It thrums with something like Zeus’ lightning bolts and feels just as hot. 

Just as dangerous.

He grins at Skelly, swinging it easily in his right hand. Compared to Excalibur, it’s practically weightless. “Let’s find out.”

After a few rounds with Skelly, Zagreus learns three things. First, the blade cuts through bone like air. Second, it turns his dash into a leap, so he can clear Skelly’s head with no problem.

Third, the blade’s original owner was named Obi-Wan.

“Aspect of Obi-Wan, huh?” Zagreus asks, deactivating the blade as Skelly reforms himself in the center of the courtyard. “Nice to meet you, Obi-Wan.”

He goes to his keepsake cabinet and snags Zeus’ signet. Sparks fly from his fingers as he fixes the lightning bolt to the front of his toga, and he grins as he turns up the Heat on the Pact. 

He has a good feeling about this run.

Zagreus crawls out of the Pool of Styx only a few minutes later, dripping with blood and defeat. Hypnos is, fortunately, still asleep, so he doesn’t get the flak he deserves for falling to witches in Asphodel. He isn’t sure the last time he didn’t even make it past the Bone Hydra, and he doesn’t want to check. Obi-Wan’s blade has unparalleled offensive capabilities, yes, but Zagreus discovered the hard way that it can’t deflect dark energy blasts or waves.

Worse, it absorbs dark energy if Zagreus gets hit. It funnels the blast straight into Zagreus’ arms and burns away all of his casts for twenty seconds. He tried to use his new leap ability to dodge instead and then landed directly in a burn-flinger’s bomb trio. It… hadn’t gone well.

Plus, the blade burns Zagreus just as easily as his opponents. Whoever Obi-Wan was, he must’ve been quite the fighter. 

“Back so soon, boyo?” Skelly asks.

“Forgot something,” Zagreus lies. “But I’m good now.”

He leaps through the courtyard window before Skelly can remark on his choice of a much, much lower Heat this time.

Even with the lower Heat, Zagreus still needs a few tries before he gets through Elysium with his blade’s new aspect. It takes a few more attempts still before he finds Cody again, but at last, one Elysium door leads to Cody's glade.

He slows his pace to a jog, waving with the hand not carrying his blade. He wonders if Cody’s had any other dreams about the blade, if he’ll recognize what kind of sword it is, or if he’ll be happy to see—

Cody’s on his feet in an instant, his hand going to his hip in search of a weapon he doesn’t have any more.

“Where did you get that,” he says, wild-eyed, desperate.

Zagreus stumbles backwards, praying to all of his relatives that he doesn’t have to fight. Not here, not now, not when he’s gotten so close.

“Your dream,” he says, hurriedly, “this is—this is what it was about. It’s the sword of man named Obi-Wan—”

“I know what it is. Where is he?” Cody asks, still thrumming with manic energy, and a lot of things make sense all at once. “Have you seen him? Is he here?”

“No—I—Cody. I’m so sorry. It’s not really his. I haven’t seen him.”

It’s an apology more than anything. Stars, of course. Of course Obi-Wan is who Cody’s been looking for. And, though Zagreus knows the Fates are neither kind nor cruel, he’s frustrated that they didn’t warn Cody about his dream or give him even a small amount of context. Was the fall in the prophecy the fall Cody mentioned, then? Who was the brother?

Zagreus doesn’t have time to ask. He holds the blade’s hilt so it lays flat his palm: a gesture of peace.

“It’s my sword, still,” Zagreus says softly. “In a different form. One it took a long time ago and in another galaxy, I think. But this isn’t really the one you knew.”

Slowly, carefully, Zagreus holds it out as he approaches, and Cody doesn’t move as he does. Zagreus isn’t scared of an attack—he hardly fears dying and he’s accustomed to pain—but he doesn’t want to say the wrong thing. He wants to help; he wants this to help.

Cody picks up the hilt with the familiar care of an old friend. His thumb goes to the activation switch automatically, and he closes his eyes. 

“I—I can’t. Kark it,” Cody says, the words emerging from his throat on a shaky exhale. His hands are shaking, too, as he tightens his grip. “I always—I always found it for him—I.”

He opens his eyes. “Of course I find it now, when I can’t return it. It’s just like everything. Just a mirage.”

Zagreus lets Cody hold onto the blade, wondering if he’ll need to ask for it back or if he’ll be weaponless for the rest of the run. This, regardless, seems more important. He’d go bare-handed into the Colosseum if it’d help him fix that.

“Will you tell me about him?” Zagreus asks, and he watches as Cody tries to pull himself out of his misery and memories. “Stygius didn’t give me much, just the name. Obi-Wan.”

Cody passes the hilt over without another word, desolate.

“Obi-Wan.” He holds even the syllables of the name carefully in his mouth. “I didn’t use it often. For most of the war, he was General Kenobi. High General Obi-Wan Kenobi… He was the best of the generals, and not because he was unstoppable on the battlefield, though he was that, too. He was kind. Clever. With devilish wit and endless compassion. When the chips activated in the clones and turned us against our generals, he never even saw it coming.”

Cody takes another breath, one that catches in his lungs and throat. “I loved him. I killed him. I miss him every day.”

Zagreus eventually has to leave Cody behind, despite the tear tracks on the curves of his cheeks, and head towards the surface again. 

He has a name now, at least.

When he jumps into the hall still riding the high of beating his father, he’s grateful to find Thanatos waiting for him. 

He doesn’t waste any time. “Than, have you heard of anyone named Obi-Wan Kenobi? Or General Kenobi?”

Thanatos, to his credit, immediately recognizes why Zagreus is asking. “No, I haven’t. But if they died on the battlefield, then Ares might have picked them up. And if they died outside of our jurisdiction, then we’ll need to request a file review from the administration that collates all of the data across the various underworlds.”

Zagreus squints at him until Thanatos rolls his eyes.

“Come on, Zag. This was your job; you should know this.”

“Yes,” Zagreus admits cheerfully, “but you must admit I wasn’t very good at it. So you’ll help?”

A mixture of clever words, ambrosia, and heartfelt pleas gets Thanatos—and, when she returns from Tartarus, Megaera—to help Zagreus go through the records in the Administrative Chamber. After a few long minutes of shuffling papers and recruiting the poor shades toiling at their desks, they come up empty-handed.

“He’s not here, Zag,” Megaera says, dusting her hands off as she pushes the last file shut. “You’re going to have to request an external file review.”

“Wait, how do you know about that?”

“I pay attention, and I have more than two brain cells,” she says dryly. “It helps.”

They pool their brain cells together to find the right form and fill out the extremely small amount of information they actually have.

“Occupation?” Thanatos asks, putting the quill to his mouth. He has the best handwriting, so he’s been saddled with writing everything down.

“Military general,” Zagreus says confidently, but something that Stygius had told him rings more clearly in his head. “Wait, no—Jedi. Military general… Jedi.”

Thanatos glares at him. “Spell it.”

Zagreus does his best, but they really don’t have very much to go on. They know his name, his profession, and that he was a hero of great enough glory or renown that the shape of his sword found its way to the Infernal Arms.

And that he was loved, and loved well. Loved well enough that a man who loved him loves him still: even in death, past the ends of their shared universe.

“There can’t be too many heroes named Obi-Wan Kenobi with laser swords, right?” Zagreus asks. “Surely that’s strange in any universe.”

Megaera shrugs. “There are lots of universes, Zag. Maybe laser swords are a lot more common in the other ones.”

She folds the forms into perfectly pressed thirds and folds them into a cream-colored envelope from the supply closet. Thanatos and Zagreus hover around her as she grabs one of the candlesticks and tilts it until hot wax splashes into a puddle along the flap. When enough wax has built up, she presses the end of her whip into it until the red overflows the edges.

“Your turn,” she says, and Thanatos does the same with one of the rings on his gauntlet, and Zagreus, for the first time, uses the Sigil of the Dead that his father had bequeathed to him in an official capacity. 

Their three seals—the seals of a Fury, the God of Death, and the Underworld’s only prince—glint with all the colors of flame across the paper. Thanatos picks it up and, with his usual complete lack of fanfare, tosses the envelope into the pool of blood that forms the Eldest Sigil of the house.

They stare at it in curious silence until it sinks beneath the ruby red surface and only a few bubbles signify its passing.

“It’ll be a couple of hours before the review board can go through their system and get back to us,” Megaera says into the thickening, anticipatory air. 

Zagreus grins, looking up at both of his lovers, reveling in how they’re both in his reach for once. Megaera catches his look and, almost unwillingly, starts to smile.

“Hours, huh. Whatever shall we do in the meantime?” Zagreus asks, and he laughs when Thanatos blushes and Megaera shepherds them both towards the door.

Zagreus stumbles through the drapes covering the entrance to his room a few hours later. His legs are still a little shaky from Thanatos’ mouth, and his back smarts when his toga brushes against the raised welts from Megaera’s whip. He dashes past his father and mother before they can call him over, though he doesn’t think he moved quite fast enough to hide the stinging red marks from Achilles’ keen, long-suffering gaze.

He skids into the administrative chambers and tries to act naturally as he moves to the Eldest Sigil at the back. The shades are clearly not fooled, but they are as accustomed to Zagreus’ antics as any of the dead can be.

An envelope is hovering above the still red waters of the sigil. Zagreus abandons all attempts at dignity and races towards it, snatching it out of the air with a speed that Hermes would envy. With shaking hands, he slides his nail beneath the plan black seal on the flap, and a single sheet of white paper falls out. 

The writing on it is small and delicate. Zagreus doesn’t know what kind of quill could draw such fine lines, but it is as precisely written as if someone had stamped every single letter on it in a perfect line.

We know who you’re looking for, the letter says. But he isn’t dead.

Cody doesn’t believe him.

Cody doesn’t believe Thanatos, either, when Zagreus somehow manages to finagle a few spare seconds of Thanatos’ free time and Cody’s appearance in Elysium. 

“If you’re trying to cheer me up,” Cody says, uncowed in the face of two gods, “lying to me isn’t the way to do it. I know what I saw.”

“And I believe you. But couldn’t he have survived the fall?” Zagreus asks. 

For the first time since Zagreus met him, Cody looks unsure of his answer. 

“Maybe,” he allows. “Yes. But, Zagreus, I’ve been looking for him for what must be decades, even in this strange timeless place. Maybe he didn’t die then, but he would’ve passed by now. Everyone dies eventually.”

“Trust me,” the God of Death says. “I know.”

Thanatos and Zagreus promise to keep an eye out for Obi-Wan, but Zagreus can tell that Cody isn’t reassured. He has resigned himself to his misery, it seems. Cody sits back by the River Lethe and waves them on, tells Zagreus to be careful and Thanatos to take care, and then Zagreus is at the doors to the Colosseum yet again. He goes through the motions.

Rinse, repeat; rinse, repeat. He brings Cody nectar when he can, but he can’t help but feel like there’s nothing more he can do without finding Obi-Wan. Maybe he’s somewhere on the surface? Maybe Persephone could find him, through the whispers of the trees and flowers beneath the sun?

Zagreus takes Coronacht, then Malphon, then Exagryph. He sees Alecto, then the Bone Hydra, then Asterius, then Asterius and Theseus all over again. He fights through all the vermin and the satyrs of Styx and passes Cerberus on the way to his father. And he does it again, and again, and again.

But one day or night, when he emerges into the crisp cold air, his father isn’t there to greet him.

“Hello?” Zagreus calls. He doesn’t think this has ever happened before. He wishes he’d taken a few more Athena boons as his feet melt the freshly-fallen snow; a few more shields would be useful against a sneak attack, although subterfuge isn’t exactly his father’s style. “Father?”

He stands out in the cold until the frigid surface air, as it always does, sends him back.

The space around the Pool of Styx is more crowded than Zagreus has ever seen it. Shades mill about, hushed and curious, and Zagreus has to fight his way through the thick press of souls to see what’s drawn their attention. Whatever it is must have kept his father in the underworld, so it must be important.

His father is in his full regalia, wearing both mantle and helm, and his mother is at Hades’ right hand. Their expressions are twin mixes of concern and confusion, although Hades’ scowl is deepening by the second. It takes Zagreus another second to elbow his way through the crowd to see what—who—they’re looking at. 

A man in a long brown robe stands at the foot of Hades’ tall desk. His brown hair turns red in the firelight where it isn’t streaked with gray, and his face is lined with years of experience but not, just yet, with age. His hands are folded into the bells of his sleeves, and his posture is deferential as he bows.

“My lord,” the man says as he straightens. “Thank you for agreeing to an audience with me.”

Hades snorts.

“It is not often that a living soul comes before my court,” Hades says, his voice booming through the hall. “But, regardless of their status, anyone with a grievance can seek an audience with me. Speak.”

“I am seeking someone. I believe he may have wandered into your realm.”

Every one of Zagreus’ nerves lights up like Zeus’ thunderbolts. This—this is him. He can feel the threads of the fates winding through him in this moment, as tightly woven as the fabric of the stranger’s robes. Zagreus bounces to his toes and looks around for Megaera or Thanatos, but neither one is around. Orpheus alone manages to catch his eye, but he looks only sympathetic for another lost and searching soul.

Hades glares down with beady red eyes. “If he is here, then he is dead. Even if you found him, you could not leave with him.”

This time, the man himself looks towards Orpheus. “I have heard tell—”

“We do not offer bargains,” Hades interrupts, but not unkindly. He is a harsh master of harsh halls, but even Zagreus can admit that his harshness is not entirely without reason. “Not any more. I cannot let you into the underworld any more than I can let the dead out.”

“Can you at least tell me if he’s here? Please?”

The man’s voice is remarkably steady for his circumstances. He is far more patient than Zag has ever dreamed of being, especially if he is who Zagreus thinks he is. At his even and measured words, Persephone pauses in consideration. She whispers something in Hades’ ear, but Hades shakes his head.

“The secrets of the dead are not for the living. Now go, or you will find the way out much harder than the way in.”

The man’s mouth, half-hidden behind a graying auburn mustache, sets itself into a stubborn line. The baggy fall of his robe does not hide the steel of his spine, and the room fall into an anticipatory hush. The man’s unassuming, quiet demeanor shifts, minutely, into something else.

“I’ve always had a good sense of direction,” he says lightly. “I’ll take my chances.”

The shades murmur amongst themselves, their rustling building to a roar, and Zagreus knows exactly what the thunder building in his father’s brow means. He wouldn’t be surprised if this man—if Obi-Wan Kenobi, it must be—would try to fight a god, but Zagreus has fought his father hundreds and hundreds of times. It took Zagreus thirty-seven tries to beat his father even with all the help of Nyx and Olympus, and this stranger doesn’t have any godly help.

He also doesn’t have thirty-six extra tries.

…Actually, wait.

“Let him try to escape,” Zagreus says before he can think about it. “I would love for someone to check my work.”

“Boy,” Hades growls, but Persephone puts a hand on his arm.

“Dear,” she says, and her voice, though soft, echoes through the hall. 

Hades looks at her, his harsh frown softening, and they have one of those silent conversations that always seems so loud. As they do, the man turns around. His eyes are as clear blue as Athena’s and just as wise, serious and considering. The wrinkles set beside his eyes deepen as he tilts his head, curious.

Zagreus winks at him, and he smiles back. 

“Very well,” Hades says at last. “You have the same right as any shade here: you may explore the Underworld only so far as you can fight your way through it. If you die here, you will stay here, with or without the shade you seek.”

The man bows again, to both Hades and Persephone this time, but Hades isn’t done.

“And Zagreus? If he comes even close to making it out, it’s on your head.”

The shades disperse once Hades dismisses the court, and Zagreus has to fight not to immediately dash forward to meet Cody’s long-lost general. He waits with the patience Megaera swears he never learned until he can lead the stranger away from Hades’ furious flaming eyes.

“Thank you,” he says once Zagreus pulls him through the shortcut into the lounge. “It was kind of you to speak up for me.”

Zagreus grins. He can taste the resolution in the air, the way the threads are all coming together, and he can’t wait. 

“Oh, I didn’t do it for you,” he says, and the man’s eyebrows raise politely. “I did it for Cody.”

The man’s calm slides away in an instant. 

“He’s here? Is he okay?” Obi-Wan asks, because he must, must be Obi-Wan. Thank the Fates. His hands are gripping the edge of the table so tightly that his knuckles have bleached bone white. He holds himself so rigidly that his shoulders are a single straight line beneath his robes.

Zagreus rocks backwards at the intensity of his gaze. “Yes—yes, he’s here.”

Obi-Wan sags against the lounge table as if all his strings were cut. It’s a relief to know that Obi-Wan is just as gone on Cody as Cody is for Obi-Wan. He’d guessed as much, but Cody’s insistence had been hard to shake. Zagreus waves for the bartender to tap into the honor bar Zagreus bought what seems like years ago. It had seemed frivolous then, but he’s grateful for it now. 

Obi-Wan’s first question was easy to answer. The second? Not so much. “And he’s… hm. He’s been looking for you.”

Obi-Wan tenses again. “I see. I was afraid of that.”

The words rest between them, sharp-edged and serious, and at least Obi-Wan somehow seems to know what Zagreus means. Cody had never mentioned anything about their relationship. He’d never said if his love had been acknowledged, let alone returned, but Zagreus can see in the tight corners of Obi-Wan’s eyes that Obi-Wan had known.

Plus, he’s found his way through countless Underworlds, too. He must know exactly how hard Cody’s path has been.

When Obi-Wan looks up, his clear blue eyes are as hard and impenetrable as Athena’s shield. 

“Then we’d best not keep him waiting any longer,” he says, and Zagreus grins. 

Zagreus leads him past Nyx’s knowing gaze and through the warzone of his bedroom, biting back the urge to apologize for the mess. Obi-Wan, to his credit, just picks his way around the piles of clothing and the massive stack of weights that Zagreus still can’t lift.

“I’m glad that Cody has found a friend in you,” Obi-Wan says as they walk towards the courtyard. “And thank you for your efforts on his behalf. But, if you don’t mind, I don’t even know your name.”

“Oh! My apologies, sir. I’m Zagreus.”

“And I’m Obi-Wan,” Obi-Wan says, and it’s good to hear the confirmation of what Zagreus had already guessed.

In the courtyard, Skelly doesn’t even blink at Obi-Wan’s appearance, and not just because he no longer has eyelids. “Gonna tag-team this one, boyo?”

Zagreus laughs, anticipation running hot and joyful through his veins. “Something like that.”

But Obi-Wan doesn’t seem to share his confidence. He stands at the entranceway to the courtyard, one hand stroking the long red-white fall of his beard while the other stays hidden in the fall of his sleeve. He looks less like the warrior Zagreus knows him to be and more like an ancient sage, pondering the weight of an upcoming choice. It’s enough to make Zagreus himself hesitate.

“Zagreus… this Underworld has a very, shall we say, martial reputation,” Obi-Wan says. “I have gotten this far through a mix of negotiation and the Force, but my connection to it is weaker, here. I may not be very much use in a fight.”

“I know you’re very skilled with the blade.”

“A blade I no longer have,” Obi-Wan says, smiling. “And, although Lord Hades was correct in calling my soul living, it is only by the broadest possible definition. I am alive only through the grace of the Living Force in my universe. I, technically, don’t even have a real body. If I die here, I will return to it entirely, and… I am not sure I could find my way back out again.”

Death is permanent for mortals. It was one of the first lessons that Zagreus had ever learned, though he sometimes still struggles to understand what it means. He tries to stop himself from fidgeting. The solution had seemed so simple, but running through the Underworld has far greater risks for Obi-Wan than Zagreus.

“Do you want to try to find another way?” he asks quietly. Megaera used to call him the God of Stubbornness, but even he has learned that sometimes the easiest path is going around instead of through.

But Obi-Wan shakes his head. “No, I simply wanted to warn you. I’ve come this far, and I’m no stranger to impossible odds.”

Zagreus nods and goes to pick up Coronacht. The Heart-Seeking Bow will give him the best shot at sniping anything getting too close to Obi-Wan, he thinks. 

He pulls the string taut, testing. “Well, I’ll watch your back, sir. And I’m more than happy to let you borrow a blade.”

Obi-Wan reaches for Stygius at Zagreus’ nod, and he has to wrap both of his hands beneath the sword’s scowling skull in order to wield it. It’s clearly much heavier than he’s used to, and Zagreus can guess why. The blade looks unwieldy as Obi-Wan gives it a few tentative swings, and while it wouldn’t be unworkable, Zagreus can do better.

“Stygius,” he says. “Grant him the Aspect of Obi-Wan.”

With a flash of flight, the sword transforms itself into the thin silver cylinder that Cody’s dream had brought out of history. Obi-Wan almost drops it, blinking, stunned all over again at this unlooked-for blessing. He’s speechless, mouth open, and the blade sings to life with a now-familiar hum.

It sounds happier in his hands.

“You—Zagreus, this is—”

“You might not have the Fates in your universe,” Zagreus tells him, grinning, “but here, they have a fondness for defying impossible odds.”

It’s an honor to see Stygius in the hands of a true master, and Zagreus has to fight not to be distracted as he watches Obi-Wan flow seamlessly through his forms. Zagreus warns him not to try to deflect any of the dark energy blasts shot at him, and Obi-Wan nods and leaps effortlessly away from the blasts instead. Zagreus takes Demeter’s boons as much as he can to slow their enemies down. He has godlike reflexes and an impervious dash; Obi-Wan doesn’t.

Still, Obi-Wan manages, mostly, to hold his own through Tartarus. Zagreus had removed every single flicker of Heat from the Pact of Punishment, too, so only Megaera is waiting for them at its end.

“This him, then, Zag?” Megaera asks, cracking her whip and rising into the air. “You know I can’t go easy on you. Either of you.”

Zagreus swallows and steps in front of Obi-Wan as best he can. “I’d expect no less.”

“Then come.”

Despite her words, Megaera does seem to go easier on Obi-Wan—if only by going harder on Zagreus. They both know that she could take Obi-Wan out first if she focused on him, but she doesn’t. She gives them a fair fight, following Zagreus when he draws her away, and Obi-Wan takes down the allies that she summons. It still takes longer than usual because Zagreus has to kite her around the columns and keep her moving, but, at last, one of his arrows finds her heart.

She falls to the ground with a groan, hand curling around the arrow’s shaft, but there’s a thin smile playing about her lips as she slips soundlessly into the Styx.

Zagreus can’t help but smile softly back. “See you at home, Meg.”

Obi-Wan looks between Zagreus and the fading scorch mark on the tiles where Megaera had fallen and, wisely, doesn’t ask any questions.

Asphodel is much, much harder. The overheated air slows Obi-Wan down even without the tougher enemies, and the profusion of dark energy blasts, bombs, and seismic waves are hard for even a Jedi to dodge. Zagreus has to spend most of his time next to Obi-Wan, deflecting blasts with one of Athena’s boons, and even then he misses a few. Obi-Wan loses his outer robe to a burn-flingers bomb, and his tunic gets scorched by splashing magma and an armored witch’s spray.

The Bone Hydra, too, is far less understanding than Megaera had been. The first head is easy to distract, and even the three heads are easy to keep from Obi-Wan, but Zagreus struggles to keep track of all six heads when he only has to worry about himself. He takes down two, then a third, and he’s struggling with the fourth when he realizes he’s lost Obi-Wan. 

He looks around frantically, feeling fear—true fear—for the first time on an Underworld run, until he finally finds Obi-Wan astride one of the Hydra’s heads, driving his glowing sword through the snake’s massive skull. The head shatters into bone shards and brings Obi-Wan down hard on the platform beneath. Obi-Wan staggers to his feet, sword at the ready, but Zagreus is already there, rebuffing the sixth and final head.

Obi-Wan leans on Zagreus as Zagreus pulls them both into the boat that will take them up to Elysium. They sit in the cool stone hallways between Asphodel and Elysium, catching their breath, and Obi-Wan dunks his whole head in the fountain waiting next to Zagreus’ keepsakes.

“We’re almost there,” Zagreus says, trying not to hover. “He’s in Elysium. The chambers shift every time, so I’m not entirely sure where, but. He’s close.”

“Thank you,” Obi-Wan says, and his voice is hoarse from the smoke and heat. 

He runs his hand through his hair to get it out of his eyes, and it stays there, matted to his skull. When he pulls at the tabards of his scorched tunic, a piece tears off the end, and Obi-Wan can’t help but laugh as he lets the blackened cotton fall to the floor.

“I don’t think I was ever going to make it through this with my dignity intact,” he jokes, but Zagreus thinks even the heat of Asphodel couldn’t burn this man’s dignity away.

Elysium is, for whatever reason, less dangerous than Asphodel. The Exalted seem to recognize one of their own, and they hardly seem to even see Obi-Wan. The main threat to him there are the butterflies and the traps, so Zagreus focuses on the soul catchers before tucking Obi-Wan safely up against a wall.

It’s less dangerous, but no less daunting. The one thing Zagreus has tried not to be worried about—tried to forget—was that they aren’t guaranteed to find Cody on this run. The chambers shift, and sometimes Cody’s chambers fall into the line of rooms to the exit, and sometimes they don’t. He hasn’t told Obi-Wan this, but his heart drops into his throat every time they open a door and Cody isn’t on the other side.

The Fates are not cruel or kind, Zagreus remembers, but they are purposeful. Surely this was his purpose. Surely, he thinks, they’ll put Cody in his path.

They pass Charon; they pass Asterius, who consents to fight Zagreus alone while Obi-Wan watches from the stands; and they run through room after room of witches and vicious, uncaring Exalted.

And then, with the sounds of the Colosseum growing louder and louder in the air, then, they open a door to the sound of the River Lethe and nothing else.

Zagreus had taken to going through the door first, but this time, he steps aside.

Obi-Wan walks through, giving Zagreus a curious glance as he does, and then all of his attention snaps to the man sitting cross-legged on the far side of the glade. He takes one step forward, then another, and Zagreus can see the movement of his shoulders as he takes a deep breath and breaks into a run.

The sound of his footfalls is enough to make Cody look up, and the sight of his general brings him instantly to his feet. Obi-Wan slams into him at top speed, but Cody catches his weight easily, digging his feet into the soft earth and lifting him into the air before wrapping his arms tighter around Obi-Wan and pulling him in close.

They don’t say anything. They just hold each other, chest to chest and heart to heart, as two halves of one soul become whole once more.

Zagreus, slowly, eases the door shut behind him and steps over the bridge.

“Obi-Wan—Ob’ika, I’m—I’m so sorry,” Cody says at last, muffled through tears and the weave of Obi-Wan’s tunic. 

Obi-Wan presses one hand over the back of Cody’s head, his fingers moving restlessly through the curls as though his hand can’t decide between holding Cody in place, stroking his hair, or pulling him down.

“Hush,” he says, gently, so gently. “Hush, now. It wasn’t your fault.”

He pulls back, just enough so that they can look at each other. He moves his hands to cradle Cody’s face, stroking his thumbs beneath the tender curve of Cody’s eyes and wiping away the tears as they fall. Wetness glistens on both their cheeks, reflecting pale blue and pink in the faint Underworld light.

“I love you,” Cody says, gulping. “I always have, and I always will. Obi-Wan, I—“

And Obi-Wan just pulls their lips together in a kiss that feels as inevitable and unending as the collision of two tectonic plates, slow and earth-shaking, so tender that Zagreus has to look away. They’re together now, he thinks. And they always will be.

He picks his way past the two of them on light feet with his heart singing in his chest. He sends a quick prayer of thanks to the Fates, because this does seem kind, just as kind as Cody and Obi-Wan deserve, though he knows that isn’t how the Fates work.

“Wait,” Obi-Wan calls before Zagreus can make it to the door. 

Zagreus turns around, caught out, to find Obi-Wan and Cody with their foreheads pressed together by the curve of the river. Obi-Wan pulls away for a second to reach for his belt, and he unclips Stygius with one practiced movement. 

“I won’t be needing this any more,” he calls as he tosses Zagreus his blade. He tilts his head until it touches the side of Cody’s, and he sighs with so much joy and relief that his whole body sags with it. “I’m home.”

Cody chokes in another unsteady breath as a tear slips, unbidden, down his cheek. Obi-Wan looks towards Cody with a smile, eyes twinkling, and Zagreus grins. This is it, he thinks. This is what makes it all worth it.

“Zagreus,” Cody says. His voice is rough, and his eyes haven’t once left Obi-Wan’s. “Thank you. Will you come back?”

“Definitely,” Zagreus promises. This is the first of the reunions that he’s actually been able to witness, and he can’t wait to hear their story now that he knows it has a happy ending.

Then Cody eyes flick to his, and a grin hovers around the corners of his mouth. “Then come back later, shiny.”

So Zagreus leaves them to it, to all the laughter and the stories and the tears, and wonders exactly who he’ll find next.