It took Loki a minute to process where he was, and what had happened. He removed the damp towel Eros had placed on his forehead, and he sat up slowly on the sofa.
Eros was smoking on the sofa opposite him. Between them, on the coffee table, was the Bowl of Fate. It was cold and lifeless once again, only hinting to its vibrant past, with the same wistful whisper as a fossil.
“What the bloody hell happened?” Loki slurred.
“In short,” Eros ashed his cigarette in the tray, “you and I will never be going to Tartarus.”
Loki pulled his brows together, remembering. “You gave them the Bowl of Fate?”
Eros crossed his legs, and said defensively, “Yeah, but I got it back.”
“No… that was brilliant!”
Eros flushed. “Well, it was easy to make them desire to leave us alone.”
“Yes, but now it’s fated that they do. I never thought of you as a trickster.” Loki leaned forward, groaning from the weight he endured, and took Eros’s cigarette to take a few inhales himself.
Eros chuckled, “Apollo would disagree with that.”
Loki handed him back his cigarette. “Regardless. We won the battle… all thanks to my hoarding of useless junk.” Loki gave him a coy smile, and Eros squinted his eyes back.
“Oh,” Eros recalled, “we did have a visitor while you were unconscious. Thanatos’s weapon… His son.”
“Say again?” Loki asked in disbelief.
Eros sighed and rubbed his temple, “The son found his way home... Give to the father of none when you tell him he has a son. The Fates told me. The boy is Death’s son. He caused the hole in Tartarus by escaping, but they let him escape as a message, I suppose.”
Loki’s face was scrunched with thought. “What the hell is the message, exactly?”
Eros’s brows shot up. The answer was obvious to him. Thanatos had been the leader of the whole rebellion against the Fates, despite the flaws in his leadership skills.
“The message was not to fuck with them. If he could have a son, and never know of him, if they could manipulate the situation so that Thanatos is his holding his very own son prisoner in his basement, and the only reason Thanatos has him now is because the Fates allowed it, and they could easily take the boy away again- that’s an evident don’t fuck with us maneuver. It’s a show to illustrate just how rigged the whole bleeding system really is.”
The giant was quiet for a long minute, his eyes distant and pondering. His fingers were laced together but were wriggling around nervously.
He finally brought his eyes back to Eros. “This is going to kill him,” he said.
Eros gave a small sympathetic nod, and Loki abruptly stood, again groaning at the strain in his joints.
“Where are you going?” Eros asked. They had so much to talk through, so much to understand and unpack after this ordeal, and yet, Loki was walking out of the room.
“To fulfill the prophecy.” Loki turned back to face him, “I can’t let him go a second longer than need be without knowing the truth.”
Eros hopped to his feet, offering, “I’ll go with you.”
“No.” Loki held up a hand. “It’s best I go alone. You should rest.”
“I’m fine. You’re the one who looks like hammered hell.”
Loki’s eyes glinted. “Funny.” He trudged his way up the stairs and upon entering the office, his gaze immediately fell upon the red bottle. It had a magnetism, an ominous one, that Loki was entirely bitter to.
He snatched it up as if it was a lurking intruder and held it up to his eye level to give it a good stare-down. He still didn’t know what the bottle was, but if it was some device the Fates concocted, it was as dangerous as that bowl was.
With the bottle held tight in his fist, he trotted down the stairs, doing his best to ignore the pain shooting up his back.
Eros waited, arms folded, for him at the foot of the stairs. “Your desire to help your friend is a noble one, but I still think we have a lot to talk through before you go. The boy told me things that-”
“We will have all the time in the world to talk when I get back. He needs to know before he does something he can’t take back.”
“I think it’s too late for that.”
Loki made a mess of facial expressions while mentally assembling his rebuttal, “...Before he does anything else he can’t take back.”
Eros nodded.
“I’ll be back before you know it, and we will talk about everything, and we’ll drink tea and brandy. We’ll get wildly pissed, and nearly forget this whole thing ever happened.”
“I don’t want to forget,” Eros said.
“I said nearly forget not completely forget.”
They looked at each other for a moment, and Loki grabbed Eros by the back of the neck and sweetly kissed his forehead. “Be back in a jiffy.”
Loki then disappeared.
Eros felt the silence creep into his being. He remembered being alone, acutely alone, in the Red Room. He remembered why he hated being alone.
***
Loki had appeared at Death’s door. It was massive and black. The mansion to which it opened expanded past the limits of imagination. It was unknowingly immense in stature and in presence.
Loki took hold of the lionhead knocker and rapped three times.
A drunk and disheveled Thanatos opened the door. He took one look at Loki and walked away, leaving the door open.
He still had a glass of scotch in hand, and he took a sip before asking, “Why are you here? Shouldn’t you be in Tartarus?”
Loki cautiously approached him. “Eros saved me from the Underworld in true Greek fashion.”
Thanatos snorted, “Greek fashion. If that was the case, he would have second guessed, and you wouldn’t be here at all… except Tartarus and the Underworld are two completely different places, Loki. You should know that.”
Loki pressed his lips together then said, “Yes, well... I’m happy to see you too.”
Death waved away the conversation with the flick of his wrist and took another burning gulp of scotch.
Loki stepped across the hall, moving closer to Death. “Thanatos, you sold us out to the Fates.”
“Yes… I did.”
“And you knew what they were going to do? And you did it anyway?”
“Yes. I did.”
“Then why did you do it? Even if you had a plan to save us you still-”
“And the plan was a failure. It was a wing and a prayer at best.” The self-deprecating tones in Thanatos’s voice panged at Loki’s heart.
“Listen,” Loki said, “that’s- that’s not why I’m here. I need to tell you-”
“To tell me what?” Thanatos turned. He slammed his glass down on a hall table and said, “If you aren’t here to chastise me for my careless actions, my self-serving motives, and my complete lack of empathy, then why the fuck are you here? Any other reason you might have to entertain my presence is absurd. But, you’ve always been absurd, haven’t you? People have kicked you like a dog all of your existence, and you just keep coming back for more! How are Thor and Odin by the way? Have you told them about Eros yet, or are you afraid to? I would be.”
Thanatos began to chuckle quietly as he picked his drink back up and finished it off.
In the spot where Thanatos’s drink had previously sat, Loki slammed down the red bottle. “That’s for you. It’s a gift,” Loki snarled the last word. In the land of gods and spirits, you never can refuse a gift. “...from the Fates.”
Loki turned to walk out of the mansion, while Thanatos stared blankly at the ruby-red perfume bottle.
Loki stopped in the doorway. “Oh, and by the way,” he turned back to face his friend, “...that boy you’ve been torturing in your basement… He’s your son.”
Thanatos’s expression remained the same, still and void, as Loki stormed from Death’s mansion, slamming the door behind him.
Death left the bottle where it was, and after a time had passed of him staring at the door, he walked back towards the kitchen.
There, in the kitchen, was the white wooden door which opened to the basement. Under the ornate, tarnished door knob, was the tarnished, little skeleton key. It was in the locked position, holding inside, behind thick walls of magick, a new god, a strange boy, his son.
His hand hovered over the key, his fingers trembled, the drink ran down his veins to his feet, leaving behind a glorious hangover headache.
The Fates had sent him. The Fates had made them cross paths, and had put him in the basement. In true Greek fashion, they had designed this tragedy.
But to blame the Fates was easy, so he did the hard thing, the thing he always did.
He blamed himself.
He killed everything he touched. He was Death. This was his role in the universe, to be the devourer of all things, and he accepted his fate.
His fingers fell away from the key, and he slipped away from the door.
***
The Fates floated in the darkness at the very edge of the expanse of the Cosmos. Drifting in endless space their bodies had no form, no mass. They were three consciousnesses syncing as one, looking at the distant glittering of stars in the way only bodiless creatures can look and see, and they spoke to each other in that same way.
“I do love it when the tapestry we weave pulls through.”
“The mistakes only add to the beauty, I believe. Don’t you?”
“But it is incomplete, sister-children of mine.”
“Ends remain untied and finishing touches must be applied.”
“But until then, can we not marvel and appreciate the hard work is done?”
“And, remember, as we float, the end has already begun.”
“Yes, my dears. All that’s left to do is to drift and to wait…”
