.x.
When the Asgardians come, Loki is not there.
It was not unusual for their father to leave their home on Jotunheimr, sometimes for quite a while. But when Fenrir catches the scent of Asgardians coming near their home, he knows papa is not among them. Mama knows this too, if the way her shoulders tense is any indication.
Fenrir slips away from his brother and sister to come to his mother’s side. “Why are the Aesir coming, mama?” She’s peeking out the window, worry etched over her face. She glances down at her eldest son, frowning.
Instead of answering, mama ushers them all forwards and tells them to run.
“But why? Where?” Jormungandr shakes his head, slithering closer. Hel says nothing, but her shoulders are tensed and hands clenched together, finger entwined with bone. Fenrir’s tail twitches, shuffling in place as he hears the sun gods drawing near.
“North,” their mother says, looking over her shoulder. “Do not stop, just keep going until you find a safe place to hide. Wait there until your father or I—”
The only knock is the single one it takes to tear down the door. Gods and goddesses of sun-kissed skin and golden hair barge in, swarming into their home like an infestation. Angrboda shoves her children away, spinning around to yell as the Asgardians invade.
Fenrir can’t keep up with what’s happening, besides shouting and arguing and words like “monsters” and “dangerous” and “Ragnarok” being brandished like the swords and axes hanging from the Aesir’s waists. All words Fenrir has heard before, the ones he and his siblings were warned of, and it makes his blood run cold. The wolf, still but a pup, though a large one, nudges his brother towards the back door.
“We have to go!” Fenrir hisses, but Jormungandr keepings swaying his head around to look at the crowd.
“What about Hel?” The serpent cries in return, and it’s only then Fenrir notices his sister has disappeared from their side.
A high pitch scream cuts through the argument, followed by a shout of disgust. Fenrir ushers Jormungandr into a corner as they watch their little sister fight the hold of a large Asgardian. She squirms and shouts and finally digs her teeth into the god’s arm, enough to make him drop her and ask his companions about infection. Hel scrambles away while Angrboda distracts, letting Hel run towards her brothers. Fenrir takes on the appearance of a boy and Jormungandr follows suit, having been taught minor magic and glamour by their father long before. He hopes this will help them slip away — the Asgardians are looking for monsters, not children — but Fenrir truly only wants the reassurance of his hands clutched around his siblings, afraid one will slip from his grasp.
Clutching their hands, he drags them on, Angrboda yelling and screaming and throwing things to distract the group of gods while her children flee. They slip outside, the chill of the cold smacking his furless skin like frozen water, but Fenrir pushes on, not looking back. Hel keeps glancing about, for what Fenrir doesn’t know, and he has to keep yelling at her to focus on the task at hand. Jormungandr struggles to keep pace, far less used to legs than his siblings, and cries out as he stumbles and trips.
“Jor, we have to move,” Fenrir insists, panicked as his brother falls for the fourth time, slowing them all down.
He pulls him up by the arm while Jor snaps, “Not all of us know what it’s like to run!”
Fenrir almost smacks him for bringing up something as useless as that now of all times, but luckily Hel steps in by silently taking Jormungandr’s other arm and taking off at a jog once more. It’s painfully slow for Fenrir, who wishes desperately he could change both his siblings into wolves like him so they can all fly across the fields of Jotunheimr with no worry of regular gods keeping pace. A part of him wants to do so himself, but he knows he couldn’t bare leaving either sibling like that. He was the eldest, he had to protect them.
Somewhere behind them there is a great crash, and a fire grows to lick the sky.
It is Hel who pulls Fenrir from his halt, who turns him away and onward while he screams for his mother.
.x.
Asgardians are cruel.
Asgardians are traitors.
Asgardians are kinkillers.
Fenrir remembers this almost as a motto, and it’s the only thing running through his mind while his feet carry him over the ground.
“Asgardians are cruel, children,” his father had said, ever since Fenrir could remember.“Asgardians will use creatures for their own means, nothing more. They will blame you for their problems, and punish you for their misdeeds. Never trust an Asgardian, children.”
“But papa,” Fenrir had piped up once, when he was very small, too curious, and too loud.“Were you not apart of them before you met Mama?”
Father had stared at him, piercing green eyes cold and veiled. He did not answer.
.x.
“They will hate you,” father had said once, when Fenrir had wandered too far from home in search of other beings he knew must be out there. “All the realms will. They will not see you as I do.”
Fenrir didn’t understand, and said as much. Loki had sighed and stroked a hand over Fenrir’s head. “You mustn’t leave I nor your mother. You must stay here, where it’s safe, until you are grown enough to fill others with terror.”
That sounded far away, and like a bad way to make friends. “What if I don’t want that?”
Father had smirked at that, as if enjoying some private joke. “Do as you please, and then return to me when I am proved right.”
In the end, father was right. Fenrir had wandered far into the cold mountains, the chill hardly bothering him with his thick skin and fur and Jotun heritage. He met a few Frost Giant children, and had eagerly moved to make friends. It’d almost worked to, and for a few moments it was glorious to simply exchange names and see strangers smile at him. But then, the parents came, and the sting of their words were as sharp and painful as their weapons.
Fenrir returned home, limping, bleeding, and nearly crying. Mother was distressed, but father grimly silent. After mother had dressed his wounds and smoothed away his fears, he crawled into his father’s arms, mumbling that he was right. “I know,” father had murmured gently, sadly, holding him close. “I know.”
.x.
“They will call you monsters,” father added later, after Jormungandr and Hel had been born. Fenrir had noticed his brother didn’t look like him, but as neither of them looked exactly like their parents, he thought that normal. When Hel was born, looking strange but more like father and mother than himself, the pup had grown concerned. When he asked what this meant, father had said they will call you monsters and Fenrir frowned, knowing who “they” were. Those Loki had once called family.
“But we’re not monsters,” Fenrir argued, but his tone was questioning and he stared up at his father, anxious. “We’re not.”
Father sighed and took the wolf pup into his arms, smoothing down the fur on Fenrir’s head.The pup tucked himself beneath his father’s chin, focusing on the warmth of the embrace and not the chill of the topic. “Of course not, my child, of course not.” Father had spoken softly, distantly, almost as if Fenrir was not there. It wasn’t until much, much later that he realized his father had been thinking of himself, the mother of monsters. A monster himself.
.x.
Fenrir shoves his siblings into a nook created by tree roots when he hears and smells another’s approach. His senses are dulled in this form, so he cannot make out who or what the creature may be, but will take no risks when it comes to his sibling’s safety. They hunker down, Fenrir shoving them as far back into and beneath the roots as he can until Hel starts hissing she’s being smooshed.
The footsteps draw near, pause, then continue closer and Fenrir curses himself for not better concealing their tracks. He’s about to leap out, shift into his regular form and rip out the stranger’s throat, when a familiar voice speaks up.
“Children?”
Fenrir crawls from the hiding spot, kicking his siblings back into the safety of the tree until he can be sure his ears are not deceiving him. “Papa!” He cries in relief as the man standing in front of the knot of roots leans down. His green eyes flicker from child to child with clear worry while Hel and Jormungandr crawl out from their hiding spot. Fenrir thinks he’s too old for it, but charges towards his father to wrap his arms around his neck anyway, the possible loss of their mother sticking in the back of his throat. Hel and Jormungandr follow suit, and Loki is flooded with the embrace, wrapping his arms around the small group with concern.
“What’s happened?” Father asks as if he already knows the answer, and keeps his voice very carefully controlled, serious.
Fenrir looks between his siblings and his father, opening and closing his mouth but no sound is coming out. Jormungandr is stumbling over his words and looks ready to cry, and so it’s Hel who finally explains with her father’s same steely composure.
“Asgardians.”
Loki curses violently, which would be hilarious any other time but now is just worrying, and shoots to his feet. He looks over the expanse of terrain his children had just covered, waving his hand and muttering something which made any trace of their escape disappear. Though their home is no longer in sight, smoke still rises into the sky. “Angrboda,” he says softly, staring at the blackened clouds. His expression is pained, then furious, then restructured into a stoic mask. He looks back to his children, and they pretend they didn’t notice.
“Stay here, and stay hidden. Only move if they come again,” he orders, as if speaking to a miniature army of a wolf-boy, snake-child, and half living girl. “Am I clear?” Fenrir glances at Jormungandr, who turns his head between him and Hel, who gives them both a short glance. They all nod. Loki nods in return, sighing quietly as comes before them and kneels down, drawing them close. They all huddle near, Fenrir burying his face into his father’s shoulder while the man briefly strokes his hair. Father smells of spice and earth, and Fenrir suddenly worries this may be the last time he’ll smell him. He presses closer, reminding himself that neither wolves nor big brothers cry. (Young sons might, a small voice in the back of his head speaks up, in time with Loki’s caresses.)
Loki pulls back enough to look them all in the eye, and Fenrir is quick to make sure his own are dry. “Stay together. Family stays together. We’re all we have. Remember that.”
When father stands to leave, hesitating for a moment before pressing quick kisses to Fenrir’s, Jormungandr’s and Hel’s foreheads, he eyes them for a long moment to make sure they hide themselves properly. They do so, and remain silent as any sound of Loki’s presence disappears.
Fenrir peeks up over the roots, finding their father gone and the smoke in the distance still rising. When he looks back to his siblings, they return his stare solemnly. Hel nods, Jormungandr bites his lip then does the same, and Fenrir sets his jaw.
Their discussion is quick and silent, decision reached. They are their father’s children.
.x.