THE SHE-WOLF AND THE RAVEN

Chapter 13: Tønsberg

"This was Elder Thunderbird that was killed by K'wati. His younger brother still lives and goes back and forth looking for his brother. The anger which flashes from his eyes may be seen in every storm cloud. You can hear the noise when he flaps his wings in rage."

Oooooo

Leah pulled her leather jacket closer around her as they walked, not out of cold but out of nervousness. She felt the eyes drilling into her back and she fought the urge to turn around and glare. She hated feeling so exposed. At Fenris' side, they moved as the fulcrum of undiluted attention of all the villagers who lined up along the cobblestone streets to watch them.

They were not humans. While their appearances and clothes easily hid them from obvious notice of regular humans, her senses were fine-tuned to "otherness." She could sense the power emanating from them in waves, similar to what washed off of Fenris when he first transformed from wolf form and similar to what she still felt in his presence. Her wolf senses prickled and screamed "not human" within her as she felt herself surrounded by the strange crowd.

She was glad Fenris had spared the pups of this all too public spectacle. When a man Fenris obviously recognized came and obsequiously knelt before him, Fenris sent the pups with him.

"Take my children to whoever oversees the royal household and see they are fed and refreshed," Fenris stated (with full confidence his order would be obeyed without question). The man bowed again and led all five pups along a side street. Leah could only nod at them in reassurance as they left, trusting their father knew what was best for them.

Leah realized (not for the first time that week) that she really had no idea what she signed up for when she imprinted on that white wolf in a Canadian forest.

It was the immediate respect and reverence assigned Fenris by those who greeted him which made his previously out-of-place arrogance fall into a more understandable context. He walked like he owned the earth around him because he was used to owning the earth around him. He came from a place where it was the role of the earth to shift beneath his movements and was rarely bothered to shift himself to accommodate the earth.

Fenris walked taller, straighter, and with greater grace than she had ever seen as he followed a woman who led them to "the king's house." Internally, she could tell it was both the clicking into place of old habits…and a conflicted anxiety over what he was again immersing himself in that made him respond in forced composure to hide how truly discomposed he felt. He was both confused and dismayed and amused and horrified by what he saw around him and she didn't know what it was about the village around him that elicited his response.

Then again, she was used to not understanding much when it came to Fenris. He was as obtuse as obsidian in a ray of sunlight and he preferred to keep it that way. If she didn't have the insight granted to her through their bond into the window of his emotions, she doubted she would know him at all. He certainly seemed intent on building as high of walls around himself as possible and only granting the most elusive, misguiding perceptions of himself to the outside world. His facial expressions rarely matched his emotional status and he guarded his inner world as a wolf guards his territory.

Initially, she had thought of him as two separate beings-the wolf and the man. In the former, she knew a loyal, warm, playful soul, and the latter a proud, prickly, disdainful spirit. It baffled her mind how the two could share one being. It was only as she felt him struggle with whatever realizations he came to after Seth's revelations that she realized she had been wrong. The wolf and the man were the same.

Fenris wore his human facade as a mask, hiding the wolf from the world. In his wolf form, he hadn't felt the need to hide or masquerade as something else. It was as if in his wolf form, he removed layer upon layer of thick, calloused scar tissue formed from an infinite number of old wounds. In human form, he wore the scars as a shield, as a smokescreen, to protect what lay beneath, but she wondered if the wolf were not his truest measure of himself. Even as a wolf, she felt the fragile schisms of the scars, but he was not hidden behind ossified skepticism and disdain but free to romp unburdened like a pup in snow.

She remembered how, as a wolf, he preened in delight at her presence and companionship. At that time, he allowed himself to rely on her, need her, and be admired by her. Why would his desires be any different now that he was in the form of a man?

Except he wasn't really a man…or was he? Could she even classify him as human? (Then again, could she even classify herself as fully human?)

She could still feel him fighting their bond, refusing to give in or even consider what would happen if he did surrender. She did the same, out of her own pride and fear of appearing weak. They were both too proud and too stubborn to grant victory to the other and they were both too broken to risk rejection. Why should she be the one to initiate and risk herself first? Let him sort himself out and be a stubborn, lonely beast if that's what he wanted.

Then as she felt him internally combust after Seth's revelations, she knew she couldn't do it. As tied as she was to him, she could not watch him flounder and lash about like a fish on a hook without doing everything within her power to assist him.

It was a wolf thing. The role of the wolf and their imprint was to be together, no matter what. They were a bonded pair, mates who were meant to face the world together. She would do her best to make sure he was not alone, even if he pretended he wanted to be.

She shifted her perception of him in her mind to that of the wolf she had known and shared a life with. She preferred not to think too hard on the implications of this shift, especially as she busied herself with preparations for their impromptu trip. They had enough other things to worry about (like how to transport three giant wolves across an ocean and continent) for her to concern herself with all the ways her perception of her world had shattered and been remade.

After days spent roiling between crushing guilt, anger, fear, and panic, she was more than happy to prod him out the door and onto an airplane to find his mysterious and heretofore unmentioned "brother." He needed to know what became of his family. She understood that. She would have felt the same way if she didn't have her family right in front of her nose. He'd let her drag him from Canada to Washington to check on her brother. It was only fair that she accompany him to find his.

Now, as they walked uphill through the cobbled streets of this tiny Norwegian village, and she felt his unease grow, she knew she had made the right decision. If there were fewer eyes on them, she would not have hesitated to take his hand in hers, but as it was, every single person they passed stopped what they were doing to stare at them and then kneel to the stony ground in an obvious show of reverence.

Yeah. It would have been nice to be warned that he was some kind of alien royalty before he brought her home to "meet the family." But that was part of his game. She knew this. He liked to ruffle her feathers and watch her flounder and he'd give her that irritatingly smug expression as she embarrassed herself. He intentionally withheld information from her simply to exasperate her.

She could learn to play this game. She'd just have to prove herself unruffled by anything he threw at her-even hundreds of aliens kneeling before him.

The grey-haired woman brought them to a large wooden and stone building on the pinnacle of the hill overlooking the town beneath. She opened up the large door, made of rough-hewn planks of wood well-weathered by the cold sea winds, and she ushered them inside.

"These are the chambers of the king," she said with a polite bow and she closed the door after them without another word.

It was the smell that hit them first. A thick, stagnant concoction formed of stale alcohol, forgotten food and, long unwashed bodies encompassed them and Leah fought back her grimace. She was suddenly grateful that Fenris had sent the children elsewhere as she now had the feeling whatever they were about to come across might not be suitable for their young eyes.

"Impressive," Leah said under her breath as she nearly tripped over a pile of bottles strewn across the hallway. In the dim light, her wolf eyes could see the trail of bottles continued like a trail of breadcrumbs to what they assumed was their destination.

"He typically is," Fenris responded in confusion as he spared a glance around what could scarcely be classified as a "royal" setting.

Their quiet footsteps drew no reception and it wasn't until they reached the end of the hallway that they could catch a glimpse of any other living beings. Where the hallway poured out into a large, high-vaulted sitting room, they saw the flashing lights of a television giving the only illumination into the otherwise dark room. The thick, brocade curtains barricaded the outside light from entry through the windows facing the wharf. A series of mismatched sofas and chairs lay strewn across the room-some torn and shredded into pieces, others balanced precariously on missing legs, and all covered in layers of bottles and trash.

"Yeah, I can see why you don't talk about your brother much," she said in a whisper as she took in the room.

He failed to answer but she could feel a growing undercurrent of unease within him that he failed to express on his stoic face. Whatever they were walking into, it was decidedly not what he expected to find.

The largest sofa in the room was covered in a blanket which rose and fell with the rumbling breath of the immense being. All she could see, other than the great size of the figure, was a great pile of unkempt blond hair that covered every exposed surface above the blanket. A large ax lay beside the sofa, next to what appeared to be a domino run of overturned bottles. Upon the blanket covering the figure, an open pizza box, long cooled and overturned, covered both the blanket and the side of the couch with marinara sauce trails. Each breath that rose and fell from the sleeping figure was punctuated by snores and snorts which rattled the room.

Fenris stood frozen in the room, his keen eyes falling upon every corner in quick succession before he approached the figure on the couch. With one eyebrow raise, he pulled back the blanket to expose a pale, fleshly mountain of a bare chest, clothed only in piles of hair that fell in coarse, braided locks from both the beard and head and down the ample chest.

Fenris gaped at first. Then he raised the man's rotund arm over his head and let it flutter back into its former place. The man snorted but failed to wake or notice the disturbance. With a menacing grin, Fenris grabbed hold of the arm again, but this time Fenris' hand up to his elbow gradually turned a pale shade of blue. As he did, a dark shadow fell on the pale flesh encircled by his arm. The man woke with a startled snort and gracelessly fumbled into a fighting posture, a clear handprint burned into his arm.

"Show yourself, foul villain!" the man stammered with a slurred, sleepy voice. The ax sprung into his hand, though he nearly dropped it in the next moment as he couldn't quite maintain his balance and he tottered precariously towards the wall.

"Ah, where is the fun in that?" Fenris said and he vanished from sight. The man, who more than towered over her in height, eyed Leah with red, dim eyes and a look of baffled confusion.

"Why have you so accosted me, good lady?" he asked. "And who are you? Have you come to fix the cable?"

"I did not. I am Leah. Umm, it's, uh, nice to meet you," she stammered back as she sought out Fenris' now invisible form.

"Don't believe her, brother. With a stench as you have on you, it benefits no fair maiden to make your acquaintance," came the disembodied voice from beyond her shoulder. The man swung around so fast he crushed three bottles under his feet, and though his feet were bare, he showed no sign of noticing that he now walked upon broken glass.

"Loki?" The man said as he blinked blearily into the empty space the voice had come from and flung his arms around him. He made a groan has he made contact with an invisible body and within a split second, Fenris reappeared and flipped his brother onto the ground with a dagger to his throat.

"You have grown fat and slow, Thunderer," Fenris said with a sharp-toothed grin. He drew the dagger in a thin line across his brother's neck, calling out a small beaded line of blood. "It took two moves to best you instead of four."

"Loki?" the man said. "Am I dreaming?"

"If you were dreaming, you would surely be less repugnant than you currently are. Don't you bathe, man? The King of Asgard remains half-clothed and more than half-drunk at only midday? You are a disgrace. Frigga would have never allowed it-from Odin or you."

"Loki?" the man said again, blatantly ignoring both Fenris' comments and the knife at his neck. He blinked his bleary eyes again and again and lifted his hands to drag them along Fenris' cheek and down his chest, as if he were a blind man seeing for the first time.

"For the love of Valhalla!" Fenris said and with a wave of his hands, a wooden bucket appeared. He splashed it onto his brother's head. The man gave a startled shout and jumped up, pieces of ice and streams of water falling after him as he did.

"Argh! What was that for?"

"Your senses are dull. I wish to waken them."

"I am awake!"

"Hmmm. I am yet to be convinced."

With another wave of his hand, a second bucket of frigid water appeared and faced a similar fate.

"Loki! Enough!" the man said as he shook the water off his knotted hair and bare chest. Bits of ice now mixed with shards of glass across the floor and the water pooled in puddles on the wood floorboards. The man grasped Fenris around the shoulders again and shook him. "Why are you alive? You were dead…," the man said, continuing to eye Fenris dubiously.

"That, dear brother, is a question I ask myself every day and that I tire of answering to every person I cross paths with. It can hardly be attributed to a lack of efforts made to the contrary, by myself or by both my abundance of allies and enemies. I am alive for a reason only the Norns can adequately answer, no thanks to you, you great oaf. Did you even pause to ensure I was dead before you left me on Svartaflheim?"

"You…you died. I saw you! I held you in my arms as you took your last breath!" the man said, pain clearly written across his features at the memory.

"Ah, it would have made a moving saga, to be sure, the way you tell it. All the bards would no doubt compete for the honor of telling such a tale of brotherly devotion and bravery and sacrifice."

"You survived?"

"No, Thor. I am dead now. You are speaking with my ghost. I have returned from my hallowed place in Valhalla to exhort you for your drunken, slatternly appearance and remind you to act like a king."

"Loki is alive," the man replied in an awed whisper. In the blink of an eye, Fenris was captured in a wet hug by his half-clothed brother. Fenris' eye grew wide before he curved his lips in disgust. He tried, and failed, to extricate himself from his brother's tight grip. He ceased his efforts to escape when his brother's sobs shook through his shoulders and filled the room.

"We thought you dead. We mourned you. All Asgard mourned you…again. How could you do this to me, to us, again?" the man forced out between gasps.

Fenris rolled his eyes. "It was a glorious end. A fitting end. How could I ever match its equal? I prefer to leave the stage when all would still applaud my departure than to maintain the charade long after my presence is no longer desired," he said. While Fenris' tone dripped with bitterness, it overlaid a deep well of pain and insecurity that Leah had only ever seen glimpses of. Now it bubbled up and through him, even as he tried to cork its source with sarcasm and feigned nonchalance.

"So you came to Midgard? To do what? Another attempt to conquer its people and subject them to your tyranny?" The man said as he pulled back to stare his brother in the eyes. He held onto Fenris' shoulders with a tight grip and Fenris scoffed, though, internally the statement was met with both a spike of pain and anger.

"Hardly," Fenris said as he rolled his eyes. "Though my family may disagree." He tilted his head in Leah's direction as he spoke. "Thor, King of Asgard, may I present Lady Leah Harrydottir of the Land of Clear Waters, Warrior Maiden of the Quileute, and Midgardian Shape-Shifter."

The tall, gargantuan man now turned a curious gaze to her, though he failed to release his brother as he did.

"Forgive my poor manners, good lady," Thor said. "I am disconcerted at the sudden appearance of a brother long considered lost to me. It is an honor to meet one so distinguished."

He gave her a closer appraisal before taking her hand in his and placing a wet, hairy kiss upon her knuckles.

"It's, uh, nice to meet you," she replied awkwardly, wishing, not for the first time, she had been given some semblance of a tutorial in etiquette before being thrown into such a first meeting.

"Give her space, you great oaf. She will hardly be impressed if she must tolerate your stench for any great length of time," Fenris said as he gave his brother's shoulder a hard shove.

"Truly, Loki?" Thor asked. "You have dwelt in Midgard without mischief, conquest, or tyranny? Good lady, I hardly dare to hope he speaks truth. Perhaps you may inform me if it is otherwise?"

"Well, I don't think he will openly admit to being the one conquered and subjected to my tyranny, though he has whined about both since the day we first met," she responded with one eyebrow raised.

Thor let out a loud, booming laugh and smacked his brother so hard on the back that Fenris flinched and stumbled forward slightly before glaring at his brother.

"The lady speaks truly," Fenris replied, giving Leah an amused glare. "I am afraid I have kept all my mischief and tyranny within the bounds of our family and have conquered naught but a small plot of Midgardian forest inhabited by only a few wildlife creatures."

"But you have now returned and you will stay with me here and all will be well now that you have come back to us," Thor said with undisguised optimism. He ruffled Fenris into another inescapable hug and tears gathered in his eyes again.

"Enough of this sentimentality! What has occurred to turn the lauded warrior of Asgard into this blubbering, blubbery mess?"

At that Thor collapsed back onto the couch, not minding the pizza box and sitting right in the midst of the cold remnants of food. He motioned for his guests to follow suit, though they both struggled to find seats both sturdy enough and clean enough to host them.

"It's not easy being king, Loki," Thor began in a solemn tone, still slightly slurred. As Fenris and Leah sat before him, Thor felt around his feet till he grasped a half-full bottle of something clear and fragrant and drank it all in one gulp before discarding it and reaching around for another. He sighed when his search bore nothing but empty bottles. Then he rubbed his forehead with one hand before he took a deep breath and braced himself to continue.

"Since you've been gone, a lot has occurred. I had to kill Thanos twice-no easy feat. I spoke with mother and mourned father. Our sister from Hell destroyed my hammer and so I had no choice but to destroy all Asgard. But, don't worry, Rabbit and I travelled to Nidavellir to make this fine axe you now see instead. Our sister also took my eye, but Rabbit gave me a new one, see?" he said. Then he popped an eye out of his head and held it out to his brother with a pleased look on his face.

"Oh, by the wings of the Valkyrie, put your eye back in your head, Thor. The lady and I have no wish to see you removing parts of your body," Fenris said in disgust as he moved back from Thor's outstretched hand. "What is all this about? You are uttering nonsense. Thor, we have no sister. You cannot possibly have spoken with mother, and what do you mean that you destroyed Asgard? If it is a jest, it is a poor one."

Thor replaced the eye in his socket and gave a deep-throated sigh, which might have been interpreted as full of the solemn weight of his responsibilities, if it were not interrupted by a bout of hiccups.

"I assure you, it is all as true as you are sitting here in front of me now…unless you are not really sitting in front of me now. That reminds me-I ought to be more cautious these days-which Loki are you?"

"Which Loki? What in the Nine Realms is that to mean?" Fenris asked as he sat farther forward in his chair. It squeaked angrily at the movement, but Fenris ignored it as he fixed all his attention on his brother. "May the Norns help us all if there is more than one of me masquerading as myself in the universe!"

"Oh, I merely need to be sure. One cannot be too cautious these days. What happened after I retrieved you from Stark's tower?"

Fenris rubbed his temples with his long fingers and sighed. "Must we dwell on that humiliation again?"

"Please, brother, this is important."

"Fine. I returned to face Asgardian justice and your father locked me in a prison cell for the remainder of my life. Then you sprung me from my cell to assist in the removal of the Aether from your Midgardian beloved, a cause which we both thought I gave my life for. Unfortunately for both of us, I survived. Then I traveled to Midgard via a portal caused by the Convergence. I have remained here ever since."

"Not possible. We have had no reports of problems or use of magic from our Midgardian magic-wielders or allies. Where did you really go? Were you assisting your former ally, Thanos, or are you the Loki who stole the Tesseract after the Battle of New York in one of the other time streams?"

"My former ally…stealing the Tesseract...You are quite mad!" Fenris answered, his mouth agape and anger plain on his face before he replaced it with calculating sarcasm. "I take it all back. I died on Svartalfheim and am now a ghost. I am set on terrorizing all who cross my path and now it is your turn to face my vengeance."

"More believable than your first tale," Thor replied, too solemn a response for the clearly mocking tone Fenris had used. "Though if you are bound to the afterlife, I swear on the uru of Mjolnir that I will bargain for your care in Valhalla so that the sun may shine on us again and that we may fight side-by-side in the next life."

"You are madder than a rabid ice hound, Thor," Fenris hissed. He rose to his feet, clearly intending to leave.

"Brother-where are you going?" Thor asked, suddenly panicking and clawing at his brother's shirt to plead with him to stay.

"I am going to speak to whoever actually rules Asgard, as I can see plainly that it is not you."

"Do not leave me, brother! Even if you are but a ghost, I prefer to see your apparition than be parted from your side!"

"As touching and utterly disturbing as that is, I am afraid I must insist we leave you to both rest and bathe and clothe yourself properly. In two hours' time, I expect to see you-and this disgusting hovel-made appropriate for guests and only then we will return," Fenris said as he stood and motioned for Leah to follow after him. They could hear the rattling of bottles behind them as they headed towards the hall and Fenris paused for a moment before Thor cried out and a bottle crashed to the floor. Fenris gave a self-satisfied smirk before he continued walking.

"What did you do?" Leah asked.

"I turned every bottle of strong drink in this abode into cat urine. I also expect to see him more sober than he is now before I introduce him to the children."

Thor gave disgruntled cry and another bottle crashed. Leah muffled her laugh under her hand and followed Fenris out the door. They both paused to inhale the cold, sea air deeply into their lungs and let its clean, freshness wipe away the stagnant air they still felt clinging to their clothes. Leah gazed out into the harbor where the fishing boats lay moored and bobbed up and down under gentle swells

"Why does he call you Loki?" she asked Fenris quietly.

He sighed. "There are some names I prefer to let die along with my former life."

"Your former life that has a past of conquest and tyranny?"

"Only one such unfortunate incident. Now I am reformed," he answered lightly, though she could taste the regret beneath.

"You conveniently left out a few more important details about yourself, oh prince."

"Once a prince. No longer. As I said, I'm reformed."

On catching her probing expression he sank inwards on himself slightly and changed his tone to one more somber. "That particular detail hardly seemed relevant as one tends to be removed from the line of succession after death."

She sighed. "How many times has your family thought you were dead?" she asked, thinking back to Thor's crestfallen expression as he spoke of his brother's death in his arms.

"More than once, though in each case it was the managing to survive that was the error, not the appearance of death."

"Right. Loki…," she began, but he interrupted her.

"Call me Fenris," he asked. "As I said, who I once was died and I have no wish to resurrect that man again."

"Fine. Fenris, why didn't you tell your brother you were alive sooner?"

"I prefer a life in exile over a life in prison," he answered succinctly. "I never planned to let my brother know I still lived. You can say we last parted on positive terms and I preferred to keep it that way."

"Positive terms? Thinking you are dead is a positive impression?"

"I have long told you that you are not the only one to have a complicated relationship with your supposed kin."

She harrumphed and crossed her arms over her chest. "Right. Understatement of the century, I think. So, let me get this straight. Your alien brother, who is also the supposed king of a tiny village in Norway but looks more like the town drunk, now thinks you are a ghost. Does that pretty much sum today up?"

"For a first reunion, I think it went quite well," Fenris said letting a half-smile play on his lips. "He neither beat me to a bloody pulp, threatened my life, nor took me as his captive to lock me away forever. Considering our most recent interactions, I consider this our most heart-warming and positive reunion in decades."

Leah snorted and took his arm in hers and leaned her head against his shoulder. He was, once again, hiding the conflicted feelings the meeting with his brother had elicited with a mask, but she did not wish to pry further just yet.

"Well, let's celebrate the small victories then…is there something else to eat or drink in this place other than cat urine and stale pizza?" She asked instead.

Fenris broke into a full laugh. "Judging by the width of Thor's girth, I have high hopes…unless the glutton reserves it all for himself. Come, my lady, let us find who actually rules Asgard and hope they are someone of greater sense and hospitality than King Thor," Fenris said.

He took her arm and led her down the cobbled street and back towards the heart of the village.

oooooo

Author's Note: This got done early, so here it is. ;)