Who: Fenrir [narrative] When: Shortly after his talk with Tyr Where: Near Central Park What: Fenrir makes a decision.
He didn't normally like heights, but the fire escape he'd perched himself on had proved to be a good place for thinking. From it, the alley and the street beyond were spread out below him, and he could see every angle and shadow of it. He imagined that was how Loki saw things, the potential actions and reactions all clear and obvious to him.
That wasn't the case for Fenrir, unfortunately. As he leaned against the metal of the fire escape, the horn sitting in his lap, Fenrir came to the conclusion that he was nowhere near smart enough to have the potential fate of the world in his hands.
Fenrir wasn't Odin or Thor. He wasn't his father or Hel. Questions of fate and destiny and predetermination made him tired and angry. He was a wolf at heart and still mostly a wolf in mind, and losing himself in the concerns of a normal wolf had been a wonderful relief for him. He'd hidden for centuries as nothing more than a wolf. Certainly not a monster. Certainly not the son of the trickster, the murderer of the All-Father.
He supposed that he was done pretending now, at least.
But that still left him with Heimdall's horn in his lap, and the potential to start the end of days within his grasp. He knew the story. The all knew the story. The horn would sound, and the earth would shake, and it would all come to a bloody end before whoever was left over began again. The story says Heimdall blows the horn, though, Fenrir thought, kicking his legs aimlessly. So if I do it, it won't count. Nothing will happen.
It was a comforting thought, but Fenrir also knew that it wasn't quite right. The story was already all twisted. Fenrir was free, Gleipnir a distant memory, and he was shaped like a man. Even when he took on his real form, he was just a regular-sized wolf. He didn't tower over humans, his jaws didn't scrap the top of the sky. Hati and Skoll were human, too. Odin was missing. Tyr had both hands. Everything was different. Safer for him to assume that blowing the horn would start Ragnarok, then.
He turned the horn over in his hands. So skilled, human hands. There wasn't much they couldn't do, unless something with hurt feelings and sharp teeth came and bit one off. Tyr would die, if he blew the horn. They'd all die. And granted, that had always been a given. But there was a huge difference between a death that was inevitable and distance, and a death that was sitting in front of him, ripe for the taking. Fenrir let the horn drop into his lap, put his head in his hands, and sighed. It was one of the more distinctly human gestures he'd ever made.
He had to be reasonable about this. He had to think this through. Going on instinct and hunger would be a bad idea.
Why blow the horn? Well, it would make Loki happy, for one. Some kind of happy, anyway. And Fenrir felt a desperate, puppyish urge to please daddy, even if he also wanted to smack his father across the head more often then not. If Fenrir was honest, most of what he'd done in the past month or so had been to please Loki. But bringing Ragnarok might make the others happy, too. Even if it ended in their deaths, it was at least an end. It was a finale to the thousands and thousands of years of waiting, of skirting around each other, of knowing all the gory details of their final minutes. It would bring them all some peace.
Fenrir wasn't quite sure if most of his pantheon deserved peace, actually, but there wasn't much avoiding it either way . That was another point. Ragnarok was going to happen. Why fight it? He'd stopped bashing himself against the cage and rubbing his skin raw against Gleipnir when it became clear that it was an unwinnable fight. Running from the end was about the same. And at least he'd get to tear Odin apart. Fenrir smiled a little. That would be worth a lot, to have Odin's blood running down his throat. Revenge was a good motivation.
But even as he smiled, the worry nagged at his mind. Everyone would die. Everyone. The humans and the gods alike would drown and burn and be torn apart. He hated this city, but that didn't mean the thought of it and everyone in it as a bloodstained ruin pleased him. Fenrir had never been cruel; he killed to survive, nothing more. The thought of destroying everything really didn't hold an appeal. He could have cared less about the humans, but the other god-things he'd met, the ones who'd been kind to him...he didn't know what would happen to them. He didn't want them to die.
He didn't want his family to die, either. Not Loki, not his siblings, not his sons. The thought of any of them being gone permanently made a whine rise in his throat. Fenrir didn't want to be responsible in any way for their deaths, even if those deaths were fated to happen. And he supposed what was standing out starkest in his mind was that he didn't want to die either.
Locked below the earth, sunlight and freedom just a distant memory, death had seemed sweet. An end to pain and suffering, and a chance to make his tormenters pay with their lives. The Fenrir of myth wouldn't have hesistaed. Bring the end, and let it be bloody and terrible for everyone. Let them all suffer.
But he'd spent a thousand years running free in the forests of North America, no rope to bind him and no cage to trap him, and an insidious sense of happiness had crept in. How could he pray for death when he had the mountains spread out below him, more beautiful than any of the art he'd never get to see? How could he hate when he was curled up warm and safe with his pack around him?
Fenrir liked being alive. He wanted to stay that way for as long as possible, because he'd spent too long locked underground and he had to make up for lost time. If Ragnarok came, he'd play his role. If Loki brought it, he'd stand by his father. But it wouldn't be on Fenrir's hands. Not smiling, but feeling considerably less troubled, Fenrir slipped the horn back into his messenger bag and hopped off the fire escape.