WHAT.Atreus checks on a friend and a friend checks on him. :) WHERE. Just outside the Sanctuary! WHEN. This afternoon. WARNINGS. SPOILERS FOR GOD OF WAR RAGNAROK. Some sadness, vague and brief discussion of animal passing. STATUS. Complete!
“Fe-” The name cut off in Atreus’ throat before he could stop himself. It had been a whirlwind of a morning. One long day when it was only a few hours, really. Memories of war would do that to anyone, Atreus supposed, but then he’d only ever been involved in one war before, so that was just based off of his father’s comments on everything.
He’d checked in there, had given his father a hug, said hello, caught up on the week or so that they technically hadn’t seen each other, despite the fact that Atreus had saw him just the night before here in Vallo. Lance had been first, by way of Atreus waking up in a cold sweat as his memories flooded in. Either of them jolting upright in bed was usual, either from dream visions or Lance’s bad dreams creeping into their safe space.
It was the usual day for Shiro to come over and help out, but Atreus had to stop in and check on Fenrir- Lore, first. The name change had happened when he was only a puppy and arrived in Vallo, so far removed from his own memories of home, before things had changed. Before he’d been around the Kol Raiders. Before his passing. Before Garm.
So he’d grown up here, over the last two years, with only memories of this place, and Atreus had wanted to give him a fresh start. The wolf had been happy to go along with it, and was usually off living his best life with the girls, Melog, Hati and Skoll. Enjoying the forests of Vallo.
Now Atreus just needed to give him a hug. And to tell him he was a good boy.
He hadn’t been expecting to stumble across a very large Lore, just outside of the Sanctuary boundaries, and Atreus burst into a big grin for the first time all day. “Hey, Fen, look at you.”
The wolf reacted in kind, his big body immediately jumping up with so much excitement that the ground rumbled under Atreus’ feet. He laughed in return, and held out his hand for Fenrir to rush forward for pets. It worked, and he found himself under the wet slobber of a large giant wolf and nothing delighted him more than that in the moment.
Atreus was laughing loudly as he placed his hands on Fenrir’s snoot. “I was wondering if it was you or you. I love you both, but it’s really good to see you, big guy.” His heart still ached for what was lost in the past, it wasn’t a feeling that would pass anytime soon, Atreus knew that, but being able to lean into the very large nose before him was a comfort in itself.
Shiro was used to tracking Atreus down. He'd avoided it for a while - after the clone - but it had felt like further punishing his friend for trusting him and he hated that feeling. Enough time had passed that he moved through the Sanctuary with ease again, passing by the campfire where their combined families had relaxed and joked not too long ago.
It put a smile on his face as he spotted Svanna and she lifted her head to point her snout down a path that led outside of the fenceline. She knew him well enough to know he would be looking for Atreus. He scratched her between the ears as he passed.
"Thanks, girl. Think you just saved me a longer search." Shiro started to jog until he saw something moving in the trees and a rather large one to find himself staring up at a wolf the size of a building. He stumbled to a stop.
"Holy--Atreus. What…" A more thorough glance confirmed Atreus looked over the moon and the wolf was all panting smiles too. Shiro inched a little closer. "Uh. Hi? Nice to…meet you?"
Atreus turned his grin on Shiro, clearly delighted by this turn of events. He smoothed a hand over Fenrir’s nose and continued to speak softly. “Hey, you remember Shiro, right? He’s our friend.” That seemed to ring a bell, as the giant wolf immediately perked up on the name recognition, and scooted closer on his belly so he could get right up in Shiro’s space.
Fenrir licked Shiro on the face and Atreus burst out laughing. “Sorry.” He clearly wasn’t sorry at all. The laugh was needed after how raw everything felt this morning. “It’s uh- we both had a whole load of memories from home. I guess humanoid-shaped people aren’t the only ones that can get that sort of thing.” Atreus kept a hand on his wolf and stroked a hand down his dark fur. “But he uh- goes by Fenrir now. Or prefers it, anyway.” Fen whined in response, puppy-like attention seeking at its finest.
“Oh. Oh.” Shiro stared up at Fenrir with new understanding. It was obvious now that he was looking him in the eyes. The softness of Lore’s eyes was very familiar to him; it was just larger now. So large. “Look at you, all grown up and—” He sputtered as Fenrir licked him and Atreus’s laughter filled his ears. It was good then. At least this part. He scratched at Fenrir’s muzzle before the wolf laid down and rested his giant face on his paws to stare at them.
“Well. This is a big change…pun unintended. Are you…” Shiro frowned thoughtfully and moved closer to Atreus. He liked to think he was very good at reading his friends and this one in particular. There was a heaviness to Atreus’s shoulders, even with the laughter in his eyes. But he wasn't sure how much else had changed physically and how much he was imagining. “Are you okay? Do you want to talk about it?”
It was easy to focus on petting Fenrir’s head, when things were still mulling around his head. Plus it was near impossible to stop when the moment he pulled his hand away, Fenrir whined pitifully. So back the hand went, and Atreus opted to split his time by looking over at Shiro. “It’s-- a lot. I’m okay.” He was as okay as he could be, given the circumstances.
Shiro probably knew more about the shit he went through at home than anybody outside of his father and Freya, just by way of having known him the longest. Lance and Torunn were obviously close behind, but Shiro had been his friend through a lot of the early stuff. “Odin’s dead, and none of us were able to prevent Ragnarok.” He remembered when he’d first arrived here and he had told Shiro and others about wanting to prevent it, and he snorted. “We ended up seeking it out, even. But we were able to save the other eight realms, and get a lot of innocent people out of Asgard before that, so it’s not all bad.”
Shiro winced at the mention of Ragnarok. He did know how desperately Atreus had wanted to stop it. But Odin being dead was good. A relief. Maybe an exhausting one.
"I can't even imagine what it took to finish off Odin but I'm guessing also stopping Ragnarok would've been asking a lot. And stopping someone that powerful always comes at a price. It's good you were able to save the other realms. Really good. And save the lives in Asgard. I bet they suffered at Odin's hands too, in different ways."
He reached up and brushed a hand over one of Fenrir's giant ears. "How did this part happen? Was he always going to be this big and it just took time? I still have quite figured out how all that works with you god types," he said, a little teasingly.
“I’m not upset he’s gone,” Atreus admitted, but with a little guilty edge to it. It had been Freya’s choice first, and then Sindri had taken the initiative, but no one blamed him in that moment. Brok’s death had weighed on them all heavily and the only thing more surprising was that Freya hadn’t done it first. “He hurt a lot of people, and the realms are a lot safer without him around.”
He looked at Fenrir with a sad little smile, Atreus had been proud of himself for learning the magic on the go that even made this possible, it had helped ease the hurt left in his heart. “This guy, though-- Whew. We um, we lost him, during Fimbulwinter, but it turns out that I can uhhh- pull souls from bodies, and transfer them to others. It’s a giant thing. I did it by accident with Fenrir, and then I--”
He winced, ashamed by how things had started out, and Fenrir took that opportunity to bump Atreus’ hand in reassurance, as if to remind him it was okay that things got a little messy. “Kind of set Garm, the giant guardian of Helheim, free, and he was tearing holes in the realms. So.. I put his soul into Garm. Turned him to our side.”
Everytime Shiro thought he had a handle on the kind of wildness that happened in Atreus's life at home, he ended up learning something new that set him back to square one. Even knowing some things from Norse mythology didn't really help. His wide eyes shifted to Fenrir and how he comforted Atreus, and a fond sadness softened his expression.
"Wow when you said it was a lot, you really meant a lot," Shiro said. "I…" He shook his head and gave Fenrir another scratch. "I'm glad you saved him. I know how much he means to you. And this--" He gestured at giant Fenrir, a baffled little laugh escaping him. "Well this might mean you get to be together for a very long time, right?"
Atreus's lifespan was a sensitive subject, so Shiro didn't want to linger on it. But his follow-up question wasn't any less sensitive. "Your dad…is he alright too?"
Fenrir seemed over the moon at the idea of sticking around a while and getting scratches from both of them, his head tilted back and forth, leaning into their touches with a contented look on his large face. It made Atreus smile again, his mood improved by large degrees just from this kind of comfort.
“He’s stuck with me. And Angrboda.” Atreus had been glad she was more than willing to help care for him when he was traveling to realms out of his reach, and clearly with the way Fenrir’s ears perked up, he liked it too. “But so is father. He’s doing good. Turns out the prophecy was complicated?” Though it’d also turned out that they all were complicated. “Instead of father, it played out like the All-Father. My mother had helped us forge our own destiny by keeping us protected for so long.”
Shiro breathed a large sigh of relief. He'd known of the prophecy and Atreus's fears, and he'd worried for Kratos. He was practically family to Shiro too now, these days. And hearing that Atreus's mom had played a part in protecting them was heartwarming.
"I'm really glad to hear that. That may be the best news I've heard in a while, actually. No offense, but the way you two are, I was sure he'd sacrifice himself trying to protect you or vice versa." Fenrir made a sad sound at that and Shiro patted his snout. "I know, me too, pal. But it sounds like things worked out better than you'd hoped? I mean…I assume it wasn't all good. You don't have to tell me more of the bad stuff if you're not ready to talk about it, but I'm here for you."
Atreus hated that Shiro was right. That Kratos would have done just that. It was a conversation they’d had, even, on Alfheim, but it still hadn’t sat right to ever have things go down like that. “He’d said as much too.” Atreus frowned at the thought, he didn’t care if it was hypocritical since he’d probably do the same thing for his own future children. Or, shit, had put himself on the line for the animal here in front of him.
Still.
“Some of it downright sucked. Still sucks.” The pain of Brok’s death and Sindri’s feelings towards him wouldn’t diminish anytime soon, and he winced when it rolled in that it wasn’t the first time he’d dealt with an imposter. “If only my memories from here carried over to there, I might’ve been able to spot Odin parading around as Tyr a little quicker. I still prefer you in either form, though.”
Shiro winced., both at the idea of Odin hiding amongst Atreus and his family and at the reminder of his clone doing the same. "That…must have been really upsetting, even without the memories of here. I know how you looked up to Tyr."
The stories he'd heard about Tyr made Shiro think highly of him as well. Tyr had seemed cut from the same cloth as himself. Which probably made the sting of betrayal even worse. Trusting someone to find out they were a snake lying in wait was never easy. He reached out and squeezed Atreus's shoulder.
"Did you ever find the real Tyr?" he asked. "Or was he really gone all along?"
“Atreus might’ve preferred the snake, but then he had a soft spot for Jörmungandr, so maybe he was a little biased at that. “It was a lesson in realizing I shouldn’t have put so much of my attention into finding him.” Though Atreus didn’t regret finding out about the shrines, or the soul stones. All of that had lead him to his people, to Ironwood, to answers.
“Uh- Odin had been keeping him in prison, I guess? Father told me about it, he and Freya found him later. After I was gone.” He was glad they were bonding and getting along. That Freya could have left once Odin was dead, and opted to help him instead. That was all good. But there was still a tinge of regret in his voice, of missing home and his father. “I had to leave. To go find the rest of the giants. I owed that to them, and I knew that was my path, but--” He shrugged, sadly, like the but was there and he couldn’t voice it. “We’re here, and I’m glad about that.”
“Sometimes finding what we’ve been looking for is more about finding ourselves in the long run,” Shiro offered. He knew a little bit about that. Getting to space had been a dream that led him to a yearlong nightmare in the end. He didn’t regret it, of course. It had all been part of the journey to Voltron. And it taught him a lot about himself. And what he was willing to do for the people he cared about.
“I’m selfishly glad you’re here too though.” Shiro matched Atreus’s sad smile with an understanding one of his own. “I’m sure you’re where you need to be there as well. I think maybe you owe it to yourself as much as to the Giants. You’ve been in the shadow of prophecy and your father your whole life. It’s about time you got to write your own story there.”
He still had a hand on Atreus’s shoulder so he slung his arm more fully around his friend’s neck. “Do you think your story here could use a drink? It feels like it could use a drink.”
Atreus wasn’t completely convinced that he was writing his own story in doing this for himself, but he’d never been the one that had hated prophecies. But learning to not depend on them had been an important lesson to be sure. He nodded at Shiro and elbowed him. “A drink sounds nice. It’s been a busy morning.”
Fenrir sat up before Atreus even had to call his name, and when he finally did look over at the large wolf, he grinned. “Fen, go find father.” Might result in disaster, but the ground rumbled and Atreus could use the distraction of the very large wolf running off to get a small headstart on Shiro as he took off. “Race you!”