FENRIR ※ Tony Stark [2]

21 - WAITING

For a long time after his last words faded in the silence of the room, Tony's mind was unable to formulate a proper thought. In an instant, everything made sense, it all clicked together perfectly and melted into chaos at the same time.

Tony mustered up the courage to look at Angie. An icy numbness had taken over her expression. Her gaze was riveted to the ground and tears clouded her eyes with no strength to fall down her cheeks. Seeing her like this broke his heart.

He was wrong though. Angie had recognised him, that much was clear in Tony's mind. That gut feeling of hers before they'd gotten caught, the reason she'd been so quiet since the Hellhound revealed himself to them. A part of her realised what was happening a long time ago but perhaps it had been too absurd for a sane person to believe.

Tony still had to convince himself he didn't hallucinate the last few minutes as he opened his mouth to call the Hellhound by his real name. As much as he tried though, he just couldn't get himself to emit a sound. In the end, it was Angie who broke the silence.

"Fenrir... untie me."

Her voice came out in a whisper but it was firm. Fenrir's expression was hard to decipher as his eyes fell to the shackles around his sister's wrists and ankles. To Tony's surprise, he did exactly as she asked and took off the restraints without uttering a word.

Tony couldn't help looking back and forth between the two siblings. Now that he observed them more carefully, they did have the same mass of thick black hair, but that's where the resemblance ended. Where Fenrir's skin was pale, Angie's was darker. Where his eyes where deep ebony brown, hers were striking blue. It didn't surprise him much; they did have different mothers after all.

Now free to walk, Angie slowly inched toward her brother, her eyes shining with heartache. Her hand trembled as she extended it to Fenrir's face. Disbelief and bewilderment swept her expression, searching his eyes for the brother she had lost... and although the person in front of her was a grown man, for a second she could swear seeing the frail little child from her memories.

Suddenly her defences were just paper... paper being soaked by the tears flowing down her cheeks. A sob escaped her lips as she pulled Fenrir against her. Her arms wrapped fiercely around him, like she wished they had all those years ago before he fell off the bridge.

When she cried there was a rawness to it, like the pain of the past decades was flooding back in one single wave. Fenrir stood limply, not really knowing how to react. Conflicted emotions tumbled in his mind as the bitterness accumulated over the years made way for something much more tender. He thought he had buried it all deeply but there it was, resurfacing again, as his sister sobbed against his shoulder.

"My God Fenrir, all these years I thought you were dead..." she brushed a hand through his hair, just like she used to when he was a child "What happened to you?"

"I drifted off in space for a long time until a raider spaceship found me."

"But how could you possibly survive that fall?!"

"The Warg saved my life," he told her, his eyes shining with a pride she found very unexpected "There are things it can do that I couldn't even fathom."

Suddenly, something tilted in Angie's mind. Fenrir's transformations were always triggered by intense emotions or physical trauma. There had been a fair share of emotions so far and yet she wasn't seeing any sign that the Warg would make an appearance. Should she be worried?

"I can control it now," he told her as if he'd read her mind "No more spontaneous transformations."

"That's... good to know."