Work Text:
Fenris startled for a moment when he felt his private mobile vibrate. He glanced at the door to make sure it was closed, then pulled it out. He smiled when he saw the number. “Mary, hello. This is a nice surprise. How are you?” He frowned when he saw the time. “Has anything happened? It’s the late at night, almost morning, in London.”
“I’m fine. Everything’s fine. We celebrated another mating ceremony, that’s why I’m still awake.” That made sense, of course. Since gargoyles turned to stone from sunrise to sunset, a mating ceremony would take place at night. “I wanted to ask how you are doing.” After a momentary pause, she added: “I heard where you started working. And it’s late for you as well.”
“Like you said, I just started working here. I have to stay late occasionally.”
“Are you certain it’s a good idea to work for them?”
It was nice to hear her worry for him. He had been locked up in that cave for ages, longer than he could tell. He was not sure if it was because, like on Avalon, time ran different there or because he had lost track of time in that never changing cave, with no contact to the outside world. With no contact to his family, his father, his brother and sister.
His first contact with any other living creature had been when the Unseelies had let him out, calling him family, claiming that he had a duty to them, as his saviours and as kin.
Assholes and liars, the lot of them. Not that he had known that then. He’d only learned about that when Mary, her boyfriend and his cousin had come to Antarctica to free him from Gleipnir.
He’d stayed in contact with them, especially Mary. She was like a younger sister. And not just because Mary turned into a wolf during the day.
“It’s fine. I’m not sure if they really know about magic and aliens, they appear more preoccupied with science. Even their knowledge of gargoyles seems very patchy.”
“That’s something at least.”
“Working for them is the best way we have of keeping an eye on them, on what they know.”
“And a way for you to make up for what Madoc and the other Unseelies convinced you to do in the war?”
He didn’t reply. Sometimes, she was far more perceptive than he would like.
She sighed. “You know that not even Cole would want you to put yourself in danger in order to make up for what you did?” Cole was the leader of the Antarctica Clan, the clan the Unseelies had convinced him to attack.
“I know.”
“Then, promise me, if there is any hint that you’ve been found out, you will leave, you will get yourself to safety.”
“I promise.”
~*~
Fenris was beginning to understand Merlin’s cousin and the Banshee better and better. It had seemed strange to him, the way the lines between their true selves and the role they were playing had blurred. Now he was doing the same. He was coming to feel a strange loyalty to, if not the whole agency, then at least certainly members of it.
“You’re building yourself a pack,” Merlin’s cousin had said. As the only one aware of his true identity living in the US and not across the Atlantic, he had been the first to realize it.
He really was, wasn’t he? But he had not been able to help himself, certainly not after becoming the handler to those two assets who were so very similar to him, who, like him, had joined to make up for what they had done. Phil only wished he could tell them why he believed in them the way he did, in that they deserved a chance and that they would manage. But until now, they had only had to deal with humans. Fenris had no idea how to tell them about what else there was out there, about what he truly was.
~*~
He hated the desert. Sure, the temperatures here in New Mexico were much different to the one in Antarctica but the silence of it reminded him uncomfortably of the icy desert of where he had been imprisoned.
But more than that, he hated the reason he was here.
“Is he really my uncle?” Fenris ignored the way his voice was shaking slightly. He had to concentrate not to accidentally crush his phone. “Or just another fay having adopted the name?”
“He’s not a fay,” Owen Burnett, the human alias of Merlin’s cousin, Puck, said after reviewing the footage Phil – Fenris had sent him. “So yes, that should be your uncle.”
Fenris wasn’t sure he was happy about the confirmation. It had been millennia since he had had contact with his family. What memories he had of Thor, few as they were, were not exactly pleasant. He, like most of Asgard, had been suspicious of Loki’s shapeshifting children, even if all they had been able to do was shift between their Aesir appearance and one animal form, though they could vary the size of their animal form. Thor certainly had not protested when they had been captured.
Well, at least Clint was getting an introduction to what else was out there.
~*~
He watched, jaw clenched, as the news showed the most recent mission of the Avengers. He barely noticed the hand Mary was resting on his shoulder, to busy trying to judge how the team was doing, how Clint and Natasha were doing.
After the life he had build for himself, the role he had created, had come crashing down around his ears, he had been taken to London. He had barely managed to survive his – to survive Loki’s attack. It had been touch and go for a while, especially since no one at SHIELD had known that he was not human. They had not understood how and why he had survived, why his body had started healing so quickly. Those aware of who and what he was had smuggled him out before he had regained consciousness, before someone could get suspicious.
And now he had no idea what to do. How could he tell them now, after they believed him dead? How could he tell Clint and Natasha that Phil Coulson had never truly existed, that he was really Fenris, son of Loki, the very person who had mind-controlled Clint, who had caused so much pain and death?