Chapter Text
The forest wasn’t supposed to be dangerous.
That’s what Shane had told himself when he’d brought Finn out here for a short walk, just far enough to let the boy see the frost-tipped pines and hear the streams running under their glassy skins of ice. Fresh air, he’d thought. Quiet.
He should’ve known better.
“Finn!” His voice rang too loud in the cold air, scraping his own ears. The echo that came back was thin, mocking. No answering footsteps. No small voice calling for ‘Daddy’.
He’d only looked away for a moment. Adjusted his pack, checked the map. When he looked back, his little boy, his boy, the one he’d signed his name for in a courthouse two years ago and promised the whole world would be safe for, was gone.
Shane’s chest felt like it was caving in. Every image in his mind was a threat: wolves, a fall, a stranger’s hands. The forest around him pressed closer with every step, branches snagging at his jacket.
“Finn!” It came out broken this time.
Finally, a sound answered, soft and high. A giggle. Not far, not scared.
Shane shoved through a thicket and stumbled into a small clearing washed in pale winter light—
—and froze.
Finn was there, his little hands tangled in the folds of thick fur, grinning up at the figure wearing it as though he’d found some secret friend. He looked impossibly small against him, barely more than a bundled shape in his wool coat and red hat.
The man, no, not a man, stood like a deer caught between flight and stillness. His hazel eyes, impossibly luminous, flicked to Shane and then back to the child clutching him like a lifeline. His pale fingers hovered awkwardly, as if he didn’t know whether he was allowed to touch or not.
Shane’s knees nearly gave out. Relief hit so hard it left him dizzy, but the fear still gnawed under it, sharp and unyielding. Because whatever he was… this man was as confused to see them as Shane was, and he had his son.
The mortal man’s fear was a living thing. Sharp, acrid, pulsing in the air like the scent of iron before battle. Ilya could taste it on his tongue, thick and electric. It coiled around his ribs, familiar in its desperation.
Father, Ilya thought, and something in his chest loosened.
The boy, this small, warm weight against his leg, turned at the sound of the mortal’s voice, his face lighting up like a struck match. “Daddy!” he crowed, but didn’t let go. His tiny fingers curled tighter into the fur of Ilya’s mantle, as if he were afraid he’d vanish if he released him.
Ilya exhaled, slow and measured. He kept his hands carefully at his sides, fingers uncurled, palms open. A gesture of peace.
“...Your boy,” he said, voice low, the words rough-edged with disuse. His accent curled thick around the syllables. “He is... unharmed.”
A pause. The clearing held its breath.
Then, quieter, almost hesitantly, Ilya heard himself speak again. “He is brave.”
The mortal man was still frozen, his chest rising and falling too fast, his dark eyes flicking between the boy and Ilya like he couldn’t decide what to do first. The bond between them, father and son, was a taut, golden thread, fraying at the edges with panic.
Ilya tilted his head slightly, watching. Waiting.
The boy, oblivious to the tension, tugged at Ilya’s cloak again. “You’re tall,” he informed him, matter-of-fact. “Like a tree.”
Ilya stared.
Then, against his will, he huffed; a soft, startled sound that might have been a laugh, if he remembered how to do such things properly.
“Da,” he agreed, solemn. “Like tree.”
Ilya’s gaze lifted properly then, meeting the father’s eyes at last. They were dark, earnest, rimmed red with terror not yet spent. A warrior’s fear wore many faces across the ages; this one was no less fierce for lacking a blade. It burned for something smaller than himself, and Ilya had always understood that kind of devotion.
“I am not…” Ilya searched for the word Midgard used now. Dangerous, perhaps. But the lie tasted wrong, and so he tried again. “I am not meaning harm.”
The truth of it carried, settling into the frost like a vow carved into stone. The boy shifted, satisfied, as though he felt it too. He leaned his shoulder into Ilya’s leg and yawned extravagantly, the adrenaline of his adventure already burning off.
The father took one step forward. Then another.
Careful, as one approached a skittish animal, or a god whose temper he did not yet know. His hands hovered uselessly, aching to reach, restrained only by the strangeness of the scene.
“Finn,” the man said, voice breaking on the name. “Bud. C’mere.”
Finn considered this gravely. He looked up at Ilya once more, studying him with the frank scrutiny only children possessed.
“You won’t disappear?” he asked.
The question struck deeper than it had any right to.
Ilya knelt, slowly, lowering himself so the boy could see his face without craning his neck. The earth groaned faintly beneath the weight of him, fur mantle pooling like a dark tide in the snow.
“No,” he said, and meant now, and perhaps meant ever, though that was a promise he could not truly make. “I staying.”
That seemed to satisfy the child. Finn released the fur at last and trotted back to his father, who dropped to his knees and crushed him into his chest with a sound halfway between a sob and a laugh. Ilya turned his face away instinctively, granting them privacy he had learned, over centuries, was precious to mortals.
When the man looked up again, his eyes were wet but steady now.
“...Thank you,” he said. Simple. Earnest. As though he were speaking to another mortal.
Ilya inclined his head, an old, formal dip meant for kings and equals. “You are welcome, Shane Hollander.”
The man stiffened. “I didn’t—”
“I know,” Ilya said astutely.
Silence settled again, but it was different now. Not held-breath silence, but rather something rested. The kind of quiet that came after danger had passed.
The boy peeked over his father’s shoulder and waved at Ilya, unabashed.
Ilya raised two fingers in return.
“...How did you know my name?” Shane asked eventually, when he was sure his voice wouldn’t break, fear thrumming through his veins once more. Who was this man? How long had he been watching them? Was he planning something? Should Shane call the police?
Shane tightened his hold on Finn without meaning to. Not enough to hurt, never that, but enough that he felt the solid, living proof of him there. Warm, breathing, real.
“Hey. How did you know my name?” he asked again, quieter this time, as if volume alone might wake something dangerous.
The stranger didn’t move closer. That helped, if marginally. He stayed where he was, half-kneeling in the snow like some storybook relic that had wandered into the wrong century, fur spilling around him, breath fogging faintly in the cold. He looked… puzzled, almost. As though the question itself were odd.
“The land told me,” the stranger said at last.
Shane blinked. Once. Twice.
“The—” He stopped himself, swallowing hard. Finn shifted against his chest, fingers fisting in Shane’s jacket, thumb finding its way into his little mouth. Exhaustion, Shane realized distantly. The adrenaline crash.
He pressed his lips to Finn’s hat, breathing him in. Laundry detergent and cold air and something sweet he couldn’t name.
“That’s not funny,” Shane said, sharper than he meant to. Fear always made him brittle. “If you’ve been watching us, if you followed us out here—”
“I did not,” the stranger said immediately, too quickly, too honestly. “I came for forest. You came after.”
Shane searched his face for cracks. For the tells he’d learned to watch for over a lifetime of being careful. But there was nothing slick there, nothing calculating. Just… stillness. Ancient, maybe, or just very tired.
“The bond,” the man added, hesitating, like he was choosing words he didn’t often have to use. “Between you. Is loud, but… No blood.”
Shane’s breath caught despite himself.
“What bond?” he asked, though some part of him already knew.
The stranger looked at Finn. Not like prey, not like possession.
Like reverence.
Like something fragile and miraculous.
“Father and son,” he said simply.
Shane’s throat burned. He looked down at Finn again, at the curve of his cheek pressed into Shane’s collarbone, at the faint scar on his eyebrow from a playground tumble months ago. His son. The words still felt new some days, like a promise he was terrified of breaking.
“...That doesn’t explain how you know my name,” Shane said, stubbornly clinging to the thread of logic.
The stranger inclined his head. “Names linger,” he said. “Yours is worn. Spoken often, with care.”
That shouldn’t have meant anything. It was nonsense. Poetic, maybe, but still nonsense.
And yet.
Shane scrubbed a hand down his face, breath shuddering out of him. “Okay,” he said weakly. “Okay. You’re clearly not normal.”
Ilya suppressed a laugh at that. 'Not normal', like he was some sort of insane hermit rather than a god older than the world itself.
He wanted to scoff, the sound pressed sharp and bright against the back of his teeth, but he swallowed it down, letting it melt instead into a quiet huff of breath. Mortals did not laugh easily when their hearts were still trembling. They deserved gentleness, not mockery.
No matter how tempting this man was to tease.
“You are observant,” Ilya replied instead, voice dry, eyes warm despite himself. He watched Shane Hollander steady himself, watched the way he shifted his weight to better support the child, how his hand never stopped moving, rubbing Finn’s back, counting him again and again through touch. The habit of a protector, of one who had learned loss too intimately to risk it again.
It pulled at something in Ilya’s chest.
“...Do not belong to your world,” he said, choosing the words carefully. “Nor your laws. But am not your enemy.”
The boy had gone quiet now, his small body slack with sleep against his father’s shoulder. His breath puffed white, each exhale a fragile thing Ilya could have snuffed out with a thought, and would sooner have torn out his own heart than do so.
“You spoke boy’s name,” Ilya added, nodding toward Finn. “Into the trees. You called him back.”
He had heard it ripple through the forest like a plea braided with command. Names did that, love did that.
“Midgard listens when fathers beg,” Ilya said, and it was not comfort. It was truth.
Shane’s gaze flicked up sharply at that, suspicion warring with something like awe. Ilya felt the moment stretch thin, felt the man standing at the edge of belief, peering over without quite meaning to.
That would not do.
Just as Ilya was about to step closer, Shane swallowed.
“What is on your arms?” he asked, blinking slowly, as if his eyes might’ve been playing tricks on him.
Ilya stilled.
Ah. So the veil had thinned after all.
He lowered his gaze fully now, following Shane’s stare to his own forearms. The runes had begun to wake, slow, unhurried, as if stretching after a long sleep. Lines carved not by ink nor blade, but by oath and age, etched into him when the world was younger and gods still bled openly.
They pulsed faintly, blue as glacial light beneath ice.
Careless, he thought. He had let himself speak true. Midgard always demanded a price for that.
“For you,” Ilya said slowly, eyes lifting again to Shane’s face, “is marks.”
He did not hide them. Hiding now would be worse. Mortals could smell evasion as keenly as fear.
“For me,” he continued, voice quieter, deeper, “is memory.”
The glow brightened for a heartbeat, responding to his attention. Names, deeds, vows sworn into bone. Battles no living mortal remembered. The runes hummed softly, a sound felt more than heard.
The child stirred faintly at the sound, brows knitting. Instinctively, Ilya drew the power inward. The glow dimmed at once, obedient.
“Did not mean to frighten him,” he says, and this time there was something unmistakably earnest beneath the weight of the words. “They answer when I forget myself.”
Shane hadn’t moved. His fear had changed shape, though. Less sharp, more stunned. Awe was dangerous, Ilya knew that. Awe led mortals to kneel, to offer blood, to pray.
But this man was doing none of those things. If anything, he seemed thoroughly unimpressed.
Shane shifted Finn higher on his hip, squaring his shoulders like that might somehow make this situation normal. Like confidence was a switch he could flip if he pressed hard enough.
“Okay,” he managed, sharper now. “So what, you’re telling me you’re some sort of— of ghost? Spirit?” He let out a breathy, incredulous laugh that fooled absolutely no one. “You realize how insane that sounds, right?”
Finn made a small, sleepy noise and tucked his face closer into Shane’s neck. Shane pressed his cheek into the wool of Finn’s hat, grounding himself in the solid fact of him before looking back up.
“Tell the truth,” Shane said, jaw tightening, “or I’m calling the police.”
The threat felt flimsy the moment it left his mouth. The police wouldn’t know what to do with glowing runes and forests that listened. But it was the language Shane had. Rules, authority, something with edges he understood, at least more than he understood this.
The stranger didn’t flinch.
Didn’t scoff, either. No condescension, no irritation, just… patience. Like Shane was a frightened animal baring its teeth, and he had all the time in the world to let him calm down.
“Police,” the stranger repeated thoughtfully, tasting the word. “Will find nothing.”
That did not help.
Shane’s grip tightened again. “That’s not an answer.”
“No,” the stranger agreed easily. “Is not.”
Snow whispered as he shifted, the movement slow and deliberate, careful not to loom. Shane clocked it immediately, how intentionally non-threatening he was being, and that somehow made it worse. Predators didn’t need to try this hard to look harmless.
“Does not matter who I am,” he continued, unbothered. “Your son is safe. You can go.”
Shane stared at him.
Just… stared.
Of all the responses he’d braced himself for; anger, smugness, cryptic riddles; dismissal hadn’t even made the list.
“Are you serious?” Shane asked, incredulous. “That’s it?”
“Yes,” the man said, utterly unbothered. “Shoo. Go.”
He even flicked his fingers again, a small, almost amused gesture, like he was chasing a bird from a windowsill.
Something in Shane snapped. Not fear, exactly, but offense. Raw, sleep-deprived, adrenaline-soaked offense.
“You don’t get to tell me to shoo,” Shane said sharply. “You scared the hell out of me. You had my kid. I think I’m entitled to at least—” He faltered, words tangling. To what? An explanation? An apology? Control?
Finn chose that moment to yawn hugely, mouth stretching wide before collapsing bonelessly against Shane’s shoulder again, fast asleep now. The tension drained out of him in a way Shane envied fiercely.
The stranger’s gaze softened at the sight.
“He come to me,” he said, as if that explained everything. “I kept him warm. Is all.”
Shane swallowed. His anger deflated, leaving behind something messier, something almost like gratitude, unwanted and heavy.
“Yeah,” Shane said, quieter now. “Okay, yeah.”
He turned to leave. He didn’t get far.
Something, not a sound, not a command, made him glance back over his shoulder despite himself.
The stranger hadn’t moved. Still half-kneeling in the snow, fur dark against the white, eyes fixed on them. But the look on his face had changed. The careful distance was gone. The patience, too. What was left unsettled Shane far more than the glowing runes ever had.
It was… soft.
Bare, almost. Like Shane had caught him mid-thought, unarmored.
For a split second, Shane had the strangest, most disorienting certainty that this man; this impossible, ancient, clearly-not-normal man; was looking at him the way Shane sometimes caught himself looking at Finn in the dead quiet of the night.
Like something fragile and miraculous had wandered too close and he hadn’t known he was allowed to want it.
Their eyes met.
Whatever passed between them then was brief, wordless, and deeply uncomfortable. Shane’s chest tightened with a sudden, inexplicable awareness of himself, of being seen. Not as a threat. Not as a nuisance.
As a man.
The stranger blinked first. Looked away, as if embarrassed by his own attention. When he looked back again, the distance was carefully restored, expression smoothed into something neutral and ancient.
“Go safely, Hollander,” he said, voice steady once more.
Shane nodded, pulse skidding strangely. “You too,” he said automatically, then frowned. You too? What did that even mean?
He turned and walked away before he could think about it any harder.
Behind him, unseen, Ilya remained very still.
He watched the mortal disappear between the trees, watched the way he carried his son like the most sacred burden in the world, watched until the bond between them faded from blinding gold to a distant, aching glow.
Smitten was not a word gods used.
But as the forest closed in and winter shifted quietly around him, Ilya brought a hand to his chest.
What he found there felt utterly, unmistakably, like warmth.