he has been carved into and hollowed out by the misfortune bred into him by his moladion-diseased parents. he loved jaye and he respected bahamut - but they had made him endlessly more pained than ought ever have been borne by any one creature. their blood tainted by the moladion curse of imprinting - and made subject to the bitter taunting of fate as it snapped not once, but twice before severing entirely with Doe’s death.

and nanrua’s lifebonding had done him no favors in that sense either.

he was a shell, violent static held behind a blackened steel corpse. utter rage and hate and savageness roiling beneath his surface as it lay in wait for someone dumb enough to throw down their gauntlet.

and yet he sees her standing there, he can see her with her white fur and that serenity he lacked in the innermost reach of himself. he was the hulk. he handled the rage and dragon blood in his veins by never letting being soothed, by being ever angry and bitter. you cannot be eaten up by fire if you are the fire itself, after all. but there - there she stands in the night, the moonlight mocking him as it stroked the pale fur of her face, of her shoulders, of each of her four perfect legs. it touches what he cannot and for a moment he hates his Moon Mother. He curses her for touching her, for making her more beautiful, for making him stand at the cusp of a place he could not tread and teasing his eyes with the bewitching sort of perfection that she had no doubt created. No one could be so lovely and not have been carved from the Moon Mother’s very surface.

his voice dies as eerily quiet as it had begun, his pale green eyes alighting on hers only when she stands with her ears full-front and her tail just a little higher. her smile twists some unknown thorn in his chest and there is the barest crinkle at the stop of his skull. then all at once she is immediately before him, a sway of her tail seeming to draw his in the barest sort of one himself before he can realize it. his silence is absolute, and even that hidden danger has been quelled. she is a weakness he does not know he has yet, a way to stem his utter perfection in his warrior-art. she is a kink in his armor and he will still reach out with arms outstretched and fingers spreading wide to grasp her angel’s robe.

“You are not a sight I expected, Fenrir, but yours is a pleasant one in any case. Have you and your brothers had your fill of the elk?” she asks, so innocent in her ignorance of his strange unknowing importance placed in her person. “it will fill our bellies yet. we would not dislike you coming to take more of a share.” he speaks deep and quiet, neither ashamed or hopeful by his clear invitation that she join them again. he thinks he had enjoyed brawling over her with ifrit and would do so with even more vigor if he thought it would inspire her to come and visit them again. “my brother still carries a vertebrae bone from her from time to time.” he adds, morbid but seemingly not the usual of the red bafoon by the slight squint added to fenrir’s eyes at the thought.

“i worry that he has taken a liking to the other she-wolf who helped us at the end...” and on that note his face returns to the stoney smooth perfection of control that was most common.

“Have they come with you?” she asks, but the look that he turns to her from his glance towards the nearby foliage says that - with a bare twinge here and a slight dip in his voice there - he is in a far greater tangle than his expression otherwise would admit. “would you have preferred that i had brought them?” and while there is no real worry, it is clear that his interest is in her preference. “i have come to see you on my own.” he adds again, seeming to think answering her question was more polite than answering a question with one of his own. “they rest in asteraia, and if you are looking for ifrit, it seems that female happens to reside now in that pack. neirin will keep an eye. i do need to be his keeper, if my company is enough to be satisfactory...”