I Feel It In My Bones
They are afraid, or at least they are except for Vladimir, and even that boy of the strangely advanced mind and oddly depreciated emotions seems to know something is far from right. Panzer is safe by the time the four who would succeed their fathers are also in the den with Herschel (who was, by now, also wide away). They hear it when the bear roars, when Fenrir snarls and leaps onto the roof of the den of Everlyse and Ifrit, when the bear is driven away from Herschel’s father and back up and over the hill overhead. They hear it as Neirin attacks, when Ifrit snarls, when the four brothers work together for the last time… but none of them understand what it going on. Herschel hides behind Alexander, his eternal protector. Alexander stands trembling with the depth and might of the roars ringing in his ears. Vladimir stands, deadpan, staring at all the moving parts and seeing each as a clockmaker might predict the problem in a patient by the moving cogs.
The three of the sons see as the great beast collapses, hear the roar, the mouth-full yelp and cracks, the great bellows and roars. They watch the gore and the attack and the ultimate victory from the mouth of the den where Natu stares out - only Vladimir slips through the alley between their and Uncle Nei’s den, past greer, to stand at the mouth of the den as Ifrit is pulled in front of Uncle Fen’s and Sea’s dens. He watches in idle contemplation as his father lays there, mouthing his mother’s leg as he had always done - as Uncle Seamus had always said he had done since his birth to those who mattered, at least in the only way Ifrit understood what it was for a being to be important to him.
He watches his mother’s grief, the bid of his father that she eat the largest meal he had ever provided her, and the subsequent death that drove his mother into the beast to retrieve it’s heart. He watches with a clinical gaze of a pup who does not understand far more than doesn’t understand under what emotion he should emote.
Warriors are panting, his uncle so still and oblong and twisted atop the bear, his father still and beginning to chill-- but his first thought is to the heart that lays outside the carcass, not to his mother’s broken one.
Alexander huddles beneath his mother, brave face faltering in the face of Aunt Everlyse’s raging display and the stillness of his Uncles, not to mention the absence of the other and his father. Hershel paws, high whine spilling shrill past his nostrils as he tucks himself into the strange legs of Rhae, who he does not know and yet cannot be more thankful for, Alexander too shaken to give him reassurances.
The other pups look on as Vladimir, alone, walks towards the carnage and stops where his mother has buried her face into the lifeless form of his father; with two paws on the squishing gift she had placed at his father’s maw, and a puppy’s rolling growl, he tears into the flesh simply to ruin it - his father’s son, a reminder to the woman who is as red as her lover and her son, that there is a place where Ifrit’s own spirit yet resided. Caring nothing for ceremony, stepping forward as heir long before anyone would have known the Fantastic Four would live on… or perhaps their knowing stemming from this very act.
“Momma, Vlad is getting dirty...” a slight shaken voice murmurs, as if it might all be ok if they did not look too closely at what lay outside the doors of their homes. “Where is Uncle Fen and Daddy?” Herschel inquires, voice far more quivering and wheezy from the scent of blood flooding his nose. “Why isn’t Uncle Iffy eating? Can I sit on that with Uncle Nei?” the young boy asks Rhae, utterly at a loss at the looks on the faces of the adults around them.
Just then, the sound of Everlyse rises, followed by Lucero, and with the heart in tatters at his small red feet, Vladimir feels the pack song call to his heart, a great howl of an older wolf suddenly met by that of the Bloody Baron’s son, then that of the Shining Prince’s son from the other side of the bear as the heartbreaking truth comes to light -- the reason his eyes did not match his father’s and the sorrow that came from only knowing till it was too late to do anything but bring a smile to an old man’s face, nameless but as golden as the sun.
He had run ahead, dodging his parents in the face of his own seeming reflection many years too old, so now he howls, the brightness of tone so reminiscent of the Shining Prince, that none who had ever heard Neirin’s song would doubt his lineage. His song is shorter, his lungs smaller, when he turns to look at his mother from over his shoulder, “M’ma....” and the tone is trembling with much left unsaid.