Start Again

Baldur limped silently like a ghost behind the group. His white coat blending in with the fallen snow and the silver sky, everything but the black mark around his left eye and several wounds that striped his body with blood. Failure rang in his ears and stained his sight. Hodr was dead, blinded and slain in a horrid twist of irony and fate, and Baldur was to blame. He had not been there to defend his twin, had made know attempt to return until it was far too late.


He hovered for a moment waiting for them to get ahead while he turned to silently wretch. Those pups had been through enough, they needed their cousins to be strong and sure not weak and sick? but he could feel it building up in him again. The grief, clawing and scratching up his throat with more vigor as he tried again to swallow it back down.


Not only did he have to come to terms with the death of his twin he now found himself drowning in a quagmire of memories that he had long since forgotten. The brutal murder of his lover Linne? being a hub on which his internal agony was spinning. Other childhood atrocities also filtered through his brain. Crimes against him and his siblings as well as one's he himself had committed.


Baldur felt both numb and overwhelmed. His emotions and sanity bubbling like hot oil in his skin and mind and for the third time that trip he'd wished there was a cliff he could throw himself off of and just be done with the whole thing. But he never would, not in front of the pups at least. Maybe later when he could silently slip away?


"Alright, guys, we're here. Welcome home."


"Thor?" Baldur said quietly. "Can you get them settled in? I'm going to scout and see what we can find to eat. I don't know if Loki's stored anything up with having to keep hold of his rascals."


Baldur did not wait long for a reply as he swiftly turned, his form seeming to dissolve into winter terrain.


"Speech"

Don't you remember anything I said when I said,


Don't fall away and leave me to myself