Blood Wolf - Original Ficlet

[icarus_chained]

Tiny thing written for a prompt on comment_fic of "Mother, you are blood red."

Title: Blood Wolf
Rating: M
Fandom: Original Work
Characters/Pairings: The Mother, The King. Mother & son.
Summary: "Mother, you are blood red." An outflanked army returns home, expecting ruin, and finds something else instead
Wordcount: 519
Warnings/Notes: Dark fairy tale, war, despair, blood, victory
Disclaimer: Mine, if only just

Blood Wolf

They are called she-wolves, those queens who bare tooth and claw in the pursuit of strength and the protection of a people. It is never meant as a compliment, though how it is heard is perhaps a different story. There are those who hold only love for the ferocity of wolves.

In a silent world, white with snow and black with smoke, they see her standing solitary before the gates. A red figure, a beacon in the stillness, the great gates barred behind her and her people armed and ready behind them. They come to her, a weary army long outflanked, having expected only the ruins of what they loved. They fall to a halt before her, and stare in lost and desperate silence at her challenge.

She stands still and calm. She waits for them, her hair the colour of ash, her eyes the colour of char, her clothes the colour of rust and old wounds. Her hands are white, and unmarred, and they hold a steel tooth with steady calm. Not a threat, not a warning, but a promise, still and simple. She stands so that they may see her, so that all the world may see her, and for all her love she does not flinch at all.

It is her son who moves, then. It is her child, a wounded warrior king, who stands forward from his forces who do not know how to act, who have lived too long in despair and no longer understand how to hope. He moves, and staggers, and falls, kneeling before her, a strange, red-stained longing in his eyes.

"Mother," he says, as he raises his face to her. "Mother, you are blood red."

There is no sound in the silence as she moves. There is no breath, a world caught on the cusp of a happening, and there are none who dare breathe, none who dare move, none who dare hope or fear or want until this blood-strange stillness is broken. They watch her move to him, they watch her blade come to rest at her side, they watch her white hand move to cup his wounded cheek and bring him softly to her embrace, and they are silent. All the world behind them, they are silent, while she gathers close her shattered son, and answers.

"A mother always is," she says. "A woman is always red with blood. This blood is not mine, however, but that of our enemies. Rest easy, my son. They shall trouble us no more. You were brought into this world wearing my blood, and you shall depart it wearing nothing less, for all who would slay you shall march through me, and be blooded for it. You are home now. You are returned safe into my keeping. Rest easy."

A she-wolf's promise, on the field before the gate. A promise made in the blood of enemies, on a steel tooth, in a world made still and silent by despair. A promise made, and a promise kept.

And for this reason, you see, there are those who cannot help but love the wolf.