He had disappointed the few that he had loved. He had betrayed them and broken pieces of himself in the process. He had lived alone, retreating to the reaches of the Tundra that could only be reached by wings, and then perhaps going even farther north. He had disappeared. He had left his kingdom. He had left Ridgon, his confidant. He had left Emelia, his love. And he had left his Roan, his beautiful daughter. And his Niklaus, the son he had never met.
He had come to love the bite of disappointment as it gnawed in his breast. He had become bed mates with the cut of betrayal and the familiar way the pain sliced through him. He had been everything more than he was now, a ragged stallion, his body covered in hair so thick he could have passed for a polar bear. The scars from his reign covered, hidden beneath it, the multicolored fur that covered his body.
But something, or rather some ones had returned to the Tundra and while he was no longer king, his blood ran through it, his blood was part of the Tundra. The ground told him, whispering their names to him in his sleep. Roan. Em.
And so his wings were opened, his muscles clenching and working, pushing him into the air, each stroke of his feathers through the wind that much less than before. Until he remembered and his body remembered and for the first time in a very long time, the old stallion laughed. The sound was hoarse from disuse and the wind stole it from his mouth, but he was off.
Days. It took days to remember the way back to the Tundra, to finally see her below him and know that it was here. That his beloved Emelia was here, returned to their home. His wings tucked themselves to his sides, and he fell like a bullet from the sky, oblivious to the rest of them, to the other Brothers would no doubt come to find this intruder.
All he could see was her.
He lands in front of her, his wings barely tucked to his side before his nose is mere centimeters from her own, and while he aches to tuck himself against her, to press her into her place along his body, he does not know if she will welcome him. The conflict apparent in the eye he turns towards her. "Em." He says, softly, nothing more than a whisper of breath against her nose.
Ianto
Nothing burns like the cold.