[center][b][color=slategray][sup][h1]F E N R I R[/h1][/sup][/color][/b][/center]
[COLOR=slategray][INDENT][B][SUP][SUB][H3]T H E   S A N C T U A R Y[/H3][/SUB][/SUP][/B][/INDENT][hr][/COLOR][INDENT][INDENT][sup][color=darkgray]July 3[sup]rd[/sup], 2020  |  6:30p.m.  |  Mount Justice, Rhode Island[/color][/sup][/INDENT][/INDENT]

	The team was mostly quiet on their way back from the mall, subdued in the face of their victory. Fenrir was reminded of a quote Shayera had made him read once, written by a man who’s name he had summarily forgotten: [i]“…nothing except a battle lost can be half so melancholy as a battle won…”[/i]. He hadn’t understood it at the time, a victory was something to be relished. What aspect of dominating an enemy wasn’t to be celebrated? Looking at the morose features of his teammates however, he could almost begin to understand the meaning of those ancient words.

	At least Dinah Lance-Queen, the woman who insisted upon calling herself Fenrir’s ‘[i]den-mother[/i]’, didn’t seem to share the other’s pensiveness. While hardly enthused by the group’s performance, she did seem to recognise that they had been victorious. She mentioned that they would need further training, but allowed them the night off. He trooped out after the rest of the team, still dragging the mallet he had commandeered from Bonk. He wasn’t sure why he had taken it, but it felt right that he had. Perhaps he would keep it, as a trophy. That was a good and proper way of celebrating a victory. 

	Andy and Steph made dinner, Fenrir watching them like his eyes were glued to their forms the entire time. When presented with his steak he accepted without a word, instantly tearing into it. He gobbled the meal down, quick and messy, pausing every ten seconds or so to cast suspicious glances around the room, as if afraid that one of the others may have been planning to steal the meal from him.  He finished long before the others, and spent the rest of the meal time licking his fingers clean and picking shreds of meat from his teeth with the talon upon his index finger. It wasn’t a pretty sight.

	The others finally finished, and talk shifted towards the night’s activities. Hellfire was of a mind that they should all do something together, training or dodgeball, while Twilight pushed for practicing working as a unit. Mirage simply wanted to be included. She was the runt of this litter, but at least she knew her place. There was something to be said for that kind of self-realisation. Most everyone else he had ever met spent all their energies jockeying for a place they had neither earned, nor deserved. 

	Tired of the talk, which seemed to wind round and round itself in an endless loop, he pushed himself up from the table and began walking towards the door and down towards the training rooms. The rest would follow in his wake.