Bruce was a good boy.
Or maybe a girl—but for now, a boy, because that was what he had decided, and decisions mattered when so little else did.
And because Bruce was good, he had stayed where Rob had put him.
Curled tight behind the hearth stones, tucked into the narrow black space where the fire lived, where ash stuck to his hair and skin and made everything smell bitter. He did not move. He did not speak. He tried not to breathe too loudly. He tried to be very small.
Very quiet.
The night was long.
At first the fear was sharp—too sharp. It hurt. It filled his head and chest and hands all at once. There were boots. Loud boots. Heavy ones. The floor shook when they stepped. Metal made noises—clinking, scraping, clicking—like teeth biting together.
Voices.
Angry voices.
Not Rob's voice.
These voices had been all wrong. Their words sounded like English, but twisted, ugly, full of sharp edges. Big men. Heavy men. Men who filled the whole cottage just by being inside it.
They were looking for someone.
Bruce didn't know who.
Mama.
Papa.
Him.
He did not want to know.
He pressed his hands over his mouth until his lips hurt. He squeezed his eyes shut. Ash tickled his nose. He did not sneeze. He did not cry.
A shadow crossed the opening.
Light flickered.
A lantern.
Someone stopped close. Very close. Bruce could smell them—wet leather, iron, sweat. The air felt thick and heavy like it was pressing on him.
Do not move.
Do not exist.
Then—
they left.
The door slammed. Footsteps ran away. The cottage went quiet again, but it was not the good quiet.
Bruce stayed still.
Because it wasn't over.
It took only a little while before it started again.
More men.
Different men.
These ones were louder. Rougher. They didn't search carefully.
They broke things.
The door burst open. Wood cracked. Something heavy hit the table. A pot rolled and clanged and clanged again. Someone laughed. Someone kicked something that shattered with a sharp sound that made Bruce flinch so hard his muscles burned.
He curled tighter.
He cried, but no sound came out. His sleeves were black with ash and wet with tears he tried to push back inside. He was so small. Too small. He couldn't help. He couldn't stop anything.
He could only hide.
The chickens did not hide.
He heard it before he understood it—feathers exploding, panicked clucking, and then Terminator's scream. Loud. Furious. Brave in a stupid way.
Someone shouted.
Someone swore.
Chaos.
Wings beating. Men stumbling. The hens rushing through the open door in a storm of feathers and noise, Terminator charging like a tiny general who had decided the only victory was escape.
The men chased them.
Laughing.
Yelling.
Swearing as they ran into the forest.
And then—
nothing.
The cottage was empty.
Bruce did not move.
He stayed curled in the hearth while the sounds faded. While the night settled. While his body began to hurt from holding itself so tight for so long.
Eventually, the fear grew tired.
His thoughts slowed. His shaking stopped. The ash was warm. The stone was solid.
Then somewhere between one heartbeat and the next, Bruce had fallen asleep.
And when he woke, the sunlight was already pouring down the chimney.
---
It struck his face directly, bright and warm, making him squint and turn his head away with a small, confused sound. The light felt wrong after the dark—too open, too honest.
He blinked, soot clinging to his lashes, and rubbed his eyes with blackened hands.
Something warm shifted around him.
For a moment he did not understand.
Then he looked.
The chickens were there.
All of them.
Pressed close together in a soft, feathered heap, bodies tucked tight as if they had decided the hearth was the safest place in the world. They looked exhausted—eyes half-closed, feathers ruffled, breathing slow and deep.
Even Terminator lay against Bruce's side, solid and warm, his weight resting there with the quiet certainty of a creature who had chosen a duty and meant to keep it.
Bruce's chest hitched.
Relief flooded him so suddenly it almost hurt.
"You… you came back," he whispered, voice rough and tiny.
He pushed himself up carefully, fingers sinking into feathers as he used Terminator for balance. The rooster made a low, deeply offended sound—but did not move away.
None of them did.
They had stayed.
They had come back.
Something in Bruce's chest warmed, fragile and aching. He leaned forward without thinking and pressed a small, sooty kiss to Terminator's beak.
The rooster froze.
Then accepted it with dignified tolerance.
Bruce kissed the hens too, one by one, awkward and earnest. They made small, content sounds—soft clucks of approval—as if this was simply how things were done now.
Bruce didn't really understand kissing.
But he understood this.
The warmth in his chest said it mattered.
When he finally wriggled free of the hearth and stood on unsteady feet, the world revealed itself.
The cottage was ruined.
Mud streaked the floorboards in long, violent smears. A plank near the hearth had cracked under someone's weight. The stew pot lay overturned, its rim bent, half blocking the hearth opening like a shield that had failed.
One clay jar was shattered near the wall—berry paste smeared dark and sticky across the wood, seeds scattered like grit.
Dried mushrooms had been ground into crumbs beneath boots.
A bundle of spare clothes lay torn open, spilled and trampled.
The table was shoved aside. The bench lay on its side.
And in the middle of it all—
salted fish.
Bruce's stomach growled.
The sound was loud in the wrecked silence.
He lowered himself to the floor, ash smearing his knees, hair tangled, dress slipping off one shoulder. The quiet pressed in on him from all sides.
No Mother.
No Rob.
No voice calling him kitten.
Just daylight.
Ruin.
Silence.
Where are you?
The question echoed inside him, over and over, until it felt like it might crack him open.
Rob had promised.
Papa and Mama will come back.
Bruce blinked hard, jaw trembling.
Not yet, he told himself fiercely. They just… not yet.
Hunger made the decision for him.
He crawled to the fish, tore off a strip with small determined bites, chewing slowly. The salt burned his throat, but the food grounded him, gave his body something solid to hold onto.
He ate until the shaking stopped.
Until his thoughts steadied.
Then he wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, stood as straight as his little body would allow, and looked around the ruined cottage.
He would wait.
He would survive.
Because when Mother and Father came back—
he would still be here.
Only when the worst hollow in his belly softened did he rise again.
He went to the door.
Or what was left of it.
The door lay outside in the grass, twisted at the hinges like a limb bent the wrong way. One plank was split clean through. Another had teeth marks where an axe or boot had worried it apart. Cold air drifted in without permission. The cottage smelled wrong—ash and trampled food and fear that had dried into the wood.
Beyond the threshold, the forest stood green and bright and indifferent.
Like it hadn't watched.
Like it hadn't listened.
Bruce stepped out and blinked in the sunlight.
The garden was still there.
But it had scars.
The little fence—his fence—had gaps punched through it where heavy feet had simply decided wood was not an obstacle. Stakes lay snapped and kicked aside. The rope binding was torn loose, trailing like dead vines. Plants were crushed into the soil—peas flattened into streaks of green, cabbage leaves torn open, strawberries smashed into red bruises.
The earth itself looked hurt. Churned. Scuffed. Ruined by careless tracks.
Bruce stood very still and stared.
He tried to make his mind fit around the damage the way he tried to make his little hands fit around grown-up problems.
It didn't work.
He was a toddler.
He had no tools. No strength. No plan.
He didn't know what a toddler was supposed to do about war.
So he did the only thing that made sense.
He went to the lake.
The small gate still opened if you pushed it just right. Bruce slipped through and walked the path with careful steps, bare feet finding familiar stones. The air smelled of water and wet leaves. Birds chattered like nothing had happened.
The fish trap still sat where it always did—patient stones in a ring, unchanged, as if the world had not cracked.
Bruce knelt and drank.
Cold water soothed his throat. It washed the salt away. It made him feel real again, as if the lake could rinse panic out of him the same way it rinsed ash from his hands.
He drank until his breathing slowed.
And then he saw his reflection.
The water was still.
Too still.
Bruce leaned closer, hands braced on damp stone, and stared down at the face staring back.
It wasn't his.
It never felt like it was.
A small face looked up at him—round and soft, like the world had shaped it gently on purpose. Pale skin, barely kissed by sun. Cheeks faintly pink no matter how dirty or tired he got. A little mouth that didn't know how to look cruel. Lips curved in a shape that always threatened to become a question.
Big eyes.
Too big.
Violet and clear, reflecting the bright sky so perfectly it was hard to tell where water ended and he began. Long lashes framed them without effort, making every blink look gentle and every stare look… open.
His nose was small. His jaw barely there at all. No angles. No hard lines. Nothing that suggested teeth or claws or danger.
Only softness.
Hair spilled around his face in pale, messy waves, catching the light like threads of gold. No matter how tangled it got, it always fell back into the same innocent shape, like it refused to look wild.
Bruce tried to scowl.
The reflection only looked confused.
He bared his teeth, forcing his mouth into what he meant to be a snarl.
The little girl in the water looked like she was pouting.
He narrowed his eyes, drew his brows down, lifted his chin the way he'd seen warriors do—like Frank did when he stepped into a room and decided everyone would behave.
The face looking back just seemed… earnest.
Determined, maybe.
Brave in the way kittens were brave when they puffed themselves up at shadows.
Not frightening.
Not even a little.
Bruce stared harder, searching for something—anything—that looked fierce.
There was nothing.
No matter what he tried, the reflection refused to obey. It stayed gentle. Disarmingly soft. The kind of face strangers trusted without thinking. The kind of face people protected.
An angel, his mind supplied bitterly.
A stupid, useless little angel.
His throat tightened.
So this was it.
This was the face the world would see.
No matter how hard he trained. No matter how stubborn he was. No matter how much strength he carried inside—this softness would come first.
He exhaled slowly.
Fine.
If he couldn't look fierce—
then he would survive anyway.
He leaned closer to the water until his breath made ripples and whispered, voice small but steady:
"I… kitten."
The word tasted strange.
And right.
Kitten.
Small.
Not harmless.
A creature you could kick—
and still it would get up, hiss, and refuse to die.
"Ek em eigi… Bruce," he muttered clumsily in Norse, forcing the sounds out like stones. "Ek… kitten."
He didn't have the words for everything he meant. Not yet. But the feeling behind them was solid.
Bruce had been big.
Mother was strong.
Rob was clever.
He was none of those things.
But a kitten could still be fierce.
A kitten could still have claws.
A kitten could still survive.
Behind him, something rustled.
Bruce turned.
Mr. Terminator had waddled down with the hens, the whole flock gathering at the shore to drink. They crowded near him like he belonged among them. Warm bodies brushing his legs. Small sounds. Quiet life.
They weren't brave like heroes.
They were brave like animals were brave—because living was the only thing they knew how to do.
Bruce's chest tightened.
His eyes burned again.
He blinked hard, jaw clenched, refusing tears.
He looked up at the sky.
Somewhere out there, Mother and Rob were alive.
They had to be.
Good people didn't just vanish.
Not in stories.
Not in his.
He raised a small fist toward the bright morning, ridiculous and stubborn and shaking a little.
"I wait," he whispered. "Long time if need. I survive."
The chickens drank beside him. The lake rippled gently, innocent as ever. The forest stood silent and green, pretending nothing had happened.
Kitten—formerly Bruce—turned away from the water and started back toward the cottage.
There was work to do.
And he would do it.