riverviewlogs | January monthly log!

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January monthly log!

who: Ivar and others. Maybe even you?
what: Monthly log
when: All throughout January
where: Abandoned City, the park, all over
warnings: A fight, possible baby mama drama, maybe some body horror with morphing?

A. First rule of Fight Club - For Damian and later on Bucky

Considering how their last fight had gone, even if Damian didn't remember, Ivar was eager to see who would win in this second one. He headed out into the Abandoned City towards the biggest waterfall. It was best not to do this in the city, for it was a certainty that someone would try to stop the two of them if they knew what they were up to. This might have been the wiser course of action, for there was no telling how carried away they were likely to get during this.

Ivar was the first to arrive and he waited, taking out his axe, sharpening it on a whetting stone as he waited for the young assassin to arrive.

B. The blue box - For Marco

It's been several weeks since Ivar broke his leg badly and Marco had to rescue him in gorilla form. While his leg is now healed up thanks to the ministrations of Shigeru, such a traumatic experience is not easily forgotten. They haven't really spoken much of it since then, but observant as Ivar is, he's noticed that Marco seems to have something on his mind.

Rather than press him, he waits for Marco to find the right moment to talk to him. It appears to come when they're relaxing on the couch together, Ivar with his head in Marco's lap and his eyes closed, the TV on for background noise. Marco says something that he doesn't quite catch, so Ivar opens up his eyes and looks up. "Hmmm? What did you say?"

C. Co-parenting - For Letha

Dealing with Letha was rather like strategizing for a war. He kept trying to read her and figure out how to stay one step ahead. Right now, they were in an uneasy truce, both of them remaining civil for the sake of Winter. Ivar wanted to believe that she had changed and actively wanted to be a part of her daughter's life again, but the cynical side of him wondered how long it would last.

The reunion hadn't been smooth. As soon as she picked up Winter, the familiar glow surrounded the baby, and Letha had nearly fainted from stubbornly insisting she kept wanting to hold onto her. Ivar wasn't sure how much babies could remember, but it was obvious he was going to need to deal with this problem of Winter draining her mother's life force sooner rather than later.

The best thing for her would be to associate Letha with positive feelings, love and comfort, the way she did with Ivar. So right now, they were out in the backyard of Letha's house. Winter had on a cute little smock dress as she crawled around the backyard while her parents watched her.

"She's gotten so big," Ivar remarked. He was hoping she wouldn't drain the life out of any of the plants or bugs in the backyard, but if she did, well, at least it wasn't a person.

D. What kind of Pokemon are you? - OTA

With all that had been going on lately, Ivar hadn't had the chance to really get his Pokemon out and about. It made him feel a little guilty. Pets were not to be neglected no matter what form they came in. So he took the three of them out to a nearby park and released them from their Pokeballs so that they could get some exercise.

Skinfaxi and Hrimfaxi galloped around for a bit before settling down to graze. It was amazing how his Ponyta had grown from a tiny foal all the way to a full-grown stallion big enough to ride. Sprig, on the other hand, remained close to Ivar, occasionally nudging him in hopes of getting a treat. He was a gluttonous little thing.

If he saw anyone, he would wave them over, proud to show off his trio of pocket monsters.

E. Morphing - OTA (Set at some point after the thread with Marco)

Anyone walking around the city would notice a certain oddity now roaming the streets. There were different animals wandering around. Some were ones from earth and others were obviously alien in nature. Most of the time, they could be found tearing around at top speeds, or if they had wings, awkwardly swooping down low to land nearby people. It was, of course, Ivar testing out his new powers.

If he noticed anyone that he knew, he was likely going to approach them, trying to look as cute as possible. He wasn't going to be revealing who he was just yet. He wanted to see what advantages there were when people just thought a dumb animal was around them, not a Viking who was far too sneaky for his own good.

This will only end well.

F. Wildcard

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Being snapped at makes her freeze, and her face turns scarlet as she hesitantly returns Winter to Ivar's lap. Without missing a beat, Winter curls back up against her father's chest and buries her face in his shirt, apparently thinking this counts as hiding.

"I just wanted to..."

There it is again. Like always. 'I just wanted to help'. She doesn't even bother finishing the sentiment, and just hangs her head slowly as she watches her daughter cower from her.

"I'm sorry." She says it both to Ivar and to Winter. "I've just- missed her, and I thought..."

Ivar pats Winter on the back, trying to soothe her little whimpers. In a way, he feels sorry for Letha, that she can't even hold her own child without pain. But she made this bed four months ago. She can lie in it.

Cruel as Ivar can be, he doesn't have the heart to twist the knife further with what Letha is feeling. He loves Winter with all his heart and he's starting to see that Letha does love her too. "I know. You're trying. But maybe you're trying a little too hard."

"I have a lot to make up for." She hesitates, wringing her hands as she watches her child and holds back the urge to make a grab for her again, "I'm sure your father feels the same way."

She hadn't been lying about wanting to be back in Winter's life; or at least, she was starting to discover how serious she was about it. Being apart from her family was a dull ache, but now that Winter was so close and still out of reach it had turned into a burning wound. If no one stopped her she'd be clinging onto her baby until she wasted away, hoping to somehow make up for her stupidity; not just to Winter or Ivar, but to her friends, and to Aristeo, and to the entire Regis clan. On this rare occasion she knew she had no one to blame but herself and it was absolutely horrible.

"I'm sorry." She mumbles again. "I just wish I could hold her like you do. You always seem to... bring out the best of those around you."

Ah, Letha, still in her pretty little world after all this.

Winter seems to be settling back down, fretful state of being returning to one calm and sweet. She seems to be dozy after that display of emotion, curling up against Ivar's chest, eyes beginning to close. Ivar rubs her back, trying to soothe her to sleep. Once she's in a deep sleep, she won't care whose holding her, and Letha can stop feeling so guilty.

Ivar snorts and shakes his head. She still sees him as the Viking prince of her dreams, even after seeing the reality of his world. He certainly has cast a spell on her without meaning to. "I'm sure you're the only one to feel that way." With everyone else, he tends to annoy or anger them most of the time.

"I'm sure they don't." She speaks evenly, shifting to watch him properly. "But I've never seen you raise an angry hand without reason. You've always been fair to me."

And it's very true, she's never seen him be cruel. When she's seen him in crowds it's been at parties and feasts, where he's playful and friendly. He can be terrifying, dangerous, but never without a good reason. Letha would be a hypocrite to hate a temper like his and call him cruel for it.

She pauses, mulling over her thoughts a bit before speaking them.

"I always liked how much you spoke your mind. My family was never the type for it, you know... my husband and I were shunned simply for being curious, and for questioning our traditions. I had always told myself I was being punished needlessly but really, he was the only ally I had.

You make me think of what Aristeo could have been, if he had the spine for it. My husband was a rebel, but he was also a coward. He rebelled simply to feel that he was different from our little herd of sheep. Perhaps if he'd been born truly different from the others, he would have learned the sort of strength you have."

Winter's breathing starts even out, becoming long and slow as her eyes close shut. Ivar listens. She always has put him up on a pedestal. No matter what he's done, be that holding a knife to her when she was still pregnant or trying to strangle her when she came back, she still sees him as some shining prince. It doesn't seem even almost a year away could dim her views.

He sighs, shifting Winter in his arms as she begins to sleep. "I've never meant to set out to be different from anyone. That was just something that was thrust upon me. It wasn't until I came here that some people seemed to see me instead of just a cripple." Not that even Letha had managed to do that. He still remembered what she'd told him when they met, how he didn't seem like a cripple.

"Do you think she looks like him at all? Your husband?" Ivar thought he saw a lot of Letha in Winter's looks. That was a good thing. She'd grow up very pretty, her odd coloring making her quite striking.

Letha pauses to watch her daughter, wrinkling her nose slightly as she tries to think of what she might have in common with Aristeo. His eyes, maybe... a hint of his cheekbones. But the trouble with marrying one's cousin is that it's very hard to pick apart which features came from which side.

"If we're being honest... I've been away from him longer than the time I knew him." She admits with a sigh. "I can barely remember his face anymore."

Aristeo had been a previous chapter in her life, one she would never be able to return to. His appearance had faded away and become abstract shapes - a hook nose, almond eyes, and thick, neat brows. Through all her time in Varberg, it had been Ivar's face that she remembered in clear detail, who she mourned the loss of every night as she lay cold and alone in bed.

"Have you been seeing anyone?"

She'd planned to bring it about casually, but it just sort of blurts out. Her cheeks turn pink when she realizes what she's said, and tries to backtrack a bit with explanation. "I mean- surely with my absence you would have thought to get her a new mother, it would be difficult to raise her all on your own, and..."

Ivar felt that was a little sad, forgetting the face of the man who had given her their child, but that was life. She'd completely moved on from her husband now. What that meant for them, he couldn't say. They were still getting to know one another again, rebuilding badly-broken trust.

"No, I've been raising Winter all on my own. I mean, my roommates help a little, but it's not the same thing. I didn't want to get involved with just anyone right away." He'd been too heartbroken to even consider the possibility at first. Then there was the thought of what-if. What if he got involved with someone, they got close to Winter, and they up and left too? He couldn't stand that thought.

Still, he does feel the need to be honest with Letha. She deserves that much from him."But there has been....." He trailed off before he finally finished his sentence ".....someone. You know how I live with several people now?" He has no idea how Letha's going to react when he reveals that he's gotten involved with a man while she was away. Best ease her into it.

"You don't have to step on eggshells... Lola already said she fancied you. Not in as many words, but the intention was clear. And if that's- well, at least if it's her that you're involved with then I know you're well taken care of, she does care for you and Winter a great deal, and by the sound of it Winter likes her as well..."

And Letha has always been jealous of Lola, nearly as much as she looks up to her, so it seems so obvious for Lola and Ivar to end up together. Lola is prettier and nicer and more sane, and they've already slept together and everything...

"Wait, what?" Cue the sound of a scratching record. Exactly what had he said that had led her to make that supreme leap in logic? Well, this was Letha, he really should have seen this coming. Dammit, this is just going to be even more awkward now. "I don't know how the hel you came to that conclusion, but that's not what I was trying to say. Lola is great and all for helping to calm Winter down, but we're just friends."

Deep breath. Just get this over with. "I was trying to tell you that I've gotten involved with Marco." So, yes, there it was. Ivar hadn't gotten involved with a woman in Letha's absence, he'd completely hopped the fence, and gone for the opposite gender.

Well.. it's Letha's turn to hear a record scratch.

In the Regis clan, handling things directly has never been a strong suit. Letha considers herself the best at being blunt and direct, and even she can fall into the traps of euphemisms and sugarcoating. In this case, the reality she's been presented is so far-fetched, so very different from the way she had been seeing the world, that she is stunned into silence, fails to come up with a quirky way to approach it... and resorts to the coping mechanism her mother had taught her. Pointed avoidance.

"I'm... sorry, I didn't hear you quite right." She gives him her best apologetic smile, as if she really had gone coincidentally deaf for a moment. "I don't know any Margots, do I? Had she been here before I left?"

That's it, this is how Ivar dies. Not on the battlefield, no, he's going to die after a stroke from trying to explain to a Victorian era girl that he's bisexual. Why couldn't this just be easy? But he should have known that things were never going to be easy with Letha. She just had the habit of making everything around her much more dramatic.

He takes a very deep breath and tries not to consider the merits of just strangling Letha again. That hadn't worked last time and it wasn't going to help right now. He was just going to have to spell it out for her. "You're misunderstanding. I got involved with a man. The one I live with. Marco."

And there she already wasted her coincidentally deaf card. She keeps smiling but something about it had become glossed-over and distant, most of her brain working hard to decide a proper reality where things are good and make sense... and is close enough to bridge the gap into this conversation.

It does not work, and she ends up uttering a little "Hm?" As she tries to think, before finally settling on, "I don't... understand, what do you mean you're... involved with a man? Like a- are we still talking about the same thing?"

Because suddenly they're talking about something else? Right? She didn't lose Ivar to a boy, surely??

The problem with dealing with Ivar, is that while he often was good at doubletalk and saying what people wanted to hear, when he became forthright, it was to the point of bluntness. There was no sugarcoating that was going to happen here. He was just going to keep having to tell her until it sunk somewhere deep inside that thick head.

He sighs for what feels like the fiftieth time in this conversation. Apparently, her time among Vikings hadn't improved Letha's worldview regarding people's sexuality. He would have thought living among people who were loosely bisexual all the time would have done something for her. Nope. "I hope we are. A relationship. One with kissing. And sex. Things like that."

"Right."

Sex.

Sex with a man.

Her Ivar, engaging in forbidden acts instead of being at home with her.

Something in her is boiling up, and she's no longer sure what emotion it is, but it's making her steam like a kettle. Her hands clench a bit, and she nearly drops her tablet as she pulls it out without really looking at it. "Goodness, is that the time..." She mutters, having looked at the clock but not read it. "I'm sorry, I shouldn't have brought this up, I'm sure it's awkward and- strange to talk to me about it, and..."

...And she wants to go, right now, immediately.

Well, this conversation has gone down the drain, into the sewers, and out to the river, where it was currently stuck choking the neck of an adorable heron.

Ivar watches Letha with a flat look on his face. So that was going to be her reaction. He kind of preferred it when she was being deliberately obtuse. Ivar mutters, "And you dare to sometimes call me childish." That's what it looks like to him. A retreat because she can't face the fact Ivar might fancy both sexes.

"Well, what am I supposed to say to that?" That something bursts as soon as he speaks and she nearly tramples over his words, so riled up that her hair seems to stand on end with indignity. "First you tell me that I can't have my own child back, then that you don't trust me, and now- you expect me to take it well that I managed to turn you into a- a-?"

She doesn't stop this time because she's realized she's gone too far... no, she hasn't gone quite far enough yet but she simply doesn't have a word for what she's trying to say. The words didn't exist in Thornwell because speaking about it was forbidden, and they didn't exist in Varberg because it didn't matter. Maybe someone had mentioned it in Riverview, but it was so long ago now that it's gone from her memory.

She resorts to just shoving her tablet back into her bag and shaking her head. "You may as well have just said I was that awful when it happened, not sworn off of women entirely... What exactly do you expect me to say to all of this, really?"

Ivar's eyes narrow as he waits for her to find what she thinks is the proper word. No matter what it is, he's sure it's going to be insulting. Then she just stumbles without a proper conclusion to the sentence. Ivar begins to wonder...she can't possibly not have known about this beforehand, could she? For the gods' sake, she lived among Vikings for ten months! That would have been enough to give anyone a proper sexual education.

Then she just goes on. "Wait, you think the sex was so bad that I...swore off women?" He tries very hard to stifle a laugh and only partially succeeds. No, he cannot crack up now, she'll only manage to take that the wrong way too. "Do you actually hear yourself talk sometimes?"

He reaches out and grabs her hands to prevent her from leaving. He's got to spell this out for her in simple terms. "Letha, I didn't turn to a man because I decided I didn't want to be with women anymore. I liked him and he liked me back. It could have just as easily happened with another woman, but it didn't. I like women and men." Something he'd been trying to figure out when he was still with Letha, hence why it had never come up.

Then he smirks. "And by the way, you were not terrible in bed."

Her face turns bright red at that last part... god, that one comment is enough to make whatever stress and anger was piling up in side of her burst into fluff. Even if he's laughing at her... she still loves Ivar's smile, and it still has just as much power over her as it did months and months ago.

"Gods..." She grumbles meekly, her hands suddenly loose just because she's afraid he might actually let her go. "And this- Marco. Things are serious with him?"

She's still trying to wrap her head around it, but... the main point of her worry has been soothed. Now her mind has moved on to the fear that she might have to compete with this mysterious Marco for Ivar's affections, and judging from the fact that he hadn't laughed her questions off with a comment about being undesirable.. well, she laid that trap herself, didn't she.

Ivar squeezes her hand reassuringly. The fact she hadn't started yelling, throwing things, or burst into tears was a sign of progress. Usually, when she did any of that, he just left to let her have her temper tantrum, or if he was feeling really petulant, started throwing things back at her.

"We haven't really put any labels on things between us. But I care for him a great deal." Ivar doesn't use the word love. He's refused to think about that word after the last time he used it with Letha and ended up with a broken heart. But he does like Marco an awful lot. "He fought in a war back in his home world. He understands that part of me very well." The brutal, calculating, and angry side that Letha either wouldn't acknowledge or couldn't accept.

He shifts Winter around with his free hand. "Do you want to hold her for a little bit before I take her back home?" Maybe this way she won't keep beating herself up over not being the perfect mother.

She would have been okay with just a simple 'yes', but hearing his reasoning... well, it stings. She can't deny that she can't provide that - she hadn't seen combat until she came to Varberg, and she hadn't adjusted well. Not the way that she knows Ivar values combat and war. She can fight to defend herself, but she doesn't like it anywhere near as much as she thought she would when she was younger.

"Ivar..." She starts, but the rest of the words catch in her throat. She's not even sure what exactly they were going to be.

She just wrings her hands before straightening up a bit and reaching for Winter. This time she stops just short of her daughter, trying to get her attention. Winter looks up at her, her little brow knit with concern, before she snuggles closer to her father and away from Letha. Letha lets out a small sigh of defeat. "She hates me, doesn't she. She always has."

Ivar looks down at his daughter with an indescribable expression. He does honestly want Winter to get to know her mother, but at the same time, does his daughter instinctively know something he doesn't? Is Letha bound to break both their hearts again? "She doesn't hate you. She just doesn't know you enough yet." But even he can't be sure his words are the truth.

He squeezes her hand reassuringly one more time before he lets it drop. It's time for him to be getting Winter back to the mansion. He turns to shift her one more time in his arms before he heads back out of the backyard and towards the front of the house. Maybe with some time Winter will soften towards her mother.

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January monthly log!

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