riverviewlogs | Forgive me, hearer, I cannot stay

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Forgive me, hearer, I cannot stay

who: Letha Regis, Winter Regis-Ivarsdottir, and all their friends.
what: Catch-all log for late February and early March; Letha reintegrates into society
when: Feb 24 forward
where: Alllll over the place.
warnings: Post-partum depression, homicidal/suicidal thoughts, Letha's tactless attempts to treat others like human beings, and possible accidental child injury. It's okay though, the baby heals quickly.

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(This is a fake cut because there are a LOT of prompts, starters are below.)

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It takes a while for Letha to work up the nerve to speak to Lola again... of course it does, over a month passes before she even considers it. But Ivar is gone and her hair seems like it's going to stay white for the forseeable future, so there's no time like the present. Weeks after their confrontation.

It seems almost on purpose that Letha picks the same table at the diner as she did in her child form, thought it was a pure coincidence over a year later by her count. She has a hood up when Lola approaches, but even when she pulls it off it may take a moment to recognize her - seeing as she's paler than normal, her eyes are blue and her hair is currently a pair of curly white braided pigtails. Even her eyelashes and brows are white, which stands out sharply against her makeup - the magic refuses even her mascara to hide it.

"Do you have a break soon? I do plan to order something, but I thought I might treat you while I'm here." She's doing her best to act casually, like she isn't just a little terrified of Lola rejecting her and tossing her out.

Dolores's memories are... skewed, Lola remembers them, but the context is all weird, so that connection is lost. Lola, however, is good at faces. And coloring changes that would influence others recognition do not have the same impact on someone who studies make-up and hair for fun. So while there's a brief moment taking in the coloring, it quickly fades into recognition.

Which is obvious, Lola's hair turned that stormy thundercloud gray once she figured out it was Letha. Because she was mad, she was mad and that didn't go away easy. But... she sighed, she could at least hear her out. "We can talk when your order's up. What'll you have?"

"Thank you."

Her tone is the most genuine it's been in their entire time knowing each other; Letha may be selfish and playfully thoughtless, but she understands that it takes a lot to hear someone out when you'd rather tell them to fall off a cliff.

"Do you think I could have a strawberry milkshake. And something very large and meat-heavy to eat, I'm starving."

She doesn't quite remember what things are anymore, but it's one of those days when she forgot to eat the day before and plans to make up for it by eating a huge amount all at once.

Lola scribbled down some things, and wandered offer. She'd need a little time to calm herself down, vent to some of the other wait staff in the back. Lola's always trying to make others feel better, and she's always giving people chances to talk. Doesn't mean she isn't bitter, angry, and wishes she was a little less perfect in all the worst ways.

Eventually she comes out, large serving tray filled with dishes. Well... normal sized serving tray but she's rather petite. She hits up a few other tables with their meals before she makes her way over to Letha's table. Strawberry milkshake (which is blue, but details), and a big juicy steak, side of mashed potatoes. It was, incidentally, the most expensive meat option on the menu and she would expect the largest tip possible.

...Lola's still not happy with Letha, you can't expect her not to try to maximize the end result. "Alright, I'm here. Talk."

If that was an attempt to spite Letha, it barely registers. Since coming to Riverview the first time she had unfortunately had to learn the actual value of money, but her husband was a banker and she'd caught onto the concept well enough. Still, she is and always will be a big spender, and Lola is a friend no matter what rift is currently between them; she'll be getting a wealthy tip no matter how this meeting goes.

"I was hoping you'd take something for yourself, as well - I would have happily paid for it."

But she isn't going to press the issue. She instead takes a moment to assess whether she wants to deal with the propriety of silverware, before she begins pulling the steak apart with her bare hands, idly popping bite-sized chunks into her mouth as she speaks.

"I believe we had a bit of a misunderstanding, last we met. You see, I was under the impression that what you were implying was that you had taken Ivar off of my hands, and that was the reason I was no longer welcome. But I heard from Ivar that he's not seeing you, but someone named- what was it- Marco. Odd, how no one seemed to think it important to tell me about him, isn't it?" Her tone is casual, but there's still a bit of an edge in her tone as she speaks about Marco. "But if your problem with me isn't based in wanting Ivar, then I don't see why we were fighting. My only desires are to have Ivar and Winter back in my life, and I doubt that should get in your way at all."

Even with all of that talking, she's already halfway done with her meal by the same she's said all of that... she really was hungry.

Lola wondered why all her friends, family, any sort of connection was with someone in some need of help. Was that her? Here, at least, everyone was some flavor of misfit toy. Never going to make a Christmas happy on their own, because they just didn't fit. Trains with square wheels and dolls that didn't look quite right. How Letha missed it, the clearly obvious, and instead found an insane conspiracy theory to latch onto?

But before Lola could process any of that she showed a face mixing revulsion with confusion. Because, to Lola, Ivar was never a potential romance. He couldn't be, he was spoiled, forever, by another version of him sleeping with someone Lola could not stand. Another version of herself. So the very concept just boggled and disgusted her to the point it caused her hair to go a little green. A sickly color right out of Wizard of Oz. It would take a moment for Lola to calm down and try to explain in ways Letha might understand, how she monumentally fucked up and it would never quite go away.

Unlike that steak.

"First off, if this was about me, I'd have gotten over it in a few months. I don't really hold grudges for myself. If this was about Ivar, I never would have gotten so mad in the first place. The two of you proved quite well he can take care of himself." Lola's managed to calm herself down enough to relax, lean back, and not scream. Which... was way better than she expected going into this. She kinda knew it'd always happen, but she hadn't really planned it out. "You don't get to run off through a portal leaving your baby behind. No matter who you have looking after her. And just breeze back in and act like you didn't do anything wrong."

"Also what Marco and Ivar do only matters to me if they do it on any of the living room furniture, or in my kitchen." Lola didn't really register that Marco's name was important to bring up last time, it wasn't her business. Also it wasn't really Letha's business either. And it certainly wasn't her place to out Ivar to Letha after Letha vanished. But mostly she didn't think it was an important detail, so two of her housemates were dating, no big deal. "I didn't even bother to mention my love life since you left, something that's actually mine to tell. Which also would have told you I wasn't with Ivar. Something that won't happen in a billion years and if he's the last man on ear-
this moon."

"She's a baby. She won't remember me being gone."

She grimaces, wiping her fingers on her napkin as the last of the steak disappears. That's the sort of speech that had made Ragnar so cautious of her, isn't it. But it's hard to think of a better way to word it, when Lola has to put the image of Ivar doing things with his mystery cavalier.

"You saw me after she was born, I thought you'd understand. I was losing my mind in that house. Winter wouldn't let me touch her, Ivar wouldn't let me be away from her, I kept seeing my husband in the crowds when I left the house. I'd lie awake at night and think about leaving her beyond the wall, or gouging Ivar's eyes out, and I couldn't stand the thought that I might actually do that one day. I thought if I left, at least everyone else could enjoy her. She was supposed to be the one thing left of my home, but she only served to prove what a failure I was, I couldn't take that." She drains a portion of her milkshake haughtily to give herself time to breathe. "I thought perhaps now that I'd had... time, to regret, and mourn, I could try my hand at being what everyone wants of me again. But now everyone tells me I'm not allowed to have her back, because I left the first time. As if I've ever hurt her in the past - it was always her hurting me. I thought someone might appreciate that I'm accepting that burden again. And I would think if Ivar wanted to be rid of me, he would at least have the courtesy to give me back my child to which he has no claim, but I have to assume he's keeping her out of vanity. Since he can't make his own."

She's already plenty sullen, having lost the chipper mask that she was trying to keep. She'd much prefer to act like she's above all of this, but she is hurting deeply, struggling with all sorts of problems she's never had to confront before... things that getting everything on a silver spoon definitely didn't prepare her for. And she can't help one last petty remark.

"And anyway, he can't be doing anything with Marco, he's only done anything with me. It wouldn't work otherwise."

"I remember you calling her a monster. Because she's different. And that I didn't understand then."

Sadly, Letha, Lola can't understand. Her own burden is to know what being the girl abandoned by her mother feels like. And even if Winter is too young, so what? It doesn't changed how it happened. "You left Ivar with a baby, which he loves and cares for because he loves her and cares for her. Whatever in his past left him as messed up as he is hasn't taken away his ability to care about children. He spent nights caring for her, feeding her, buying those ugly but kinda cute dresses he puts her in. And you're surprised he won't give her back? And surprised he doesn't want you back?"

There's a level of disbelief at the end, given how Letha talks about Ivar, Lola does understand that's just how the two have always been. A hair away from murdering each other. Or, is it manslaughter? Lola doesn't get the difference. The point is that she doesn't get how, after leaving, Ivar might hold some reservations. Because unlike Winter, he can remember. And unlike Winter, this is not his first betrayal. "I'm glad that you were a blushing virgin when you and Ivar did anything, because you couldn't possibly do anything with Ivar if you did things with someone else. Sex is actually kinda easy, once you know all the parts involved."

"Well, maybe I wanted to treat her the way Ivar does. I was excited before she was born, I was ready for it. She was going to be trained to fight monsters, and speak to the dead, and Ivar and I would get married and everything would be wonderful forever." She huffs. "And she's beautiful, isn't she? She looks just like me the way my hair is right now. But if everyone kept telling you you were holding a puppy, and you could plainly see a rat in your hands, wouldn't you feel like you were doing something wrong? Like you were broken, somehow, for not seeing what everyone else did?"

She purses her lips.

"I cannot explain everything that is wrong with my daughter because I don't know all of it. Healers are- scary stories that we tell at night, like changelings and imps. They're parasites, they latch onto the mind of those around them and make them fear death. Make them willing to do anything a healer wishes, so long as they are promised a few more days of life. It's a disease for the natural order of things, and I birthed one. And it's all my fault, because I was communing with the dead when I wasn't supposed to and I got myself wrapped up in a fate worse than death. My daughter is the way she is because of me, that's why I couldn't bear to be near her."

Her eyes lock onto the table, and she ends up grabbing a spoon and shaping what's left of her potatoes into abstract shapes instead of eating them. And then, at that last comment, he glances around before focusing on Lola.

"I don't have to spell out the problems with that, do I? I bore another man's child before I slept with him. And his... manhood, doesn't work. It's weak, like his legs. It would only work with a woman, I would think."

"I don't really hold Winter, but she looked like a baby. I mean sure, I look in her eyes and I see all those expressions that prove she's alive and real, but she's a baby. Nothing more, nothing less. She really likes the feeling of my healing power and when Ivar tells her stories. Like a baby." Lola didn't like babies, not really. But they were alive, and that's easy enough to respect.

Lola's trying to get something out of the big speech about healers but all she got was 'blah blah weird necromancer bigotry' and self hatred. It wasn't like she could say 'that's stupid' no matter how much she wanted to. Instead, she got an out with the last comment. Lola's eyes went wide, and then she leveled a cool glare.

"I'm not Dolores, but I do have her memories, about sleeping with the other Ivar. I know what he is and isn't capable of. I'm sure he and Marco can figure out some enjoyable activities that are none of our business." Stop reminding Lola she has these memories, she'd rather not bring them out unless she has to.

"It's my business, at least, if not yours."

If Lola isn't going to listen to her necromantic bigotry, she'll just have to cling onto the pettier argument. While she pointlessly stabs at her potatoes.

"I wasn't gone for that long... and now he's gone, by his own choice, for who knows how long. He won't even let me near my child when he isn't here to be the better parent." She purses her lips again, and her shoulders slump before she pops up with another burst of anger. "Why did he move on so fast? I never even met Marco, I left for three months and suddenly they were lovers. We were perfect together, how could he just forget and move on as if it didn't even- you have healing powers? Wh- since when?"

That just sort of... hit her, right at that exact moment.

Lola, for once, isn't going to pick a fight she can't win. Which would be trying to explain how much Ivar's love life isn't her business. Nor will she focus on how much time Ivar and Letha had before they got together either. Cause Lola was here for that too.

"He's a viking, I don't think he really knows how to dwell. Some people just move on, it didn't take me long to move on from Yuffie either," Not that that was very serious. Or a thing Lola got to tell Letha about. As to the other topic.

"You weren't here when I finally figured out why I was tired all the time. If I focus on someone their injuries heal faster. Or, in Winter's case, she giggles. It's a thing I do." Lola wasn't exactly the same Lola she was months ago either.

Letha is about to state that she didn't know Yuffie either, but... yes. That's Lola's point, isn't it. Just how much has Letha been missing because she forgets that other people's lives don't revolve around her?

That's a pretty startling thing to consider, and she quickly decides to forget about it.

"So... you're immune to her. Because you can.. heal." She's definitely not happy with that, but... well. "Do you know how to stop yourself? There's someone else here who is the same sort of creature that Winter is- well, not exactly, but something very similar. We talked briefly about- turning Winter's powers off, so that I could approach her safely. That sort of thing." She pauses, "I don't mean to do it without Ivar's permission, of course."

"Never really tested, I don't hold her. But she likes to drain life energy, and I can sorta send life energy too her. In a controlled way I guess?" Lola was dismissive and generally quick in her words on this, it was an irritant, nothing she liked to focus on. Stupid magic nonsense, and Lola hated stupid magic nonsense. Her stuff was stupid science nonsense, and that was merely marginally better.

"I can handle my own powers," except when she can't, but that isn't nearly so common. "If they can help handle Winter's powers, and Ivar's okay with it, it isn't really my business. And I have enough to do with my time."

Like, this break, that she planned to spend pouring over business textbooks and other learning aids. But she was here, instead, trying to hash out a bunch of things that were either not her business, or wouldn't be solved in her dwindling break.

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Forgive me, hearer, I cannot stay

For Lola

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