I don't mind, forget it, there's nothing to lose (OTA)

[ragnarsson]

who: Ivar and you + some closed prompts
what: Catch-all for August! Amnesia plot and regular prompts
when: Later half of August, the 9th onwards.
where: All over the city
warnings: None



A. Ivarsdottir. Def: Old Norse for Ivar's daughter. - OTA

While Letha seemed determined to hide Winter away like she was some hideous monster, Ivar's attitude was in a complete 180 degree direction. He couldn't have been prouder to be a father to such a wonderful little girl. Because of his impotency, he'd always thought he'd never be able to have children. To get the chance to be a father was more than he ever could have hoped for.

Anyone who might have been worried about how someone so filled with anger was going to be around a child would soon have their fears put to rest. Ivar was as doting and gentle as any new parent, wanting nothing more than to hold Winter close and gaze down at her little oddly-colored eyes.

She was still a little fragile, so mostly he was found with her in the hospital. But every so often, he got permission from the staff to take her outside, provided she was suitably protected from the sun. That pale skin, white as snow, would burn easily without her dressed up. No matter where the location was, Ivar was going to be approaching friends, acquaintances, and let's face it, perfect strangers to brag about his child. "Have you see my daughter?" He asks everyone with just about the proudest expression on his face that he could have.

B. Just fade away. - OTA

Compared to most of the denizens who have been afflicted with amnesia, Ivar seemed to be unaffected by what was taking everyone's memories. He wasn't stumbling around completely unaware of who he was or where the Quarantine was. But there's some subtle details that one might notice about the Viking that show he's not as unaffected as he's pretending to be.

He doesn't seem to use anyone's name in conversation or bring it up until the person he's talking to has done it himself. Five minutes after he leaves them, he won't remember it anyway. Also, in a first for the Viking, he's without weapons. Holding onto them had only caused a deep gash across his palm since he was unable to remember how to wield them properly. All he was keeping were the arm guards Tony had made for him. He figured the blades that could pop out of them were enough to keep him safe if anyone tried to attack him.

Finally, for anyone close that have heard him talk of his family, he seems to have forgotten entirely about one of his brothers, only mentioning three instead of four. This actually is one of the more advantageous aspects. Sigurd has been nothing but a constant torment his entire life, providing a neverending source of anger for the Viking. He's actually much happier not remembering the worst one of his older brothers. All in all, the more perceptive denizens of the Quarantine might realize something's amiss, but to everyone else, he might just seem a touch off.

C. A llama is a made up animal. - For Marco

"...What is that?" Ivar has seen a lot of strange animals in his time here. Heck, he owns a pair of fire and electric horses, for goodness sake. But every so often, there's an animal that continues to surprise him. After all, he's from a time period where very little of the world and its creatures have been discovered. This thing before him is fluffy, has a long neck, and overall is just...weird. He's never seen anything like it before.

He holds out a hand, having seen enough animals to know it was better to let them come to him instead of approaching them in what they could interpret as an aggressive manner. Besides, the wheelchair made some of them nervous. He continues talking to it in a low, casual tone. "So what are you then? Some sort of reject horse?"

Of course, he's never expecting in a million years that this funny looking creature might actually be capable of answering him back.

D. A little family just struggling together. - For Letha.

Ivar had barely been speaking with Letha. He was still furious at the way she was treating Winter. He wouldn't have even seen her at all had he not been coming to the hospital on an almost daily basis to see their daughter. Even then, she was lucky to get more than two words out of him, maybe a question of how the two of them were doing if she was lucky. When Ivar got mad, he could hold onto grudges forever. It could have been worse. If provoked again into a real rage, there was no telling what he might do, no matter how much he loved her.

But when he showed up to see Winter today, she was already being held by Letha, and apparently without any prompting by the nurses. It was such a surprising sight that Ivar merely sat there in the doorway, watching the two of them for a moment. It was such a pretty sight, so normal to see her actually acting as a mother caring for her child. "Well, that's more like it." He wheeled himself into the room and up to the edge of Letha's bed.

He reached out a hand, letting it rest upon the skin of Winter's tiny baby-soft one. "I was wondering what it was going to take to get you to come to your senses." As usual, he was blaming everything that had happened solely upon Letha. There would be no apology or soft words coming from him. There never was.

Comments

[brightline]

While most people with Marco's confidence sometimes bordering on ego might be compensating for something, Marco's not. Not really. He's well aware of his own strengths and weaknesses, aware that sometimes he's not pleasant to be around, aware that people withdraw from him because of his coldness sometimes, but also aware of what he's good at and proud of how he looks, for the most part. He hasn't quite figured out that Ivar has a fragile self-worth, not quite yet, though it's tugging at the back of his brain - Marco might not care that Ivar's in a wheelchair, but logically, the other Vikings probably did. It's there, in the back of his mind, brain putting together puzzle pieces without him really thinking about it.

In fact, right now, he's mostly occupied with enjoying making a new friend who isn't a fan or an Animorph.

"No. More now than back when I got the power to morph, but not a huge number. It's a technology created by the Andalites. Aliens. They live in space, like, out among the stars, and they kind of look like blue centaurs with scorpion tails. Anyway, one of them gave the power to me and my best friend, and a few other kids, so we could fight a war against invading brain slugs from outer space."

Marco shrugs, avoiding eye contact just slightly because 'fight a war' and 'alien brain slugs' is nowhere near explaining how terrible things had been during the war. And honestly, he doesn't want to right now.

"No kidding. I don't think I've ever had honest-to-god ale, but I could probably use one right now. Anyway, pizza with every topping including the absolutely nasty anchovies, and a cherry Coke, coming right up!"

Marco heads over to the counter, places the order for the two of them, and when the cashier hands him the drinks and says she'll bring the pizza out when it's done, Marco winks at her, grins, and heads back to the table, flopping down in the chair across from Ivar, taking a sip of his own.

"Cherry Coke. Truly inspired choice. I wasn't even sure they had it here."

[ragnarsson]

Ivar leans forward, putting his elbows on the table as he talks. "I think the only thing I understood entirely about that chunk of information was being involved in a war." He actually understood a little more than that, but it was better digesting it in smaller pieces. While some people closer to the modern era might question someone not even yet twenty being involved in a war, Ivar doesn't bat an eye. Vikings start being involved in battles as soon as they're considered adults, which usually happens around age twelve or so.

He sips a little of the Coke through the straw. "I assume that's where what you were saying about seeing your entrails on the battlefield came from." Lovely talk for a lunch chat, but then, they were both warriors. Clearly it didn't matter to either of them.

"Sounds like you came from quite an interesting world. I came from a war myself. My brothers and I were fighting in England against the English kings. We'd just finished blood-eagling one when I got pulled here. When I go back, I've got another kind and then a queen I've got to kill." Ivar's ambitious. He's not going to stop until he's gotten exactly what he wanted, which is revenge on anyone who has ever hurt his family.

[brightline]

Leaning forward, Marco rests an elbow on the table and then leans his forehead into his hand, combing his fingers through his dark hair, smiling a little at Ivar across the table. When Ivar mentions the entrails on the battlefield thing, the smile takes on a wry twist.

"Man, trust a Viking to go right there, straight to the entrails. Yeah, that's definitely where I saw them. And I've seen them more than once. Not something I want to deal with literally ever again, but it sure was a thing that happened."

A pause, and then he raises his brows, "I'm almost scared to ask, but what is blood-eagling?"

[ragnarsson]

"Alright, there's got to be a story behind how you survived that multiple times. Most people die after the first time that happens, you know." Ivar should know. He's done it to a lot of men on the battlefield. There's just some things in his time that are impossible to survive and an axe through the stomach is one of them.

When Marco asks what blood-eagling is, Ivar grins. There's something a little unhinged about the way he looks. "A very cruel method Vikings have for killing people. It's so brutal that it's only been performed on two people in living memory. You tied a man to two posts and then take a red hot knife, plunging it into his back. After you peel away the skin and muscles, you take out an axe, and break apart the man's ribs. If he's still alive at that point, he'll suffocate from feeling his lungs actually ripped out of his back." He pauses in the gory description as the pizzas arrive at their table. Picking up a slice, he casually adds on, "My brothers and I did it to the king who murdered our father," before he bites down into his slice.

[brightline]

Marco's mouth quirks up at one corner, and he's abruptly offering Ivar a crooked grin across the table as he asks how Marco's survived being gutted more than once. There's part of Marco that still feels squeamish when he thinks about those times, especially the first one, when he remembers holding his own guts in gorilla morph and the feeling of dying before he'd been jolted back to life and morphed out.

"That's the thing about morphing. You change forms, and you get restored to default. Any injuries you have, they're gone. It's like a reset button. Boom, no more guts in your hands."

While Ivar is talking, Marco picks up a slice of his own pizza and takes a bite, only to completely stop chewing when Ivar gets to the gritty details. By the time Ivar's done talking, Marco is sitting there with a half-eaten slice of pizza in his hand and his mouth hanging open.

"Well, there goes my appetite."

[ragnarsson]

"Now there's something that I could see coming in handy on the battlefield." This shapeshifting ability sounded like there was a lot of advantages to having it. He wondered if this type of technology that could be found in the city. Not that Ivar thought he'd ever actually go to one of those body modification parlors. He tended to instinctively mistrust anything that had to affect his physical form.

Ivar grins at Marco, before biting pointedly into his slice again, speaking around a mouthful of pizza. "Hey, you asked. Revenge and war is never a pretty business." Vikings were used to the brutality of battles. In fact, they counted on it to be able to get them to the halls of Valhalla. At least Marco hadn't puked. Some Vikings did that just watching a blood-eagling. Swallowing down a slice, Ivar reaches for another one.

"So how did you come to know about knights? You don't talk like someone from my time. You're more from the same time as a lot of other people are here." He means the 2000s, though he's noticed there seems to still be a variety of years even then that people come from.