For The Sake of Revenge

III~Chapter 2: Reliving the Woes

"I don't know," she finally admitted, her breath was hot against his throat, and her nipples were little pebbles against his diaphram. "It was just scary."

"Do you remember?"

"No," another lie.

"Tell me, Yasmeen," It drove Ivar insane that she didn't understand the weight of dreams. Dreams were...they were just so prophetic. Even the most seemingly insignificant dreams were the ones that could have changed the course of a lifetime. "Dreams to us...they are omens."

"That is very superstitious," she joked weakly and Ivar almost rolled his eyes. Almost.

"That is the way of our life," Ivar finally settled on saying. Not for the first time, he was disturbed by how coldly she dismissed some norms in Ivar's culture. She lived in it now. She couldn't just dismiss such things so easily, especially in public. She did it with Ivar, who was always quick to correct her, lest she take it upon herself to say it to someone else, and risk the wrath of the believers and followers of Odin. He needed to get that through her gorgeous little head. "Humor me."

Yasmeen gave him an uneasy look. "I--do you promise not to get upset?"

Ivar was already upset, and insulted. He thought he had already proven that under no circumstances would that ever happen. "I won't hurt you."

"I know you won't," she assured him. "I just don't want to hurt your feelings."

Ivar was jarred. Her consideration was genuinely touching. Often times people omitted certain information from fear of Ivar's infamous, tempremental, and unusually cruel wrath. But Yasmeen, she was cautious of hurting Ivar's feelings. The implication that she believed he had any was touching. Ivar did have feelings, as any normal human. He just wasn't prone to showing them. It was crass and telling to show feelings. It was dangrous.

But Yasmeen, for how stupid she often seemed, was the most intelligent person Ivar knew. Or perhaps it was less intelligence and more preceptiveness. In any case, it was enough that she could read Ivar as though he outright confessed his feelings and waxed sonnets to her about his day. Not as if he barely spoke 3 words to her in terms of a heartfelt, empathetic conversation between two, intimately involved adults.

"You can't hurt my feelings," Ivar said dryly. "The only person who was ever able to do that is dead now."

Once upon a time, Ragnar was a sober and faithful family-man to Aslaug and their progeny. Ubbe, Hvitserk, Sigurd, and Ivar all enjoyed being around their father. Ragnar would carry Ivar up on his shoulders and let him sit infront of him on the saddle, something that all his brothers envied. And Ragnar's state declined and in his descent to madness, oust his true feelings regarding Ivar infront of all of Kattegat. He yelled loudly how he had left Ivar to die as a babe and the only reason Ivar survived was because Aslaug had disobeyed his orders and rescued Ivar.

Ragnar conviniently left out the part where Aslaug searched for days in the cold, for Ivar, as Floki would tell him later on, to affirm that he was not unloved. Perhaps it was more convinient to simply state her action and not her journey, so that he may not lose any more sympathy from the already disenchanted court of Kattegat. Aslaug had searched for Ivar until her fingers were frostbitten, only to find Ivar, swaddeled in the hearth of a mother bear and her cubs. Aslaug, the soulsinger she was, had commanded the bear to give Ivar up to his true mother.

That last bit Ivar doubted but Floki, who was usually not serious in many regards, had seriously told Ivar that Aslaug never lied, and that she truly was a soulsinger, and had truly commanded the mother-bear, and the mother-bear had truly obeyed Aslaug.

Safe to say, it took Ivar years to build his reputation again, past the 'unwanted cripple' reputation. It hurt more because Ivar let himself believe that Ragnar actually cared. And it hurt all the more when he finally went mad.