people talk about how great love is, but that’s bullshit. love hurts. feelings are disturbing.

[rhinemaid]

Who: Ilde Decima & Ivan.
What: Meg Shao did something for Ilde before she left; Ilde has been meaning to discuss it with Ivan for a while.
Where: Ivan's apartment, Mafaton.
When: Veerdi night.
Notes: The squidbaby cometh. Did you know the gestation period of an octopus is seven months?
Warnings: Uhhh let me get back to you on that as necessary, but the usual probably apply ("reference to trauma").

After a few people know, she stops talking about it; she hadn't wanted to dive right into this conversation with Ivan before they'd both had some time to resettle with her presence in the city, but she doesn't want him to be the last to know, either. It doesn't seem fair, or practical, or a hundred other little things that fit together into this thing she doesn't entirely understand that they are allegedly referring to now as 'a relationship'. If she's planning something drastically life-altering, and he's got some kind of inexplicable investment in her life, then this is one of those things they're supposed to talk about and she doesn't even need someone else to give her the nudge, this time.

She's slowly easing back into work - cello and violin lessons mean working from home, which is easier, and most of her clients have been understanding without asking too many questions (they understand 'Baedal happens' just like everybody else) - and it's easier again than moving back into her wider social spheres. She promises music to Rodolphus and sits in the temple with Jae and sleeps beside Sonja the first couple of nights she's back, which is mostly for her own sake but maybe it can't hurt to be a heartbeat and solid body after emptiness; she thinks about her father, more, and it's a different and easier pain now that door is shut. It feels like survivor's guilt, except she didn't, so mostly it's just shapes without names and her nails pressing into the palms of her hands. She doesn't talk about what happened with Hilmi; she treats Ivan's apartment like her own space, which isn't new.

He's probably getting used to waking up to her eyes, huge and unblinking, and her weight on his thighs. He'll never need to buy a cat.

Comments

[rhinemaid]

A beat.

"Not that," she says, having evidently realized the worrying ambiguity of her last remark. "I was thinking of donors. I could find out more about it at the Glory Shada." She has a relatively vague idea of what that entails, presently, but she's on the right track with where she'd go to find out more.

(She watched the ritual in Shada's temple and wondered if Remy was right.)

[deservesadaisy]

"I see." It was an opaque remark, rather purposely so. Before Ilde, Ivan hadn't been involved with anyone but a vampire since his recruitment. Never seriously. This conversation wasn't something he was properly prepared for.

"You've decided to have a child, then."

[rhinemaid]

"I always planned to, except then I couldn't--" which is a sore point, still, even if it's changed now; the experience was not erased, "--and there was..." New York, and her world, and so much that she had to do first. Which is done, now, in the most definitive way possible.

She presses the heel of her hand to the side of her mouth, reorienting herself. Then, "Not in the next five minutes. Yes, though. It's--" a hesitation, settling on, "--important to me."

She holds herself very carefully.

[deservesadaisy]

"Alright." He doesn't own Ilde; she's perfectly capable of making that decision on her own. "Thank you for telling me."

He's policing his reaction very carefully, for now. He isn't sure exactly how to sort it out yet.

[rhinemaid]

"It seemed like the sort of thing we should probably talk about." Unprepared as she is for actual conversation, at least she's thinking about what she's doing. Even if she's not entirely sure where to go from that very polite close.

[deservesadaisy]

"Ilde... I'm not going to leave you, but it's going to take a lot of your time. And it's probably not best for me to be around your child, which means in total we'll see a great deal less of one another." He says it calmly, almost careful.

[rhinemaid]

She'd been prepared for her decision to be the end of it - had expected that, for both the obvious reasons and because ultimately expecting someone to leave is her norm - and she finds herself slightly less prepared to make sense of her compromise. Not displeased, just unsure of the right move; that's about her norm, too, in its way.

She's got time to figure these things out - she isn't ready now, she knows that - but it lends a surreality to an already strange conversation.

"Aren't you?" she says, at length, guileless in quietly figuring that one out.

[deservesadaisy]

"I don't know if it will work," he says, frank. "But I know if I made you choose between me and the baby, you wouldn't choose me. I may as well have what time with you I can."

Frankly, when the baby is born, no matter how she feels, he thinks it will end. She knows the risk of being near him, and that's her choice, but risking a child is different.

It might end even before the birth, but he's not going to be the one to put a stop to it. But the prospect of losing her (again) so soon isn't pleasant.

[rhinemaid]

He's right; she wouldn't like choosing, but it's a choice she's already made in advance. She hasn't had to test it, yet, but she's already been over where her priorities should lie once she's sure of herself.

After a beat, weighing all of that and watching his expression, she settles on, "I don't know when, yet. I know I'm not-- I shouldn't jump into things when everything is still." There's supposed to be a proper end to that sentence, but she gets as far as 'still' and doesn't know quite how to finish it. Things are still changing, still resettling, and she's not quite come to a solid stop, not yet.

[deservesadaisy]

He lays his hand along her cheek. "You'll do what you must." Everyone always did. It usually ended poorly for someone else. That was just the way things worked.

[rhinemaid]

"And you won't leave." Not yet, or not for now, or however it's being qualified; Ilde repeats it for her own sake, like it's more real once she's said it and like it needs to be real because it's important that he doesn't. It was important that he was still there when she got back and it's important that he's still here now, however ineptly she tries to express it.

[deservesadaisy]

"I can't be around your child," he says, quiet. "But no, I'm not leaving." He runs his thumb along her cheekbone. "I'm here."

[rhinemaid]

Tension eases, almost unexpectedly, like something was clenched in her chest that isn't any more and for a split second she doesn't know what to do with how easy it is to breathe. It feels alien and not what she was braced against.

"...okay," she says, quieter, leaning forward to rest her forehead against his chin.

[deservesadaisy]

He rested his hand on the curve of her back. He'd known this couldn't last, like this - he'd hoped for longer, but nothing lasted indefinitely.

Ivan presses a kiss to the top of her head and tries not to think about what parenthood does to people.

[rhinemaid]

It's awkward and it's strange and it's not at all what she had in mind months ago when she'd invited herself over to his flat - the first one he had - and she doesn't trust it, not quite, but it'd be nice to. (He said she trusted him too much, and she said she didn't, and it had been mostly true then and it's less true, now, but it slides under her skin when she isn't paying attention and she doesn't see it until she's already twisting in the wind.)

"We're okay?"

[deservesadaisy]

"I'm not angry, if that's what you're asking." Sad, a bit, and unsettled, but he had both well in hand.

[rhinemaid]

"I don't know," she admits, touching her thumb to his mouth when she leans back to study him, properly. There are a hell of a lot of things he could be besides 'angry' that might qualify as not okay, and they're on unfamiliar ground here.

[deservesadaisy]

"You want whatever you want, Ilde. The rest of the world, myself included, will cope however it may." He watches her. "I told you I'm not leaving."

[rhinemaid]

Her smile is small, tired, genuine: "You make me sound like a force of nature."

But she doesn't push it again; he did tell her, and she doesn't need to make him irritated by pressing at something she's already been reassured of. (Even if she wants to, even if she doesn't quite understand, even if it doesn't feel like it makes sense yet and she wants to turn it upside down and around a few times, study it at all angles and watch his eyes.)

[deservesadaisy]

He smiles, mainly to himself. "I don't think that's terribly inaccurate, really."

He should probably give her more, he thinks, but perhaps it doesn't matter. A few months, maybe even a year, and then she'll be effectively gone. Letting people in was something he was long out of the habit for.

[rhinemaid]

"Bigger than I think of myself," she says, tipping his chin with her hand against his jaw, like she's looking for something in him that she hasn't quite pinned down yet.

[deservesadaisy]

He met her eyes, but she wasn't wrong - a wall had gone up somewhere in him. "I think I would measure by effect, rather than size."

[rhinemaid]

It's like trying to pull apart a puzzle-box with multiple compartments; she can only ever get one open at a time, and it's never the same one, and she can never figure out how she did it to replicate later. When she's looking at one thing, something else disappears and she finds herself always just a few steps behind.

"Wearing away at stone," she says, and it's a little sardonic, for that.

[deservesadaisy]

"Just so." Her nature suits her, he thinks; she's very like a river, in ways beyond the obvious.

And he's, perhaps, the stone.

[rhinemaid]

"What a strange thought," she murmurs, more steadily, inscrutable.