“Ivar,” Heahmund said and there was more bite to the single word than Heahmund usually took with the teenager but the temper tantrum being thrown was liable to get them both killed. “You’re not paying attention, this is but the front of a herd and we need to go,” Heahmund said. He would drag Ivar kicking and screaming if he had to but he hoped it wouldn’t come to that.
Even with the two of them being more than adequately skilled huge quantities of zombies from such a disadvantaged position was less than ideal and even their survival chances would be low. He swung his sword effortlessly to cut down a zombie that came close enough to his range.
Ivar listened more to Heahmund's growling tone than he did the actual words. As another zombie came near, Ivar severed its spinal column, and then drove his axe into the rotting head when it tumbled to the ground. His icy eyes glared at Heahmund in clear defiance.
"You can go. It's not you'll miss me all that much." He'd been alone before Ivar came upon him. He'd get used to such a state soon enough again. Yep, Heahmund was going to have to end up dragging Ivar away bodily by force. He was clearly in no mood to be thinking clearly.
Heahmund let out a disdainful growl when Ivar refused to listen or see any reason. He doesn't waste his breath arguing with him any further and simply moves over to him and forcibly picks him up. While he's careful with his legs he is unceremoniously thrown over his shoulder as Heahmund braces himself for whatever violent reaction that Ivar would have to it. He cares little as he isn't going to leave Ivar there to die to a herd.
He keeps a hard hold on Ivar, unwilling to let him go and keeps his sword raised for any undead that come to close as they head back to the van.
As Heahmund predicted, Ivar was furious over being hauled away and thrown over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes. He cursed at Heahmund, trying to twist in his grasp in such a way that he'd be able to smack him with the axe. "Put me down, you bastard!" Not the blade, mind you, he wasn't that far gone. Just the flat of the blade. "Let go, you zealot!"
Of course, nothing he does makes any difference as Heahmund hauls him back to the van, and drops Ivar down in a seat. He's still enraged, yelling at Heahmund without any concern for the fact he might attract more zombies to their location. "I was doing just fine without you! I didn't need your help!"
Heahmund is unperturbed as he's hit by the flat of the blade, it hurt and it would bruise later but it was better than Ivar dying because of his insolence. "Shut up," Heahmund said harshly.
"For the love of God," he mutters afterward, looking back toward the direction that they had just come from. He's quick to get into the back of the van and shut the door, giving Ivar a dark look. "There is a herd, you childish brat. Do you want to die?"
He didn't wait for an answer, moving into the front seat of the van and turning it on. They needed to get to a better location quickly.
Ivar is furious when he's dumped in the van like a sack of flour. "Maybe I do," Ivar snarls, though they both know that's not the truth. Ivar loves life too much to ever consider some ill-thought out suicide plan. He picks up the nearest object, a small tin cup used for meals, and throws it at Heahmund's head.
With that, his temper begins to fizzle back down. "You don't respect me," he says, now sounding more sulky than usual. That's the main reason he'd acted so recklessly. He wanted to be seen as an equal by Heahmund and felt like he wasn't.
Heahmund shakes his head because he knew Ivar better. No one had as fierce a will to survive as the teen did. He managed to duck the thrown object and sighed as he drives away from where they had been set up the night before.
“If I didn’t respect you then you would not be traveling with me.”
"Then you should act like it once in a while! You can't expect me to read your mind all the time." Ivar snaps. It's hard for him sometimes to read Heahmund, though at other times he could see right through him. Heahmund had stoicism down to an art form.
He crawls from the back of the van towards the front. "Sometimes, I need a way to let my anger out." Killing zombies was one of the best outlets he'd ever had.
"You should not be so damned sensitive then," Heahmund retorted. After all, he doesn't particularly think that he ever acts as if he doesn't respect Ivar so he's not sure what the other could have even been set off.
"Your anger can be let off without getting yourself killed. You're not a child, stop acting like it."
"I'm eighteen years old! I'm be as sensitive as I want to be!" Ivar yells back. It was perhaps the first time Ivar had admitted his age as being more of a detriment then an advantage. He did tend to act a little older then he was.
"If you're tired of traveling with me then drop me off at the next fucking gas station. I can take care of myself," he says, meaning every word. It wasn't worth it, traveling around with a religious zealot who clammed up anytime Ivar got close to opening him up.
Heahmund only drives faster as Ivar yells at him and he pushes his fingers through his hair feeling frustrated with him. Ivar could be utterly impossible.
"I am not tired of traveling with you. I just refuse to let you die because you decide to be immature."
Ivar wants to snap out that he's not immature, but then, that's just what an immature person would say. Instead, he glares at Heahmund. "Is that all you really think of me?"
Just a traveling companion, someone to keep the nomad-driven eventual insanity at bay? He wanted to know that Heahmund at least thought a little more of him. That he truly cared.
"Of course not," Heahmund snaps and Ivar is being impossible which is nothing new but as he's dealing with trying to make sure they don't die he's rather annoyed that they're having to have this conversation at all.
"Look behind us," he commanded because if he did they are now positioned where Ivar would be able to see that they're fleeing a herd.
"Then what do you think of me?" Ivar demands. He's serious. Either Heahmund actually has a reason for keeping him around or he's going to abandon his taciturn companion the next time they make camp. He doesn't need to put up with this bullshit.
Ivar shifts so that he can turn around to look behind them. He looks upon the heard and then turns around, slouching down in his seat. "I still would have been fine on my own," he grumbles, unwilling to admit that he might have been wrong.
"What kind of question is that?" Heahmund said and there's a flare of temper there and he focuses on driving instead and there's a roll of his eyes at Ivar's grumbling.
"If you'd rather be alone you can go."
He actually slows down the van to a stop and glances at Ivar. "Would you rather be alone?"
Ivar looks outside. He's tempted to just unhesitatingly say yes and leave, letting Heahmund go off to do whatever he was before he'd been helping Ivar find his family. But part of him is torn. Now that he's learned to be around a companion, he doesn't want to leave and be on his own all alone again. It's not a good way to be. People were meant to have company.
Plus, there's his unresolved feelings towards Heahmund himself, which definitely figure into the equation. Ivar just sits there for a few minutes, thinking slowly. Part of it is deliberate because he knows it will aggravate Heahmund too. Eventually, he shakes his head. "No. I don't."
Heahmund had been relatively confident that Ivar wouldn't leave -- he's not sure what he would have decided to do had the other left. He would have inevitably stopped him -- probably. But Ivar doesn't and so he starts to drive again, his hands gripping the wheel tight and he's a bit irritable about Ivar.
There's a lot that he doesn't admit about his young companion. Things were... complicated... between them which would have been absurdly normal in normal times but maybe that he allowed things to be this complicated in an apocalypse was an absurdity to an insane degree.
Ivar doesn't say anything else for a long while. Instead, he slumps down in the seat as he rolls the window down, placing one arm on the window frame while he props his chin up on it and stares out the rolling landscape around them. There's so few people these days, just the sight of a few shambling zombies here and there.
After about half an hour, he speaks again, not turning to look at Heahmund. "You never answered the question." The one about what Heahmund thought of Ivar. Heahmund was infuriatingly good at dodging questions when he didn't want to answer them.
"And I don't intend to," Heahmund said, which is more of a direct answer than Ivar would usually get. At least he's answering. But he didn't know what he should say, what words are exactly the right words to say or even for sure what he did think of Ivar.
Ivar gives him a withering glance that could have lit a zombie on fire with its power. Really, was it too much to ask for Heahmund just to be honest for once? "Well, that's very helpful. You've got all the verbal skills of a mule, you know that?"
Heahmund is utterly unperturbed by the look that Ivar sends his way. He’s used to the teen and his moods by now and this is just another one of them in a way.
For that, Ivar picks his axe back up off the floor of the van, reaches over, and smacks Heahmund hard with the flat part of the blade again. He deserves a bruise for the way he's driving Ivar absolutely batty. "On second thought, getting out of the car and striking out on my own is sounding pretty tempting."
"You never know. One day you might wake up and just find me gone without leaving so much as a note to remember me by." With how tenuous the strands of life in the zombie apocalypse could be, there was a chance this could happen anyway. All it took was one wrong move: bitten by a zombie and succumbing to the disease, eating rotten food that led to being poisoned, breaking a limb that left the person to face the slow death of starvation. Anything was possible.
He's still quite annoyed that Heahmund simply won't answer the question. Why can't he ever just say what he means?
Heahmund glances over at Ivar again and he lifts a shoulder. It's true enough. He can't argue that. He still highly doubts that Ivar would chose to leave anytime soon and Heahmund would do everything to prevent other fates from befalling the young man.
Heahmund is content to let them fall into silence as he continues to put as much distance between them and the herd as possible before nightfall.
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Even with the two of them being more than adequately skilled huge quantities of zombies from such a disadvantaged position was less than ideal and even their survival chances would be low. He swung his sword effortlessly to cut down a zombie that came close enough to his range.
“Come now.”
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"You can go. It's not you'll miss me all that much." He'd been alone before Ivar came upon him. He'd get used to such a state soon enough again. Yep, Heahmund was going to have to end up dragging Ivar away bodily by force. He was clearly in no mood to be thinking clearly.
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He keeps a hard hold on Ivar, unwilling to let him go and keeps his sword raised for any undead that come to close as they head back to the van.
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Of course, nothing he does makes any difference as Heahmund hauls him back to the van, and drops Ivar down in a seat. He's still enraged, yelling at Heahmund without any concern for the fact he might attract more zombies to their location. "I was doing just fine without you! I didn't need your help!"
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"For the love of God," he mutters afterward, looking back toward the direction that they had just come from. He's quick to get into the back of the van and shut the door, giving Ivar a dark look. "There is a herd, you childish brat. Do you want to die?"
He didn't wait for an answer, moving into the front seat of the van and turning it on. They needed to get to a better location quickly.
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With that, his temper begins to fizzle back down. "You don't respect me," he says, now sounding more sulky than usual. That's the main reason he'd acted so recklessly. He wanted to be seen as an equal by Heahmund and felt like he wasn't.
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“If I didn’t respect you then you would not be traveling with me.”
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He crawls from the back of the van towards the front. "Sometimes, I need a way to let my anger out." Killing zombies was one of the best outlets he'd ever had.
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"Your anger can be let off without getting yourself killed. You're not a child, stop acting like it."
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"If you're tired of traveling with me then drop me off at the next fucking gas station. I can take care of myself," he says, meaning every word. It wasn't worth it, traveling around with a religious zealot who clammed up anytime Ivar got close to opening him up.
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"I am not tired of traveling with you. I just refuse to let you die because you decide to be immature."
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Just a traveling companion, someone to keep the nomad-driven eventual insanity at bay? He wanted to know that Heahmund at least thought a little more of him. That he truly cared.
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"Look behind us," he commanded because if he did they are now positioned where Ivar would be able to see that they're fleeing a herd.
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Ivar shifts so that he can turn around to look behind them. He looks upon the heard and then turns around, slouching down in his seat. "I still would have been fine on my own," he grumbles, unwilling to admit that he might have been wrong.
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"If you'd rather be alone you can go."
He actually slows down the van to a stop and glances at Ivar. "Would you rather be alone?"
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Plus, there's his unresolved feelings towards Heahmund himself, which definitely figure into the equation. Ivar just sits there for a few minutes, thinking slowly. Part of it is deliberate because he knows it will aggravate Heahmund too. Eventually, he shakes his head. "No. I don't."
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There's a lot that he doesn't admit about his young companion. Things were... complicated... between them which would have been absurdly normal in normal times but maybe that he allowed things to be this complicated in an apocalypse was an absurdity to an insane degree.
"I thought not."
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After about half an hour, he speaks again, not turning to look at Heahmund. "You never answered the question." The one about what Heahmund thought of Ivar. Heahmund was infuriatingly good at dodging questions when he didn't want to answer them.
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“Better than a zombie’s.”
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"If you were going to you would have already."
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He's still quite annoyed that Heahmund simply won't answer the question. Why can't he ever just say what he means?
maybe another timeskip?
Heahmund is content to let them fall into silence as he continues to put as much distance between them and the herd as possible before nightfall.
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