ArchivedLogs:Vignette - It's All Relatives

Vignette - It's All Relatives
Dramatis Personae Ivan, and only about half of his direct relatives.
In Absentia	2013-04-13 Months after having only communicated through letters and, occasionally, phonecalls, Ivan sees his family again. As a sidenote, all of the dialogue is in Russian, but I've omitted the {brackets} so as to avoid redundancy.
Location <XS> Ivan and Peter's Dorm
Ivan sits on the floor of his dorm room, glass cases to his left, right, and one serving as a makeshift back rest. Large insects and arachnids occasionally crawl past terrarium walls behind him, peering out from inside their see-through, plant-filled cells. He's wearing a simple white dress shirt over some jeans and green socks. One particularly tubby-looking African giant millipede sits on the boy's shoulder, curling around his neck as it tries to find its way to god-knows-where. In front of him, on the floor, sits Peter's laptop-- he had asked to borrow it quite a while back but this is the first time he's actually gone and done it. The image on the screen is static, mostly. Save for the little rectangle showing his own seated form back to him, courtesy of the laptop's built-in webcam. A burst of movement returns to Ivan, then, at the sound of the laptop beepbooping a cheerful little jingle at him. He reaches forward to press a button, and at once another webcam's feed pops up onto the screen. And a second later, a sound that eerily resembles what Ivan might imagine a velociraptor's death throes might sound like. But he knows this to be entirely someone else-- his mother. "VANYUSHKAAAA!!!" She sits at a desk, skinny and pale but dressed in a bright yellow dress, virtually emanating warmth even through that tiny rectangle of visual communication, sitting like a bright beacon in the midst of that drab, tiny, grey living room behind her. Russian words spill from her without thought, enthusiasm and endearment personified. "Look at you! Look at you my little Vanya, at a big school with all of your pets oh my GOD Vanya! Put that thing away please!" The laptop screen shows her covering her eyes, a nervous laugh flowing from her. Ivan, on the other side of the shared images, pries the foot-long millipede off of his neck, an amused little grin forming on his own face. "What thing?!" Yet another voice pops up, and three faces with it. They loom over their mother's shoulders, one male, two female. The rustle of plastic bags can be heard in the background, and a light is flicked on in a hallway. "Oh my god! Oh my god Ivan!" The male yelps, shaved head, looks to be in his late twenties. He presses a hand to his mother's shoulder to lean closer to the screen on their side, squinting. "You're all /grown up/ looking! What is that shirt, did you buy that there?" "Oh no," another voice cuts in, a girl with her hair pulled tightly back into a ponytail, only one or two years older than Ivan himself, ducks down and peers past her mother's face to narrow her eyes at the screen in scrutiny, "I know that shirt, he wore it when he went to work with dad that one time?" "Oh yeah!" Chimes the girl next to her, almost identical if not for the fact that she's another year older. "I remember us buying that, down in the old town, right?" "Nadya, Natalya, let me talk to my baby boy, shoo, shoo!" Ivan's mother speaks again, pushing the two girls away as they wave and giggle and chat amongst themselves. The older brother is harder to get rid of, lowering himself to sling an arm around his mother's shoulders as he talks. "Come on, Vano, no hello for your big brother Lev?" A number of different approaches to hellos pop up in Ivan"s head, along with a plethora of questions and stories and he opens his mouth to let the first one roll out only - to be distracted by yet another face on the screen, who starts talking before he ever manages. "Jesus you look like shit, little Van'ka. They feeding you alright?" It's another girl, slightly chubbier, grinning widely, following her brother's example and piling yet another arm around her mother's shoulders. "Seriously, though, what kind of food do they have over there? Any good?" "Krista!" Chides their mother playfully, reaching an arm to adjust her mounted webcam downward - toward HER, not the people behind and around her. The people behind and around her, in response, lower themselves within view again, smiling widely. "It's good-" Is all Ivan manages to answer before he is once more cut off. This time by a scream, a slam of the door, and a sudden, eerie awkwardness that follows. The three faces still shown on the webcam pause their smiles and inquisitive stares toward the screen to throw confused looks over their shoulders. Lev disengages from the arms-around-shoulder monster with a sigh, hauling himself toward the back of the living room and toward that slammed door. The girl follows shortly afterward, leaving only her mother at the desk for now. Her smile returns, but in a much calmer capacity. "... Regina." Ivan breathes to her, as the millipede coils itself around his wrist just off-screen. "Is she okay? Does she still..." "Yes, Vanya." His mother replies, features softening with concern and love all at once. "Last week she plummeted through two floors at once. She's fine, everyone's fine, but the rumours had /just/ started to die down. I think... /we/ think, Drav and I, that she's doing it on purpose." "Someone could have been HURT!" An angry voice, this time. Ivan's oldest sibling walks by, his head just above the webcam's reach but two bulging bags of groceries in his muscular arms plainly visible as he moves past. "I swear, this is the last time I take her with me in the car, she's disruptive and immature!" "Zhenya, she's /fourteen/." Tries Ivan, through the speakers, through a frown and furrowed brow. His fingers have found the hem of his shirt and fidget with it tirelessly, now. Alas, there is no response to his argument, and he squints to try and understand what is being said by his brother off-camera. His mother once more adjusts the webcam, without a clear reason to, and sits up straight to offer yet another warm smile. "You look good!" She offers, over the sound of things falling and clanking in the background. She seems unfussed, as if this is an everyday occurrence, even as her son's brows lower further on the other end of her video call. "Is there anyone in the room with you? Did you make friends, or is everyone already in their groups? Sometimes I think it must be hard." Ivan tries another smile, but they have becoming increasingly weary. "I--" "Vanechkaaa!!" Bellows a voice, suddenly. Ivan's father, recognisable as such pretty easily by his facial features. But relatively kind features sit somewhat strangely on the otherwise impressively tall man with a wide chest and big sailor's arms and a loud presence to match. He kneels down next to his wife to peer at the screen. "It's been too long! How has it been?" Finally, the Xavier student is allowed sufficient time to answer. The lack of input and interruptions from the other side feels like a wave of fresh air, and he breathes it in for a few seconds. Cherishing it as his eyes come to rest on the recorded versions of his parents" faces. How has it been? This place, with all of its different kinds of people and views and social tightropes and testing boundaries and abilities and accidents and hazardous situations that even rise to life-threatening situations at times, compared to... what he's looking at? He smiles. "... Quiet."