■ - Bedroom/house/living quarters
Ike is…definitely the organized mess sort of guy. He vaguely knows where his stuff is, but anyone else is going to be at a loss. While he doesn’t keep a whole lot of knickknacks or other things, he does hold onto a few sentimental items. Clothes everywhere but where they should be. Stashes of food. Little wood carvings scattered about – as whittling was something he picked up while on the move to both calm down when stressed, as well as to simply have a physical reminder of some areas.
Family has ended up being a fairly broad term for Ike. Mist is his only blood relative still living, the rest of the Mercenaries being non-related but viewed as familial; Ike has known Titania since he was born, Shinon and Gatrie join up roughly at a time where Ike is still younger, etc. – it’s safe to say that, more or less, Ike has grown up around most of the Greil Mercenaries.
This sort of extends out to others that the group meets along the way, people Ike gets to know and grow an attachment to. Literally, to Ike, his friends are his family. He cares about them all very deeply – it’s one of his bigger, if not biggest, motivation for succeeding at the end of everything. He’s fighting for all the people he cares for – even the ones he just met and was starting to understand, like the Dawn Brigade.
So its a…sort of odd blur of lines to him, in the end.
Since I brought it up earlier in this post, may as well talk about Ike picking up whittling! Through PoR, the group travels through a majority of Tellius, going through a wide variety of environments – forests, deserts, snowy mountains. They didn’t generally stay very long in any one area, so Ike never really gets to explore, doesn’t get to enjoy it on account of having to fight and then move on.
Talking with Brom one night, the topic of wood carving managed to come up, and the farmer-turned-militia demonstrated his surprisingly detailed skill of whittling. He said that it was a nice way to pass the time, and often ended up carving out little figures of things back home – his family, particular livestock he got attached to, or some of the villagers he was friends with. Ike was curious, and asked if the country knight could show him how to do it himself – it definitely ended up being harder than Brom made it look, but Ike was determined to improve.
After quite a while of trail and error – several messy but nearly finished carvings accidentally getting beheaded when he exerted too much force on the dagger he used – Ike finally managed to complete something. A small, not incredibly detailed but still recognizable carving of their old fort back in Crimea.
As the war continued, and they marched on – Ike’s leadership being called upon more and more – whittling became something that he could do to just…escape a little. He could go off to a quiet place, away from the main camp, and simply set his mind to carving out something from memory or something from where he currently was. It kept his hands busy, and let his mind focus on accomplishing something with absolutely no stress tacked onto it.
A comb/brush has never once willingly touched a hair on Ike’s head. When he was a child, his mother would do it and he didn’t mind too much beyond please do it quick I wanna plaay. Later on, it’s just...not something he cares to do because he generally doesn’t...care how presentable he looks.
Mist has likely tried to run him down and attempt to fix that mess he has, but it also likely ended in her just chucking the brush at his head in frustration as he climbed up a tree to avoid her.
Only special circumstances can get Ike to either brush it himself, or let someone else do it. He’s like a pissy cat when any sort of brush comes out, he’s so stupid.
