Haddock's Past

== Summary ==
== Full Text ==
=== Part 1: Looking Forward, Looking Back ===
 He always thought that on those days he felt depressed, the weather was supposed to be gloomy, too.That stormy skies would reflect a stormy soul.
That both raindrops from the clouds and tears on his face would fall as one.
Hel, even a little gust of Odin-damned wind to disturb the leaves on trees’ branches could have served to mirror the restlessness currently overtaking his heart.
Yet the weather, if anything, juxtaposed his emotions rather than reflected them.  For sunlight cheerily danced on bright aspen leaves, intensifying the burning reds on crap apple trees and verdant greens of grass-cloaked meadows.  Carefree clouds scudded smoothly over intense blue skies.  Even hares, usually intimidated by a human’s approaching footsteps, rested unperturbed in plain view.
It was almost ridiculous, in a sense, how tackily perfect the outdoors seemed.  Could something so idealistically idyllic actually exist?  It was pure mockery, an absolute travesty – and would have been so on any afternoon, even one less doleful than was today.
Even the stupid weather can’t sympathize with me, he thought as he stomped past a cluster of blooming primroses.
But he should have known he would be alone again.  All the signs had been there, that this isolation was coming.
Even then, with this longstanding knowledge, it never ceased to baffle him what had occurred over the last few months.  The son of a king, thrown aside.  Outright outcasted.  Unable to return home for three years, else he would be killed on sight.
In a burst of anger he rushed up to punch a perfectly-rounded tree straight in its trunk and then staggered backward as pain shot up his arm.
“Bloody half-Jotun bastard,” he cursed under his breath.  At the tree, not himself.  No, not at himself at all.  No reason to curse himself. None. What.so.ev.er.
The young man trekked onward through the landscape.  The steep incline of tumbling hills and miniature mountains sometimes forced him to paused and puff for breath, yet he never completely halted his journey.  No, he wanted to leave his past behind him as quickly as possible.  Head to a new world.  Someplace better.
Wherever that so happened to be.
It preferably would be the location to a place he had never before read on a map, a name he did not recognize, one that did not even tickle in the back of his mind as somewhere he should have known.  For if he lacked complete familiarity with even the location’s name, then likewise all the inhabits should not know his own hometown, his own family name.
What used to be his family name.
“Son of a troll-fucked mo…”
No, he wasn’t cursing himself right now, either.  Just cursing… cursing… the unnaturally immaculate weather.  That was all.
Weather like that deserved a few well-targeted swear words.
He began taking devious pleasure noticing the imperfections of the landscape.  That one snapped branch on the alder over there.  The pine tree’s browning needles, insects crawling over its trunk’s rough bark.  That too-skinny rabbit to his left darting away from him.  The flowers he intentionally trampled just to show he still had some control in the world.
Even the egg white clouds were stupid, malformed beasts, if he put his mind to it.
And he did.  For pointing out nature’s shortcomings made him feel better about himself and all his imperfections.  Those imperfections which had landed him here in a beautiful, peaceful, sunny, impossibly green, but nevertheless completely and utterly intolerable Hel.
But…
How else could flowers grow unless someone watered them?
He threw his back up against the tree and began to sob.  And the next curses that escaped his lips were all directed at himself.
=== Part 2: An Affront of Honor ===
King Sturgeon Halibut Haddock of the Wilderwest, Revered Hero of Memo, Defender of the Western Shores, O Hear His Mighty Name and Tremble, UGH UGH lounged upon an impressive throne.  He himself was an impressive, muscle-cut figure, even if the monarch smelled like a rotting combination of all three of his namesakes combined.  Sturgeon’s intimidating glare was even more imposing and striking than his smell, though – at least at this current time.  He scowled at a short and stick-like seven-year-old boy who stared, somewhat abashed, down at his feet.  A spark of defiance glimmered out from behind the child’s outward penitence, though.  Fire leaked out from his blue-green eyes, just as blood leaked out from both of the nostrils of his banged-up nose.
“Gareth,” the king heavily intoned, “what do you have to say for yourself?”
The mop-haired boy shuffled his feet as though uncomfortable and ashamed, but squeezed a stubborn clenched fist on either side of his body.  Apparently he wanted to believe he hadnogood reason to stand before the king.  He thus said nothing, simply glaring down at the ground, occasionally wiping the blood from his dripping nose onto his sleeve.
“Well?” the king demanded softly.  Still no response.  “Gareth, answer me.”
The boy licked a split lip – causing its red crusted scab to reopen – and responded hoarsely at last, “He started it.”
“Oh? He started it, did he?”
“Yeah.”  The boy craned his neck up to the king’s proud boots, then enormous bulging knees, then armor-plated waistline, then finally his broad, glaring face.  Despite Sturgeon’s readable, radiating displeasure, the boy did not cringe away.  Instead, stiffening his neck, he elaborated, “Rockguts poked me.”
“Uh-huh.  And that’s how you got your bloody nose, is it?”
“No. That was when he punched me in the face,” the boy responded indignantly, impatiently, as though the monarch ought to have known that already, no mind he had not been present during the squabble.
Wearied, rubbing his brow irately with a sword-calloused hand to ward off an approaching headache, Sturgeon asked, “And why did he punch you, Gareth?”
“Because I hit him in the stomach!”  Gareth leaped up and swung his left arm excitedly to demonstrate exactly how he socked his foe.  It was pretty impressive for his pencil-wide arms.
“So let me get this clear.  You punched Rockguts Wodinsson after he poked you.”
“Yup.  Toldja he started it.”
The king raised his eyebrows.  “Son, a simple poke is no reason to start a fight.”
“But I said he started it.  Not me.  He touched me first!”  That half-hidden fiery defiance in his eyes now bust into brilliant flame.  The tiny boy could have started a forest fire had he been standing out of doors.  “I was tryin’ to show him he shouldn’t mess with me!”  And the boy with the bloodied lip cracked open a lop-sided grin on the left side of his face, smacking his fist into his other palm, then trying to puff up and brag off his non-existent biceps.
Sturgeon shook his head.  “There are many good reasons to defend yourself.  That is not one of them.  Gareth, this is your third fight this month.”
“Yeah.”  The boy seemed stoked rather than chagrined.  “And I’ve won all of ’em, too!”
“I wouldn’t call that winning.  Winning a fight would have been never to start it.”
The boy deflated – only slightly – but at least he was no longer flexing his arms.
“You’re picking fights with all the boys – and the girls – and the sheep in the village – for nothing more than poor excuses.  ‘He poked me’?” Sturgeon scoffed with a short, crisp bark.  “You are the son of a king!  You should be able to hold your temper against something so measly as a poke.”
“Rockguts wasn’t bein’ nice to me,” the boy muttered.  “He should be nicer to aprince.”
“And you weren’t acting in the proper conduct for a prince,” Sturgeon reprimanded.
“I was just trying to –”
“Silence!” King Sturgeon Halibut Haddock snapped.  The entire room echoed.  “I have told you time and time againnotto lose your temper over such petty instances!  How can I get that into your head?  Until you can start acting like a prince, I’m not going to treat you like one!  Go to your room, Gareth.”
“But –”
“NOW!”  The king’s shouts rocked the Great Hall as he threw his arm forward to point in the direction of his son’s private chambers.
Moping, Gareth Ragnar Haddock the Second obeyed his father’s command.  But behind his blue-green eyes and scuffed-up mid-brown hair, his defiant fire remained.
--- 
“Gareth,” the king said when his wide-eyed eleven-year-old son approached the Wilderwest throne.  “Why were you trying to run away?”
“I wasn’t running away,” the boy protested, pouting.
“You sabotaged one of the large ships in the harbor, cut it from the anchors, and started sailing out to unprotected seas.  You tell me what else that is supposed to be.”
“Oh Dad, I was just going on an adventure!”  He pointed to the short sword strapped to his side, gesturing to the proof.  “I was going to go off and be a big Hero like you by fighting off all the pirates and the sea monsters and the vicious dragons and…”
“Hold on there!” the king exclaimed, throwing up his hand to shush his son’s commencing monologue.  “There’s more to being a Hero than fighting!  And you don’t have go out…adventuringfor it!”
“But how else will be I be an honorable fighter like you?” the boy said. 
“Well,” the king said, puffing out his mustache, “you could start with staying at home, not stealing any ships, and trying not to fight the other children your age.” 
--- 
A lanky fourteen-year-old boy slumped before the king’s grand throne.  He was just entering a growth-spurt which stretched his limbs and torso like taffy without adding any weight.  The result was he looked like a broom.  The fluffy, unkempt hair bursting out of his forehead was the only substance on his person; the rest of him was nothing more than a tallish, thin pole.
“Ye-e-e-e-e-e-es, Dad?” he drawled agitatedly, glaring upward to Sturgeon with his arms insolently crossed.  “Heard you wanted to talk to me?”
“I’m sure you know exactly why, too,” Sturgeon remarked.
“Yeah?”  Gareth shrugged casually, hardly caring.  “Look, it’s not that big a deal…”
“Seabeard almost lost his head from your axe.  That IS, in fact, a ‘big deal’.”
“Relax, Dad.  He didn’t actually lose his head.”
Sturgeon might have heard the kid mutter afterward, “Though he should have,” but the king was more than infuriated enough from his son’s earlier statement.  “I am more concerned about the fact my son actively tried to remove his head–”
“Seabeard was –”
“That would have been murder, Gareth!”
“But it wasn’t.”
“That was your intent.  You can’t ever avoid that fact.  You could still be imprisoned for this!”
“Don’t you want to hear my side of the story, Dad?  You’re making me out to be some bad guy without understanding at all what I was doing or feeling.  Don’t you think that maybe Seabeard was antagonizing me and he –”
“Gareth!  It doesn’t matter!  Whatever he said, whatever he did, you took it too far.  Son, you still should be imprisoned for this.”
“Oh great, instead of getting locked in my room, I’m locked in a cell,” the boy hissed sarcastically with a pointed eyeroll.  “How absolutely horrendous.”
“You take too much advantage of your royal status and retaliate against people who offend you,” King Sturgeon warned his son.  “Don’t think you’re so protected just because you were born a prince.  You can lose that title, too, you know.”
“Oh, you wouldn’t even think of doing something like that,” Gareth scoffed irreverently.  “I’m your only son.  You have no other heir.”
With a heavy sigh, King Sturgeon remarked, “Son, that was not meant to be a threat.  But you have to know that if you don’t curb your hot-headedness soon, you will run into dangerous consequences from which your status – or anything at all – cannot protect you.”
--- 
Angry shouts aimed at a fifteen-year-old menace whose honor was affronted.  “You need to control your temper!”
“Well so do you!”
Storm out the door and slam it shut.
---           
Sixteen-year-old, muscles forming on a lanky, growing body.  Exasperated prince.  “What is it now, Dad?”
--- 
Seventeen-year-old turning away, screaming angrily at his father, “See what I care!”
--- 
Eighteen-year-old, six-foot-one and elegantly lean, protesting, “But Father –”
--- 
A tall soldier garbed in light but well-crafted armor now stood before the King of the Wilderwest’s throne.  This young visitor, on the cusp of adulthood, just a few months short nineteen, held a rounded horned helmet deferently beneath his left arm.
“I am here to give my report, Father,” he announced with a dip of his head.  Though his hair was still its characteristic chocolate brown, thick and fluffy, he wore it trimmed a bit shorter than he had as a child, the hair tickling at the top of his ear on the side, a jagged cut across the eyebrows to the front.
A rapidly graying king leaned forward, inquiring, “You come yourself, Gareth, rather than send a messenger?”
“Yes,” the young man responded.  “I did decide to come myself.  It’s been a long time since I’ve been home in the capital, and this is a special report which I felt I should relay to you myself.”
“A special report?  From the quiet northern border?” Sturgeon inquired, puzzled.
“Quiet no more, Dad.  We’ve capture twenty men and women, killed six, wounded ten.”
The king’s hand dropped from his chin and smacked against the armrest to his throne.  For a long while he sat there, staring, mouth agape at Gareth, before he finally demanded, “What happened?  Were our soldiers attacked?”
"We might as well have been,” Gareth evaded.  His eyes shifted off to the side to briefly study a tapestry.  Even though it depicted a gory hunting scene, its visage depicted a far more welcoming and friendly face than his father’s solemn stare.
"So you weren’t.”
“Well.  I mean.  Yes and no. 
“In full, there was a group of merchants from the north passing our border who were acting suspiciously,” the young man explicated with a mostly even expression, though perhaps overly stiff and formal.  “We asked to search their cargo to ascertain that they would be no threat to our kingdom once they entered.  But they balked, even opposing my direct order!  We had to use force to search their belongings.”
“And you found something that would threaten us?” Sturgeon inquired.
“Well, no.  Nothing but fruits and grains.”
“Then why the bloodshed?”
Emotion broke through the young man in full now, and with a snarl he answered, “Because the leader of the wagon train was positively infuriating!”  He gesticulated wildly with both his arms, tirading.  “Her defiance against us is a threat enough to the Wilderwest!  The way in which she mouthed off and even threatened me –”
“Was it really a threat, or just an insult?”
“Either way!  The merchants just proved they were a hazard to the kingdom!”
“And now their chief will learn of this attack,” the King of the Wilderwest moaned.
“Undoubtedly,” Gareth responded with a serious nod to his head.  “We let two of their men escape just for that reason, so that everyone knows not to balk with the Prince of the Wilderwest.”
“Don’t you understand?” Sturgeon shouted furiously.  He stood up and marched to Gareth’s face.  It was one of the only times in all the young man’s nineteen years that his father marched off his throne to speak to him.  And now it was to glare at him, uncomfortably close, leaning down and breathing his pungent fish breath directly down Gareth’s nose.  “This could start a war.  For no good reason, you enacted violence, and we could be in battle in a fortnight.”
“Then let that battle come, Father,” Gareth retaliated.  He threw his arm out exasperatedly in front of the King of the Wilderwest and almost whacked him on the nose.  “You’re berating me as though I’ve done something wrong.  But I’ve protected our borders, I’ve trained men in the military, I’ve prevented thieves and rogues and criminals from entering our lands.  I single-handedly stopped a band of murderous outlaws from entering our country.  I’ve fought in skirmishes with minimal casualties to our side.  I have been bringing youhonoras the Captain of the Guard.  I’m overseeing security, of which you explicitly placed me in charge, andeveryone – needs – to – be – checkedbefore they enter the kingdom.  It’s protocol.  It’s for our protection.  And you’re acting as though keeping our country safe is a travesty?”
“I won’t deny that you have made me proud with many of your actions in the north,” Sturgeon responded.  He placed a hand firmly on his son’s shoulder, giving him a firm but hearty pat.  “Your passion to protect the country is admirable.  You shall defend it to the very end.  But while your pride can be a strength, it is also your greatest weakness.  Raising you,” the king stifled an exasperated groan, “has made it more than clear you have a strong sense of self-respect.  To the point youattack othersto protect your honor.”
“This was for the good of the country, not for –”
“The country is an extension of yourself.  You are a Prince of the Wilderwest.  An affront on the honor of your home country is the same as an affront to your own person.”
“Father, you’re missing the point,” Gareth protested.  “This isn’t about my – mypride–” he spat that word out with a bit of disdain, clearly dismissing his father’s analysis of the situation “– but about the fact these merchants refused to obey my contingent of soldiers.”
The king sighed, “That’s your excuse for directly attacking a group of unarmed civilians –”
“– they had a few knives, rakes, and large dogs –”
“– because they insulted you –”
“– defied the authority of the Prince of the Wilderwest and Captain of the Guard!”
“– and that’s worth the threat of war?”
“Yes!”
The room dropped into silence.
A long, long period of silence.
Uncomfortable.  Silence.
Gareth shifted his feet, his conscience finally catching up to his mind.
“I hate to do this to you, son,” King Sturgeon began wearily.  He stared the young man straight in the eye.  The king’s blue eyes were weighty, baggier than the wrinkles of his old age usually showed.  And he dropped his hand from his son’s shoulder.
“Do what?” Gareth asked hesitantly.  He regarded the fallen arm warily, then looked up inquisitively at his father’s face.
And King Sturgeon Halibut Haddock of the Wilderwest answered.
“I’m relieving you from your duty.”
Gareth felt his mouth run dry.  “You’re demoting my status in the military.”  He felt himself stepping slightly backward away from his father.
“No.”  Sturgeon grimaced.  “You are no longer in the military.”
“What?!!”
 “I will relieve you of your sword right now,” Sturgeon said.
Gareth touched the handle of the blade.  Clutched it in his left fist.  Tightened his hand.  And snarled, “No.” 
He pulled out his sword, blade shining in the Great Hall, and proclaimed, “You cannot take this from me!”
“Guards!” called out the king.
Men rushed out, sharp steel in their own hands, and charged toward Gareth Haddock of the Wilderwest.  And as they charged, one man started, clearly shocked to be rushing against the son of the king.  And Gareth, noticing his opening, plunged his blade straight through the gap in that man’s armor at the armpit, dug his sword in deep, and yanked it out with a vicious tug.  His assailant collapsed to the floor in a pool of blood.
It was Rockguts.
And as Gareth struggled, swinging his sword around, over and over and over, hollering out defiant exclamations, suddenly he found himself pinned to the floor, his arms twisted in painful restraints, one man seated directly on top of him, and another pulling out the sword from his hand.
Category:Pre-Season
Category:Events
Category:Gareth Ragnar Haddock the Second