Paralyzed

"Paralyzed," also called "Paralysis," is a series of Season 4 one shots written on April 10 and 13, 2015. "Will Not Let You Go" takes place a day after the second part.
== Summary ==
== Full Text ==
=== Part One ===
Gareth Ragnar Haddock the Second: …something. sxc mucccqzh ppixn. Eyelid twitch at worried muffled pulsations. Might be… voices.
yxuo rrae gddiogn tx selso yxruo lges
Consciousness fading.
qqqzyxuo rrttae gdxddiogqnzd txcco saaavbbelso ywghwxruo leghhhgesfffssssssss
. 
Nothingness.
 .
Soundwaves thrumming in blackness. Belatedly realize… those are… words. They’re beyond the numbness and the pain of his torso. Floating there. sc mdccuch pffognipess. Try to listen in, to perceive, to understand… but the mind slips in the void of blackness… and he finds himself fading… fadinngg… ffadninng… ffxxaduinngf…
Nothingness.
.
When he wakes he can feel every bruise on his torso, every stinging laceration, every angry throb from his heart.So mcuch fogiiginess. His eyelids flicker, vision black, red, white, red, black. Shut eyes again. Groan. Heart throbs. Ears beyond the fog hear murmurs, and he catches half of it… “going to make… but don’t… not sure that… -n’t be ab-… -lk.”
His tongue is too thick in his mouth to ask for them to repeat the words.
Consciousness fading.
Nothingness.
 .
There’s something holding his hand. Alongside it, his wife’s voice. What’s she doing here on the battlefield? He thinks of responding, but… so much fogginess… he just squeezes that hand instead before drifting back into the void.
.
He opened his eyes.
He shut them again. Everything was so bright his pupils stung. However, stubbornly, he forced his eyes open again and let his vision adjust.
The top of Mera’s auburn curls were visible as she looked downward into her lap, focused on an impressively intricate needlework project. Another torso then came up and blocked his view, but that person – a healer – knelt down just a moment later. They made eye contact. “Your Majesty.” The medic stepped back, touching Mera lightly on the shoulder. “My Lady, he’s awake.”
“Gareth…”
Haddock groaned, blinking rapidly, trying to focus vision and thought. Where was he? What was going on? “Okay.” His vocal cords croaked an approximation of the word. Clearing his throat, he tried again, and scratched out, “Do I want to know? What… ah… happened?”
“You’ve given me the scare of my life, Garthy,” she responded, setting down her needlework and stepping delicately toward his cot.  Mera’s voice was firm and almost berating now, but she licked her lips and hesitated, as though meaning to say something but deciding against it.
“What is it?”
Mera gave a half-second glance toward the healer in the room.
“Ah yes, Your… um… Your Majesty…” the healer vocalized, taking on a quiet, almost soothing tone. Haddock shifted his head on his pillow to make eye contact and listen to her words. “You have gone through quite an… injury… since day one of Ragnarok. Can you please tell me, sir: how are you feeling?”
“Nothing I can’t tolerate. That said, my chest burns like fire, my arm has a few…” The king paused in his tally of injuries. He paused for a long time. He stammered at a sudden realization, mouth working. “I… I don’t feel my legs.”
Mera bit her lips.
There was a bit of stillness before the healer exhaled, “As we feared.” She looked Haddock sympathetically in the eyes – staring a bit too much, perhaps – and spoke gently if informatively in content, “Your Majesty, you were pierced in the spine through the back. And as a result… you are paralyzed from the waist down.”
He stared at the ceiling and forced himself to breath. Breathe heavily, diaphragm rising, falling, rising, falling. Swallow something in his throat. “Everyone,” he said. He swallowed again and blinked multiple times. It was a little difficult for him to see. “Everyone out,” he murmured softly, numbly, slowly. “I need to handle this news alone.”
=== Part Two ===
Gareth Ragnar Haddock the Second: The healers had moved him to a private chamber to recuperate well within the Grounded Dungeon. And there, alone, unmoving, he had stayed.
“You’ve been quiet.”
His eyes rose, watching Mera slip into the room, her arms crossed about herself in a self-made, half-comforting hug. He was seated as upright on a bed as he could position himself, feet hanging unmoving over the edge. Beyond a glance upward, though, and a belated dip of his head, he gave no response to Mera’s observation.
Mera seated herself beside her husband, murmuring, “Garthy,” and wrapping an arm around him.  He kept both hands clasped together on his lap.  The couple remained silent for a while, neither speaking.
It was Haddock at last who ended the silence, though his solemn speech was quiet, voice slightly hoarse from lack of use.  “I deserved this, you know,” he murmured.  “Living with…” he swallowed “…half a body.”
Mera frowned.  “Gareth,” she growled, displeased.  She worked her jaw, mouth agitated, as she tried to decide where she began her reprimands.  
However, before she could even grumble “deities,” let alone rant to her husband about his words, Haddock spoke up again.  “Please.  Don’t try to deny it.”
“It’s not half a body,” she huffed anyway.  “And it’s rude to say that to anyone who has lost a limb or been born without the ability to walk.  People have made very good use of their lives wh –”
“I know,” Haddock cut in, somehow both irritably and gloomily.  “But I…”  After faltering a moment, he choked out, “It’s half a body to me.  I – I know a different type of life.  And…”
Mera let him in silence as he oscillated on whether or not to finish the sentence.
He did.  “And I’ll never have that life again.”
Responding softly, Mera said, “Doesn’t have to be a bad thing.”
Haddock rolled his eyes, glaring at the wall opposite of Mera, clearly disagreeing. He clamped his jaw shut.
She rubbed his back, continuing, “I know you don’t like talking about it, Garthy. And I’m not going to force you. I’m thankful you’re finally saying something, though.  You shouldn’t have to deal with this alone.  We’re all in this together.”
He did not acknowledge he had heard Mera.  He just sat there stiffly, his torso so tight it might as well have been paralyzed along with his lower half.
“The fact that things have changed doesn’t have to be bad.  Not going back to previous times… well, you don’t want to go back to being a wordless, diaper-pooping, constantly bawling, red-faced baby, do you?”
“Mera, don’t make light of…”
“I’m not making light of this!” she exclaimed, whacking him on the back of the head.  “Events aren’t good things or bad things.  They’re neutral things.  We choose how we respond to them.”
Haddock snorted.
“I remember a young man once proposing to me saying we should take control and create some happiness in our own lives.  It made us happier.  The problems in our lives didn’t end when we decided to marry.”  Mera leaned in, kissed his cheek, and whispered, “But it made so many things wonderful despite the problems.  
“So. Well.  Maybe neither of us like what just happened.  But maybe if you can make happiness out of darkness once with our wedding, you can find some good out of unpleasantness here, too.”
“I won’t,” he said dolefully.  And that was all.
Mera tried to lean forward to read his eyes.  The hazel-green were foggy and unclear.
“You’re gonna completely ignore me, aren’t you?” she said flatly.
“No.”
“Deities, are you three or thirty-one?”
“I’m paralyzed.”
She halted for a moment at the surprise he actually said it aloud, but an instant later, regained composure and growled, “And I’m sick of you wallowing around.  A bad thing happened to you.  I’m here to support you through that.  I understand, Gareth.  But don’t punish yourself more than the event already has.”
“I’m not.”
“Oh right,” she growled.  “You said you deserved it.  Okay. Okay, Sire Wise Crown.  I’m taking back what I said earlier, and you are telling me what’s whacking around in that stupid noggin of yours.”
“The soldier I killed,” Haddock said, referring to Orskaf, “was, in many ways, a better man than I was.”
They let that sit in silence.
“He was,” Haddock said. Mera did not dispute him.
“So that’s it.  Your conscience has finally caught up to you.”  Her voice softened at those words, and so did her eyes, green beaming at him in sympathy.  After exhaling deeply through her nose, she leaned in and whispered, “But I think you’re wrong there… angel.”
His eyes flickered uncertainly, shock entering his irises at the fact Mera used his own pet name… and at such a time in the conversation as this.
“Maybe you used to be ‘as bad as him’.”
“Mera, I –”
“But you’re not anymore.  What you are now, Gareth, is an incredible and inspiring man –  inside and out.  I don’t know if you’ve lost… so much as gained.  And I mean that.”
She stood up and bowed to him deeply.  “You have so much to work out, Gareth.  I don’t like to see you struggle.  I don’t like it one damned bit.  But… after all that’s happened… seeing who you are and hearing what you’re thinking today…  I couldn’t be more awed, more thankful, and more blessed than to be the wife of such a king.”  She leaned forward to squeeze his hand.  “A true and noble king, Sire Honored Heart.” 
=== Part Three ===
Gareth Ragnar Haddock the Second: He lay in bed again, facing away from the doorway. The room was the wall, the other wall, the edge of the bed, the covers on the bed, and the small pillow tucked under his head. There were no sounds but his breathing. And that was the only movement in this world.
Breathe in. Breathe out. Thoughts cycled, nagged, nagged, nagged through his head. No, don’t think about it.
Stare at the wall.
Feel his heart beat.
Listen to his breathing.
Something else… something else beyond that. It was high pitched and energetic.
He tried to rise from bed, cursed muscles that no longer moved, and awkwardly shoved himself upward with his elbows. This better get less awkward over time. 
He managed to pull himself up into a seated position by the time the door creaked open, and in walked three uninvited but wholly welcome guests. It was Mera, Signy, and Egil.
“Daaaaa!” a small child’s voice peeped.
“Well if it isn’t Signy,” Haddock said, looking gratefully at Mera as she paraded the two children inside and shut the door behind her. He reached out his hands to take his daughter, looking her over with a little bit of life in his eyes. She did not stare right at him - she was already zoned off in her own little world again - but the red curls on top her head, and those plump infant’s lips and round toddler cheeks were more than enough to get her father to hesitantly smile. Slowly, like snow melting from the ground, the despondency began to melt from the features of his face.
It was the first smile he had had since the injury. It was tinged with sorrow, but also the joy of young life. Ofhis own precious daughter.
He held her with both hands, gazing at her, trying to catch her gaze in turn. “Hello there, little girl,” he murmured softly, trying to sound welcoming rather than doleful. “Hey Signy.” 
“I’m here toooooo,” another voice pouted. Egil marched up right to his father’s bed, outright offended and indignant at being ignored for five whole seconds. “Say ‘hi’ t’me!”
“Hello, Egil,” Haddock said, with a little bit of an amused bite to it. It was getting harder and harder to be melancholy in the midst of two young souls.
“And lookit me too. C’moooonnnn, lookit me! I got somethin’ ta show you!”
“Alright. I’m looking. What do you want me to see?” Haddock glanced once at Mera to silently check if she knew what Egil was up to now. She just shrugged and smirked.
“Awww c’mon. Guess. Guess, Dad, guess.”
Blandly he answered, “You’ve grown a third eye.”
“Noooo. That’s not it!” Egil protested.
“Oh! I’m sorry. I guess that’s your nose, not a third eye. Have you…… grown wings? Turned into a dragon? Learned how to breathe fire?”
“No, Dad. Come on.”
“We’ll be guessing all day. What is it?”
“Can’t you see how much I’ve grown? And lookit how strong I’m gettin’!” Egil puffed up his arms, showing off the allegedly manly muscle he had along his biceps. “I’m gonna be strong ‘cause… ‘cause…” The boy frowned in consternation. “Well. Mom told me. That you was… puh-ruhhh-ummmm…”
Mera looked very sympathetically at her husband in a wordless apology before saying the sensitive word, “It’s paralyzed, dear,” crouching down to Egil.
“Yeah. Palaryzed. You’re palaryzed.”
“No. No I’m not.” Haddock shook his head, and his lips twitched very slightly upward. “I’m not paralyzed. I’m Dad.”
Mera’s eyes widened slightly, realizing that the worst was over for her husband. She stepped forward to give him a kiss on the lips, to which Egil vehemently, passionately narrated, “Ewwww!”
Category:Events
Category:Gareth Ragnar Haddock the Second
Category:Mera Violet Haddock
Category:Egil Ander Haddock
Category:Signy Rose Haddock
Category:BOTGD
Category:Season 5