Gregor The Cripple

Mildred woke, and nothing at all happened inside her head. Absolutely nothing.

She just lay curled in the warm darkness beneath Gregor's cloak, hurting. It hurt to breathe and to move, and it even hurt to do nothing at all.

It smelled like him. Parting the folds of fabric with feeble fingers, Mildred exposed her face to the cold world beyond. For a moment, she lay dim and listless, looking up at the sky and the leafless trees by the road, feeling the bump and jump of the wagon beneath her. The sun was up there, perhaps standing at ten o'clock, and she hurt. In that moment, dumb as she was, Mildred felt for all the world like a nailed piece of wood, punctured and thoughtless.

Her mind was… She didn't know. She couldn't quite think of the word that meant whatever it was that was going on with her mind. Thinking was hard. It was like she'd discovered a new and terrible variety of hangover, and maybe she had. An odd combination of liquids had entered her gut yesterday, mingling within. Was that alchemy? Maybe.

Mildred remained inanimate for a long while, vegetating, feeling the persistent throb above her hip and and the ache behind her eyes, and upon realising that she was still awake, she blinked bleakly and re-buried her face in the robe, rolling over very slowly and carefully and trying to go back to sleep, but finding after a few minutes of persistent discomfort that it could not be done.

Gregor had always made getting shot look manageable, but it wasn't, not at all. Rather, it was actually quite inconvenient.

Uncovering her face, Mildred looked back up at the sky.

The pain wasn't as bad as the night before, but it was certainly still bad in a numb way. Now more akin to an eternal cramp than a simple stabbing agony, and she found herself wondering if Gregor's leg had felt the same way when he'd been shot. It must have, but did it still feel like that, just a little? Maybe. It hadn't been that long ago. And what about the rest of him? He'd been kissed all over by bullets, and in light of this new experience, she now had a very good idea of how horribly he must be suffering.

How much of that was her fault? And how did he manage to keep going?

With all the speed of flowing honey, a memory percolated Mildred's mind; back at The Shard, just after he'd been shot, Gregor had remarked that his great agony was 'only pain', and that it didn't bear thinking about, which had seemed entirely absurd at the time, but now that she was feeling that same pain, and even though she now knew it to be a far more outrageous statement than before, she thought that maybe she understood – maybe that was the solution.

Perhaps, she posited, if you acted as if all pain was merely pain, and nothing more, then it'd simply just become true. Perhaps, when dealing with things that the mind can govern, insofar as the mind can govern pain, attitude is king.

Of course, you can't just choose not to feel pain, but you can choose how to react to it.

She didn't know if any of that made sense, but it felt right.

Thus, Gregor could leverage his arrogance and choose to just keep on going, nevermind the agony. However, things possible for Gregor are not necessarily possible for other people. In many ways, he was a madman.

What about her?

It couldn't hurt to try. Or it could, but that was parallel to the point.

Gingerly, Mildred tried to sit up, which was itself a journey of discovery. She found that the human body makes far more use of its abdominal muscles than one would expect. Practically every little shift elicited a flare of pain, and so the task was completed mostly by her arms, which were more than ready to pick up the slack left by her faulty middrift.

With some painful effort, Mildred dragged herself over to the side of the wagon so she could lean against it, then pushed herself into sitting with her long legs stretched out over the warm pile of sacks she'd been sleeping on.

Propped up on the the low side-wall of the wagon with assistance from her faithful right appendage – the side opposite the injury – she used her left arm to roll up the bottom of her new white blouse, which, unlike her old one, had no bullet holes, and was not stained with a tremendous amount of her own blood. Ever resourceful, Gregor had it stolen from a selection of window-hanging laundry as they were on their way out of town. The back of her nice coat still had a hole, which was a shame, but felt was easy enough to patch and Gregor could probably launder the blood.

Blinking, Mildred's still-slow mind arrived at the strange fact that she couldn't remember ever changing her top, even though her top had obviously changed. It was quite the mystery.

Looking down at her waist, she found herself wearing a thick belt of bandages, just beginning to stain red at the point of pain, and a little above and a little below, she saw that the skin had taken on a grotesque spectrum of reds and purples and yellows. Morbid as it was, she felt an urge to peek beneath the bandages and to glimpse the naked wound, but that could come later. Inevitably, the bindings would need to be changed. She'd see it then.

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In the meantime, Mildred looked to Gregor, who was driving the horses at the front of the wagon.

Around them rolled a peaceful winters' day. There were a few clouds, a little chill, and moderate wind. The landscape was generally rocky, awash with shades of yellowish brown and grey, but with a few well-placed smatterings of green amongst the hills where the earth swelled and dipped and rose. It wasn't a beautiful place, but it was calm, and had something of a picturesque quality. She thought that it was the kind of place that could make for a dramatic battlefield, which was an odd thought to have.

The back of Gregor's head was now without bandages, and Mildred could see the fresh scars, still raw and red. Had those bandages gone to her? Likely.

He was still driving – still awake, bearing the magical and physical toll of the fight and the surgery, as well as the night's vigil… and the previous night's vigil, now that she thought about it. As usual, Gregor was working exceptionally hard.

Sluggish mental arithmetic told her that he'd been awake for somewhere near a full day and a half. If he could endure all that on her account, as well as bearing silently the pain of his own significant injures, what excuse did she have for being useless?

"…It's only pain," Mildred muttered to herself, shifting painfully to a crouch. She then began to unsteadily stand. The stabbing in her gut became worse, and she sucked in a sharp breath of cold air, barely stifling a gasp. Eventually, with much huffing, Mildred successfully forced herself to to stand at her full towering height, the wind in her hair and Gregor's cloak held tight around her chest. Her jaw clenched and her face scrunched, she refused to exhale, afraid that she might let out a bleat of pain if the wagon rocked too much or if she moved too suddenly.

Annoyingly, her hair had grown to hang just low enough that the wind could blow it into her eyes.

She could endure. Gregor had suffered far worse without a quibble, and, as unladylike as it was for her to admit, she was physically something of a titan. She was big and strong, so why shouldn't she be able to bear a little pain?

With delicate attention, Mildred stepped over the high backboard that separated the driver's bench from the space that had been her bed for the night, and then lowered herself down next to Gregor, using her arms as much as possible to ease the strain. She sat, released her breath, which itself hurt quite a bit, and they both looked at each other. Mildred spoke first.

"I think…"

"Yes?"

"I think I'll cut my hair."

"Like mine?" Releasing his reins to telekinesis, Gregor rubbed the back of his head.

"Not like yours, no."

They sat there for a while, neither exactly comfortable or healthy, but with Mildred not complaining about her pain, and Gregor not protesting his state of exhaustion. During this period, she discovered that there was something to be said for casual acts of great endurance, and she found that she rather liked the way they made her feel, even though she didn't much care for the feeling that she endured. Strangely, with this in mind, the pain became much easier for her to bear. It was incredibly odd.

"You should sleep." She began again.

"I can manage."

"So can I, which is exactly why you should sleep."

"In a while."

"I think sooner would be better than later."

Now that she had reason to notice, Mildred could see that Gregor wasn't doing very well. His hat had begun to wilt, he was paler than usual. His eyes were both red, and his head looked as if it were just barely hanging onto his neck. If she didn't act fast, it might fall off, and then what would she do?

Gregor was exhausted, really exhausted, and Mildred couldn't help but wonder if it was only his recent exertions that were burdening him, or if it was perhaps something more, because now that she really actually personally knew some of the pain that he felt, rather than merely thinking that she knew it, it didn't seem possible for him to be fine after all of his accumulated suffering.

She certainly wouldn't be, and although she knew that there were certain differences between herself and Gregor, he had to be wearing thin by now. Yet he was still willing to go further, to suffer more and to sleep less, and to carry Mildred across the world atop his sagging, crippled shoulders, probably until he simply couldn't, whenever that might be. Perhaps he only kept going to find that point – to discover once and for all the upper limit of human endurance. If he found it, did he get to name it? Probably. That was usually how it worked.

It would be a grand achievement, but Mildred couldn't allow it. He'd be nothing but dust at the end, and so she had to stop him. That was her part in the partnership.

"You know, Gregor, whatever you gave me yesterday was rather grand. Not to suggest that you might need it, but you were shot too. If we still have some, you should take it, and then you should sleep. I really will be fine. It's only pain."

At this, Gregor turned to look at her, thinking, cogitating, pondering, eventually even combobulating, but to no end. Rare indecision marked his face, and he sat thinking for a little while longer.

"I'll wake you at the slightest hint of anything untoward, I promise. I will no longer trust any strangers," continued Mildred.

"…Not long ago, you asked me to share some of my embarrassments."

She cocked her head.

"As recompense for this recent failure-"

"It wasn't your fault."

Gregor began frowning heavilly. "As recompense, I shall share two more embarrassments, and then I will sleep. Maybe."