Paul had murky dreams. Paul often had murky dreams. Sometimes in the murk he might spot something or someone he recognised, and sometimes something would lunge suddenly up through the murk and he’d wake up somewhere that it took him a few seconds to remember.
This time, he woke up slowly without recognising anything. A distant prodding resolved itself into actual, immediate prodding, and he sleepily realised that he was, in fact, being prodded. In real life.
By Cozy, as he saw.
“...why are you prodding me?” He asked, peering sideways at her. She was little more than a blur but she was a blur that he could identify anywhere.
“I’m trying to wake you up,” she said.
“Well you succeeded.”
“Did consider just pulling the curtains open but, uh, that might not have worked out so great, given, uh, you,” Cozy said as Pau gruntingly worked his way up in bed so he was sitting.
“Wise,” he said, shifting the pillows behind him so he was fractionally more comfortable.
Once he was properly settled and had stopped moving Cozy wheeled over one of those hospital trolley-tray things that typically have food put onto them so bedbound people can eat the food. On this tray there was food, fittingly.
“Breakfast,” she said, simply. She wasn’t wrong either. It was breakfast. Paul blinked at it for a moment and then heaved himself up further in bed, squinting at how bright everything damn well was.
“You work here now?” He asked. This got him some side-eye.
“A nurse did bring some in earlier but you woke up and smacked the tray away and so she, uh, left the room. Quickly. I said I’d try this time. Say it was working out better, wouldn’t you?”
“What?”
He had absolutely no memory of that having happened. Even straining to remember yielded nothing, not even anything that he might have otherwise dismissed as a dream. Apparently he’d done it without even waking up, or at least without waking up enough to really notice.
Paul then looked and saw the remains of the first breakfast, still on the floor, tray and all. Evidently they’d not felt like risking coming in to clean it up yet. He winced.
“Eurgh. That’s just embarrassing. Uh, do you know which nurse it was so I can-”
“I already found her and said you were sorry and that you didn’t mean it. She was okay with it, just think you frightened her, is all.”
“Presumptuous, Cozy, but, ah, thank you. That - that hasn’t happened in a while…”
“I know.”
Paul sat in silence and felt guilty and angry for a bit, though not too long. It wouldn’t solve anything. Time was he wouldn’t have cared. That he cared now showed something, but he wasn’t sure what.
“Could really go for a cigarette,” he said. He knew he’d been cutting down - rather successfully too, by all accounts - but if there was ever a time for a quick cheat one now seemed to be it.
“I don’t think they let you do that in here,” Cozy said.
Just a hunch on her part.
“Pffbt, rules. Who cares about rules?”
“Alright, I don’t think I will let you do that,” Cozy said, having subsequently learnt since meeting him that it was not an especially healthy habit. She’d learnt this from him, in fact.
“Tiny bloody tyrant. To think I should raise such a spoilsport!”
“Heh, ah, yeah…” Cozy said, a touch awkwardly, his choice of words there landing perhaps not as they might once have given what had recently been said vis their relationship. Paul realised this too, albeit far too late, and grimaced to himself.
The banter stalled.
“We probably need to...talk...don’t we?” Paul asked.
“Probably,” said Cozy.
He’d been afraid of that. Going by the way Cozy had spoken she was about as enthusiastic about the prospect as he was. He grimaced.
“Eurgh. I already talked to the big one, that was enough for me for a lifetime.”
“You talked to Celestia? Like, just the two of you?” Cozy asked. He’d presumably done it under sufferance but that it had been a significant enough conversation for him to mention to her was certainly something. “About what?”
Paul shifted under the covers.
“...you.”
“Oh.”
Cozy realised she probably should have seen that one coming.
“Yeah she’s big on talking that one, and a ‘good listener’. Eurgh. It was torture,” Paul said, rubbing his face.
“I bet talking about me was torture,” Cozy said, nodding and brimming with gravitas and mock-seriousness. Paul grinned despite his dread of what was coming up.
“No, now, hey - good joke but no, let’s - let’s be serious about this, for once. Then we can never be serious about it again. But let’s try and be serious.”
Cozy was also dreading what was coming up.
“That sounds like more torture,” she said.
“It will be, but it - eurgh - probably needs to happen. Come here,” he said, pushing the little bedside breakfast tray to one side and patting a spot on the bed onto which Cozy obligingly flew up and landed. Didn’t fit quite as comfortably as she might have done a couple years ago, but she still fit.
“Right. Well. Um,” Paul said haltingly, licking his lips. He suddenly felt very parched, and the little jug of water on the tray was so far away now. Drinking would be a distraction anyway. Had to press forward. “We need to be...honest...with one another,” he said, every word an agonising effort.
“Right.”
A pause.
“You first,” Cozy said.
He’d been about to say that!
“Damnit, Cozy, that’s - ! Fine. I - well, us, the both of us - you - “ Paul fumbled, bit his cheek, grunted, took a breath and tried over: “Thinking about it and about...these last few years and a few other things and - and talking about it with the big one, I - I’ve come to realise that - I’ve been - that I actually do l-l-love you, Cozy, as a - as a chi- as my - as m-my d-daughter, I think, and that’s - well - it’s just…”
Paul briefly lost all capacity for speech and just mouthed vague noises into his lap, fiddling with his hands.
“Fuck. This was much easier to talk about to the big one, fuck. She is a good listener...”
He looked up at Cozy, hoping that maybe she’d pick this moment to step in and do her bit and let him off the hook, but no such luck. She was just staring at him with those big, big eyes. Staring expectantly.
Oh well. Onwards. Too late now. Started so he’d finish.
“And I know I’m not the best at doing whatever a f-f-father is supposed to be or be but I am - I am trying, or trying to try. I want - I want you to be happy, you see and - I’m trying. And I am also learning that a part of that is… appreciating that… I should at least try to keep myself vaguely intact, for your sake. Probably should have fucking listened when the other one told me so.”
He wasn’t sure what point he was trying to make now, or how far he’d got in the points he’d need to make. His brains were scrambled and he’d moved from fiddling with his hands to fiddling with the bedsheets and was doing this vigorously enough that he was in danger of ripping them.
“What I guess I’m trying to say - trying and failing - is that if you want to keep calling me d-dad then that’s - then that’d be okay, because maybe that’s what - what I’d like to be to you. Or you can just, you know, tell me to shove off. I don’t know.”
This was all he could manage. He actually did succeed in ripping the bedsheets and so quickly stopped fiddling with them, instead just fiddling with his hands some more and looking at the various nicks and cuts he’d acquired over the last day or two, too terrified to look up to see how what he’d said had landed with Cozy.
She wasn’t saying anything...
“You go, you do your bit. You’re much better at this than I am,” he said.
Still nothing. It was getting so bad that he risked a quick look up. He saw those big, big eyes again on the cusp of tears. His gut twisted. He’d screwed it up! He’d got it all wrong! Everything he’d meant to say had come out backwards! He’d fucked it up!
Then she just hugged him again, especially tightly. Hurt less this time.
Maybe he hadn’t made as much of a hash of it as he’d feared?
The hug precluded anything else needing to be said for a bit. The two of them had been a lot more touchy-feely of late than they had anytime before, but this was to be expected, really, all things considered. Certainly, neither felt the least bit awkward about it or self-conscious or anything. It just seemed to come quite naturally now.
At length the hug broke, Cozy being the one breaking it, and she sat back.
She still wasn’t saying anything, and it was at this point that Paul realised she wasn’t actually going to. Cozy saw this realisation dawning and her smile took on a slightly different character.
“That’s not fair! I can’t spill my guts and then you get away with a hug!” He said.
“What are you going to do about it? You love me, dad,” she said, putting heavy, treacle-thick emphasis on the last part, complete with a smug-yet-loving smile plastered across her face.
“You-!”
There really wasn’t anything he could do, he realised. She had him dead to rights.
“Clever bloody girl. Fine, fine. Keep it to yourself. I know I did my bit at least! Laid my damn soul bare for you, bah. Got years more of this to look forward to, I’m sure,” he grumbled. Cozy nodded.
“Oh, years and years. And years.”
“Wonderful. Well, I’m sick of sitting here, it’s about time I got out of this damn bed. Where did they put my leg?”
He’d thought - hoped - that maybe the hospital staff or whoever had just tucked it around the side of the bed somewhere but now that he was looking he couldn’t see it. They hadn’t hidden it as a joke or something, had they?
That had happened back home, once. Only once. That particular batch of work associates had very abruptly learnt the error of their ways and certainly learnt better than to take a chance on Paul seeing the funny side on any future jokes involving his leg.
In their defence, had they picked any week other than the one in which they pulled the trick it likely would have gone down better. As it happened they’d caught him at a bad time. But such was life and that was by the by.
Paul was no longer back where he’d come, those people were all dead now, and he was still sans leg, though at least he’d had a better week than the last time.
“Well, looks like it’s hopping for me. They did leave a stick at least?”
He started looking around again, this time for a stick, only to notice Cozy chewing her lip.
“...what?” He asked.
“I have bad news,” she said. “It’s leg-related.”
“Oh. Great. What is it?”
“When they found you in the snow - in the snow, dying, freezing to death after having made a stup-”
“Yes yes Cozy, I get it. Get on with it.”
“When they found you, your, uh, framey thing and your leg were both pretty beaten up and bent out of shape, and your leg was kind of full of snow, too. And dirt. And gravel. And then when they brought you here and had to, you know, start looking after you they had to take them off. But they didn’t really know how. So they kind of dismantled them. With extreme prejudice.”
“So you’re saying they broke them.”
“No, I’m saying you broke them, they had to take them off your unconscious body after they dug you out of a snowdrift. A snowdrift where you were dying. And I’m saying that they’re now a bit broken.”
Paul stared at her.
He couldn’t really find it in himself to be angry. He was upset, yes, and grumpy but then he was almost always grumpy so this wasn’t a huge change, leaving him mostly just upset, and mostly also just tired. Certainly too tired to waste the energy being loud and unhappy about it. Not worth the effort.
It wasn’t even as if he was especially attached - hah - to his leg or anything like that. It wasn’t his first one, or even his second. He’d just managed to keep this particular leg going for a good while now and he’d got quietly fond of it, for all its failings. And even for him it was hard to be annoyed at the doctors and such for just doing their jobs. They’d done their best, he imagined, as most doctors he’d encountered in his life tried to do. Never worth getting all that upset at them. Just doing their jobs. He was so tired.
He sighed. His shoulders slumped.
“Well. It happens. There is a stick at least? Joking aside I’d really rather not hop.”
“Better! There’s a replacement! Twilight found it when she went back to our house,” Cozy said, brightly. Paul did not share her brightness. His view was a dim one.
“What was she doing in my house?” He asked.
“...looking for a spare leg, I just told you.”
“Hmph.”
“Oh get over yourself, dad, she did a nice thing. It’s under a desk at the nurses station, I’ll go get it. Don’t go running off now,” she said. Thought she was funny, apparently. Paul crossed his arms and glowered.
“Har-fucking-har.”
Off Cozy went, flapping down from the bed and trotting out the door. In her absence, Paul leaned over and pulled the breakfast tray back over and started to pick away, not really concentrating on what it was he was eating - habit was that it didn’t really matter as long as it wouldn’t kill you. He stared into space and chewed, thinking about his leg and all the good times - well, times - they’d had together.
Then he paused, and actually looked at what it was he was eating. He cocked his head, raised a cube of something that wasn’t meat up on his fork.
“You’re very familiar…” he said to the cube, brow furrowed.
Further rumination on this mysterious meaty-and-yet-not-meat cube was forestalled by the reappearance of Cozy, struggling her way back into the room with the spare leg. It wasn’t that it was heavy (though it wasn’t exactly light), it was more that it was awkwardly shaped. She’d had to kind of sling it over her back and kept having to shift to keep it from slipping off, much to her obvious frustration. The instant she was able to she slung it up onto the bed.
“There!” She said, semi-breathlessly. Paul’s eyes fell upon the leg in blank confusion for a second. Then it clicked.
“Oh, that one,” he said, setting his fork down and pushing the tray aside once more to reach over and grab the leg. “Thank you, Cozy,” he then said before setting about getting it secure and attached. Cozy, who’d seen him do this more times than she could count at this point, just stood back and let it happen.
Though, as she watched him and this new, unfamiliar leg, a thought did occur to her:
“Since when did you have a spare anyway? And since why does it look so much fancier than your other one? This one looks more like you made it out of actual parts and less like it was made out of the bits that were left over from making a better one. Why wasn’t this the one you used?”
Paul paused for a moment and plainly thought about how best to answer this question. He then gave up thinking on how best to answer this question.
“...I’ll tell you later,” he said, resuming.
“Yeah, that’s not a weird thing to say.”
“Later.”
“Fine, fine. You not going to eat the rest of that?” Cozy asked, nodding to the partially-eaten breakfast still sitting on the trolley where she’d put it and where he’d pushed it away from the bed again.
Paul paused. He’d forgotten about that. His memory really was getting a little spotty these days. He considered how best to play this.
“We’ll eat and walk,” he said, grabbing the plate from the tray with one hand, some toast with the other and cramming it into his mouth as she strode semi-steadily out of the room. Cozy wondered if she should say anything about this - something pithy, perhaps - but decided there wasn’t much point, and instead grabbed the nearest blanket in her teeth and went after him.
Once he remembered it was cold outside and that he was only wearing a flimsy gown he might want it. He wouldn’t admit to needing it, but if she had she could make him take it.
Honestly.