[icon]https://media.giphy.com/media/Igq1E4Q5XCWqobD7UK/giphy.gif[/icon]Oliver always smiles. He is too strong to be sad. He is too optimistic to be broken. He makes bad jokes, promises everyone to be back on the broom in no time and swears to curse his team, if they dare to find a new captain.

It is really easy for the first couple of days. Oliver Wood, if anyone, knows something about pain. His courage and strength brought him through the war, he has fallen down just during the school years more than average person does in a lifetime. Oh, he knows for sure what pain is, and the best part of it is that it ends. Well, normally. At least that what Oliver learnt in his surprisingly not so short life: you clench your teeth, so hard you think they'll shatter, you hang through and you survive. And then it gets better, it always does. Until it doesn’t.

First several days he is just fine. Yes, his head is hurting like hell, yes, he is not feeling the whole right part of his body, but he has the full trust in healers, he is still alive and getting treatment - nothing unusual. It’s later he is starting to realize something is not right, when the healers let him go home (well, let Marcus bring him home).

They say, we are just wizards, not angels, miracles are beyond our expertise. They’ve healed his broken ribs and leg, they gave him painkilling potions, but they can’t just find him new legs. His brain has been damaged, and they have fixed it as much as they could. Now it’s just up to him and hope.

Oliver thinks that he is pretty good at trying, he didn’t want many things in life, but whatever he’d wanted, he got. And nobody could say he didn’t work hard enough for anything he has. So Oliver promises to do all exercises and to take all potions, and he really means it.

Till it’s been already three weeks since the accident, and there still has been literally no progress. Nothing. Not at all. Zero.

Keeping a smile on is slowly becoming a difficult job. But he has to keep going. For their kids, for Marcus, for himself for Merlin’s sake. At some point Oliver feels that the last point stops being valid, he just simply doesn’t recognize himself in the mirror, he has never had such an awful face impression (and pitiful stubble, because shaving charms are pretty hard with left hand).

Sometimes Oliver hopes they would all just leave him in peace. He has too many friends, too many people, who pretend to care, but never actually understand. He feels like his fuckign world is ending, and they ask, when he is planning to return to the team. Oliver puts on his best smile, promises that till the end of month he will be doing Wronski Feint with his eyes closed (though he was never able to do this before). Everybody is laughing, everybody is happy, Oliver feels that he is perfectly fulfilling their expectations of him.

He’s never felt so miserable in his whole life (and he once realized that he loves Marcus Flint), but he is totally not feeling like sharing it. The last thing he needs is for Marcus to pity him. Their whole life has been and non-ending battle, and showing his weakness is a total defeat (at least that what Oliver thinks). But this is very tiring game, especially when even holding you hand still is a super-difficult task.

So Oliver is pretty happy on this Monday to be alone and fucking stop smiling. Marcus has left to work and took Eugenie with him before Oliver woke up, Ethan was staying over weekend with a friend from his year and hasn’t returned yet, so Oliver has the whole house for himself, if only he was able to move around properly.

Old habits die hard, so his morning glass with water is staying to his right, and he really tries to get it. His hand is not moving for more than a millimeter, but he is already sweating like a sow. Another ten minutes and another millimeter.

At some point Oliver is feeling that he has had enough.

“FOR FUCK’S SAKE!!!”

The glass flies directly into family photo on the wall and falls down in hundreds shining pieces, leaving a huge water mark on the wall - his left hand is still good.

Oliver will think later about how he is gonna fix it, but right now he feels a tiny bit better.

[nick]Oliver Wood[/nick][icon]https://media.giphy.com/media/Igq1E4Q5XCWqobD7UK/giphy.gif[/icon]Oliver hears the voice of his daughter, and it feels like a bucket of cold water, like a perfect wake-up call. She is scared and his worst fear is becoming reality. He never ever wants his children to be scared of him or Marcus.

Oliver really tries to be a good parent, much better than his own mother (though it is not so hard to better than somebody who leaves their three-years-old inside the shopping mall and disappears forever). Of course, sometimes he has to be strict (with Eugenie - almost never), sometimes he can forget and swear in front of them (he is pretty sure that Ethan can swear much better than he can), sometimes he acts unfair or doesn’t listen, when he should have. But he tries, and that makes a difference. He would apologize if he was wrong, he would admit he made a mistake. Surely, Oliver wants to be respected by his kids, but this respect should never be coming from the place of fear.

Oliver can clearly read fear on Eugenie’s face, so he forces a smile.

- Come in, honey, please. Have I scared you? I’m very sorry, Genie, I just dropped a glass and got upset about it, nothing to worry about. Would you mind giving me my wand - it’s over there, on the side table, - Oliver is talking with his normal “parent” voice - soft and calm, but he himself can feel, how fake it sounds. He hopes she won’t realize, but she always does. Sometimes he really wonders, how they were able to raise somebody that smart (at her age already much smarter than he is).

When they decided to have Ethan - he can hardly believe it has been 15 years already - he was very scared, terrified to death to have a child, a real screaming child. Not that he was not sure in Marcus - at this point of their lives, after everything they have been through, he would not trust anybody more than Marcus - but he was not sure in himself. Would he be able to parent? They had to grow so fast because of the war. They were born during the first one and got hardly kicked by the second. Sometimes Oliver would even well old, but grown-up enough? Not so sure. He was worried, if he has something left in him worth sharing with a new human, he was constantly worried that they would totally fuck it up. And how would it be for a child to be bring up by two dads? Beginning of two thousands was not like now, it was different world, different society. Oliver was ready for the shit storm, he was not gonna hide ever again in his life, he fought too hard to have Marcus by his side to give a fuck about somebody's else opinion. But the child hasn’t signed in for that and they were not leaving him any choice.

But they did it anyway. Because they were still scared of death and so hungry to live right now and there.

And it went super well. Oliver was also worrying if he will be able to love somebody else, somebody being not Marcus Flint, but that has turned to be not an issue at all. He found out that a love for a child, your child, is something so different to anything you have experienced before that it really makes it worth it in the end.

With Eugenie it has been a little bit different, they have had experience, they were much less scared and more prepared (though nobody can be fully prepared) and could have been more relaxed and just enjoying her changing everyday and becoming somebody really incredible.

- Come here, - he taps over the blanket, inviting her to join him in bed, since he is not able to stand up anyway. - I thought you were going to come to the stadium with Marcus, what have happened?

Even if he won’t be able to be a sportsman after this, he is still going to be a father, and he has to put his shit together.