The first thing Anders felt when he came to was a stinging pain coming from his face. He tried to groan, but only managed to make a strange pitiful sound at the back of his throat. At least that alerted the person in his hospital room to his being awake. Anders blinked rapidly trying to clear his blurred vision to see who was standing over him, and soon enough Mike came into his line of sight. Anders tried to sit up, but let out another awkward groan of pain and flopped back onto his pillow.
"Are you alright Anders?" Mike asked quietly.
Anders tried to respond, but he only managed to make some mangled noises. That's when it all came back to him. He was walking back home when he had been jumped by Hoenir, and Anders could remember searing pain, and Hoenir taunting him mercilessly. His tongue...Anders let out another groan, as he soon realized that his tongue wasn't there. It was BARELY there, a stump at the back of his throat. Useless. And the pain across the bridge of his nose was the same cut that every other victim of Hoenir had. It wasn't gonna go away, that was for sure. He was going to be permanently disfigured.
But his tongue...
"The doctors said you won't be able to talk...Not properly at least. You'll be able to form a few words, but they won't ever really sound right Anders..." Mike put a hand on Anders' shoulder in comfort.
Anders was glad that at least for now Mike wasn't horribly pissed at him. Hell, Mike probably pitied Anders right now. His power relied on his voice, it relied on him speaking to people to bend them to his will. But now without his tongue he could barely form simple words. Anders was now officially completely useless to the hunt for Frigg. He's so sure that his brothers only needed him for Bragi, so it was obvious that he was now just some poor broken fool who's going to have to live life without even being able to speak. He might as well get rid of his god spirit for all the good that it would do for him.
He wanted to ask Mike where Michele was. Why she didn't heal him. But then again, he didn't know if Yggdrasil could regrow organs. He wanted to ask where everyone was. It was only Mike sitting there with him in his hospital room. He had no proper way of communicating, just laying there and staring up at the ceiling while Mike watched him like a hawk. Then he felt a small book being pressed into his hand, and he turned slowly to see a small notebook and pen lying on his hand. He glanced at Mike with tired bloodshot eyes, before carefully picking up the notebook with his shaking hands.
His handwriting was barely legible as he slowly wrote out 'Where is everyone else?' and 'What am I going to do now?' onto the first sheet of paper in the notebook. When he stopped writing, Mike plucked the notebook out of his hand and glanced over the short question. "They went out to eat. I stayed behind to see if you would wake up. And what do you mean, what are you going to do?"
Anders made motions to his mouth, and let out another strange sound. He winced a bit at that. He sounded so hideous. It didn't sound like his own voice. It just sounded wrong.
"Well, from what I've heard from the doctors here and there, after you're properly healed, you're going to start learning sign language to communicate. It's better than just carrying around a notepad and pencil wherever you go. We're all supposed to learn it together, as a family." Mike couldn't help but roll his eyes. "It was Olaf's idea, but it makes sense I guess because we're not gonna understand you if we can't use sign language."
Anders wanted to groan again, but his throat was raw and in pain from all the other shit it had to go through, so he stayed silent. His eyes went back to staring at the ceiling as he tried to figure out how he was even going to live his life. It wasn't until now that he realized how much if his life relied on his powers of Bragi, or even then, just his ability to speak. He couldn't run a PR company like this. It would take ages for him to properly recover and be able to speak sign language well enough for work. He heard a chair scrape, and Mike mumble something about going to get some coffee, and Anders was left alone in his hospital room.
He felt useless. Completely and utterly useless. He knew no one was ever going to look at him the same way ever again. Not with the scar, or the fact that whenever he tries to speak it just sounded like awkward whale noises. He was just going to be the useless god who couldn't even use his own powers, the one that was defeated by the god of silence. He felt tears streaming down his face, and his mind quickly flashed back to him lying in the street in total pain as his life was torn out of his grip. And he let out a bark of pained laughter.
He wasn't even going to be able to taste Ty's cupcakes anymore.
He had never sobbed harder than he had that day.