love you ‘til my lungs give out by scarlettroses
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Archive Warning: No Archive Warnings Apply
Fandoms: Heated Rivalry (TV)Game Changers | Heated Rivalry - All Media Types
Relationships: Shane Hollander/Ilya Rozanov, Shane Hollander & Ilya Rozanov
Characters: Shane Hollander, Ilya Rozanov, Yuna Hollander, David Hollander, Hayden Pike
Additional Tags: Major Character Injury, Disability, Brain Damage, Hurt/Comfort, this fic wants to be a hurt/comfort so bad but even the comfort is painful, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Non-Linear Narrative, Career Ending Injuries, Caretaking, it’s sweeter than the tags make it sound i swear, Hospitals, Seizures, Happy Ending
Weeks later, when the news finally breaks, the headlines will call it a “catastrophic brain injury”.
They’ll analyze the hit from every angle, trying to find just what went so wrong. It was clean, it was legal… and yet it somehow slammed Shane Hollander into the ice hard enough to end his career.
or, another take on shane’s injury in episode 5 being much, much worse.
I need you to go read this. I'm still crying so I'm just gonna copy the comment I left on it.
As a disabled person, nearly every story I have read and seen that has a brain injury with such catastrophic results, or even just amnesia, frames the life the person has to live afterwards as something tragic, pitiable, and a living monument to loss. For example, one of my favourite shows had the MC discovered alive after being presumed dead. He was able bodied, and recognised and loved her, but trapped in psychosis. His fiancée tells him "I don't know what I'll do if this is all that's left of the man I love". That is the gratitude of a woman for having her lover restored to life in a disabled state. He's not a person to her, but the remnants of one.
This is the narrative that dominates every facet of media and society. Being impaired is to become a remnant and an object of pity, and having to rely lifelong on your loved ones is a worse fate for them than if you had died. Few stories challenge it. But this is one of the vanishingly rare ones that completely steps outside that narrative as though it doesn't even exist.
Granted, most of the worst pressures on families are eased for the Hollanders because Shane is a millionaire and Canada's advanced medical facilities and universal healthcare would have gone a long way even if he wasn't. But it still would not have coloured the way his every sign of life, existence and agency was celebrated by his family and Ilya as joyful in and of themselves instead of being contingent entirely on continued progress. The way his friends learned to easily fold him into their conversations and banter without treating him like half a person. The way neither the narration of this story nor its characters infantilized the simplicity of his thoughts and communication, and matter-of-factly explained and accepted his fascinations with lights and toys. The way he was given sexual and romantic agency along with his capacity to communicate his desires, and him asking for sex was never treated as gross or problematic. The way his family's hopes for him were never pinned on him returning to his former self but on him regaining as much of his own autonomy and happiness as possible, whatever that might look like. The way Shane's journey was so entirely about his own re-discovery that being lauded as inspirational at the end by the sports community didn't feel oppressive but deserved. It was always focused on Shane's existence being cherished and them all learning to navigate his new life, rather than him having to prove his worth to anyone else. I bawled until the very last word and another twenty minutes after.
I have chronic and mental illness, not brain damage. I have still spent my whole adult life feeling like I've been shoved away in a cupboard for broken things. A relic of what once was, unable to be thrown away. Seeing the open, accepting love of a family that celebrates the existence you have rather than grieving the one you won't, and how much of a difference that could make in healing and living fully...there are no words. I am awash in grief and gratitude. This story is a precious gift and I will always hold it close to my heart.
Please go read it and give the author their flowers. They deserve thousands more comments, bookmarks and kudos.
