Disclaimer: Disney owns the preview pic, not me. I also do not own any of the characters. All I own is the storyline.
It was one of the last truly hot days of summer, the scorching heat and blinding sunlight easily fooling anyone into thinking that school was still out. But alas, much to Anna Arendelle's dismay, it was September 4th and school had been going on for a good three weeks, and being trapped in stuffy classrooms with minimal air conditioning was something akin to torture. And of course, to add insult to injury, the third grade teachers had decided it would just be a splendid idea to give a classroom full of kids fresh out of vacation mound after mound of tedious spelling homework all throughout the three tiresome weeks.
Not that the 8-year-old was particularly focused on that right then. She was lying in the cool shade of her front porch and scribbling away at her coloring book, a pitcher of lemonade her mother had made sitting beside her. Every so often she would steal a glance at Hiccup Haddock's house, standing serenely across the road with its light blue paint looking like it could start running off like water at any moment in the hot sun. Anna surveyed it thoughtfully for several seconds, scrunching her brow in thought before returning to her coloring.
She found her eyes returning to the house again and again, try as she might to focus on filling in every last tree, flower, pathway, and dog in the park scene she was currently coloring.
As much of a pain in the behind as the spelling assignments had been, Anna's main concern was Hiccup Haddock. He hadn't been in school for about a week and a half (and she knew he hadn't moved schools, as he'd been at school at the very beginning of the year—see? She was clever like that!), and she couldn't imagine that any fever or case of the flu would keep him home sick that long. She supposed he could have gone gallivanting off on one of those strange mid-year Hawaii vacations that kids seem to go on so often (and give jealousy-inspiring show-and-tell presentations all about them as soon as they got back), but that seemed odd, considering it was the very start of the school year, and there was no logical reason not to take a Hawaii vacation just a few weeks earlier, so as to avoid missing school and other such irrational things. Besides, she saw Hiccup's father drive home every day, and although being sent to have fun in Hawaii without one's parents was ideal, it seemed like the sort of thing that only happened in wistful daydreams—or perhaps a far-fetched children's book.
So Hiccup wasn't sick, nor was he in Hawaii. And every time Anna watched Hiccup's father get out of his car, his son was never with him. It was a very bizarre situation.
Not that Anna would be so conscientious of Hiccup's whereabouts, of course, if it weren't for the fact that she had been very much in love with him for a solid two years now.
Elsa would always roll her eyes whenever Anna insisted it was true love, making annoying comments along the lines of "Why? He's the weirdest kid in your grade and he won't shut up about dragons!" and "How often do you even talk to him, anyway? Once a month?" (Which, by the way, was entirely untrue. Anna talked to Hiccup at least twice a month, and once she had said "excuse me" while trying to get by him in a crowded part of the hallway and made it three times.)
Maybe an hour or two had gone by when Anna heard a familiar car engine, and her head shot up. Hiccup's dad's familiar black Ford Fiesta was pulling into his driveway. Anna watched in anticipation as the front door opened and the burly 6-foot-7 Mr. Haddock stepped out. Was the back door going to open as well?
She let out a grunt of disappointment as this proved not to be the case. Mr. Haddock shut the front door with a loud bang, pressing a button to lock the car as he clomped inside. Anna noticed he looked very downtrodden. She felt the smallest nip of anxiety, hoping it didn't have anything to do with Hiccup's decided absence.
She watched the car for a while longer, hoping Hiccup would turn out to be in the back all along, simply choosing to play his Gameboy for a while longer before going inside. But as the sun sank behind the tiled roof of his house and the sky was washed over by the deep blue of twilight, it seemed that her anticipation was not going to yield anything. When Anna looked back down at her coloring book, she realized it had gotten too dark to even see the picture anymore.
Anna's front door opened, and her mother stepped out. "Time for dinner, sweetie," she said.
Just as she spoke, Hiccup's front door opened, and his father stepped out again. He shuffled back to his car, seeming to have forgotten something.
Anna looked back at her mother to see the brunette woman shaking her head. "Oh, that poor man," she murmured.
Anna felt her stomach twist. "Why? What's wrong with him? Why is he poor?"
Mrs. Arendelle looked down, seeming surprised her daughter had heard her. "Oh…he and his little boy got in a nasty car accident a little over a week ago."
And just like that, Anna's entire world collapsed.
"Some idiot plowed right into their backseat. Stoick came out fine, thank goodness, but little Hiccup's been in the hospital. He's expected to make a full recovery in about six weeks, but the poor thing's leg's been hurt pretty bad."
Anna's first feeling was relief. For one horrible moment, she had thought that the perfect brown-haired dragon-boy across the street had been snatched away from her, whisked off and trapped in the same place Grandma Alicia had gone to when she wouldn't wake up from her nap. But as she looked up at her mother and her blue eyes filled with superficial sadness, she felt a rush of anger.
"Why didn't you tell me?" she snapped. "I've been worrying about Hiccup all week!"
"Oh?" Mrs. Arendelle raised an eyebrow. "I didn't know you two were friends. I've never seen you talk."
"We do too talk!" Anna retorted. "And he's in my class, Mom! Of course I wanna know if something bad happens to him."
Mrs. Arendelle seemed unfazed, smiling down at her daughter. "Well, that's very sweet of you to be so concerned about your fellow classmates, love. I just didn't want you to worry yourself with such…upsetting grown-up matters, that's all." She tousled Anna's hair, and the little redhead scowled.
A chime sounded as Anna closed the door of the candy shop behind her. The girl at the counter smiled and waved, and Anna waved eagerly back before beginning to tenaciously patrol the store, scanning the displays as she went.
The candy shop was placed right along her walk home from school, at the end of a block of shops that started to shift into houses. Usually Elsa herded her right past it, but today the platinum blonde was getting picked up and taken to ballet practice, meaning nothing was stopping Anna from going in and having a look around.
Once she located the chewy candy display, she made a beeline for it. Her eyes flitted over package upon package of gumdrops and licorice and flavored tootsie rolls and saltwater taffy until they locked on exactly what she needed: An entire pile of starburst packages.
The memory surfaced again: Valentine's day, second grade, Hiccup gasping in delight as he pulled a pack of superfruit starbursts out of his valentine box and then proceeding to parade around the room, showing them off to everyone (but, of course, in the rather shy, understated way that Hiccup showed off anything. And, of course, the classmates he tried to show off to paid his enthusiasm about the candy little mind or care). Anna anxiously scanned the selection of flavors, hoping they had that mystic mix of blueberry acai, strawberry starfruit, raspberry pomegranate, and passionfruit punch (all flavors that sounded like something straight out of her mother's health smoothies, she noted). There seemed to be every flavor pack but that one. Tropical, fruit slushy, favoReds, summer fun, sweet and sour, and…ah! There it was!
Anna snatched up the little rectangular tube before the lopsided display could collapse on top of it and bury away her superfruit victory forever. She pranced to the front of the store and slid the tube up onto the counter, along with one dollar and fifty cents of her weekly allowance.
"Hope to see you again soon!" the girl at the counter called out as Anna skipped out the door. She turned and grinned. "Oh, you definitely will!"
"I want to visit him," Anna declared importantly, sauntering into her mother's office. Mrs. Arendelle looked down from her computer, pushing her reading glasses down her nose.
"Visit who, sweetheart?"
"Hiccup. In the hospital."
"You do?" Mrs. Arendelle chucked. "I must say, Anna, you're just full of surprises!"
"I, uh…" Anna held up the pack of superfruit starbursts. "I bought him candy."
Mrs. Arendelle beamed. "Well, that was thoughtful of you! I'm sure he'll appreciate that. Anyway…" She glanced up at her clock. "I'm off of work now, so that shouldn't be a problem."
All through the car ride over, Anna clutched the candy close to her. She stared aimlessly out the window, thoughts wandering and wrapping themselves around a thousand things that had nothing to do with her trip to the hospital. It wasn't until they pulled into the parking lot that the panic finally started to set in.
What was she doing? What on earth was she going to say to him? How was she going to explain why she, of all people, was visiting him in the hospital without giving away everything she felt about him? She supposed she could just shove the candy into his hand and hightail it out of there, but unfortunately Hiccup was one of the smartest kids in their grade, and she figured it would only take one look at his favorite candy and her mortified face to piece together exactly what was going on.
Mrs. Arendelle stopped the car and stepped out. She opened up the back door, but Anna stayed firmly in her seat, seatbelt still slung across her shoulders. "Anna, come on."
"This was a bad idea," she mumbled. "I can't go in there. I wanna go home."
Mrs. Arendelle frowned. "Anna! I go to all the trouble of driving you over here, and you suddenly decide you don't want to visit Hiccup after all?"
"I just wanted to give him candy!" she whined. "I don't know what I'll say to him if he's awake!"
Mrs. Arendelle let out an exasperated sigh. "If you're really that nervous to talk to him, you can just ask one of the nurses to give him his gift for you. But for goodness sake, we're not leaving until you at least get rid of that tube of processed sugar!"
"Mom!" Anna glared at her.
Mrs. Arendelle sighed again. "Aren't you going to feel better if you do what you came here to do? Don't you think you'll regret it a little if you just go home without giving that poor boy what you went to all the trouble of buying for him?"
Anna bit her lip. As much as she hated to admit it, her mother was right on this one.
"Fine."
"Don't sound so surly," Mrs. Arendelle said as she unbuckled her daughter's seatbelt. "This was all your idea!"
Twenty awkward minutes were spent in the waiting room with Anna twirling her starbursts around and around and Mrs. Arendelle continuously refreshing her email on her phone before a doctor opened up the door leading into the hospital hallway. "Iduna and Anna Arendelle!" he called out, and both of them slowly got to their feet.
"So you're here to see Hiccup Haddock?" he asked them. Mrs. Arendelle nodded.
"Well, I'm afraid he's asleep at the moment," he said. Anna's whole body deflated with relief.
"But I could tell him you were—"
"No, no!" Anna interrupted him. Her mother gave her a dirty look (she had been told many times that it was rude to cut people off), but she ignored her. "I just came to bring him this." She held up the candy, and the doctor smiled.
"Oh, I see! Well, in that case, follow me."
The doctor led them into a white hallway that smelled like iodine and disinfectant. The blaring starkness of the walls set Anna on edge, and she hunched in closer to her mother, holding her hand tightly.
At the very end of the hallway, the doctor opened a door and gestured for Anna to go in. She looked uncertainly up at her mother, who gave her a quick nod. "Go on. I'll wait outside."
The door clicking shut behind her, Anna's eyes widening as she took in Hiccup's sleeping form on the hospital bed. One of his legs was held up in a hefty sling, but other than that, there was nothing different or damaged about him. Anna smiled to herself, and shuffled over to the bedside table with a yellow notepad and pen sitting on it.
Most of it was just various notes written in medical gobbledygook, but she was able to find a blank page near the end of the pad. She hastily ripped it out and started scribbling a note on it, making a point of making her letters longer and more pointed than usual, and adding extra swirls to her round letters. She had to make absolutely sure that Hiccup didn't recognize the handwriting of the girl leaving him candy.
Hi Hiccup. I'm sorry you hurt your leg. I hope it doesn't hurt too bad. I brought you superfruit starbursts because I know you really like them. I hope you feel better soon!
She carefully set down the pack of starbursts on the table, folding the note around it. Quietly, she settled into the stool perched by his bedside.
Hiccup was cute when he slept, she decided. His hair was spread out over his pillow in a soft, disheveled lump that framed a serene face…well, other than his open-hanging mouth and the line of drool coming out. Anna giggled, thinking it only made him cuter.
He was snoring. Not loudly and obnoxiously like her father did in hotel rooms, but with soft little grunts and puffs of air that that were nothing short of adorable. She sat watching him for a while, head in her hands, stupid grin creeping over her face.
He suddenly let out a snort, and Anna yelped aloud, shooting to her feet and nearly sending the stool toppling over in the process. Before she got the chance to see if Hiccup was actually waking up or not, Anna was out of the room, practically dragging Mrs. Arendelle down the hallway in her rush to get as far away from the hospital as possible.
"I want to visit him again."
Mrs. Arendelle looked up from her book, raising an eyebrow. "Twice in the same week? My my, Anna, you seem to be awfully fond of this boy!"
"I mean…uh…" Anna looked away.
"If I didn't know better, I'd say you like him!"
Anna's cheeks turned bright pink. "I—it's not like that! I just thought if I brought candy a lot, then it wouldn't stink so much to be stuck in the hospital." She carefully hid her pre-written note, folding it up so that she could conceal it behind the starburst tube.
"Well…all right. Since you're being so sweet, how can I say no?"
As her mother got up from the couch, Anna glanced at the clock. 10:00, the exact same time she had visited on Monday. She grinned. If she planned this out right, Hiccup would be asleep at this time and she could once again slip into his room and leave him his candy completely anonymously. On Tuesday and Wednesday night, she had had nightmares about him waking up and catching her in the act, but ultimately she decided she was willing to take her chances.
The process of visiting Hiccup went much like it had on Monday evening. They sat in the waiting room for a few minutes before a doctor escorted them to Hiccup's room. Anna noticed it was the same doctor as before, and he was smirking a little. Mortified, Anna studied the floor the entire walk down the hallway.
As she approached Hiccup's bedside table, she finally unfolded the paper and smiled to herself as she read her note.
Roses are red
Violets are blue
Just thought you should know
That I think everything of you
It wasn't much, but it was a start.
She found herself watching the sleeping form of Hiccup again, looking just as serene and peaceful as ever. The steady rise and fall of his chest was so lulling that Anna herself started to get a little drowsy. That's so creepy, Anna, she could almost hear her sister saying. Well, she was going to have to disagree. It wasn't creepy to watch someone sleep unless you broke into their house and snuck into their bedroom. Hospitals were public buildings, so watching a classmate snoozing was fair game.
Right?
Nevertheless, Anna hastily tore her eyes away from the sleeping boy and backed away, tiptoeing out of the room and shutting the door behind her.
It became a ritual of sorts. Every Monday and Thursday evening, Anna would get her mother to drive her over to the hospital, where she would leave a tube of superfruit starbursts and a new poem by Hiccup's bedside. It began to grow tiresome, constantly insisting to Mrs. Arendelle that she did not like him like that one bit, but she was persistent. She knew her mother and Stoic Haddock often talked at the neighborhood night outs, and she couldn't well have any revelations of Anna Arendelle's true feelings slipping into those conversations.
She would let herself watch him sleep for a few minutes, although as the visits wore on, the time she watched him grew shorter and shorter, and eventually petered out entirely, leaving her darting in the room, leaving the note and candy, and fleeing the scene. It was partially due to the fact that she grew more and more paranoid that he was going to abruptly wake up while she was in there, and partially due to the fact that what she was doing could be considered, in some manner or form, something akin to creepy. Although, as she would haughtily remind anyone who confronted her on the matter, she was not breaking into anyone's house. Thus, any creepiness was entirely subjective.
Her first several poems were nothing particularly impressive. She was hardly comfortable breaking the roses are red, violets are blue formula, since poetry had never been her forte and having an easy start helped quite a bit. But if anyone deserved love poems, it was her injured crush, so she wasn't going to let a single soul say she wasn't trying.
The following Monday evening, she left:
Roses are red
Violets are blue
I think you should know
That you're really cute
(Blue and cute counted as a rhyme, right?)
And then on Thursday:
Roses are red
Violets are blue
You're really attractive
Please marry me
(Okay, maybe that one didn't rhyme, but she was sort of running out of ideas, to be honest)
After that, she started to get a little adventurous, even adding a second verse to her next poem:
Roses are red
Violets are blue
Your thought makes me happy
When I get the flu
You really like dragons
And I think that's cool
I can't wait for you
To come back to school
And then, the day after that:
Roses are red
Violets are blue
You're even better
Than a trip to the zoo
I love that you come up
With fantasy places
When I'm falling asleep
I think of your face
(Well, "places" and "face" didn't quite rhyme, but close enough, right?)
Eventually, she felt adventurous enough to tamper with the opening two lines:
Roses are red
Except when they're pink
If you were a sink
You'd be my favorite sink
And then, the following Monday:
Roses are red
But sometimes they're white
You're really smart
And your imagination is bright
And then, the following Thursday:
Roses are red
Violets are actually purple
Wait, purple doesn't rhyme with anything
Now I see why it says they're blue
Wow, I'm kind of just rambling to myself now
I need to go back and write an actual poem later
No way can I give this to Hiccup
(Unfortunately, she had gotten distracted in the process of that one, and as it so happened, writing another poem completely slipped her mind and she didn't realize she had grabbed and left that horrid attempt at Hiccup's bedside until the car ride home.)
It had been three weeks when she left her latest poem on Hiccup's bedside:
Roses are red
Violets are not
In my heart
You've earned a spot
She walked out of his room to see her mother speaking quietly to Dr. Martin, which Anna had learned was the name of the doctor who always showed them to Hiccup's room. As the doctor turned and walked away, Mrs. Arendelle looked unusually somber. Without a word, she grabbed Anna's hand and led her down the hall.
"Oh, that poor boy," she heard Mrs. Arendelle mutter finally as they walked into the waiting room. Anna's head snapped up to look at her mother in dismay, big blue eyes stretched even wider with fear.
"What's wrong with him? Why is he poor, Mom?"
"I was just speaking to Doctor Martin about how your friend is doing," the brunette woman explained. "The doctors have tried everything, but his leg is too damaged to save. They're going to have to amputate it."
"What does 'amputate' mean?" Anna asked anxiously.
"Remove it. Cut it off."
Anna cried out in alarm. "But that'll hurt really bad!"
"No, no, sweetie, they'll give him some medicine to make him go into a deep sleep," Mrs. Arendelle amended quickly. "He won't feel a thing."
"Oh." Anna's whole body slumped with relief, although it wasn't long before the concern bubbled up again. "But…will he have to hop around on one foot now?"
Mrs. Arendelle chuckled. "Oh no, sweetheart. He'll get this thing called a prosthetic leg, which is basically a man-made metal leg that the doctors will attach to his body and he'll have to learn to move it like he did his old leg."
"So he gets a robot leg?" Anna's eyes widened. "That's so cool! What's so bad about that?"
"Well, those prosthetics cost a pretty penny, for one thing. And losing a limb is always hard on the body, even if it can be remedied. And for him to have to go through that at such a young age…" The brunette woman shuddered. "I'd hate to see what the other kids have to say about it. They're always looking to pick on anyone who's different."
"I would never pick on him," Anna said emphatically.
Her mother ruffled her hair. "I know you wouldn't, dear, but there's no telling if others would. I hope for his sake, no one does."
She nodded earnestly, following Mrs. Arendelle out into the parking lot in silence. She didn't see what was so bad about having a mangled, beat-up leg replaced with a cool robot one, but if her mother was right, and it really was going to be a nasty experience for Hiccup, her simple love poems suddenly seemed incredibly juvenile given his situation. So he was about to lose his entire leg, and the best she could do were short little roses are red, violets are blue poems?
No, if she was really going to do something to make him feel better, she needed to step up her poetry game quite a bit. And she knew just who to go to to help her with that.
Well hello there! Remember how, before I pranced off in an ADHD-induced frenzy to do Jackunzel week, I promised more Hiccanna? WELL, HERE IS THE "YOUNG LOVE AND MISSING CATS" PREQUEL NOBODY ASKED FOR! Eh, okay, ONE person asked for this…sort of. I had a reviewer to Young Love and Missing Cats ask if/when Hiccup lost his leg in my modern AU, and if his prosthetic was going to enter into the story at all. I actually had how all that happened figured out in my head, but I didn't want to cram it into the story because I felt like it was long enough already without stuffing excess angsty backstory about Hiccup's prosthetic leg in there. The whole story of how he lost his leg and the prosthetic leg itself really had no need to be mentioned in the story, so I left it out.
BUT, when the reviewer asked about it, I started giving the whole backstory more thought, and formed a whole, elaborate story around it. And I was like hey, if I can't put this in the main story, I can make it into its OWN one-shot!
One-shot MY ASS.
What was ORIGINALLY meant to be a short lil fluffy one-shot turned into this fucking MONSTER that was SO DAMN LONG that I had to split it into 2 parts! Whoops ^^; But hey, Hiccup's missing leg is pretty integral to his character, so I felt like I kind of owed it to him to tell this little side story of how he lost his leg.
I do hope I didn't make Anna seem like too much of a creepy stalker in this ^^; In her defense, though, she IS an 8-year-old kid. LOTS of kids have borderline stalkerish tendencies when they're younger that they eventually outgrow. I know I did XD And anyhow, Anna DOES actively try not to be creepy, so she has that going for her! Still, if you DO find this young Anna excessively creepy…well, don't let that ruin Hiccanna for you ^^; I promise she gets better when she gets older!
Also, if you find Anna's poetry completely atrocious and are cringing at it nonstop, believe me when I say that that was 100% intentional XD She's a third grader, so…she kind of sucks. A lot. Also, I myself am not a particularly good poet, so by default the characters I write aren't going to be, either. Rest assured that this was more of a "stylized suck" than me really being that bad, though XD
Hmmm…I really ended up liking Anna's mom in this. She's so down-to-earth and she sees right through all of her daughter's bullshit XD And rest assured, she definitely knows that Anna likes Hiccup, but is purposely acting like she's in the dark about it for Anna's sake.
Until next week, when I'll be submitting Part 2, the thrilling conclusion-that-wasn't-actually-supposed-to-be-a-conclusion-but-rather-part-of-the-same-oneshot! Eh, but if I didn't submit it in 2 parts, no one would bother to read this longass thing. So I suppose the split is for the best :P 'Sides, it keeps everyone on the edge of their theoretical seats, so I suppose I can't complain. See you all next week!