Disclaimer: I DO NOT OWN THE PREVIEW PICTURE! IT BELONGS TO DisneyxFairyTale ON DEVIANTART! I also do not own any of the characters. All I own is the storyline.
WARNING: MAJOR CANON ALTERATIONS TO THE FROZEN MOVIE CANON PRESENT IN THIS STORY. IF YOU HAVE ISSUES WITH THAT, PLEASE DO NOT READ THIS.
"Come on, Bud. I'm sure we're going to find her this time around."
Hiccup patted the dragon's neck, and Toothless swiveled his head around to give him a dubious look.
"No, I'm serious! I have a good feeling about this one."
Toothless rolled his eyes.
"Hey, don't be such a quitter. If we found it once, we can find it again."
Over the fjords and inlets they went, the expanse of thick forest covering the hills seemingly unbroken. Usually Hiccup enjoyed these relaxing long flights over the wilderness, but this time there was a strange urgency he couldn't quite explain working its way into his bones. He urged Toothless to go a little faster; the dragon complied, although he grunted a protest.
And there it was, seeming to creep up on them and suddenly be right in front of them as it always did on their flights. The familiar bluff, adorned with a distinctively enormous spruce tree with one side completely blackened by a long-past forest fire. The tree was set just far enough apart from the surrounding forest that you could pick it out from the sky.
Hiccup always used to use it to find the kingdom when he came to visit her.
"Maybe this time," he said, half to himself. Toothless gave another disbelieving snort.
They touched down on the top of the bluff, a few feet away from the spruce tree. He sucked in his breath slightly, his steps slow and hesitant as he made his way to the edge of the bluff.
When he got close enough to peer down into the valley, his entire body sagged with disappointment.
Nothing but steep cliffs and bluffs covered in sprawling pine forest, stretching all the way down to the dark ocean. There was no sign in the slightest that a castle or a village had ever been painstakingly built into this wild, overgrown place. No indication, even, that another human being besides him had ever laid eyes on this valley.
There weren't even signs of a struggle. No blackened ruins ravaged by fire, or crumbling stones bashed apart by enemy cannons. Just an entire kingdom completely gone…replaced seamlessly by sea and wilderness, like it had never even existed.
The valley looked just like it did the last several times he had come. He wasn't sure why he kept coming back expecting something different.
He sighed, sinking to the ground and looking mournfully out over the empty fjord.
He knew it was real. He knew he had gone there and met a crying princess under a willow tree who had turned out to be more full of life than he ever imagined. He knew she had kept him coming back over and over, always trying to think of new ways to make her smile and always feeling the sting of loss a little more every time he had to leave.
Where was her castle? Where had she gone?
Toothless latched lightly onto his arm, trying to pull him away from the edge of the bluff. Hiccup shook him off.
"No, no, Bud, I don't want to leave yet. I need to figure out what happened to her."
Toothless gave him an irritated you-say-that-every-time look, but Hiccup waved a hand dismissively. "No, this time I'm actually going t—"
A cold breeze, frosty enough to make his skin tingle and his eyes sting, suddenly whipped across his face, cutting off the rest of his sentence.
What in Valhalla…?
Wind that was cold enough to leave him frostbitten, but it was the middle of July.
He exchanged a puzzled look with Toothless. "Did you feel that?"
Toothless glanced at the mountains behind them, but Hiccup shook his head.
"No, it was way too close to come from all the way up there."
He stood up, looking around. If the wind got colder here than it did in Berk this time of year, perhaps the cold spell was worth investigating.
Was I imagining something?
Another icy breeze stung his face in answer, seeming to come from right by the massive spruce tree. He started to creep toward it, the air around him seeming to gradually grow colder and colder as he went.
There seemed to be a tiny pouch of cold air hanging around the tree, having completely frosted up the half facing down into the valley. That half seemed to be the only one the ice had bothered with, though, as it stopped in a sharp line before reaching the other half of the trunk.
He reached out and slowly ran his hands over the intricate crystals and patterns, staying stubbornly impervious to the mid-summer sunshine. His frown grew deeper as his fingers trailed over more and more of the icy ridges and bumps.
"What the…?"
He took another step forward, and his foot landed on an especially slippery bank of grass.
For a heartbeat time seemed to slow, a soft humming sound filling Hiccup's ears as he fell backwards.
Then all at once the cold hit him like an avalanche, and he was tumbling uncontrollably down a bank covered in freezing white powder it took him a second to recognize as snow.
He let out a screech, trying to find something to grab on to.
"AHHHH! TOOTHLESS! HELP ME!"
His terror only lasted a couple seconds more before a massive black-winged shape swooped down and scooped him up, tossing him onto his back. Hiccup clung to Toothless tightly, hunching down and breathing hard and fast for what felt like a long while. When his heart had slowed down and he was sure he was holding on tightly enough to his dragon to not topple off back onto the snowbank, he finally looked up.
They were hovering above a frozen landscape, every last tree and rock and shriveled plant blanketed in fresh snow. The ocean below, previously shifting and shimmering as it moved about, was now a deathly still sheet of ice. But all of that was of little interest when he noticed what was perched out on the waters of what had previously been the fjord.
It was a castle, looking much starker and more desolate than he had ever seen it look in the middle of July, but with its familiar towering stone wall and sharp spires nonetheless.
He was back. He didn't know how, or why he hadn't been able to get back here before, but he was back.
Nonetheless, Hiccup was too confused to celebrate. Why was there snow everywhere in the middle of the summer?
He started to shiver, pulling himself as close to Toothless's neck as possible to try to take in as substantial a share of the reptile's body heat as possible (whatever reptiles had in the way of body heat anyhow, being ectotherms).
Well, whatever was going on here, Hiccup got the distinctive impression it wasn't normal. He was no weather expert, to be sure, but if Berk, which was a lot farther north, didn't get blizzards in July, then neither should Arendelle.
"Unless this is a nice little climate quirk Anna never bothered telling me about," he muttered.
Anna…
His brow furrowed with worry at the thought of her. He hoped she was okay, huddled by a fire with a cup of hot chocolate and not freezing out in the woods somewhere because she had decided to go out on an adventure right before the gracious weather had decided to gift all of the kingdom citizens with a surprise summer blizzard.
Oh, don't be ridiculous, he chastised himself. Anna's never even left the castle except when she's with you! Unless…
The blood slowly drained out of his face, this time not just from the cold. Coronations typically came in the early summer, didn't they? Elsa's wouldn't be any exception.
And if the gates had already been opened…
"We have to find her," he said aloud.
It was a rather stupid realization to state, he realized. Snowstorm or not, his plan would have been to go see Anna anyway, so it wasn't like this newfound development changed the desired objective of his escapade in the least. All the presence of the winter conditions added was, perhaps, a little more urgency.
"Get me to the castle, Bud," he said. "She'll be in there…I hope, anyway."
Toothless gave him a skeptical look, and he rolled his eyes. "You know how I mean! We'll go in the back way like we always do."
Toothless skirted around the pointy white roofs of the village and the snow-capped houses, making sure to stay out of the sight of prying eyes as they coasted over the trees. The chill in the air started to seep into Hiccup's skin as it rushed past him, making his fingers and toes start to burn and working its way down into his very bones.
The warmth of the castle was starting to become just as much of a motivation to get there as Anna herself.
He mentally reprimanded himself for not bringing winter clothes along when leaving Berk before reminding himself that, in fact, it would have been very hard to predict this morning that he would not only find his way back into Arendelle this time around, but that it would be covered with unseasonal snow when he got there.
Toothless touched down in the castle courtyard, as he had so many times before. Hiccup had seen the garden in winter a handful of times, but never had it looked quite this…frigid. Icicles seemed to hang from every tree branch, and the usual splashing that came from the duck pond was replaced with the silence of a hard blue shell locking the water away. The moss that had once covered the massive boulders was lying in frozen clumps on the ground. Every leaf in sight was a brittle, shriveled husk.
Leaves that were still green, he noticed. It was as if the massive snow-dump really had come overnight.
"I think you'd better hang out on the roof for now," he told Toothless. "I kind of doubt they'll let you in."
The dragon's face fell—well, at least as much as a dragon's face could—and his body sagged with disappointment. Hiccup gave him a couple reassuring pats on the nose.
"There, there! I know, I know, you want to see Anna too. But you'll get to see her soon enough! Tell you what, as soon as I find her in there and make sure she's all right I'll see if we can't talk the guards into letting you come in."
If he was perfectly honest, he thought it was going to be a longshot convincing the guards of any castle to let a dragon in, no matter how friendly, in any reasonable amount of time. But right now, he had to worry more about checking up on Anna than Toothless's feelings.
He couldn't explain why, but ever since he had entered into this snowy wonderland he couldn't shake the feeling that something with her was very, very wrong.
He went over to the door leading out into the courtyard and tugged on it, muttering a curse when it wouldn't budge. Someone must have locked it, figuring no one would want to go and take a pleasant stroll around the garden in this sort of weather. Grumbling to himself, he scaled the garden wall and rounded the corner of the castle, walking briskly over to the massive oak front doors.
The guards standing in front of them let out a cry as soon as they saw him, grasping their spears and pointing them right at him.
"W—who are you?" one of them stammered. "How did you get in here?"
Hiccup bit his lip, realizing he had not thought up a reasonable cover story as to how he (legally) got over the castle walls.
"Look, there's no time to explain," he said, doing his best to make his voice sound as urgent as he could. "I need to see the princess immediately."
Well, it's not necessarily a lie, he told himself. Maybe he wasn't wrong. If his hunch that she was in trouble turned out to be correct…
"I'm afraid the princess is not taking visitors at this time," the guard said, his voice clipped in a way that invited no further questions.
"Are you even supposed to be in here, anyway?" the other guard asked. "Who even are you?"
"Please." Hiccup put his hands up, giving the two guards a pleading look. "I'm a close friend of the princess's. I just want to go and see her and make sure she's okay—"
"Make sure she's okay!" The first guard's eyes darkened. "What do you know about her? About what's going on?"
"Nothing! That's why I want to go and see her!"
"She's not taking visitors," the first guard repeated. "She's currently…incapable of attending to any diplomatic matters."
"Oh for the love of…these aren't diplomatic matters!" Hiccup snapped. "I'm just her friend and I want to see her! So let me in. Please."
"That can't be," the second guard mused. "Princess Anna doesn't have any friends. Well, maybe except that ice harvester who brought her back here earlier and his chubby reindeer. What's your name, son?"
Hiccup sighed, knowing giving a name wouldn't do any good whatsoever. Couldn't do much harm at this point though, either.
"Hiccup Horren—you know what, just Hiccup Haddock."
The second guard gave him a puzzled look. "She's never mentioned a Hiccup."
He rolled his eyes. Well, of course not! She's not going to go blabbing to all her castle staff about the dragon-riding Viking who takes her on secret, forbidden escapades all around the forest!
"We, ah…met at the, ah…coronation," he lied clumsily. "Yeah, um…I guess it's only been a few hours, but oh man! We're just…as close as close can be! Man, haven't felt all that…purely platonic affection for someone in years! She's honestly the best friend a guy could ask for. Amazing how fast friendships move sometimes, you know?"
He gave them his most convincing grin, but the first guard sneered in reply.
"Sounds like you know her so well." He gripped his spear tighter, beginning to inch toward Hiccup with it. "Get out."
Hiccup let out a long sigh. I really do not have time for this. He glanced at the roof, sucking in his breath. Well, they can never say I didn't at least try to be reasonable.
"Hey, Toothless!" he yelled out. "I could use your help down here. These guys won't let me in!"
The guards barely had time to form puzzled expressions before a massive black dragon crashed off of the roof in front of them, letting out an ear-splitting roar. The screams that came from their mouths sounded more like they were coming from adolescent girls than full-grown men. In a frenzied panic, they booked it away from the castle doors, with a snarling Toothless galloping after them.
"Don't ruffle them up too much!" he yelled after them. Smirking, he calmly unlatched the front door and walked into the castle.
As soon as he was inside his face fell into a more serious expression, calling her name in an urgent whisper as he mazed through hallway after hallway. He wanted more than anything to scream out her name, to yell loud enough so that she would hear him no matter where she was in the castle, so that wherever she was she could guide him straight to her…but having to explain who he was and what he was doing there to multiple castle staff seemed very time-consuming and like a great way to increase the time it took him to get to her.
Besides, he was probably worrying himself over nothing.
And that's when he heard it behind a door. A voice…small, broken, hopeless…but he would know it anywhere.
"Please…somebody…help…"
He reached out and yanked on the door handle, but the door didn't budge. He jiggled it several more times, muttering curses under his breath.
It was completely locked.
He tried again, fingers tugging with more urgency and frustration. There was still no movement.
Who the hell had locked Anna up in her own castle?
"Anna! Hold on, I'm coming!"
Come on Hiccup, you can do better than this!
He reached into his belt and shuffled around, finding the tiniest dagger he had. Tuffnut had often made fun of him for the narrow-bladed thing being useless (except in very, very close proximity combat), but right now it was about to come more in handy than Hiccup had ever imagined it would.
He carefully stuck the dagger into the keyhole, moving it back and forth and shifting it this way and that. After a fair amount of fiddling, there was a loud click. He grabbed the handle and let out a triumphant cry as the door swung open.
Whatever sense of victory he had been feeling evaporated into mist and was whisked away as soon as he saw her lying on the floor.
He scarcely recognized her. She was curled up in a shivering bundle, hair gone from its usual lively orange to the stark, deathly white of an old woman on her last leg of life. He wouldn't have even known it was her if she wasn't looking right at him.
It felt so hauntingly unreal that Anna, the girl who made a point of never letting anything in her life defeat her, now looked so completely and utterly…defeated.
Her face flushed with confusion…well, more than it already had, considering most of the color had already drained out of it.
"Who are you?"
The three words stung like a fresh wound.
As he reeled back slightly, he sternly reminded himself to be reasonable. It had been almost two years, after all. Of course he looked a bit different.
Aside from the white hair, she looked exactly as he remembered her.
He kneeled down, taking her face in his hands. Her skin was deathly cold, burning him like ice, but he kept his hands on her cheeks and looked her in the eye.
"Hey, Anna, it's me. I, uh…" He looked away briefly, biting his lip. "I know I have a lot of explaining to do."
Her eyes widened. "…H-Hiccup?"
He smiled. "I'm back."
He felt his stomach knot guiltily as her initial shock quickly shifted to hurt.
"W-where have you been? Why didn't you come back?"
There was no anger in her voice, only a raw and palpable sort of pain mixed with resignation. Somehow, that made it even worse.
If he was telling the truth, he would rather her have been furious with him.
"I'll…I'll explain everything in a minute," he promised hastily. "But you feel like you're about to freeze! I'm not doing anything else until I at least get a fire going for you."
"I wouldn't say no." She smiled weakly.
He helped her stand up and led her over to the fireplace in the back of the room, sitting her down beside it. He quickly got a fire going and sat down beside her, turning to face her.
"I'm sorry." He brushed a stray white strand of hair out of her face and met her eyes again, pleading with her to understand. "I wanted to come back. But I came to see you the next time and the entire kingdom was just…gone. Completely vanished. I had no idea where you or the castle or anyone went, and I searched all over, and there was just…nothing." He took a deep breath. "All—all this time, I've been trying to find Arendelle again. Every single chance I've gotten, I've flown down from Berk to search for it. But every time I looked for it, every time I looked for you…I could never find it again after that last time I left. And I never knew where you went, where the kingdom went, or why I couldn't find you anymore…hell, I didn't know if I'd ever be able to see you again, and it killed me."
His eyes started to sting with tears, and he hurriedly wiped them away.
"But now I can," he whispered.
"But…how?" She looked at him in confusion. "How did you find Arendelle for a year and then all the sudden, you can't anymore?"
He sighed, taking one hand off of her face to rub the back of his head. "I think…okay, this is going to sound crazy. I think your world and my world are connected by some sort of…magic rift. It must close up some of the time, which is why I wasn't able to find Arendelle for so long. And where I was earlier today, well, it was the middle of the summer and there wasn't snow everywhere. But I pass this weird spot by a tree, and suddenly BOOM, here I am and it's apparently blizzard season!"
He expected her to frown, to slap him, to cry maybe at his flimsy attempt at an explanation. He expected her to call him a liar and tell him he abandoned her, and for her eyes to darken as they filled with hatred for him leaving her alone for so long.
Instead, she smiled wryly. "Well, after what I've seen lately, magic portals don't seem like too much of a stretch." She paused.
"You've gotten a bit taller," she added sardonically.
He grinned, bashfully rubbing the back of his head. "Ah, well, that tends to happen. You've gained a few inches yourself."
"Not as many as you." She sighed, shaking her head. "A shame. I'm going to miss being taller than you. You were adorable!" His cheeks burned with embarrassment.
He was opening his mouth to reply when she let out a small cry and lurched forward. Hiccup's hands shot out and broke her fall, catching her by the shoulders. Light-hearted banter forgotten, fresh worry washed over him as he felt her breathe hard against him, her fragile body starting to tremble.
"Anna, what happened to you?" he asked frantically. "What's going on? Why are you so cold?"
Anna chuckled slightly. "Well…I finally found out the reason Elsa locked herself in her room all those years. It was because she had ice powers."
Hiccup glanced out the nearest window, where a ripe July snowbank was gradually burying the forest as more and more snowflakes drifted down. "That…would explain a lot."
"Well anyhow, her powers went kind of haywire at her coronation and then she ran off," Anna explained. "So then I went to try and find her to bring her back to Arendelle. But while we were talking, she accidentally hit me with her ice powers, and…" She groaned in pain, hunching over again.
Hiccup felt his heart begin to speed up as he looked over her. "But…you'll be okay, right? I mean, you're in here by the fire now and you're getting warm. Ice has to melt, doesn't it?"
She looked up at him sadly. "Not this kind of ice."
His eyes widened, and he placed a hand on her cheek. "What do you mean?"
Anna didn't meet his eyes. "She hit me in the heart, and the trolls said…th-they said only an act of true love can thaw my heart. So I tried to get my fiancé to kiss me to break the spell, but—but he wouldn't. He said he was just using me to marry into the throne, and then he left me in here to freeze."
It was as if Hiccup had been struck across the face.
So he had finally found the girl he'd been searching for for the last 2 years and she was dying of a magical ice curse. And if that wasn't enough to make him feel like something had been wrenched out of him…
"Your…fiancé?" As the realization sunk in, his entire world started to crumble slowly around him until it was crashing down at full force, leaving him feeling shredded and slashed to pieces and desolate and lonely all at the same time. "You're getting married?"
"Was," she murmured, her expression more sad than bitter. Hiccup hated himself for being so relieved.
"He doesn't love me," she went on. "He doesn't love anything except power, and he'll do anything to get it. He said he's going to kill…"
Her eyes widened with a sudden realization. "He said he's going to kill Elsa to bring back the summer." She grabbed onto his arm urgently. "Hiccup, we have to go and stop him! Now!"
She tried to stand up, pulling Hiccup with her, only to collapse again. He just barely managed to catch her before she slid onto the floor.
"Hey, wait, hold on a second," he said gently. He fought to keep his voice calm, although he felt a rising terror begin to bubble up inside of him as he looked over her frail body. "What about you? What happens if you don't get this 'act of true love' to thaw yourself? Would you…freeze to death?"
"Th—that doesn't matter," she said, shaking her head. "I still have time. Elsa doesn't. We have to go stop Hans. He could already be planning some attack on her. Or at least we have to warn her! I—I told him he was no match for her, but I'm scared for her…"
"Are you sure you're going to be okay?" He ran his arm down her arm, starting to tremble in panic as he felt how cold it was. He grabbed both her arms, trying to keep his hands from shaking as he gave her a hard look. "You're literally dying of an in curse!"
"I…" Anna looked away. "I told you already, I have time. And anyways, right now I don't know how we can save me. But I do know how we can save Elsa. So that's what we have to do." At his anxious look, she tried to smile encouragingly. "Maybe we'll think of some 'act of true love' on the way!"
Chills began to coarse all through his body, making his stomach churn. He looked over her, green eyes bright with unrestrained fear. "Anna, if you're really about to die, we need to try harder to—"
"Just trust me. Please." She grabbed both his hands, meeting his eyes with a pleading look. "Elsa needs our help right now. As soon as we make sure she's okay, then we can think of something. I promise."
He let out a resigned sigh, although he still felt sick to his stomach. "Okay, but…the instant we save her, we're going to save you. Whatever it takes."
"Deal." Her triumphant grin gave way to a soft smile. "Thank you."
OH HEY GUYS, I WASN'T FUCKIN AROUND WHEN I SAID THERE'D BE AN ACTUAL SEQUEL SOON
(Okay listen, given my school schedule "3 months" is soon for me XD)
It honestly would have been in even sooner if not for me trying really hard to get my research papers perfect to save my GPA XD Aaaaaand a bit of depression to get past (remember that guy friend I was in love with? Tried to ask him out finally and he gave me a one-way ticket to friendzonopolis. RIP, I think I'm going to give up dating forever in favor of having 57 cats). BUT obsessively planning and writing Hiccanna fanfic has been my escape, so at least that means that my actual trainwreck of a love life IRL shall not interfere with my undying love for my OTPs!
BUT ENOUGH ABOUT THAT
This was actually my first shot at writing a Hiccanna story from Hiccup's POV…most of the time, including with the longer ones I'm working on, my Hiccanna fics are from Anna's POV since that's what I tend to lean toward, for whatever reason (kind of like how my Jackunzel fics are usually from Jack's POV? Not entirely sure why I tend to lean towards that). It was actually kinda hard…it's kind of tricky getting the perfect blend of snarky and serious in the narration, but I did my best with it. Why is it so much easier to write Jack and Anna than Hiccup and Rapunzel? Idk, maybe because I relate to Jack and Anna more.
So one of the main complaints I often hear the Rise of the Brave Tangled (Frozen) Dragons fandom get is NUUUU THEY CAN'T MEET EACH OTHER, THE TIMELINES DON'T EVEN MATCH UP! And at the time I was planning out Dragon-Riding in Arendelle and its sequel I was determined to be like "HaHA! Who's complaining about irregular timelines now BITCH? TIME PORTALS!" Without…realizing that no one actually cares that much that the HTTYD timeline and Frozen timeline don't match up for crossovers XD So long story short, the whole "opening and closing time rift" thing seems a bit dumb in hindsight, but I wrote the story in such a way that it would be the only thing (maybe aside from randomly getting lost, which doesn't make sense) explaining why Hiccup just went off and abandoned Anna for months, since he really really cares about her and would never leave her willingly! Even if he WAS busy with Berk stuff, he would at least fly down and tell her he was going to be AWOL for the next few months.
So there you have it. For better or for worse, the reason Hiccup stopped coming to visit Anna is because the time rift essentially closed up.
I actually got a kick out of writing the scene with Hiccup and the guards. Like having a literal pet dragon is the most OP weapon…I feel like you could get into 90% of castles pretty easily because the guards would see a real legit dragon and be like "oh fuck that, they never went over that in guard training" and just fucking leave. Also, Hiccup can't make up false friendship origin stories on the spot for shit XD
The scene by the fireplace was one of my favorites to write, mainly because…it's what I always subconsciously wish would happen when watching Frozen XD HICCUP DON'T YOU LET ANIMATION COMPANY LINES PREVENT YOU FROM GETTING TO BAE! Admittedly I did have to rewrite some of the dialogue, since in my first draft of the scene, Hiccup was kinda just calmly trying to talk sense into Anna about not letting herself die but then I was like WHY IS HE CALM WHEN HE'S FINALLY FOUND THE GIRL HE'S BEEN LOOKING FOR FOR LIKE 2 YEARS AND SHE'S FUCKIN ABOUT TO DIE OF AN ICE CURSE? So he tries to appear to be chill about the whole thing (heh, no pun intended) for Anna's sake but he's actually just massively freaking out inside and is practically going into panic mode, which I think is much more realistic.
PHEW, since this story turned into another one of those long-ass one-shots no one will read all in one sitting, I once again had to make it a 2-parter! Tried my best not to leave you at TOO brutal of a cliffhanger, but either way, fear not—the next part will be in next Sunday! TUNE IN NEXT WEEK FOR AN EMOTIONAL ROLLERCOASTER FROM WHICH THERE IS NO ESCAPE!