Hiccup was aware that he was cold.

And he was wet, and he was bleeding and…wow, everything just kind of sucked for him right now, didn't it?

The second thing he noticed were his hands, and they felt cold, too. Numb and stiff. And when he tried to move them, they just wouldn't. A heavy feeling of dread washed over him. A groggy, tired panic clutched at his throat.

He couldn't lose his hands. He needed his hands. They meant the difference between being able to build things and belong, and being useless again, like he used to be. Or, maybe he still was. He just couldn't think right. Everything was foggy and wet and numb, and really, did that thing about training a dragon really happen? It just seemed so absurd.

No. No, Toothless was real, it had happened. He tried to grab assurance from the thought, but it was tenuous and slippery and it unraveled like a knot of vaporous yarn nefore he could firmly lock it in.

There was something bothering him, something beating upon the wall of dark and cold like an agitated branch and it took Hiccup several seconds to realize it was a voice. And then several more afterwards to recognize the voice as belonging to a certain blonde Viking with temperament issues.

Somehow, with a great deal of effort, he managed to drag his eyes open. They were pierced by a frightening wave of cold and light, and Hiccup winced sluggishly through a vale of blurry moisture. He blinked several times, with deliberate gentleness as each movement sent a twinge of pain resounding through his skull. His vision cleared about five seconds before his brain caught up with what he was seeing, and Hiccup supposed he should be alarmed by that. But his mind was currently and wholly occupied with the task of just remaining awake, and he just didn't have the energy to spare. His brow twitched in a pathetic attempt at furrowing, but it didn't deter Hiccup's confusion at the sight of his hand. It looked somewhat unnaturally pale, fingertips lying limply in an unholy mixture of slushy snow and black mud. He tried to move it, but all he got was a weak, minor spasm in his fingers. Hiccup felt a bit of irrational anger at his mutinous appendage, but tamped it down because Astrid's voice sounded scared, now, and he knew he should probably answer if he didn't want to get socked in the jaw.

He focused his attention, and the voice adopted shape and form, becoming words. His name.

"Hiccup! Hiccup, for Odin's sake, answer me!" she sounded panicked, scared, angry, and if Hiccup didn't know any better, he'd say that she was starting to cry. But of course, Astrid doesn't cry.

But then again, she never says please, either. Hiccup tried to answer her, but when he opened his mouth and only a soft, breathy note wheezed from his throat, like a smaller, weaker version of a dog whining, he suddenly knew with no small amount of alarm that he couldn't. And then he realized two other things.

One, there was a minor chance that he was seriously injured. And two, judging by the fact that he couldn't remember how he'd gotten seriously injured, there was also a chance that he was concussed. Which meant he could die. Which meant he really did need to get out of here now.

"Hiccup! Oh, no. Oh, no, oh, sh… "

Hiccup started to notice something strange about Astrid's voice. It was somehow…above. High above.

"I'm…I'm going to get help, okay?"

Which could only mean one thing. Hiccup was below.

"Please, Hiccup, if you can hear me…"

Faint wisps of light penetrated the darkness of his missing memory. And then it started to make sense. For the first time, Hiccup noticed that half of his body was submerged in icy water, that the mud seeping through his clothes, violating him, was more of a sludge than dirt. That the high wall of tangled roots and slime looming in front of him was actually sheer drop, a cliff.

And that the sharp pain digging into his skull was actually a cruelly placed rock. And if his head had landed on that…

No wonder Astrid was begging.

"Please, just hang on!" Astrid ordered furiously, and Hiccup thought that he could hear the rapid sound of departing footsteps. So, she was gone then. The silence and cold seemed to intensify. Loneliness and fear made their first appearance.

Astrid…

And Hiccup was left alone with the faint scent of blood in his nostrils, and the steady mist of light rain on his face. And he found that he couldn't escape the knowledge of the one thing he remembered from his fall. His prosthetic leg had been badly jolted.

But his right leg, his real one…had snapped.

Hiccup silently stared at his hand, willing it to move.

…

Astrid had never run so hard and fast as she did that night. Every sinew every muscle every rapid thump of her heart was fueled by the desperation and fear pumping through her blood. Her eyes roved autonomously through the trees in front of her, and she dodged and jumped and ducked out of utter instinct. She couldn't think, could only manage to breathe because of her need to get help and to get help fast.

All she kept seeing was Hiccup's crumpled, bloody form, splayed haphazardly at the bottom of the ravine so far below. All she could hear was his scream as he tumbled down the steep incline, only to go tumbling over the sheer drop at its end.

She gritted her teeth against the acid pain filling her mouth, biting back the wave of hot tears threatening to burst forth. This was her fault, all her fault. Damn it, they had just been going on a walk. A stupid walk! Why did her dumb, stupid, clumsy boyfriend always have to get into trouble?

She was a Viking warrior, and she didn't fear.

Yet, Hiccup somehow always managed to scare her.

Once she got him out of there, the first thing she would do is kill him. And there wouldn't be any kiss following after, this time. She was far too mad at him for having the nerve to look so pale and silent and still and just not alive that-

"No!" she barked out through her grinding teeth. No, he was alive.

He wouldn't dare die on her.

Finally, chest heaving, and eyes bright with fear, Astrid broke from the line of trees and put on a new burst of speed towards the thatched roofs and wooden walls of Berk.

…

It was only when he woke up that Hiccup realized he had fallen asleep. He was disappointed to find out that he didn't feel any better. In fact, he felt even worse, if that were possible. His head throbbed heavily, as if a nail were being slowly driven into his skull by the incessant fall of a preternatural hammer. His throat felt dry and sore, and every inch of him ached with cold. He wanted to open his eyes, to see how long Astrid had been gone, but he found it wasn't worth the price of the agony it caused. Besides, there was this sticky paste over his eyelid gluing it shut. Meaning, he had bled more since Astrid left. Not good. Head wounds were bad news, and he was already struggling to form thoughts through a thick layer of some kind of abstruse tar. Everything was thick and muddled and dark, and there wasn't one part of him that felt right in any way.

He had a sudden wish that he was unconscious again.

He took a delicate sniff of the air, and it was permeated heavily with the musky, pervasive scent of moist dirt and sickly rot. He tried to take stock of his symmetries, to gauge where exactly he was injured and how badly. But nothing would move. Now, he couldn't even get his pinky finger to twitch. Great, just great.

Hiccup supposed he should be afraid. Maybe he was, somewhere in the back of his mind, where he couldn't reach. But he couldn't touch that emotion, not just yet. Maybe it was the shock.

Instead, what he felt predominating his insides was a twisting unease. Something was different, something important. Something was very wrong and he just couldn't pinpoint-

Then a trickle of liquid snaked through his lips, and caused his jaw to spasm with pain. And Hiccup realized what was wrong. And then, then he was afraid.

The water was rising. And he couldn't move.

He tried. Oh, Odin knows he tried. But all he really managed to do was fill himself with a panic almost as cold as the water making him numb from the waist down. On some, ridiculous level, he guessed he should be grateful. If his broken leg was in the water, that meant he was being spared the pain it would normally cause. However, this also meant it might get infected. And really, did this have to happen during mid-winter?

Mid-winter. Yes, it was winter. He would have been happy at this revelation, except then he realized something else that was very, very bad about being in the water.

There was a chance he might be experiencing the early on-set stages of hypothermia.

Once again, much like before, his brain caught up with things after they had already happened.

He didn't realize that he had been shivering, until it stopped.

Hiccup was far too unlucky to not believe in omens. And this wasn't one. This was far too clear to be an omen.

This was just his body letting him know that it didn't want to fight anymore.

…

Hiccup contemplated what it would feel like to drown.

Sure, he had thought about it before. But only ever about the physical pain. Now, he thought of the panic he would feel, the despair. He thought of how horrible it would be to die here, unable to move, unable to scream as the water slowly swallowed him.

He found it was getting harder and harder to stay optimistic.

And he couldn't stop worrying about his hands. He knew it was silly. What, with death no longer just being a possibility but the most likely outcome, he thought he should be more concerned with the fever, or the bleeding, or maybe the brain damage. But all he could think about were his hands. They were everything. They were Toothless's saddle and half his tail. They were Hiccup's tether to the world, the way he contributed, the way he made people happy. With his hands, he created and reshaped and repaired. He brushed Astrid's hair behind her ears in that way that made her flush just before she slapped him. He loved doing that, and the sting afterwards was nothing compared to the joy he felt at being the one guy who could make her turn that color.

Or, maybe that was just part of the dream. The dream where he had a dragon as a best friend and a father who was proud of him and a purpose and plan and a girl he loved even more than the feel of the wind in his face and the ability to just reach out and touch the sky.

Hiccup distantly wondered if he was suffering from delirium. Then he hoped it meant he could dream about flying.

The water was almost at his chest, which was just barely expanding with each strained, shallow breath. He wondered if the cold would stop his heart before the water filled his lungs.

Then he tried to convince himself that Astrid would get there on time. But he found it was difficult to actually believe.

When oblivion claimed him, it was without warning.

...

A/N: I have part of the next chapter already written up. So tell me if you guys want me to continue. :b Thanks for reading!