In Wingspan, I mention Hiccup having pneumonia at one point. MoonRose91 asked to see it, so here it is. Sometimes I get so emotional writing these, the first part makes me want to cry!
Hiccup Horrendous Haddock III was eleven years old, he was miserable, and his mother felt like a phantom limb: gone, but still felt. She had been gone years now and most days Hiccup could face the teasing and his father's disappointment without her love and faith in him. But today, when his teeth were chattering in his mouth from the chills, when he kept coughing up stuff he preferred not to look at, and his breathing hurt like dragon fire, he just wanted his mother to make him some tea and kiss his cheek. Hiccup had a cold one day, and the next he was parked in his bed with pneumonia. His grandmother, the Elder, had instructed his father to make him drink and keep him in bed and had given him an herbal soup to help. He felt like Hel. His father had lumbered around him for the first three days or so, but a week in Stoick began to send Gobber to check on him, because Gobber at least knew the boy. "I miss yeh in the forge," Gobber said, tucking the blankets Hiccup kept throwing off firmly under his chin. "Awful silent, like it hasn't been in so long."
Hiccup smiled as best he could at Gobber. "I miss it too," he said.
And it was true. Hiccup was going out of his mind with boredom. He wasn't a natural idler. He spent his days designing and building and exploring, and his room offered little and the bed he was confined to even less. He drew up sketches at least ten new inventions, but he couldn't begin to build any of them. He drew portraits of nearly everyone in the village, multiple of Astrid Hofferson. He tried to whittle, but judged it probably not the best idea to hold a sharp knife with shaky hands.
Pneumonia gave him a lonely two and a half weeks, and when he came back into his village-world, still exhausted and weak, no one acknowledged him.
The next time he caught it, his life was nearly unrecognizable. The Dragon Wars had come and gone, and by his bedside sat an anxious Night Fury, who every time he threw up or coughed or groaned whimpered in sympathy. "Thanks bud," he rasped at him as he nosed his hand. "I'll kick this eventually."
Toothless nodded.
Hiccup was eternally grateful for his dragon's company. Toothless entertained him by just being Toothless. He spent hours focusing on the Night Fury for a much better drawing than his originals. And of course, he talked to him. In a way, it felt like the earliest stages of their relationship, when it was just the two of them.
Of course, everyone else came by. The twins argued at each other, which was highly entertaining; Fishlegs brought rolls from his mother and some good conversation; Snoutlout came by for a while and they talked about Hookfang. Gobber brought news of the forge. And Astrid, of course Astrid. She brought herself, her personality, and a kiss. Hiccup tried to protest, "You'll get sick," but she declared she didn't care and kissed him again. Even his dad spent a good portion of the time by his bedside, discussing the village and leadership with him, because "one day, son, you'll be chief, and you'll need to know your stuff." Hiccup was elated—there was a time no one doubted the chief's position would pass over Hiccup and go to Snoutlout, horrifying thought though that is.
Now even his dad thought he could be a good chief.
Toothless never once left his side the whole week he was sick. Something else he owed Toothless.
"Thank you," he whispered to the sleeping dragon curled against the fire, and Toothless hummed.
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