Heya folks! Before you get into reading this, I just want to reiterate the trigger warning for death, mourning, and depression. Things of the sort. I would think the reasoning is self explanatory, and I just want to make sure that everyone reading enjoys it to the best of their ability. ANYWAYS. Have fun reading, I hope you enjoy!

I stared at myself in the mirror. I had only just gotten the bathroom aired enough from the shower steam to see my reflection, and already I looked like a disaster. My eyes had been red and puffy for days, and though I had worked extra hard to make sure my face and hair were clean, it still looked as though I hadn't washed either in weeks. I stared at my reflection for far longer than I should have, though I wasn't truly looking at it. I felt empty and distant.

My father's funeral went by in a blur. I made and gave some sort of a speech, but ten minutes after I wouldn't have been able to tell you what on earth I said in it. I felt cold and numb; my mother had only just returned from caring for family overseas days before, when my father was hit by a drunk driver while crossing the street to his car after work. The driver proceeded to crash into a tree. He didn't make it either.

I stayed at the cemetery for hours after the funeral ended. My mother had long since gone home. I stared blindly at the pile of dirt now covering my father's body. We would be planting an oak near his head in a couple of days; a symbol of courage and power. Soon after that his headstone would arrive and would be placed between that and his body. I sighed as familiar tears rolled slowly down my cheeks. When I noticed the sun was long past set, I got up, wiped the tears from my face, and walked home.

My house wasn't far, but it felt like my body was going to give way under me regardless by the time I reached the front door. I walked straight up the stairs and into my room, flopping onto my bed. I couldn't even be bothered to take off my nice clothes, uncomfortable as they may have been. I went straight to sleep.

I woke up with a tongue on my nose and green eyes staring curiously at me. I rubbed Toothless's head, earning myself a short purr from the fluffy black cat before he jumped off of my bed. I sighed and stared at the other end of my room. I hadn't even moved in my sleep. My blankets hadn't moved, aside from the slight depression that my body had made when I landed. My legs were still dangling awkwardly off the side of the bed. I pushed myself backwards, allowing myself to come to my knees on my carpet. My body was stiff; unsurprising, but still uncomfortable. I quickly undressed and threw on a ratty T shirt and some old jeans, and stretched a bit. It didn't help much. I looked over to the door, where Toothless was sitting and staring up at me. He probably wanted food. I sighed and left the room.

Predictably he followed me down the stairs, his footfalls light taps on the carpeted steps. Before long he was ahead of me, and turning the corner into the kitchen at a speedy trot. I glanced at the clock at the end of the stairway on the way down; 1:30 in the afternoon. I groaned a little, not that I cared what time it was in the end. I wouldn't be missing anything. I'd been out of school for weeks already, and there really wasn't much that I had the drive to work on or get into at this point. I walked into the kitchen and scooped some cat food into the bowl sitting in the corner, Toothless quickly rubbing against my arm before diving into the bowl of food. I looked on the table to find a small spread of breakfast pastries and a doughnut, along with a note.

"Checking out some of the farms in the area to see if any need a farrier. Not sure when I'll be back, can you take care of Cloud and Skull for me? I already got everyone else. Thanks, make sure to take care of yourself too. I want some of this food gone when I come home.

Love you.
Mom"

I sighed. I had thought that she hadn't noticed the fact that I hadn't eaten over the past couple of days; apparently I was wrong. I wrapped up a piece of cheese danish-though I didn't know that I'd be able to stomach it now or later-put it in my pocket, and put on some boots to go take care of the horses.

We didn't live on a farm, really; we had a few chickens, two sheep and two horses. But it did require a farm-esque lifestyle. I walked out to the stable to find that Mom had, in fact, turned Cloud and Skull out into the paddock. I picked up a pitchfork and pushed the wheelbarrow out into the hall between the two stalls. I first heaved Cloud Jumper's stall door open and started mucking his stall out. It didn't take as long as I had necessarily expected, but then maybe it just seemed to go by quickly due to my depression.

I procrastinated as much as possible on getting to Skull Crusher's stall. While Cloud had been my mother's horse, and the one I'd gotten to know best over the years of her being overseas, Skull was my father's. Something about the idea of simply cleaning out the stall of my father's horse felt like a great weight on my shoulders. By the time I got to it, I had not only cleared out and replaced all of Cloud's bedding, dumped the waste in the hedgerow, and thrown in some hay for when he was brought back in, but I had also waited around on my phone for a good two hours trying to distract myself. When it came down to it, I sped through Skull's stall as quickly as possible, hastily glancing around at the end to make sure I had gotten everything. I then immediately changed out of my boots and into a pair of sandals, and walked back to the cemetery.

I wasn't really sure what I expected when I left. I got there feeling very much as though there was nothing for me to do; part of me wanted to go stand over my father's grave and feel like shit all over again, and part of me wanted to get as far away from the thing as I possibly could. I ended up sitting on a bench about fifty feet away from my father's grave. All I really did was stare at the ground, feeling miserable.

I jumped a bit when I felt someone tapping me on the shoulder; I was even more surprised to find a guy with the whitest hair and the bluest eyes I've ever seen staring back at me. I nearly fell on the ground, but managed to catch myself at the last minute.

The guy smiled apologetically when I regained myself. "Sorry, I didn't mean to scare you. I just wanted to ask if you were okay," he said.

I didn't say anything. Nothing came to mind, first off, and secondly I had no idea how to respond to that. I had to imagine it was obvious that I was mourning, I was in the middle of a cemetery for god's sake.

There was a long awkward silence. I scratched the back of my head and looked away.

"Sorry, I guess that was kind of an insensitive question. I just saw you yesterday sitting over that new grave for hours, I wanted to make sure you weren't too beaten up over the whole thing. Mourning's never easy, I know that much for fact; but there is a point where there can be too much," he sputtered out, words all in a bit of a jumble as he tried to explain himself.

"What would you know of it," I scoffed, crossing my arms and looking away.

He was silent for awhile. Then he straightened himself up, sighing slightly, and walked away. I watched him for a little while; he just wandered amongst the graves, weaving in and out between headstone after headstone. Every so often, his fingers would graze over the top of one. I shuddered slightly; something about him was unsettling to me.

I thought for a moment about what I had said. I knew that it was beyond rude, to talk to a random stranger in a cemetery as though they had never before experienced loss, but I didn't particularly care. Selfish as I knew it was, all that mattered to me was that my father was gone. I didn't care about anyone else; my mother, though she too was clearly heartbroken, knew how to take care of herself with all this, the animals would be fine with her around, and I didn't particularly care what happened to me. Not to say that I wanted to die or anything, I knew better than that. If nothing else, I didn't know how my mother might react should she lose both myself and my father, certainly not over a short time span. No, I was more looking for the blinking out of existence route, but I knew that that wasn't very possible. So I was content to do nothing but stare blankly at the ground, no thoughts in particular running through my head, waiting for the day to pass.

I pulled out the piece of danish from my pocket. My stomach rumbled slightly, and I knew for a fact that I was, indeed, very hungry. But somehow the concept of eating made me too nauseous to consider putting the pastry anywhere near my mouth. I closed my eyes and quickly shoved the now partly squashed confection back into my pocket.

I glanced around the cemetery. The white-haired guy was still weaving through graves. I noticed he had a cloth in his hand; he must have been cleaning the messy ones as he passed. Nice of him, I supposed. Maybe he worked for the county or something, though I wasn't sure that there was actually a job for cleaning off gravestones.

I pondered him for a moment. He seemed about my age, maybe a little older. On the tall side, though I'd have wagered I was a tad taller than him. He wore pants as though it weren't the middle of a ridiculously hot summer, and a simple T shirt. He had a messenger bag slung across his shoulder, and I noticed he paused to read over each gravestone he passed. I wasn't really sure what to make of him.

Suddenly he glanced back in my direction, and I quickly turned my attention somewhere else, anywhere else. My gaze settled on a crabapple tree not far away. The flowers had long since fallen off, and its leaves were full and dark. It provided a nice patch of shade, standing at the other side of the trail that led into the cemetery. Maybe later I'd try to nap under it or something; anything to get my mind off of my father being gone.

I took a sidelong glance at the other guy through my rat's nest that was passing for bangs. When I saw that his grave weaving had taken a sudden directional change towards me, I stood as smoothly and coolly as possible, stretched, and made a calm beeline for the crabapple. I immediately settled myself beneath it, curling beside its trunk, and did my best to make a convincing impression of someone who had fallen asleep.

My impression was a little more than convincing, seeing as I awoke what was probably a couple of hours later, laying on my stomach with a mouthful of grass. I spat out what I could, rising to my knees and wiping off the extra that had stuck onto my face. There was a suppressed giggle beside me.

My eyes shot up in horror, and unsurprisingly fell on a thin, white haired boy with clear blue eyes, a hand over his mouth to continue with the suppressing of his laughter.

I could feel my face starting to burn, but I glared at him nonetheless. "Sorry, sorry," he said, waving his hand in front of his face. "Just that one second you were sound asleep and the next you're a waterfall of grass. Not what I was expecting when you woke up."

"And just what were you expecting?" I shot angrily at him. "Last I checked, watching strangers as they sleep is rather high up on the creepy radar."

"Hey, I was just keeping an eye out for you. Figured it would probably be better to sit with you and wake you if it got late than leave you to spend the night in the graveyard. Who knows what kinds of creeps show up here in the dead of night?"

"Probably the ones like you," I said bitterly, looking away and rolling from my knees to a proper sitting position.

No response. I figured he'd probably pull the same move he had earlier in the day, and I waited for him to take offense to my comment and walk away. When I heard no movement, I glanced back over at him. He was scrolling through something on his phone, what looked to be a number of images. At that moment I noticed the sketchbook in his lap, a few half-finished drawings of what looked like hummingbirds on the page. I shrugged to myself and leaned back, putting my weight on my elbows. Strange as this guy was, I wasn't entirely opposed to just sitting with him. As long as he didn't make any more comments about mourning and knowing what I was going through and all that crap.

The lighting had definitely changed since I had fallen asleep. I didn't want to check my phone for the time for risk of five missed calls and twelve worried texts from my mother as to why I hadn't eaten, how long I had been up, what I had been up to. I estimated it was probably around six thirty or seven at this point, and technically I knew I probably should have been getting home pretty soon. I had no desire to stand, however, much less walk anywhere. Especially not home.

"So... what's your name?" the boy beside me asked. I glanced back to him. His gaze was focused on his sketchbook, pencil scratching lightly back and forth over the page as he added details to one of the birds he was drawing.

"Hiccup," I responded simply, waiting for the inevitable surprise.

"Hiccup? Can't say that's a name I've heard before," he said, eyes not moving from his drawing.

"Long story. Childhood nickname that stuck, let's leave it at that," I said, slightly annoyed but glad that he hadn't blown it up to more than it deserved to be.

"That works. I'm Jack." Now he looked up from his drawing, though only to flash a silly grin my way before returning his attention to the page before him.

More silence followed. I wasn't complaining. I was still rather weirded out by this Jack guy, but I had to admit that he didn't necessarily seem like all that terrible of a person. Just weird. And maybe a little creepy.

I stared at the sky as the sun began to lower towards the horizon. "Why exactly do you hang out in the cemetery?" I asked half-heartedly after awhile. I needed something to keep my mind occupied.

Jack chuckled. "I was wondering when you'd ask that. Mostly that it's a pretty peaceful place. Not many people come by unless they're paying their respects, and aside from the odd stare every so often no one bothers you. It makes for a nice place to clear your head and think," he explained. I mulled the concept over for a few moments.

"Still seems rather dismal if you ask me," I said.

"Ah, but how many times have you visited a cemetery for the sheer sake of visiting the cemetery? There's a strange sense of awe and serenity you can get when you just come here without the direct motive of mourning. I find it to be quite nice. Of course, I still pay my respects to the dead here. I like to think that the spirits of those who have passed on like knowing that someone comes around to make their resting places look nice." Jack put down his pencil and held the sketchbook slightly away from his face. He nodded to it, as if to affirm that the drawing was complete, and then closed the book and put it and his pencil in his messenger bag. He placed it at the trunk of the tree and leaned back, stretching.

Suddenly, I felt my phone vibrating in my pocket. I groaned a little as I went to pull it out, knowing exactly which contact it would say was calling me. As expected, the word "Mom" showed up below the image of a green phone. I sighed, sliding it to "ignore," and stood up. "Someone expecting you?" Jack asked, looking up at me inquisitively from his position at the trunk of the tree.

"Expecting is a bit of an understatement, I'd say. I should be going though," I said exasperatedly, rubbing my brow a little.

Jack snorted. "Well, good luck with that."

I nodded in response before turning away and walking down the dirt trail out of the cemetery, towards certain scolding at best.

And there you have chapter 1! I must say, it's been quite awhile since I've consistently worked on any fanfiction, and this one's been mulling around in my head since early summer. Hopefully it won't be too long of a fic, and I can actually manage to complete one for once? Reviews are appreciated and encouraged, and keep an eye out for the next chapter!