A/N: just a rambly drabble about Hiccup and what he remembers of his mother. As far as I'm aware from the small little glimpse given of the new movie, this does not follow canon. It does take place somewhere after the events of the first movie, but as I've never watched the tv show, probably deviates from that as well.
Disclaimer: All rights to Httyd belong with Dreamworks, I am but a simple drabble writer and have no hold over the characters in any legal way.
Hiccup didn't think about his mother often; he missed her, obviously, but thinking about her deep breathy laugh and the softness of her steel grey eyes left him feeling more hollow than anything. He couldn't remember much about her anymore, that thought alone was enough to leave him gasping awake in the middle of the night, an intangible weight pressing a hole somewhere deep in his chest.
His dad and him never talked in much detail about her either, well, they never used to talk at all about anything but even with their relationship on the mend, his mother was a sore spot for the both of them. Hiccup was never really sure what happened to her, as a result. It was like his memory repressed the incident and the days around it, all he could recall was confusion and vague impressions of feelings and sounds. He felt her hand ruffling his hair, a figure vanishing into a foggy bank, and the sound of wooden masts creaking in the breeze. He knew his father hadn't been able to look at him for weeks, locking himself away in the Great Hall and talking to no one but Gobber. He remembered the way everyone looked at him, with pity and pain, and how when he caught their eyes they'd look down and leave as fast as they could. He knew how it hurt, seeing all the other mothers, the other kids with their families; how breathing felt like fire for a long time after. Sometimes he wish he could remember what she'd said before she left, other times he was glad he didn't.
Astrid once told him that he was too shy around girls, that he held himself differently around her and everyone else. Obviously, he was more relaxed around her specifically, they'd been through enough it felt almost natural. Girls and women as a whole were strange and foreign, an uncharted location. He thought of them as exceedingly powerful, fantastically strong and wise, and he was sort of almost afraid of them. Or maybe a lot. He'd grown up with Gobber and Stoic, the two most gnarly and grizzled men in their village. Being the weak chicken legged screw up he'd always been, it was hard to feel confident and comfortable on a regular day.
Now, though, he had friends. And his father's respect. The whole village's respect even. He'd stopped the fight with the dragons, saved everyone from the Red Death, Odin- people actually liked him now. He'd never really been confident but he was happy; he believed him and Toothless could accomplish whatever they set their minds to, and that was better than anything he could ask for. Well, almost anything. There was a pressure on him, now. People looked to him when there were problems with dragons, or with livestock, or honestly when any sort of dilemma arose; they expected he'd have a scheme or a diagram to walk them through it. They expected him to be the brains that solved everything, and by Thor he was more terrified about letting them down than anything else.
There were some days where the stump of his leg would shoot small bursts of pain where it connected to the metal hunk of his foot, like reminders of the people he'd let down and the mistakes he'd made. He felt small. The skies and land he'd travelled were limitless and immense and he was just some boy with twig arms and a knack for saying the exact wrong thing. Days like these he'd take Toothless and fly as fast as he could push them, until the wind stole the breath from his lungs. They'd lie on a hilltop somewhere, and Hiccup would try to see the shape of a viking hat in the bright lights pinning up the sky.
He hoped his mother would be proud of him. That she would have hugged him and laughed with him and called him her "fire-eyed fishbone" with kisses and smiles.
He wondered, if she had seen what he could have been, all the triumphant victories, medals, and accomplishments, maybe she would have stayed.
