Going Under
A/N: My friend convinced me to post this. I don't know what this is anymore. Enjoy it, please.
"Is he breathing?"
"I don't know…"
Hiccup stirred slightly, trying to reach up, to grasp for the speakers. His head was pounding and his skin felt oddly tight, stretched and squeezed. The stump of his leg was excruciatingly painful; there was dried blood caked around the leg, where the prosthetic began and looking up at his hands, hovering uselessly in the air, he realized they were covered in dark red stains as well. There were men above him, dressed in ragged clothes and heavy armor, and they were talking, but Hiccup could not make out their words.
His mind wasn't yet finished waking up before it all started flashing in front of his eyes again: Mildew sneering down at him, Alvin smirking, Alvin announcing that they were heading home…
His gut clenched and he rolled over, now thoroughly disinterested in the conversation above him. The simple movement he made ripped several gasps of pain from his mouth as he remembered the Outcasts' latest beating. Mildew was not stopping them in their false impressions that physical pain would be enough to break the boy. Perhaps he was enjoying watching Hiccup suffer.
The thought made Hiccup give another little sigh, but this one was of a different kind of pain. He had never imagined that Mildew would betray him. The old man might have been unpleasant and unkind, but never had Hiccup once thought that he might make an accomplice out of Berk's oldest and most feared enemy. This fact still smarted, not that he had been captured so easily, but that Mildew had been such an important part of his capture.
Hiccup closed his eyes as the voices grew louder and louder above him.
"Look, the boss won't like it if he's dead, I'm just gonna poke him!"
"Don't touch him there, I think his ribs are broken!"
That would explain why it hurt so badly to draw breath, Hiccup realized, and he opened his mouth to call up to them, to tell them he wasn't sleeping, wasn't dead…
"Then let's find something else of his and break it!" snarled the other man. "That'll wake him, won't it?"
No. No, please, Hiccup thought weakly to himself, squeezing his eyes shut as he waited for the pain to rack his body once more.
"Is that what I think it is? Is Dragon Boy begging?"
With a start, Hiccup realized he had accidentally spoken his thoughts aloud and shut his mouth tightly, determined not to enlighten the Outcasts to his pain.
"You know one way you could stop this?"
The room was starting to grow blurry again, and the headache was returning now, stronger than ever.
"If you just give us what we want."
"I won't help you." Though pain licked his insides like fire and agony blazed a trail upon his skin, Hiccup's voice didn't shake. "I won't. I don't care what you do to me, nothing you do will make me betray them—
"We'll see."
All of Hiccup's conscious thoughts were trickling through his brain like water in cupped hands. It was over, all of it, he simply couldn't hold on anymore. His stump was trembling with the cruelty of it, all the pain Alvin had inflicted upon the tender injury. Hiccup still vividly remembered the hot knives pressing into his skin.
He whimpered softly as the Outcast began to speak to him again. "Now get up, weakling, the boss wants to see you."
No. Hiccup clenched his hands into fists upon these words, although it was not from anger. He could not imagine walking on the agonizing stump that served as his leg. He wasn't even sure if he could stand, come to that. He rose from his place at their feet, trying to push himself into at least a sort of kneel, but his whole body resisted.
"Get up, stop wasting time!" The Outcast snapped, picking him up by his collar.
"Pl-please," Hiccup managed to sputter, "please, I don't know if…if I can walk…"
"If you want your precious dragon to live, you'll make yourself walk. I'm sure you can find the strength."
This had Hiccup tensing instantly. Though what they made was an empty threat, of no true importance or consequence, Toothless had come dangerously close to death too many times. If he did not get up and start walking…his heart squeezed as he, for the first time, remembered what his dragon had gone through. It was worse than hot swords on a healing leg, far worse, and he was not letting it happen again.
At last, he managed to rise unsteadily to his feet, standing shakily upright for a second or more. And then another wave of pain shot through his body and he crumpled in on himself, collapsing once more on the cold stone floor of the cell. His head hit the cool surface with more force than he thought possible, and the throbbing in his skull worsened. The room began to slip away and turn black. He was going under…again.