Hello there everyone! HTTYD 2 is so close... at first, I wanted to finish that fic before the movie would came out, but now I can tell this won't happen, cause even if the translation is completely done, I haven't written yet the last chapter in french, so... You'll have to wait for the very end of this, I hope you'll still read it even though I know HTTYD 2 may steal your attention.
Also, just a little thing about the story: Gothi, the Elder, made a few appearances in the previous chapters, but in the next ones she'll be a bit more present, and just in case some of you would be surprised, she speaks. I mean, I still kept this quiet silent aspect of her, she doesn't talk when it's not necessary, but she's not dumb or anything. Just so you know.
And I know the story isn't really eventful those days, but I really wanted to develop some points. Something interesting is coming within two chapters though ^^
XXVIII. (Un)Certainty
Astrid was looking at Hiccup. Hiccup was looking at Astrid. The girl leaned over. The boy came closer. Their lips tenderly united. And at the same time, the door opened.
Hiccup was the first one to open his eyes, alerted by the floor creaking. He pulled away from Astrid, who turned her head, looking around for what had interrupted the boy. The teenagers then saw the Elder slowly coming in the room, a big bowl and a cloth in her hands. She didn't seem to care at all about the scene she had just happened to see. When she looked at them, Astrid remembered her quite questionable position, and hurriedly stood up. So hurriedly that her leg couldn't withstand it, and almost made her fall. The girl caught herself right in time on the edge of the bed, and leaned against it to let herself slide on the floor. She nervously passed her hand through her tangled hair. She didn't dare to look at the Elder, even though the old lady didn't make a single comment.
She slowly walked around the bed and signaled Hiccup to move so that she could sit down. The boy obeyed, relaxing a bit since she seemed totally indifferent. He averted his eyes and concentrated on Astrid, who shyly dared to have a look at him. The boy smiled to her, examining her face to avoid thinking about what Gothi was doing. He still felt the covers being pulled though, and a cold sensation took hold of his wounded leg. The old woman grabbed his knee with one hand and slightly lifted it up. Hiccup closed his eyes in spite of himself when the warm cloth touched his skin. It was both agreeable and disagreeable. The heat was soothing the pain, but his stump being handled like this was making him shiver. He was suddenly really aware of his missing foot, and it was quite weird.
His thoughts were interrupted by Astrid, who took his hand when she saw his closed eyes and tensed features. She didn't say anything, didn't look at him, but held his fingers in such a way that she almost managed to communicate by this simple touch. Hiccup relaxed. A bit. And when his thoughts came again to his foot, the Elder was done.
The Viking slowly dared to lift his eyelids, and then finally opened his eyes. He wasn't proud that it was so hard for him to deal with his wound. At the moment, it always seemed absolutely horrible, but then, he thought he was being ridiculously weak. He was a Viking for Thor's sake, and even if he had just infringed one of their fundamental rules, he had to be brave.
"Is it hurting?" Gothi asked, and Hiccup almost started since he wasn't used to hearing her speak.
"No. Less and less." he answered honestly.
The Elder slowly stood up, and dragged her feet to the table, where she put the bowl and the wet cloth. Then she looked at Hiccup.
"Your leg is healing well. You can try to walk." she said, pointing the prosthesis on the table.
It wasn't even a question. He could try to walk. He had to.
"I… I'm not sure… if I'm ready." Hiccup stammered.
Gothi shrugged, and left the room without saying anything else. The boy stared at the prosthetic leg without really seeing it, thinking again about his conversation with Toothless. He had to deal with it. Make another harness for his dragon, and also think about a way to control the tail with his artificial foot. The idea of walking sounded inconceivable, but he would have to try one day. For the moment, his fear had the upper hand on his need to move, but he knew it wouldn't last. He used to spend his days walking around the forest or working at the forge, he would obviously miss his legs.
"You alright?" Astrid asked.
She had stood up without him noticing.
"Yes." he answered simply.
"You're not hungry?"
"Hungry? Yeah, maybe a little…"
As long as he had an excuse to not think about his leg… Yes, first, he would eat, and then… he would see.
"I'll go look for something, there's nothing but herb tea in here." Astrid continued. "You just wait he– well, I'll be right back."
After a quick look at the boy, the girl walked out of the room, leaving Hiccup alone with himself. She slowly crossed the main room, lost in her thoughts, and, in front of the door, she stopped for a second. Sighed. Raised her hand to the handle, already imagining the fresh air outside which would certainly set her thinking straight again. But when she was about to go out, a voice stopped her.
"Astrid."
The Viking turned her head, and saw the Elder standing up in front of her worktop. She looked so focused on whatever she was making that the girl first wondered if she hadn't dreamt. But after a silence, the old lady finally spoke.
"Hiccup needs you."
Astrid frowned. Was she supposed to answer that? She knew that Hiccup needed her. She waited for more, puzzled.
"You're his rock, so you have to be here for him." the Elder said. "He's feeling worse than what he shows."
"I don't intend to leave him or anything." the young Viking retorted. "And there's Gobber too. And Toothless."
Gothi nodded.
"Their bound is strong, but he's an animal." she answered. "He can't understand everything."
Astrid restrained herself answering. It was for the better if she avoided that subject. She perfectly saw that a dragon couldn't totally replace a human, but she had been observing Hiccup and Toothless long enough to be able to say that their relationship was… different. She knew the boy would never feel more understood than by his dragon; even she wasn't certain to be able to comfort him better than the Night Fury would. It didn't matter whether the dragon truly understood him, Hiccup still got more comfort from him than anyone else.
"Be careful with him, that's all."
More and more puzzled, Astrid guessed that this sentence ended their conversation, and opened the door. She gave a last look to Gothi, who hadn't lifted up her head from her decoction or whatever she was making. Since she didn't react, she shrugged and got out.
She hadn't been outside for so long that the cold air immediately bit her skin. Holding back a shiver, she closed the door – a bit too violently maybe – and paused in front of the house, turning over in her mind what the Elder had just told her.
She hadn't really like the tone of her advice. She respected Gothi, of course, but the life lessons like the one she had seemed to be trying to tell her deeply annoyed her. The Elder didn't speak much, so everybody knew that when she took the trouble to do it, her words deserved to be listened to. But here, it was quite hard for Astrid to understand what she had tried to tell her. It more looked like she had wasted her saliva and her time to repeat to her what she already knew, making her feel in passing that she didn't care enough about Hiccup.
I mean, I left my house while I was wounded, I abandoned my mother to be with him, and I stayed next to him for entire days! I don't know what more she wants me to do…
Seriously wondering what could have made her think that she wasn't assessing the seriousness of the situation, the girl started to randomly walk in Berk. She forgot the first reason of her leaving, even if at the beginning already the looking-for-food thing was only an excuse. She was a bit hungry, but the real reason for her walk was that, without really knowing why, she had suddenly felt the need to be alone. Maybe because she had just seen Hiccup's left leg for the first time.
Surely. She wasn't even certain she had voluntarily looked at it, but her curiosity had finally gotten the upper hand on her fear, and she had let her eyes turn to that wound she had until now even refused to make out through the blanket. Perhaps she had unconsciously forced herself to do it… She didn't know, but anyway, she understood now. She understood what was blocking Hiccup, what was making his adaptation so hard other than the fact that he had only just woken up. It was even hard for her to not faint; but she had held on, and had faced the vision of that shortened leg handled by the Elder.
And that picture was now stuck in her mind. She hadn't been able to look at Hiccup normally after that; what he was feeling was too easy to read in his eyes. Astrid understood the boy too much to not be touched by his despair. She knew he was trying to grin and bear it, to be strong and to not let it go. She had perfectly guessed his repressed distress, his choked back tears and his forced courage.
And she didn't want to feel whatever she had felt at that very moment. She refused to take pity on Hiccup, because she knew that in his place, she wouldn't have wanted it, and anyway that was the last thing he needed. He needed support, encouragement, not a speech telling him why he had the right to feel so bad after what he'd been through.
But at the moment, the girl had felt unable to show him anything other than pathetic compassion. That was why she had left, and why she was now standing in the cold, looking for her tough and fearless Viking nature which had failed her more than once lately.
She was going around. She had already walked past this house three times, maybe four. She could almost follow her own footprints on the ground, which she had walked on again and again.
Astrid stopped a few seconds, and looked around her. The sky was grey. The village too. The Vikings were pacing up and down normally; she could almost imagine that nothing had happened, that everything was like it used to be. But everything was different. She knew it; she could see it with the little holes in the ground, the wooden pieces coming from fences, torches, buckets and other objects lying everywhere, which had been burnt or trampled by the dragons the Vikings were hardly trying to make understand that they mustn't destroy everything. And she could hear it with the animal grunts mixing with the Vikings', with the villagers calling their dragon. She thought about her Deadly Nadder, who didn't have a name yet; she was still wondering if this was really useful, considering that they weren't even sure the dragons knew when they had a name.
Toothless appeared in her mind. Hiccup too.
The girl sighed. Observed the smoke coming out of the forge. Watched for the noise of the pounding metal you could always hear when Gobber was working. She couldn't hear anything but the wind.
She slowly walked toward the house, and shyly looked inside. The blacksmith lifted up his eyes from the pile of parchment he seemed to be focused on, and smiled at the girl.
"Come in, Astrid." he said.
The Viking pushed the creaking door and entered the room. The heat immediately relaxed her.
"How are you?" Gobber asked, seeming to be in a pretty good mood.
"Fine, I guess."
The man stared at the stack of sketches on his worktop and sighed.
"What about Hiccup?" he said after a silence.
"He looks fine too. Considering his state, at least."
Astrid thought about what she had just said. No, actually, if you thought this through, Hiccup wasn't fine.
"What are you doing?" she asked, looking at the drawing on the top of the stack, showing a sketch of an indeterminable thing covered with arrows, lines and deletions.
"I'm trying to make heads or tails of all these sketches of Toothless' tail. Hiccup kept everything; it's hard for me to find out what's the right version of the mechanism.
"You want to make him another prosthesis?"
"I think it'll be faster if Hiccup makes it himself, now he's awake, but if I work on it I may be able to help him. And you know, since he lost a part of his leg – on the side which directly controls the tail if I understand it well – it'll make things way more complicated."
Astrid realized she hadn't even thought about it – that Hiccup losing his foot would prevent him from flying with his dragon. She was sure it was the first thing he had thought about when he had learnt he was handicapped. She didn't know how she was supposed to feel about the fact that she hadn't thought of it.
"Do you think he'll ever be able to fly again?" she asked.
"I'll do everything I can. I'm sure we'll find something, with my experience and his imagination."
Poor Hiccup, Astrid thought.
What would happen to him if he wasn't able to fly with Toothless again? The dragon seemed to be the best thing that had ever happened to him. And the young girl was afraid of the consequences if it was taken away from him. Would it be enough to take away his desire to fight? To live? He had already lived so many hard things…
There she went again. She was pitying him.
Instead of feeling sorry for him, you should be helping him, Astrid inwardly yelled at herself. Your pity's not going to get him out of this mess.
"The Elder said his wound was healing well and that he could try to walk again." the girl finally said, to end her internal scolding.
"How did he react?" Gobber asked.
"He said he wasn't ready. You should go see him, to show him how to use his prosthesis."
"If he's not ready, I don't want to force him. Getting used to this takes time, I know it pretty well."
"We can still encourage him." Astrid insisted. "If he really blocks, we'll leave him alone."
Gobber nodded.
"I'll come." He finally said.
"Thanks." Astrid spontaneously answered.
Then she decided she didn't have anything else to do at the forge, and left Gobber with his occupations.
She took some food from the Great Hall, and then decided to go back to the Elder's house. Once she arrived on the main square, she saw Toothless' black figure, who almost seemed to be waiting for her. She called the dragon and signaled him to come with her. The Night Fury followed her. The girl briefly stroked his head, looking at his tail in spite of herself, which was moving with his steps. She didn't know whether it was real, but she noticed a slight loss of balance. She shook her head and continued walking.
Gobber had said he would help him. Hiccup wasn't alone. No matter how much time it would take, one day, he would be able to fly with him again. She was certain of that.
