Chapter 29: Nice and Neat

A/N: SURPRISE

Yes, this is the surprise. Updating all of my eighteen in-progress fics at once. It was pretty crazy, but I did it, and it's here, and good day to you all! I had tons of fun doing this, so I hope you guys have tons of fun reading this!

And I listened to Adrian Von Ziegler's 'Requiem for the Nameless Dead' while I wrote this chapter. Oddly fitting for Hiccup from this AU, I think. Warning, suicidal thoughts. I think that's all. Good day.


I remember a long time ago, maybe when I was nine or ten, and my mother was still alive, I was sitting at the breakfast table with her and Dad, and she had left a portion of the newspaper on the table when she had finished reading. I'd glanced at the paper as I'd risen to my feet, and I saw, in huge block letters, the words, HAVE YOU SEEN THIS CHILD? Below, there was a picture of a boy about my age, smiling at the camera, looking perfectly cheerful.

At the time, I hadn't thought anything of the article – I'd taken my plate to the sink and gone on my way, but more and more these days, I'm beginning to wonder if one day that was my face in the newspaper articles. What if I appeared there one day, a smiling teenage boy gone missing suddenly, and everybody at school glanced at my empty desk every so often? What if they talked about it at school for days, wondering where I was, where I had gone?

And then they'd conclude that I must have run away and gotten myself killed, and I would have been forgotten so easily. My empty desk would not have been something to talk about, it would have become my classmates' normal. And as I walked home from school, I kept worrying about what Ms. Delaney would ask me the next day, whether she would try and figure out more about my home life…

I shuddered, pushing the thoughts to the back of my mind as I readjusted my backpack so it rested more comfortably between my shoulder blades. My stomach hurt with how badly I wanted to eat, but I knew that crying in school, crying in front of people and making them ask questions and making Ms. Delaney ask questions was a huge X. I would not be eating for much, much longer than a week.

What would happen to me, I wondered, gazing down at my body, what would happen if I just didn't eat? If I ignored the constant but familiar pangs of hunger and let myself waste away, let myself die, fall into blackness…?

At least if I did do that, I wouldn't have to worry about collapsing from hunger. There had to be a point where the human body simply gave out, where it couldn't take anymore of being denied what it needed and simply shut down. That would be wonderful, I thought longingly to myself as I turned down the street to go into my neighborhood, gazing up at the clouds in the sky. That would be wonderful to just die so simply, so easily, so neatly. I wouldn't have to resort to a gun, to a knife. I could just die so easily, and I wouldn't even leave a mess for my father to clean up. They would all assume I had taken an eating disorder too far – they would never have to know the truth, and I could die all nice and neat, and be buried in a casket, all nice and neat, and my father would never beat me again and everybody at school would forget about me just like that. Nice and neat and painless.

I looked up at the sky again, remembering times in my childhood when I would find shapes in the clouds, dragons and Viking helmets and imaginative things, back when I was innocent and carefree, back when I was not a mistake. I sighed a little as I stared up at them, wondering if I would ever find that carefree innocence again.

No, I decided sadly. I was not worth it. I didn't deserve something that nice. I heard something rattling oddly in my backpack and, as I went up the sidewalk to our house, I pulled the straps off my shoulders completely and unzipped it, looking for whatever had made the noise. Finding nothing but textbooks, I shrugged and got ready to drop it when I noticed the bottle. Tylenol, sitting patiently on the outside pocket of my backpack, waiting to be used at any time – maybe even waiting to be overused.

Slowly, hesitantly, I pulled it out of the pocket, collapsing on the couch, staring down at the little white bottle. According to the numbers scratched into the side, the pills were nearing their expiration date, anyway. Somebody needed to use them.

And then I had to smile, because I was thinking of such a human thing, using pills before the expiration date. I unscrewed the cap and poured about six into my hand, staring at them, the tiny white doorways to death, and I slowly poured them all back inside. I placed the bottle back in my backpack, and I rose from my seat on the couch, walking upstairs to add the Xs. I didn't have anybody to say goodbye to, so writing notes didn't matter. Nobody would miss me.

And tomorrow, at this time, I would be sitting up, waiting to feel the pills taking effect, slowly killing me, and I smiled a very odd smile, one that I had never given before. I could feel it twisting my face into an unfamiliar shape, grim and bitter and oddly satisfied. Tomorrow, I would swallow the pills, but there would be no sign of what my father had done to me, what had driven me to this point.

"Just a troubled mind," they would say, and they'd forget me, because I was that easy to forget, that easy to cast off as unimportant. I would give it one more day. Just one more. But after that, I would take the pills and I would die. Nice and neat.