To Be Loved the Way You Love Me
Life on Berk turns upside down when a sixteen year old boy traveling with a dark past, a world of hurt, and a Night Fury washes up on its shores. The love-starved boy will only tell people one thing about his past: His name is Hiccup. But where did he live before? And why doesn't he trust anyone?
Chapter 43: Less Than
OH MY GOSH SIX HUNDRED, SIX HUNDRED, SIX HUNDRED! THAT'S HOW MANY REVIEWS I HAVE! THANK YOU, THANK YOU, THANK YOU! ALL OF YOU! THANK YOU ALLLLLLL! :D
Um...yeah. I have no idea why I decided on this. This is not that good. Like, it's long, for readers who like long stuff, but it's not that good. IDK. Everybody feels...OOC. *shrugs* buuuuuuut this story's gonna have more chapters than planned. Forty-five, forty-six, possibly forty-seven. I'm not sure yet, BUT, I will work on it. I'm hoping to finish both this one and IDMTHYT before Christmas, but, if all else fails, I'll focus my efforts on the other one, because, frankly, it was supposed to be a Halloween story and now look at it.
The next morning's weather got in the way of my plans.
When I awoke, it was snowing. And not the gentle, light snowfalls I'd been seeing all winter.
It was the heaviest snowfall I'd ever seen and I could barely see two feet in front of me just looking out the window.
Stoick was getting ready to leave when I woke up and he didn't look up from pulling on his boots when he noticed me. "Hiccup." he nodded a little.
I sat up on the edge of the bed and rubbed my eyes tiredly for a second before hearing the howling of the wind outside. I frowned. "Is it raining?"
"Nope," he responded, barely looking up. He crossed the room to the door. "Snowing, actually. Look."
I looked. It was so thick that I was sure anybody who tried to go out in this would end up frozen. "Wow."
"Yep," Stoick replied nonchalantly. "Welcome to Berk in wintertime."
He twisted the door handle and pushed, but nothing happened. He tried to pull inward and nothing happened then, either. "Oh," he muttered to himself, "thought I must've forgotten which way it turned…I've done that before…"
He turned back to me and attempted to open the door one more time before going over to the window; the sill was fast filling up with snow and, when he withdrew his head again, his beard was lightly coated in white mush. He sighed and wiped it away with one hand. "I think we're snowed in," he announced solemnly.
"Like…snowed in, snowed in?" I asked, a little nervously, as I went to the window again, Toothless helping me the whole way there.
"What other snowed in is there?" Stoick demanded. He sounded cross, but I reasoned with myself that it was most likely the weather keeping him down.
"I don't think we'll be able to get out until the snow melts," Stoick said, "unless, of course, you'd like to try to crawl through a window, but I couldn't." he gestured wordlessly to himself and I realized that the window was a lot smaller than he was.
"I see your point," I told him.
He nodded and glanced worriedly back out the window. "I suppose others must be snowed in, if we are, too."
"How long will it take the snow to melt?" I asked, turning my gaze from outside to him.
He shrugged. "It could be a few days, considering the weather here. You've seen that firsthand."
I remembered Gobber's words from the previous day: "It's gonna drop tonight, I'll bet…"
He had been right, I thought to myself. I crossed the room, leaning heavily on Toothless as I did so. "Thanks, bud." I breathed as I seated myself. Toothless curled up beside the bed, shaking his tail to get a few snowflakes that had blown in here off his tail.
Stoick glanced over at the window as well, a frown creasing his face. "I hope this storm doesn't last too long."
I was just so, so glad the people of Berk actually considered this a storm and not one of their rousing snowfalls.
Stoick was still frowning towards the window and, for lack of anything better to do, I did what I'd done a hundred times since I'd gotten it: I examined my prosthetic leg.
I stared down at the shining metal and gently massaged the area where the stump ended, staring down at the metal contraption Gobber had created to help me.
The blacksmith in me was itching to examine it and figure out what he'd done, but I resisted; Stoick was still here and I didn't want to look like a freak who regularly takes apart prosthetic legs to find out how to make them.
The stump was starting to ache again, so I rubbed it absently as I tried to turn my thoughts other ways; I didn't want to think about my leg.
But then, I didn't want to think about anything else, either, I realized as I was reminded that I was leaving soon.
There was no way I could go out in this, though, I told myself as I twisted around on the bed to look out the window again. I'd become a grease stain on the sand.
Stoick looked away from the window as well and sat down in the chair beside the bed, eyes turning instead to the wooden shelf. He picked up a small hunting knife and a half-finished, wooden dancing Viking woman he was sculpting and he began to slowly chip away at her until she began looking closer to finished.
"Wow." I said, before I even realized I was speaking aloud. "That's really good."
He looked up at me and I quickly tried to backtrack. "Er…sorry…sir…" it was the best I could do.
"For what?" Stoick asked. He put down the hunting knife and the carving and turned back to me. He tilted his head slightly, like he was curious. His helmet made a sliding noise on his head and he took it off, setting it down on the shelf. I noticed as he did this that the one he'd given me was sitting there as well, and he'd set his beside mine.
I tore my gaze away from the Viking helmets and tried to remember what Stoick and I had been talking about…oh, right, the carvings.
"Er…well…I don't know," I shrugged. "Um…I…I said, 'that's really good' and maybe…you don't like people…never mind." If it sounded stupid in my head, it would sound a lot worse when spoken out loud.
His expression didn't change. He merely shrugged and turned back to his carving. I watched him chip away for a few more seconds before he stopped and looked at me, a slight frown creasing his face.
"What?" I asked, feeling suddenly self-conscious, like he was mentally analyzing me.
"Nothing," Stoick replied, turning back to his activity. "Just…uh…thinking, is all."
"Do you…do you mind me watching?" I said tentatively. "I don't have to, I can…I can do something else…."
"Oh, no, that wasn't what I…anyway," Stoick finished lamely and he turned back to me. "I…I only meant…never mind."
The awkward silences seemed to be falling over every conversation Stoick and I had, I reflected as it happened again.
I struggled to think of something to say, but all that happened was that my eyes flew around the room again, landing on the Viking helmets on the shelf. I wondered what it would be like to wake up in this house every day, to always have blankets and pillows and to come downstairs to see Stoick smiling at me over his first cup of coffee in the morning.
I wondered what it would be like to say goodbye to him every morning as he left to do his work and greet him at the front door every night. I wondered what it would be like to go to the forge and help Gobber every day, to be around an adult but knowing they didn't have the idea to hurt me, feeling safe, secure, feeling protected. Being protected.
I wondered what it would feel like to be met with the same affection Stoick had shown me for the last few weeks, again and again, day after day. I wondered what it would feel like to have a family, a group of people I trusted absolutely around me all the time, a group of people who I loved with all my heart and who I trusted, who I knew loved me back.
I wondered what it would feel like to have a home.
My throat seared and my eyes burned, but I blinked until they stopped. There was absolutely no way I was getting all emotional, especially not in front of Stoick. I closed my eyes for a long second until the tears dried out and vanished, and then I opened them again.
I forced myself back to reality. I couldn't afford to rely on dreams. I had to remind myself that I wasn't being given a family. I wasn't. I didn't have one. I never would.
I told myself this very firmly as I lifted my – still slightly wet – eyes to meet Stoick's. He was staring at me like he was trying to figure something out and he frowned slightly. "Are you alright?"
"Oh. Yeah." I nodded, but wiped my eyes quickly with my sleeve under the pretense of plucking off a piece of lint. If Stoick noticed, he didn't say anything.
He slowly picked up his carving knife and the wooden woman again, chipping off a few more pieces of wood as he worked. He barely seemed to notice what he was doing. His brow was furrowed in concentration or maybe he was just lost in thought. He frowned down at his work for a second, like it was displeasing him. He obviously noticed a mistake in the woman's flawless plait, because the knife went down to her hair instead.
Things were starting to feel awkward again, I noticed as I fiddled with the covers on my – the – bed.
It wasn't like it was some great big mystery why; unspoken words seemed to fly in the air above us. I wondered if, maybe, if I said any of these, would they make things better? Would they melt Stoick's frosty demeanor and make him become the warm, affectionate person I had once known? And – more to the point – did I want him to be? I didn't want to see that side of him again, not if I was leaving. I would wonder too much, too often if it was all an act.
And it would make it too hard to leave. It would be too hard to leave if he acted kind to me, like a father, like a family. He would just be teasing me, because I knew I had to leave it all behind.
I struggled to find something to say, mentally reviewing everything I could say, everything I should say and everything I knew I would never say, not to him. "Um…so…uh…does weather always get this bad on Berk in winter?"
Stoick glanced up at me and pursed his lips, like he knew I was deliberately not saying something that I so desperately wanted to and that it annoyed him. His gaze returned to his work. He chipped away at an imaginary mistake before speaking. "Ninety percent of the time, yes," he sighed. It sounded like every word was an effort for him. "But sometimes, we'll get very hot summers and the winters won't be as bad." He kept examining the figure he was carving.
Having exhausted all talk about the weather, I mumbled, "Hmmm." My brain started working to think of something else to say.
I normally wasn't one to fill the silence and that was okay; I liked it when things were quiet, I preferred it that way.
But every time I fell silent, I began thinking of things I didn't want to, or my thoughts would drift to Outcast Island and, with an unpleasant bump, I would remember that they now knew exactly where I was and they could find me at any time.
I was like a sitting duck here.
For a second, those thoughts made me nervous before I reminded myself that if I couldn't leave the island, no one would be able to breach it, either.
I glanced down at the bedcovers for half a second as I thought of this before remembering Stoick's words from a few nights ago.
"My conditions are that you leave the island of Berk forever in peace. And that includes Hiccup."
I glanced up at Stoick for a second and for the first time, I felt curiosity about why he'd done that. Why had he cared that much?
Stoick set the knife down and turned to me with a vaguely curious look, like he was trying to be casual about this. "I actually had a question for you."
I opened my mouth to ask something like, 'what sort of question' but before I could, Stoick had started in.
"What did he mean earlier, when he said you'd become his conquer?"
My stomach dropped as I realized who he must've been talking about, but I played dumb, although I knew it was only saving me seconds. "Who?"
"Alvin," Stoick explained quietly. He picked up his knife again and began uncomfortably fiddling with it. "He called you 'his conquer'. He called you his. What did he mean?"
I stared down at the scratched wooden floor for a few seconds. I was tired of lying. I was tired of running and hiding and being scared, so scared I could hardly think straight. I was tired of all that. I glanced up at him for another quick second, wondering if I could tell him the truth, if I should tell him the truth… I shrugged. "No idea. Guess because I used to live in his village."
"The…" Stoick stopped himself, shook his head and looked back down at his carving, studying it intently, although I got the feeling he was just doing it to change the subject. "Nothing. Never mind."
"The way they treated you, though," he muttered more to himself than to me. "They talked about you, like…like…like you weren't…like you weren't even there."
I shrugged.
Stoick shook his head, like he was disgusted with something. "He treated you like…like you were less than."
"I know." Being berated by Alvin didn't upset me. I'd listened to him tell me I was stupid and worthless far too many times to care what he said anymore. What really upset me was the way the people of Berk had heard him taunting me, heard him making me feel less than and that it was new to them.
I fidgeted uncomfortably with the blanket for a few seconds before Stoick spoke again, quietly, softly. "You're not."
"What?" I raised my head, not really sure of what he was saying; he clearly thought I'd understand, which I didn't.
His gaze softened a little when it rested on me as he looked past the carving and back at me. "Less than. You're not. Alvin…the way he spoke to you…it was like you were. But you're not."
"Oh." I said.
"Yeah." he nodded awkwardly. "Thought I'd…you know…put that out there."
"Oh." I said again. "Well. Thank you, sir."
"Don't let him," he continued. His voice sounded a little stronger now and the thick silence hovering on the fringes of our conversation didn't seem so awkward anymore. "Don't let him tell you that. Or…or anyone else, for that matter. You're better than that."
"Um…okay." I wasn't really sure where he was going with this, so I kind of nodded. He might be feeling more comfortable, but he didn't seem to realize how awkward he was making me feel. "Thanks. I think."
"I mean it," he said.
"I know." I said back.
"I'm sorry." he told me.
"For what?" I asked him.
He turned his eyes back to his carving and the awkwardness seemed to come back again. "For that." he told me softly. "I don't want him to have made you feel less than."
"Sir, I think he's made it his life ambition to make everybody feel that way," I informed him.
A wry smile twisted Stoick's lips. "You've got a point."
The silence faded slowly back into our conversation, still a little awkward, still a little uncomfortable, but slightly better than before. The air had been cleared of a few unspoken words.
