Disclaimer: I DO NOT OWN THE PREVIEW PICTURE! IT BELONGS TO Kittykatpaws ON DEVIANTART! I also do not own any of the characters. All I own is the storyline.
Anna kicked up a pile of dry leaves, shoulders tensed as she watched them spiral listlessly through the air. She was several paces ahead of Hiccup, leaving the brunette boy struggling to keep up as she walked briskly toward the lake.
"Anna…" He jogged up to stand beside her, panting. "Hey. Slow down, will you?"
"Well, it's almost noon and we haven't started yet," she pointed out. "We're kind of wasting daylight, don't you think?"
Hiccup gave her a puzzled look. "Since when do you care about wasting daylight?"
Anna shrugged. "I dunno. Just might as well get in as much training before dinner is all."
The beginnings of a smirk crawled over his lips. "You're not usually like this."
Her hand began to curl into a fist. "What, so you're always the responsible one?" she snapped, feeling suddenly irritated.
He flinched a little, but his grin didn't falter. "Come on, you? Getting up before 11 a.m.? What is this madness?"
"Well, sorry I want to be productive for once!" she huffed. "This is important, you know!"
Hiccup frowned, seemingly caught off-guard by her sharp tone. "Anna," he sighed. "What's wrong?"
"Nothing," she said tightly.
Hiccup sighed, raising his eyebrows. "You're a terrible liar, Anna," he deadpanned. "It's clearly not nothing."
"A terrible…?" She glared at him as the statement processed. "I am not!"
"Come on," he sighed, looking her up and down. "You're literally trembling."
Anna looked down at herself and realized that he was right. She let out her breath, giving him an apologetic look.
"It's just…I think you were right about Victoria. She probably will come out searching for me, knowing her." Anna groaned. "But see, the thing is…if she's going to, why hasn't she done it yet? I mean, it's been two weeks…I'm sure she's had enough time to send a search party out. But we haven't seen hide or hair of anyone."
Hiccup raised his eyebrows. "Are you complaining?"
"No." She shook her head. "It's just…she's biding her time and I can't figure out why. I'm kind of worried."
"Well, there's not much use stressing." Hiccup shrugged. "If she comes, she comes. Fretting about it isn't going to change that. Besides…" He smirked slightly. "You said we could take her, didn't you?"
Anna's face grew hot with embarrassment. "Oh, uh…yeah, I guess I did say that, didn't I?"
It seemed like a laughable notion now. Typical, she thought, her bravado talking instead of her brain in the heat of the moment.
Thankfully it hadn't definitively been proven wrong yet.
"Well, all the more reason to train!" Forcing a smile, she turned away from him and continued tromping through the messy mix of leaves and melting snow.
She halted abruptly in a clearing, stopping so suddenly that Hiccup crashed into her back with a brief grunt.
"Anna, um…the lake's not for—"
"We're practicing right here," she announced importantly. "No more of this water buffer stuff."
He gazed at her uncertainly. "You know, um…this didn't work out so well last time…"
"Well, that doesn't matter, does it?" she hissed, tone growing suddenly sharp. "If I can't learn to control my powers when there doesn't happen to be a giant lake nearby, then what's the point? I'll never go back to Arendelle!"
For a brief moment he looked hurt, but quickly masked it with a confused expression. "Well, that doesn't mean you have to master it right now—"
She turned and gave him a poisonous look. "Do you want me to prove Victoria wrong or not?"
He held up his hands in defeat, backing away. "Okay, okay!"
"Good."
Still bristling slightly, Anna ripped off her gloves and dropped them on the ground. What the hell did he expect? That she was just going to magically get better by having a huge expanse of water to save her behind whenever she screwed up?
Huffing, she spread her hands apart and summoned a ball of fire. As it grew bigger and bigger, it spat and sparked at the edges, sending tiny bits of flame flying and vanishing into the winter air. She tried to make the surface more even, smoothing out the licking flames into a flat, rippling orange surface. She had mastered that little trick a couple weeks ago, but today the fireball just did not seem to want to cooperate at all.
"Come on, come on," she growled, scrunching her brow and trying harder. But it seemed the harder she concentrated, the more the disobedient flames reached up and grabbed at the air of completely their own accord.
"Oh, screw it!" She broke her hands apart and caused the fiery ball to sizzle out, dropping a shower of ash onto the ground.
She rubbed her index finger and thumb rapidly together, pulling them apart to form a tiny stream of fire. She ran her finger through the air with practiced precision, trying to form the burning outline of a wolf.
It came out ragged and bent, spasming around the air like the messy creation of a 5-year-old with no inkling of how animal anatomy worked. Unlike her attempted drawing, real wolves did not, in fact, have huge gaps all throughout their back or legs like ungraceful spaghetti noodles or a head so covered in uneven ripples it might as well have been made of water.
She looked down at her hand to see it was still quivering slightly, although from what she couldn't tell. She groaned, waving her hand and snuffing the badly-drawn wolf out of existence.
Why isn't anything working today?
"Wow. Real smooth," Anna grunted, half to herself.
Okay. This time.
Anna cupped her hands and summoned up a thick column of fire. As she tried to shape it, Hiccup gave her an uncertain look, but said nothing.
She tried to bend it over, making the two ends connect into a single hollow, burning disc. It was something she had been practicing, making her fire into a tossable, controlled weapon resembling a frisbee. It certainly seemed less wild and unpredictable than a fireball.
It sometimes teetered over, but stubbornly snapped back up into its original column, spewing tiny flames out into the frosty air. Letting out another irritated groan, Anna waved it out.
"Son of a—" Anna gave her hand an impatient flick, trying to conjure a small flame.
She was completely unprepared for an enormous fireball to come careening out at full force. Letting out a small gasp, she stumbled backwards and clutched onto a nearby tree to steady herself.
Before she could process what was happening, the fireball crashed into a nearby pile of leaves. With a roar, it came to life, crawling over twigs and grass and tree trunks and anything else it could get its greedy fingers on.
The entire clearing was suddenly blazing orange. Smoke began to slowly rise, curling up in inky black tendrils stark against patches of white snow.
Anna watched in horror, fingers beginning to claw at the tree trunk as she stood frozen to the spot. Not again…
With a jolt, she remembered how she had been feeling earlier. Angry, anxious, tense…
Was she going to start a fire whenever she got stressed? Whenever she got scared?
It was true that the majority of her successful practicing was done when she was in a relatively calm mood…
Hiccup came to his senses before she did, grabbing up what little nearby snow he could find and chucking it at the roaring flames. It did little to stop the growing blaze.
Anna's ears rang with a screaming, and she realized after a long moment that it was her own.
Her feet seeming to move without her accord, she suddenly stepped forward, swinging her hands out in front of her and spreading her palms wide. As the blistering heat of the fire drew closer, she closed her eyes, sucking in her breath sharply.
She felt a sudden warmth ripple and swirl in the middle of her palms. When she opened her eyes, she let out a cry of shock.
The fire was rushing back into her hands in glowing, spiraling streams, filling her entire body with uncomfortable heat. In a matter of seconds every last flame was sucked off every leaf and every tree and back into her, leaving the forest clearing empty.
Hiccup stared at her in shock. "How…how did you do that?"
The unpleasant heat faded inside of her, leaving her with nothing but an uneasy chill running down her body. She looked down at her hands with an equally stunned expression.
"I have no idea," she whimpered.
"You…you just…you made it…" He gestured wildly around the clearing. "How did you do that?"
Anna shrugged, starting to shake.
"Hey, this…" Hiccup started to laugh. "This is great! This means if you ever start a fire, you can just suck it back up, right?"
Anna shook her head. "N—no, Hiccup, I have no idea how I even did that! And look at all this."
She gestured around the clearing, leaves and grass blackened into ash and trees seared with burnmarks. The fire had even jumped to a few adjacent trees outside the clearing from the looks of it.
It might well have spread across the whole forest if it hadn't been for…whatever the hell that just was.
She shook her head. "Look at all this," she whispered. "All because I was a little upset. I'm never going back to Arendelle!"
She buried her face in her hands. She felt her eyes grow hot, and wasn't sure if it was from tears or from the touch of her ungloved fingers to her eyelids.
"Anna, hey." Hiccup's voice softened. "People make mistakes. This is your first time practicing away from the lake…I didn't expect you to be perfect."
She peeked at him through her fingers, and saw him reaching a hand toward her own. Instinctively, she snatched it away and ducked out of his reach, stealing a glance at her gloves on the ground. (The fire hadn't spread to where they were, thankfully.)
"What's wrong?" he said. "I just—"
He reached for her hand again, and she pulled it away again, more sharply this time.
"Don't touch me!" she yelped. "I'll burn you!"
He had never, she realized, touched her hands when the gloves were off. Even the innocent accidental finger brushes and lacing his fingers around her wrists when he was showing her how to do something always happened when the gloves were firmly on.
And she wanted to keep it that way. She was scared out of her wits of what would happen if she didn't.
"No, you won't," he said evenly. "I trust you."
She gave him an incredulous look, spluttering. "Well…but…I mean…you shouldn't! Did you not see what just happened here?!" She looked away, sighing bitterly.
"I just burn everything I touch. And I don't want to hurt you, too."
"You're not going to."
She shook her head, eyes wide. "I don't even know what I can do," she whispered.
"You can take back in your fire!" Hiccup said, waving his hands in exasperation. "That's awesome! Once you get a handle on that, you'll always have a backup plan if you accidentally set stuff on fire."
"But how am I supposed to get a handle on that when I can't even get a handle on my powers I do kinda know how to control?" she whimpered.
"Well, you were kind of tense—"
"I've told you a thousand times!" she snapped. "There's no point to any of this if I can't learn to control it when I'm 'kind of tense.' And I've barely been getting any better. Look what I did…"
Holding back a sob, she rested her face in her hands again. "I don't know what's happening to me. I don't know what I'm turning into. And I can't stop it."
"Well, hey, welcome to my life," Hiccup said with a chuckle, trying to lighten the atmosphere. When it didn't work, he dissolved into awkward silence.
"Anna, you really have gotten so much better," he said finally. "It could take a long time, I'm not going to lie, but you will go back to Arendelle. And this sucking-in-fire thing doesn't have to be a hurdle if you can learn how to use it to your advantage."
She let out a frustrated sigh. "But I don't know how it works! I don't know how any of this works. I don't know how to keep it from…from being a danger to everyone. Just like Victoria says."
"Anna…"
She felt the palm of his hand rest against the back of hers. Letting out a yelp, she turned away from the tree and backed toward the gloves.
"Hiccup, stop it! I'm going to hurt you!"
"Anna, you're not. And if you do…well, then it's my own fault, isn't it? I'll just deal."
He reached out and grabbed her hand before she could pull away again, unexpectedly intertwining his fingers with hers.
"Hiccup!" Anna cried, although she made no move to pull away. "What are you doing?"
He smirked. "See? I'm fine!"
Anna relaxed slightly, letting a smile poke through even though her heart was still racing.
"You're an idiot."
With her free hand, she picked up a glove and wriggled it on. Sighing, she met his gaze.
"Hiccup, seriously. You saw how on-edge I am. I'm going to burn a hole in your hand if you don't let go."
He shook his head. "No, you're not. You want to know why?" He took a step closer, unlacing their fingers to press their hands together at the palms. "Because I trust you. If you were really such a raging disaster, far more of this forest would have been combusted by now. You can control your powers. Look at you…you are right now!"
She glanced down at her hand, pressed against his with their fingertips touching. Breathing hard, she wondered if she was sweating all over his hand.
Maybe you sweat out of your hand when you were incredibly nervous. Did you? Anna didn't really know.
"Doesn't my skin burn you?" she whispered.
"Nope." Hiccup grinned. "Just feels a little warmer than usual."
"See, if you can control it enough not to burn me, you can control all of it."
Her heart starting to race, Anna suddenly jerked her hand away, picking up the remaining glove and putting it on.
"I'm not sure that's a risk I'm willing to take."
"Hey." Hiccup put a hand on her shoulder. "You're going to be fine, okay?"
She let out a long sigh. "Okay."
"Why don't we go back to the cave and have some lunch?" he suggested.
Anna looked at him in confusion. "But…we just started…"
He shrugged. "Well, sure, but it kinda looks like you could use a break."
Right on cue, Anna's stomach made a gargantuan gurgling sound.
"See?" Hiccup gestured to her belly. "Even the dying whale in there agrees!"
Another smile forced its way through, and Anna shook her head. "Okay, okay, fine. Heh, I ah…I guess I'm not really gonna say no to food."
She bounced with a renewed spring in her step all the way back to the cave, rejuvenated by the thought of fresh roasted meat and Jarlsberg cheese and baguettes.
When they got back to the cave, the remains of her latest trip to the kingdom were stowed in the picnic basket, pressed up inconspicuously against the wall. The weather being what it was, the cold air of the cave was plenty enough of an icebox to keep the cheese from going bad. Anna had been stealing into town regularly to buy them non-meat food, wearing a different disguise and using a different backstory every time. Luckily, no one seemed to have caught on yet.
Unfortunately, there hadn't been enough bread and cheese left over for them to make a full meal, so Hiccup had had to catch a deer that morning.
Hiccup pulled the body out from under the pelt he had draped over it, and as he set to work putting meat on sticks to cook, Anna started a fire. She looked over to notice that he seemed to be working oddly fast, scooping up the venison and shoving it onto the sticks with an uncharacteristic impatience.
He must be hungrier than I thought. Still, it seemed odd that Hiccup of all people would be eager to dig into a bunch of meat.
As they held their sticks over the fire, she saw him continuing to eye it hungrily, turning the stick with his fingers in the same rushed, sloppy manner he had put the meat on.
Anna fidgeted, working the fingers of her free hand against the cave floor.
"Is everything…"
"Hm?" He looked up from turning his venison, giving her a questioning look.
"Never mind." She shook her head, going back to turning her stick.
He finished in just a few minutes and scooted away. Although Anna couldn't see it, she was fairly certain that the insides of the light brown chunks were still red.
Strange. Hiccup usually liked his meat well-done…sometimes almost burned, in fact. When asked about it, he had said he liked to get any "wild, feral" taste out of it that he could, keep it like something the villagers back at Berk would eat.
And the precise way he did everything didn't leave much room for careless undercooking errors, she would think.
Hiccup was already done making a sandwich and spreading some mayonnaise on it by the time Anna finished roasting her meat. She was starting to crawl over to the basket when a sharp noise made her turn.
Hiccup was devouring his sandwich like he had never seen food before, practically shoving it down his throat as though he was trying to speedily get rid of some piece of unsavory evidence. His fingers seemed to claw at it as he ate, nails scraping through the bread like a wolf tearing apart their prey.
But that wasn't the most disturbing part.
As he was chewing, he was making odd, guttural noises, sounds that no human being should have been able to make. Noises that sounded like they should come from a rabid feral dog, or a bear threatening something trespassing on their territory.
"Hiccup…"
Anna uttered his name almost involuntarily, her voice soft and dismayed.
"What?"
He looked up, green eyes big and cheeks full of food in the same manner as a spring chipmunk. He looked so innocent and childlike that it was nearly impossible to believe that the sounds she had just been hearing had been coming from the same person.
"You were growling…" she breathed.
His face fell, eyes widening with horror. "I…was?"
"Yes."
His entire face flushed. "I, uh…I didn't mean to. I mean, I was pretty hungry, but I didn't know I was doing all that. I just thought I was eating…"
He eyed his sandwich guiltily, and Anna immediately felt bad.
"No, no, it's not a big deal! Keep eating. I don't really care. I probably growl when I'm eating for the first time all day, too," she added, forcing a laugh.
He nodded, but moved the sandwich toward his mouth more slowly, taking cautious bites and chewing for too long. She could see from his pained expression how much he just wanted to continue to scarf it down, but he held back.
Turning her attention away from him, Anna set to work preparing her own sandwich. And she tore open the bread and laid down the cheese and the thick chunks of roasted meat, she felt her body give in involuntary shudder.
Anna had always marveled at how fast Hiccup could go to sleep.
She herself had always had quite a bit of trouble drifting off, sometimes tossing and turning for hours on end and playing a multitude of fantastical, far-fetched scenarios over in her head before sleep finally came. Hiccup, meanwhile, could curl up in his bundle of pelts and blankets and be quietly snoring in a matter of minutes.
It was never loud, obnoxious snoring like the kind that once drifted out of her father's room at night. It was soft and peaceful, and often just rhythmic enough to help Anna herself drift off.
She found herself staring at the cave ceiling, trying to focus on nothing but Hiccup's gentle snores but finding her thoughts racing and darting restlessly around like fish trapped in a bowl. Every time her head seemed to quiet, something new would surface for her to worry about.
What are you going to do when Victoria comes for you? How are you going to tell Elsa about what you're capable of when she gets back? What if Elsa isn't okay with Hiccup living in the castle? What if she doesn't even want him in the kingdom? Will he have to be alone again? What if people still want to kill you after Elsa comes back and tries to protect you? What if people want to kill Hiccup and you can't protect him?
She was jerked from her frenzied thoughts when the steady cycle of snores suddenly broke, going quiet for a few seconds before what sounded like a soft whimper echoed through the cave.
Anna turned onto her side, peering at Hiccup's sleeping form across the last of the dying fire. He seemed to be twitching in his sleep, his face shifting in and out of a grimace and his mouth making a series of noises that sounded like a mixture of snarls and growls.
Anna frowned. What is he dreaming about?
He turned over a few times, the growls and snarls morphing into pained-sounding whimpers and groans. The twitching intensified until his entire body seemed to be trembling.
Feeling a prick of concern, Anna crawled out of her bedding and started making her way around the firepit and over to the side of the sleeping boy. The last burning embers of the fire reflected off of his skin, revealing that it had grown damp with sweat. He was still trembling, lips parting to reveal gritted teeth as he went back and forth between vicious-sounding snarls and pained whines. Anna noticed his fingers were working against the cave floor, fingernails clawing at it so fiercely that she was surprised that they didn't leave gougemarks.
It set her teeth on edge.
He turned over a few more times, fingernails still scratching mercilessly at the cave floor. The trembling dissolved into full-out shaking, and the odd mixture of growls and moans dissolved into what sounded like a soft wailing.
Okay, no question about it now. Whatever he's dreaming about can't be good.
"Hiccup!" She leaned forward, shaking his shoulders as roughly as she could. "Hiccup, wake up!"
He came to in a few seconds, green eyes snapping open and locking on her with such a startling intensity that Anna barely recognized them as his at first. He bared his teeth in another snarl and lifted an arm off the ground, hand rushing toward her as if trying to claw at her.
She caught his wrist firmly in her hand, stopping him. "Hiccup, it's me!" she hissed. Her tone softened. "You were having a nightmare."
He blinked a few times, a look of confusion spreading over his face as he looked around the dark cave and then back to her. "You…you're not…"
He started to sit up, and with his other hand he tentatively reached up and touched her cheek, seeming to check to make sure it was really there. His fingers spread out and rested against her skin, as if trying to keep her from dissolving away under him. Anna felt her cheeks grow hot at the gesture, but forced herself to remain calm for his sake.
"It was just a bad dream," she said gently. "You're safe now."
"You're okay," he choked out finally, eyeing her with such a desperate, haunted look in his eyes that she shifted uncomfortably.
It was her turn to look at him in confusion. "Well, yeah…why wouldn't I be?"
"I thought you were…well, never mind. You're okay."
She carefully let go of his wrist, moving her hand over to rest on the one on her cheek. He sat all the way up and unexpectedly wrapped her in a tight embrace, pulling her so close to him that she nearly felt like her ribs were being crushed.
She would have made a joke about him possibly considering giving her lungs some room to work, but she could tell that whatever nightmare he had had had shaken him up pretty badly.
"It was bad, huh?" she ventured. In response he hugged her tighter. She could still feel his entire body shaking, and it made her stomach twist with worry.
"Do you want to talk about it?" He said nothing, only burying his face deeper in her shoulder.
"You…uh…you don't have to if you don't want to," she added awkwardly after a brief pause. "But you can say what it was if you want. I'll listen. And uh…I'm not going anywhere either. I'll stay right here and give you whatever you need. So like…if you want to hug it out, or if you want to vent or something…well, either is fine. I'm here for you, okay?"
He let out a shaky breath, and Anna let him pull her even closer.
"You can tell me anything," she went on. "Unless you don't want to. Then you don't have to, obviously. And I understand."
It was only a minute or two, but it felt like an eternity before he finally spoke again.
"I was…really hungry. Felt like I was starving to death. You were right there talking to me. And I started turning into a dragon, and I didn't really want to, but I couldn't stop it. I was screaming the whole time. I've…" His voice cracked a little. "I've had involuntary transformations before, but this one…this one was different. Everything was searing and stretching and it was like everything inside of me was twisting into some…completely feral…thing."
He took a shuddering breath before he went on. "And then it was like…everything was red and all I could smell was meat. I started following something, and I didn't recognize that it was you, and then…"
A short, tense silence. "And then?" Anna prompted.
"I…killed you."
She pulled away, eyes widening in alarm. Hiccup leaned back and sat on his knees, eyeing her warily. He seemed to be worried he had let too much slip. Worried that she was going to shove him away, scramble to her feet, and run for her life, leaving him abandoned and alone to hate himself in that dark, miserable cave.
Instead, she took a deep breath, meeting his eyes evenly. She had said she wasn't going anywhere, and she had no intention of going back on her word.
"Everything was red, and all I could smell was meat, and I killed you." His entire face wrinkled in disgust. "And I didn't even realize I was until…"
He fixed his gaze on the floor, not meeting her eyes. "And I changed back and realized and…there was so much blood, Anna…"
Hiccup looked like he was ready to throw up. His eyes flicked up to meet hers again, giving her a gaze that wasn't anything short of terrified.
In that moment, any fear of him that might have been starting to gnaw at the inside of her chest completely shattered. It was clear he was in much more pain over this than she was if the thought of him doing anything to her had shaken him this much. He was an absolute mess.
Anna reached out and rested her hand on his arm.
"Hiccup, listen. It was just a bad dream. You're not like that, okay? I know you would never do anything to hurt me."
"But it wasn't me, Anna." He looked up at her with a haunted expression. "It was something else that just…took over me. And I couldn't fight it. I just turned into this…this monster."
His voice shook as he said it, and Anna squeezed his arm, gazing at him sympathetically.
"Well, that's never going to happen, because you've learned how to control your transformations," she said firmly. "That's not you, and it never will be. You're not a monster. You're just an unlucky kid who had a little bit of trouble finding his way in the world. But look how far you've come already!" She smiled proudly, patting his chest a couple times. "You're able to make wings come out of your back at will—which is pretty damn cool, you know—and you've figured out enough about controlling your own powers to help teach me how to handle mine!"
"That's just it, though!" He looked at her pleadingly. "I haven't learned how to control my transformations. Not all the way. I've just gotten a bit better. I can still lose control…"
"Yes, you've gotten better," Anna reminded him. "You're not just going to suddenly turn around and get worse. You can only improve from here, right? And it already seems like you have a pretty good handle on everything."
He sighed. "It's not that easy. I've tried to get a handle on what I can, but…I don't even know what it is I am, really. Or what I'm turning into."
His voice cracked at the end, and he hunched over as if he had been physically hit.
She touched her hand to his shoulder. "You're not turning into anything," she said softly. "You're just you. Nothing you've ever done has made me feel unsafe. Whatever you saw was your imagination trying to scare you, and…none of that was real. And it won't be."
"No, no, I don't know!" he said frantically. He sat up, reaching out and grabbing her shoulders so tightly that it hurt. "I don't know what could happen to me. And if I ever hurt you Anna, I…"
He trailed off, and Anna noticed that his green eyes were pooling with tears.
"I couldn't live with myself!" he choked out. "Thinking of something happening to you because of me, I…I can't…"
He held her shoulders even tighter, if that was possible.
"You're the only real friend I've ever had, Anna."
Am I really? The terrified, desperate look in his eyes confirmed it, and it broke her heart.
Anna pulled him in close again, and his body started to heave with soft sobs. She was reminded of the evening in the cave what seemed like an eternity ago, when he had told her about the villagers of Berk driving him out. But this time around, all the fear and anguish dulled by time was more real…more immediate.
"Hey, shhhh," she whispered. "Shhhh, everything's going to be all right."
"You've done so much for me, you've tried so hard to help me, and if you ever got hurt because of me, I'd just…" He choked on the words, unable to even finish.
Her hands started to work through his hair. "That's not going to happen, because you're not going to get like that," she told him firmly. "And if something starts to happen—if you start losing control of your powers and you're really scared you'll do something—then we'll figure something out. I'll find a way to help you."
She wanted to do anything—hug him, hold him, kiss him, hold his face in her hands—anything to convince him he wasn't some sort of monster. Anything to convince him that he was just as cared about as anyone else.
But how am I supposed to save him from himself?
She settled for just holding him for a while, running her fingers through his hair and trying to comfort him. The quiet sobs persisted, but eventually started to slow down and become more infrequent.
"No no no no, it's okay. You're okay. You're okay," Anna murmured, over and over again.
After a while, Hiccup pulled away and she grabbed his shoulders again, forcing him to meet her eyes.
"You're going to be fine," she said.
At last, Hiccup seemed to have calmed down. He took a deep breath.
"Thanks for waking me up," he said. "Sorry about all that."
Anna shook her head. "Don't apologize! You didn't do anything wrong."
"Well, I didn't mean to freak you out. I am scared, but you know I'm going to try really hard to never let anything like that happen."
"Of course I know. Anyway, I was the one who told you you could tell me about it. Kind of my own fault if I'm freaked out." She forced an uneasy laugh.
Anna glanced briefly at his bedding, wondering if another human sleeping next to him and a little bit of physical affection would help him sleep any better. She decided against asking, worrying that she would be crossing some sort of line.
"Are you…are you going to be okay?" she settled for instead.
He shrugged. "Yeah, yeah, I'll be fine. Thank you, though."
His eyes flicked out to the forest, where the starry sky was still spread out above the dark outlines of the trees.
"I guess I should try to go back to sleep," he said.
"Right, right, of course." Anna started to scoot away. "Hey, um…" She bit her lip nervously. "If you have any more bad dreams, come wake me up, okay? I want to help."
"Yeah, will do!" He started to ease back into his pile of pelts and blankets, giving her an encouraging grin and a thumbs up as he did so. "Er…thanks again."
"It's no problem," she said, giving his arm one last comforting touch before making her way back to her own blankets. Even as she slid into her bed, she found herself casting concerned glances over at him, staying alert for any more sounds of distress echoing through the cave.
Hello again! Y'all ready to be SAD?
Hey, I DID warn you. Shit's gonna get REAL dark, my friends. Just in time for Halloween! :D
Now, now, I know what you're thinking. "Why can Anna reabsorb her fire? That's such a weird, random addition to the way her powers work?" And the honest truth is that like…I needed to nerf her a bit? Like having a power where you can shoot out fire with no way to actually…put it out is gonna lead down to everything around you getting burned down pretty fast, so I decided to give Anna a way to at least lessen the damage it causes a little bit. I mean, the thing with Elsa's power is that snow and ice DO eventually melt without totally destroying whatever they land on, and in any case Elsa ended up being able to condense the entirety of the "winter" and disperse it at the end of Frozen in a way you really couldn't with fire—at least not without raining a bunch of toxic ash and cinders down on everything after the whole kingdom has already gone up in flames anyway. So I know there isn't quite a "flame re-absorption" equivalent in Elsa's powerset, but this was mainly just by feeble attempt to equalize their powersets a little more and come up with another way for Anna to actually have hope of controlling what would otherwise be like…a ridiculously over-the-top destructive power lol
Don't mind me, just casually further feeding my headcanon that Hiccup is one of the only damn people who would successfully be able to calm Anna down when she's freaking out about something XD Also, smooth bastard…using reassuring your crush about her powers as an excuse to hold her hand? We allllll see what you're up to, Hiccup!
I've always headcanoned that Anna struggles with insomnia (like me!) and that's why she finds it so hard to get up in the morning. Mine is usually anxiety-based (i.e. can't relax enough to drift off to sleep because you start worrying and stressing about everything possible), so I decided to make that the case with Anna as well. To be fair, she does in fact have quite a bit to reasonably worry about XD
Ah, no fanfic would be complete without the "Half of OTP comforting the other half after a really bad nightmare" bit! Sorry, I had to. Hey, when I write angst, I go all the way—go big or go home! Also some spooky foreshadowing that we…definitely haven't seen the worst of Hiccup's—er, condition yet. Let's just say he wasn't fucking around when he told Anna it was dangerous to be around him.
Fun fact: This scene was partially inspired by this one scene in The Shining where Jack Torrance (before he goes crazy obviously) has a nightmare about killing his wife and kid and he breaks down crying telling his wife about it and she just holds him and comforts him and man, it was lowkey super sweet and poignant. Makes you almost wish Jack isn't gonna go totally batshit and murder-happy later on cuz the dude clearly did seem to care about his family somewhat before he went completely bonkers and such.
I feel bad for how many times I'm going to make both Hiccup and Anna cry throughout this fanfic XD IT'S TRAUMA TIME, HOORAY!
Also yes they are both very much into each other at this point and yes they are absolutely in denial about it because "oh, they'd never like me back, right?" and yes this is both hilarious and frustrating and yes this will go on for a little while longer yet.
I've had some reviews asking when Elsa's going to come back and what she's going to think about all this. Don't worry, all in due time! I'm definitely planning on bringing Elsa back into the story eventually, but not for a few more chapters. Like I mentioned earlier, she'll be a major player later on, but for now I wanted the focus to be mainly on Hiccup and Anna and their relationship. Also Victoria, and what schemes she's concocting in Elsa's absence!
Also this is yet another plea to go follow my new tumblr, Hiccanna-Tidbits, for more Hiccanna content! I make mostly moodboards but I'm going to be posting some headcanons and OTP questionaires for Hiccanna as well. I'm even going to be making a moodboard to go with this story to celebrate its 1-year anniversary next month! (Wow…has it been that long already? Wack)
Also ALSO if you're regularly following this, please please please leave me reviews to tell me what you think! Please, I'm begging you guys! D: Like I haven't gotten many for the last couple chapters, and I just want to make sure people are still invested. I have to put a lot of time and work into updating once a month, and I want to make sure that people actually DO still care. If people are more "meh" on it now, I might update a little less frequently so I have more time to work on my other Hiccanna projects. Let me know!
See y'all next month!