I'm back!

Sorry guys, I know I disappeared there for a bit, finals week sucked. But I have returned! I may not be able to post quite as often as before just because I am also now a writer for a request submission blog for HTTYD, but I promise I won't forget about you guys!

I've got more Astrid mommy time in the words right now, but until then, here is actually my first submission for the request blog I mentioned. The blog name is The Dragon Central and you can find it on Tumblr. I have a link in my bio if anyone wants to check it out!

This was requested by Tumblr user spoonofsurrender, and the request was "Daddy, why do you only have one leg when Mommy has two?" Again, this isn't posted on my personal Tumblr blog like my other stories are, as this was written specifically for The Dragon Central. But I also wanted to share it here because I wrote it with the Haddock family dynamic I had created here in mind. Hope you enjoy and see you soon!

Hiccup and Astrid: around 28 years old; Zephyr: 5 years old; Nuffink: 1 year old

"Daddy, why do you only have one leg when Mommy has two?"

Hiccup looked up from the vegetables he was chopping into the curious eyes of his daughter across from him. A piece of parchment with a crude drawing of sheep in a pasture lay forgotten in front of her. However, the charcoal remained in her hand as she absentmindedly fiddled with it, waiting patiently for her father's response.

Hiccup glanced down at his prosthetic and then back to his daughter. "I have two legs! See?" he said, stepping around the table and dancing in a small circle.

Zephyr laughed. "No, Daddy! How come Mommy has two normal legs and you have a metal one!"

"Well, I'd hardly call your mother's legs normal," he joked, earning him a punch in the arm from his wife. She scooped up some of the vegetables and playfully glared at him, crossing the room to the firepit as Hiccup massaged his sore arm.

"Daddy," Zephyr insisted through giggles. "Uncle Tuffie said a troll took it 'acuz you wouldn't give him a buckle off your s'irt. Is that true?"

Astrid snorted over by the firepit, and Hiccup rolled his eyes. "You're absolutely right Zephyr," Astrid said before Hiccup could say a word. "Your Daddy loves his shirt buckles so much that he let a troll take his leg instead of losing one."

"Astrid! Don't feed into this!"

Astrid threw her head back and laughed, and Zephyr quickly followed with more of her signature giggles. Baby Nuffink screeched in delight from his infant chair and clapped his hands together.

"Nuffink! Not you too!" Hiccup cried. The baby only cried out again, elated by the bright and joyful smile on his father's face.

With the family settled back down and Zephyr's attention back on her drawing, he hoped the subject had been forgotten. But Zephyr was stubborn. "Daddy, are you really not gonna tell me the story?" she asked as she continued drawing the fluff on her sheep.

Hiccup glanced to Astrid in desperation, but she only offered a shrug and a devious smile. An obvious "you're on your own" gesture. And so Hiccup sighed, deciding how to water down the story for his toddler. "You really want to hear this story, huh?" he said, sitting in a chair beside Zephyr.

Zephyr looked up immediately, eyes bright with wonder and lips slightly ajar. She nodded fervently and dropped her charcoal as she turned in her chair to fully face her father. He chuckled as warmth flooded his chest; he loved nothing more than seeing his children so happy and interested, no matter what it was that sparked their curiosity.

So he crossed his arms on the table and leaned towards his expectant daughter. "Did I ever tell you about Old Berk? Before the dragons lived with us?" Zephyr shook her head. "Well, remember, when your mom and I were kids we didn't live where we live now. We lived on a whole other island far away from here. But you see, when we lived there, dragons would come and try to steal our sheep and our fish and our food for themselves."

"The dragons?" Zephyr whispered, voice dripping with wonder and smile crossing her face as she remembered dragons from other stories her parents told. They were always her favorite stories, and she wondered what they had to do with her father's missing leg.

"The dragons," Hiccup repeated. "All kinds of dragons of all different sizes, not just the ones like Mommy and Daddy's dragons. And the brave Vikings like your mom and all your aunt and uncles helped fight those dragons."

Zephyr's brows pinched together. "Fight them? But Daddy, I thought the dragons were our friends?"

"They are, sweetheart," he said, overjoyed his daughter already understood the important fact from previous stories of Toothless and Stormfly. "But that wasn't until after. See, we were mad at the dragons because we didn't know why they kept attacking us and stealing our food.

"Like when Baby Nuff grabs my food off my plate?" she asked innocently.

Hiccup chuckled. "Yep, just like that. So, we fought back. But then Daddy met Toothless and things got a little... Weird." Zephyr was quiet now, fully enveloped in the story, so Hiccup continued. "I didn't want to tell anyone because I didn't want them to find Toothless and hurt him, so I tried to learn from him instead. Well then one day your Mommy followed me into the forest because she was mad I kept beating her in Dragon Training-"

"Cheating was more like it," Astrid said as she stirred the contents of the pot over the fire.

Hiccup smiled her direction but continued. "-and she wanted to know how I did it. And that's when Mommy met Toothless."

Astrid had joined her family around the table now, and she set her hands on her husband's shoulders, leaning in towards her daughter as well. "And then, your Daddy and Toothless kidnapped me!"

"Now, now, hold on!" Hiccup said, holding up his hands. Zephyr giggled and reached up towards her mother. Astrid lifted the girl into her arms and sat in her daughter's chair, perching Zephyr on her lap and wrapping her arms around her. She kissed her hair as Hiccup continued his defense. "We did not kidnap her, okay, we simply took her on a flight around Old Berk and the sea stacks and whatnot."

"Unwillingly," Astrid pointed out with a smile.

Hiccup rolled his eyes. "You were going to run back to the village to tell everybody!"

"You don't know that," she teased. Zephyr was thoroughly enjoying the banter, looking back and forth between her parents.

Hiccup sighed and gave in. "Alright, fine, maybe we sort of, indirectly... Kidnapped your mother." Zephyr giggled, sending a smile to her father's face as he continued. "But she loved that flight."

"I did," she softly admitted with a smile.

The couple glanced lovingly at each other, remembering a much simpler time, before continuing the story. "But while we were flying on Toothless, he took a detour to Dragon Island."

Astrid rested her chin on her daughter's head, knowing Zephyr was once again engulfed in the tale when she didn't interject with questions or comments. Astrid always loved watching Hiccup tell stories to the children. He was always so animated when he talked about anything he was excited about, and it made him a natural storyteller. Even Baby Nuffink was intrigued by his father's movements and voice despite lacking an understanding of his words.

"He flew us down into the depths of a big, big mountain and hid. We watched all kinds of dragons flying down into the cave and dropping heaps of food into a massive pit in the middle." Hiccup dropped his voice to a whisper and Astrid could feel Zephyr leaning in towards her father ever so slightly. "And then one little dragon dropped nothing more than a small fish into the pit, and that's when we saw it. The Red Death."

Zephyr gasped, and Hiccup glanced at Astrid just for a moment as the two shared a smile. But then Hiccup dove right back into storytelling, standing to better animate his story and voice returning full force.

"It rose from the depths of the pit and snapped at the dragons trying to escape. I could've sworn it was as big as the mountain itself! And it almost got us, but Toothless flew us out and right back to Berk. Now, when Grandpa Stoic found out, oh boy, was he angry. He had been searching for Dragon Island for years, and now he knew how to find it. They strapped Toothless down on a boat and sailed off with the biggest army they could gather for Dragon Island."

"Oh no," Zephyr whispered, hands covering her mouth and blue eyes open wide.

"Oh no is right," Hiccup said.

"But," Astrid jumped in, "we had a secret weapon."

Zephyr spun around to face her mother. "What was that, Mommy?"

"We had Daddy."

Hiccup's hands slowly dropped as Astrid's favorite shy half-smile joined the blush in his face. She overtook the story, knowing he was too humble to tell the next part right on his own.

"Daddy taught me and your aunt and uncles how to train dragons in a matter of minutes. Then he hopped on Stormfly with me and lead the Dragon Riders on our very first mission: saving the entirety of Berk. Grandpa Stoic helped him save Toothless, and then Daddy and his dragon fought the Red Death one on one."

"Woah..." Zephyr's mouth was open wide in astonishment now as she looked back to her father. "Daddy, what did you do?!"

Hiccup took the story back. "We got the Red Death to follow us high up into the sky. And then just when we had it mad enough, we dove back down towards the ground. And then we waited. We waited for it to fire at us-"

"But they were running out of time," Astrid jumped back in. "Toothless's tail had caught fire and it made it harder to fly with one side gone."

"And then the Red Death opened its jaws to blast us, but Toothless blasted it first. He crashed to the ground in a ball of flame!" For a moment, Hiccup worried he had gone a little too far with the details in his excitment, but the intrigued and delighted look on his daughter's face told him otherwise. "Toothless tried to fly out of danger, but as he flew along the body of the Red Death, it's giant tail came crashing down towards us. With Toothless's tail gone, he couldn't change direction to fly out of the way. And so it hit us."

Zephyr gasped again. "No, Daddy! What happened?!"

Hiccup shrugged. "I don't remember, sweetheart. Ask your mother."

Hiccup turned to tend to dinner and Nuffink as Zephyr spun around in Astrid's lap, pleading with her mother to continue the story. Astrid took a deep breath. "Daddy let go of Toothless when he was knocked out and started to fall back towards the ground. Toothless, though, was still awake. And he didn't hesitate for a moment. He dove to catch up with Daddy, reaching out his paws and trying so hard to catch him. And then the flames swallowed them both."

Zephyr quietly exhaled as tears brimmed her eyes.

Astrid leaned in close, touching her forehead to her daughter's. "But then when the smoke faded away, we saw Toothless laying in a heap on the ground. And as he gently unfolded his wings, we saw Daddy carefully folded in his paws. He did it. He saved Daddy."

"Or most of me, as Grandpa Gobber would say," Hiccup added, holding Nuffink and stirring the stew.

Astrid smiled at him before turning back to her daughter. "And that's how Daddy lost his leg."

Zephyr was quiet for a moment. Hiccup and Astrid watched her carefully, waiting for a reaction to know what she was thinking. Eventually, she nodded and said "That's a lot better than a dumb troll."

Hiccup and Astrid both laughed, relieved they didn't scare their little girl. Hiccup sat Nuffink back in his chair so he could scoop the stew into bowls. "I'm glad you think so, sweetheart."

"Daddy's a pretty amazing hero, huh?" Astrid asked, setting Zephyr back in her chair so she could gather the rest of dinner.

"Yes yes yes!" Zephyr reached up to her father as he set the bowls on the table. He leaned over to scoop her up in a big hug, kissing her check before setting her back down. "Ah, I don't know about that." He looked up to his son, playfully pointing a finger at him. "And now you've already heard this story, so it's not my fault if you don't remember it. Understood?"

Nuffink flung his arms up and down, hitting the table in front of him twice before freezing with his hands in the air. He dropped them again and threw his spoon across the table before looking back up to Hiccup and laughing, a big, open smile overtaking his face.

Hiccup chuckled and shook his head. Zephyr's eyebrows scrunched together, focus still trained on her brother. "I don't think he's gonna remember that," she said.

"Well, maybe you can tell him the story next time," he said, ruffling her hair.

Zephyr smiled up at her father. "Nuh-uh. Nobody tells stories good like you, Daddy."

"Hey now, I tell some pretty good stories," Astrid said, juggling three plates of yak chops as she joined her family at the table.

Zephyr rolled her eyes. "Yeah, about Daddy."

"Not true! I tell other stories!" she insisted, ruffling her daughter's hair as well. Zephyr smiled but returned to her drawing. "Come on, what was the last story I told you?"

"How Daddy always let Mommy win the Dragon Races," she said matter-of-factly, focus never leaving the parchment in front of her.

Astrid thought for a moment. "Okay, fine. What about the one before that?"

"How Daddy almost got ran over by a yak."

Hiccup's face turned redder than his shirt. He forgot about that one. Astrid chuckled, remembering the story now as well. "Alright, alright, alright, but the one before that-"

"How Daddy-"

"Oh Thor, okay, you made your point," Astrid interjected, leaning over to kiss her daughter's cheek as she giggled. Zephyr loved being right.

Hiccup smiled as he took in the sight of his little family enjoying their dinner, laughing and playing with each other. They'd come a long way since the days of the Red Death, but he wouldn't take any of it back for fear that it would alter this moment right here.

Not even his left leg.