Dragon Treasure, a DreamWorks' How to Train Your Dragon fanfic by Raberba girl
Chapter 4 - Interview, part 1 (rough draft)
A/N: This is Eret Senior, NOT Junior.
WARNING for references to physical and sexual child abuse in this two-part chapter.
o.o.o
Stoick had a lot to do before he went to bed. In addition to working on case-related paperwork and coordinating multiple investigations, he also had to make arrangements with a therapist and a tutor for Hiccup who could make home visits and would be willing to work around the dragon. He also had to set up regular food deliveries for Toothless, look up how to obtain a permit for housing a dangerous exotic animal in his home, and warn his personal assistant, housekeeper, and groundskeeper about Toothless before they showed up for work in the morning.
The assistant and the groundskeeper both refused to set foot on his property until the dragon was gone. Stoick informed Stefani that she could work long-distance, and told Armando that he could freelance elsewhere for as long as Toothless remained in Stoick's care.
Marta was the only one who arrived as usual the next morning. She cringed and shivered at the stove as Toothless, ignoring her, devoured his breakfast at the opposite end of the kitchen. Hiccup sat in the chair closest to his dragon, working through a plate of eggs and toast at a decreasing pace, and Stoick distractedly ate his own breakfast as he skimmed through piles of papers. He looked up when he noticed that the boys had finished eating and were casually wrestling on the kitchen floor.
"Hiccup, go brush your teeth," Stoick said.
Hiccup stared at him. "I just brushed my teeth last night. You want me to do it again?"
Stoick closed his eyes briefly. "You're supposed to brush your teeth at least twice a day." A thought occurred to him. "Have you ever been to a dentist?"
"No..."
"Come here, please." Then, as Hiccup trudged toward him very slowly and reluctantly, "I'm not going to hurt you, I just want to look at your teeth for a minute. I won't even touch you. Will you please open your mouth?"
Hiccup obeyed uneasily, one hand clutching Toothless.
Stoick squinted at the boy's teeth. "Not as bad as I was afraid of... How often did you brush your teeth at the circus?"
"Most days. Bludvist said I had to brush them so they wouldn't rot. My teeth have to look nice when I smile."
"...When you smiled for the customers, you mean?"
"Yeah. But you said- Are we going to be performing again after all?"
Stoick's fists clenched. "No, Hiccup. You need to brush your teeth twice a day so that they'll be healthy. For your own health, not to suit anyone else's needs." He sighed. "We need to get you to a dentist at some point, but..." He glanced at Toothless. A dentist visit would have to wait until the boy and the dragon could tolerate being separate from one another for long enough. "Please just go brush your teeth, Hiccup."
Hiccup nodded and left, the dragon at his side.
As soon as they were gone, Marta burst out, "What is this?! This boy, he plays with dragon like it is pet, you let dragon claw at him and lick him, what is this?! What is this, Mr. Vast?!"
"It's all right, Marta," Stoick said soothingly. "At this point, it would do more harm than good to tear him away from the dragon."
Since Stoick was unable to leave Hiccup in anyone else's care under the current circumstances, he was going to have to work from home for an indefinite period of time. He moved the essentials from his office to the living room so that he would be able to keep a better eye on the boys.
After Hiccup had finished being fed, brushed, dressed, and combed, he was called back into the living room. Stoick eyed him critically. "You're going to need a haircut at some point, too."
"Y...You mean, cut my hair?"
He looked so nervous at the prospect that Stoick said soothingly, "It's not urgent, we can wait. But your hair is a bit long and very, er, uneven. How would you feel about Marta cutting your hair?"
"It's not urgent?" Hiccup said desperately, clutching Toothless. "C-Can we wait? I...I like my hair this way, it-"
"We don't have to cut your hair if you don't want to," Stoick assured him. "There are more important things to be done first." He took a deep breath. "Sit down, Hiccup. Anywhere you like- Er, but Toothless stays on the floor, please."
Hiccup settled on the floor next to his dragon, leaning back against the couch.
Stoick cleared his throat. "Hiccup, I need to interview you. I'm going to have to ask you some very personal questions that you might not want to answer. And if I have your permission, I'd like to film this interview. How do you feel about all this?"
Hiccup said nothing, though he clutched at Toothless for reassurance. The dragon licked him briefly and exhaled into his hair.
"This is very important, Hiccup. Drago Bludvist and Eret Hunter and their men are guilty of many crimes. They subjected you and the other children to abuse, neglect, and inappropriate risk. We want to prosecute them for these crimes, but we need to hear from each of you directly about what you experienced while you were at that circus, and any other information that might help us investigate and build our case. Will you help us, Hiccup? Will you answer my questions as honestly as possible?"
"...Do I have to answer all of them?" Hiccup asked in a low voice.
"At least try. I know this is going to be very difficult for you, and you will probably be asked these same questions many times, by all sorts of different people. At least listen to my questions, and answer them if you're able to. All right, Hiccup?"
"I'll try."
"Good." Stoick got permission from Hiccup to start filming the interview. "Now, then. To start off with, what is your real name?"
The boy gave him a strange look. "I told you. My name is Hiccup."
"...Yes, you've given your name as 'Hiccup,' but surely that's not your real name. What were you called before you came to the circus?"
Hiccup stared at him, wide-eyed.
Stoick drew in a breath, his heart aching. "Hiccup, do you remember your real name?"
"My...my name is Hiccup," Hiccup said, sounding anxious and uncertain.
"All right. All right, well, we'll move on to the next question for now. How old are you?"
"I don't know."
"How old do you think you are?"
"I don't know... Twenty, I think."
"If I were to guess, I'd say you look about twelve."
"Oh...maybe I'm twelve." He said it as if he genuinely had no idea how old he was, and was simply going along with whatever Stoick said.
"How old were you when you came to the circus?"
"I don't know."
"If you were to guess, how old do you think you might have been?"
"I don't know...I was little."
"Were you old enough to walk?"
"Yes."
"Could you talk?"
"Y...Yes. Yeah, I could talk some."
"Good. Do you remember anything about the date when you arrived? Even just part of the date, or perhaps a holiday?"
"It was Christmas...I remember that, it was Christmas..."
President Hiiro Yui had been assassinated around Christmas eight years ago, when Hiccup would have been a young child. "Do you remember anyone talking about an assassination when you first came to the circus?" Stoick tried.
"Yeah. That guy, Hero Yooey, he was on TV a lot. They stopped talking about him after a while, though."
"News stories come and go, even about something as important as an assassination. You're sure they were talking about President Yui on TV at the circus, not wherever you came from before?"
Hiccup paused a moment, as if something unexpected had occurred to him. Then he lightly knocked his fist against his own head and said, "There was a TV at the circus. It played all the time, all day and night most of the time, with people talking and talking and talking on it, or singing and stuff. I know it was that TV that talked about Hiiro Yui being assassinated."
If Hiccup was twelve now, and if he really had arrived at the circus around the time of the Yui assassination, that would mean the boy had been only four years old then. "Can you tell me where you lived before you came to the circus?"
Hiccup didn't answer for a long time. Toothless whined in concern and nosed at him.
"Do you remember your parents, Hiccup?" Stoick asked gently.
"...There was a woman," Hiccup finally whispered. "She...she was..."
"Was she your mother?"
"Yes...I think so- I hate her," Hiccup suddenly burst out. "I hate her, I hope she's dead."
"...What do you remember about her?" Stoick finally said.
"I don't want to think about her," Hiccup snapped. "Ask me something different."
"All right... Well, I'm trying to determine how and when you came to the circus. Is there anything you can tell me that might be a clue?"
"I was little...Toothless was little, he was just a baby..." Hiccup shivered.
"Can you tell me how you first met Toothless?" Stoick thought that Hiccup might be more inclined to talk about his beloved dragon, but the boy continued to clam up.
"Toothless...h-he was little, he was a baby- We're friends. We're friends and I love him and he loves me and keeps me safe, he protects me!"
"All right, all right, Hiccup, yes, I know. I can see how much you care about each other."
"He was just a baby," Hiccup whimpered. "He didn't hurt me."
"Have you always been his trainer, or did someone else work with him before you did?" Stoick asked, trying to steer the line of questioning away from whatever was upsetting Hiccup.
"He...me, it was...always the two of us...the two of us, they can't take us away from each other..."
"Has anyone else trained Toothless?"
"No."
"How did you learn to train him using treats and commands?"
"Bludvist never listened, I tried to tell him that Toothless will do whatever you want if he loves you, but he was always hitting me and hitting me, I hate him so much there was nothing I could do, sometimes he'd be mad enough to whip Toothless but it's not fair it's not right to beat Toothless because he never does anything wrong-!"
"Hiccup! Hiccup! Stop, calm down, lad. I don't understand what you're saying."
Hiccup was breathing hard, his hands clenched into fists, looking angry and distant.
"Hiccup, we were watching the circus for a few days. We saw you go into the dressing rooms right before a performance, you came out in that virgin sacrifice getup. We also saw you leave sometimes to work with Toothless in the ring. But you spent the rest of the time in Toothless's cage, even sleeping and eating with him. Was that typical?"
"Was that...what?"
"Normal. Was that normal, for you to spend so much time in the dragon's cage?"
"Yeah...Toothless and I stay together."
"...All right, now please describe a typical day. When you weren't performing, what did you do? What time did you wake up, what did you eat?"
Hiccup explained how he and Toothless would usually sleep until they were woken by either bright sunlight or by a bucket of fish being thrown into the cage. Toothless would eat the fish raw; Hiccup would usually have Toothless burn his share of the fish before he ate it.
"Did you ever go to a doctor, Hiccup?"
"I don't really... A doctor? Going to- What?"
Stoick's heart ached. "You said that sometimes you didn't feel well, but were you ever seriously ill, or badly injured?"
"A few times."
"Who took care of you?"
"Toothless mostly."
"I mean, did any human being ever take care of you when you were sick or injured?"
"A few times, I guess... Whenever I started throwing up too much or if I couldn't move because I was too hot and my stomach hurt, sometimes they told me to swallow these little 'pill' things. I didn't want to, they tasted so nasty, but they said they'd beat Toothless if I didn't, and I guess sometimes the nasty things made me feel better. Sometimes. A few times they made it worse.
"Or there was a man sometimes - different men, they kept changing, Bludvist and Hunter would pay them to fix people if they couldn't work. That's a doctor, right? Or, they wouldn't always fix them, sometimes they'd make things worse... It happened once with Sophia, and once with Ruby."
"Who is Sophia?"
"One of the harem women. She's been gone for a while."
"I see..."
"They screamed and screamed so much, trying to get everyone to go away, but no one listened to them and they made them fall asleep. I don't know what they did to them when they were asleep, but afterward they cried so much and wouldn't work until Hunter made them. When it happened to Ruby, Seth was really upset, too. He told me they took her baby away, but I never saw a baby."
"Those would have been forced abortions," Stoick said softly. "Ruby told us about hers; I didn't realize it had happened to one of the women as well." He sighed heavily. "This is your interview, though, so we should be talking about you."
"I don't want to talk about me," Hiccup grumbled.
"Do you need to take a break?"
"Noooooo," Hiccup said, sounding both annoyed and resigned. "I want a break forever, but you won't give me a break forever, only for a tiny bit, so I don't want one. I want to get this over with."
"All right. You said a doctor would tend to you if you were too sick to work, right?"
"Yeah..."
"Did Toothless let them approach you?"
Hiccup made a face and started to have trouble breathing, though Toothless managed to calm him down before the attack got too bad.
"Can you tell me, Hiccup?" Stoick asked gently.
"They'd...they'd tranq Toothless first, because he'd snarl at them and try to protect me, but at least they wouldn't take me away from him...they'd come in the cage and touch me with things and make me eat things. Sometimes I got better right afterward; other times it took a long time.
"One time- It was when Tiana tore up my arm...she's one of the tigers we had. Toothless had licked it clean and usually he can make it stop hurting, but this time it still hurt inside my arm, and then that man-" Tears started to slip down his face as he spoke. "They tranqed Toothless and came in the cage and tied me to the bars so I couldn't fight back anymore. It was awful. I tried to bite them, so they hit me and put a rope around my neck; it choked me if I tried to move my head. He hurt me, he poured this stuff on my arm that stung, and then he hurt my arm so bad and wrapped it up so I could barely move it. Bludvist wouldn't let me take the wrapping off for weeks, I had to do a lot of stuff with just one arm."
"Which arm was it?"
"This one."
"That's the one that was fractured. That might have been the time you fractured your arm; he was probably setting the bone so it would heal straight."
"Oh...really?"
"Probably. But they should never have tied you down, Hiccup. They should have explained things to you and been gentle with you," Stoick said through gritted teeth, wishing he could literally get his hands on all the people who had hurt or frightened these children, wishing he lived in some more savage time where he wouldn't be prosecuted for punishing them the way they deserved. He tried his best to inject more clinical detachment into his voice as he changed the subject. "What about your diet, Hiccup? Did you ever eat anything besides fish?"
"Sometimes. Sometimes if they had leftover food, they'd throw it in at me; or if I got sick, they'd make me eat different things until I got better. Sometimes they'd give me things if I made Toothless do tricks for them. Sometimes they lied and just walked away without giving me anything, but sometimes they'd give me what they promised. Sometimes, if Seth was sad or mad or bored and he came to talk to me for a long time, he'd give me something to eat. Or if there was anything I wanted from the kitchen, Seth would get it for me if I paid him."
"Paid him? What did you pay him with?"
"Like, he'd tell me or Toothless to do something so he could take a picture, or he said that when he gave the signal, I should make Toothless threaten someone when they walked by, or stuff like that. There wasn't much I could do to pay for things, but I think sometimes he did things just because he liked me."
Hiccup was quiet a moment. "You know, a week or two before you guys came, it was real late when everyone was asleep. I woke up because Seth had stolen the keys again so he could come into the cage. He went straight for Toothless and started crying...he's done that a couple of times before, too, like he thinks Toothless will comfort him the way he comforts me." Hiccup paused. "Well, Toothless does comfort him, but only because he feels sorry for him. When that happens, I go lay on Seth's other side so he'll feel better and go away. We did that that night." Hiccup paused again, thinking. "We never talked. He never said anything, so I didn't say anything either, but the next day he'd be better and he'd come bring a treat for Toothless. That's like being paid, right? Even if you don't have money, you can still pay for things or get paid for doing things, right?"
They talked for a while, and it was a few minutes before Stoick realized that he'd gotten distracted away from his actual purpose. He cleared his throat and resumed the interview, asking about Drago Bludvist. Hiccup replied that on most days, he and Toothless would get dragged out of their cage for training with the man.
"Did he hit you, Hiccup?" Stoick asked, already knowing the answer.
"Yes."
"What did he hit you with?"
"A stick. Sometimes a whip. He'd hit me if I made a mistake or said something he didn't like." Hiccup's fists were clenched again. "It wasn't fair! It wasn't fair, he hit me when I made him mad but he'd hit me if Toothless made him mad, too. He knew he could get Toothless to do whatever he wanted if he punished me instead, but I hated it HATED it when he'd hit me even when Toothless was good, Toothless would see him hurting me and it would hurt him too but he didn't know what to do because he hadn't done anything wrong, and I couldn't explain to him and he'd cry and wonder what he did wrong and I didn't know how to tell him, I didn't know how to tell him that it's not his fault-!"
"Sshh, Hiccup, sshh. It's all right, you're safe now, you and Toothless are safe."
Hiccup was sobbing into Toothless's neck as the dragon nuzzled him and crooned to him. Stoick moved close to lay a hand on the boy's head, but Hiccup screamed at him to stay away.
"All right! All right, Hiccup, I won't touch you. I think it's time to take a break." Stoick called for Marta to bring snacks. She actually had some already prepared, and was standing at the threshold watching the suffering boy with a heartbroken look on her face, but she wouldn't go near the dragon. Stoick brought the food to Hiccup instead.
Hiccup nibbled at a cookie and Toothless wolfed down about five in one gulp before Stoick managed to yank the plate away.
"Is sugar bad for dragons?!" Stoick exclaimed, worried about an endangered animal falling ill or dying while under his care, due to being fed poison. "Hiccup, will sugar make him sick?!"
"No," Hiccup mumbled. He sat up. "No more sugar," he ordered sternly. "No cranky and sleepy for you, and you know what it does to your fire. No sweets, Toothless."
The dragon whined at him, then laid his head back in Hiccup's lap.
"Hiccup?" Stoick finally ventured. "There are some more questions I need to ask you."
Hiccup stiffened.
"Do you think you'll be able to keep going, maybe this afternoon if not now? Or do you want to wait until tomorrow?"
"Wh...What questions?! Tell me what your questions are and I'll decide if I'll answer them!"
"Just two more things for now. One, were you ever hurt while you were working with Toothless-"
"NO! Toothless would never hurt me, NEVER!"
"Maybe...maybe not on purpose, Hiccup, but were there ever any accidents? Did he ever-?"
Hiccup seized the ceramic cookie plate and flung it at Stoick. The man dodged, and the plate hit a window with a loud bang, leaving a crack in the glass. Man, boy, and dragon all stared at the damaged window and broken plate for a minute. Then Hiccup leaped to his feet and ran.
"Hiccup!" Stoick shouted. He chased after them, wondering why they fled into the bathroom. Hiccup tried to slam the door shut, but Stoick managed to catch it before it could close.
"Toothless, Guard Me!" Hiccup screamed. "Guard Me!" Toothless immediately planted himself in front of the boy and snarled, wings spread as far as they had room for.
Stoick froze and raised his hands. "Hiccup," he said in a very quiet voice, "Hiccup, I'm not going to hurt you. Please call him off."
"I didn't mean to," Hiccup said shrilly. "I'm sorry, the window, I, I, please don't punish me where Toothless can see. Please, I'll tell him to stay in here and you can punish me outside, please don't let him see-"
"Hiccup, stop," Stoick ordered. Toothless heard in Stoick's voice the anger at Hiccup's abusers, and mistook it for anger at Hiccup. The dragon roared and feinted a lunge, clearly warning Stoick to back off. "Ssshh ssshh ssshh, no, calm down, dragon. Hiccup, please call him off-"
Hiccup had collapsed by now, clutching his head as he curled up on the ground and cried.
Stoick took a step back and spoke as softly and calmly as he could. "Hiccup, please. I'm not going to hurt you. As long as I have any say in the matter, no one will ever hurt you again."
After what felt like an endless time of Toothless standing guard and Stoick waiting and waiting and waiting, the dragon finally backed away and began to nose at Hiccup, whining and warbling. Hiccup's arms rose to encircle the dragon's neck. Toothless lay down with a couple of limbs draped over the boy and let Hiccup bury his face in his scales.
When Hiccup was finally quiet, Stoick spoke softly again. "I'm sorry that I have to ask you things that are painful for you to answer. I know that you were frightened and upset, but there are more appropriate ways to express your feelings than throwing things or running away.
"I need for you to go back into the living room and pick up all the pieces of that plate. You will apologize to Marta for breaking one of the dishes. Then you will stay shut in your room for an hour, and you're not allowed to turn on the TV during that time." Stoick knew that separating Hiccup from Toothless was out of the question, so grounding him together with his dearest companion was a pretty weak punishment. However, it was the only thing Stoick could think of; his nerves were still rattled from being directly threatened by a dragon. "I'm not going to hit you, Hiccup. I will never hit you, do you understand me?"
Hiccup slowly raised his head. "I'm sorry for throwing the plate at you," he whispered.
"The next time you're upset like that, tell me that you need a break. I'll give you a chance to calm down and talk out what you're feeling, all right? Now come along."
Stoick was a little exasperated to find that Marta had already cleaned up the mess, so he gave her instructions to just leave the thrown items where they were if such an incident happened again. After Hiccup had apologized to her (and gotten mothered a bit in response), Stoick led the boys back to their guest room, ushered them inside, told them they were to stay there until he came to get them, then shut the door. When he returned exactly one hour later, he found them asleep on the floor, curled close into each other.
To be continued...
Author's Notes: Again, this is Eret Sr., NOT Jr. It's also not my headcanon personality for Eret Sr.; I just wrote him like this for this particular story because it was useful. I'm planning to write him somewhat differently in other stories like Hybrid.
For this chapter, I looked up permits or licenses to keep dangerous exotic pets. Basically, it varies a lot depending on the location. We'll just say that it's legal to get an exotic pet permit/license wherever Stoick lives (though it complicates things a lot that Stoick had to bring Toothless into his care before actually getting the permit, and the whole mess with Toothless being almost literally attached at the hip to a human minor and the fact that they are dependent on each other for emotional health reasons, etc.)
The Hiiro Yui assassination is from Gundam Wing.
For the record, Hiccup in this AU has a very underdeveloped sense of privacy, due to how he was raised. There are things people might watch or record him doing that would embarrass an ordinary person, but which don't bother Hiccup at all (even in cases when it probably should).
There are some...more unpleasant things that Seth made Hiccup do as 'payment,' but in the end, I decided against writing them... I like Seth a lot and didn't want to tarnish his image, but he did get messed up because of what was done to him, and his morals would have been somewhat skewed. :/ I also didn't want to write about Hiccup having to deal with the aftereffects, so I'm just not going to mention it onscreen.
I keep getting more ideas and adding them to chapter 8, so I finally split it into two chapters. So this entire fic (including the epilogue) is now 11 chapters instead of 10.