Hello! I hope you all had a lovely Christmas! I totally watched Gift of the Night Fury much to my parents annoyance aha :).
Yeah, I struggled to write this chapter, and found myself decided to write feelings rather than actions as not a lot actually happens, but I think it came out...okay.
Thank you very much again for the reviews, and i'll get into the Hicstrid in more depth later, promise ;). I want to develop it naturally first though, i'm not really a fan of these stories where they're in bed within the third chapter. :P
At around midday, Hiccup started to regret not eating his breakfast; his stomach was starting to rumble and groan unpleasantly. He had grown quite accustomed to ignoring it, as since the attack, food had been rationed accordingly, with a strict 1000-calories a day diet. However, he had been forcing the food down of late, quite literally. Whilst it was never going to be fresh or of good quality, the assortment of preserved and packaged food that lay in the preservation room was nutritious and kept them fundamentally alive, and he knew full well that he would have to savour every mouthful. But no matter how famished he felt, the nerves and the jitters in his stomach told him that eating was redundant; he could keep pumping on the adrenaline, the stupor each morning of finding himself alive but in living hell, clinging on to the scraps of hope he had left.
He thought about Astrid for sometime as he was tinkering with her mothers axe, aligning the metal and giving it a few swings every now and then to make sure it had feeling. He had never spoken to Ilma Hofferson, but he could see where her daughter had taken after her, at least aesthetically. Ilma was a tall, thin and foreboding woman, with long blonde ringlets that reached her knees when they were down, penetrating blue eyes, thick lashes, pink skin and cerise lips. Even though she was in her 40's, Hiccup had to admit that she was quite beautiful, and he remembered how his father, who was never particularly vocal, had eyes for her whenever they spoke in the supermarket where she worked. "She looks like she should be a famous actress!" he would cheerfully announce to his son after a shopping trip. He wondered about her heritage, and how Ilma's family came to possess such a stunning axe. It looked well over a hundred years old, a heavy, three-foot long tabarzin, with intricate carvings on the wooden handle; if he had to guess, Hiccup would've said it was Persian, but Ilma was Finnish so it must have changed hands several times.
Gobber had taken a quick look over what Hiccup was doing, chuckling at the gesture and muttering something about old times and keeping up with tradition despite everything that had happened. He took a very good look at the carvings and shook his head at the chinks in the metal, suggesting here and there what Hiccup should do with the axe to bring out the best in it. Although he was apprenticing in engineering the structures of the bunker, he dabbled in mechanics, electronics, woodwork and metalwork, the latter especially so as Gobber's father was a blacksmith who had taught his son what he had learnt in their forge located in a lonely cabin in the woodland.
"I was gonna give you a project, lad, but apparently someone is psychic. This axe shouldn't be too 'ard for you, just give it a sharpen and a polish and it'll be good as new" he'd told his apprentice with a big grin on his ageing face. Gobber was a stout little man with greying hair that was at one point a dirty blond. He had the most extravagant beard Hiccup had ever seen; it was like a long handlebar moustache that reached his chest, but the lengths had been elaborately plaited. There were no real facilities for cutting hair so men either cut it themselves which often meant disaster or let it grow out; Hiccup's own was fast approaching his shoulders and Ruffnut had taken to playing with it whenever they were alone, like how he used to do with hers.
Gobber had left to scavenge some lunch at around 11.30 and promptly found himself in conversation with an old friend, so Hiccup was left alone in the forge. Unlike the rest of the bunker, it was relatively cosy when the fire was lit in the small pit at the centre of the room, with the smoke escaping through a comparatively tight hole several metres above. The workbenches were a mix of mechanical steel that was bought down in the bunkers incarnation, and soft pinewood that Gobber had stored over time. When Berk's government decided to prepare for the attack, they had stored an assortment of wood, metal, glass and cement in the hope of a quick rebuild of the damage on land, but as the rebuild was postponed until much further notice, Gobber had used the resources and suggested that they improve the environment they were currently in instead.
Hiccup continued his work silently, enjoying the solitude and keeping to his thoughts. He thought back to life before the attack; he regretted telling his father that he hated him before running to school after another argument. A part of him knew that the pain they were feeling was shared, but he just couldn't talk to him about anything, and everytime he had tried to bring up his mother...well, the less said the better. Hiccup had never really hated his dad, though he often wondered whether the feeling was mutual. He wondered whether he'd ever have his own children, and maybe realise how hard things were.
Children don't seem to respond well to the more tragic events in life, he concluded sadly. Following his mothers death, Hiccup went from a happy and creative child to a reclusive, uncooperative mess. It hadn't helped that hormones were part of the formula, and how at the ripe old age of 14, other matters were beginning to concern him, like how he didn't really fit in with the rest of his peers so he resorted to being the class clown instead. He was constantly being thrown out of the classroom for insolence by his teachers and was close to being expelled on a few occasions for playing pranks and vandalising the building. He had attended a few anger management classes here and a few child psychologists and counsellors there, but there was no consistency and therefore no result, and Hiccup knew his dad was at his wits end. If he had gone back to school tomorrow, he decided he would sit quietly and listen to what his teachers had to say, because it was far more comfortable from his position now.
Hiccup's thoughts went out in a flash, however, when he heard gunfire. It was faint, on the land above, but it was there and he knew that it was dangerous. As quickly as he could, he put out the fire and stood still against the wall as he heard another shot. He thought he may have heard voices, but it was too far away to distinguish what they were saying, or even if they were speaking the same language. And then, he heard a blood-curdling cry; an animals cry! Checking that the fire had completely gone out, he balanced over the fire pit and started to shuffle up the small vent. The light of the sky was several feet above him but danger wasn't something that bothered him, although he realised that he was struggling to clamber up the brick-laden chute with his prosthetic foot, which had conveniently managed to loosen. Pausing, he took one last look up before he figured he would start coming down-if Gobber had seen him try to climb up a metre-wide hole he would've thought that the lad had gone mad.
As he looked up however, he saw something that horrified him; blood. Blood was coming down the holes of the vent, sticky and crimson against the brick walls, and Hiccup realised his hands were covered in it. He became suddenly aware of it dripping, and became vaguely aware of the metallic smell as he noticed that it was on his face and in his hair. This wasn't his own blood, he was sure. This was the blood of someone, or something, on land, and it was recent.
Scrambling down back into the pit, and cursing as he landed on the hot ashes, Hiccup ran from the forge and into the laundry room, where he saw Astrid and her mother cleaning clothes with steamed water. He didn't notice the horrified look that they both gave him as he threw off his shirt into the water-bath until Astrid put her hand on his shoulder, with a sense of panic.
"Hiccup, what happened? Are you hurt?" she asked the boy, who was just as confused as she was. Hiccup shrugged, shivering slightly at the cool air.
"I'll tell you later" he finally answered, acknowledging Ilma's presence. He knew that naturally she was suspecting something bad had happened, and she had silently concluded that he had probably had an accident with something sharp and was too embarrassed to say anything.
Astrid wasn't buying it though, as Hiccup had looked pretty shaken up, eyes to the floor as he silently wrung out his shirt. She didn't try and make conversation; instead she just watched the fumbling boy and paid attention to his freckled skin and how soft it all looked, a complete contrast to her rough skin that was currently battling a fresh batch of acne. She rolled up her sleeves even further up her bony elbows, the cuffs of her blue wool jumper getting caught up in the hot water. Astrid had decided a long time ago to stamp over her imperfections but she couldn't get over them completely. She cursed herself for ignoring Hiccup, although in fairness they hadn't actually attended the same school. He only knew him because she was a neighbour of the twins, and Hiccup had hung about with them and caused trouble around the neighbourhood. She had heard about his mothers death, and felt blessed that she had both parents, even if her father was a possessive pig.
Hiccup couldn't keep his mind off the life on earth. He was always told that they couldn't go back on land because they'd die of radiation poisoning; he had almost died of it himself, spending two months bedridden, shaking and vomiting and writhing as his hair dropped out and his nose permanently bled. But clearly, someone or something was there, living, or at least it was. He couldn't tell from the blood alone but he knew that if you lost enough you were essentially knocking on deaths door.
Silently retreating back to the forge, with still no sign of Gobber, he reset his fire-pit and got back to his work, making a pact to himself that he'd find out where the blood had come from, somehow.