Hiccup watched Jack work in a kind of reverence, slowly feeding larger sticks into his fire as his eyes caught on the muscles connecting Jack's arms to his chest as they pulled needles from branches. He made two piles, one of clean branches and one of what he removed, and occasionally stuck his hands into his hair to fluff out slowly melting ice. Finally, he glanced up at Hiccup.
"You haven't been keeping ice out of your hair." He looked back down. Hiccup had to take a moment to register, and another moment to try and adopt an angry attitude.
"So what? You can't tell me what to do, I'm not one of your children."
"You certainly act like one." Hiccup watched Jack still and bite his lip as the words passed it, and then close his eyes and sigh. With seeming reluctance, Jack pushed himself to his feet and circled the fire. He sat down next to Hiccup and grabbed his shoulders, turning him to face Jack, who was crossing his legs and moving closer.
"What're you-"
"-If you want your ears intact, you'll stop fighting me and let me get your hair away from them. I'm not kidding about this; you could lose much worse than just your ears if you let your hair stay wet."
Hiccup fought the urge to practically moan when Jack placed his hands around his ears again. How could he possibly crave someone touching him so softly so badly? Nobody had ever done so before. Jack's hands went to one side of his face, pushing Hiccup's chin so he faced the fire as nimble fingers began to comb through the hair behind his ear. Instinctively, he closed his eyes. He didn't care if Jack made fun of him, though he did hope Jack wouldn't notice. His fingers seemed to barely move, so calmly and quickly braiding the strands of hair together. Hiccup opened his eyes so he wouldn't seem so desperate for the contact, but Jack was hardly paying attention. He was staring past Hiccup with unfocused eyes, his lips hardly opened, brow deep in pensive thought. Steam was rising from his hair and undershorts where he was nearest to the fire, dissipating into the sky like smoke from a cigarette Hiccup desperately wanted. He honestly hated the smell, the taste, of smoke, but the relief was so worth it. Besides, most all the Vikings smoked. Jack finished the braid and ran his fingers along Hiccup's cheekbone, tracing it down to his chin and pushing it to the other side. Hiccup couldn't help it; before he knew what he'd done, he closed his eyes and leaned into the touch. Jack made a strange sort of huffing sound, and Hiccup opened his eyes again to meet an almost endearingly raised eyebrow. Immediately, his face fell into a deep scowl, and he looked away further.
"It's cold out." He defended.
"It certainly is." Jack hummed.
He began to sort through the hair on the other side of Hiccup's head, and kicked at his boot.
"You need to take that off, it's just keeping cold water around your foot."
"Why only that one, huh?"
"Please. Everyone knows you're an amputee. There's nothing wrong with that; you're just not good at hiding it."
"Everyone knows?"
"All of us, anyway. It's not like it's a bad thing, really." Jack's fingernail scratched at Hiccup's jaw gently as he worked.
"Though, I'm guessing you weren't born with it."
"N...no, I wasn't." Hiccup's tone, which had started accusatory, lost its vigor like a deflated balloon.
"We've all lost something, in this world."
Jack said quietly, his accent blending the 'th' sound into a sort of 'z'.
Hiccup sneered.
"What have you possibly lost?"
Jack fell silent. Hiccup was oddly proud of himself.
But then Jack opened his mouth again.
"I lost my sister. My mother. My entire clan."
He finished the braid and stood up. He drove sticks into the ground, pointing out and away from the fire, hanging their clothes on them. He did not face Hiccup.
"A...aren't you a Guardian?"
Jack began to laugh.
"Have you paid no attention to us? Tell me, what have you noticed of us?" Jack demanded.
"I...you all speak different languages?"
"Exactly! Why would you think we've all been together since the fall?"
"I don't know, maybe because nobody ever bothered to tell me directly?"
"I didn't think we needed to."
"You all have too close of a culture for us to believe anything different!"
"What?" Jack had finished slapping frozen cloth onto sticks and turned around again. Hiccup relished in how his accent spat the word out.
"You...your culture! It's so intimate...so...so…"
"What? I don't- I don't understand. What about us is intimate in some new way to you?"
Jack tilted his head to one side. Steam spilled from his lips, breathing carefully.
"You're all-ugh!" Hiccup jumped up, flushed. He felt a hand on his bicep. Jack was standing only inches from him, as confused as ever.
How could he honestly not understand what Hiccup was talking about?
He'd seen it from day one.
The Vikings were being led through the field of wheat, following Jack and Bunny and their children. They left the field and stumbled onto what used to be a highway, a thing where cars would travel. They'd been useless for travel since before the fall, and were really only spare metal and parts. Their hundreds of feet scuffled against the artificial stone. But Jack, and Bunny, and their children, their feet hardly made a sound.
If any at all.
They practically floated, as if their own weight and the weight of the children that hung on them weighed nothing at all. Bunny loped awkwardly, but it was graceful, and Jack; Jack practically danced. Only the tips of his toes seemed to touch the ground as he moved. His arms were not just filled with children, but also strength, one child on each shoulder and one on one hip, another playfully hanging from his right arm. Bunny had two children on one shoulder, one on the other, one on each hip, and three clinging to his legs. They spoke to them in hushed, happy tones, and the children responded just as calmly and pleasantly. Where was the fighting, the chasing and shouting and tripping and kicking? Where was the hair pulling, where was the fatherly slap on the shoulder? The Vikings had little complaint over two persons of the same gender as mates but for the lack of offspring, but why did they not treat the children like a father would? Where were the boisterous laughs and stories of battle? Why did they not show off their scars with great pride when the children ran their hands over them? Why did the children run their hands over them so gently, instead of just pointing and asking? There was such odd gentility to the way they moved. In some deep part of his mind, Hiccup feared something sinister he couldn't hope to describe.
As soon as the tall man with gray hair rested his hand on the small of the white haired man's back, however, he found that he very suddenly could describe it.
It was described with a gasp and rumble through the crowd as their feet scuffled to a stop. The children and two men turned to look at them quizzically. Everyone was fixated on the small touch, as gentle and soothing as something Hiccup had never seen before. Not even a proud mother and her newly-crying infant could have shared something so tender.
"Wot? Wot's tha matta?" Bunny's accent was so thick that he could hardly be understood. One child who hadn't been connected to either parent slowly slid her hand around Jack's thumb, backing away from the anxious group.
"Is something the matter?" Jack repeated his partner, eyes darting from one face to the next. He turned more and Bunny's hand left his spine as his eyes locked onto Hiccup's. The offense gone, the Vikings fell to whispering again. For the first time, they saw a Guardian go on the defense, Bunny lifting the back of his shirt and drawing out a curved piece of wood, uneasy. Jack never glanced over, but he had to have sensed it somehow, for he reached out, slender fingertips hardly brushing Bunny's wrist as he murmured something quietly. The man's breath hitched in his chest and Jack glanced up to him. They did not break eye contact until Bunny put the boomerang away again.
"It's not far," Jack called to the group, eyes following his words as he tossed his head. "Do not worry." He finished carefully, eyes confused and concerned. Bunny turned and began to walk again, adjusting the child on his left hip, and Jack followed.
As soon as their backs were turned, the quiet murmuring began.
Why did he do that? In front of children?! What kind of people have we come across?!
Hiccup was still staring at the small of Jack's back, where Bunny's hand had been. Those around him were livid, shocked at the absolutely appalling display.
Jack was right; the goal was not far, and it was not even a mile before they turned off the paved road and began to see signs of surviving civilization. Mostly, there were cleared spaces that had been staked off, and in the distance the roofs of buildings could just barely be seen. The buildings were hidden by tall, thin trees with white bark and red leaves, reaching up into the sky like bloody fingers seeking help. It was just in front of one of the stakes that the children fell off of Jack and he stepped up to it, standing on one foot on top of it as if his own weight was nothing. He tilted his head back slightly and began to sing, a haunting melody.
"Flower gleam and glow, let your power shine…"
Hiccup did not hear the rest. Almost as soon as he had begun speaking, a long, thick, luminescent, incredibly heavy and wide cut of rope dropped from the roof of the nearest, thickest tree. A figure came rappelling down it, and as her feet hit the ground Hiccup realized that she was connected to the thick rope by the back of her head.
She was barefoot too, with wide, green, round eyes and a short and slim figure, clothed in a silky purple blouse tucked into parachuted pants of a pale pink that was almost white. In the clasps of her shirt and on the gold buttons of her pants, a bright sun appliqué was pressed into the metal. She was a fair amount brighter than the men and their children- a surrogate, perhaps?- and seemed less wary of the huge group of beastly people behind them. She seemed much more concerned with her own people.
Jack jumped from the small stake to the ground, and she leapt forward with a joyful cry. The little ones flooded the space between their adults as the woman ran into Jack's arms and they hugged tightly with wide smiles. Quickly, they pressed their faces together on each side, kissing one another's cheeks twice before she let of Jack and leapt into Bunny similarly, kissing just as tenderly.
Hiccup's people didn't even try to contain their cries of disgust and panic.
The Guardians immediately sprang to action. The children herded together, the shorter ones crouching behind the legs of their older siblings, spreading their legs and crouching back in a stout defensive position. Their caretakers swung into a triangle around them, the woman who they later learned to call 'Rapunzel' swinging her braided hair into a half-whip, Jack low to the ground with his staff sideways across his chest and ready to spring, Bunny as tall as he could make himself with sharply bladed boomerangs in each hand. They surveyed the area around them with expertly adept eyes, but Jack was staring right at Hiccup, who couldn't wipe the look of horror off his face. He cocked his head to the side and rose slowly.
"Qu'est-ce que c'est?" He said softly.
"What is it?" Bunny repeated in common, turning and following Jack's lead, lowering but not stowing his weapons.
They could not find the words to tell them.