Carried Off, a DreamWorks' How to Train Your Dragon fanfic by Raberba girl (rough draft)
This time, Hiccup only experienced a couple of seconds of disorientation when he awakened, and barely cringed to find himself being hugged by a Night Fury. He stood up and stretched, then ambled out and greeted the Stormcutter. "Mornin', owl-face." The dragon squawked a return greeting.
Hiccup's two - guards? bodyguards? welcoming committee? - followed him around as usual. He found the closest 'privy' and used it (apparently dragons were fastidious and kept their waste confined to particular areas - yet another thing Hiccup had never even thought to wonder about).
It was disconcerting to have an audience for this activity, though the watching dragons (both his own pair and a few passersby) seemed more interested in the odor of his urine than in the size of his 'manhood' the way Vikings would have been. Hiccup was about to make a sarcastic comment before he realized that they were examining all the freshest waste, not just his. One of the dragons, a medium-sized purple one, started back after sniffing one of the pieces of dung and took flight in an urgent sort of way.
"O-kay. Not sure what that was all about, but whatever..."
He felt gross enough that he did the best he could to bathe, an activity which the dragons seemed to find both interesting and confusing. The water was ICY, so he rushed through it as quickly as he could and then cuddled desperately with Toothless until he stopped shivering. Then he sought out the king.
Hiccup approached hesitantly, still awed and intimidated by the leviathan's size. The king's eyes turned to him, and he hurriedly bowed. "Good morning...er, Your Majesty."
The king exhaled. Hiccup gasped and stumbled backward as a white cloud came wafting toward him, but it turned out to be harmless. He sheepishly brushed the frost off himself. "I..." He remembered that spoken words meant nothing to the king, who was an animal, after all. An incredibly majestic and intelligent one, but still a creature who perceived and processed the world differently than humans did.
Hiccup closed his eyes and tentatively reached out a thought. "'Hello.' Greeting scared, I reach for you scared, me small small small you biiiiig, scared, greet don't hurt me, I want-" He sensed contact, the beginning of a relieved, pleased return greeting. "Scared scared scared don't hurt me don't hurt me don't hurt me!"
"Reassurance warmth safe peace love safe."
Hiccup opened his eyes and stared up at the king. "...Love me? Why you love me? Little stranger enemy small bad ashamed 'I hate this'...!"
The king was surprised, then confused, then compassionate. "Small broken frightened ones seek refuge here; welcome. 'Hiccup' is good. Not hurt my flocklings, good."
Hiccup wasn't thinking consciously now as he remembered himself back in his village, useless and weak and worthless and good for nothing except shaping metal and warming the chieftain's bed and keeping her babies out of her way, worthless worthless never measure up worthless-
"STOP."
Hiccup automatically cowered at the forcefulness of the king's command.
The great dragon's next thoughts were gentler. "Monsters trap you in darkness; bad. No darkness here. Safe. I love you."
Hiccup burst into tears, hating himself.
"Why grieve and shame?!" The great alpha had comforted many broken-hearted survivors, but he had never seen such self-loathing in a creature before. Only the dark corners of Valka's heart had ever come close, but her strange shame was nothing compared to this wreckage. "Love is a good thing, yes...? Love for you, true and strong and good..."
"Toothless," Hiccup croaked out, struggling onto the confused Night Fury's back, "take me away, take me away, take me away...!"
He hid from the king for two whole days after that, terrified of a being who could see so deeply into his heart. What made him finally creep back was that it had occurred to him that perhaps his mother might not be dead after all. Whether 'Owl-face' was indeed her abductor or not, the fact remained that these dragons were the complete opposite of what he'd thought dragons were all his life, which meant there was a chance that perhaps they had not killed his mother. She had been carried off just like he was, and he wasn't dead, so perhaps she was miraculously alive as well - though he had searched the nest and not found a trace of her.
Still, he wanted to ask, and the only creature in this nest whom he could ask was the king. None of the other dragons he experimented with ever responded to his attempts at mental communication.
"H...Hi there." "Scared scared scared don't hurt me don't look at me don't touch me don't hurt me..."
The king regarded him warily.
"'M...Mom.' Human woman, my mother, warm safe caretaker loves me her child son-"
There was a jumbled, disorientingly scent-based impression that hurt Hiccup's head before it resolved itself into a visual image. He gasped when he realized that the king was doing the equivalent of showing him a representation of a human woman. Long red hair, slightly haunted green eyes but a warm smile...
"Hiccup's dam, 'mother,' loves her child 'son;' you. Mother loves you." Moving images filled Hiccup's mind, distorted by a dragon's perception but still recognizable as memories. His mother, Valka, caressing the Stormcutter and talking to the dragon animatedly as he vocalized enthusiastically back at her ("'Cloudjumper' her sound-name for him, One Who Leaps Over Clouds, 'Cloudjumper'"); Valka spreading her arms in the joy of flight as Cloudjumper carried her through the skies; Valka crooning at dragon hatchlings who flocked around her, playing with them and comforting them... Cloudjumper wailing his grief; the sorrow of a flock who has lost a cherished member; quiet emptiness where there had once been life; anger and sorrow that this tiny, wonderful little flockling had been lost forever, inexplicably at the hands of her own kind...
Hiccup stumbled away, clawing at his head as if he could tear out the memories. The king withdrew and Hiccup blindly walked and climbed around the nest for a long time, stunned. 'My mother was here... Owl-face was the one who took her, he took her and he...he loved her, they all did, the king and this whole flock, they loved her even though she was human, she was HERE, she was right here but now she's gone, humanskilled her...I'll never see her, my mother was right here but I'll never, ever see her...'
He cried out, angry and hopeless. 'She was here. My mom was here. But she's gone. She's gone...' He was curled up, rocking, clutching his head, whimpering in raging, grieving frustration. 'I'm gone, too. My babies are wondering where I am but I'm not there, I'll never see them again, I'll never hold them again, I'm gone. Just like Mom.'
He cried out again, this time in surprise and alarm as Toothless knocked him over and licked his chest in an angry sort of way. Frustrated, the Night Fury clamped his teeth on the front of Hiccup's tunic and ripped. Hiccup squirmed, frightened and confused, and winced in apprehension when the dragon licked bare skin as if trying to scrape it out of the way with his tongue. Draconic green eyes glared helplessly. Then Toothless flopped down and rested his head on Hiccup with a sigh.
"...You know it's emotional pain, and you can't help with that," Hiccup slowly realized. He scratched behind the Night Fury's ear-like head plates, and the dragon made a rumbling "Mmmmm" sound. "Sorry, buddy. Hearts aren't as easy to heal as flesh is."
Toothless rolled his eyes up to glance at him.
"I don't even know if I'm grateful or not," Hiccup said softly. "I...I like it here..." He thought about it, and decided that it was true. "I like it here. But my kids, Toothless. My children are still on Berk. They need me. You didn't just take me to paradise, you took me away from my babies. You can't do that, okay?"
He looked over at Owl-face - no, Cloudjumper, that's the name his mother had given that dragon - who was keeping watch nearby as always. "I know you guys mean well. I don't know how you knew, but you did, and thank you for the sentiment and all, but...we silly humans, we do this thing called procreating. We become a package deal when that happens. If you take one, you've got to take the others along as well, and I know you didn't know that, but you can't do that anymore, all right?"
He closed his arms around the Night Fury in a hug. "Take me home, Toothless," he whispered. "I have to go back to hell, because that's where my children are. I can't let them go through what I did just because a dragon chose the wrong person to rescue."
o.o.o.o.o
'How did Hiccup DO this?!' Astrid found herself thinking often, wildly frustrated by the stress but also helplessly admiring. Hiccup had had a full-time job just as she did, yet he had also looked after the children, caring for them in almost every way except feeding them...and he'd done most of the cooking. And some of the cleaning. 'Hiccup, you were the most amazing man- ...At least, the most amazing woman-in-a-man's-body I could ever imagine.'
Astrid herself couldn't do it. She was going crazy. She hired a wet nurse to help feed Valka when she was busy (Finn refused any milk that wasn't his own mother's) and had her mom move in with her to take over many of the more housewifely duties that Hiccup had previously covered, but it still didn't seem to be enough, even with Gobber's help. 'How did Hiccup DO this...?!'
She didn't even think about her late husband's personal belongings until one evening when they were trying to find a place to store a crate, and her mother suggested putting it up in the loft.
The loft. Hiccup's room.
Astrid avoided it for a while, but then went up there once when she was missing her husband badly, missing his warmth and the sound of his voice and even his smell. She stood in the center of his room for a long time, slowly turning, silent tears running down her face as she looked at this place that belonged to him, at all his things waiting for him as if he would come back to finish that half-sketched drawing, straighten that unmade bed, pick up those carelessly scattered clothes...
She spent a single night sleeping in his bed, trying to get close to him. It only served to sharply emphasize his absence, rub in her face the fact that she had lost him forever. It was too painful. The whole room was too painful. She had to get rid of this shrine to him, this intimate sort of grave marker which kept calling for a soul that would never return.
Astrid gathered it all together except for the little stuffed Nadder and an old knife, which she turned over in her hands for a long time before setting aside. They would be final gifts to her children from their father.
She asked Gobber what he wanted to salvage from Hiccup's things before she burned the rest. Gobber took it all, storing it in the back room of the forge where Hiccup had used to work. Hiccup's bedroom had not been the only shrine he'd left behind.
'It doesn't matter,' Astrid thought. 'It's out of my sight, gone, just like him. ...Goodbye, Hiccup. Never haunt me again.'
She was in the Great Hall one evening, slumped wearily on a bench, nursing Finn as she picked at her supper and ignored Valka complaining in her mother's arms beside her.
"...that old nuisance...!"
Astrid paused. For some reason, the conversation at the next table had caught her attention.
"At least he ended up being good for one thing."
"Yeah, a human shield for our next chief! Guess he wasn't entirely useless after all, haha!"
'They're talking about Hiccup,' Astrid thought. 'They're talking about my husband as if that's all he was good for.'
"I suppose we are better off, though I admit I didn't realize how much he'd helped the blacksmith-"
"Excuse me," Astrid said coldly.
Both men stared at her.
"Hiccup Stoickson gave his life for the good of this tribe, facing down the most fearsome dragon in the world with more courage than I've ever seen from either of you. Do not speak ill of him again."
Grumbling, the men turned back to their ale.
To be continued...