Carried Off, a DreamWorks' How to Train Your Dragon fanfic by Raberba girl

Disorganized segment, posted 24 Oct 2016 (rough draft)

A/N: Everything from this point onward is temporarily messy and out of order. I discovered that it was easier to write the initial draft of this story arc one subplot at a time rather than hopelessly trying to keep track of everything. Once I finish the first draft of this story arc, I will go back and re-organize all those subplots into proper chapters. Please bear with me in the meantime.

o.o.o

Astrid avoided the thought for about a day, but then she realized that avoidance was cowardly and she needed to face her problems head on, no matter ashamed and uneasy she felt. She put her kids to bed and then went into the woods to think.

She had spanked her children. Such a thing was inevitable, all children needed discipline, and she was relieved and little proud of herself for getting it right with Finn.

What bothered her was the way she had treated Valka. She had lost her temper and struck the girl more out of a sense of vengeance than discipline, just as Hiccup had thought she would, and she hated that she had lost control like that. Not only that, but even though it had only been a spanking this time, what would happen when Valka was older and had a sharper tongue? What would happen when she became a wild and rebellious teenager, guaranteed to butt heads with her mother? Astrid needed to develop self-control now, at the beginning, or it would only get more difficult later.

'Why do I get so angry with Val and not with Finn?' Finn was usually so obedient, so easy to intimidate. ...So much like Hiccup in a way, though Hiccup, despite usually submitting to his wife's demands, had often had defiance smoldering in his eyes which his daughter had apparently inherited. 'Hiccup would make me so angry, too, though...he knew how to pick his battles. He knew when to give in and when to...push back.'

She now remembered uneasily how often she had hit Hiccup. He would make her so angry just like Valka did...as if they knew exactly what to say to make her fly into a rage, as if they wanted to purposely-

'I don't understand. Hiccup couldn't have wanted to be hurt; Val doesn't want to be hurt. But they defy me anyway, and...' It occurred to her that maybe it wasn't really right of her to expect to get her way all the time. 'But I don't expect that of anyone else! I know that the villagers and even my own mother don't agree with me most of the time, I count on it, I plan for it... What makes Hiccup and the kids so different? Why do I...expect them to bow to my every whim?' In the children's case, it was because she was their parent and so much older than them. She knew the big picture, she knew what resources were available, she could plan for the future, she had so much more experience.

'But...Hiccup...what made me think that I was always right and he was wrong? What made me think I was better than him?' Well, she was better than him, there was no question of that; but she thought uneasily that he was at least better than how she had treated him. 'I...from the very beginning, I just assumed that he was the worst, and I...' What would have happened if she had been gentler with him, listened to him more, compromised more? She had done that, but not from the start. By the time she had learned better, he had already hated her. 'Would he have hated me so much if I'd been kinder to him?'

Well, it was too late for that now, Hiccup was gone. 'The kids, though. What do I do about the kids?' Fine, she was right and they were wrong; she had the right to discipline them when they misbehaved. ...But she needed to figure out how to do it in such a way that she stayed in control and didn't let her emotions rule her. 'I have to be able to stand there, looking into my daughter's eyes and hearing her speak poison, and be able to stay calm.'

How would Hiccup have handled his children if they ever defied or disrespected him? Astrid couldn't see him losing his temper and whaling on them. ...He had been disrespected plenty of times when he'd still lived in the village. He'd get hurt and angry, she started being able to tell when he was hurt and angry, but he expressed it so differently than his wife did. He held it in, he...sort of went still and hyper-alert, looking for any opening, any-

'That's how the weak fight. They know they can't win fairly, so they watch for an opening and grab any alternative they can, even if it's cheating. I'm not weak. I fight differently.'

Okay, but that was only when Hiccup was dealing with a wife or villagers who didn't actually like him. But when it was his own beloved children? Would his methods be different?

"I HATE YOU, DADDY!" Valka would scream. "You're a BAD DADDY!"

Hiccup probably wouldn't get angry. He wouldn't hit her. He'd look at her all sorrowfully and maybe say something like, "Really?" and she'd love him so much that she'd be ashamed and apologize and hug him, and everything would be hunky-dory again.

'That's not going to work for me,' Astrid thought. She didn't think her children loved her enough for that. 'But I still need to figure out how to stay calm and not let them bother me.' She sighed. What were the worst things her children could ever possibly say to her? "You're incompetent. Nobody loves you. You're a terrible chief. You can't protect or provide for your people. Everyone would be better off if you were dead. Stoick would be ashamed of you." She imagined each of her children saying those terrible things, and had to breathe deeply for a while.

'It's...it's not true. I am a good chief. I can provide for my people. ...I have to believe that even when people insist differently.' She imagined her children saying those things to her again. "I know you feel that way," she said aloud, "but that doesn't excuse what you did. Let's focus on that right now so we can make it better."

She practiced. She practiced in her imagination and with her children and with the villagers. It took her a long time, and she failed so often ("VALKA MUDBATH HICCUPSDAUGHTER, GET AWAY FROM THERE RIGHT NOW." "OW OW OW STOP IT MOMMY I HATE YOU I HATE YOU I HATE YOU...!"). She hated herself so much for failing until she realized that blaming herself was making it worse instead of better. 'It's okay if I make mistakes. It's okay to...to lose. It's okay to suffer. The important part is to get back up and try again and do better next time. ...And even if you do worse next time, the important part is that you tried. You tried your best.'

It helped, though when she thought of Hiccup yet again, about how many mistakes he made and how hard he really had tried and how very little mercy she had shown him...how little mercy anyone had shown him...she cried. And tried to banish him from her mind because he was gone, he might as well be dead, but then one day she realized that Hiccup might be gone but her memories of him were still here, so in her thoughts she begged him for his forgiveness and visualized how differently she would have done things if she'd had the chance to do her marriage over again from the start. She cried again when she thought of how badly the dragons had ruined him, and how good a man he could have been if she'd managed to hold onto him before the Night Fury got him, but now it was too late and they'd stolen his soul and she would never, ever have a chance to make it up to him...

'You have a second chance with his children. You can make better choices with our children,' she thought to herself.

She didn't make as many mistakes now, but it was still hard. "Guys..." 'What would Hiccup do, what would Hiccup do, what would Hiccup do...' "I'm just trying to understand. WHY did you dump chum all over the Ahlberg house. Why. Please explain to me." 'WHAT WOULD HICCUP DO.'

"Oh, okay," Tuffnut said eagerly, "so, let me explain our brilliant plan."

"We make the already-wrecked house smell like fish," Ruffnut said gleefully, "then the dragons attack the house, and when they're distracted here NOT finding food, we get a chance to save the real food somewhere else!"

"But we'll STILL GET EXPLOSIONS!" Tuffnut cheered. "Totally win-win!"

"Except for the loss of the lumber, a lot of which is still reusable," Astrid pointed out, "and the nails, and some of the furniture, and the glass..."

"Uhhhhhhh," both twins drawled in unison, before Tuffnut abruptly pointed at his sister and said self-righteously, "Her idea." Ruffnut punched him, and it instantly degenerated into a slugfest.

Astrid stared down at the Thorstons writhing at her feet, trying to make each other bleed. 'What. Would. Hiccup. Do.' "...Oh well," she said, trying not to wince as she heard her voice take on a slight nasally tone, "we got two or three days of extra work now, but, hey, if we want to get some explosions out of it..." The Thorstons paused and looked up at her with interest.

Astrid knew she had made significant progress the first time Snotlout copped a feel and she felt only a momentary impulse to blacken his eye. Instead, she said without missing a beat, "Give me five silver pieces."

"What?! Why?"

"Because I am not a whore, and if you're going to treat me like one, then you're going to do it to completion. An ass-grab costs five silver."

He got a crafty look in his eye.

"The price doubles each time."

"Sooooooo, if we had sex-"

"Two hundred gold," she said instantly.

"What?!"

"That's by my exact preferences. Five hundred gold for your bare-minimum ones."

"That is SO MUCH MORE than your bride-price and your morning-gift combined, which you STILL HAVE, by the way-!"

"And an extra hundred gold for each of your additional preferences," she added relentlessly.

"You're trying to bankrupt me!"

'Are you really that stupid?' "Or I could just arrange for you to be castrated. That would work, too."

Snotlout squealed and scurried away with a hand protectively cupped around his family jewels, and Astrid was rather astonished that he never again sexually harassed her to an extent that made her uncomfortable.

To be continued...