Carried Off, a DreamWorks' How to Train Your Dragon fanfic by Raberba girl
Disorganized segment, posted 26 Oct 2016 (rough draft)
Finn...Val...
Hiccup sat up, abruptly wide awake, when he realized that his children were gone. "Finn! Val! Toothless, light."
There was a confused dragon croak in the darkness, then a blast of fire in the hearth. Hiccup scrambled to light the lamp and desperately searched the still shadowed corners of the cave, but there wasn't a trace of his children. The others were gone, too; only Toothless was left. "FINN! VALKA!"
He stumbled outside, calling and calling. Eventually Hen came scampering up to him with the little ones scuttling in her wake, and Cloudjumper settled to a landing nearby.
"Where were you?!" Hiccup collapsed to his knees and snatched up his children, clutching them tightly. Finn wriggled until he finally managed to find a comfortable position; Valka squirmed completely out of Hiccup's grip, shook out her wings, perched on his back, and started preening his hair. "Don't EVER do that again, don't you ever wander off-! HEN! You thought it would be such a great idea to take them out playing in the middle of the night, what is wrong with you?! Don't you ever do that again!"
The young dragon crouched, tail tucked tightly, staring up at Hiccup with wide, pained eyes as he scolded her. Cloudjumper approached and lowered his head protectively over the little dragon, hissing at Hiccup.
"Why are you taking her side?! You went with them, why didn't you tell me?! You can't do that! You can't take my children away from me and not even tell me!"
Valka, disturbed by the noise, hopped off of Hiccup's back and went to go sniff inquisitively at Toothless's paws. As Hiccup was making a grab for her, Finn took the opportunity to stretch and wander off toward a ledge, spreading his wings to take flight.
"NO." Hiccup grabbed him up again. Finn yelped in protest and struggled. "No. You two are coming back home with me to sleep, it is not time to go galloping all over the nest getting into trouble!" They were squirming so much that he had to hold them too tightly to keep hold of them, and they were crying in distress by the time he got them corralled inside the pen he had made for them whenever he needed to make sure they stayed put. Finn hissed at him; Valka gave a mournful howl. "Stop that. Go to sleep." He happened to glance up at the other dragons and saw Toothless cringing against the wall, Hen crying as she hid behind Cloudjumper, and Cloudjumper's eyes fixed unwaveringly on Hiccup as he growled softly. "All of you! Don't look at me like that!"
Valka was yelping and writhing on her back as if she was being tortured, even though no one was touching her. Finn kept trying to claw and shove out of the pen, getting more stubborn every time Hiccup pushed him back. "Stop that."
Cloudjumper finally looked at the hatchlings and made a long, ratchety sort of noise. Valka crawled on her belly to the side of the pen closest to Hiccup and pawed pleadingly at it until Hiccup reached through to caress her. She buried her face in his palm, whimpering. Finn exhaled a cloud of smoke and curled up in a tight, huffy ball with his back to Hiccup. Hiccup wasn't sure if they actually slept, but they did go quiet and still for a long time.
It took Hiccup a long time to fall back asleep as well, and even then, he slept fitfully, waking again and again from horrible half-dreams where he thought his children were being ripped out of his arms. In the morning, Valka, extra-clingy, climbed into his tunic to be carried around by him, even though she was getting too big and heavy to do that anymore. Finn kept sulking, curled up in the pen even though it was open now, refusing to respond to his mother.
"Finn...come on, buddy, it's morning, you can come out and play now. Val, it's okay, you're not in trouble anymore. ...Guys, come on."
Everyone got over that incident eventually...but then there was another. "I TOLD you not to take them off without telling me!"
And then another. "You guys KNOW BETTER, why do you keep doing this?!"
Hiccup eventually had to face the fact that his children were their own people, young but growing, dependent on him but not simply extensions of himself. He couldn't hold onto them forever. He couldn't forbid them to ever leave his sight. The knowledge tore at his heart and made him grieve in a way he had not done since before the twins' hatching, and he thought with despair that life was too painful, that he couldn't stand to keep living even in this place of refuge...
Toothless was licking him a little desperately, as if trying to call him back. Hiccup was curled against the Night Fury, warm in the dragon's embrace, alone because his children were off who-knew-where again, yet not alone because...he was never alone. Not once had he ever been truly alone in exile.
"What am I going to do?" he whispered to Toothless, who croaked hopefully at him. "I can't take anymore of this...my heart keeps breaking again and again and again, and it hurts so much..."
After a while longer, just lying together with his dearest companion, being held and comforted and anchored, Hiccup finally acknowledge the fact that his children...whether they were dragon or human...would not be children forever. They would grow up someday and leave him. They would love others more than they loved him. No matter what he did, he would lose them, and it had never been his job to hold onto them. He was simply meant to take care of them and protect them and love them, help them grow to be the best people they would be, and allow them to take flight when they were ready.
"It hurts...so much..." He cried a little more, then he went to see the king.
"Grieving for your hatchlings?"
"Something's wrong with me... She hurt me too much. They hurt me too much, those Berk humans. Hurt me, took away my babies HURT ME, tore me apart when they took my babies, now these Finn Val precious dragons, my babies, so so so afraid so AFRAID they will take them away from me again, leave me, leaving me all alone bleeding hurt alone left me alone they left me they left me they left me...!" He'd thought he hadn't had any tears left to cry, but here he was, sobbing again. The sense of abandonment and loneliness and loss was devastating.
For a long time, the alpha didn't know what to say. It grieved and angered him to see his flockling's pain, it astonished him to see how much damage could be done to a single person. Finally, because he'd known from past experience that Hiccup could never seem to be fully convinced that he was deeply loved and would never be alone again, the alpha ventured, "It's okay to be alone lost broken."
Hiccup sniffled, considering.
"You won't die."
"I won't die... ...Want to die."
"You will be happy if you're dead?"
"...No," Hiccup finally admitted.
"Be happy. Be broken grieving crushed. Be comforted. Be happy. It's okay to be broken grieving crushed, because you will call for us and we will comfort you. Again and again and again, always."
Hiccup exhaled a deep, shaky breath. "Yes...it's good...but I want to be fixed."
"What does fixed Hiccup look like?" the alpha asked. He knew what his idea of a whole, healthy Hiccup looked like, but he had learned long ago that humans thought quite differently than he did.
Hiccup thought. He imagined himself laughing, happy...surrounded by family, by parents who were proud of him, a wife who adored and looked up to him, beautiful brave children who made him proud in turn... He imagined, just for a moment, himself as big and strong, but it didn't feel right. He didn't want to be a Viking, he simply wanted to be valued as he was. He imagined...a prosperous, thriving village, peace on the horizon, unrestrained flight, plentiful and mouth-watering food, books, allies, celebrations... He imagined himself with bright eyes and laughter, he imagined himself looking at whatever fate threw at him and meeting it with confidence, knowing what to do, having support at his back-
Fear.
Fear of being rejected by his father, of being hurt or killed by a dragon, of not having enough to eat, of how in the world he could run a village when he was completely unprepared, of being despised by his wife, of being hurt, of being alone, of failing, of losing what he treasured...
"Fixed Hiccup has no fear," Hiccup finally decided.
He felt the king 'gathering' for something. Hiccup braced himself, sensing that whatever the alpha was about to say next would have none of the cushioning the dragon king usually used when speaking to his delicate little flockling.
"HAVE NO FEAR."
Hiccup cried out with the almost painful force of it, and for a second he thought he might weep from the intensity - but instead he stood up, and he roared for Toothless, and he leapt off the alpha without looking but without any intention of dying, feeling a sudden sense of assurance.
Sure enough, he was caught by a Monstrous Nightmare. He laughed and kissed her scales and leaped from her to a Snafflefang, poised there for two seconds, lost his balance and fell, reached up casually to catch the claws of a swooping Raincutter, heard Toothless's worried screech behind him, laughed again and dropped, settling onto his friend's back and squeezing the Night Fury in an impulsive hug. "Let's fly, bud."
They raced the wind for half an hour and found an island and caught a deer for supper. They leisurely glided home and found the rest of their troop anxiously waiting for them. Hiccup, relieved despite it all, cuddled his chirping son and daughter and fed them scraps of deer and told them they were wonderful; he hugged Hen and told her she was the best sister/aunt ever; he caressed Cloudjumper and thanked him for always looking out for their little family.
Hiccup sprawled beside his sleeping hatchlings that night and journaled for hours. He imagined the worst, if something were to happen and he lost his children forever, and he wept again, but this time his tears dried without the sense of devastation and despair that had dogged him for so long. He wrote letters, letters that would never be read, to the people of Berk and to the human children it had been too painful to truly think about until now, to the woman who had hurt him so badly, to the parents who had abandoned him, and to the blacksmith who was perhaps as broken as Hiccup himself was.
The tears this time were silent. 'It's okay...to be broken. It's okay, because I'm not afraid anymore. I'm not afraid. I've survived the worst, and there will always, always be something to live for. If I lose that, too, something else will come. Whether I live or die, there will always be something. Have no fear.'
To be continued...