Carried Off, a DreamWorks' How to Train Your Dragon fanfic by Raberba girl
Gruffnut subplot (rough draft)
A/N: I'll explain more in a different subplot, but just be assured that Tuffnut is Gruff's adoptive father. No incest here! X'D
o.o.o
Gruffnut was three years old when she first started to notice.
Her parents where throwing knives at each other again. This in itself was not noteworthy, and nothing bad had happened before, and Gruff was too young to notice how narrow the escapes were sometimes.
But she had apparently not inherited Ruff and Tuff's luck, and during this particular incident, one of the knives missed its mark and sliced its way across Gruffnut's scalp instead.
While the little girl was still sitting there in shock, Tuffnut said casually, "Aw, crud, you hit the kid. Nice going, sis."
"I wouldn't have hit the kid if you'd just stayed still, muttonhead."
Then Gruffnut started crying, first from distress and then from seeing how much she was bleeding. Her parents bickered the entire time they were treating the shallow but long cut, and from then on, Gruffnut ran to a different room whenever the twins started throwing sharp objects around.
By the time she was five, she'd tasted food cooked by many people, either meals eaten at her friends' houses or tidbits given to or stolen by the children as they played about the village.
Nothing was worse than Chief Astrid's food, but Gruffnut gradually became aware that her own parents' cooking wasn't much better. "Your food is always so yummy," she said wistfully one time to Bunny as they ate together.
"Daddy's a really good cook," Bunny said proudly.
"Why?"
"Hmm...I don't know!"
The next time Gruffnut ate at Bunny's house, she ignored the game the girls were playing and came to watch Bunny's parents cook instead. "Would you like to help, Gruff?" Fishlegs asked.
"I don't know how," she said shyly.
"That's all right, we'll teach you. Here, spear these pieces of meat onto the skewers and I'll show you what to do with them."
Gruffnut started trying the things she learned. She found that, even though her own food wasn't nearly as good as the grown ups' who knew how to cook, it still often tasted better than her parents' food. By the time she was six years old, she was doing all the cooking for the household (the few times she tried to leave it up to her parents, they claimed it had been so long since they had cooked that they'd forgotten how).
Around five or six years was also when Gruffnut started noticing differences in the way her parents kept their house. Everything was a mess - Ruffnut and Tuffnut tended to keep their stuff in separate piles, but there was no organization to it, and items often got thrown around during fights or experiments. Tuffnut did like to decorate, but his creativity was only concerned with arrangements. As long as whatever wall or floor space he needed was clear, he could care less where all the junk got moved to, or whether there was mud on the floor or trouble spots that had never been repaired.
Gruffnut had grown up with the mess and was quite used to it until she noticed that it was easier to move around safely in tidy houses. She rarely stepped on things or cut herself or knocked things over at her friends' homes. She was surprised the first time she was about to re-use a plate that hadn't been washed, and her friends reacted with disgust. She made up some excuse and pretended that of course she hadn't actually planned to eat off it, ew! But it was yet another thing to start paying attention to...
She discovered that most people washed their eating and cooking stuff before using them to eat or cook again. Gruffnut hadn't known that. And once she learned, she couldn't unlearn it, and was frustrated with her parents for acting so unconcerned when everyone else made it seem like a bigger deal. "Tuffnuuuutttt, don't put it there, there's stuff from yesterday still on it!"
"So?"
"So WASH it first, Tuffnut!"
"Pah. You're just trying to trick me, aren't you."
"...What?"
So Gruffnut angrily started to clean, too, but she soon got fed up with her irresponsible parents and decided to only clean her stuff. If her parents wanted to eat off dirty plates and sleep on dirty bedding and trip over all their stuff, fine. She was going to take care of herself, and that was it.
"Behold! My masterpiece!" Tuffnut crowed, gesturing at the tapestry he'd just finished.
"Tuffnut!" Gruff whined, you put all this stuff in my part of the room! I told you not to do that!"
"See how well the colors complement each other," Tuffnut went on, lovingly running his fingertips over the threads, "that took me a while to figure out, the blue wasn't cooperating, but it looks awesome now!"
Gruff sighed loudly and shoved the haphazard pile of junk back over the boundary line she had marked on the floor.
The girl was also very young when she learned what warranted running to get the chief and what didn't. At first, she simply watched in confusion as Astrid yelled at the Thorstons, but then Gruffnut started noticing herself whenever Ruff and Tuff's antics put the village in danger or hindered people's work or broke laws that were supposed to protect the villagers' health and property. Gruff also learned that Astrid didn't want to be interrupted about other things, like when the Thorston twins were simply wasting time or working hard on useless projects.
"But they're scaring me!"
"Gruff, I know, and I sympathize, but I really need to be here making sure nothing goes wrong - and as long as your parents aren't blowing anything up, they're kind of low on my priority list right now. Just...just stay out of their way for a while, sweetie, all right?"
Gruffnut spent as much time as she could outside the house, usually hanging out with her friends. By default, her friends were the other girls in the village, because there were so few of them.
The chief's daughter was the ringleader, the smallest of them in stature but somehow seeming the biggest (she was definitely the loudest). Valka liked to lead them in training and dictate their games, and would fight anyone who crossed her - fights which she usually seemed to enjoy.
Gruff usually just took the path of least resistance; her own preferences weren't worth fighting for when she was up against such a spitfire. She didn't understand why Bunny, who hated being bossed around, always unintentionally seemed to do things that would prompt Val to try to boss her even more.
"Noooo, Valka, we already did training today, I'm tired!"
Gruffnut felt the same, but was simply planning to go through the motions, appeasing Val with the appearance of practice while really conserving her energy.
"Who cares if you're tired! We still have to practice!"
"But I don't want to."
"Don't be a baby, Bunny!"
"I'm not a baby!"
"Then be a woman and FIGHT ME!"
"No! I don't want to! I'm going home!" Bunny turned her back to walk away, but Valka pounced, as everyone (except Bunny, apparently) had known she would do. The two girls screamed as they tore at each other, Valka in excitement and Bunny in fury. Val reveled in the chance to practice her how-to-fight-an-opponent-who's-bigger-than-you tactics; Bunny, so upset that she was moving on instinct, did her best to pound her tormentor into the ground.
Valka eventually emerged bruised and bleeding but victorious, perched atop Bunny with a huge grin on her face as the bigger girl sobbed into the ground. "I win!"
"I hate you...I hate you, I hate you...!"
Despite how badly Val and Bunny got along, they were assigned together, along with Gruffnut, on a training assignment when they were ten years old, expected to survive for three days and two nights in the woods with no adult help and minimal supplies.
It was not their first such assignment, and they did fairly well. The first night, they covered themselves with leaves for insulation and huddled together for warmth, Gruff in the middle because Bunny refused to sleep next to Valka.
Gruffnut was drowsing to the sound of Bunny rambling about constellations, when Valka heaved a long sigh and started fidgeting. "Val...stop moving, I'm trying to sleep..."
"What are you doing?" Bunny asked.
"I want to read my letter." Valka squirmed closer to the fire and carefully smoothed out a piece of parchment.
"What letter?"
"The letter my daddy wrote me."
That woke up Gruff. She and Bunny both sat up, staring. "Your dad?!"
"A long time ago, when I was a baby. He wrote me a letter. Finn found it when Gobber died." She read the letter out loud to them. The girls listened quietly, a little stunned, feeling things they didn't expect to feel at the words of a traitor.
"I love you, my princess. You have the best of your mother's spirit..." Valka read eagerly until, "Actually, I got two- Um." She squinted at the page. "Ummm, blah blah...oh. He says, I love you SO MUCH. Take care of Finn. Be strong. Be kind. Your smile lights up the world."
She was silent for a while. Finally Bunny said, "Wow. He...doesn't sound crazy."
"He sounded kind of nice, actually," Gruffnut remarked.
"I miss my daddy," Valka said in a low voice.
Gruffnut knew how she felt. She had a dad, sort of, but she didn't feel safe with him, and...and he wasn't her real dad, anyway. She had no idea who her father was, and he probably wasn't a great person, anyway, if he'd knocked up her mother and then refused to take responsibility. Gruff, wanting to cry, moved so she could put her arms around Valka.
Bunny caught herself just in time from saying that she missed her daddy, too. She did miss him, but he was waiting for her back home, probably fretting and worrying about her, ready to wrap her in a huge wonderful hug the minute he saw her again. Neither of the other girls had that.
Valka's father was probably dead, and she'd never see him again even if he wasn't. Despite Bunny's dislike for the other girl, she had a generous spirit, and her feelings right now were all pity. She ended up hugging Val, too, and the girls fell asleep that night snuggled closer together than they'd been before.
o.o.o.o.o
The older Gruffnut got, the less she could stand living in her parents' house, and the more she yearned to get out and have a life of her own, where she could make her own rules and be safe.
Unfortunately, her options were rather limited. She tried to take on odd jobs whenever she got a chance, but it was going to be a long time before she had enough saved up to live on, and she didn't have a regular trade to sustain her in the long term. Her combat skills, while decent, were nothing special; she found training tiresome, and forced herself to the basic practice sessions but marveled at people like Valka who seemed to have boundless energy and enthusiasm even when spending hours repeating a single move. Gruff couldn't bring herself to have that level of dedication, even though she tried. She would never be able to make a living from special assignments.
Her best bet was to get married, but the pickings on the island were...rather slim, and getting slimmer every time another boy was lost to illness or fire or the other many hazards of life on Berk. Gruffnut's looks certainly didn't help... She had inherited the solid masculinity of her mother's face, and she had neither Bunny's ample figure nor Valka's vivacious personality to make up for it.
After both the boys she wouldn't have minded marrying died, she was forced to face the fact that she would have to marry someone she didn't like. Juuuuust when she had accustomed herself to the idea and decided that Bucktooth was the best of two bad options, Bucktooth's broken body was found at the bottom of a cliff after a battle, clutching a rack of dried meat. Such things had happened before, when a warrior leaped at a flying dragon to rescue its loot but had not managed to extricate the food before the beast flew too far away from safe ground.
Gruff cried at Bucktooth's funeral, because she cried at all the funerals and it was sad. Bucktooth, while not prime husband material, hadn't been a bad person, and she would miss him just like she missed everyone else who had fallen in the war.
She was also, however, crying because she could see her hopes for a bearable future slipping further and further away every year, and it occurred to her that maybe she herself would die before adulthood and make all her fears and worries moot. 'I have to do something.'
She had to get married as soon as she was old enough, and Finn Astridson was now the only candidate on the island anywhere close to her age. Therefore, despite her initial reluctance, she forced herself to see him as her future husband until the idea started to seem mildly attractive. While not exactly handsome, Finn was...a pretty boy, that's what it was. Not reassuring as a protector/provider figure, but nice to look at from a purely aesthetic perspective.
Yet he could provide, even if he didn't look the part. He was the only blacksmith in town, he had far more wealth and independence than anyone else in their generation. And while the shadow of his father's shame lingered over him, he himself was not like his father. He contributed to the good of the village, and he never caused any disasters like in the legendary tales of Hiccup the Traitor. He was quiet, but that actually might be a good thing in a husband - no stomping around arrogantly, less likely chance of abuse.
Yes...Finn Astridson would make a decent husband, and he was Gruffnut's best chance at escaping her parents' house. Now she just had to make sure she claimed him before anyone else did.
To be continued...
Author's Notes: *HEADDESK* There are yet more glaring continuity errors in this subplot. I'll...fix them, I'll fix them later, but I wanted to post this now. X''''D This subplot works better as a characterization exercise for Gruffnut (which was actually the sole reason I wrote it) than it does as a legitimate part of the story. DX
Privately, the twins and their mother still think of their surname as Hiccup's, but officially, their surname changed to be derived from their mother's name after their father was exiled. That only just occurred to me while writing this subplot, so I hope that means I didn't make a mistake in the previous ones. I think "Hiccupson/daughter" was only used in private contexts.
I originally considered making Gruffnut like her parents, but that seemed boring. So then I thought, "What would it be like for a poor kid who had to be raised by Ruffnut & Tuffnut?" The kid would probably grow up feeling really unsafe with parents like that, so things like safety and responsibility would be important to her. I don't know if Gruff is like that naturally, but regardless, it's a survival tactic she's had to learn. The older she gets, the more she wants to disown her crazy parents. X'D