[HTTYD] Hybrid: Break Away (theme 6)

Hybrid: Break Away (theme 6) [rough draft], a DreamWorks' How to Train Your Dragon fanfic series by Raberba girl

List of themes by AngieChild, Variation 1 for the 100ThemesChallenge group on DeviantArt

A/N:  Again, I think Hiccup is four.

o.o.o

Hiccup soothed and caressed and comforted the injured dragon until it had calmed down enough to let Valka tend to it.  Hiccup, in between crooning and petting, would steal horrified glances at the torn hide and bloodied flesh, the work of a metal trap.

When the dragon had fallen into an exhausted doze, Hiccup crept into his mother's lap, and Toothless pressed heavily against them both.  "Mama, why?" Hiccup whispered.

"Remember what I told you?" she murmured back, rocking him a little to soothe him.  "Outside this nest, humans and dragons don't like each other...they're angry and frightened, and they hurt each other."

Hiccup's fingers clenched around her sleeve.  "Humans hurt him."

"Hiccup, you know that some dragons are kind and good, but other dragons are violent and selfish.  Humans are the same way.  Humans can be both good and bad, just like dragons.  Sometimes a human or a dragon gets hurt, and then wants to hurt other humans and dragons."

"Hurt him...."

"That's why I want you to grow up here, Hiccup.  Our village, our real home--  Our...our old home...do you remember what it's called?"

"...."

"Berk, Hiccup.  Our human home is called Berk.  Your father is still there."

"Papa, Father, come here to take care of me and love you.  Not there far away."

"Hiccup, he is fighting.  The whole village has been fighting and fighting for a very long time.  Dragons come and take their food away, so they get hungry and angry and scared, that's why there's so much fighting.  Here, you have me and Icefisher and all these other dragons to take care of you, so Papa can focus on taking care of the village.  He's the chief, Hiccup."

He looked at her uncomprehendingly.

"You are the son of a chief, Hiccup."

"Dragon word?"

"Er...I'm not sure....  A chief, he is the leader."

Hiccup frowned in confusion.  "Alpha?"

"No, that would be, let's see...a king.  A king is the leader of many peoples.  Many...flocks, many human flocks.  Like how our alpha has power over all dragons.  Stoick, your father, he is the chief of one tribe, one flock.  He's the leader."

"Leader?  Partner?"

"Well...I suppose I was his partner when I still lived there...."

Hiccup straightened up and stared at her, surprised and aghast to learn of her neglect.  "Mama is queen?!"

"Oh, Hiccup!  Nothing like that, I--  Well, I'm a chieftain's wife, that's not really--"

"Mama is queen!  Go back to our scared human flock take care of them, left consort all alone!"

"What?"  Finally she realized what he had misunderstood.  "Oh--!  Not a dragon queen, Hiccup!  Oh, how do I explain this....  Stoick is the, the queen, I suppose.  Stoick is the first leader of his flock.  When I was there with him, I was his wife, his consort."

Hiccup thought about this some more.  "Papa is the queen, but he's male?  Mama is the consort?  But she left him....  It's good that she left??  She ran away and took me away, why?  Fighting and hungry?  Humans hate dragons?  Keep her cub safe from danger and hunger, but her flock is still fighting and scared, why, confused, two flocks, I don't understand I don't understand!"

"Tell me what's wrong, Hiccup."

But Toothless was asking for an explanation as well, and Hiccup answered him first.  "I don't know if Mama did a bad thing or a good thing, she is keeping her cub safe but her flock is sad and alone and scared and fighting, she is consort but she left.  For me???  For me?!  Alone flock, my fault?!"

"Safe Half Of Me, safe here," Toothless said.  "She can go back and take care of her flock, Half Of Me stay here safe."

Hiccup crooned back in approval of this plan, knowing that with the loss of both of his parents, Ice Hunt would adopt him.

"Hiccup, what are you telling him?"

"Mama, go away," Hiccup said, slinging an arm around Toothless.

"What?!"

"Mama consort go to human flock, help queen take care of them.  Hiccup cub stay here, nightwings Alpha's flock take care of me."

"Hiccup, no, I wouldn't leave you like that!"

"Flock!  Left your flock, Mama!" Hiccup cried, angry.

"We will go back someday, Hiccup!  When you're old enough.  You're too young now, but we'll go back when you're older, when you can teach the villagers and the dragons how to be at peace with one another."

Hiccup hunched down under Toothless's wing in disapproval.  "My fault...sad flock, my fault, I don't want it to be my fault, Mama is making it my fault, I have to get bigger older more mature.  [Peace?!]  How do I make angry scared dragons and humans stop fighting?!"

"She made You upset, I will take You away from her."

"Yes.  We will go chase fish, maybe catch one."  Hiccup slid up onto his dragon's back.  Toothless wasn't strong enough to fly with him yet, but he could carry him on foot when they needed to get somewhere fast.

"Hiccup!  Toothless, bring him back here!"

"Go fishing, Mama!" Hiccup called back by way of explanation, and then they were gone.

o.o.o

Author's Notes:  This conversation about Stoick was what I was trying to get at in Annoyance.

Human Hiccup is usually pretty easygoing for me, but hybrid Hiccup is really being a brat. X'D  All this brainstorming where he was acting like he could care less about Berk, then suddenly here in the middle of drafting, he's going altruistic on me in this smug way. *sweatdrop*

Most of the time, I receive normal messages from people (thank you, btw! ).  A few times, I receive odd messages.  And every so often, like the two I got recently from (I assume) completely different people, I receive such bizarre, nonsensical, totally out of left field messages that I can only conclude the senders are trolls, mentally ill, or spambots or something. o.O  (As always, it's FanfictionDotNet; haven't had a problem on the other sites I post on.)

Argh, okay - for my own personal terminology, I use "one-shot" for single installments that are several thousand words long, but I have another type of short story, the equivalent of a "doodle" for artists, where I aim for just a few hundred words (though it usually ends up being longer) or just want to throw down a quick scene or idea.  These are usually about 600-1,200 words, and I was calling them "drabbles" for a long time, but decided to change my terminology when I learned that, technically, a "drabble" is supposed to be a short work that's exactly 100 words.  So I recently changed the term to "ficlet" instead, but I looked it up the other day and it seems like "vignette" means the same thing but is less cutesy???  So I'll probably start saying "vignette" instead of "ficlet" or "drabble."

I'm gonna see if I can progress on something that's not Hybrid this weekend, preferably one of the stories that I promised to people (way too long ago!).  Next Hybrid vignette is drafted, btw, and I've been trying to get the one after that done.  It's the first one that brings in another character, and has been causing me problems.

Complete:  4/100