[HTTYD] Hybrid: Dying (theme 43)

Hybrid: Dying (theme 43) [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

When Hiccup was three years old, Valka made his first fur cloak for the coming winter.  She took pains to teach him that it was called a 'cloak' and was meant to be used for warmth, not flying, but he still insisted on referring to the garment as his wings.

"They are NOT WINGS, Hiccup.  You cannot fly with them, they will not carry you.  If you try to use this cloak to fly, you will DIE."

Two days later, he didn't die, but only because a dragon caught him before he could break to pieces on the ground below.

Valka panicked and raged and took the cloak away and burned it.

The dragons who saw it reacted with great shock and confusion, and Hiccup threw a tantrum.

At least, she thought it was a tantrum.  But when he didn't stop, and didn't stop, and eventually made himself ill, then she started to panic again and paid more attention....

They were all grieving:  Hiccup, who lay glassy-eyed and unmoving as if dead; Toothless, huddled at his side, endlessly crying and shivering; Ice Hunt, frantically pacing and licking the two children and rushing away to swoop unsteadily around the nest and then returning to start all over again; Cloudjumper, keening softly but constantly, staring at Valka with such a desperate expression....

She realized that she hadn't burned a piece of clothing.  She had burned Hiccup's wings.  "Oh, Hiccup, Hiccup, they're not wings, they're not part of you, it's just a piece of fur!"  She held him and spoke urgently to him, trying to make him understand, but he was beyond reaching now.

She took him to the king.  On her knees with her possibly-dying child in her arms, she tried to explain, spoken words supplementing and intermingling with the thoughts and images and emotions she pushed at the great alpha.  "He thinks it's his wings, wrong wrong wrong bad, NOT wings, warm safe fur help, WARM for winter!  Not wings!  Not wings not wings [Hiccup's tiny body splattered across the ground in a great pool of blood] horror horrified terror my dead precious child, no no no no not wings, 'CLOAK' fur warm, not flying!!!" she begged him.

Wise aquamarine eyes turned to the boy.  Hiccup sat up, so suddenly that it frightened Valka.  She watched intently as Hiccup and the king spoke together.  She couldn't understand most of it, though Hiccup's grief and rage and desperation was clear in his posture and tone.

The king rumbled, and eventually Hiccup drooped, slowly lowering into a despondent sprawl.

The alpha looked at Valka again.  "Give his wings back to him."

"Flying, die?" she asked anxiously.

"No," he assured her.  If Hiccup's look of despair was anything to go by, the boy didn't see the return of his 'wings' as a victory, which could be a good thing.

Valka made Hiccup another cloak.  He wrapped it tightly around himself and then hid with Toothless in a rock burrow for more than nine hours straight.  Ice Hunt patiently stood guard the entire time, not allowing even Valka to disturb them.

When Hiccup finally emerged, he spent two whole days ignoring his mother and staying out of her reach and eating the same raw food his companion did and refusing to walk upright or speak a word of Norse.

Just when Valka began to be truly afraid that her son would never be human again, she woke up to find him snuggled close to her.  She wrapped her arms around him and squeezed him tightly, afraid to ever let go of him again.

"...Hurt me, Mama," he whispered.

"I'm sorry, I'm sorry," she choked out.  "You hurt me, too, Hiccup."

He burst into tears, and she could no longer hold hers back.

They comforted each other for a long time, then when they finally got up, he was docile and obedient and ate what she cooked for him and spoke almost entirely in Norse when he addressed her.

By the next day, he was back to normal, expressing himself as a child of two worlds.  He used his makeshift 'wings' to aid in communication, seizing the edges of the cloak whenever he wanted to flare it, but he never tried to fly on his own again.

At least, not until he was old enough to make himself a pair of real wings.

o.o.o

Author's Notes:  Every time I try to write the vignette with that new character, it keeps rebelling. *sigh*  Someday you're going to see a human in this fic who is not Valka or Hiccup, I promise.

It's been a while since I've written anything.  As always, news update on my DevArt journal (I don't feel like retelling it all here).  I got one of those DreamWorksTV messages, btw; would be interested to know who else has.

Complete:  7/100