Dragons: The New Chief

Chapter 5: Where Are You *Edited*

Hiccup lay curled in the fetal position, directly in the moonlight of the early morning, just before the time it hides from the sky. It was the wee hours of the morning when Hiccup jolted up, waking both Astrid and their dragons.

"Hiccup, it's time we talk about this." Astrid said with concern for her other half.

She sat across from him and Toothless, with her back against Stormfly's side. She knows it's only been three days, but he needs to be coaxed out of his hardening shell now, he can't dwindle away. Stoick wouldn't want his son to be like this, and she knew that. On his behalf, the blonde Viking wanted to make amends by trying to make Hiccup see Stoick's view on what happened. He doubled over and cried loudly, it pained her to see him like this, but they had to get through it somehow. This was not how people grieve.

Astrid crawled across the dewy grass to his side. She grasped his hands that were hugging his leather covered knees and pulled them away from his body, grasping them in her hands. He shakily looked up, his eyes beet red and stains running down his face.

"Hiccup..." she choked out, on the verge of tears herself. "I need you to tell you what is bothering you. I want you back, the village wants you back, your mother..." She sighed. "Where are you? Why are you not yourself?"

He started to cry a little more. "My father is dead!" he snapped.

Astrid was taken back a little, but she wasn't unprepared. She knew she was going to open the wounds even farther and that it might cause him to lash out. But, she couldn't let him slip into madness.

"I know that, Hiccup, but what about his death is bothering you? It can't just be the void of his presence, you wouldn't be so moody, and you wouldn't lash out and then be alright." She said calmly.

His eyes darted back and forth, he was trying to get what he wanted to say out into words, but there was just too much. His lips parted, but then closed soon after.

"Is it me?" she asked after a while. "Is there something I could have done? Could I have saved him?"

Hiccup shook his head rapidly. "You...couldn't have done anything, at least without getting yourself killed and I don't even want to think about...that."

"Okay, but there was a possibility, I have seen it as well. Let me put that into perspective for you." She said as she sat criss-crossed, her hands still holding her boyfriends.

Hiccup copied her, rising to sit up with his legs crossed. He bit his lip, not looking up at the woman in front of him.

"If I had done what I could have, I would be dead, you wouldn't and neither would your father." She said. "I know what Stoick would say in this case, he would say that he wouldn't have wanted me to do it, that I mean too much to you and he knows that it would hurt you too much. He would also say that he knows that pain, as he lost Valka for twenty years, and he wouldn't have that upon you."

Hiccups wheezy chest lessened as she talked on. He hung his head even lower, gripping Astrid's hands a bit tighter. It pained him to think he could have lost her as well. Without Astrid here, he probably wouldn't be either. At least, not there fully.

"But there was something that I shouldn't have done..." she continued and turned her face down as tears began to form. "I shouldn't have told Drago about you, or Toothless, or Berk. If I hadn't have told him, then he wouldn't have known..."

"You did that?" Hiccup asked in dismay, looking up at the woman.

Astrid wept and hung her head. "Yes, Hiccup, I did...and it was a huge mistake...but it just came out of my mouth. I thought it would threaten him, but...."