Sticks and Stones [closed]

[i-saw-myself.livejournal.com]

He couldn't find her in the great hall, and that meant that she had likely heard, too, heard the truth. He wasn't sure if he should look for her, wasn't sure if she'd want him to find her. It wasn't that he expected her to run off and cry, but Astrid, by her nature, was the type to deal with things like grief alone.

In fact, he remembered when they were younger, when her father had died, she'd just... withdrawn; disappeared to practice like the crazy person she was. He wondered sometimes if the Astrid of the present, who made everything look so effortless, had been built on those quiet afternoons in the Berk woods, as she worked out her grief with relentless practice.

He still found her anyway, trying to find somewhere to be alone himself. It was a room that wasn't really a room. It led to an open sky, a meadow surrounded by trees, somehow still inside the ship. They weren't trees like back home, but they were trees. What he didn't know was this was Stacy showing off the Sensoriums to anyone nearby. All he did know was that he heard screaming. Over and over. And thunking noises. Scream. Thunk. Scream. Thunk. Scream. Thunk. Grief and anger with its own percussion. As if just screaming or just thunking alone weren't enough.

He watched her, and for once she didn't see him coming, she was so lost in it. For a moment, he wondered idly if he should leave, since she hadn't noticed him coming in, but found that he just...didn't quite want to. Right now, as far as he knew, she was the only Viking left, the only person from Berk left alive with him. After a while of standing there, watching, listening, he started to shake, and then closed his eyes, his mouth setting in a firm line.

Then he pulled his knife out of its sheathe, and his eyes opened again, and there was his own scream, his own thunk, as he threw it into the same tree Astrid was using as her unfortunate practice dummy. It actually hit the tree for once, next to her axe. And it even stuck. A testament to what he was feeling maybe.

(Everyone always told him he needed to focus more.)

Then he stood there, shaking with pent up...something waiting to see if she'd yell at him to get out or not.

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[i-saw-myself.livejournal.com]

If he knew what she was thinking, he'd tell her that his loss wasn't any greater than hers. It was a home to the both of them, they both belonged to its people. Her mother might not have been among the saved, the same friends might not have...

But he was the overly sensitive one, wasn't he. Of course she'd be able to shrug it off a little easier, of course she'd see his pain as worse, because she was so used to just gritting her teeth through her own.

That was Astrid all over.

And it did hurt. It hurt because he's finally gotten the approval of his peers, finally fit in with the rest of his people. He'd finally gotten the love and approval of his father.

And maybe most importantly of all, he'd made a friend that had become a lifelong friend, the first to ever accept him as he was--a friend he wasn't sure was here. His best friend.

Finally, finally after a life of being Hiccup the Useless, he'd gotten everything he wanted. And then, in some universal display of irony, as if a world where he got his heart's desire couldn't exist without imploding under the sheer pressure of unlikelihood, Everything He Had Ever Wanted was suddenly gone.

Both the unselfish part of him that was mourning that loss for the loss it was, and the selfish part that was mourning it for the loss it was to him were working on overdrive.

So when she embraced him, there was a choked noise in his throat, and then a sniff he couldn't hold in, and he, in turn, buried his face in her hair.

His arms tightened around her--around the very last precious thing from home that, as far as he knew, he had in all the universe.

Also unspoken was:

"I won't tell if you won't tell."

Vikings didn't cry. Ever. Not even silently.

But he'd always been a pretty crappy Viking.