#I’m such a sucker for hurt/comfort pls don’t psychoanalyse me

[smallish-viking]

Returning Home (pt3/4) - A HTTYD Book fic.

Fishlegs takes care of Hiccup following the events of the quest.

1200 words

Fishlegs smiled. He stretched his hand out towards the sun and peered at the horizon. A small cloud of dragons were emerging from the West, the Viking boats below following shortly after. So the quest had been a success. He stayed standing on Highest Point for a while, watching the boats make their way towards Berk. They were a little singed, a little scratched, but otherwise in good shape. ‘Come on Horrorcow,’ he called to his hunting dragon, who had been munching at the grasses. She flapped onto his shoulder and the two of them began to walk to the harbour.

The boggy grassland of Berk was a difficult thing to venture through. The ground was never fully decided on whether it was solid or not, so a very sturdy looking clump of grass could give way to knee high sticky mud. The harbour soon came into view and Fishlegs could hear the shouts of Vikings on the wind. He began to quicken his pace, a coil of dread gathering in the pit of his stomach, and by the time he had reached the boats he was running.

Camicazi was one of the first to descend from the ship. There was a look in her eyes that Fishlegs hadn’t seen since the war. With a flicker of fear he asked ‘What’s happened to him?’

‘It was a trap, Fishlegs.’

‘What?’

‘He’s been hurt pretty badly. The roof collapsed onto him.’

Fishlegs raced towards the boats. Four men were carrying a stretcher across the gang-plank and onto land. Hiccup lolled on top, jolting with every step the men took. Fishlegs screeched to a halt next him. Hiccup’s chest was rising and falling in a regular rhythm, bloodied and covered with soot and dirt. He grabbed his friend’s wrist: normal pulse, felt his forehead: fighting a fever. ‘What are his injuries?’ Fishlegs demanded, continuing to search Hiccup’s body and assessing the damage.

‘Wounds to the chest and head,’ said a voice from one of the men. ‘Broken ribs, we think, and fractured arm.’  

‘He was lucky.’ Barbara stepped into view; a lot of her bright red hair had escaped her braid. She looked exhausted. ‘There was only one storey and he missed the worst of it.’ Then her gaze lifted to meet his own and he could see the battle in her bright green eyes. ‘The Gods were on our side.’ It could have been worse. It could have been much worse.

There was a path - not a path exactly more like a stretch of slightly sturdier and dryer heath - that lead from the Harbour to the Hooligan Village. Hiccup and Fishlegs grew up on these craggy Berk marshes. Here they would trudge home from lessons, train their dragons and escape from the hubbub of the Hooligan Village. Now, Fishlegs ran through them with Hiccup’s limp body at his side, carried to the Healing Hut where the doors were slammed open and the King was laid in gently onto the bed in the centre of the room.

‘Get me some honey,’ Fishlegs ordered. ‘Boiled water. Clean cloth. Yarrow, as much of it as you can, Verbena, Ground Ivy and,’ he stripped away Hiccup’s shirt and surveyed the blood and bruising. He steeled himself. ‘Mayweed if there is some. Chamomile will do if you can’t find any.’ With quick strides and heavy feet, the men left.

The wooden shutters were shoved open so bright light illuminated the hut. Fishlegs turned back to Hiccup and rolled up his sleeves, he had a job to do.

Fishlegs had never been a warrior, even during the war and the perilous days of his childhood, he was never a natural fighter. He was skilled enough in battle if he went Berzerk, but that side of him died with his father. After the war, Fishlegs turned to fixing things. Helping to repair the huts in the village, tending to the woods and gardens after the dragon fires. He learned the art of healing from Old Wrinkly, and then he mended the people, too. He took some clean cloth and pressed it to a gash in Hiccup’s chest, holding it there as it turned a deep red. He was used to patching up Hiccup. Growing up on these rugged islands and with dragons, even a fang-free one, meant that treating little injuries became an almost daily occurrence. And in the Secret Hideout* Fishlegs took it upon himself to make sure that Hiccup and Camicazi were alright, a role that he hadn’t dropped in the last six years. It had never been as bad as this, though, not since the last days of the war.  

The door creaked and Barbara joined him again with two full buckets from the well. She wet a clean cloth, wrung it out, and placed it on Hiccup’s forehead, cooling his fever. Her features were set and believing.

‘I’ve no idea how he pulled that one off, Fishlegs.’ The worry that he felt was not reflected in her voice. He used her to steady himself.

‘Nor do I,’ he breathed as he used the fresh water to clean the wounds.

And so they stayed, until the dusk gathered in the West, working tirelessly until their job was done. Until Hiccup’s chest and arm were bound, wounds were cleaned, pressed with herbs and dressed, until their hands were red and their eyes weary.

‘You should get some sleep.’ Fishlegs said at last.

‘So should you.’

Fishlegs couldn’t bear the thought of leaving Hiccup.

‘Barbara, I –’

‘Don’t worry,’ she rose (Fishlegs had insisted that she took the stool) and walked to him. She reached out a hand and brushed hair from his brow. ‘I know.’ Warmth lingered from her touch like the first golden sun beam after a storm.

‘I’ll come in the morning.’

He smiled, ‘ok’.

And so she left, and Fishlegs was alone with Hiccup. He took a blanket from the shelf by the fireside and lay it over Hiccup’s sleeping form, gently tucking him in. He then leaned over and rested his forehead upon Hiccup's. ‘You’ll be alright’ he whispered. He drew the stool to the bedside and rested his head upon his hands, watching the rise and fall of his friend’s chest.

When Barbara found them, many hours later when she returned at the break of day, Fishlegs was sitting slumped in the stool beside Hiccup’s bed, head resting on folded arms upon the bed. The King lay stretched out on the bed, one arm bent upwards and his head turned towards it, the colour back in his cheeks. Unthinking, Barbara took the cloak from around her shoulders and lay it over Fishlegs. She reached out to take his glasses and noticed that his eyelids fluttered, lashes dancing the way they did when he dreamed. She gently took the glasses from his face, folded them and placed them on the bedside table.

‘Let’s leave them to sleep.’ She said to Horrorcow and Toothless, who hovered by the doorway. She clicked the door shut, readjusted her boots, and set off to the dragon stables, knowing that a chaotic hubbub awaited her there. 

*See How to Steal a Dragon’s Sword, another one of Hiccup’s memoirs