#hey maybe hiccstrid happens after this and I can pretend to be normal for a hot sec laskdfjlasdfkj

[alkalinefrog]

“I love you. Goodbye.”

@twiafom drew homunculus!Jack and it was so beautiful and the quote they chose was super poignant aslfkjsaldkf. It inspired me to TELL MORE OF THE STORY.

Quick background context, this is an FMA au and Hiccup lost half his heart trying to revive Jack bawwww :’’’D

[tysonrunningfox]

Guys.  GUYS.  guys.  

It’s more fester hiccstrid.  This takes place immediately after the last chapter.  This also takes place, like, period.  It’s a wow.  

To find the rest

Astrid is unreadable, flipping through the stack of documents that he asked her to update herself on at the council table long after everyone else has left.  Hiccup left too, he took Eret home and got a few things done there while Eret pouted about being fine enough to help out in the village again even though half his face still has the pulpy, ambiguous shape of a target.  But Astrid didn’t come home and Hiccup well…

Well, he decided, for once, that maybe other people’s absence didn’t equate to them needing space and that maybe he should look for her.  

She doesn’t look up right away when he enters and he gets, for the first time, what it must have been like to catch him at work all those years ago when he didn’t want to look at anyone.  

He clears his throat. She turns a page.  

“Hey.”  

She looks up at him, startled.  He thinks about walking up beside her, sitting in the chief’s chair and asking her why she’s still here.  

“Hi.”  She looks back down at what she’s doing and he gets, for the first time, that his authority is probably not the right token to play.  

Because that’s the thing he’s realizing about Astrid.  That as much as she’ll follow and commit and help, being told doesn’t suit her.  

“What are you still doing here?”

She shrugs, “you told me to familiarize myself—”

“I didn’t tell you to memorize every word,” he forces a chuckle and this feels like a fight, like something’s building.  Something familiar, something that makes him feel young but not as confident, because now fighting would hurt him more than her.  

“I’m not.”  

“And you don’t want to talk to me because—I mean, why don’t you want to talk to me?”  He takes a step forward, looks at that chief chair again.

“I never said that.”  

“You didn’t come home.”

“Why now?”  She looks up and the instant of winning her full attention is like a punch to the face.  

“What?”  

“Why now?  Of all the times you could have sent someone else, why now?”  She pushes the papers aside and it feels like a deadly play in some game he didn’t mean to step into.  

“I…isn’t this enough of a situation?”  He asks, and he knows it’s wrong as he’s saying it, he knows he’s caught, he knows she’s bringing up thirty years ago like it still matters.  

He wants it to matter. He wants to finish that fight in a way he doesn’t hate now, wants to rewrite all his younger, dumber self said and did.  

“There have been dozens of bigger situations.”  

“Yes,” he nods, “there have.”  

But none of them have involved their son.  He knows saying that won’t help anything, it won’t make her feel more important than Eret, which she is sometimes even though he’s not supposed to feel like that. Maybe it’s because he didn’t get to watch Eret grow this whole time, or maybe it’s just that he’s not as young as he used to be and the person he owes the most apologies to has to come first.

“So why now?  Why is it now that you decide to stay home?  I—I could handle this on my own.”  She says it like she’s convincing herself and he doesn’t mention it because he remembers the last few times she convinced herself of something.  

It never ends up great for him, does it?  

“You could.”  He shrugs, tucks his hands in his pockets, “you shouldn’t have to.  You don’t have to.”  

“But I could.”  

“I just said that I agree with you.”  

“It doesn’t matter if you agree,” she grits her teeth, flexes her jaw, looks him up and down in that familiar toxic way that makes him feel young and bitter and ready again.  

He could take her up on it, he knows, she’d let him and they’d both feel better for an instant.  They’d both go home and smile and pretend it didn’t happen, even while he felt sticky and wrong and remembered, like no matter what he says she still knows he’s a man, still appreciates it.  

“I know it doesn’t.”  

“You aren’t going to defend yourself?  You aren’t going to tell me why?” She’s angling for one of those knock down, drag out, strip down on the nearest flat surface fights and it almost sounds good.  It sounds relieving.  It sounds like he might not be quite so guilty for abdicating some chiefly duty for the first time in thirty years.  

He swallows hard, “I don’t have to defend myself for doing what’s right.  For once.”

She sighs, “how’s Eret?”

“Determined to come to work, I told him to sleep it off another day at least.”  

“You can’t do this,” she flexes her jaw, “you can’t care about us and then pretend you don’t, you know that, right?  You can’t stay this time and not stay the next.  You can’t…” She exhales, like she’s trying to calm down, and her eyes are glassy in the way his never were when he was sitting above her.  “You can’t make promises you aren’t going to keep.”  

“It’s not a promise. I’m going to keep it.”  

“I don’t believe you.” Astrid looks old, for the first time Hiccup can really see.  Not her age, not a better version of middle aged than him, but old.  Old like Gobber, old like she’s seen too much and lost too much and expects to lose more.  He hates that he made her look like that. He hates that she thinks she lost him when really he was pulling away as hard as he could.  

“I’ll make you believe me. I’ll convince you.”  He feels himself being louder than he needs to be, like he’s talking over the din of every fight she ever lost when she should have won.  “I’ll be around so much that you get sick of me being here.”  He laughs.  It’s not funny.  

“You’ve made those kind of promises before—”

“Thirty years ago!” He snaps, and he remembers what it was like to tell his father that this time was different, this time he really shot something down.  “I was young and stupid and my father was dead and I treated you like part of the problem.  But now…”

“Time doesn’t fix everything.”  

He wonders if she’s thinking about that night.  About their wedding night.  About the other day.  If she thinks about them all the way he does, sees all the ways it could have been closer if he’d known how brief his chance was.  

“No, but effort does. Trying does.  And I’m trying, Astrid, I’m trying so hard.”  He hates the way that his voice sounds, echoing off of the walls of the empty hall.  “I—I’m starting to remember now, aren’t you?  Why we were together in the first place?”  

She scoffs.  It’s fake, lofty, like she’s struggling to rise to the position she’s in but she doesn’t know how.

“Don’t leave.”  Her voice trembles.  It’s a warning she’s not sure he deserves and that makes him want to heed it more than anything else.  “Don’t change your mind.  Don’t decide—stay.  You said you would.”  

“I will.”  He wants to say that of course he will but he knows that’s not true, it’s not an of course.  “Who else is boar-headed enough to help you with that son of ours?”  

“Gobber, Aurelia…Fuse Thorston, apparently, because you just have to be right even when it sounds impossible.”  She stares at him, calculating like he missed so much, “but I want you to do it.  So you have to stay here.”  

“I already said I would.”

“Mean it,” she orders, like she has that authority and he realizes that she does, over him, that she never should have lost it.  

“I do.”  

She looks at him for another moment that feels like another excruciating year without her before turning back to her stack of pages, “I’ll be home when I’m done with this.”  

“Ok.  I’ll go make sure Eret doesn’t go dragon wrangling until his face goes back to its normal shape.”  

She nods like he’s annoying and he knows he is, but it’s an answer and that has to be enough right now.