A Tale of Parallels

For a moment, Hiccup’s hands and arms are numb. Stoick’s hands still hold the pan of scalding hot water. Its contents drip onto the floor, pieces of half cooked pasta slopping after it. The scene is frozen. Neither dare to move.

Then the pain spreads - slowly but surely, like sparks along a fuse. His skin tingles, then prickles, then burns like he's being roasted alive. Hiccup bites his lip and tries very hard not to cry. Stoick’s ice-cold eyes bore into his.

Finally, he slacks, puts the pan down, and reaches towards him with his big, suffocating hands. “Son, I’m-”

Hiccup recoils before he can help it. He freezes mid-flinch, his heart speeding. His muscles freeze, ready to receive a slap, a punch, a cut - anything would be better than silence.

“Fine.” His words are cold. “Be like that then. Ungrateful bitch. Just like your mother.”

He stomps past Hiccup, still frozen to the floor, and slams the kitchen door.

Once he’s gone, Hiccup lets out a breath he wasn’t aware he was holding. He flips on the tap, and lets out a sigh of relief at the cool water beginning to course onto his skin. He bathes his hands, then his arms, slowly moving them back and forth like a robotic machine.

What do you do for burns? He isn’t sure. Running them under cool water is good. He also remembers he shouldn’t put ice on it, or that will damage the tissue. He remembers that much from watching Grey’s Anatomy.

Now he’s thinking about it, something pops into his mind about degrees of burns. This has to be first degree. It is, right...? the water only touched his skin for a second, but it must’ve been boiling.

Stoick was cooking pasta, like he usually did when he gave him food. Half-cooked pieces of it littered the soaking floor. His stomach squirmed when he thought about how he’d have to eat a few of them to satiate his hunger while his dad cools off. He hates eating from the floor, but sometimes - on days like today - it’s that or starve.

While his hands and arms soak, he tries to preoccupy his mind with thinking about what else he can eat without his dad noticing its absence. Crackers are always an option. And they have so many oatmeal sachets, his dad won’t miss just one . If only there was some way to make one in the microwave without him noticing.

Hunger begins to bubble in his stomach. He can’t remember eating lunch. If he doesn’t eat now, he’ll be too dizzy and hungry to concentrate tomorrow. And he has a test in English tomorrow, so that can’t happen.

Swallowing his pride, he dares to remove his hands from the water, and begins picking up the pasta from the floor. They are slimy, squirming at his feeble grip. Each tiny movement feels like his skin is splitting open, laying his flesh bare to fire. It’s unbearably frustrating, and it takes everything he has not to cry.

Finally, he has a handful, which he dumps into a bowl and rinses with water, holding his hand in front of it to drain the water down the sink. Even with that, there is still the occasional hair and crumb and goodness knows what else stuck to the pasta, and it’s frankly disgusting .

At least it takes his mind off the burning in his hands and arms. His shirt - short sleeved, thank goodness, he can’t imagine peeling it off his tender, red skin - is splattered with water, but nowhere near as bad as his hands and arms.

He shuts his eyes, and swallows greedy handfuls of the disgusting pasta, his skin creasing, and it feels like fire. He doesn't know which he'd rather eliminate - the burn, or the swooping disgust in his stomach. He'll come down with a tummy bug in the next few days, he's almost sure.

If , he thinks dryly, this doesn't kill me first . The pain stops at his elbows, but it feels ready to consume him whole and swallow his body like a blue whale.

His throat caught between hurling and swallowing the final pieces of pasta, he shudders, makes him swallow it, and heads upstairs.

He keeps a keen eye for any signs of his father nearby, but there are none: he doesn't appear to have moved since he stormed off into the living room for a glass of whiskey.

That means one of two things for Hiccup: he can get away with borrowing some burn cream, or the punishment if he's caught will be five times worse at the forefront of his drunken rages, rather than the regular ones.

Even so, he slips into the bathroom, and puts his hands under cool water while he decides.

He weighs up the pros and cons carefully as he lets himself enjoy the meagre comfort he's been granted. The burn cream would help it heal faster, and if he healed faster, his dad wouldn't bring it up. But, to be caught on the receiving end of a drunken yelling fit, when public image as mayor of Oregon are no longer a concern for his incoherent state of mind, Hiccup has no safety net keeping him from harm worse than a burn.

Somenly, he turns the tap off, knowing what he needs to do.

Even though it’s only half seven, he burrows under his duvet, cradling his fragile hands to his chest, and tries to sleep. The heat suffocates his skin like an oven, prickling down his skin. It’s a few numbers off torture on the 1-10 pain scale, and Hiccp doesn’t know how much longer he can stand it. He screws his eyes shut, willing against the telltale creaking of his door opening.

Any second now , Hiccup thinks. Any second before he has to pretend to be asleep and relax his face as long as possible so his father doesn’t - hell forbid - try to talk to him about what happened.

When it seems to have been an hour, Hiccup dares to poke his hands out, and the cool air is miraculous on his skin. His muscles relax into the feeling, his whole body grateful for relief from the awful feeling.

But he can't leave his hands there; can't relax into even the tiniest of comforts. If his dad came in and saw him, he would have to talk about why he didn't tell him ( like he cares why ) and get in trouble even for using up so much water.

He sighs, and tucks his hands back in. It hurts every second.

Many hours later, he drifts off to a fitful sleep. His hands and arms burn under the duvet.

.o0o.

“Hello? Yes, this is Mr Herrera-Sosa - no, my wife’s at work. Yeah, yeah I can come. ... She what? Was it an accident? Oh, right, okay. Yep. I’m on my way.”

His heart racing, Hiccup saves the planning draft of How to Train Your Dragon vol. IV , shuts his laptop down, and picks Nuffink up, strapping him into his baby carrier. Clumsily grabbing his car keys off the hook by the door, he gets into his car and begins to drive to Berk Elementary School as fast as he possibly can.

He’s sick with worry, enough to make his stomach churn. Zephyr, his beautiful, wonderful, perfect daughter, scalded her hand. Her teacher wouldn’t give him any more details, no matter how much he ached to know. (And why five year olds were remotely near hot water he didn’t know.) He’s been a parent long enough to feel so acutely the twisting ache in his gut when either one of them were in any kind of pain. Even a paper cut has him fretting - he's so unbearably helpless to ease the hurt.

He wonders if it's a bad burn, like his hands and arms all those years ago. He wonders if she’s crying, or staying strong even though her upper lip wobbles. If a teacher is tenderly treating her wound, or leaving her to deal with it alone. Just like he was the first decade and a half of his life.

He parks his car in the school parking lot, and signs himself in, his heart racing in his ribcage. Her class teacher - Ms Haarshini - is already waiting, and leads him to Zephyr’s classroom.

“Daddy!” Zephyr cries - flustered, crying, but mostly okay. Hiccup lets out a sigh of relief he didn’t know he was holding. She walks up to him, holds out her delicate little hands and gingerly unwraps the wet blue paper towels wrapped around them.

Hiccup holds in a gasp. Her flesh is red and raw, just as he'd feared. Some is swollen, the worst of it close to blistering.

“Oh sweetheart...” He gently pulls her into a side hug. She hugs him back, careful of her brother strapped to his chest. “It’s okay. Daddy’s here.”

“We were going in the forested area in the playground for creative play, and all the kids got some hot chocolate. Zephyr spilled hers,” Ms Haarshini explains. “It was just a little accident, and we got cool water on it as soon as we could.”

“Thank you,” Hiccup says, though he still feels a sting of anger that she wasn’t protected enough. Why was the hot chocolate actually hot? Why were they all the way in the forest area and not closer to a classroom?

“It hurts, daddy,” Zephyr mumbles into his shoulder.

“I know, raindrop, I know. I’m going to take you back home, and put some cream on it that’ll make it better, okay? We can even have tamales for lunch, how does that sound?”

“With ice cream?”

“Of course, mija .”

“Okay daddy.” She nods, giving a brave, watery smile.

He stands back up, and faces Ms Haarshini. “She is okay to go home, right?”

“Of course,” she says. “Once I've dealt with the paperwork I’ll sign you out.”

Hiccup phones Astrid in the car, while Zephyr and Nuffink sleep in the backseat. 

As soon as he gets home and connects to WiFi, his messages come in. Immediately, he notices that Astrid - being Astrid - has texted him a list of very concise instructions.

Milady 💙

Give her the burn cream under the bathroom sink, leave half an hour, then give the aloe vera gel from our group’s Thailand holiday. After that’s dried, moisturise with a neutral cream, then wrap with a microfiber flannel. Let her watch TV while you’re treating it.

And a second message:

Tell Zephyr I love her very much and will be home ASAP. I’ve got dance club after school until 4:15 and then a bit of paperwork. Will be back by 5:00. Are you okay to cook? 💙 xxxx

Hiccup chuckles. He always cooks, but Astrid is learning. Her face of pure delight when what she makes comes out tasting good is one of Hiccup’s many reasons he positively adores her.

Babe ❤️

Of course! Will do ma'am o7 have fun & good luck for dance club ❤️ xxxx

Zephyr is uncharacteristically calm as Hiccup holds her unscaled hand and takes her to the bathroom. She sits carefully on the toilet, peeling the blue paper towels off her skin, and-

It's not pretty. The delicate little skin is pink and sore, the beginnings of blisters forming. Hiccup winces for the second time today. Despite his dread, he does exactly as Astrid says: smears the burn cream onto her tender skin with his thumbs, and tells her to wait for it to dry while she watches TV.

He leaves her in front of Peppa Pig and goes off to change Nuffink and rock him to sleep. He's fussy from the commotion, and Hiccup sings lullabies until his throat is sore, but he doesn't stop cooing, rocking and humming until his son sleeps soundly in his arms. With a practiced hand, he gently lays him down in his cot.

“Zeph? Mija ?” He calls for her, carefully treading back down the stairs.

He comes in, and Zephyr stuffs her hands into her school jumper's pockets.

“Hey, hey, none of that, alright? You'll hurt your hands.” Hiccup immediately reaches for her, then stops. “May I see your hands?”

Shamefully, she takes her hands out of her pockets. The skin is irritated and flushed red, the burn cream in white and pink ribbons where her nails scratched at it.

“I'm sorry daddy,” is all she manages before she starts quietly crying, stuffing her knuckles in her eyes.

Hiccup gently nudges them away, wiping her tears with his thumb. “You have nothing to be sorry for, my raindrop. Was the skin itchy?” She nods, her cheeks going pink from shame.

He can almost hear his father's voice.in his head, if it were his hands scalded, his father screaming in his face. “How dare you be such an ungrateful, worthless wretched bitch, I was so kind to deal with your own stupid clumsiness and here you are being rude enough to scrape it all off, why do I even bother, I shouldn’t ever have had kids-”

“It's okay, mija . I'm not mad at you,” he says instead. “I just wish you would have told me. But-” he slaps his knees as he stands up from the sofa “-what’s done is done. How about this - I give you another thin layer of burn cream and you can rub it in with your fingers to get rid of the itchy feeling?”

Zephyr contemplates this for a while, her large, hazel eyes round and intelligent. Then, she nods eagerly. “Okay daddy.”

Hiccup won’t lie. It’s a difficult evening. Zephyr sniffles - not crying - into her comfort blanket on the sofa several times in between Hiccup and Astrid treating her scald. Seeing his daughter in so much pain makes his chest physically ache. He knows it’s the same for Astrid; he sees it in every shaky press of her lips as she bites back tears.

But they both agree Zephyr doesn’t need to see her parents worrying so much - not at such a young age, when she’s too young to understand the depth of pain behind their fear.

Thankfully, the tamales and ice cream (homemade by her and Hiccup last weekend) cheer her up, and it puts Hiccup and Astrid’s minds at ease enough to let her watch her favourite movie Encanto . Astrid holds Nuffink on her knee, while Zephyr curls up on her father’s lap.

Hiccup only half pays attention to the movie. Instead, he keeps an eye on Zephyr, though there’s nothing really for him to watch for. Maybe he’s just being careful. Maybe he’s worrying too much.

He drinks in every russet hair on his daughter’s head, edged with gold when it catches the light. If she really takes after him in that regard, it’ll turn darker soon. But she has her mother’s gorgeous, brown skin, and the same nose shape.

Hiccup thinks about how she has Astrid’s hands too - long, slim fingers, and pointed nails. Elegant, with a good grip, ever since she was a baby clasping Hiccup’s index finger with her tiny fist. But, they are still five year old’s hands, and Hiccup still feels a tiny shred of guilt at allowing something so horrible to happen to her.

Halfway through the movie, Astrid takes Nuffink upstairs to put him to bed. A barely-concealed grin on her face, she nudges Hiccup and silently points to Zephyr.

Hiccup looks down, and realises she’s asleep already.

He smiles.

It’s seven thirty pm and Zephyr’s only five, so he puts her to bed early. It would probably be for the best that she sleeps off the pain.

After prepping her bedside assortment of a sippy cup of water and a face flannel to keep her hand soaked, he clears his throat and - with his hand on her forehead - begins to sing.

“The sky is dark, and the hills are white, as the storm king sings his song tonight.”

She opens her eyes, ever so slightly, and lets out a sleepy yawn.

“And this is the song the Storm King sings as over the world his cloak he flings.”

Hiccup fondly brushes the hair out of his daughter’s eyes.

“Sleep, sleep, little one sleep. He ruffles his wings and gruffly sings: sleep, sleep, little one sleep. Sleep, little one, sleep.”

“Night daddy,” she mumbles, rubbing her eyes with her uninjured hand.

“I love you, baby. You know that, right?” Zephyr nods. “I don't want you to ever feel like I don't, or there's anything you can't tell me, because there isn't. Your mom and I will always be here for you.”

“Okay. Goodnight daddy.” Her eyelids are drooping already.

“Goodnight my raindrop.”

Hiccup lays his daughter’s hand above the duvet, and kisses her goodnight.