Work Text:
July 2014
“ASTRID!” Someone screams as she comes crashing to the ground.
The crash winds her. Her head hits the ground before anything else with a thunk , and if it weren’t for her bike helmet, she’d probably be dead. With several other bumps, she skids to a halt, gathering dust on her new skirt. Cursing her misfortune, she tries to move, but her bike traps her leg, and the gears snag her skin. Blood wells, and she kicks furiously, trying to escape the torment she finds herself in. All she does is make the bleeding worse.
“Hey, slow down.” A gentle voice by her side speaks. “Let me help.” She blinks the flyaway hairs out of her eyes and sees Hiccup’s softly kind face struggling to move her bike off her leg.
Weakling , she thinks with a grin, and finishes the job for him.
“I had it under control,” he grumbles.
“Sure you did.”
“Are you okay?” Fishlegs yells from the top of the hill where she sped down, waving frantically.
“I’m fine!” She yells, irritation flaring in her throat, making it sting. She kicks the bike and it skids in the dirt. “Stupid thing.”
Hiccup reaches to her chin to unclasp her helmet, and ruffles her hair. She glares at him but doesn't move away. “What went wrong?” He asks.
“Misjudged the jump,” she says, pointing to the mud hill some of the older kids in Berk had built for their own bike stunts. Admittedly, it may have been in poor taste for a group of ten year olds with no adults in the woods to try it. “I dunno what happened, I just didn’t even land my bike on the ground.”
“Are you hurt?” Hiccup asks, ever the worrier.
She does a careful examination of herself, starting from her feet: her ankles are sore, her calf is still faintly warm with a trickle of blood, but her knees are only scraped, and the rest of her body feels fine.
That is, until her interoception shifts to her head, and finds terrifyingly little.
Something’s wrong, she thinks instinctively, like jerking your knee when someone hits it. The funny feeling in her head spreads until it threatens to knock her over again.
But, just as instinctive, she grounds herself, pressing her nails into her palms, and forces a smile.
“Yep! All good!”
Hiccup gives her a look, like she doesn’t quite believe her, but contents himself with offering his forearm for her to lean on. Snotlout jogs down the slope and wheels her bike after them, whether it was out of consideration or a want to go back to their stunts, she doesn’t know.
He leads her towards an old tree stump, and makes her sit down. “No more bike stunts for you for today, I think,” he says. “Or any of you, for that matter.”
Ruffnut and Tuffnut, who were lined up to go hurtling down the hill again, give him disgruntled looks, but obey, leaning their bikes against a tree.
“What happened?” Tuff asks, sitting on the ground and crossing his legs.
“I dunno, I just... I fell, okay.” Astrid hunches her shoulders. The same irritation burns in her throat, making her dizzy. Or it might just be the growing funny feeling in her head.
She attributes it to the former, and accepts the bottle of water Hiccup hands her.
“Don’t have it all, you’ll need to spread it out,” he reminds her.
“It’s fine, we’ll just go home,” she says.
Hiccup looks at her like she’s joking. “ I’m sending Snotlout home to call your parents because he’s the fastest. You’re not going anywhere.”
It’s Astrid’s turn to look at him, expecting a laugh, a chuckle, a ‘gotcha- kidding!’ on his lips any minute now. She waits, and so does he.
But his face remains stone-cold and Astrid finally cracks.
“Are you kidding ?”
“No. No, I’m not,” Hiccup says, far too calmly.
“Hiccup, I’m fine ,” Astrid assures her. “We’ll all cycle back.”
The others brighten at the suggestion, happy to have their get together end more positively than the disastrous turn of events the day had taken. All except Hiccup.
“Not in your state, you’re not,” he says firmly.
Astrid rises to her feet, and every organ inside her seems to drop into her boots. “I- I told you guys, I’m-”
She doesn’t finish.
Her knees crumble like chalk and the ground zooms towards her. Light swims in her head, and what little consciousness she felt leaves, like a bird flying free from its cage.
Before she can hit her head, a pair of arms grab her, gasping sharply. “Damn it, Astrid,” someone says breathlessly. Hiccup.
He lifts her into his arms, which proves to be a bit difficult, considering his lack of muscle, and Snotlout helps him. Together, they transport her back onto the log. Fishlegs holds her upright, propping her on his shoulder, and Hiccup and Snotlout step away to talk in hushed voices.
With Hiccup’s head further away from her, she can only make out scraps of conversation.
“-cushion the head-”
“-use your jacket, God’s sake-”
“-lift her legs up... blood flow-”
“Go back... aunt and uncle... be quick-”
With a skidding of tires on dirt, Astrid can only assume Snotlout’s gone. Two more pairs of hands -Ruff and Tuff, from the feel of them- shift her off, and onto the ground, leaving the forest staring menacingly down at her.
“You okay?” Hiccup peers at her, disrupting the web of trees above her. “You passed out for a moment.”
“Did I?” Her voice is croaky; she still feels disorientated. Sure, she’d collapsed, but she didn’t think she actually passed out, did she?
Oh God . Anxiety hits her in the face like a truck. If I passed out, that’s bad. Like... going-to-hospital bad.
It hits her how serious the situation is. Even with a helmet, she’s probably concussed, oh God -
“Breathe,” a voice reaches the edges of her consciousness. “You’re alright.” A hand touches her cheek, gently stroking the mud-dusted skin underneath it.
“I’m breathing,” Astrid says, taking in deep lungfuls of air. The clean, forest air helps, as does the softness of someone’s jacket she lies on. It’s calm enough to go to sleep in, but when she shuts her eyes, Hiccup forces them back open.
“Fish’ says you can’t go to sleep until-” he breaks off at the indefinite nature of the situation. “Well, you have to stay awake for the time being.”
“Do I have to?” Astrid whines, and the sound is so unlike her, she wonders if it’s the twins for a moment.
“Just until the amb- help gets here, so you can tell them what happened,” Hiccup says, as Fishlegs’ hands gently start to dab at her leg with an antiseptic wipe. Cellophane crinkles under his fingers, and a plaster is carefully laid over the wound on her leg. Thankfully, he also thought ahead to bring an ice pack -the kind you shake to activate them- and he puts one on Astrid’s forehead.
Hiccup reaches across, and holds her hand. She hears him telling the twins to lock Hiccup, Astrid and Fishleg’s bikes to the tree, and hears them leave on their own ones.
And with his hand in her’s, and the ice pack easing the throbbing in her head, she relaxes, letting the web of forest above her close over her head like a shield.