Found again (HTTYD FF)

★15★

The effects of the Dragon Root were slowly fading. All Hiccup could feel was the cold surface beneath him. It didn't take long for the excruciating pain in his tail to overtake him. It grew in intensity as he regained consciousness. It throbbed, stabbed, cut, pinched and burned at the spot on his left tail fin - the place where the fin should have been.

He came fully awake and pulled himself up to a sitting position, eyes wide open. His hands were in shackles, Inferno was nowhere in sight, and his tail...

His tail was no longer whole. The left half was missing now.

No...

He stared at it, almost forgetting how to breathe. His heart skipped several beats in a row. Soon he couldn't see anything through the tears in his eyes. He didn't want to see.

He pulled his tail into his lap and squeezed it tightly. Time slowed for a moment, stopped. For a moment there was only him and his heartbreak. He let the tears flow silently. He didn't care about anything that was going on around him.

He didn't sob. He was afraid that if he tried anything like that, he would be stricken with tears and unable to breathe.

He had to breathe.

He had to breathe deeply and regularly.

He mustn't let the terror consume him. He must not panic.

He had to keep what little calm he had left and figure out how to get out of here now - but not until his hazy vision cleared and the wound stopped hurting so much. Not before. Not before.

But the moment of grief couldn't last forever. Someone came to the door of his cell - only then did Hiccup realize that he was sitting in a cell in the middle of a ship rocking on the waves, and that there were actually two guards standing outside its bars, watching him out of the corner of their eyes.

He looked up, but he wasn't about to untangle himself from his ball. It was the safest position he could be in at the moment.

One of the brothers, the smaller one, was standing there. Viggo, Hiccup assumed.

For some reason, he was the one who scared him more. He was smaller, and it was obvious at a glance that strength was the last thing he would rely on in a fight. There was an intelligent look in his eyes - the look of someone who leaves nothing to chance - but nothing more. Hiccup could see into him, he had all the dragon's senses. This man had only blackness, emptiness, the absence of any emotion. Looking at him like that, Viggo seemed almost dead - at least his soul was.

He was a predator who was not afraid to go beyond all limits to get his prey. And his prey was Hiccup.

Viggo stepped inside, his footsteps careful on the floor, as if perhaps he feared the dragon boy would disappear before his eyes if he moved too fast. But Hiccup simply saw right through him, knew what he was doing - he tried not to frighten him, approached him like a frightened animal.

His efforts had the opposite effect.

Hiccup stiffened, tried to curl up into an even smaller ball and disappear from Viggo's sight. It was a stupid idea, but what else was he supposed to do? His arms were out of the game as long as he had the shackles around his wrists that bound them together. He couldn't fly away. And he had nothing to defend himself with - no sharp jaws or claws, no fire. He was utterly helpless.

Somehow it was even worse than on Berk, where he was subjected to the constant, maddening wailing of the other dragons. He had Inferno, his hands weren't tied - he could defend himself somehow. Now he could do nothing at all. Just lie in his corner and wait to see what happened next.