avannak:

avannak:

(Information used dyannehs’ babies and vikings post.

“It’s a boy!”

Valka’s announcement did little to enhance the joy of the room; the lively, healthy infant was enough to bring face-splitting grins and soaring hearts to the intimate gathering.

Astrid still squatted over the old, bundled cloths, eyes closed and leaning heavily on Hiccup. Hiccup kissed her salty brow, gripping her smaller hand, and grinned at the screaming child in his mother’s arms, splotchy arms swinging at her face.

“You’re amazing,” he murmured into his wife’s stringy tresses.

Astrid hummed her agreement.

Movement flit around them—water sloshed over the edge of a basin as cloths were wetted, Bursa’s two young assistants knocked shoulders getting to the witch hazel—but Hiccup only had eyes for his son, and could only feel his wife pressed against his body.  The child was quickly wiped down and swaddled, still screaming against the new elements.  Astrid was taken from Hiccup by her mother and Bursa and eased onto the bed, where she was swiftly tended to in washings and comforts.

Hiccup used the opportunity to free an aching hand and see his son for himself.  His knees protested as he stood.

“He’s beautiful,” Valka whispered as she handed her grandchild to a wide-eyed chief.  

Hiccup thought many times of how he would handle holding his child for the first time.  He worried over the unfamiliar weight in his arms and appropriate postures: would he bend the child too much? Hurt him with unintended brutality?  Cause discomfort?  Drop him?

None of these worries registered—not remotely—as he took the infant into his hands.  Everything felt right, but more so, everything looked right.  Large head and a robust chest.  All limbs in tact, all parts present.  The long, kicking body was possibly the length of his forearm, with a healthy set of lungs—small, gummy mouth managing to produce a ringing, unrepentant holler.  Hiccup felt his cheeks ache and his chest lighten, like a tension he hadn’t registered before had suddenly unbound.

Astrid ignored the washing going on around her hips and legs and reached towards Hiccup. 

“Let me—” she demanded, pushing her exhausted body forward. Bursa used the opportunity to stuff two pillows behind Astrid to better prop her.

Hiccup wasn’t nearly ready to relinquish his child, but he hurried to fulfill the new mother’s request.  Behind him, he heard someone creak open the front door and say “it’s a boy” to whomever stood on the other side.

The entire village would be up to date before the child nursed.

Astrid only relaxed against her padded throne once the baby was in her arms, tight against her breast.  She gazed at the screwed, pink face, with her own ruddy across the cheeks and brow, still shining from her efforts.  Hiccup watched them both; an unusual glimmer of possessiveness mingled with the pride and joy. His family.  His.

“He’s perfect,” Astrid sighed, like a breath.  The baby quieted, almost at the exact moment his mother’s voice reached his ears, as though familiar combination of sound and touch was exactly what he needed to alleviate the fear of a sudden, new environment.

Hiccup knelt by the bed and placed a hand on the tiny, warm head where fine, dark-red hair plastered to a purpled scalp.  He bit his lip.  His father would have been… so proud.

“Astrid?”

Glüm said her daughter’s name with the sort of alarm that had no place in the happy moment, and that’s when Hiccup realized Astrid’s eyes were half-closed, and her hold on their son had loosened.

It seemed so odd.  She had spoke just a second before.

“Astrid?” he said softly, giving his wife a gentle nudge. 

Astrid said nothing.  Her breathing slowed.

“She’s still bleeding,” Bursa announced from the other end of the bed.

Hiccup was pushed back.  Confusion set in.  He saw his son taken from Astrid before his immediate view was blocked.

“Get those rags, over there—”

“Astrid?  Astrid, dear, I need you to stay awake.”

“What can I do?” Hiccup managed to utter through a closing throat.

“Hold him,” Glüm said grimly, and she deposited the newborn back into his arms as gently as the situation would allow.  Though the baby had quieted since his birth, he continued to fuss and grunt, as though sensing something was amiss in the room.

So Hiccup held their child—his and Astrid’s—with his back against the wall and stared at the rushing bodies with unseeing eyes.  His wife’s bare knees, propped. Blood.  Paling cheeks.

He wanted to do something other than stand in paralyzed distress, to help more—fix her—but he didn’t want to impeded Astrid’s care. He wasn’t a healer, he was a flier and bumbling chief.

“Is she breathing?  Check her—!”

Hiccup felt the floor fall away beneath his feet. The boards behind him softened.  He gripped the swaddling cloth as though it were some kind of grounds to sanity and a very distant part of his mind wondered if he held the child too tightly.

He wished for… for someone.  Someone to brace him, other than the wall and the knowledge that in his hands was a very alive piece of Astrid.  He needed someone to explain to him what was happening because he couldn’t accept it.

Gobber, a stray thought screamed at him. Gobber would know what to do.

Gobber was holding down the Dragon Academy. Had been for the week. Eret was off speaking to northern tribes. Snotlout to the Meathead clan with Ruffnut. Fishlegs and Tuffnut were investigating rumors of western trades (which Hiccup would have much preferred to supervise himself).  All gone.  All taking care of businesses Hiccup found necessary during the final month of his wife’s pregnancy.  He needed one of them—any of them—here.  He felt more than helpless. He felt weak.

For the first time, his baby felt heavy in his arms—too heavy; the sort of heavy he worried about long before the birth—and Hiccup realized he couldn’t do this. He couldn’t do this without her.

He wasn’t as strong as his father—single parent and chief, the love of his life ripped away—He never had been.

The room had gone silent.  Valka and Glüm and Bursa murmured to each other, begged the woman on the bed to “hold on”.  Liquids and rags were aflutter—sloshing and creaking, rustling and moaning—but Astrid was soundless, and she was the only sound that mattered.

“She’s not responding—”

“Astrid?  Come on, girl—”

“No…” Hiccup groaned. “No no…”

Gods, this didn’t make sense.

She was fine moments ago.  She went into labor with a clear head.  They were prepared, with people and supplies and health.  She made a joke about the baby being Snotlout’s and their sinister plot to usurp Berk from him.  Always with her ill-timed humor.

She was smiling then. Holding her baby and smiling.  Now she was silent and pale as the pillow she lie on, eyes no longer fluttering but closed.  Lips parted and dry.  Hiccup had his hand against her forehead. He didn’t know when he came closer again or how he came to touch her, their child cradled in one arm, but no one pushed him back this time.

Still warm. He thought, desperate, all his concentration thrown to the palm of his hand. Still alive.

He glanced down, boldly taking his eyes from his fading wife to find a new pair watching him. Dark, dark blue.

Hiccup felt like he’d been kicked in the chest, both with the reality that this child was alive and that he would need him (with or without Astrid).  The newfound strength left him rattled.

“You have the strongest mother in the world,” he told their son, senseless to everything but the sweat-slicked skin against his palm and the heat of the baby. “The strongest,” he repeated in an inaudible croak.

He pushed his fingers into Astrid’s hair, fisting the dank strands, and kissed her brow, even as her body jostled with the work of the women below.

“Come on,” he whispered, kissing down her temple.  “Come on, baby.”

He wouldn’t forget the taste of her, or the smell of her, or the sound of her breathless ‘perfect’ mere heartbeats before.  But he needed more.  He would need more. He couldn’t imagine a life without more.

He bowed his head and whispered a myriad of profanities and prayers.  He cursed his fate and pleaded with the gods, even when knowing how they hated him.   Knowing he was blessed both cursed—defying death and bringing peace at the very tips of his fingers, and having it come at price he couldn’t emotionally bear.

Because Hiccup couldn’t have everything.  He couldn’t have a mother and a father.  He couldn’t have a wife and a child.  It had to be one or the other. Always.

Minutes later, his mother touched his shoulder and gently pulled Hiccup from where he had buried his nose against Astrid’s cheek. His knees ached. He hadn’t once relinquished the newborn, who lay silent and bleary-eyed in his arms. 

It wasn’t until Valka held Hiccup’s face and brushed her thumbs across his cheeks that he realized they were wet.

“What—,” he started thickly. Disoriented and crushed.

“She’ll live,” Bersa said. “Still could go south, but…”

Bersa might have trailed off, or Hiccup might have shut her out on his own.

She’ll live.

He sagged into the chair that had been pushed beneath his legs.  Or perhaps he had been led backwards.  The room left focus as unimaginable relief tore through his body.  The baby slept.  Those blue, blue eyes were closed.

The baby sleeping was a good sign, Hiccup thought, dazed. The baby knew. It could sense that things would be alright.  Alright. Things would be alright…

One of the handmaids said something.  Blinking, Hiccup asked her to repeat it.

“A name, chief?”

The first word that passed through his mind was Stoick.  For a large, healthy child with a smattering of red hair that came screaming into Midgard like any proper viking.

“I want her awake,” Hiccup said instead.  The child still needed to nurse.  Vatni Ausinn would wait.  Everything would wait, until he had his wife back again. Truly back.

His mother’s fingers ran the length of his neck as though she were calming a dragon. Bloodied rags were rolled and removed.  Astrid’s chest rose and fell as she slept.  Glüm held her daughter’s hand, looking ragged. Older.

Bersa gripped Glüm’s shoulder, eyes on the slumbering infant, and said, “We can wait.”

In the subject of giving Astrid anime “doomed mother” hair, this is as close as I’d get to killing her via motherhood