A/N: So, I finally got around to looking at this story again and realizing about ninety percent of you guys were really confused upon reading it. I mean, I did speak in kind of vague terms throughout the whole fic, and I'm happy with the way it turned out, but I see now I should probably explain things a little better, just so you guys have a clearer view of what's really going on. I don't want to say Hiccup's crazy in this, because he's not exactly…I mean, he's…unstable. I guess you could say. So I tried to write the story as he sees it happening – so at times, the writing is very simple and childish because that's what he does in this fic, he simplifies things so they're easier to handle.

So basically the "cold" and the "heat" are metaphors in the story – the "cold" is numbness and the "heat" is happiness. So: "Hiccup was cold" is basically "Hiccup was numb, Hiccup didn't feel anything". But Hiccup can't deal with what he's feeling in such a clear-cut way, so he thinks of it in terms of temperature. But it goes a little farther than that, because he hates the numbness, the loneliness, so much that he tries everything just to feel something – the line about "he wore his winter clothing in summer" is a metaphor for his attempts to find peace, but ties into the warmth theme. Lines like that are pretty common in the story:

"He shivered when there was no snow" – he can't feel anything even though he knows he should

"Hiccup wanted warmth" – Hiccup wanted to feel something

"He left his jacket at home that day" – he found the way to make himself feel, and felt no need to try with anything else.

So when he burns himself, he responds to the physical sensation with interest, excitement, even – the burns didn't just pain him, they helped him feel actual emotions again, and this brings him hope. He connects the dots to the physical pain and thinks he needs to keep doing it to keep feeling things. For awhile, it actually is a solution – admittedly an unhealthy one, but a solution nonetheless – and at one point, his teacher even questions his burned hands.

"He boiled water once without the intention of ever using it, and when it was done, he turned the stove off and put his hand in it. Pink blisters exploded up his palms, and for days afterward, it hurt to hold his pencil. Nobody noticed except his English teacher – damn her – and he told her he'd gotten it from a cooking accident. He was higher than the clouds afterward; he liked lying. He was good at it."

A good liar, he might have been, but it wasn't the deception Hiccup found himself enjoying – rather, it was the experience of having someone to lie to. I address this later in the fic, when he thinks it "wasn't the lying he liked so much", but I never expounded upon it, so if there was any confusion there, that's understandable.

Now here's where things get really interesting, on this line right here:

"His reflection stopped smiling before he did."

After awhile, the burning lost something for Hiccup – it was a solution, but it caused more problems than it was worth, but he won't admit it, and he won't stop. So he starts lying to himself instead, pretending to feel happiness when he doesn't. So when he says, "His reflection stopped smiling before he did. He was fine", it's his twisted way of saying he's happy, despite even the mirror telling him otherwise. And of course, the "jacket/warmth" part of that scene is his way of saying he won't search for any other, maybe healthier, way to feel things, but he's happy – "warm" – nonetheless.

In the very next scene, we see Hiccup replacing even Astrid with the burning in his brain – then, in the next, discussing the approaching Christmas.

"Men in red suits and fake white beards began appearing in malls, and Hiccup smiled at them when he passed because he had nothing and everything…"

The "nothing" was his way of addressing his father and the kids at school and whatnot – his father never notices him and he's losing any feeling he might have held for Astrid, and no one else besides his English teacher has been mentioned as even looking at him throughout the year. The "everything" is obviously the burning.

A few scenes later, we see him realizing that it's having someone to lie to that he likes, when Astrid questions his blistered hands – seems to be a week of breakthroughs for the kid, because the very next scene says,

"…now (his skin) was red, permanently red; his hand burned, and he lay just right and his arms didn't hurt, but he still sobbed into his sheets."

Meaning he finally realizes that he honestly feels horrible, still, despite the burning and the lies he tells himself, and despite the very real possibility that they may have even worked at one point.

The next scene is a bit warped, perhaps more so than the others, by Hiccup's view – "Astrid wasn't pretty anymore. He wondered how badly it would hurt if he burned his face on purpose."

Astrid really didn't get a lot of attention, despite this scene – but the story was never about her. So, while this scene is supposed to convey that she finally connected the dots and suspected self-injury or maybe child abuse due to the burns littering Hiccup's hands, I never took her character arc any farther than that. And when Hiccup says "she wasn't pretty anymore" – well, he never intended anyone to figure out his secret. He just liked that she was concerned enough to ask about him the first time. And she may have gone farther and reported him to the school nurse or something – all we really know is that this has twisted Hiccup's view of her to the point where she's completely beyond his affection at the current moment.

Shit gets pretty real in the next scene; despite his realization that he wasn't happy earlier in the fic, when he mentioned crying himself to sleep, he starts denying it again right here – right after Astrid made the connection, actually. So we see him laying down in the snow – "lowering his burning body to the ground" – and watching the flakes fall. I obviously got a little carried away with the metaphors in this scene. Since the "cold" and "winter" and things like that were meant to convey sadness or numbness, this is sort of the scene where Hiccup rejects the realization that he still feels like shit. So he is both literally and figuratively laying down in the snow in this scene, and watching other people's sillehoutte through their windows – and even makes it a point to call the homes across the street "their warm houses", as if even the place he lives is cold. And to him, it probably is. His denial reaches new heights when he starts to shiver and tells himself he's warm – or better yet, when he "wondered if anybody would notice if he went up in flames where he lay".

But Christmas Eve is really his breaking point – it's sort of where everything hits him at once, when he realizes that nothing has changed and he's still in the exact same place he was at the start of the year, and he's not happy and his father never notices him and now he's gone and chased Astrid off and started hurting himself, and he starts to think that maybe the burning wasn't such a good idea. He realizes that the "high" he experienced wasn't worth it, but by this point he considers himself wasted maybe, or damaged, and starts thinking it's too late to turn around or go back or stop hurting himself, because he figures it's already too late for him. The story's ending is a bit unclear, but the closing line is meant to mean he killed himself – how he did it is never mentioned.

So that's it! I hope this cleared things up for you! I tried to deal with the most confusing lines in the story, but I'm not so sure I achieved it. If I helped any of you at all, feel free to tell me!

- .ryder