Whump server prompt: Chronic Pain

Summary: Post-THW. (but diverges before the ending) "Yeah, it's only fun if you get a scar out of it." Astrid vaguely remembered making this statement years ago as a response to something the Thorston twins once said. Watching her husband struggle with the loss of his leg eight years after his amputation, she feels like a fool.

Author's Notes: For the whump prompt "Chronic pain" from the Httyd whump Discord, a prompt I was very excited to do. I like to headcanon that Hiccup's amputation lead to him suffering from chronic pain as a result.

Constructive criticism is appreciated and I do not own How to Train Your Dragon.

Enjoy!

Also, I still don't know how to properly use the word "had".

Only Fun If You Get A Scar Out Of It

It is late in the afternoon when Hiccup and Astrid return home after a flight taken over New Berk together.

Pushing the door open, Astrid helped Hiccup inside. His arm rested on her shoulder and he leaned on her as he limped.

"Easy," Astrid told him, keeping him steady. Toothless warbled something behind them as he followed them inside while Stormfly remained outside, too big to fit through the door.

Hiccup gasped and cringed as a particularly bad pain ran up from his stump and through his hip. Astrid paused to allow him to breathe through it, giving him a moment.

"Chair or bed?" She asked when the pain seemed to subside enough for him to move again and Hiccup needed to think for a moment.

Would he take the easy way and sit only to possibly be in more pain later when he needed to get back up? Or would he take the extra time and energy required to walk all the way to bed in a different room?

Ah well, at least he didn't need to do stairs. Their house was built in a way to have everything on the same floor and it was built that way just for him. So he might as well go directly to bed.

"Bed." He decided and Astrid nodded before supporting him all the way there. Toothless already shoved things aside to clear a path for them. Hiccup didn't need to maneuver around or over the furniture or the mess they hadn't had the time to clean yet.

"Thanks, Bud." Hiccup told him and patted him on the nose on the way to their bedroom. Toothless purred as his Rider passed him by and then left for the kitchen.

Astrid helped him inside and lowered him onto the furs. Hiccup groaned out loud as he moved to sit down and Astrid kneeled to help him remove his prosthetic. It was an action that caused him great discomfort, but would help relieve him in time.

Standing and walking brought him nothing besides pain, but sitting down somehow made it even worse with the pressure no longer on his stump. Hiccup once again needed to breathe through the hurt. Astrid fumbling with his prosthetic to remove it didn't help much either. She tried to be careful, but her efforts amounted to very little.

Once it was off, Hiccup sucked air in through his teeth and lied down on his side, arms crossing and head on his pillow. He was plagued by the chill and that was partially due to how exhausted he was.

"Not planning on removing your vest?" Astrid asked as she stood and he shook his head with a no.

"Okay." She whispered and, while still holding onto his metal replacement leg, decided to take a seat on the edge of their bed and gaze at him.

Hiccup lied facing away from her, his eyes already closed. If his pain allowed him to sleep, he would've dozed right off.

But if the rummaging in the kitchen was any indication, Toothless was searching the place for willow bark.

In their shared bedroom, it stayed quiet for a couple of moments as Astrid kept her gaze on her husband. If it wasn't for his deep frown, she would've thought him asleep already. Knowing this, she decided to speak up.

"That wasn't one of my best ideas, was it?" She spoke, referring to the afternoon flight they had taken with just the two of them and their dragons.

Hiccup opened his eyes again to look up at her. He didn't answer her, which said enough.

Hiccup had told her his leg was especially bad that morning and still she had insisted on taking to the sky. He let her convince him, albeit because of the assumption he wouldn't need to worry for about half an hour or so. He missed being in the air for hours.

They got to taste the freedom of the sky for not even ten minutes when his leg started hurting so bad he feared he and Toothless would crash.

Flying back and landing had each been a horrendous experience for his burning leg, but getting the prosthetic loose from its stirrup had been a completely different kind of nightmare. The pain in his stump had traveled up to his knee before it continued to his hip. He would've cried if his pride hadn't kept him from doing so.

Astrid would've carried him inside, but with worried and pitying gazes already on him, Hiccup had stubbornly decided to walk inside himself.

He looked back in front of him again and Astrid released a quiet sigh, feeling guilty.

"I thought it'd be nice." She admitted, speaking of her idea to go flying.

"Well, it wasn't. What would've actually been nice would be a day without pain." Hiccup replied, perhaps a bit angrier than he meant it to be. Astrid stared at him in sympathy, she could hear his frustration.

Briefly glancing at her, Hiccup quickly apologized.

"I didn't mean to snap." He added, but Astrid was already running her fingers through his hair reassuringly.

"You call that snapping, Babe? You've "snapped" worse." She told him, remembering a particularly bad moment in their lives when the late Stoick the Vast lied on his death bed and Hiccup blamed himself for putting him there.

She wished he wasn't hurting so much.

This wasn't phantom limb pain, though he had plenty of those days, too, here in the far North. This was a pain he has felt nearly every single day for the past eight years, ever since the day he lost his leg.

He had good days, the very rare pain-free days, and then there were days like these. When he woke up hurting and went to sleep still hurting.

It was draining. On days like these, Hiccup would be exhausted by the time midday arrived and it seemed to be getting worse with each passing year and he was only twenty-three years of age.

In the three years after his amputation, it had been fairly easy for him to hide his discomforts and simply shrug them away. The Dragon Riders only knew of them when that year spent on the Edge forced Hiccup to come clean when he collapsed because his leg refused to cooperate after a battle with Viggo Grimborn and his men.

He'd hated every minute of it, but this sentiment was shared with the Riders. Hearing that your best friend suffered on a near-daily basis behind that mask of smiles, high energy, and sass had been hard on all of them. That the only reason Hiccup came clean was because he wasn't given any other choice and not because he wanted to had made his confession more difficult to bear.

Two years earlier than that, Stoick made Hiccup go for a visit with Gothi after Gobber happened to mention that this kind of pain was quiet unusual and Gothi diagnosed his pain as being chronic.

Chronic and growing worse.

As Chief, he wasn't exactly allowed to just sit his days out either. Not that someone as fidgety as Hiccup could ever sit still for long.

Moving, Astrid gently pulled on his pant leg to reveal his stump to her. The scarring there wasn't irritated at least, one worry less.

"How do you feel?" She asked, her gaze still trained on his leg.

"Like it would be really nice if Toothless found that willow bark." In response, the Night Fury could be heard grumbling in the kitchen. He was big and the space he searched was quite small in comparison.

"I'll go help him search and after that, you can get some sleep. I'll wake you for dinner. It's Fishlegs' turn tonight." Astrid got up from the bed. When Hiccup nodded and closed his eyes again, she decided to take her leave.

As she closed the door to their bedroom, one last glance at Hiccup before he vanished from view, she couldn't help but think of a certain claim she'd made so many years ago as she stood there.

"Only fun if you get a scar out of it, huh?" She asked herself, as if the old fifteen-year-old girl she used to be could hear her. They were foolish words spoken by a child who wanted to sound tough in a world where being soft was seen as a weakness and a detriment.

She had to admit, though her scars were exciting tales she would proudly tell their future children and Berk's, Hiccup's was one that has brought him pain and misery for years and would do so for many more.

It was required of him as a Chief, and her as a Chieftess, to have heirs. With the pain he was in so often, Hiccup wasn't even sure he wanted them, afraid his disability would affect them somehow.

At least his lightning scar simply looked cool and gave him no further troubles, though it was quite sensitive to the touch.

Astrid wondered if her fifteen-year-old self could see the kind of suffering her future husband was to go through for saving Berk and ending a near four-hundred-year-old war, if she would still see having scars as fun as it once did.

She remembered witnessing his amputation. Hiccup hadn't been conscious for that, fortunately, but she had wanted to help her new, and already dear, friend. It was a memory that stayed with her still. At least ever since that event, scars weren't as much the ultimate achievement every warrior strived to reach as they once appeared to be.

No use fretting over it now. She promised Hiccup to help Toothless find and prepare that willow bark. His one way to soothe his pain, if it worked. Turning away from the bedroom door, she made her way over to join Toothless in the kitchen.