Hiccstrid/ Httyd one-shots (DISCONTINUED / SOTRA COMPLETE / SOME RANDOM EDITING)

#2 Nightmares (rewritten)

Trigger Warnings: none really except nightmares, like, really bad nightmares.

Summary: Astrid has a nightmare.

Word count: 1600

Run. It was the only thing going through Astrid's mind. She had no idea where she was or what was happening, all she knew was that she needed to run fast and she needed to run now. Her breaths came out in short shallow breathes as she pushed herself faster and harder, needing to get further and further away. From what she was running from, she was unsure, but despite not knowing, she knew that she was in some type of danger and that she had to get away.

In the distance she could hear distorted and mangled cries of fear and pain, but she forced herself to block them out and focus on running. She had to run, as though her life depended on it, because it felt like in that moment, it really did. Jumping over tree logs that had fallen in the way, she made her way through the dense forest as fast as possible, the thudding of her feet and the snap of branches were blurred out by the sound of the blood rushing around her head and her own panting of exertion.

Although she was running from the screams, it was as though she was running towards them instead as they seemed to get louder and louder with every step she took, every extra meter that she traveled. It started to mess with her head a bit. She could hear echoes and phantom screams repeating in her mins, not that she could really tell the difference between the real and the fake screams at this point, they all sounded the same.

Her vision started to tunnel, blackening around the outsides and the trees around her seemed to curve over her, slowly closing in on her, making panic rise in the chest. She forced her legs to move faster, to push herself further and faster. The wood of the trees creaked and groaned in odd sounds, the old ancient trees almost sounding like they were croaking out a name, her name. By now the screams were everywhere but nowhere at the same time. Her breath was caught in her lungs, making breathing her breathing hard and the lack of oxygen getting to her making her vision swim a bit.

But then she was falling. She let out a small scream, closing her eyes in fear and pushing her hands out in front of her to try break her fall, but nothing came. She waited a few seconds before opening her eyes, only to be met with nothing. She was still falling, she knew this for a fact, her balance was knocked off and she could feel herself spinning, but there was nothing around her, pure darkness. It was weird, but in a way she found that she feared this, the darkness and unknown, more than she feared whatever was chasing her and the screams that were still echoing in her head.

She tried to utter a word, make at least some noise, but it wasn't working. No matter how much she opened her mouth and tried to scream, there was no sound at all. Her falling stopped abruptly, she could feel the sudden stop which should have given her whip lash, but she was left unfeeling anything. The coldness started to seep in, crawling up her legs first, making a chilling shiver roll down her spine and the coldness started to move up, through her stomach to her neck where it started to squeeze at her throat, making her breathing even harder than it was in her panicked state.

If she thought that was it, she was wrong. She felt something brush against her feet which she realised had somehow become rid of her shoes, left bare and freezing in the never ending darkness. She could feel the roughness against her feet, the touch of it telling her that it was undeniably the bark of a tree. She stilled for a second, trying to place her feet down on the wood, maybe to stand up, but quickly jerked away when the wood started to move.

It wrapped around her ankles, so tight and rough that it left small scratches in it's way. She let our a surprised yelp that was inaudible in the vast nothingness around her and felt tears fall down her cheeks as fear overtook her when the moving branches and twigs started to make their way up her, twisting and winding around her body, constricting her movement the further up it went, tightening even more every second. Her breath was coming out in panicked gasps as she tried to claw at the branches, trying to tear them away but her efforts were futile as the branches wrapped around her arms and held her still.

Higher and higher the branches started to wind around her, building up speed with how fast they were curling around her. They squeezed at her waist way too sight to be comfortable, making her breathing even harder than it already was and very quickly the branches were winding around her chest, tightening and tightening, never stopping never ending. She was letting out sobs now, trying to beg to the branches to let her go, to stop, but not a single noise left her mouth.

Nearly her whole body was immobile now, the branches stopping briefly at her collar bones, just before the bottom of her neck. Her chest was so tight, her feet so cold that they started to feel numb and the branches wrapped so tightly around her arms and hands that she couldn't even twitch a finger. She thought the branches had stopped, given her a little time to calm down, maybe they were only scaring her. But she then felt a tug at her hair before she realised the branches were climbing higher up her again, this time through her hair.

The branches reached her head and started to wind around her head, slowly winding around her forehead and down over her eyes while the branches at her collars started to move again. It was tortuously slow, the twists of the branches going up her neck slow and tight, forcing her cries to stop and breaths to slow as they wound her way up. The panic was all over her, she felt it everywhere but she couldn't take action on it, the branches too tight to allow any movement. The branches stopped at her by her mouth which was open and gasping for air, only for a millisecond before they forced themselves down her throat, cutting off her breath and-

"Astrid!"

She gasped as she sat up on the bed, sobs wracking her body and her breathing uneven as the tears rolled down her cheeks in uncontrolled floods. She placed a hand over her mouth, trying to lessen the sobs, not daring to open her eyes yet, too scared that she would open her eyes to darkness. "Astrid. Astrid, hey babe. What's wrong" The voice was familiar and she let out another sob as she realised it was Hiccup.

'It isn't real' she repeated to herself as she cracked open her eyes and turned to her right where her boyfriend was sat looking at her worriedly, the flame of a candle lighting up the room. "Hi-h-" She couldn't even say his name before she gripped onto him, hugging him tightly as she sobbed into his shoulder, the nightmare she had just had scaring her the most she probably had ever been. "Oh my- my... H-hi.. Hic- God" She tried to talk in between sobs but couldn't get anything out as she gripped tighter onto him.

"Shhhhhh... shhhhhh... it's okay" A hand rubbed up and down her back in a soothing matter and she felt his lips press against her forehead. Her sobs didn't cease as she stayed curled up by him. She felt a hand in her hair in a soothing manner, stroking it in turn with her back. Her sobs quietened a bit and she felt herself start to calm down the slightest bit and she felt relief course though her body. That nightmare was by far one of the worst things she had ever experienced, but the horror and fear that she had felt from it was dulled slightly, from Hiccup being there, from her feeling his presence and being able to touch him

After all, it was only a dream, it wasn't real.

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First Published: 27th January 2016

Edited: 20th July 2019

Edit: Wow okay, so this was completely rewritten and changed from the original which was written over 3 years ago. I hope you like the extra 1k words. I'm going to try rewrite all the chapters, I'm kinda embarrassed by how bad my writing is in some of my older chapters, so....

-Rose🌹