Belated Happy Valentine's Day! Have some actual plot.

Turned
chapter 8

by Pseudonym P

For an anti-social fuck, Jack has to admit that he missed seeing his friends.

His real friends, not those meatheads he used to hang out with. His real friends whom he's known since... since. It made his chest feel warm, like he was home. True enough, the sight of a big-nosed, freckly-faced redhead and the blonde, blue-eyed girl next to him maks Jack beam.

"Jack!" Hiccup calls excitedly, giving his friend the bro hug. Jack happily accepted. "Man! I haven't seen you in so long." The bar is mellow—exactly the kind of place Hiccup likes, Jack notes—with the right amount of dim lighting and easy acoustics and, man, Jack realizes belatedly, this place is a coffee shop. Who names a coffee shop The Bar? Ridiculous.

"Hey, Jack," greets Astrid, and Jack grins at them both.

"It's great to see you guys." And really, it is. He missed getting to see his friends—granted, they weren't a lot, but they mattered. He wasn't really complaining—he spent all that time with Elsa, why would he complain—but still, it was nice.

Speaking of Elsa, he coaxes her from behind him.

"Who's this?" Hiccup asks teasingly, and Jack flashed him a shit-eating grin before turning his head to stare at his girlfriend. So fucking beautiful, he thinks, and his eyes glaze over at the sight of her mussed hair, glasses and one of his sweatshirts.

"This is Elsa," Jack introduces, "My girlfriend."

"Glad to meet you," Astrid says, wrapping an arm around Hiccup's waist. Jack tries not to roll his eyes—Astrid is fiercely protective of Hiccup, ever since the leg incident, and she went overboard on occasion.

"Likewise," Hiccup replies, completely clueless to his girlfriend's not-so-subtle claim and simply wraps his arm around his own girlfriend's shoulders. "How are you?"

"Good," Elsa answers politely, but she seems tense. "And you?"

"Um, ah," Hiccup begins nervously before Astrid can respond, and his shoulders shake in that endearingly familiar manner that Jack kind of missed. "I actually called you out here for a reason—"

"You better," the taller boy jokes, and Hiccup chuckles nervously.

"Aww, babe," Astrid coos almost mockingly, "You're nervous! That's cute. Reminds me of the good ol' days."

Hiccup rolls his eyes. "Shut up, Astrid. You're not helping." Astrid snickers and pusheds herself up to kiss her boyfriend's cheek, and a light flash caught Elsa's eye when the girl brings her left hand to hoist herself up—

"Are you getting married?" Elsa blurts, and Jack's eyebrows shoot up while Hiccup grins sheepishly at Astrid's knowing smile.

"Yeah," Hiccup stammers, "Yeah, we, uh—I asked her a week ago. Wedding's… coming around, I guess."

"Holy shit!" Jack exclaims, laughing as he tackles Hiccup in another hug. "Holy shit, man, you did it! You're marrying Astrid Hofferson!"

Astrid chuckles and Elsa smiles lightly. "That's wonderful news, Astrid. Congratulations."

"More than congratulations, baby," Jack says as he lets go of Hiccup and swings an arm around her shoulders. "Our little Hiccup is finally turning into a man!"

Elsa's eyebrow furrows in confusion. Hiccup was at least six feet tall—he definitely didn't look like a boy. "Am I… missing something?"

Hiccup shakes his head vigorously and Jack whirls around to look at her. "Oh, yeah, Elsa has to know this."

Astrid tries not to snort as she laughs through Hiccup's embarrassment. "There's nothing to tell—"

"Hiccup used to be such a fishbone," Astrid starts, and her boyfriend—or rather, fiancé, gave her the most offended look he could muster.

"You're going to start the story?!" Hiccup cries out indignantly, and Jack motions for Elsa to sit. She sits a little stiffly, Jack notices, but he says nothing.

As Elsa learns more about Jack's friends, her lips curl into a smile. He's happy here—joking and laughing and looking more at home than she had ever seen him, and he's so beautiful. He's so gorgeous that she doesn't want to leave him.

But the pain in her torso is excruciating. It's been a week.

She makes a show of peeking inside her tiny bag and zips it closed.

"Okay, first of all," Hiccup says, speaking over Jack's taunts, "I'm the history major here, and—"

"Excuse me," Elsa says, as politely as she possibly can, and stands. "I have a voicemail. I'll take this outside."

"Sure," Hiccup says cordially, and Astrid flashes her a smile. Elsa bends down to kiss Jack's forehead before walking away. Jack just stares after her.

He knows she left her phone to charge at his apartment.

"Hey," Hiccup says worriedly, "Elsa's taking a while."

Yeah, she has. She's been out for half an hour, and Jack's getting antsy. "Yeah, she—I should go look for her."

"Go, it's okay," Astrid reassures, and it makes Jack smile. He'd always liked Astrid—strong, smart, brave, beautiful Astrid—and he knew she would be perfect for Hiccup. You know, if he ever had the balls to ask her out. Which he did, eventually, a decade later. Still, better late than never.

"Congrats again, guys," Jack says sincerely, giving his friends one last hug before exchanging final goodbyes and striding out the café.

He looks around—no Elsa, and his brow creases when he can't instantly find her. This isn't… where is she? He crosses the street to the convenience store and even walks around it. Not here. Jack sighs irritably.

"Fucking hell," he swears under his breath, before he takes a chance.

The bars he used to frequent are teeming with people, all noisy and drunk and smoking and he almost gives up when he finds a familiar flash of blonde hair going behind the building.

She wasn't alone.

Jack's blood boils, because how the fuck—this is fucking—his heart wants to burst in pain and anger. That's Elsa.

With someone else.

An unbelievable wave of jealously swells in his chest, because that's Elsa, Elsa, the one person left in this godforsaken world that could ever make him happy, make him smile, make him want to live. He feels like he can move mountains when he's with her, split seas and get rid of locusts and turn sticks into snakes and all that special shit—Elsa's a goddess to his worthless, lonely, human self.

Jack feels his heart break and despair make his fingertips heavy. And suddenly, rage makes him see red.

He shoves people out of his way when his legs finally decide to follow, rounding the corner and practically breaking out into a run—behind the bar is forest, for some reason, and he's never been more pissed at trees in his entire life.

It doesn't take long to find her—she hasn't gotten far, and he was right, it was Elsa.

And she was leaning over someone, someone on the ground, someone on the ground who was crying.

Jack stops dead in his tracks, the surge of anger flushed out from his veins.

Elsa's muttering something and the man she's leaning over cries out in pain and grows limp, but she doesn't stop talking. Jack shakes his head—what the fuck is this? Whatever it is, he's fucking sick of it. What's she doing? Talking the guy to death?

As Jack approaches, he realizes that she's leaning over Flynn, this guy he talks to occasionally in his philosophy elective. And he looks like he's in pain. Quickly, Jack pulls Elsa away and makes her look him in the eye. "Elsa, what the fuck—"

"What are you doing?!" Elsa hisses harshly, slipping out of his grip and shoving him out of the way. Jack's shocked by the deep blue, almost black of her eyes when she tears herself away from him and goes back to kneeling over the unconscious Flynn. "I wasn't done!"

"Wasn't done what?" Jack demands once he gets over his initial shock, because he has to get Elsa of Flynn, who is obviously drunk of his ass. He strides over and grabs her by the arm, "Elsa, what the fuck—we're in the middle of a fucking forest with a drunk guy from my philosophy class—this isn't—"

"Jack, please!" He stops, because she's starting to sound hysterical. "Please, Jack, I need to feed—I haven't in so long—"

"Feed?" Jack repeats incredulously, and Elsa takes his moment of confusion to break away and lean her face over Flynn's, and he wants to ask what the hell—

"Hey!" someone hollers, and a few beams of light start spotting on the trees next to them. The calls snap Jack out of his stupor and he practically lunges for Elsa and drags her away from his unconscious classmate.

"Elsa, let's go!"

"No, I—" He yanks her behind a tree and presses her to his chest, cradling her head, and carefully leans away from the direction of the flashlights. He gives a low hiss to signal her to keep quiet.

"Someone's here!" he hears, and a few rustle of leaves later, he hears a groan. "Ugh, it's a drunk guy."

"I'm not even surprised. The chick he was with probably ran away."

"Good for her. Hope she's okay." They hear grunts, probably carrying Flynn and their voices fade away as they get farther. The silence that comes after stretches into an impossible amount of minutes or hours. All Jack can count is the number of times Elsa fidgets against him, but he doesn't let go.

It's until she cries that he finally registers time.

"Hey, it's okay," Jack says automatically, even if he feels like a liar. He doesn't know what the hell just happened, and he doesn't know what the hell to say.

"It's not okay," Elsa says so softly that Jack has to strain to hear.

"What?"

"I killed someone," she says again in a low, pained whisper, and a bristle runs through Jack. Was she talking about Flynn? He just passed out, didn't he?

"Elsa, no, he's okay—"

She sobbed into his chest, "No, I—I didn't stop when I should have, I should have stopped—"

"Elsa, Elsa," Jack tries, taking her face in his hands and looks her in the eye. Her eyes are the same blue he's always loved, but they're glassy and wet. "He's fine. Elsa, he'll be fine."

"He won't," Elsa practically chokes, "He's going to kill himself—"

"What?" Jack laughs nervously, because she's starting to scare him. "He's not—Flynn's the coolest guy ever, he won't do that."

Elsa freezes. "He—You know him? He was your friend?"

Friend? Well, he wasn't an asshole to Jack, so... "Yeah, you could say that."

Her cries transform into frenzied sobs. "I'm sorry, I'm so sorry—I didn't mean it—"

It's late as fuck, and Jack is honestly tired of her speaking in riddles. He throws his arms up in exasperation. "Elsa, what the fuck are you talking about?!" he finally burst out, "What the hell is wrong with you?" Jack wants to punch himself, because there's nothing wrong with Elsa, Elsa's perfect and beautiful and he wants to apologize, but her next words make him stop.

"I'm dead, Jack," Elsa sobs, "I'm dead. I'm as dead as he will be in the morning."

to be continued

Threw in some Hiccstrid in there because it was Valentine's Day and they deserve a good Valentine's Day. Also because I hate Merricup. But that's neither here nor there.

Not much emotional attachment to this chapter—it's midnight and I have work in the morning, but I had to hammer this out because it was vital.

Sorry for taking so long with the updates; real life has been happening, and that's always a bummer. Hope you all are doing well on your end, and thank you for sticking by this story.