Chapter 1: The Beginning

A/N: Well, this is my newest story. It's set in the AU of 'Overachiever', and actually follows that fic pretty closely up until Hiccup is twelve - and, of course, it doesn't entirely follow the story because this one features Hiccup with a much darker side than he has in Overachiever. I don't think Hiccup has a mean bone in his body in that story honestly, and in this one, he's just all over the place on the mean scale xD also, he's really sarcastic, too. But anyway. I hope you enjoy! Please review!

The first time I'm fully sober in over a year, no drugs or drink clouding my thoughts, and I'm leaning over the toilet bowl, vomiting my guts out. Just another picture to go in our nonexistent family photo album. Wonder what the caption would be on it.

'After yet another night giving half his dad's medicine cabinet to some unsuspecting twelve-year-olds, Hiccup pukes his guts out.'

On second thought, it was probably best that we didn't have a family photo album, if these were the types of memories likely to go in it. But this wouldn't be the only one in the album. There were many other picturesque moments in the last four years, too: me trying alcohol for the first time, me bumming a cigarette off a high-school senior, my dad twisting my arm behind my back and screaming in my ear as I cry hysterically, my face a purple, black, blue and red mass of bruises and discolorations. I could practically hear the camera clicking away, the button pressed by an unseen person just behind the bathroom wall.

Look, my life really wasn't that shitty. I know I just made my dad out to be the bad guy, but give me a chance. I'm new to this whole "writing" thing, so this could be anywhere from sixty words to sixty thousand, and my goal is not to make my dad out to be a villain. Because if there's any villain this story, it's me.

I'm what you might call a trouble child. That's what the teachers at school used to call me, back when I was in middle school. My dad just called me a good-for-nothing lazy-ass who blamed all his problems on other people. Me, I know the truth. I'm just stupid sometimes, and yeah, Dad's right when he says I'm good-for-nothing. I get blamed for a lot of things, but I'm not going to pretend I don't deserve it. So it wasn't a big surprise when my dad blamed me for Mom's death. Nor when he started hitting me.

My dad's like that, see – he's like a big time bomb, and at any second he could go off. He held it together pretty well when Mom was alive, but the instant she was gone – boom. He exploded, just like a bomb. He exploded on me, throwing all this debris and shrapnel on me, screaming all this stuff about how it was my fault his wife was dead. I'm not denying it, either – if I hadn't encouraged her to go out that day, the car never would have crashed at that intersection, and she would still be here.

But then our charming mental family photo album wouldn't exist, which brings me back to my original point. Me vomiting into the toilet. My dad wasn't home at that point, but I doubted he'd care, even if he was. He'd probably just walk right past the bathroom door anyway, barely look at me, and unintentionally add another picture to our album.

I wiped my mouth free of spit, staring down into the bowl. And this is why I chose to start here, even though I should have started earlier: I just stared down at all that vomit, my stomach still churning, my head completely clear, and I just rested my forehead against the toilet lid. Dear God, what was my life coming to?

And now that I think about it, I really should have started this whole thing earlier – before today, at least. Maybe I should just bag this whole thing and stop. Or maybe it's time for me to go back…back to the beginning…

So, technically, "the beginning" would be four years ago, right? After all, that's the year that everything started happening. My mom died, and three days after the funeral my dad came stomping in the front door, drunk as anything, and smacked me on the face when I tried to talk to him, yelling about how I'd caused this, I'd caused her death. How dare I speak of her when I killed her.

Yeah, that's the official beginning, but that feels a little too far back, you know what I mean? Maybe I should start three years ago, when I was eleven and entering sixth grade. I could talk about the utter terror I felt at having to go to school that first day with obvious bruises on my face, hard as I tried to hide them, but I don't think anybody really cared, so it wasn't like it was a big deal, anyway.

I could talk about the day my first report card from sixth grade came and Dad beat me over it. Said he didn't raise a stupid son. Yet another picturesque family moment, I suppose.

Look, I guess there's no real beginning to this story, no concrete ending, either. So this story won't be worth shit when I finish telling it, and I guess it's not really worth shit now, either. But I'll try my hardest to pick a beginning.

How about we start when…I know! We'll start when I was twelve, and I'll take it from there. I might skip some moments in my thirteenth year, but I'll fill in as many gaps as possible before this is over. So it started like, the day after one of the worst beatings Dad had ever given me, and I remember it, too. It hurt so badly just to walk from one room to another, and I seriously thought he might have fractured or even broken my back. That's how badly it hurt. My dad had cleared out though, shortly after that, so it looked like I was gonna have the house to myself for the whole weekend.

I was bored, and I was looking for something to do, and I couldn't do much because my back hurt too badly to do anything, so I just sat there at the kitchen table, thinking about everything and I started stewing. Let me tell you something – it is not a good idea to stew. If I hadn't sat there and stewed, none of this would have happened. But I did sit there, and I did stew, and pretty soon I was pissed as hell. I mean, how could my dad have done that to me? His son? I wanted him to stop. I needed him to stop, and I knew exactly what was making him do this, what was making him treat his only son like I didn't matter.

I rose up from my chair with a new determination and walked to the fridge, ripping open the door and drawing out the six-pack of beer. I was so angry that I stomped right over to the sink and poured the four remaining bottles from the six-pack straight down the drain. And then I decided that if I couldn't even walk due to pain, there must be something seriously wrong, so I opened the medicine cabinet and found some painkillers. The thing was, I was twelve years old, and I'd never had to give myself medicine before. Back when Mom was alive, she always took care of the medicines, measuring out the right dosage and everything. I took some pills that were kind of old, and I'm guessing I took something too strong or maybe I took too much, because I got this weird feeling and I just got a headache to add to my discomforts.

I didn't think the pills really helped, but I kept taking them anyway. It was habit, I guess. It's like putting a bandage over an open wound and having your mom or dad kiss it better – the kiss doesn't really help, but you like to fool yourself into thinking it does.

Before I knew it, all the bruises and aches from the beating were gone, but I kept taking the pills anyway. The funny thing is, I don't really think I was addicted. Maybe I was, a little, but mostly I just liked the feeling the painkillers gave me. It was the feeling of being simply…away. It was like all my problems weren't there whenever I swallowed the pills and as long as they were in my system, everything felt okay.

Besides, my dad was forever taking medicine for everything under the sun, so I figured popping a few pills here and there couldn't be all that bad.

I skipped school. My Bs slid to Ds and Fs, and whenever I even bothered to answer a question or do the homework, I'm pretty sure I always did it wrong. What did school matter, anyway? My whole life revolved around that bottle of pills now.

Or at least, it did until I ran out. But that's not the beginning – that's more like the end of the beginning if you will. You see how easily, how innocently it started out? Little twelve-year-old me having a brief fit of anger toward my father, and suddenly I needed pills every day to keep me going. And then suddenly, that little life-sustaining substance was gone. I'm not even going to try to deny how terrified I was when I realized how few I had left. I'd have to ration them, I thought to myself, but the mere idea made me panicky and nervous, made me want to swallow them all then and there so I could achieve that feeling of leaving my problems behind again.

Whatever happened, I was determined to get more drugs. And that's when things took a turn for the worse.