Disclaimer: I do not own How to Train Your Dragon, Rise of the Guardians, Brave, Tangled or any other movie characters seen in this story. No copyright infringement intended. All rights reserved to Cressida Cowell, William Joyce, DreamWorks, Pixar, Disney etc.

Warnings: AU, OOC, language, underage drinking, past sexual abuse, past abductions, past semi-slavery, past verbal abuse, past mental abuse, past emotional abuse, heavy angst at some points, underage drug use, bullying, suggestive themes, this chapter contains slight sexual and physical assualt [more warnings will be taken off/added as the story progresses] [my story may/may not contain triggers, it all depends on your personal experience in life and how it affected you.]

Notes: I hope you all enjoy this story, and please review, favorite, and follow! Thanks for all of the favorites and follows! Thanks so much for all of the positively wonderful reviews! This is a short chapter, and I apologize for that, but I wanted to get something published before I go back to school tomorrow.

I'm sorry for any mistakes; this is not Beta'd.

Chapter Ten Reviews

To Nicky: I haven't thought of putting in the minions yet but Mulan is in this chapter (chapter 12), and thank you so much for your kind words!

Chapter Eleven Reviews

To Love Laugh Live Your Life: You don't need an account to review on ao3 unless the story specifically says that the author doesn't allow guest reviewers. If you didn't get the update, well I deleted the authors note and published chapter eleven. And I wasn't going to change anything from the chapters when I transfer them.

To Sammy: Aw, thanks so much!

To crazyfoxqueen: In an earlier chapter, Jack took Hiccup to Patty's Pizzeria for lunch, and Hiccup told him about Astrid and Fishlegs when Jack had asked. Chapter Eleven should explain what Snotlouts' and the twins' relationship to Hiccup is but in case it wasn't, when Hiccup was six he got sick, like near death bed sick, and it scared the shit out of Snotlout so he became overprotective, and when Hiccup was rescued from his kidnappers' base in Arizona and went back to Berk, the twins became his bodyguards of sorts to ease their guilt. And Berk is pretty much an island a few miles away from Scandinavia.

To Euryphae: thanks for your kind words! And unless Hiccup explains what happened to him during his captivity, his memories will allude to it but not outright say what's happening. Like context clues. I hope you enjoy this chapter!

:: The Land of the Dragons ::

{Twelve}

November blurred into December and Hiccup awoke to blankets of snow surrounding Burgess. He sighed, wrapping his scarf around his neck. It wasn't that he disliked the cold but he was more susceptible to getting sick. When Hiccup crossed the threshold of Thaddeus High with Jack and Merida trailing behind him, bickering about something inane, the school was swept into a winter haze.

He sighed at the banners proclaiming the dances and festivities that were coming up, at the girls wearing reindeer ears and elf hats, at the hanging snowflakes from the ceiling and walls. Burgess practically worshipped its winter season due to its all-around prettiness. Merida and Jack were still arguing as he opened his locker and grabbed his textbooks he needed for the first periods of the day.

"What are they bickering about?" asked Rapunzel as she appeared next to him, staring at the two sophomores.

Hiccup shrugged, closing his locker. "I think, this time, it's about whether anchovies on pizza should be a felony or not."

Rapunzel snickered at the two before greeting Eugene with a bright beam. Camicazi appeared at his shoulder, leaning her elbow against it, as she peered at Jack and Merida with inquisitive, calculating orbs. Hiccup noticed Astrid down the hall with Anna, who seemed more vibrant and lively than before. He noticed, curiously, how the teen dimmed when Hans appeared next to her, charmingly smiling at Astrid, before whisking her around the corner.

With the odd encounter fresh on his mind, Hiccup walked to Chemistry with Merida. They snagged their normal seats in the back as the rest of the classroom filed in. Mr. Drew was in the process of trying to figure out how to work a PowerPoint on the projector. They were working on Percent Compositions and molecular structures, which Merida groaned about.

"This is Chemistry," Merida complained. "Why are we doing mathematical equations?"

"Merida," Hiccup said, amused, "If you haven't noticed, chemistry is science and math."

"I hate this subject," she grumbled, pouting.

Class began with roll and the lights dimming once Mr. Drew passed out the handouts on the lesson. "This unit is easy, guys," he said amidst the complaints and whines. "I promise."

Mr. Drew began lecturing on the type of formula to use. Hiccup paid attention and took notes until Merida slid a piece of paper in his line of sight.

Are you okay?

Hiccup cast the redhead a look but she was peering intently at the PowerPoint. He scribbled a response and slid it back in her direction.

I'm fine. Why?

You seem sadder.

Hiccup blinked at the reply. It was true that he was a bit more silent and pensive due to the box he'd found over Thanksgiving Break in Berk. The memories of his captivity were coming back at a more alarming rate than before and he struggled with its secrecy. Although he knew that Rapunzel, Anna, and Elsa had been kidnapped when they were younger, he didn't want to bring back unwanted memories by disclosing the real reason why he was living in Burgess.

The bell rang, jolting him out of his thoughts, and Hiccup escaped Chemistry with Merida hot on his heels.

"Hiccup!" Merida called through the swirling crowds, fighting to get to the small, nimble figure slipping through the hallways of Thaddeus High. "Oi! Haddock!"

Hiccup slipped into his Algebra II classroom and breathed a sigh of relief at having evaded the stubborn sophomore. Classes blurred together and Hiccup found himself slipping into his seat in Journalism. Rapunzel was chatting animatedly with a girl who had untamed brunette hair and wide eyes. Her name was Eloise but she was endearingly called Eep by her family and friends.

Hiccup slipped into his normal seat next to the girl named Alice Liddell, who was fixing the blue ribbons in her hair. She gave him an ethereal smile and greeted, "Hello Hiccup."

Hiccup smiled back and said, "Hi, Alice. How're you?"

"I am okay," she said as she pulled out her own sketchbook and began to draw details on, what looked to be, a man with a top hat. "This is the Mad Hatter."

"Why is he mad?" Hiccup questioned.

Alice gave him an enigmatic grin as she said, "I suppose it's because he may be the maddest of us all."

Lunch rolled around quickly enough and Rapunzel refused to let Hiccup slip away from the cafeteria to go to Mr. B's room. Slouching at their lunch table, Hiccup scowled as Rapunzel ignored him and engaged Astrid into a conversation about Berk.

"Oh, didn't you visit Berk during Thanksgiving, Hiccup?" Rapunzel said as she turned to him suddenly. Hiccup blinked in her direction – the girl was the sun, blinding and vibrant. "What was it like?"

"Cold," Hiccup said. Insufferable. A nightmare. Miserable. "It was cold and wet and filled with people who think they're Vikings."

"Vikings?" asked Jack as he plopped down next to Hiccup with his tray of food. "What about them?"

As Rapunzel filled Jack in on the topic of discussion, from across the table Camicazi peered at Hiccup with a shrewd look in her eyes but said nothing. Astrid looked uncomfortable and nervous when the exuberant blonde began to quiz her on her family.

"What are they like?" Rapunzel asked. "Who'd you live with? In fact – why'd you move to Bur—,"

"Blondie," Merida interrupted, noticing the way Astrid squirmed. "I think that's enough o' Berk."

Perplexed, Rapunzel gave Merida a look but nodded either way and asked Astrid about the clubs she was going to join.

"I was thinking of soccer or lacrosse," Astrid replied with a thoughtful look on her face. "I may do baseball if you guys have a sports team here."

It set off Jack and Merida into a spiral about the sports environment at Thaddeus High School, proclaiming that lacrosse was the way to go. Hiccup zoned out of the conversation since sports wasn't interesting to him but jolted out of his thoughts by his phone buzzing with an incoming text.

Cami: What's wrong, Hiccup? Did something happen in Berk?

Hiccup looked at his childhood best friend but she refused to look in his direction and, instead, was speaking with Rapunzel about pottery. Scowling, he thumbed back a response.

Hiccup: I'm fine. Nothing happened. Snotlout was his overprotective self, the twins were my bodyguards, Dogsbreath was awkwardly hovering around me, and my father and Gobber got drunk on mead.

He focused on eating the leftover pasta from last night and not on the box he'd found. The letter. The picture. The map and ticket. The ticket of the place his mother might be. His phone buzzed again.

Cami: I don't believe you but fine, talk to me when you're ready.

As the rest of the day plowed onwards, his friends' concerns echoed in his mind. Jack and Merida had lacrosse practice after school, though they offered the suggestion that he could watch them on the bleachers since his father was still uneasy about him walking home by himself. Hiccup was nervous because nerds and jocks don't mix that well.

When he got to the outdoor bleachers, Hiccup spotted Astrid's blonde hair by Coach Phil, who was a short and stocky man. There was a vice coach, someone Hiccup had never seen before. Then again, he rarely went to a sports event. Hiccup made himself comfortable on the bleachers and idly sketched whilst also observing practice.

Astrid was stretching with a Chinese girl Hiccup vaguely knew to be Mulan, who was also the co-caption of the lacrosse team.

"Shang!" Coach Phil barked over the field in a booming voice. "What're you doing, kid? That's not how you—FROST, GO FOR THE KNEES! DUNBROCH – THAT'S A FOUL!"

Even from where he was sitting, through the tumbled mass of limbs, Hiccup could see Merida cursing at the short man.

"WATCH THE LANGUAGE, DUNBROCH! FA, HOFFERSON, GET IN THERE!"

Said teens scrambled onto the field with lacrosse sticks and headgear.

"Phil, they're teenagers," said the other coach. "Please stop screaming at them as if they're soldiers."

"They are soldiers," Coach Phil grumbled. "They're my soldiers."

A few feet away from the lacrosse players held the cheerleaders. They were a peppy lot, never bothered Hiccup, and he spotted Rapunzel, Anna, and a girl from his Algebra II class named Aurora in the midst of teens flipping and jumping. He stared for a moment – he never knew Rapunzel was a cheerleader.

"GO FOR THE WINNNING GOAL, YOU IDIOT!" Coach Phil screeched. "DON'T JUST STAND THERE! IF THIS WERE A REAL GAME, WE'D LOSE!"

The cheerleaders were doing a chant.

"GO, GO FOXES! LET'S GO!"

Hiccup closed his sketchbook with a sigh. There was no way he could concentrate on completing the delicate details of the Skrill with all this noise echoing the fields.

"TWENTY LAPS AROUND THE FIELD! GET TO IT!"

Sighing once more, Hiccup stared at his sketchbook, wondering why the loud brashness of the coach didn't seem to bother him. Normally, he was unnerved by loud voices and noise in general, getting lost in the sweeping memories of a time he'd love to forget. His memories were slow in coming back, only certain things would set them off. Sometimes it was a flash of blonde hair from the corner of his eye (Stormfly had such vibrant blonde hair. Soon, it was lifeless and matted with the blood that pooled around her), other times it was overhearing a conversation or a sudden commercial over domestic violence and help lines.

Some memories, or episodes as he liked to call them, were fleeting in the front of his mind. They flickered over his eyes as if he were watching a movie clip before ebbing from his mind, even if he tried to grasp it in his metaphorical hands. Majority of his memories, however, were longer, spiraling onwards in a haze that he struggled to get out of.

He observed the lacrosse team running laps, watching the female team members' hair fly behind them as they ran against the blowing winter air.

It was freezing. It was a cold winter, dragging and desperate. Cold meant suffering for the occupants in this house. Hiccup shuddered violently underneath the thin blanket that shouldn't really be considered a blanket. Others were in corners as well, huddled into themselves, freezing as well but resigned to their fate. There are new faces to Hiccup but he doesn't bother remembering their names anymore.

Not after Gustav.

Not after his hope became desolate and bleak.

Not again.

He will not remember anyone here again because they would be gone soon; some might not even last the night due to the freezing temperature of the room they were occupying. It was a fact, one that many would struggle to accept.

A hand swam into view. Hiccup blinked and turned his head to blink owlishly at Rapunzel, who was peering at him with concerned eyes. "You okay?" she questioned in a worried, almost mothering tone.

Hiccup nodded. "Yeah – just lost in a memory."

"If you say so," she said, looking at him. "Anyway, practice for both sports teams are over so Jack said to go wait by his car."

Hiccup scooped up his things, nodding, as he made his way down the bleachers. Rapunzel was called to talk to the coach, a woman he doesn't recognize, so Hiccup's journey to the student parking lot is silent. He can see his breath in the air if he breathes out in a long drawing breath so as he walked to Jack's car, Hiccup amuses himself by seeing the tufts of his breath in the wispy air.

"Hiccup!" someone yelled from behind him.

Hiccup froze, recognizing the voice, recognizing the stomping footsteps approaching, and shuddered as he whirled around to face Dagur the Deranged.

"Dagur," Hiccup greeted curtly. "What do you want?"

With a familiar leer, Dagur replied, "Why are you being so short with me, my little Hiccup?"

Suppressing the instinctive shudder of abhorrence, Hiccup replied, "I'm not little nor am I yours."

The smirk still on his lips, Dagur moved forward. A gleam of excitement flashed through his eyes as Hiccup took a step back immediately. "Stop playing hard to get, Hiccup," Dagur purred. His hand shot out, faster than Hiccup could comprehend, and grasped the freshmans' wrist. Hiccup's heart pounded in his ears. There was no one around. Jack and the others are assuming that he was waiting in the parking lot, and expect him there…not with Dagur at the side of the school.

"I'm not playing," Hiccup responded, his voice shaking as he tried to get out of Dagur's grip. Riku had once given him advice on how to get out of someone's grip but he can't remember it at that moment. "Please let go of me."

"What was that?" Dagur spoke in a mocking tone with that infuriating smirk of his. "'Please kiss me, Dagur'? I'd love to." Dagur pulled him closer.

Repulsed, Hiccup struggled even if his efforts were pitiable. There was no way he'd ever be able to defend himself against someone like Dagur.

"Let me go, Dagur!" Hiccup cried. His heart was thumping dangerously now and his blood was roaring in his ears. Panic flickered by the edges of his feet, colder than the winter air surrounding him, waiting for the right chance to strike. Dagur was getting closer, his breath was hitting Hiccup's flushed cheeks. He was too close, Hiccup thought frantically, too close. Too close. Too close.

"Dagur, please."

The world was crushing him.

Hiccup couldn't breathe. He couldn't move. Couldn't think.

A high pitched shriek echoed throughout the oppressive atmosphere. The crushing, overwhelming weight of the world was removed from Hiccup's space as Dagur crumbled to the floor, howling in pain. Hiccup blinked, dazed, looking at his rescuer.

Anna was breathing heavily. "Sorry I didn't get here sooner."

"Thanks…" Hiccup said, blinking, before looking down at the older teen. "What did you…?"

"Kicked him in the balls," Anna replied with a straight face. "Used to play soccer before I joined cheerleading so I know how hard to kick."

Hiccup couldn't help but snort. Anna soon followed with a laugh before she began to usher Hiccup away from the prostrated figure on the ground and towards the student parking lot. Towards safety. She kept a protective arm around Hiccup's shoulders and kept a bustling pace as they walked. Hiccup soaked in the warmth Anna projected, the safety.

"Thank you," Hiccup murmured.

"No problem," Anna said. "I'd do it again if you ask. Just say the word."

They made it to the student parking lot and Hiccup let out a breath of relief at not seeing the others there. They would ask uncomfortable, prying questions that he didn't have the energy to answer.

"Oh…" Anna said, voice soft as she looked ahead. "There's my boyfriend."

Hiccup looked covertly. Hans was peering at them with barely contained rage in his eyes. "He looks really mad," Hiccup commented, observing the way Anna tensed. "Really mad. Are you sure you're going to be okay?"

"What? Me? Pfft," Anna snorted. "Hans would never hurt me."

"I didn't say that," Hiccup said flatly. "I asked if you were going to be okay, not if he was going to hurt you."

Anna gave him a smile. Blinding and vibrant, just like Rapunzel. "I'll be fine, Hiccup," she said before speaking firmly, "Hans wouldn't hurt me."

"Okay," Hiccup said, watching her amble towards Hans' sports vehicle. He looked away once Hans began to argue with her the second she buckled herself in the passenger side. He drifted towards Jack's car with an uneasy churn in the pit of his stomach, waiting for the others to return and keeping an eye on Hans' car. He didn't have to wait long before he saw Merida's gravity-defying hair.

"Anyone give you trouble?" she asked.

He thought about telling them about Dagur but shook his head. It was already taken care of. There was no need to inform them.

"Let's go to Baby Tooth's," Rapunzel suggested as they all climbed into Jack's car. He turned it on and the heating system kicked in immediately. "I could go for some hot chocolate right now."

"Baby Tooth's it is," Jack said as he reversed out of the parking spot.

As Astrid was given the run down about Baby Tooth's, Jack drove past Hans' car. The others were oblivious as they chatted and/or sang along to some boyband on the radio but Hiccup was the only one who noticed that Hans was yelling and Anna looked as if she were about to begin sobbing.

Alice - Alice in Wonderland

Eep - The Croods'

Coach Phil - Hercules

Shang Li - Mulan

Fa Mulan - Mulan

Aurora - Sleeping Beauty