Chapter Text
Winnie was nearly five when the sickness ensnared her home village. and consequently, Winnie herself.
The early days were blurry and difficult to recall whenever she dared to try; the only available healers at the time mentioned to her parents she busted her head open in ill-riddled delirium—that probably explains the headaches and odd thoughts she's had ever since.
The illness stole many of Berk's people; very precious few elders escaped its clutches, and a lot of kids are dead, like a lot. Successful pregnancies were already rare; the stress of dragon raids means pregnancy is a very perilous state to be in for any Viking woman.
That doesn't mention the food shortages the raids create and the issues they cause.
Winnie remembers tugging on her father's sleeve and asking if they can eat the dragons back.
-
Winnie is six; she's still thinner than her parents would like. They don't say it, but every time they enter the Mead Hall, she finds food that wasn't there in her wooden bowl, appearing nearly every time she idly glances off at other tables.
During Dagmal, she dutifully and slowly eats her porridge, stale bread, and dried cod under her mother, Gytha's watchful eyes, knowing a more fulfilling and flavorful meal was waiting at Nattmal.
Her attention was drawn upon the vast sea of large bodies, and loud voices and horned helmets were a favorite part of her meals; specifically, trying to spot the smaller forms hidden amongst them. There were fewer than her memories suggest should be there; many couples ate with a solemn air, and smaller wooden bowls sat empty between quite a few.
Winnie tries to not feel the urge to hide near her parents when gazes and murmurs get aimed around her—none of the other children that survived contracted the disease at all.
(She ignores what that says about Winnie's supposed vitality; the neighbors had been a particularly chatty bunch, with words about blessings, luck, and good blood. She tries not to think about the twisted feeling in her chest that Winnie didn't survive at all.)
-
Winnie's seven; the Berserker tribe are visiting for one reason or another. She's out with Mother handling some firewood for the Mead Hall, preparing for Nattmal. A larger feast was planned for their guests. It was out there when she saw the passing retinue, the sight of the other tribe's heir, their appearance eerily familiar yet so utterly foreign. Pausing in her stride as she felt her hand creep up to her forehead, scratching lightly at the pink scar across her temple as the ever-present feeling grew more insistent.
Some days it's barely there; other times it's bad enough her concerned mother says she ceases moving entirely.
-
Winnie always goes to bed on time and never has a problem going to sleep, to her parents great fortune. Winnie sleeps like a log.
So why is she still awake?
Her body is tired, yet her mind is a treacherous thing. Recently, Winnie's parents tend to look at her both with love and barely concealed worry in equal measures.
She shuffles and turns about before abandoning her bed entirely, slowly rising from her fur blankets, and lighting a candle at her barren desk.
The feeling got worse today, and unlike usual, it didn't recede even after heading to the safety of her home. Her small hand reached up and tugged at her brown hair.
Except it wasn't brown, not anymore. It hasn't been brunette for a long time.
Small hands, far too small hands for someone who certainly remembers being far larger than she currently is; her hair is a shade of red now.
Red hair, ginger hair like Heir Dagur, like Chief Stoick, Stoick the Vast, his son, Hiccup, Berk, Dragons—
Faltering, she stumbled to the side and promptly jammed her foot against the wood of her desk, hissing quietly as her hands adjusted the jostled candle back upright (no need to set the room on fire). Eyes blinked away tears; her eyes opened to look around at the walls surrounding her with clarity she had been missing; even in a small flickering candlelight, the details dwarfed anything she could recently recall.
If her mind was bad before, the sudden rush of dizziness forced her to take a seat at her desk, staring into the flame of the candle.
She isn't Winnie; she hasn't been Winnie—
She wasn't Winifrey and hasn't been; her mind sure took a while to catch up—was it because her brain was too small? Too young? The memories of something, someone older, locked away until she could handle them? A quiet and desperate chuckle escaped her lips; it sounded a little bit delirious even to her.
Dragons, dragons, dragons were a thing now—Vikings; she's a Viking child now—or rather, Winnie was one; she was a small, lively thing who loved her parents and the Gronckle plush her father would always play with her with, urging her to strike her play wooden axe at its weak points.
Gronkle plush, living dragons—dragons were good—or would be, one day?
Shit, when does that happen?
She dragged her hands down her face; her chest felt like it would twist itself out of her own rib cage and start curling itself into a ball.
She hustled quickly, quietly, as to not wake up the other residents of the house (she's not sure she could look Winnie's parents in the eyes right now, not when they'd be looking for their little girl), to the desk and wrote, and not in Norse.
The Red Death? She's important, a queen of dragons that causes the raids somehow; she dies to Hiccup and his dragon—but when was that? He looked scrawny back then, in the first movie—she's more familiar with Race to the Edge; she remembers watching with her siblings (and wasn't that a punch to the gut? All six of them are gone) and she never watched the third movie because she disliked it on principle and never had the time to waste.
Hiccup was fifteen, then eighteen and twenty, then thirty—but he's seven now. It was quite hard to look at the boy, and now she thinks she knows why—just a hunch, really.
Hiccup was fifteen, shot down a night fury, and couldn't kill it and became its friend—and fuck, if literally anything goes wrong during or before that period, the future will be irreparably skewed off course. Not that she should take everything she remembers (and can't remember—god, why wasn't she more of a nerd?) as fact; she knows blood and death weren't shown on a kids show, and Winnie vaguely remembers watching a Viking lose his arm to a dragon, eyes wide as she was rushed to the mead hall in the arms of her mother, her father cutting off the tail of the green-scaled Deadly Nadder behind them.
Her parents, she thought back with a wince, oh man, she did just a phenomenal job being normal—her parents were worried sick their daughter was mentally crippled, an unseeing haze to her eyes, and never truly seeing what was going on around her.
How cruel could it be to nearly lose your child, a miracle followed where they survived only to be changed so utterly? A cruel back and forth of hope and despair?
Would they have preferred their daughter to someone who isn't her at all?