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evangelic4l · 8 months

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This was actually beautiful

Always an Angel, Never the God Full

Hiccup Horrendous Haddock III x Runaway!Reader

Words: 13,104

Your plans to run away with Hiccup fall through. Three years later, you finally make it off Berk and away from the Edge. Here are the years that follow.

Tags: SUGGESTIVE ENDING, Runaway Reader, Angst, bitter reader, unrequited love, requited love, healing, conflicting emotions, compiles parts 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5

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You waited for hours, back aching against the flat rock, basket of your few chosen belongings hidden behind a small outcropping of rock as you waited for him, increasingly more worried as the sun began to set.

Scared, even. You’d seen the axe, laid plainly on the ground. You feared the worst, especially after your frantic search bore no fruit. That he’d been found, and that something terrible had happened to him.

But Hiccup was fine, with Astrid, this whole time.

Even Toothless seemed to like her well enough. He didn’t like you, glaring and snapping at you when you got too close, despite all of your efforts to get on his good side. He barely let you on, and he certainly wouldn’t without Hiccup. You had the sneaking suspicion he’d buck if you tried it on your lonesome.

While you understood, it hurt that even as close friends he’d not told you about Toothless at all, at first. You doubt he would’ve if he’d not seen you do so poorly at dragon training. He probably felt terrible, watching you fail over and over again when he could be doing something to help.

You hugged your knees tightly, hidden behind rock and moss, fighting not to make a sound as you peered around a corner, barely listening in as they conversed.

Even if he never inherited the chiefdom, It was still a heavy expectation that he’d marry. You two were an inevitable couple, if not because of love, out of a bond of solidarity. It’s not like either of you had any suitors. You were friends first, of course, but privately you hadn’t had a problem with that. You got along well, and you could see a future with him where you were both alright.

And you really, really liked him.

You knew he wanted someone else, someone who was confident, capable, who had good standing, who his father could be proud of. Someone who was more gorgeous than plain, someone like Astrid.

You weren’t the best viking, you couldn’t work in the forge, you hadn’t a lot of lucrative talents at all and a measure of clumsiness and troublemaking that could rival Hiccup’s own.

But you were friends, and that had to count for something.

He came to you with his plan to run away. You were running away together, you thought.

But somehow, she was here, and he left with her. He liked her. You knew that. And, you realized with mounting horror as she leaned in closer to him, she liked him too.

You knew you’d never had a chance, but knowing it is different from experiencing it. You had not a chance in the world.

You could never fault him for that.

You couldn’t stop the tears from pooling in your eyes, or the tiny bits of your heart from splitting apart and scattering across the grass.

Conversely, he didn’t tell you when he flew off to battle with the rest of your peers. The whole thing with the Red Death? You missed it completely. You only found out later after Hiccup had been towed back to Berk on death's door.

Constantly spilling his heart out to you but saving the rest of it for the other teens, the ones who used to jeer at him from the sidelines, who all of the sudden began to treat him well, but still jeered at you while he wasn’t looking.

A hangers-on to their group, not very useful or funny, just there, always. Not spoken with or talked to or considered at all by anyone who wasn’t Hiccup. Just there.

Your companionship had, for lack of a better word, remained the same, except now there was an undercurrent of something under the surface of a black ocean, broiling and writhing like an angry serpent.

Sometimes it felt like a sick corruption of the friendship you and Hiccup used to have, made up of long held hardship and what you had thought were good times. Sometimes it was better than it was before, and you could joke and laugh and play games the same way you had as children.

And sometimes it felt like you were speaking to a stranger, one you weren’t sure you’d ever known at all; sometimes his mannerisms, his ticks and even the way he stood were alien to you.

You weren’t even sure you recognized who he was anymore. You never asked why, afraid of the answer you might find.

“So, I’m hoping that if I place a spring there, when I pull the lever it wont catch so violently. The gear system around the side is to help turn the barrel while you’re aiming. Got it? What do you think?”

You nodded, eyeing the vast array of blueprints and open journals spread sideways in between the two of you. Brown leather met leather as Hiccup rubbed his shoulder, no doubt a result of a hard fall he’d taken earlier on Toothless.

“Yeah, I got it,” You say casually, “What about the wheels? If you’re going to be pulling it over grass, you might need to cover the space between the wheels and gears, because the plants might catch and pull up into the gear system.”

It feels fake. Slimy to say, like a lie, except you know it’s not. It feels like a product of something more larger and uglier.

Hiccup picks up a yellowed paper, scrutinizing his own design, “Yeah… Actually, you’re right. I don’t know If- maybe if I shift the base… Yeah, I think that would work. Thank you.”

“No problem,” You puff, blowing a strand of hair out of your face.

“Also, I’ve been meaning to ask,” Hiccup shifted in his seat, clenching and unclenching his fingers, a nervous tick he’d had since the two of you were little, “Your dragon. Have you picked a name for it yet?”

“Ah, no,” You sigh, looking down at your knees, “Honestly, I haven’t been able to find something he likes.”

The picky bastard./Picky beast.

Hiccup had helped you find a dragon before the lot of you had moved, a smallish nadder who still didn’t feel much like your own, but served you just as well as any other would and you did teh best to serve it fine as well. He turned out to have just as much propensity for social upset around the other dragons and seemed to get along with Stormfly, Toothless and no one else.

Speaking of, the black dragon, Toothless, had warmed up to you, and in the end you became no better or worse than anyone else on Berk to him, which you were okay with for the most part.

The others had gotten used to you, though remained relatively detached. Conversations wouldn’t stop nor would people give you the look once you entered a room. You didn’t try to strike up conversation anymore, learning that it was better to be silent than awkward.

It still did nothing to soothe the hurt, or all of the years you’d spent hurting, or any of the time now you spent on your lonesome.

“If you don’t mind, I can-...” Hiccup leans back, the both of you turning heads as your door creaked open, heavy boots moving across the threshold of your home, wood floors creaking.

You gave Astrid a nod of acknowledgement as she approached your table and she tilted her head, glancing in your direction.

“Hiccup,” Astrid called, “Are we still flying tonight?”

“Astrid,” Hiccup greeted as he stood up, a soft smile stretching half the length of his face as he gathered his assets, leaving a few papers scattered across the top that he knew he could come pick up later as he usually did, “Yeah, let me get my things first.”

You tuned them out as they began speaking in earnest, leaning back to stare at the ceiling, fingers tapping against your elbows almost antsily as they slowly took their leave.

“Hey,” Hiccup looks back at you as your heart beats rapidly in your chest, “I’ll see you later, right?”

“Right,” You say nearly at a mumble, refusing to look him in the eye, your stomach rolling guiltily as the door shuts behind him, “I’ll see you later.”

Your foot nudged the pack you’d prepared out from under the table in the small, shoddy hut you’d managed on the Edge, slinging it over your shoulder as you watched Hiccup and Astrid take off on their dragons through a crack in your window shutters.

He may have found his happiness with the others but you had not, and you fully intended to leave, the same way he’d planned it all those years ago.

You knew what you were doing was wrong. Not saying goodbye, just up and leaving in the middle of the night without telling anyone, but you just couldn’t bring yourself to say it.

What would you be leaving behind, anyways? You didn’t have much.

You waited until they were just a small speck in the distance before running out on your own, a pack slung up over your shoulders. The dragon, who you’d parked just behind your hut and who’d spent the past few hours almost patiently waiting for you as you’d spent your sudden and unexpected last few hours with Hiccup, stood to its feet and chirruped as you hoisted yourself up onto its saddle.

Fishlegs was busy in his hut. The twins and Snotlout, maybe they’d notice you leaving but you didn’t have much faith in them asking why or feeling much at all besides a vague expectation that you’d be back later. Everyone went out for a leisure flight every once in a while, it was just about time you’d finally taken yours, after all.

Hiccup and Astrid wouldn’t be back till late doing who knows what. You bit your lip, lightly tapping your Nadder’s side with your heel, signaling for him to take off in the opposite direction, shoving down a deep spike of jealousy at the thought. He was your friend first, and soon he would be nothing to you and it wouldn’t matter at all anymore.

You weren’t sure where exactly you were going. But you knew wherever it was, it would be good as long as it was as far, far away from here as possible.

You grind your teeth, eyes tearing up as a heavy booted foot pushes you down further into the wooden ship floor. The ship rocks angrily as does your dragon, struggling against the barbed netting.

“Who are you? A new vigilante?” The leading trapper, Erik son of Erik or something, asked, bending down above you. He had, coincidentally, been the one to shoot you down.

“Where is your… hideout?” He leaned down into your ear at your silence, speaking in a raspy whisper. You got the vague impression he was trying to be intimidating, though the end results were more in favor of making you blush.

You were thankful for the hard wood covering your face and, therefore, your embarrassment. Of your belongings, you were only able to manage a mask and had taken to running around ensconced in furs with nothing but a dagger to your name.

You’d recon you looked much like a wild animal, straddling your nadder bare of a saddle. You had not done too well on your own. It was hard. You had always been a team player if by team player you meant a leech on society. At least, you had been told so.

So of course you had, unwittingly, stumbled onto dragon trapping territory. Extreme sport dragon trapping territory. It didn’t help that you and your nadder hadn’t been on the same page, you two being unable to sync in the way you’d seen the other riders with their dragons, which left a bitter taste in your mouth.

He’d go left when you were trying for right, and when you finally decided to just go with it, he would change his mind and throw you for a complete loop. It was safe to say that even if you got out of this mess you never wanted to step foot on his back again.

You breathed a silent sigh of relief just as the trapper let out an annoyed one, stepping off of you in favor of yelling at his men for damaging their goods. Meaning, your nadder. Was he really yours, though? He did try and make a break for it without you.

While debating whether or not you should try at the ropes shackling your arms together, you grunt frustratedly, noticing a new tear in your garb.

After running away and getting captured, you had not expected to be kidnapped again by some insane-looking madman in a mask. Though you did look like two of a kind, so it was fitting.

Your nadder had its wings torn irreparably, so, unfortunately, you had to retire him early.

You found small comfort in that it hadn’t abandoned you on the ship that one final time, though the irony that it had led you here was not lost on you.

He visited sometimes. He took to life in the sanctuary very well.

You didn’t, a borderline prisoner before you’d been able to win over the trust of the resident feral gorgon. Sort of. She was a woman who let you see her face, more on accident than anything else. You hadn’t let her see you or hear yours. However you weren’t inclined to speak of her nicely, least of all in your head, after the number of weeks you spent trapped in a cave at her behest.

Finally, you’d been let out. Let out enough to walk more than just the short stretch of stone and greenish ice that made up your prison. The endless turquoise was beginning to make you sick.

Recently, you found a real friend in the sanctuary, and this dragon, it was truly yours. Affectionately named, fed and groomed, you two were almost inseparable. It was the kind of friendship with a dragon you’d completely missed out on on Berk.

It was hard to maintain given your captive status, but that was alright.

There probably wasn’t any social profit involved in being a vigilante, which is why you assumed the crazy dragon lady had taken to speaking at you in her spare time. About the dragons, what they ate, what she had to do. Pointedly she gave away nothing of their true secrets, not that you wanted them, nor anything of her vigilant-ing. Not verbally, though the influx of injuries both on her and the dragons spoke volumes.

She did give away her name.

You groan, rubbing your eyes under your mask as you cradle the thing to your face with the other.

“You’re quite attached to your mask,” Valka said amusedly, shifting the logs roasting in the fire with a stick, pushing them back and forth as you sat in silence. You hardly ever spoke a word, nowadays.

Her dragon, the stormcutter, stared at you with large eyes through the licking flames.

Neither of you mentioned that the only real reason you’d been able to keep your mask so long was that she’d been kind enough to let you. An allowance you’d been given on a whim. One you clung to with all the nervous energy of Fishlegs to his dragon cards.

“... I’d rather not be,” You grumble, voice raspy from disuse, “It’s stuffy.”

“Oh,” Valka looked at you, amused and maybe a little surprised to hear you speak at last, before going back to tend to her fires, “I was starting to think you couldn’t speak.”

“Funny.” You said, lifting a sharpened stick off the ground, spearing it through a slimy, gutted fish from the basket beside you. Your nose wrinkled as you heard the sharp point break skin. No amount of faux stoicism could make it seem pleasant to you.

“I have a few questions,” You grimace under your mask as she asserts herself. She can ask them all she wants, but there’s no guarantee you’ll answer.

You might, probably, as keeping secrets hasn’t always been your strong suit. She’s certainly been trying to open you up for a while. You’ve not given her any leeway before though, no reason to give her any now.

“How did you tame your dragon?” She asked, pushing a particularly thick dragon searching for morsels. Valka guides its head gently away with her spare hand before any of the other dragons crowding around them get any ideas.

You wait for a moment, still wondering whether you should follow along. Eventually, you decide to answer.

“Wasn’t me. Someone else back home did it,” You huff, “I just followed along.”

“...But not very well,” Valka hums. It’s obvious she doesn’t believe you. Unfortunately for her, that is not your problem.

She pulls a small trout off her own stick, tossing it to a crowd of young dragons, who you knew had acquired a taste for the cooked, through no fault of your own.

You should feel offended, but you know she’s right. You lean away from a wandering dragon snout as it searches you for morsels. The stormcutter, after a look from Valka, shoos it away with a large wing.

“Where are you from?”

You feel the embers from the fire as they rise, the furs of your coat becoming nearly unbearable, your skin heated up rapidly. You wrinkle your brow with annoyance as you feel a drop of sweat slide down the side of your face.

“Where are you from?” You retort pointedly.

She studies you cautiously, as if she could glean your intentions from your body language. And she very well could. Or the heat was getting to you, the wells you’d spent in solitude had finally done some real damage to your psyche, and you were hallucinating.

“Berk,” She says. You sit back, surprised, “And you?”

“...None of your business.” You wonder how long it had been since she had left. You pray she would not know you.

Valka raised her eyebrow.

“I’m serious.” You ground your heel into the dirt. It was a touchy subject, still.

“Berk, too. …Stop looking at me like that.”

Valka leaned back against the ice wall where you rested, looking out over the empty ocean as dragons flooded to and fro the sanctuary. You squinted far into the distance, as if you thought you might be able to see through it if you tried hard enough.

Your hair tugged wildly by the winds out from behind your mask as you sat, one leg extended and the other bent as you leaned back against one arm.

You probably looked as you felt, weary and unkempt after a long flight over the seas with your dragon, who clambered among the icy spike-lined wall with clawed hands. You felt refreshed yet somehow at odds with yourself still.

You cared little for your bedraggled demeanor the same way you hadn’t cared for much at all in a while. It might have made a cool picture had you not slipped and fallen onto your face on the ice just a few minutes prior. Whether you had broken your nose or not on your mask had yet to be uncovered. All that mattered was that Valka hadn’t seen.

Dragons crowed. Through the cracks in the walls of the sanctuary, the wind would whistle through if it hit the right angle. Louder than anything else were the sounds of the waves crashing against rock.

But between you and Valka, it was silent. A contemplative silence, the kind of silence you shared with others after a long thought or a hard day’s work. That’s how you knew she was going to break it.

“Why did you leave?”

You are annoyed at the prospect but are no less expectant. After the moment passes, you are not surprised. However, it feels as if you are the one who should be asking.

“Why did I leave?” You ask, “Does it matter?”

A loose chunk of ice falls off the side of the sanctuary as a large titan scrambles violently down the side, chasing after a bright yellow baby. You spot a shape through the fog, distant and blurry enough to resemble a bird though there are no birds here. You pointedly do not think of your small hut, even less of green eyes, and tiny, fading freckles.

Valka tilted her head in your direction, reaching a hand out to scratch Cloudjumper under his chin as he lowered himself towards her, “It mattered to you.”

You open your mouth, but you are only able to choke on your breath. No one has ever said something like that to you, not in a long while. You don’t understand why it’s hitting you so hard. Maybe it’s the isolation.

You blame the burning of your eyes on the biting wind.

“Why did you leave?” You ask in return, once you’ve taken time for yourself, though you have an idea. You can’t keep your voice from sounding a little bit scratchy.

You unhook your dagger from your belt, trying not to seem so attentive. Instead, you take to carving random shapes into the ice. A gronkle. A nadder.

“I was taken.” She sighs, quieter now. Lost off in memory as you both often are.

The nadder’s spikes are much too long. The gronkle looks more like a sandwich than a dragon.

“Taken?” You prompt and you begin on the outline of a fury. The result is shallow and scratchy.

It’s one of your own designs, not the same as the one Berk uses. Astrid liked the other one better, not yours, so that was the one Hiccup went with.

“I didn’t leave,” She insisted, almost as if she was trying to convince herself of the fact, “I had a son, and a husband.”

You’ve seen her by the fires, while trying to sneak out of this hellish ice maze. She talks to herself then. On particularly paranoid days, she’s slept by you, in the same caverns, so you’ve heard it. She talks in her sleep and says things she would never say awake, or had you been around. It’s all so very unsettling.

“Really?” You remarked with false astonishment. The facade is flimsy, but you figured you’d give her the benefit of the doubt. The grace to assume that you’d no idea what she was on about.

With prompting, you might have seen it earlier. In her slim form, the one she kept hidden under thick furs and thicker armor. You squint. They have the same eye color. The same hair. They both have higher cheekbones, though her son more resembles his father in that aspect. That is all.

Valka shoots you a reprimanding look. Cloudjumper, now creeping down the wall behind you, taps you on the back of your head with its tail at her behest.

Valka was of the air. Though he had the same flighty tendencies, he was very grounded, like his father, though he might either be proud or loath to admit it. He loved flying, yes, but he loved inventing and processing and routine just as much, if not more.

He did when you were close. Of course he did, he spent his whole life on it. You couldn’t really say you knew him anymore.

You didn’t pin Valka as the type to enjoy the same in any sort of manner. But that suited you just as well. You found that as time went by and as you were granted more freedoms, you appreciated it. It made it easier for you to forget. To ignore.

In the end they, you and she, she and you, were one and the same.

“But what does it matter, if you never went back?” You grumble, pushing your dragon’s head away as it nudges you towards the cliff, crooning for more flying time.

You guessed that was why she clung so viciously to the safety of her sanctuary. Why she hated other people so much, why she’d had no faith in the humanity of other people, why she’d held you here so strictly. If things could have been different, then what did she give it all up for?

Though you’d never had something else. Not even the option. You’d never been given it. Valka hadn’t been given it either, but there was a sure difference between something being there and not.

The atmosphere is silent again, tainted with some darker undertones. If you’d had to put a name to it, you might have called it grief.

“I want to leave.”

Valka doesn’t look surprised at your request. And indeed, it’s been no secret that you wanted to leave. Maybe she was glad for it, or maybe she was sad at the news.

After all, you settled into each other's presence long ago. You had a good sort of companionship.

And from that companionship, you learned a lot without even trying, just by watching. Eventually she took notice and she took an active part in teaching you the truths she learned during all her years in self-imposed isolation.

You two weren’t incredibly close but you could tell Valka was grateful for the company, grateful to have someone maybe even a little bit like her, even if most of it was spent in silence.

You still left the Drago fighting for her. It wasn’t your fight, it was hers, and you made that clear.

Neither of you brought up Berk. Ever.

You were content to just come and go as you pleased, for a while. Nonetheless, despite your freedom, you felt restricted to the small world of the Sanctuary and the empty skies around it. There was no place for you on the ground or by the seas, where hunters and trappers swarmed by the thousands and Drago’s armies grew by the day.

You spent so much time learning from her and yet it felt like no time at all. Which was why you were shocked when you’d truly learned how much had come and gone in full.

You were out slinking in the shadows, seeking shelter from a storm on the same small rocky outcropping of island that had a shipful of trappers stranded, in a rage and a panic as they attempted to recover their assets. The winds had been too rough to fly, so you had no choice but to wait and listen.

You didn’t believe it at first. It had been…

Months.

You wondered if he’d been married, yet.

Years.

The idea hurt, not as much as you’d thought it would, still not as little as you’d hoped.

Under clear skies, you found an inn, untouched by everything except grass and trees.

You asked, “What day is it?”

The large man, a burly viking scrubbing down a wooden cup with a torn old rag, had looked down at you skeptically from behind a beaten pine and stone counter.

Two years. It had been nearly two years since you left Berk. Just as Valka’s attachments kept her at the Sanctuary, you needed to go. To run.

Since you had heard it, spoken it, the urge to run, to fly hadn’t abated at all, going from a wispy thought at the back of your mind to a full blown need. Your dragon too had become antsy, maybe feeding off of your nervous energy. Eager to take off, to fly new skies.

“Are you sure?” Valka asked searchingly. You two were stationed over a heavily planted cliff over a large main pool which consisted of the main cavern within the Sanctuary, once again in front of a fire, eating your own meals as the dragons below ate and exchanged fish.

You were already packed, your mask secured as it had been for all two years you had been in this place stuck between confinement and dwelling. You almost regretted it, not telling her your name, but you couldn’t bear yourself to her knowing who she was, not truly. Not until you’d washed yourself of that particular weight.

“Yes,” One day you would, if you ever saw her again. Once you were released from the heartache and pain of your own making, “I am. Thank you.”

You started out into the pale foggy sky, mounted your beast as smooth as you’d ever done, which is to say, not smooth at all. You’d only ever managed it right when Valka was watching, anyhow. It was odd how that worked, maybe the peer pressure was finally starting to kick in.

As you took off and the sanctuary became smaller and smaller both to your eyes and your mind, as the tight bundle of chains in your chest dropped and the world opened up to you once more, you felt light, and free.

Once again, there was no one to watch you and no one to hurt for besides your and your dragon. Endless opportunity. Thousands of ways to keep going.

You wondered what your face looked like.

You couldn’t wait to see it again.

Hiccup traced the faint outline of a Night Fury in the ice with his fingertips.

He tried to suppress the bubbling hope and dread at the thought his mother had been lying to him and his father about being alone all those years.

He had left to get some air and to give his parents time together to linger while the snowstorm outside abated, taking shelter under a misty overhang of ice just off one of the tunnels leading back into the main dwelling. One that had fortunately not fallen victim to the heavy layers of snow drowning the uncovered surfaces below.

Toothless had followed him out, of course, and sniffled curiously at the ground, giving the other few doodles littered across the ice an inspection of his own. Hiccup sat back, covering his mouth with his hand as he mulled over the implications.

He then stood, staring back into the tunnel leading back into the sanctuary. Much of the awe he had felt earlier at the discovery of his mother had washed away and a wave of uncertainty and hurt replaced it.

He knew he had been given grace. A lot more than he deserved.

Since everything had changed, terrible mistakes became minor inconveniences. People no longer whispered about Hiccup the weird, Hiccup the Useless, the Hiccup who just didn’t get it. Rather, every jest on his behalf was now just another one of his strange little quirks.

He did his part. He was happy to have a part now. A real one.

(He’d had a part. Blacksmith, inventor, friend.)

(Mistake.)

He thought they’d do the same for you. But you weren’t doing well. Even though he was busy with his new role, he noticed. He noticed when you fell behind, when you still couldn’t seem to find your place.

(His father, looking at him with shining eyes.)

He begged for you to not fumble this chance that you both had to be different. To be a part of something real, something tangible.

(He was so proud.)

Except.

(It made him sick.)

He knew what it was like. To be the odd one out, to not be able to do things quite the way you were supposed to. After all, if he hadn’t had Toothless then he would still be the same old Hiccup.

(He felt like the same old Hiccup.)

So yeah, it made sense that you weren’t always the first on call. It made sense, when you lagged behind. Why you weren’t part of the group the same way everyone else was.

(Was he?)

Like a wall had been shattered and the curtains pulled, he’d been witness to some of the moments between the other Dragon Riders he’d not been included in when he was ‘other.’ Moments that he just couldn’t quite indulge in, that used to be aimed at him, that caused something ugly and sad to curl tight in his stomach.

That left the sour taste of stomach acid on his tongue that he couldn’t wash away, no matter what he drank or how many times he tried.

So he vouched for you when the whispers started. Hounded them until they stopped, despite the creeping feeling that they were right. Clung tightly onto the few moments you were able to spend together. The way things used to be.

(Pushed down the tiny voice telling him he still didn’t belong.)

Days. It took days for them to notice you were gone. Truly gone. And they couldn’t be sure at all when it had happened, what or why.

They assumed you were dead. Once the next devastating winter set in, there was no way you could have made it on your own.

They locked your hut. An empty grave. The key, he’d taken and melted down into other things.

But. there was always a but.

Hiccup was a good handyman. For the most part. He’d caused a lot of handy-requiring, meaning he’d had a lot of practice.

He broke your lock.

Hiccup stared down at the piles of maps, noted, traced and copied sprawled across your desk, pulled out from underneath a loose floorboard by your bed. He clenched the various compasses and sea charts hidden in drawers and carelessly thrown under dishware.

It turned out you had a lot of free time on your hands.

There was something missing. Something missed when the other riders would joke and prod, wielding inside jokes he’d never been privy to just as easily as they wielded swords and hammers. And now he had no one to share with when they did.

There was something missing late at night working on a new tailfin, or a rig, or early in the morning when he was too tired to piece metal jigs together.

It just wasn’t the same, going to Fishlegs or Snotlout with these things, and heaven knows that Astrid wouldn’t entertain the idea at all. It was the dragons that appealed to her most. She was an early riser and an early sleeper and for many reasons she appealed to him, but she just couldn’t be what Hiccup needed. Not then.

You faded away as if you were a ghost, a door to a room no one used.

They didn’t get how it felt to spend all those years being the odd one out. He needed someone who got it. He needed someone who got him. A friend.

And like a note in the margins of a bad story, eventually no one mentioned you at all.

He flew as far and as fast as he could. Mapping the world, exploring farther and farther, as if he might somehow be able to trace your footsteps, following a lost trail that one day a long time ago you might have paved.

He’d flown as if, once he’d flown far enough, he might have been able to understand where you’d gone.

(Why you left him.)

They figured a way to identify dragons through scale patterns. It was a skill Fishlegs had perfected first, taking vague, long held knowledge and putting it into practice, doing the math.

Hiccup ran his hand down the side of this dragon, eyeing the torn wings, the spiked crown. The jaw.

Recording its age, its gender, his place of origin.

“You know this dragon?” Valka asked cautiously. Distrustfully. She was leaning against her staff, face guarded. He didn’t need to look to know that last bit, he heard it just fine.

Hiccup furrowed his brow. Two fish, a scratch under the chin. Dragon nip, a saddle, carefully woven and tenderly worn.

“I trained it.”

Hiccup leaned forward against Toothless, urging him ever onwards against the rough, buffeting winds and vicious onslaught of snow. Higher and higher until they cut above the clouds, breaching the threshold of the storm, evading it altogether.

Your absence had long since become an idea. Your person, a concept that eluded him time and time again, as inescapable yet unreachable as his own grieving heart.

But now, with the news from his father, his mother… he’d set out immediately, with not a word to spare despite Gobber warning him of the oncoming storm.

You were only two days departed. Two days out, a mirage turned real and he pursued it with all the desperation of a child. Finally, nearly, you were almost tangible. Reachable, physical, real.

There was no telling how far you’d gone or how far you’d go if you’d been given the chance to flee. He needed to catch up, catch you, see you.

Happy to be on your own again, you’d taken a few days rest just outside of Valka’s territory. You didn’t expect to be caught off guard like that. You didn’t expect to be found, even by accident. It was just your luck.

“Damn it!” Peering from around the bend, you spotted a man. And he was a man now, a long shot away from the kids you two were.

He was masked, hidden just out of view inside the crack between a rocky craig, where you’d set up camp. However the unmistakable form of Toothless followed suit as the two fought the wind and storm, searching for shelter.

You brushed your hand over your own mask, your dragon breathing over your shoulder as it too surveyed the newcomers. They had crash landed quite suddenly and you’d rushed to compensate, hiding before they could notice. Hopefully they hadn’t noticed. He nor Toothless wouldn’t ever notice, not if you played your cards right.

You wondered if he remembered you at all. If he knew or if he’d ever had the mind to think about you. What brought him here. Maybe he’d just been chasing a whim. You pushed back a large animal skull with your foot, the mangled remnants of your attempt to fashion a new helmet with no face.

Toothless shook his head, looking at Hiccup sourly as they trudged on towards an outcropping near the center of the small island they’d found themselves on.

Hiccup rubbed his arms grievously, staring out towards the sea, not sure the place wouldn’t be overtaken should a particularly large wave come to shore. There was no way he’d be able to catch up to you now, not in this rough weather. He prayed that the storm would give but the chances of that were low and he had little hope.

He stumbled slightly as he was buffeted forwards, finally making it to the entrance of a nigh hidden, narrow space carved into a crack in the large rock. Toothless snuffled at his back, urging him forward, though he had to take pause at the entrance as he spotted movement in the back.

A dragon? Or…

You hadn’t played your cards right.

You cursed as you ran further into the cave and towards the opening you knew lay at the back, your dragon already there, packed and ready. You had to run back after the realization you’d forgotten your dagger, which you probably should have just left behind.

“Hey, wait!”

You grit your teeth as Hiccup made chase, running past your dead fire and crumbling fish bones. You would have been caught had the passage not been too narrow for him and Toothless to run side-by-side. It was just luck that he hadn’t yet thought to jump back onto his saddle.

You increased your speed as the passage started to open up and swung onto your own dragon, kicking off and just missing Hiccup as he skidded to a stop. Toothless lept in front of him right after.

You could just imagine the two of them vaulting into the sky, a common scene turned frightening image as you and your own dragon bolted.

You’d had plenty of experience flying through this kind of weather. You hadn’t always, and the vikings on Berk hadn’t much at all, choosing to hole up with their dragons when the snow got too rough.

It gave you the advantage, one you needed if Hiccup decided to follow. There was no way to tell with the snow this thick, and with Toothless, he’d be nearly impossible to outmaneuver. You stayed under the clouds, hoping to keep your cover, as traveling into the open sky now would most definitely give you away.

What you could make out below between flurries of hail and flakes was nothing but open ocean and large mountains of ice, which passed you by in less than an instant as you sped as far away as possible, using the winds to uplift instead of hindering you.

You scanned the area around you, looking for a sound place to escape and hide. Something caught your eye but just barely and you swooped downwards.

With what happened next, you might have been caught off guard had it not been for the yelling you could make out just barely above the wind. Instead you were just incredibly scared as a large mass spiraled into you, sending the four of you tumbling and screaming down into the cavern below.

Through the vertigo you were able to kick Hiccup, untangling your limbs with force as your dragon took unsteadily to the air again.

“Wait- Come back!” He shouted, leaning forwards, arm extended towards you. Toothless roared.

“No!” You yelled stubbornly back as you twisted to glare at him through your mask.

Regrettably, it seems that the Night Fury remained undefeated in terms of speed and inescapability as he soon caught up to you again, Toothless grabbing onto your dragon’s tail and with a hard yank, forcing your landing onto a nearby ledge, large and long enough to facilitate your rough spill and roll against hard gravel.

Your mask cracked as it was thrown against the ground, loudly echoing as it clattered against hard stone.

“Sorry, I didn’t mean to- It was really rough out there, and I-” Hiccup stumbled to his feet, shaking his mechanical foot out of Toothless’ saddle, heart pounding as you looked up at him behind scraggly hair, crouched a good few strides forwards

He’d found the experience novel when he’d seen it on his Dad, an outsider looking in. But to experience it firsthand… He knew what his father meant, when he said ‘You’re as beautiful as the day I lost you.’

Even seeing you as messed up and wild as you were squeezed his breath out of his chest. Maybe even made you more… Whatever this was. Whatever you were to him.

You definitely looked different, a little older, features more defined, but he’d die before he’d cease to recognize that face.

He had to shut his mouth, lips pursed as if to hold back all the memories flooding back into his mind, faster than the winds blowing up on the surface. You two, as kids in the meadows, complaining about life and dads, sneaking around the Great Hall, causing messes and being scolded.

He realized what it was that he’d felt and missed so deeply. It was something he’d known, hidden so deep inside, realized much too late.

You held back tears as the life you’d tried so hard to forget had finally caught up to you. Within an instant, this new life you had built for yourself had completely fallen apart.

You saw the man- because you begged for it not to be him, and you’d exhausted all your avenues, and the only option you had left was denial, took a shaky step forward, pulling his helmet back over his head with both hands, revealing a face lathered in sweat despite the cool conditions.

Trolls.

“Why…” Your voice, scratchy and ragged, was easily heard despite your whispering as there was nothing else to be heard, “Are you here?”

“Why… Am I…?” Hiccup asked incredulously, staring at you wide-eyed.

“Yes!” You shout, shoving the hair out of your face as you stood abruptly, “What in the world are you doing here?” Your dragon, laying behind you, began to stand, cautiously crouching against the ground.

“I came looking for you!” He looked like you’d kicked his puppy. You bared your teeth at him.

“You came looking for me? You chased me through a storm like a maniac! Can’t you take a hint?! Gods,” You grip your shoulder, “You probably broke my shoulder, curse it!”

“I’m sorry- I’m sorry I hurt you, that I-” Hiccup stepped forward. Toothless growled, behind him, “But you left! What was I supposed to do with that?”

“What you were supposed to do with that? You tackled me to the ground!” It had been so long.

“You didn’t even say goodbye!”

“You’re mad about goodbyes? Was the goodbye I gave you not good enough?!” He had scruff now, a light dusting of peach fuzz spotting along his chin. His hair was redder, his eyes greener. Or maybe that was the lighting.

“You went missing for two years! So I chased after you. Who wouldn’t? In what world would ‘I’ll see you later’ ever be enough? Ever?” It’s not like he ever gave you a goodbye. Not before he’d left you in the dust.

“I was hurt! And what are you- how do you even remember that, anyways?” You scoff loudly. But in the end he was still the same boy. He would have taken anyone else at their whim as a friend or otherwise. Yet he didn’t even recognize your companionship or your silly little crush. Wasn’t that disheartening?

Hiccup stomped forwards, causing you to step back. Your dragon snarled and followed as Toothless began to circle, trapping you and Hiccup in the middle of a very dangerous tango.

“How could I-? You’d- Just- Have you ever considered that maybe I was hurting, too? I spent so long just trying to fix- everything! I spent so long doing, and then you just leave and I can’t do anything about it! Do you know how painful that was? Why didn’t- why didn’t you tell me? Why didn’t you talk to me? Why?” He had worked hard. So, so hard.

He probably would have chosen Ruffnut’s hand over yours. He thought she was terrible.

“Why?” You asked him, throwing your arms out, squishing the little ball of guilt worming around in your stomach, “Why didn’t you talk to me? Do you know how much it hurt, to be constantly left behind like- like your old scraps, and maybe I got tired of hearing about it! Hearing about all of it! Your standing, your dad, your stupid girlfriend! Could you not just be happy with what you had?”

“What-”

He did get Astrid, though. He pursued her even though, for the longest time, she remained just ever so out of his league. The same way he was and wasn’t out of yours. Yeah, you were jealous. So, so jealous.

Of her, of his cousin and all his other friends for pushing you around and squeezing you out of his life. You were mad at him for letting them, after all they’d done to the both of you.

“I got made fun of! All the damn time! And your head was so full of air- you were too busy jerking your own ego to notice!” Your eyes stung as you shouted at him.

“Up my own ego!” Hiccup stopped, “No one wanted me as I was. I spent so long trying to make everything work for everyone else! What I had-I wanted you to have it too! So why? Why did you leave?”

“You say that, but-” You grimace and, “Shouldn’t it be obvious? Maybe I didn't want that! Did- did you ever stop to consider that maybe I wanted you? You didn’t have to make anything up for me! You-! It was all about you!”

“I- Honestly, you have to- All my life, I-”

“I have to what?! We had the same life, Hiccup!”

“I know!” Hiccup squeezed his eyes shut tightly. Then, quicker than you could react, he grabbed you by your upper arm and pulled you closer just enough- It wasn’t pleasant at all, all force and teeth against lip. But the next one.

He pulled back, readjusted and you slipped together seamlessly. Closed-mouthed, but he clearly knew what he was doing, kissing you that way. You held onto his elbows, unmoving yet still, frozen by shock. He’d gotten his practice in with Astrid.

The thought sent a wave of fury down your spine. You punched him.

He reared back from the blow, accepting yet more startled than physically hurt as, just like him, you’d never had much muscle. Still, you’d left what was quickly becoming a nice red welt on his face.

Your dragons stared at the both of you in shock, yours more in confusion than Toothless. There weren’t many Vikings in the sanctuary, so the meaning behind the gesture, the punch and the kiss, was probably lost.

“I thought…” He mumbled, eyes wide again, speaking as though whatever just happened, hadn’t, “I thought everything was fine. Fine enough. Between us.” You looked at him, the place where your heart used to be all twisted up and torn.

He was a liar. He was a liar, and you wouldn’t let him one over you. Not again. You didn’t want him to, more than anything else.

In spite of that, emotionally and physically, you were exhausted. You could only manage sadness. You weren’t sure you had the energy to push him away.

“You thought wrong.” You didn’t want to speak to him at all.

“Please, don’t-” he fell apart, voice hushed and cracking as he spoke. He took the final step towards you, burying his head against your shoulder. You stood stiff, staring out over into the scenery beyond his back and yet unseeing.

It was weird, having said everything you’d needed to say, that you’d bottled up for so many years. It defined you for so long that having it all out in the open kind of made you feel like you’d lost something essential.

“I see it. I see it now. I really do,” He whispered that last part tearfully, fingers gripping weakly onto the fabric of your sleeves. You felt as though a stiff breeze might blow him away, “Please, don’t leave me. Not again.”

He couldn’t say that.

“I can’t let you go again,” He really couldn’t say that.

“Just... Just tell me what you want.” He couldn’t say that, either. Toothless shot you a scathing glare, your dragon all but forgotten as he tugged Hiccup back. Your dragon unfurled its wings behind you, standing tall and proud as he pulled away towards the entrance to the cavern.

You met Hiccup’s gaze.

“Just do me this.” You choked out, watching as his expression switched from despaired to flat and back again, “Go away,”

“Please.” You said.

And he did. He turned tail and ran.

It was over.

As he flew away on Toothless, becoming nothing but a pinprick in your periphery before finally disappearing up the cavern entrance, you fell back down onto your knees.

You weren’t sure what to do anymore. The most important decision of your life was made with his ghost nipping at your heels. Truly, he haunted you. Whether he was with you or not, he always haunted you.

But the dragons here, untouched by the outside world, were kind. And curious. Once the threat was gone and the commotion was over, many came over to examine the newcomers, sniffing and prodding at you and your things.

They were welcoming enough. So you set up shop.

Hiccup laid flat against his bed, staring at the ceiling of his childhood home. He felt torn in every single direction all at once.

He’d left when his people needed him. When his father had needed him. Drago had attacked while he’d been gone, and all that was left of the sanctuary now was rubble. Then he’d gone after Berk. Hiccup had only just gotten there in time.

His father was fine, his mother… alive. After twenty years. Everyone was accounted for, but what if they hadn’t been? If he’d been there, maybe there would have been less damage, less people hurt.

But he wouldn’t have found you if he’d stayed. Finally, after all this time. He'd realized how long it truly had been since you left, lost to him even before you’d actually run off on your… the, nadder.

The floorboards creaked as someone made their way up the stairs to the loft, the front door swinging shut behind him. Hiccup didn’t move, just glancing to the side to see who it was that came to get him this time.

“Astrid,” He sighed. The two of them were distant and had been for a long while, despite the fact that they were supposed to be in a relationship. He’d been off a lot for that whole long while, which she hadn’t much minded as she’d found herself more interested in other things. And… he’d found his heart had a new owner.

“It’s been a month, Hiccup,” She rolled her head back, exhausted, as if reciting a tired script that she’d been reading off for ages, one that no one wanted to listen to anymore, “Everyone is fine. You don’t have to hole up so often. I don’t know why you did it, but no one is mad you left, you know. You couldn’t have known.”

“Yeah…” Hiccup sighed, “Yeah, I know.”

“You need to get out,” She looked around his room, which was very much a mess of parts and papers, and ran her hand down a large map, laid flat over the only remotely clear space he had, his desk, “if you don’t next thing you know, a month’ll be four.”

“Why are you so obsessed with this place? … Does it have anything to do with the time you spent missing?” Astrid questioned. Hiccup propped himself up, turning over alarmed as he heard the sound of skin on paper. It had been freshly inked.

“No,” He’d guessed at where the two of you had ended up. He was sure that he’d be able to find it again, given the chance. He would. After he worked up the courage.

After all, you’d… You didn’t want to be found.

“Hey, wait, that’s-” He scrambled onto his one leg, kicking aside his prosthetic and jamming his toe in the process.

“Ah, ow, ow, don’t touch that, please,” Astrid rolled her eyes and tossed the cylinder to his bed and he picked it up, examining it thoroughly as she sauntered off.

You weren’t sure why, but he kept coming back

“Hi,” He said awkwardly, shifting from foot to peg nervously. This was the first time he’d caught you. The first time he’d spotted you was the last but you’d made off that time before he could see you.

“Why are you here?” You stared at him, blank faced. Why didn’t you leave, curse it.

Your dragon waved its tail playful from the side, waiting for Hiccup to go. The other ones wouldn’t come out while he was here. It felt good in a vindictive sort of way, because dragons had always been this thing, except this time you were the one with the secret dragon knowledge. And the upper hand. Sort of. They didn’t hide from you.

“I like… “ He flushed, “I like hearing you talk?”

“Sure,” You suggested, turning and starting off again, basket under arm and over rock as you began unsteadily making your way back up to home cave. You liked it there because you didn’t have to leave much for anything.

“Wait, wait, wait wait,” Hiccup stuttered. As you had your arms over a particularly steep ledge, your legs waved nonsensically and scrambled against the side as you searched for a foot grip, “Just, uh, let me-”

“Come back tomorrow,” You grunted after you managed to finally get one leg up the side. You’d probably figure out what to say by then.

You felt better here, like maybe you weren’t meant for people. Not for dragons either, not really. The dragons here didn’t need defending or anything, it’s not like there was anyone down here to defend against besides other dragons. The most you’d had to go out for was food, and even that was made or stolen easily enough.

Being here gave you enough time to make you think that maybe you were meant just for yourself.

You sat by the spray by the falls, enjoying the mist as it sprayed onto your face and the echoing sounds of the water hitting gray stone.

“Toothless, come on- Just please, I know you don’t want- but-” Your eyes shot open, the distant voice of Hiccup bounced around the empty cavern, your moment ruined.

You looked around for the pair, trying to figure out which direction you should be running before. Suddenly, it felt like you’d been drenched by a whole lot more than a mist as Toothless landed messily behind you.

“What are you doing here?” You were careful to keep your balance as you shuffled further inland, looking a lot like a drenched cat as you came face-to-face with an also sopping wet Hiccup

You would never be rid of him.

“You said to come back tomorrow?” He asked, twisting his fingers and very purposefully refusing to look you in the eye.

Of course, you hadn’t figured out what to say.

You blew a raspberry as you adjusted the stolen, waterlogged basket which you had, again, under your arm. You needed more than two pairs of clothes.

“...Come back later,” You grumbled, “Later than tomorrow.”

You’d been free for a week. You’d been hoping for maybe two, to be frank.

“Please, I just-” Hiccup huffed, traveling by foot while you rode your dragon. Toothless followed behind, grumbling and gurgling at Hiccup judgmentally. Clearly whatever good will you’d built up with him before you ran left had been more than lost.

“I’m not interested in whatever you’re selling,” You stare straight ahead, over the encroaching cliff, ducking round and under ledges as your dragon trotted onwards.

“I want to get to know you, again.”

Eventually, the cave dragons had warmed up to Hiccup and he was able to work his magic on them. Now they watched through stalagmites and stalactites with impassive eyes as he made chase.

“Uh huh,” You scoffed as you reached the edge of the ledge. You turned around and stuck out your tongue as your dragon took a violent leap into the open air. As the wind whistled around you, you pinwheeled your arms in an effort to try and keep balance.

“Come on, Toothless, bud,” Hiccup complained from way behind. You saw Toothless very decidedly sit down, refusing to move even as Hiccup tried to push him towards the cliff with his whole upper body, “Let’s go.”

“So,” Hiccup started, “You haven’t gone any deeper.”

The both of you stared out into the vast, glowing sea of towers and gigantic glowing mushrooms extending out of their jagged rock faces. In the distance you could spot gigantic crystals, protruding from the ground the same way the sanctuary did.

Seas of dragons crowed and chirped, bright patterns shifting and growing under hard muscle. It was very dizzying, if you were going to be honest.

“No,” You replied, “No, I haven’t. Not this far, but now I… I might.”

You hadn’t traveled too far into the cavern, deciding not to push your luck with the locals. You always figured there was some sort of nest farther in. Turns out there was, and a whole lot more locals than you expected, and a lot more to this small world besides the cold, empty cavern. At least you didn’t have to worry about flooding anymore. Or sea salt in your hair.

You swore to yourself that you were going to move further in, caught off guard and most definitely embarrassed at the fact that so much open space had been hiding right under your nose.

Free for three days.

“There has to be more. There’s no way- It doesn’t make sense how all these different kinds of dragons can live in the same environment. There’s- there’s so much here that-Gods, I have to map it,” Hiccup rambled, smiling gawkily.

He’d been here for a week.

You felt a pressure to supervise him as he ran rampant in your new home, unsure of when he’d become such a cartographer. Your dragons had gone missing a while ago, leaving you two to be babysat by the hands of the general public.

You watched as he painstakingly mapped each pillar, occasionally chiming in with your own advice, looking the same way he did the day he discovered honey when you were kids. It was almost pleasant.

The two of you had fallen off the edge of a pillar after being knocked down during a spat between two touchy Crimson Goregutters, which no Hiccup magic or dragon secret could stop. After an event with a vine, dangling over certain death and panic, you two had managed to swing your way onto a large glowing mushroom.

The downside to that was that now, you were stuck, owed to the fact that apparently, what made some of these mushrooms glow was very viscous and… sticky.

Hiccup’s arms were glued to the space on both sides of your head, and your hands were gripping his arms which were visibly shivering, because you two had been stuck like this for a while. You’d been tugged, prodded at and licked by various different dragons. Nothing helped and you were starting to think that maybe this was how you were going to die.

Well, you knew you weren't going to go to Valhalla. It was kind of really hard to die in battle if you spent most of your time avoiding people. But this just sucked.

“What's up with your pathological need to map everything?” You asked belligerently. To be honest, it didn’t really bother you. Hiccup’s rambling had never bothered you, because you were prone to rambling in the same exact way. Currently though you were hard pressed to find anyone else to hear it.

“I thought your thing was the forge? You spent half of my childhood there.”

“Well, yeah, I…” He rested his forehead against yours, eyes shut as his neck finally gave out, you weren’t too pleased as you felt his sweat drip onto your face, squirming rebelliously.

“Wasn’t sure if you’d want to hear it. I-I could talk about that instead?” No talking at all would be great.

“Yeah,” You gave in, closing your eyes and going limp against the slimy fungi, “That would be better.”

Lips pursed, then grimaced as he’d opened his mouth to speak. Nothing came out, though. He just stared above your head, unmoving. You tried to see what he was looking at, but only got an eyeful of his scruff.

Next thing you know, you’re being smothered by a plushy pink tongue, then just licked and nosed a little bit. The spit of this dragon doing something odd to dissolve the slime trapping the two of you, fizzing as it touched shiny goo. When you finally had the facilities to move, you flipped your head back and your eyes widened slightly.

It looked like the two of you had just found Toothless a girlfriend.

Three months, two days and five visits- no, seven. Nine? Eleven? Seventeen?

“I don’t actually have a problem… with the mapping. Talking about it.”

You two were nestled between a rock and another rock, though this time whether it was a result of purpose or chance remained uncertain. You couldn’t remember. You were after something… There was barely any space between the two of you. You had been talking.

There was barely any green to Hiccup’s eyes, most of his iris consumed by large pupils as he mouthed around works that looked suspiciously like, “Can I…?”

Instead, he leaned forwards and your foreheads touched, the same way they did when you were trapped before. His eyes were clenched shut as he uttered, “I love you.”

You had a hard time believing that.

You turned your head to the side.

“I wonder how Astrid feels about her boyfriend flying off and doing who knows what.”

Some of the wild dragons lay in front of you, licking at the dying fire by your feet. A terror lay in the middle of it. You’d lined it with stones which were now giving off a pleasant warmth.

“I doubt she’d mind. We’re not really… together anymore. I don’t think so. I wouldn’t… I wouldn’t want to be.”

“Right,” You raised an eyebrow at him skeptically.

“Not since a little while after you left, actually.”

You found that hard to believe too, as you shook the burnt slice of fish off your knife onto your burnt slice of bread. You weren’t much better than Valka at cooking, but you were getting better. It was something about that sanctuary, or maybe something about that woman that just made you worse at cooking.

Hiccup wrinkled his nose over on the other side of your log as he shook his head at you.

It was a petty, but bitter sort of revenge.

Your first kiss had been lost to a fair bloke- his words, not yours- in the middle-of-nowhere inn. It had been a long time since you’d been out, but you were sure you’d easily be able to find somewhere similar to lose some other things. Hiccup had your heart but you’d never give him the opportunity to take any of your firsts.

Two months.

You were angry at him for playing with your heart again.

“There was a crisis-Berk…” His voice cracked.

You looked disinterestedly out over uncanny black waters. “Yeah, It’s fine.”

Seven days, seven visits. He might have been camping aboveground.

The two of you were between two large red fungi, settled on a mossy rock overlooking a new, larger, unmapped maze of rock pillars and black water rushing below. Dragons, glowing and colorful, mingled together off in the distance. Toothless was probably one, gone off to frolic with his new lady love.

“You never wanted me. As a friend, as a- …battle buddy, or as anything else. You would never have chosen me for anything. And I just… I didn’t want to be just what you settled for,” You mumbled into your knees, “You spent so long searching for better, and then you found it, and it just really hurt to realize that I wasn’t a part of that.”

You spilt your heart out as you faced the cliffside. Hiccup was facing you. You didn’t care what he heard. None of this was real anyways.

“I’m sorry,” Hiccup repeated, clenching his eyes shut as he buried his nose into your shoulder, barely there though he had to crane his head forwards, due to the uncomfortable angle.

What he had with Astrid these past few years, that was real. That was history. This thing between the two of you was just a mess of pain and turmoil and a little bit of childhood fantasy. An old infatuation rearing its head as you got everything nasty out of your system.

“It hurt to think that-That… the one person- Like everyone else did, you didn’t think I was good enough either.”

“I’m sorry.” You felt his arms come around your sides awkwardly before he squeezed.

“Me too. I…”

He’d remember that he didn’t want-need- you again soon enough.

“I haven’t told anyone. About you, or this place.”

“You haven’t?” You’d actually expected otherwise. It was nice to know you weren’t at risk of getting dropped in on.

Two months, thirty two visits.

You might be coming around to him.

“You’ve already-?” He asked, a little startled. You still felt a little silly about it but after you’d done it, you figured it wasn’t that big of a deal. It wasn’t like you’d planned to marry or anything anyways, so his reaction was kind of funny.

“Yeah, I was pretty mad. So I went out, and… you know. It was a while ago, though.”

He looked a little disheartened at the idea, but he just scoffed, waving his hand off in your direction.

“What? You and Astrid kissed, yeah, but you haven’t done- anything? Not even before you ‘totally broke up,’” You didn’t have to specify what they hadn’t done, the innuendo was already pretty obvious.

“Nah.” Hiccup said, hair wiped out of his face, matched squares of parchment. Map pieces were strewn out in front of him as he made himself busy trying to create a complete chart of the underground, matching up the landscape he saw with the islands above it.

Unfortunately, the caverns seemed to stretch on forever and the islands only covered so much.

Three months, one day, thirty two hours.

You straddled him, crinkling some of the many, many blueprints scattered across the moss surface. You wiggled one out from under him, looking down as he looked up. It felt good, being the one in charge for once.

You leaned down, pressing your noses together. Just before, you’d been going over his things. His blueprints. Swapping ideas. Sharing minds. Like you used to, every single day. Like you’d been doing, almost every single day.

“Do you love me?” You asked.

Every day you’d been together. Your knees touched, shoulders pressed close together.

You had to know. And if he did… He had to mean it.

You played games, shared stories. You’d grappled and curled, not the way vikings could, but the way two hiccups did, a long, long time ago.

If he didn’t, well… You had all the time in the world to leave, to start again. But you didn’t think you could. You could go weeks without seeing him, and then sometimes it would be every other day.

This was it.

“I do love you,” He choked out, wheezing as you adjusted, your weight pressing against his chest. He glanced back at you, crumbling a little bit.

He spent a lot of time here, now. A lot more than before. With the time spent traveling in between, as he said it, it was a wonder he got anything done there at all. Most of his time was spent above mapping the islands or down here with you.

You read what his body language told you; he was insecure.

“... Do you love me?”

“I do.” Hesitantly, you nodded, “I do.” Was that even a question?

You trusted him. You didn’t trust him. You had no way to know if he stabbed you in the back again. Went back to Astrid. You didn’t really have a way to know if that’s what he did, every time he left.

You loved him, didn’t you?

He didn’t know that? Maybe not always and not all at once, since you left. You hadn’t done a very good job of making him know it. You hadn’t a lot of reason to.

Did you love him now?

You marveled at how easy it was to be around him, with him. It wasn’t the same as it was before, but it was still good. It could almost be better. You, against everything, wanted it. You wanted it so bad.

“I’d leave it all behind, for you,” Hiccup said.

You would make him know it.

“You would?” You asked, “Would you?”

You laid your heart bare to him, stitched and spiked. And you, as he said it, implied it, maybe you held his.

“Do you want me to?” He asked. He tugged lightly on one of the draws to your tunic, faking interest in it as he worried the inside of his cheek. You didn’t want his home, or his family.

“I don’t want anything,” You scoffed dismissively. You wanted his honesty. You wanted to know that he was yours. Yours truly. That was it.

Prove it. You urged him on, Prove it to me.

He smiled that goofy, awkward smile, half teeth and all closed at the edges. You could tell he was trying hard not to falter. You hadn’t seen that smile in such a long time.

Know me, You asked.

“So… Do you? Do you love me?” He asked again, offering his hand up to your face. His fingers were scabbed, and dirty and you leaned into his palm, pushing it down as he tangled his fingers clumsily into the roots of your hair. You pressed your lips together, again, again and over again until neither of you could breathe.

Have me, You pleaded.

“I do,” You gasped into his mouth, “I really, really do.” You offered no resistance. Not this time.

Love me.

There was no coming back.

(Deep in your mind, you wondered if maybe, possibly, he already did.)

Twelve months. Twelve months since he’d found you.

Hiccup stood at the edge of Berk, armor packed away in favor of a lighter tunic. He often wondered what it would have been like, if he’d really run away with you like he’d intended.

If things would have ended up the same.

Would he have seen you in time? In time for what he had now? For this?

No. no, probably not.

…

His father would notice. His mother might.

His father was fine. And now he had his mother. They were old, but they were tough. They could have a new kid. Or maybe they’d convince Snotlout or Astrid to take the mantle.

They’d-everyone-would be fine without him.Who was he kidding? He’d spent so long working so hard and they didn’t need him at all. And if he was honest, He didn’t need them.

He didn’t really care. Not anymore. He let go.

Life would go on just fine without him, just as it did before him and just as it would long after his name was lost to time. His distance only proved it. He spent so long away he’d been practically excommunicated again.

After a little bit of irritation, his travels became just another one of his quirks.

‘Oh, look, there’s Hiccup. Oh, well, he’s off again.’ He was barely missed. And rightly so. It was by his own doing, really. That was fine by him. In fact, It worked in his favor.

It was borderline hysterical how, the moment they found more furies, and his new paramour, Toothless went from devil’s advocate to his most eager accomplice.

The Sand Wraiths were especially cool… It cost him a lot less fish to get there now. To you.

Sometimes he had to wonder why he’d been so attached to Berk. Working for things that ultimately, he didn’t care about. Everything that kept him here, he also had with you. When he was here, all he wanted was to go back out.

A pebble-sized ball of guilt coil in his stomach. It used to be worse. But, he’d talked to you about it. The engagement.

The engagement with Astrid. The one that was basically moot at this point, anyways. She might even slap him if he brought it up, to expect anything after he’d left her for so long. Truly, officially. all he’d had to do was end it. He left a letter nearby her family home; they would find it if they bothered to search for him.

A scummy trick, yes. Was he a coward for doing it? Maybe. But he was a smart coward. He wasn’t lying when he’d told you that no one knew.

Hiccup exhaled, bouncing up and down on his heel and peg, as if to psych himself up. To dispel all of his nervous, excited energy.

It was a clear day, no risk of a storm. He strapped his saddle pack to Toothless. It was only slightly larger than usual, so as not to arouse suspicion, of course, but it held all of his essentials. Leatherworking tools, metalworking tools, more tools, his armor, spare armor, spare foot, spare charcoal. The small plush his mother had made for him as a child. His viking helmet, for memory’s sake.

Slung over his shoulder was a smaller pack with just his compass and his coin.

As the two of you grew closer and closer, it only made his decision more and more certain.

He wasn’t meant to be Chief. He wasn’t cut out for this life at all. He didn’t want this life. He wanted you.

As far as anyone else was concerned, you’d long since disappeared and now he had the feeling it was time for him to do the same.

He took a deep breath, one that pushed his lungs to his ribs. Then like his bag, he flung himself over Toothless’ saddle before he took off from Berk for the last time, closing his eyes. He’d left his helmet off this time so he felt the beating wind rip through his hair.

The two of you were there, half hidden from view under a large red plume. It was wasm, and your perspiring skin was trapped under hollow armor, same as his.

You gasped, hot air mingling every time his breath hit your face. The two of you huffed and panted as he pushed you unto the dirt and you pushed back, feeling the moss tickle your face and the backs of your hand.

Not your back, though. Just hands.

Gripped, interlaced fingers pressed firmly down by your head, sweaty palms melded to his. He’d been the one in charge, today.

He was hunched over you, his trousers unbuckled and unlaced as he pressed downwards, forwards, gently and not.

A line of sweat ran down your cheek. Your eyelids fluttered. His breath caught.

Men shouted their battle cries into the dark, never ending sky as Berk was set in flames. A skull, still fresh with blood and exposed brain, broke with a sickening, wet crunch as Stoick ground his head into it, bringing mercy to the poor, damaged creature.

“There is no fury here,” He bellowed as he towered menacingly against the hulking wall of flames by his door. Three Deathgrippers and their tails lay cut, prone and slain around him.

“We’ll see about that,” Grimmel crooned, standing tall with his hands linked behind his back, looking down on him with two more dragons hissing and spitting by his sides.

Sharp talons dug into the wood of the rafters, Cloudjumper’s head turning steering around as he hung by her feet. Valka, masked and fully covered, crouched down from where she was, nestled at the bend of his tail. She pulled her arms back, getting her hook, sharp and serrated, ready for a wicked swing.

Yes, he would see. She’d make sure of it.

425 notes · View notes

evangelic4l · 8 months

Note

I don’t know why but the ending made me cry 😭

Hiccup x reader where Hiccup is stressed over being the chief of Berk and is extra clingy to reader?

Better Left Unsaid

Pairing: Hiccup Horrendous Haddock III x Reader

Words: 14,022

You wondered if you would ever be able to touch the sky again. You don’t talk about it.

Tags: Httyd 2, Comfort, reconnection, resolution, suggestive content, Gender Neutral reader, reclusive reader (ish), reserved reader (ish), disappointment, rebound, oneshot, ambiguous ending

“It-It’s just too much,” Hiccup stuttered angrily, hushed. He shifted his arms, gesturing lightly but frustratedly with the mug in his shand, leaning against the wall. The water inside sloshed back and forth as he settled the mug down on the table with a thin clacking noise, pushing off against the wall.

It was silent, the empty dark of night all-consuming in a way that blocked everything else out. Even with passion in your voice, you probably still couldn’t speak louder than a gritty whisper.

The Haddock house was empty and dark, the fireplace in the center of the hut untouched as it has been for many nights since the passing of Stoick the Vast. Your basket sat abandoned by the door, washed over by a sheet of blue shadow.

“Maybe you need a system,” You suggested awkwardly, caught off guard as hiccup paced, too taken by his own trouble to care for much else. This wasn’t how you’d imagined any conversation between the two of you to go.

You saw each other around, of course, but events like those usually consisted of turned cheeks. It had been so long since you last talked, and it hadn’t quite ended on good terms.

“My Dad didn’t-” Limbre fingers struggled against the straps and buckles of his armor, inelegant and terse with frustration, Hiccup’s cinched brows and an angry grimace conveying everything you needed to know.

Usually nothing short of a stupid idea from his own head would get him out of it. Or a hard hit. You did your best to give him counsel anyways, despite your unsurety. He’d probably just been swept away by it all, falling back into old habits quickly.

He would snap out of it soon enough, though if he decided just as you did that you’d rather not address anything at all, you would certainly not complain.

“Your Dad didn’t have to deal with so many trappers or dragons.” You shook your head. You had to admit that you were somewhat disconnected from the matter. The two of you hadn’t been close for years, and you kept to yourself pretty closely. This whole situation was an accident, more of a wrong place, wrong time then anything done on purpose, per se.

You moved around the table, nearly stumbling as you went, suppressing a shiver as you shifted through the cold room, like an empty void. You wondered how Hiccup dealt with it.

You snorted.

Helping him out felt like crossing some sort of invisible boundary you usually avoided like the plague. But, you had pity on him and the dark circles underlining his eyes. You didn’t think he’d notice. It wasn’t something you worried much about, anyways, not since you were in your teens. That was a sore spot you’d rather not touch on.

“Isn’t a Chief supposed to be able to handle everything on his own? If I do that, then wouldn’t…” Hiccup trailed off into a contemplative, moody silence, glaring off to the side as you did your best to pull his straps free. You weren’t much better with them than he was now, but it was workable, “I’m supposed to be- Wouldn’t that prove that I’m not-…”

He looked somewhat like his father, with that expression, though the skinny frame and his wild, scruffy hair offset it somewhat.

His father was large and tough, but something you noticed about Stoick, even from a distance, was that he was stressed. And angry, all the time. He knew what to do and when to do it but couldn’t handle a lot. Not always. You could imagine the veins bulging from his forehead now, even from beyond the grave.

You weren’t sure Hiccup was ever supposed to be like him. If he was supposed to even try. Him being Chief wasn’t ever something you imagined even as kids, just as he probably never imagined it for himself, but you were sure if he pulled something together it might be manageable.

“You’ve always been enough for whatever you wanted,” You muttered, “You’ve been enough since before the dragons and you are enough now as Chief. Coming up with some sort of system isn’t... bad. You Dad had a system,” You winced, watching his expression carefully as you brought up his Dad, though you were sure that not much would reach him when he was in this state, “Your father had a second-in-command for a reason, you know.”

“My inventions, they’re not-” Hiccup groaned. You heard the unsaid question. But wouldn’t that be cheating?

“They’re just as a part of you as anything else.” You repeated the age-old adage, “It doesn’t have to be in invention, though, if you don’t want it to be. Just… Establish a chain of command, or something.”

Hiccup threw his head back, scrubbing his face with his hands. Then he looked back at you, as if he was just then realizing who he was talking to.

“The island probably won’t implode without you. They’re Vikings, they need a little lead, just trust me.”

Sometimes you were fine, and sometimes your disappointment followed you like a sheet over your eyes, something buzzing constantly around the periphery of your vision, bits stuck to the back of your boots like poorly spun wool.

You crunched through the grass on the far end of the bridge leading up to the village, nerves coiling in your guts briefly before you brushed them away.

Such was the life of a recluse.

You squinted as you marched across large wooden planks, confident in the sturdiness of the bring just as you were unconfident in what lay before you, a figure sitting with their head down on one of the large logs that made up the railing.

It was a common sight for people to sit by the edge, usually teens, usually with friends, a stolen jug of mead or two in hand on dark nights. It was also a good spot for contemplation. You’d use it many times, especially on rainy, foggy days. It made quite the atmosphere.

However, during the broad daylight, people usually tended to just come and go. They didn’t spend much longer there than they had to. To be honest, most people had dragons. There were many more interesting places up in the sky. You didn’t get that. You dragon, it left a long time ago.

You shifted your basket of foraged berries and sticks and bits under your arm and grimaced confusedly as you neared the figure, closely examining dark gray armor and a worn, untucked green undershirt.

“Hello, Chief,” You said plaintively, after you’d spent a few seconds stopped being him, looking down on hunched shoulders and frazzled flyaways.

He groaned, “Please don’t call me that.”

You snorted, gently resting your basket on the ground, making sure all the latches were secured tight over the lid. It got pretty windy up there, wouldn’t do you any good to lose all of your day’s hard work, “What brings you over to my small neck of the woods?”

You shrugged at his silence, relaxing the the hand on your hip before swinging your legs over the same log and planting yourself firmly to his left

“I can’t do this,” Hiccup mumbled exhaustively, without looking up.

You stuck out your tongue, leaning back onto your hands, which pressed against the warm surface of the wood pleasantly. It took you a moment to remember that you should probably come up with a follow-up question, “Why?”

You were a bit rusty.

“I can’t do this,” Hiccup turned briefly to give you a sour look. You stuck your tongue out at him.

“Okay,” You shrugged your shoulders, ever the loyal confidant.

So you were going the whole ‘ignore the Gronkle in the room,’ route. You could deal with that.

You wondered where Toothless was. He’d taken to his Alpha statues pretty well, as in, he did nothing to enforce it at all, so there was nothing for him to worry about. Come to think about it, it really was just Hiccup, managing both Vikings and Dragons.

Hiccup shot a look at you again, perhaps asking himself what was wrong with you. Below you, the sea rushed and lulled, storming over the jagged rocks below. You watched it like a snake on a mouse, hypnotic in its movements.

“It’s not. There’s so much to keep track of and,” Hiccup started, continuing on, shaking his head, “Everyone’s always got something- this isn’t like- it’s not like my Dad’s just on a vacation. He’s dead. I’ve never taken care of something this long-term. And Astrid-... I’m not so great at the whole ‘commanding’ thing.”

The split with Astrid was rough on him, you knew. He didn’t talk about it much at all, but everyone could tell it was weighing down on him. People talked, and you didn’t necessarily have to be a part of the conversation to overhear.

You hummed sympathetically, as a group of people started to gather on one end of the bridge. You weren’t sure if Hiccup had noticed it yet, though you were sure if he had he was ignoring it for the time being.

“You don’t have to command. You just have to be able to direct,” Most people sort of expected Astrid to be there for the whole commanding thing, but honestly you resented the idea, despite the accuracy of it in practice, “I know a guy who would be willing to handle the stables for a day. Johannes, you remember him, right?”

They, meaning Hiccup and Astrid, were both busy with their own responsibilities, so you didn’t think they had a lot of time to talk it out. It was strange. For the longest time, second to Toothless, of course, she’d been his best friend. The thought sent a sharp, bitter jab up your spine.

You rolled your eyes anyways. A lot of Vikings would give a lot to be able to be in charge of something. As you grew older, you started to realize that Stoick the Vast had a hand in everything. Maybe too much of a hand- that man was stretched thin, “The whole commanding, intimidating bit is Toothless’s job now.”

“Yeah,” Hiccup choked out.

From the corner of your eye, you noticed a pack of Vikings already halfway to you, encroaching from the Berk side of the bridge, arms waving in the air. You looked away for a moment with furrowed brows, beginning to scoot back with high caution, trying your hardest to not make any sudden moves.

“When’s the last time you did something for yourself?” You asked, “Gone to the forge, or flown out?”

“I have no idea,” Hiccup wheezed.

“When’s your next lull? It’s a lot easier for me to say it than for you to do it, but you should probably, you know, take a step back,” You suggested.

“Never,” Hiccup gestured with his hand, other arm pressed against his back, “This is it, for the rest of my life.”

You grimaced, shrugging pityingly as you heard the distant shout of his name, and watched Hiccup crumple in on himself again as the two of you met eyes.

You were a bit surprised by how easy conversation flowed between you, though you were sure whether you wanted to run or just shy away from it. You weren’t sure if you felt anything for it at all.

You shook your head, deciding very astutely on the running bit, swinging back onto solid ground and gently lifting up your shoulders. You hooked your fingers under the edge of your basket and pulled it into your arms, settling it smoothly in hand.

“Well, when your life’s over, I’ll be here. We’ll, ah, figure it out then, I guess.”

You lifted your tunic from your back, tugging until you were able to twist it over your head.

As you did, you eyed the portraits of the wives taken off and replaced, hung lower on the wall and decorated with each of their assets. You’d found them lying around and it felt wrong not to return them to their original owners somehow. They were usually separated from the rest of your dwelling by a thin, old moth-eaten curtain.

You were sure the wives were all just as ugly and unpleasant as Mildew himself, but there was something off about taking them down especially when you kept everything else close to the same.

You patched the hole in the roof with old ship’s sails and mismatched tiles, just enough to keep your cabin barely above freezing in the wintertime.

You shook your clothes onto the floor as you changed, mindful not to look down at any of the scars in the darkness of your hut.

You were probably supposed to feel proud. They were trophies of battle. Most other Vikings would wear them proudly, displayed like an honor bestowed onto them. They didn’t particularly bother you, though it never bode well to linger on reminders of things long since finished.

If only they knew how you’d gotten them.

You didn’t earn them through bravery or anything else of the sort and you weren’t anywhere near one of the worst when it came to scarring. First place probably went to Phegma, who had a huge burn scar just barely covered by her day wear.

You got yours because you weren’t fast enough to dodge the blow of an axe, to jump out the way of a trap sprung on the group without taking some serious damage.

You were a great planner, an architect and an infrastructural thinker. But that didn’t often come in handy on the Edge, especially not when all the buts of your knowledge that could be applied were better covered by the other Riders’ areas of expertise.

So where everyone else excelled, you stumbled. Where everyone else tumbled with the blows, you fell hard onto the ground, and you hadn’t anyone to confide your hurts in.

Eventually trying to keep up got to be too much. When you saw the rest of them, able to come together so easily and shake off all their cuts and injuries, you hurt.

There was nothing quite as terrible as watching everyone, especially Hiccup, walk forwards while you strayed behind, struggling your hardest and failing to even to keep to their heels.

You blinked at the scratching of something sharp against wooden walls, muffled though still clearly audible, coming from the outside. You paid it no mind, ignoring it just as you ignored the tiny shafts of sunlight seeping through the cracks between wooden planks and crumbling walls, illuminating tiny particles of floating dust.

It was just the branches pestering the framework of your salvaged home, one of the half-dead bushes lining the front, nearing the height of a tree, mimicking the sound of a dragon you’d long since pushed from your mind. Yours.

You sighed. It was just another thing weighing on your mind back then, when you’d been at your lowest. You were tired of it, now. But a blank kind of tired.

Like a flat, fresh water ocean. Waveless, shallow. Eerie.

It was a much calmer tired than the kind you felt then; Violent waves slamming you into the sand, rubbing fragile lungs raw with grit and silt. Of the bruised ribs, the fighting, the cuts and hurt no one seemed to notice and the friend you didn’t seem good enough to have anymore.

You reached down to pull your tunic off the ground, tossing it onto a nearby table, covered in dust, made frail through disuse. You coughed at the fine grime tossed into the air, flapping your hand in front of your nose in an effort to disperse it.

You wondered if the sealights would be lit tonight.

“-He has five dragons. Five. And he wants me to come up with a whole set of dragon towers for him how?-”

You trod through the dewey morning leaves, back straighter than necessary, trying not to sweat too much or to look back at the armorless, green-tunic-ed guest at your back.

You couldn’t say you weren’t a little tired of the whole running Berk it yourself. Sure, you weren’t necessarily responsible for it but it was a pastime of a lot of the Vikings around town to talk about it, the mindless gossips, and once or twice while you were in town trading for what you needed.

There were also the sailors, who had a mind, when down by the docks, to share the business of everyone regardless of the tribe. Even as the village recluse, you got roped into it, listening around corners with rap ears

“-Even with dragons it’s not easy to-” Hiccup waved his hands around, journaling under one arm and eyes glued, glaring onto the ground. It turns out he had taken you at your word. Sort of. He was still very much alive. He must have found some time off, or figured out something, because here he was.

You squinted at the paper in your hand, staring at messily done blueprints. There was a house sketched lifted above the ground by a pole and another sketch of a bunch of regular huts stacked on top of each other. You held the same basket from before under your arm, woven bits frayed and flexible and worn.

You recognized the beginning stages of a bunch of these sorts of huts being built all around Berk. It was getting fuller, especially with all of the ex-trappers and Vikings migrating in from the other tribes. And then there were relations outside of the interpersonal to manage. So of course there needed to be a few changes.

“This isn’t safe,” You said drily, “Remember the windmill? These are all going to fall down with the next devastating winter. And where are we going to find logs large and long enough to keep all these houses up? There aren’t nearly enough trees on all of Berk to get this done for everyone.”

“I know!” Hiccup pausing, turning to shake his head quickly, before bending over to scrub the hair on his head, “It’s insane! Everyone wants me to go with it!”

“You shouldn’t,” You deadpanned.

“I might,” Hiccup pursed his lips, “If it gets them to leave me alone. I can’t be builder, Rider and Chief.”

“Well- no, you can’t be. But why don’t you just come up with a few sturdy designs and make him choose one. Same for everyone else. Then just,” You paused, grimacing as you had to grab a branch, pushing it out of the way, “Put someone in charge of building all of them. And making sure they don’t go build in all the wrong spots.”

“I don’t know,” Hiccup shrugged his shoulders, letting his arms fall back to his sides, turning his head up and allowing the light filtering through the thick wooded area to fall onto his face, “Everyone wants something unique. You think they’ll settle?”

You turned around, branch still in hand, “They’ll have to. Same way they have been for three hundred years.”

You rolled your eyes and set forth again, letting go of the branch, which swung back quickly. You didn’t quite see what happened any more than you heard Hiccup’s yelp and the subsequent step back.

“Ow, ow, ow ow, Gods, curse it-”

You turned back around startled, turning back into the branch which followed its inertia, snapping back into your face.

You brought your hand back up to your eye so quickly you smacked, dropping your trusty basket right out from under your arm and falling roughly onto your butt. The berries on the inside poured out of your basket onto the forest floor and you cursed, bemoaning it and yourself and laying the rest of the way down onto your back.

Head against the roots of a tree, smelling the earth and staring up at the dappled sunlight through waving tree leaves, you couldn't help the laughter that bubbled up through your throat.

It was better than getting mad, or crying. Still, you stifled it, shaking your head clear, pushing yourself back up, ignoring the stickiness of the berries stuck to your back and the juice dripping down the side of your hand.

Hiccup looked down on you skeptically, lips quirked in a way you read as confused. You remembered a time when he might have fallen down with you. It seems though that as the two of you got older, he became much surer of yourself.

Still, it was a world of difference from the Hiccup you knew a moment ago, stressed and weighted and tired with all the burdens of everyone else on Berk and the loss of his father on his back.

You wanted to see more of this Hiccup, who was snippy and sarcastic and who you might have loved once upon a time. Who wasn’t stuck in mournful contemplation about identities and relationships and other such sad things.

And maybe you wanted to take back some of him for yourself, as if it might bring back to you the part of yourself you lost, at least for just this little while. Though if this was where it ended, for you, this moment would be more than enough.

He needed reprieve. You decided you would be that reprieve, for as long as he would take you.

“Why don’t we do something besides talk about Berk?” You smiled wryly to yourself, rubbing your hands off on your smock, shrugging your shoulders loose once you got back onto your feet.

You did your best to put on a happier facade, different from the insecure, hunched-shouldered version of you from way back in the past, and different from the apathetic lone figure you were now.

“I…” Hiccup blinked at you for a moment. He looked a tad thrown off by you now with your shoulders high, hands on your waist and back straight, much different from any sort of behavior you’d exhibited since long before.

The wide smirk on your face faltered, and you toned it down a little, slumping a bit. You knew you hadn’t had the ability to make Hiccup smile in a long time, but this was just terrible. Sometimes you wondered if you ever had, or if he was just faking it. It didn’t matter much to you now.

“Or, you can come with me and wait outside while I go find a change of clothes,” You said blankly, letting your hands fall to your sides, “Your pick.”

Hiccup grimaced, probably thinking of the greeting he’d get once he got back. You weren’t quite sure how he made it out here in the first place, and in his casual wear no less. You hadn’t seen him in anything less than a full set of leather armor for a very long time.

Of course, he’d chosen the latter. Sort of.

You let the water from the stream run over the toes of your boots, waterproofed by tar and oil as you pulled up your smock, scrubbed until it was worn and back to the same colorless dull hue you had gotten it in. It was to your benefit that you had worn something under, though the berries were much too pigmented for you to leave your smock on its lonesome.

“You didn’t have to wait for me,” You sighed, picking yourself up and away from the beck, slinging your water heavy clothing over a low-hanging branch.

You turned to look at Hiccup who had decided to wait by the treeline, back to one of the large pines lining the whole island. He had found himself a terror along the way and was minding it with amusement, waving a thin branch above its head and watching and it leapt and curled after.

“It’s alright,” He said almost bashfully, without looking up, as the Terror flipped onto its belly, wriggling after the branch Hiccup waved over its stomach like a fish to a worm, “I, ah, I got Johannes to handle the stables.”

Hiccup rubbed the back of his neck as you pulled down your sleeves, picking at the loose threads and checking for any unpleasant damp spots, of which, for once, thankfully, there were few.

“You took my advice, then,” You noted absentmindedly that this was the tunic you’d worn on the Edge, its color washed out and much thinner, but still very recognizable.

“Yeah,” Hiccup weighed the stick in his hand almost contemplatively before tossing it to the side, watching as the terror scurried after.

“So,” You said, sweeping your foot almost carelessly across the carpeted forest floor, pulling your basket into your arms again, “How have you been?”

“How have I been?” Hiccup asked astoundedly even as he eyed your smock, reluctantly pulling his gaze from it in order to follow as you led your way back up to the forest path, “I think you know the answer to that.”

“Yes, well, no- I mean, from before that,” You scoffed, looking down darkly into your nearly empty basket.

You meant after you left.

You felt the familiar pulling of tides, tugging at something deep and light in your gut.

The air was still between you. It was hard not to feel when there was nothing between you but air and your own memory of some hastily forgotten hurts.

“That was a stupid question,” You shrugged, kicking aside a stick, protruding from just off the path.

You were sure Hiccup had been too stressed earlier to care or notice but it was easily felt now. Your quarters were much too close for you to put on the same old facade and pretend that nothing had ever happened and that the two of you weren’t ever more than strangers, your bond closely resembling something you might have once called friendship.

“I… Well, if you don’t mind tagging along still, I won’t make you do much,” You pushed down thoughts of beating storms, rain so thick you couldn’t see five feet in front of you, “You caught me off guard.”

You blinked away memories of rushing, towering waves and a bone-deep chill only made worse by the pressing winds and the water soaked deep through your clothes and to your bones, causing you to shiver and shake and pull closer to the neck of your dragon.

Pressing deeper into leathery skin and scales, closer than you ever thought possible, praying to the Gods that you might be spared the indignity of living to see another day past your shame, past your desertion.

“Alright,” Hiccup decided finally, eyeing you oddly.

You pretended you didn’t feel the phantom shivers clawing up and down your spine or the echoes of a deep burning hurt you were certain had gone long since unnoticed by all the wrong people.

You made sure your breathing was steady as you marched forward, carefully putting one foot in front of the other.

You listened to the occasional wingbeat of a dragon from up above and the unburdened twittering of small animals in the foliage surrounding you.

You heard Hiccup stifle a yawn from back behind you. You wondered what you could do to make this trip worth it for him. To be honest, you weren’t quite expecting him to take you up on your offer. It was more of a snipe, really.

You’d never been good at those, though. People always took you much too seriously.

There was a clearing up further ahead to your left, one you neared as the trees grew thicker and larger, where you could hopefully make up for some of your lost boon. The berries, you were sure they were gone, but perhaps you could make up for it by finding some other things.

The loudest noise between the two of you was the sound of your footsteps.

You inhaled the misty air of the forest and, eventually, you began to relax.

“Here we are,” You hummed, as the path grew lighter, sunlight filtering between the trees and the foliage.

You examined the crown with care, looking over each leaf and link, turning it around gently in your hands. What began as a task born from boredom became something you invested yourself into with brief interest.

The atmosphere was bright and the sun warm against your shoulder blades, laying like a heavy furred blanket across them as you leaned down, splitting small holes in the ends with your fingernails and threading grasses through until you had some approximation of a flower crown, minus the flowers.

It was the kind of warmth that made you sentimental, bringing up a feeling that felt like something flowering, which you pursued vaguely as if this might have been the last time you ever felt it.

By the time you two had been teenagers, Hiccup had been long since uninterested in that kind of thing. In teenage boy fashion, he avoided things such as flower crowns and playing in the sand down by the beach, much too focused on killing a Dragon and trying to seem tough enough to meet standard.

Then he got Toothless, and from there on after he hadn’t time for anything but Dragons and the Riders. He was too absorbed in his inventions to pay any mind to other things.

You’d deeply wanted to do it, though maybe not always specifically to him, but you’d never found the purpose. You had it now.

You turned to Hiccup with a lopsided smile, watching his chest rise and fall gently for a few moments. Your lips twitched, falling into a small crown as you held out the crown, deciding whether or not you should drop it.

Hiccup blinked drowsily awake at the sudden movement, to which you startled and before you realized it, the crown had gently slipped from your fingers and fell over the crown of his head. Because of the angle, though, it looked to be resting more on his forehead than anything.

You held your breath as his eyes unfocused and fluttered shut again, unregistering, and you backed up on all fours with quiet ease, pushing yourself to your feet, attempting to flee the scene and pretend nothing had quiet happened at all.

You shuffled to the other side of the clearing, craving distance, walking a path around it like you were attempting to trace the edges with your feet. You balanced on it, placing your heel to the other foot’s toe and then again with the opposite foot, arms out in front of you, taking note of all the shrubbery around you.

Eventually the shifting ferns drew back your attention and you glanced back towards Hiccup, who’d sat up groggily, slowly examining the crown that had probably, most likely just fallen from his head.

He looked a complete and utter mess. You hid an ugly grin.

“I hope you like it,” You smiled down at the stem connecting a nice wad of berries to the bush. It was too quiet for him to hear and you were much too far away, but it was more of a musing to yourself anyways.

You leaned back onto your heels, sore for all the walking you’d done. You wondered if they were the right kind, enough to replace the bushel you’d lost earlier. You weren’t completely sure they were edible, anyways.

The two of you had broken out into a clearing, one covered in grass and ferns, and this was where you had decided to set midday camp.

You lounged there in the waning sun, Hiccup more so than you, not so much watching the world turn to oranges and reds as witnessing it in your periphery. You’d lived it too many times for it to be any sort of novel.

You were sure it was different on dragonback, but alas. You didn’t have that option.

After you came back to Berk, taking to the ground like you’d developed a phobia of everything else, it spent a lot of time flying around on its own, going who-knows-where on most days. One day, when you’d had the mind to look for it, you’d found that it had flown off for what was most likely good.

You traced the leaf veins below your thumb, lost in mindless remembrance, ambiguously aware as Hiccup got up.

He groaned like he was a decades older man than he was, audible across the clearing, while putting his hands to the small of his back and leaning backwards mad before he made his way over.

“What’s this?” Hiccup asked, holding what you were sure was the crown in his hand. You weren’t looking and ignored it, not necessarily expecting him to call you out on it any more than you’d expected to make the crown itself.

“Not sure,” You said, before looking over, and glancing up and down at ruffled clothes, messy hair and the sleeve that came up to wipe off the corner of his mouth, “Have a nice nap?”

“I’m just fine, thanks… “

You rolled your eyes, “That wasn’t my question.”

“Does it matter?” He asked, straightening out his shoulders.

“You were out for a while,” You said in lieu of an answer, “Was worried you needed me to drag you back to the village. Tuck you into bed.”

“No,” Hiccup said exorbitantly, “Never.”

“Wouldn’t be the first time,” You shot back.

“Maybe.”

“Definitely…” Hiccup started, “An exaggeration.”

“Not at all.”

“Are you sure?”

“Everyone’s had their share of it,” You stated, lifting your shoulders exaggeratedly, bringing both hands up by your head with your shrug, while kicking out your foot, turning to trot off in the opposite direction.

“You do a lot of really-need-to-be-dragged-back-after activities.”

“Hey, well, I’ve done a lot of that for you, too.”

“Pick one, name something.”

“I mean, I’ve kept you from falling down off cliffs a lot,” Hiccup ran a hand through his hair.

“I have since not stopped falling off cliffs,” You squinted at him, “And neither have you, I’m pretty sure. Also, that jumping off dragons thing? Serious disqualifier. That counts as at least half a cliff jump every time. Negative helping-me-out points. Honest.”

“What?” Hiccup shook his head, gesturing towards himself, “Doesn’t count. Never met a dragon that didn’t have my back. Natural Dragon Master. No danger.”

A natural if by natural he meant through fifteen years of absolute failure in any sort of interaction with an animal more sentient than a frog.

“Sure…” You remembered all the time he spent as kids, half with you and sometimes without, running across rooftops for his dad. Because you were being chased. By dragons.

“Okay, call me a dragon, right now.” You said, with finality.

“Right now?”

“Right now.”

You spent a little while staring at him.

“What, now?”

You nodded.

You were slightly surprised when he played along, even though you knew you had been egging him on to do it. You watched him cup his hands and chitter oddly into them, in a mimicry of what you understood as a Terror call.

You looked down on him with fake skepticism. Usually, with the call, it was a hit or miss whether a dragon would respond. The dragons with Riders tended to ignore you completely unless you were their rider.

Both of you knew this, though you counted it on being a miss.

“They’re coming, you’ll see,” Hiccup said, waving his left hand as if he was clearing smoke out of the air.

“I hope it blows up in your face. Like that catapult, from when we were kids,” You blew a raspberry at him.

“What, which one?” Hiccup asked.

“The one you tried to roll up to your house, kept rolling down the hill, went straight through Burthair’s cart and smashed through his fence,” You grinned, “Your dad made you round up all his sheep after, remember?”

You remembered trying to help him quietly in secret, gathering a few sheep on a lead before you were caught and sent home to be scolded.

“No, hey, You blew that one up,” Hiccup said incredulously, “That one was all you.”

“Yeah, it was.” You admitted guiltlessly.

“You are the worst,” He said, as the sound of flapping and the rustling of trees grew slightly louder. You ignored it, thinking it was just another random group of dragons lost over Berk. There had been a lot of those as of late.

“The worst,” You agreed. You had a foot already up, halfway into a turn before a bright yellow, spiny body slammed quickly into your face.

You yelped, falling to the side, tumbling slightly as what must have been a Terrible terror scrambled for purchase and left off your face and into the tree line. You blinked, half-shaded under low-hanging branches.

You braced yourself against your arm, bringing your other hand down from your face to see red in the shape of a smeared line across your face. By the look and size of it, it wasn’t too bad.

You opened and closed your jaw with annoyance, realizing quickly that the Terror must have scratched your face.

Henceforth, though, you were much more easily capable of dodging around the sudden appearance of more Terrors, catching a tiny green one just before it face planted into the dirt.

“Woah, woah, woah,” You caught Hiccup, too, doing his best to dodge around them, jumping back as a feisty blue clawed its way up his back as he made his way towards you.

It was a difficult effort to make as by the time you had found solid ground, the dragons began to jump on top of him, covering his arms and legs so that he looked like a pile of very large and colorful bees standing on two legs.

You could help but laugh, wobbling over to help. You slipped your hand under the leg of a terror just before Hiccup fell over with a shout, falling forwards and nearly dragging you with him as he tumbled into the shade of the treeline.

And as if following a command, terrors scuttled away, as if chasing after your peals of laughter, echoing around the clearing.

There wasn’t nearly enough time between Hiccup’s call and the appearance of the dragons for any, or at least most of them to have come in from Berk, nor any guarantee that any of the Terrors heard him, but these gathered quick enough for you to be seriously impressed.

“Yeah… I wasn’t expecting that either.” You stared down at Hiccup as he stared back, the two of you looking at each other with startled eyes, you bent half over and Hiccup propper up on his elbows on the ground before the two of you broke out into breathy laughter.

The flowers and plants around you were heady, filling the breathless airheadedness in between your eyes with even more cotton.

Your voices mixed and quieted in equal fashion, the two of you ignoring the mutterings of the forest until, eventually, they grew into something you could hear.

“Hiccup!”

You froze, a wince stuck on your face.

“Hiccup!” This shout was much more drawn than the last.

It was Astrid.

You saw the shadows of her and Stormfly drift smoothly over the face of the clearing. You wondered if she had followed some of the Terrors out or if she had gotten Stormfly to track Hiccup’s scent.

You were about to look back at Hiccup for some sort of direction before he tugged you after him. Tugged until the two of you were huddled under the alcove you had missed, made by two thick roots of a ginormous tree, waiting.

You weren’t sure how far above she was, she hoped she didn’t see your basket, sitting plainly across the way.

You could tell Hiccup was holding his breath, staring out deep into the forest, where trees went from towering to the sole consumers of light, protecting a misty undergrowth beneath a dark, leafy roof. There was a log to the left of the entrance to the narrow space, half-rotted and sprouting mushrooms out of its side.

You recalled that there had been a notable instance around when the two of you had been just about twelve, sneaking around in the Great Hall for the leftovers post meal. You’d been trapped in a closet, when they’d had those, removed after you and Hiccup had accidentally burned them down at fourteen, with nothing but a loaf of bread between you.

The air wasn’t nearly as musty or stale, and of course it was much darker then, with not the whiff of a fresh plant in sight, but the principal was still the same.

You held very little stake in it all, but you kept close and stiff anyways, the joyful atmosphere from before mixing into something fun and scurrilous, electrifying the space behind your eyes and sending ticklish bolts of lightning down your spine.

It remained there until the heavy wing beats of the Dragons above you faded long into the distance.

The field, littered with scented flowers and bushes, must have muddled Stormfly’s scent. Or she really was just following the Terrors. One thing was sure, though. Where there was one Rider, there were more.

“I thought you said you got people to cover it?” You asked.

“I did. They should have been able to, but something must have happened,” Hiccup leaned back against the tree bark, hitting the back of his head against it lightly, grunting lightly as it did.

You wondered if he had grown a few inchest still since you had last been close to him on the Edge.

You raised your eyebrow, asking the silent question. Are you going to go back?

Hiccup said nothing, looking away, though you couldn’t miss the soft clench of his jaw and the gentle slouch, or the agitated twiddling of his fingers by his waist.

You rolled your eyes. Privately, you almost felt bad that you weren’t able to give him a better time out. But also, there would be many other times for him to make up for it with other people. You wondered if he would ever choose to come back to you.

“They should be able to handle it. They’re not children. But it’s no burden on me whether you stay or go,” You inclined your head forwards.

You placed one foot in front of the other across the uneven wooden planks. You just needed to get down to the fields.

You strode past the bright red hut that marked the Jorgenon Clan, avoiding haphazardly placed construction materials.

You paused where you stood and turned back as Hiccup called your name, standing right in the middle of the walkway. It never ceased to surprise you whenever he showed up.

It wasn’t much. But it still surprised you every time he came with greetings.

You smiled.

He quickened his pace, pulling himself up onto the path and stopping in front of you, prosthetic clicking against wood.

“Hiccup,” You greeted, “What brings you to me?”

“Where do you live, now?” He asked, “I was planning on stopping by, but…”

“Up behind the spire on the way to Gothi’s,” You hummed.

“But that’s… You live in Mildew’s old hut?” Hiccup asked, surprised.

“Yeah,” You nodded, rifling through the satchel clipped to your waist, flicking through rows of herbs with delicately placed fingertips, “So what have you been up to?”

You realized you needed to go off-island soon. The idea filled you with dread.

“Do you really want to ask that?” Hiccup questioned, “because there’s been a lot…”

“Why not?” You shrugged.

“Some rouge dragons have been eating holes into the earth- and with all the dragons underwater, coupled with the Scauldrons-” Hiccup rubbed his forehead, “Basically, they’ve been drilling new hot springs, which has been nice, but no one’s gotten to any of them yet. They always seem to dry up before anyone can get there and back and I keep getting complaints about people’s water getting stolen, or something.”

“Ouch,” You said sympathetically, as Hiccup continued on.

“I wish they’d give it up, honestly. There are more important things for me to get to, but I haven’t even been able to get to all the trading issues with all the other tribes… Anyways, are you busy?” Hiccup asked quickly, looking back and forth.

“Busy?” You asked.

“I kinda want to get out of here before anyone else…” Hiccup shrugged his shoulders, cringing.

“Notices?” You finished, “Let’s go.”

“A hot spring?” You asked aloud, both your and Hiccup grasping the edge of the pool on your knees, watching the water bubble slightly.

Hiccup extended a hand hesitantly, grazing it over the bubbling surface. You watched as the foam fizzled underneath his palms and when he didn't flinch, you sat back and pulled off your boots, rolling up the legs of your trousers, revealing a long scar on the leg furthest Hiccup.

“It’s alright to wash in?” You asked, Hiccup nodding an affirmative.

You rested a bare foot onto the bubbling water, testing it out with your toes, before sinking your legs in with a breathy sigh.

“It’s one of the ones you were talking about, right?” You asked

“Yeah,” Hiccup confirmed, watching you closely.

You let out a soft, disappointed sound at the idea that it might be gone soon.

The spring looked to be about waist-deep, though that might be something you needed to test out before dipping into the pool. It was pressed up and partially embedded in the side of a rocky cliff, spearing into the ground at a sideways angle.

All around, the two of you were packed in by large, lush fauna. Huge ferns, even larger trees and a great deal of mist.

Very, very private.

It was extremely tempting.

“We could… It would be nice, but…” Hiccup reasoned. He didn’t seem into the idea, which was fine. Honestly, you didn’t mind having this spot all to yourself.

There wasn’t much of a practical way to sink into the waters without stripping nearly bare anyways. Hiccup’s armor would most definitely be damaged by the water, and you didn’t like the idea of marching back to Berk in sopping wet furs.

Your undergarments certainly weren’t up to scratch for the kind of soak you were looking for.

“We don’t have a change of clothes.” You said, meeting his eyes head on. The two of you looked at each other for a moment.

Hiccup must have followed the same line of thought, looking at you like he’d caught something odd and he didn’t know what to do with it. There was an odd feeling curling in your stomach, and an awkwardness that hadn’t been so palmable between you since before… Before.

Did it really matter if he saw you naked? Or at least clothed only partially? It wasn’t as if you’d never seen him the same during all your years of semi-sturdy friendship.

You spent a moment feeling the skin on your face begin to warm, brows crinkling with a remembrance that sort of killed the mood before you glanced away with as much casualness as you could muster.

“Do you think we could get back in time?” You asked instead.

“Well, there’s not much hope, but I guess it’s worth a try,” Hiccup started hesitantly.

You and Hiccup stared down at the small bubbling hole at the base of an empty basin. It had been an awkward walk back to the Village. Still, you seemed incapable of suggesting anything else. Hiccup, too.

“Gods damn it,” Hiccup said.

You shrugged, the roll of cloth under your hands shifting only slightly. Besides the tarp strapped to your back and the towels to Hiccup’s, the both of you were carrying a set of undergarments you found which should have covered just enough to remain modest in the springs.

Toothless, behind the two of you, basket in mouth, grumbled as he dropped it to the tall grass floor. You’d brought him along in order to help carry the bulk of your things.

“Well,” You started, puzzling to yourself, hand under your chin, “I mean, we could try what you did last time? With the Terrors?”

“But with a Scauldron, right?”

You nodded, “Honestly, it’s that or head back.”

Hiccup winced, immediately backing away to settle down onto one knee. He was turned to face your right, so that he was looking out towards the forest.

He opened his mouth and cupped his hands, then paused. Then he tried again. But no sound game out. The whole time Toothless looked peeved, eyes shifting between the two of you as he snorted.

You stared blankly, waiting, which was probably the first time you and Toothless ever felt the same sort of emotion, though you most likely meant it in a much more joking fashion than he did.

“I can’t do it with you watching,” Hiccup said, finally.

You squinted at him, wondering what was up with the sudden-onset stage fright, just as Toothless rolled his eyes, shaking his torso like a wet dog, causing a hastily-clipped basket to fall off his saddle.

“Oh,” You said, turning around and grinning to yourself, “Alright. Howl away.”

You hoped he hadn’t figured out how to get to the fish basket yet. It would be a pain to walk back to Berk with everything in hand, and it would be very easy for Toothless to leave without his incentive to follow the hostage on his back.

“It’s not howling.” Hiccup deadpanned.

You knew that. You were actually pretty decent at it, back when you were still involved in the dragon business.

“Alright.”

You stared out at a heavy wall of fauna, a large leaf and a towering set of two trees consuming the vast majority of your vision. You watched a bug crawl up the exterior of one and noted to yourself silently that you would have to watch where you rested your things while you were in the spring, if what Hiccup was trying was to work.

You listened to him shift and shuffle, moving around until Toothless must have gotten tired of waiting and he himself let out a loud, echoing roar.

You jumped back, caught off guard, jerking towards the pair with your ears covered by your hands, undergarments, falling to the grass below.

“How long do you think it will take to fill up?” You asked from the floor, hips sinking into the grass as you pushed yourself up, shrugging the straps holding the large cloth tarp in place off your shoulders.

“Not sure,” Hiccup said, shifting from foot to foot, “We should get changed first.”

“Yeah,” You agreed, tossing it over to him. He weighed it in his hands, examining it before pulling it free and letting it unravel onto the floor.

“Hey, do you have any idea where we packed the blanket?” You asked. It was a bit overkill, but… You bit your lip.

“In the saddle, I think.”

You inhaled touchily as Hiccup gripped onto the edge of the tarp, turning from you to throw the other end out, watching it unfurl as it caught air, “Ah, do you think you could get it?”

Swiftly though not without ungain, Hiccup slung the tarp over one of the low-hanging branches, the ends of the fabric falling horizontally over the thick grasses and bushes around you.

You supposed that meant the tarp was unnecessary, the forest here enough to bless you with cover and privacy. You noted that down.

“What? He’s harmless,” Hiccup said, letting the curtain fall closed behind him.

You squinted into the sky, up through a very small window, shafting light down through the trees. You would have worried that no other dragons would heed Toothless’ call, knowing that you yourself wouldn’t, had you not already heard the hurried beating of wings from up above.

You stuck your tongue out at Hiccup, then turned it towards his dragon.

Honestly, it was still unimaginable to you that Toothless had developed the ability to become Alpha. It was insane, and insanely lucky. For Hiccup, that is.

The two of you, meaning you and Toothless, had never been left alone in the same room together for a reason, though most people just thought it was your fault. The reason being that Toothless didn’t like you, and you didn’t like him as a result of that.

Harmless… Right. You scoffed.

You knew you knew better and you reassured yourself of that fact, as Toothless grumbled at you from across the small space.

Hiccup shook his head at you, quirking the corner of his mouth to the side as it formed a fondly exasperated line, unclipping various satchels and baskets from Toothless’ back.

You grimaced and scooted further away from the dragon, nudging the basket of fish closer to him with your foot, hoping that he might take more of an interest in that instead.

You kept your eyes trained on the dragon even as Hiccup walked to his side with his clothes under his arm shuffling through the treeline and behind the curtain.

“You have enough room?” You squinted at Toothless, resting your arms against your knees, and he narrowed them back.

It had been a tricky job to get his things without anyone else noticing, a lot of careful pressing around corners and tricky, calculated jabs from Toothless, many of which you were still bitter about.

“It’s enough,” Hiccup responded, voice trained.

The scaly thing was still grumpy; the chances of him soldering a grudge were high, especially where you were involved. The two of you called him away from a tussle with some other dragons from around the bend, which he seemed to be enjoying by at least some measure.

If only he’d put some of that energy into being a more attentive Alpha. You wrinkled your nose, judging the dragon like a temperamental parent.

You listened to the shifting of leaves, fabric and leather before deciding you’d been waiting too long, much too used to doing things on your own time.

“I’m just going to change over here,” You called through the curtain, “Turn around, will you?” You asked Toothless, who grumbled at you disgruntledly, the ridges of his brows as furrowed as he could make them.

“Turn around, Toothless,” Hiccup confirmed from behind the curtain.

He shifted with a grumble, lumbering sideways and around, though not without whacking you in the calf with his tail, first.

You finished changing just as the first few dragons began to settle down.

You shuffled to the side once you were ready, letting Hiccup through to order and direct, gentle-parenting the dragons into doing what you needed.

You watched him. He was shirtless, legs bare, though his left ankle remained wrapped to his prosthetic. You wondered if it hurt, sometimes, though you hadn’t the courage to ask.

He was slim as always, muscled but not quite muscly, more soft than not. It went unsaid that he was not nearly as built or wide as any of the other Viking men, so you tried not to ogle.

You sat, legs crossed on the ground as Hiccup directed the Scauldrons and Gronkle in turn, slowly patching and filling up the pool.

“How long do you think it will take to cool down?” You asked as he sent them off and he came over to stand by you, settling himself onto the small stretch of grass you were laid in.

“Not sure,” He answered.

At one point Toothless turned towards the trees, shaking himself off before beginning to march through the underbrush.

“Hey, don’t go too far, bud,” Hiccup called after him.

The two of you sat there, just you, watching steam rise from the pool

“He’s been really independent lately,” Hiccup stiffened slightly, picking at the wooden end of his prosthetic, “Yeah…”

You moved back to give him space as he unraveled the leather wraps keeping his prosthetic secure to his leg, revealing a stump and a good amount of pinched scar tissue.

You spent a moment longer looking at it than you probably should’ve before looking away. You’d never seen it before

You wondered if Astrid had. You couldn’t imagine a world where she hadn’t.

Hiccup sunk into the water first.

Sweat beaded on your forehead as you hovered above it, hands lightly gripping the edge of the pool.

You dipped your toes in before all at once you sunk into the water, drifting down until your feet touched ground, sighing as you felt the heat rise up to your hips.

The ground was made up of small pebbles and smooth stone, and much nicer on the bottoms of your feet than you’d expected.

There was a ledge underneath, just the right height and length going around the inner edge of the pool on most sides to make a nice enough bench. You waded towards it, settling over the concave surface, ignoring the slight unevenness of it.

You relaxed, going boneless underwater, feeling your face redden as the heat from the water floated up into it, causing a line of sweat to run down your cheek.

With nothing else to you, your eyes drifted over towards Hiccup. He was much the same, though he was a little more out of it.

He really needed it, you supposed.

You blinked at him as he tilted his head back, exposing freckled skin, much more faded than when you were younger but visible just the same.

You eyed a multitude of cuts, long and light against his tan, following them down to a long vertical cut by the right side of his chest.

“What’s on your mind?” Hiccup’s voice brought you back to alertness, breaking the spell the spring seemed to put you under.

You tilted your head back and forth, debating whether or not you should answer.

He followed your eyesight instead, answering the silent question in your eyes.

“That… Axe. Training accident,” He answered, shrugging. You marveled at the casualness of it all.

“...And that one?”

“Dragon racing. Caught in the side by one of the spikes over Hofferson house,” You nodded. You hadn’t been in town for that one.

“And, I’m guessing, that’s why you guys use more of a track, now?”

Hiccup rubbed his neck sheepishly.

“Where’d you get yours?” He asked

Being able to talk and converse with him like this was great and all, but you were afraid that behind all the mindless platitudes and play-warmth he would finally, finally see you. See deeper than the scars like cracks on your surface, seep right into line lines and stare into your core to somehow find you wanting.

You hunched slightly inwards self consciously.

“Hey, it’s… it’s okay if you don’t want to talk about it,”

Hiccup drifted towards you, resting his hand on the side of your shoulder.

You kept your eyes trained downwards, staring at large groups of bubbles as they rose to the surface, coloring the water an opaque white.

Your exhale blew hotly back into your face, rising up with the steam.

You nodded.

Hiccup hummed under his breath, voice tinted with a hint of confusion.

You pressed your thumbs into his shoulder blades in the dark of your hut, moving with his muscles as he groaned and flexed them backwards.

You felt the outline of lightning scars under his shirt and followed them down lazily, rubbing a path around them, pushing deep into weary muscle through his thick tunic.

Hiccup leaned into it. Again, you moved to accommodate him.

You shifted over your hastily done bed, dull fabric shifting below you.

Afternoon light trickled in through the blinds.

You counted every scar visible above the line of his collar, each cut and scab that formed alabaster marks against peachy-tan skin.

You worked through knots, strains and strains and stresses, watching with a careful eye as Hiccup softened, letting them melt off and away.

You worked your way back up, and down, leaning maybe a bit closer than necessary, feeling your breath on your face as you exhaled into the nape of his neck, lifting your elbow higher in order to get a hard spot a few lengths away from his spine.

Hiccup let out a breathy sigh.

You flushed.

You sifted through the assortment of ripe berries in the cart, humming thoughtfully.

You weren’t quite sure what to buy. Honestly, you didn’t need to buy any at all. You had a large enough stock at home to guarantee you’d not need to buy or forage anything until the next year.

You would never say it out loud but you were actually out to take inventory. A whole lot of the other Vikings would be displeased to hear about it, you were sure. It was a good way for you to keep stock of what was in store and what you would need to search for on your own. It was how you made your coin.

It was quite easy, especially when you took advantage of your close proximity to Gothi. Though a tough and harried healer, she was still an elder and it was much more convenient to have the shops travel up towards her.

Some might have called it ‘taking advantage of the elderly,’ but you were loath to the idea. You didn't upcharge her by too much. Whenever you did up the price, it was much deserved payback for dumping her waste down your side of the mountain. Somehow it always landed on your roof.

You brought your finger to your chin and moved to accommodate a newcomer you sensed by the corner of your eye, careful not to look up at the stall keeper, who was squinting down at you suspiciously. You were afraid he might have been catching on.

You walked over to a wide array of scales, most likely scavenged from the dropped and shed skins of the dragons who enjoyed roaming around town.

You enjoyed the fresh air, the wind as it flowed over your scalp. You felt light and pleased, one hand held to your back as you pursued the displayed wares.

There was a nice arranged pyramid of orangish-reddish scales and a set of electric yellow and purple sat above a wrinkled, dull green cloth, and a line of iridescent scales by your right hand.

“You see something you like?” You startled as you heard a voice murmur by your ear. It seemed to be that you were so engrossed in pretending to be invested that you hadn’t noticed as your fellow shoppe leaned into your space.

You walked to the side, turning so that you were leaning away from her.

It was a woman, brown hair nearing red, the brightest auburn you’d ever seen in the light, dressed in a thin layer of furs with both hands on her hips. You recognized this woman.

“These came from me,” She exclaimed calmly, voice running off her tongue like thick, gooey honey.

The stall keeper rolled his eyes, “You’ll get your cut, don’t worry.”

The question must have been obvious in your eyes because Valka smiled, “Oh, yes, I collected those myself, you see.”

You smiled uncomfortably as Valka laughed to herself, finally backing up a tad.

You straightened your back and your shoulders, exhaling deeply.

Though she was unbalanced from her time away from general society, she was confident and it served her well.

Her swell mood was contagious. You quirked your lips with the urge to join in, though to your chagrin, your own laughter came out more as a breathy uncomfortable chuckle than anything. You were also very much out of practice.

She didn’t seem to notice, though you knew that was most likely a calculated effort. You were glad for it.

“Hello,” You managed an honest smile, “Trying to push sales?”

“I’ve a bit of a vested interest in this shop, I should say,” She said, examining you as if you were a sort of creature from a land she’d never seen before, “Who are you?”

Valka paused, blinking to herself. Before you could respond again, she asked, “What’s your name? What’s your story?”

She didn’t know, you realized with a pang. There was no reason for her to, of course, Hiccup being your only link to each other and the two of you hadn’t been nearly as close as you had been before, as of late, but it still hurt a little. Definitely put a damper on your mood.

You kept up your smile anyways, mimicking her pose.

“I’ve not much of a story to tell, I’m sad to say,” You inclined your head.

“Everyone’s got a story,” Valka insisted, “Even-Oh, it should be-...”

You hummed your question.

“It’s probably wandered off somewhere, the frightful thing… There-! This one’s been pretty helpful,” Valka pointed out behind you, “A bashful thing, helped me bring down some of the wares. He showed up a few months before, well…”

Her eyes unfocused and her stance fell just the smallest bit. You winced with sympathy, remembering how Drago had smothered the island in ice before nearly killing off all of its inhabitants. She was very open about it, especially in the hall, and word spread faster than fire on Berk. It must have been difficult to lose her husband and her Alpha Dragon all in one day.

You shifted, turning following her direction after a moment of solidarity, and froze.

With its head bowed down, looking guiltily away from across the clearing was a dragon. Your dragon.

She leaned forwards against you conspiratorially, though this time you didn’t react, even as she whispered loudly in your ear with false secrecy, “It doesn’t hurt to have a bit of extra change on hand, you see. That’s why I’m here.”

“I do see,” You nodded along, though something about your voice was off as you spoke, still staring at your old dragon. Your voice was much too sharp and flat and cracked in all the wrong places.

You blinked away a light burning in your eye, refusing to meet your dragon by the eyes.

Your heart twinged, ruffled and upset as you were all at once confronted with the reality that you really had been abandoned, though it wasn't as bitter a fruit knowing that it had been, in part, your fault.

“So, you said these scales are on sale?” You cleared your throat, turning back towards the stall with the full intent to ignore the thing as you would a stranger, which it might have very well been.

“Which would you recommend?” Your eyes refused to focus as you blocked it out of your mind, refusing to acknowledge the faces or manners of any of the people around you.

It was because of that that you just nearly missed him, approaching down the path to your left, once again clad in dark gray and brown leather.

“Oh, hello, Hiccup!” You called.

“You’re trembling,” Hiccup noted with surprise in his voice as you approached.

“It’s been a while since I rode a dragon,” You admitted balefully, as the two of you strode towards Toothless’ saddle.

Even before, when you had just gotten yours, you’d had a hard time learning to love being up in the sky. But you pushed through it, because it was what Hiccup loved, and because it was getting to a point where you needed a dragon in order to keep up with everyone else.

You never did talk to anyone about how much it terrified you.

“Will you be alright?”

You nodded hesitantly, though privately you weren’t so sure, your heart beating like a drum.

Hiccup sighed, “We’re just headed to the sea stacks, right?”

“Yeah,” You took a few hesitant, shaking breaths before swinging yourself up on the saddle behind Hiccup, who looked back at you, securing his helmet as if he thought it might be better that he leave you behind, as if you might shatter at the slightest breeze.

“Thanks for taking me,” You looked away, ears burning shamefully. The things you could forage for on Berk weren’t cutting it. You needed the extra coin.

You jolted suddenly as you took off, alarm racing up and down your spine as you pressed yourself flush to Hiccup. You kept your eyes as straight ahead as possible, knowing that looking down, at the disappearing dow of Berk in the distance, would be your downfall.

You noticed Hiccup kept close to the ocean floor, guiding Toothless only just high enough to cleanly avoid the ocean waves below.

Past the wind rushing through your hair, the pressure plugging your eardrums and the sound of Toothless’ wings beating through the air, you realized that this wasn’t so bad.

Eventually your breathing evened and you were able to loosen up to some degree.

You leaned your head against his neck, arms relaxing slightly around your torso though your front stayed no less melded to his back.

You noticed the two of you had wandered all the way down, strolling the boundary between grazing fields, dotted by sheep, and the closer line of houses to your right.

You were still a slight bit shaken, though you’d made it back with all of your things intact plus extra, which was alright enough.

Hiccup looked back and forth, at where your hut ended just beyond the Great Hall, probably wondering if he should have been the one to walk you back instead.

“I don’t eat down at the hall much,” You looked back, keeping the silent ‘or ever’ to yourself.

“Well, I can understand why,” Hiccup looked to the side, voice sardonic, as the two of you, from a distance, watched Tuffnut and Snotlout wrestling for a plated chicken leg. You weren’t sure how they got so far out from the Great Hall so quickly. As far as you were aware, they didn’t serve food this early.

“Would you?” He asked.

Snotlout was able to pin Tuffnut to the ground, about to take a bit from the leg in his meaty grasp before Tuffnut basked him over the back of his head with the empty plate.

The other Riders were sat around him at the high table.

Hiccup seemed uncomfortable sitting up on the elevated platform reserved for the Chief and company by the forefront of the Great Hall. Out of place. Not quite like he was in shoes he hadn’t grown into yet, as was the saying, but more as if he was standing in front of a pair of shoes that did not belong to him at all.

You asked yourself if he might be more comfortable down with the common folk.

You sent him a small wave just as the two of you met eyes, Hiccup at once sending a complimentary quirk of the lips back.

You came.

It took you a few days to get there, but eventually you worked up the courage to make it down and to sidle around the heavily concentrated group of Vikings in the open floor of the hall.

Just as I promised.

You gave him a half-smile, lifting a spoon of stew to your mouth. It had been a while since you had tasted something from the hall. You had to admit it was a taste that you couldn’t replicate, not that you tried. You weren’t sure whether or not it was something you liked.

A crowd of Vikings obscured your vision as they walked past, large mugs and plates in hand.

You stared down at your bowl of stew and the thin slice of bread on the place beside it, wondering if all of this was worth it.

You were surprised when Hiccup settled down in front of you, startling you out of your own musings, plate of his own in hand.

You peered round him, back at the table to see the rest of the Riders and Gobber back up on the podium. They seemed just as equally confused.

“What brings you down here?” You got the vague idea that it was expected, though not a requirement of the Chief, for Hiccup to sit up by the front table. Something about establishing authority and basking in the attention or something before it wore off, you didn’t care.

It didn’t seem like something Hiccup was interested in, anyways.

“What, no ‘hello?’”

“Nope,” You popped the ‘p’ as Hiccup pulled out his journal from under his arm, settling it on the table to his side. You stared at brown leather and at all the small bits of parchment sticking out the sides.

“Let me see,” You said,

“You sure?” Hiccup asked with a crooked smile.

You nodded, beckoning him over to your side of the table, craning your neck as he laid the book out in front of you and settled down besides.

“What’s that?” You pointed downwards, as he began flipping through the pages.

“What, this?”

You hummed, “No, go back.”

Hiccup blinked, and you saw the minor realization wash over his face before he flipped back the page almost reluctantly, revealing a messily sketched out crack in the earth and a crude map of the archipelago with a bunch of x-es littering random regions over the sea.

“Do you mind if I…?”

He shook his head no, handing over his notebook as you pushed aside your stew.

You read over some of the notes to the side, furrowing your brow.

“The Caldera,” You said, remembering the old wives tale.

“Yeah,” Hiccup rubbed his neck, “I didn’t mean for you to see it, but what do you think?”

“There’s something about it, I don’t know,” You said, shrugging, “It would be really nice.”

Hiccup scrubbed his neck embarrassedly, “It’s just a fantasy I have sometimes.”

“Is that why you spent so much time wandering?” You nodded your head, taking a sip from the large mug in front of you with hunched shoulders, “It would make a great discovery.”

Hiccup nodded.

You got it. It was unbelievably unrealistic, but that was probably the point. It was something for him to chase after even after everything else became unfamiliar. There was something charming about its unattainability, in a way.

Mead. Maybe it was a comfort you yourself craved.

You barely paid attention as you filled your mug and his, watching as, across the hall and through warm and bustling bodies, Hiccup and Astrid spoke.

It was with all of the passion of a newly split couple. Though you couldn’t hear everything, you could see the meaningful tilt of Hiccup’s brown, the way his shoulders only moved when he spoke about something worthwhile, and the emotive movement of his hands.

They were leaning close together by a gaggle of the others, speaking in whispers. It was probably nothing of consequence to you. She was, still, his right hand woman.

But he looked at her like she hung the stars and wove this very Earth, hanging on to her every word, no matter the severity or banality.

You downed a mug, mead dripping down the corner of your chin. You wiped it off with your chin, lamenting and then going after another. It would take quite a great deal for you to get drunk.

You watched as Astrid walked away, back turned to Hiccup, her side exposed to you, and took note of the way, mouth open as if to speak, he reached out slightly, like he might be able to pull her back by some invisible string.

Your heart beat against itself, rhythm as loud and violent to your ears as the crashing waves outside down by the coast. You ignored it, tucking it away like a book under your pillow in the dark of night.

You furrowed your brows, picking up another mug and filling it to the brim. It was only considerate, if you were going to drink.

Your arms were full of mugs by the time you thought to wander back, balanced unevenly in your arms. He might need it just as bad as you did.

You’d stumbled back to Hiccup’s hut in the dark, chuckling and laughing like a pair who didn’t want to do much besides forget the world around you.

There was something tense in the air between the two of you despite the physical closeness. You weren’t quite sure when or how the two of you had fallen into each other, or why you thought this was a good idea.

You gasped through the press of lips and the taste of ale on tongue, backed up against a wooden wall, head pressed back against the hard, uneven surface.

You pulled apart, and Hiccup leaned forwards to rest his forehead against the wall by your head, panting in your ear.

You weren’t sure who you’d slept with and who you hadn’t. Many drunk nights at the Hall, sneaking large mugs of ale and mead into your small, lonely corner meant many mornings slung over beds in houses you weren’t familiar with. Being so disconnected meant it was easy for you to slip out and away without anyone noticing.

But you knew you were here, and you were here now.

You slipped your knee between his legs. He ground down on it.

Your undergarments were up to scratch this time, though you weren’t sure if you needed them.

You felt the rise and quell of feeling and emotion and dead conversation. You searched for something to say, something to soothe, to matter or to not in a way that mattered the way someone did when they knew they weren't great, but wanted to be.

He looked exhausted. Tired from hours on his feet, time he wasn’t allowed to spend alone and a while too long throwing ideas on building, automatic tailfins and infrastructure between the two of you.

Guilt curled around like a tiny worm in your stomach. It was the same feeling you got falling from a high place, the same kind you avoided every time you saw a dragon take off into the air.

You pondered if you should ask, wondering if it was fair to want him to take the first step or back away, hands drifting back and forth underwater.

“I’m… I’m sorry,” He said, and you weren’t sure why.

You tilted your head, sitting across from Hiccup in the same spring from before. His calf was pressed between your ankles, brushing over scar tissue as Hiccup sandwiched your left ankle between that and his other leg.

“Me too.” You were sorry, for taking up his time and his space, when all he wanted was something else. You thought he might rather be alone. If that was the case, you knew you would go.

Calves and ankles pressed together, shifting against each other under the water testingly.

Your face was red, heated by steam. Hiccup looked the same.

You scooted closer. Hiccup shifted forwards on his arms, leaning nearer to you.

You weren’t sure where you stood, since the night you spent together. You didn’t know if it meant anything or not, if it was a tryst born from your interest or Hiccup’s want to forget Astrid. You couldn’t remember.

But.

“Is it…?” He asked, eyes half-lidded.

You drifted forwards, standing up in the spring and met him the rest of the way, thighs slotted together.

Your arms were braced on either side of him underwater, palms resting on the smooth ledge surface.

Hiccup rested his hand on your arm, the other by your waist.

There were too many things between the two of you that went left unsaid. You hoped that one day you’d be able to say them.

“A-ash…” He breathed into your mouth.

You half-slid, half-climbed down the rocky cliffside, grinning to yourself as Hiccup jogged after, falling slightly behind your enthusiasm.

To be honest, you weren’t so sure about sharing this secret with Hiccup. It felt weighty, like you were putting it to bed somehow and you weren’t sure you liked that, not ready to give up your reprieve.

It was private to you, but also, maybe it would be worth it, to share something so nice with someone else. There was a low chance he hadn’t seen it yet anyways. Soon, the others would find out and all the other Vikings would start funneling in, you were sure.

You slid to a stop just barely in time, backtracking with your arms out, stumbling back-first into Hiccup.

The two of you fell backwards, Hiccup falling into a set of bushes stationed behind you.

“Oh, ow,”

“Are you alright?” You asked him, as you separated, quickly scooting over and peering down at him as he pulled himself from the fanning ferns.

The two of you were surrounded by rocks and fauna, world dark and blue in a way that felt fresh and new and freeing.

This ledge was one that was difficult to get to unless you knew the way, which you won through hard-earned practice and exploration.

The grass under you was cold, and wet from dew, But that was one of the many things you ceased to notice once you peered over the edge, at the beginning of a beautiful flickering.

“I’m alright,” Hiccup smiled, rubbing his head. You tried to look around him as if you might be able to see the back of it from the angle you were sitting.

“Look,” You pointed forwards with a breathy grin, as Hiccup settled himself beside you, your legs hanging limply over the side of the clifface.

He followed your direction, and he breathed. You could see the exact moment he looked down into the waters, calmer than they should be, always seeming flat and unassuming in this area.

You watched him focus, taken in by the mesmerizing sight.

Tiny dragons lit up the sea below, blinking pale pinks and greens and blues under the shifting water, looking very much like small, twinkling gems by the sand.

It was what you assumed was a mix between the glowing algae left over from the Flightmare’s time in the archipelago and the new, different kinds of dragons flooding Berk.

The two of you relaxed into the scene, calming in a way you were hard pressed to calm anywhere else. Maybe you had made the right call.

It was a while before either of you would break the silence

“I…” Hiccup started, he looked at you with open eyes, “I…”

You perked up slightly, turning your head by the most minute degree, watching him from the corner of your eye. You waited, giving him time to articulate himself.

“...I miss…”

His eyes twinkled, lights dancing in the shine of them, moving back and forth with the lights below. You softened in them, twisting so you were looking at him directly.

You wondered what he missed. You wondered if it was something to quell or nurture the beating blooming jittering feeling growing in your chest.

“Them,” Hiccup said finally, lamely, before stopping, leaning against your shoulder.

At the last moment, he looked away, pulling his hands off the ground and you read something a little like shame on his face as he said it, or on as much face as you could see, carefully tilted away from you.

You were sure you knew who, or whom he meant.

You remembered how he looked at Astrid the other night as she walked away. How something in his eyes just seemed to storm.

You remember how glum he was, still was, after the passing of his father, tall and mighty in a way that seemed to make him immortal.

You were glad. Just glad, and disappointed, in equal measure. But also you also couldn’t help but be a little disappointed that he hadn’t said something else.

You leaned back with equal weight onto his shoulder, though instead of feeling any sort of the warmth or amity you should have felt- or peace, like you usually did, staring down at the swirling lights, dancing with the currents- you just felt empty.

You took in the rustling of leaves behind you, the chittering and splashing of small dragons as they leapt out of the water, filling the air below with a colorful, glowing spray. Anything but the man besides you. The Chief, now.

“I know.”

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