Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

It was hard to process— Hiccup being banished. Astrid still remembers the look on his face as he turned and left that day in the ring. The way he didn’t look back.

Betrayal, like a shock wave, swept through their village, that damn ring the epicenter. She remembers all the ways Stoick had screamed. Cursed his own son’s name, damning him and the house they shared.

Five years later and Astrid is still trying to process it all.

Five years later and everything is about to change again.

“I heard he killed six people when Stoick exiled him!”

“You know Stoick was his dad right?”

“Well, I heard it was thirty!”

“Everyone knows that, muttonhead—”

“He’s gonna be our chief now because—”

Children talk. Of course they do. All they know is second and third hand stories— they weren’t there. They ask Astrid questions, though, questions she sometimes doesn’t know how to answer. But she should, they think. She was there, after all, she knows. She remembers.

The children don’t understand or consider what knowing and remembering does to a person.

She forgives them. Answers them the best she can and holds the pain and knowledge and remembrance in her heart, keeping it tucked away in a special place that’s just for her and no one else on this wet rock.

Stoick is dead now. Died how he lived— stubborn, unflinching, killing dragons.

It had been pointless, anyway. Dragons haven’t been to Berk for almost as long as Hiccup. Like somehow he took them all away one day, with the wind.

Every part of Astrid shakes with pain at the funeral as she lights the first arrow and prays to all the gods in the heavens for forgiveness. This first arrow is for Hiccup, not her.

She fires it with her eyes closed.

She doesn’t see that it’s found its mark and she doesn’t see the rest of the arrows fly over her head and find their marks too. She doesn’t watch the boat go up in flaming glory, smoke carrying their chief to Valhalla to join at the table of his ancestors.

Astrid is acting chief now.

There’s a strange comfort in knowing that, up until the end of his days, she had Stoick’s trust, unearned though it was.

There are a hundred and ten things she never told him— she said nothing about Hiccup or Toothless or the Nest or anything.

There’s a predictable hurt in that too, though. But it’s hard to decide what to feel guilty about anymore and Astrid doesn’t know how much longer she can live a life consumed by a hundred and ten regrets. Stoick is dead. She can’t lie to him anymore.

Even in the face of all the things he didn’t know, Stoick forgave Hiccup in the end. It was only Astrid, Gobber, and Fishlegs that heard the last whisper as Stoick succumbed to his wounds. They’d done everything they could, but it wasn’t enough.

Nothing ever was.

“He’ll be here soon,” Snotlout says. “We need a plan.”

The four of them— Snotlout, Fishlegs, and the twins— have come together in the Great Hall to create Astrid’s informal counsel in this short interim. She didn’t ask, but they always seem to know when she needs them anyway.

“Plan?” Asks Fishlegs. “What plan?”

“The plan where Astrid challenges him for the chiefdom? That plan?”

Ruffnut frowns. “I didn’t know that was the plan.”

“Of course it’s the fucking—” Snotlout throws his hands in the air and sighs emphatically at them. “What the fuck other plan do we have here?”

“Just… Let him be the chief?” Fishlegs suggests nervously.

“Fully honest— that’s what I thought we were gonna do,” says Tuffnut.

“Why would we— we’re not gonna— Astrid, talk some sense into these people!”

Astrid tries to think about it. She really does. But— “I don’t see why I would do that, Snotlout.”

“Because we can’t let him become the chief!” He looks at them now like they’re all properly crazy. Like whatever he’s suggesting right now is the only logical thing to do. Maybe it is. Astrid doesn’t know.

“Why not?” She asks him, folding her arms across her chest. “It’s his birthright, we already sent word for him, he’s already on his way.”

“And when he gets here, you challenge him for the chiefdom! What’s not clicking here?”

“Doesn’t challenging him mean Astrid is going to have to… y’know… kill him…?” Fishlegs asks.

“Well if that’s the case, I’m all for it,” says Ruffnut.

“Oh, I do love a good old fashioned fight to the death,” her brother agrees.

“I’m not going to kill Hiccup,” Astrid says decidedly.

The group falls deathly quiet in a way that makes her irrationally angry. They all refer to him obliquely just like the rest of the village. Epithets take the place of a name— The Boy Who Grew Wings, Sky Holder, The Night Fury’s Companion, The Dragon Rider— and have built him into a myth.

A myth to fear.

Astrid remembers Hiccup, though. Even before they were teenagers together, trapped in a ring learning all the ways to kill dragons, Astrid remembers Hiccup being a sweet sort of person. Soft spoken and kind in a way that many of their tribe were not. Defiant in a way that surprised her in some ways, and didn’t in others.

Her last memory of him is of his reckless bravery and compassion in the face of exile. His silhouette growing distant on the horizon, an impossible choice made.

“It’s just Hiccup,” she says after a while. “You remember what he was like, don’t you?”

Snotlout has convinced himself of the myth. He’s built it out of a place of betrayal, Astrid is sure, using it as a way to protect himself from whatever complicated feelings he has about everything that happened in the ring that day. “He’s been gone for five years, we’re all different now, aren’t we? Exile breeds resentment. Who’s to say he doesn’t come back here and raize the village to the ground?”

Astrid scoffs.

“What did he say when we sent word to him?” Tuff asks. “Anything about a rain of dragonfire descending on Berk?”

“No, nothing like that,” Fishlegs tells them, reaching into his pouch and pulling out a single sheet of paper. “Succinct and nonthreatening,” he says, laying it out on the table for the rest of them to read.

Berk,

I return to you with a heavy heart. You may expect my arrival soon.

—H

Astrid has read this already. She’s studied the shape of the letters; she’s noticed the small stain of a tear at the top of page, hastily wiped away in an attempt to hide it; she’s traced with her fingers the symbol drawn beneath the signature— a dragon curling in on itself, all black but for one tail fin colored red.

She traces it again now as it sits in front of her, transfixed in plain view of everyone. She can’t bring herself to mind right now. Who cares if she exposes the soft and tender place in her heart where the memory of Hiccup lives?

Astrid snatches her hand away from the paper, coming back to herself and feeling the hot rush of shame wash over her. The others, Odin bless them, say nothing, pretending not to see what she knows they all saw.

“I’m not going to kill him,” she says again, her words carried by a quiet sadness. “I don’t know if I could, even if I tried.”

Snotlout looks at her for a very long moment and she can see his fears written across his face. She knows hers show too, and she doesn’t try to hide them. “Fine,” he says eventually. “But the moment he steps out of line, I’m killing him myself.”

She nods slowly and looks around to the rest of them. “We’re all in agreement, then?” Astrid asks. “We’re going to give him a chance.”

Fishlegs nods eagerly, visibly relieved.

Ruff and Tuff share something of a disappointed look between themselves. “Just as long as we can kill somebody else some other time,” Ruff says with a wicked smile and suddenly, Astrid feels much better.

It’s hard to say if Hiccup will hold the past against them, certainly. It’s impossible to know for sure. But Astrid is inclined to think the best. Maybe it’s naive of her to think that the banished son would return, not to seek vengeance, but to lead.

In her head, she knows Hiccup has every right to tear them all down, but her heart cannot be convinced that he ever would.

The five of them finish their dinner in sad, companionable silence, all content to leave the others to their own repetitive thoughts of what ifs and old friends. The Great Hall is quiet in much the same way as they are— speculative conversation has melted away at the tongues of even the children, and Hiccup is, for now, a ghost to haunt the mind and not the mouth.

“Astrid, do you think we should tell them all?” Fishlegs asks lowly as the two of them walk out of the Hall together. “Don’t they have a right to know what Stoick said about— about, well, the Dragon Rider?”

Astrid still doesn’t have any of the answers people are expecting her to have. She doesn’t know. She just doesn’t. “What good would it do? Even if it’s just the other three, Fishlegs… I can’t see how that’ll make them feel any better.”

“Did it make you feel any better?”

“I don’t know how I feel.” They stop at the bottom of the stairs and she turns to him. “What about you?”

Fishlegs studies her face for a moment, then sighs and looks away to the horizon. “We were close before. The Dragon— Hiccup and I.” His face changes, brightening slightly with fond memory. “Even before dragon training… There was a day— we had to have been six or seven then— that we were exploring in the woods alone. We must’ve wasted the whole day away giant hunting or doing something else ridiculous.”

“Simpler days,” Astrid comments softly, recalling herself at that young age. Hopeful eyes and an unburdened heart.

“Much. It was getting late and I begged for him to let us go home, but he heard something, off deeper in the forest— the tiniest little bird call. I can’t say how he figured from such a far distance, but he convinced me it was hurt and calling for help. Sure enough, when we followed after the sound, we found a little bird on the forest floor with a broken wing. We got lost on the way home, but we brought it with us and he carried it the whole way back…” Fishlegs falls quiet for just a moment. “He forced Gobber to help him make it a splint the next day and three weeks later, we released it back out into the wild.” He looks back at her. “I knew that little boy, Astrid. I saw him in the ring that day, all those years ago, with a little bird held so gently in his hands.”

“People can change,” she suggests. “Like Snotlout said, banishment breeds resentment.” There’s a part of her that wanted Fishlegs to challenge her naivety. Needed for him to poke holes in her biased memories.

He shakes his head at her, something in his eyes understanding her need. He refuses her. “It’s just Hiccup,” he says kindly, throwing her own words back in her face.

“I just… can’t help but wonder if we’ve done the right thing. I want to believe he won’t want to hurt us, but there’s doubt here! I need to know what I’m supposed to do, but there’s no way to find out!”

 “Look, Astrid… We can’t know how this will be other than the fact that it will be. Even without what Stoick said, he never actually denounced Hiccup as his heir. Under Viking Law, we had to ask him here.”

She looks at him helplessly. “There really is no right answer here, is there?”

“I think all we can do now is wait.”

It’s a lot to process— coming home. It’s only been a week though, so Hiccup thinks he’s allowed just a little more time to understand it all.

His father, for starters, is dead.

Hiccup feels guilty for resenting the grief he now carries in his heart. But, gods, does he resent it. Resents the little bit inside him that was convinced, for five long years, that there was a chance that he and his father might make amends.

An ember of hope that burned for far longer than he should’ve let it, finally smothered by a single letter. Trader Johann had arrived at Hiccup's little island outpost and delivered, with shaking hands, the last blow.

Lost Son of Berk,

May this message receive you well. Stoick the Vast, your father, has joined the Valkyries in Valhalla. His death heralds the end of your exile; return to Berk and claim your birthright. Lead your people as you were born to do.

Please send word back at your earliest convenience. In the interim, Astrid Hofferson will carry the responsibility of chiefdom.

—The Hooligan Tribe of the Island of Berk

He read the letter six times with tear blurred eyes before the magnitude of it all finally started to set in.

Five years and he’s finally going back to Berk.

His father is dead and Hiccup is being welcomed home.

He and Toothless take now to the sky, a week of packing and planning and preparing behind them. He talks as they fly, explains in plain language why they must both return to such a hostile place. He’s been explaining this for the past week. Toothless, even with his kind eyes alive with intelligence and understanding, has probably grown weary of Hiccup’s telling him the same things every day.

Hiccup keeps talking, though, because, well, to be honest, he expects a fight. He expects a trap, danger, hatred. He cannot see a future where the people of Berk respect him enough to call him leader.

He says anything but that out loud.

He has a plan, of course. He won’t fight back. At the inevitable challenge for chiefdom, he will  throw down his sword without raising it, plead mercy, and leave again. Maybe they will be kind enough to ask him ‘stay’ and maybe he will be weak enough to accept. But he will not fight.

Death has marked his step for five years. He will not allow it to follow him back to his people.

Toothless groans and flicks his ears side to side in front of Hiccup’s face.

“Set down soon, bud?” He asks the dragon, running his hand down the center of his scaly head. “I know it’s a long flight.”

Toothless growls contentedly, eager for the rest. It’s not actually a terribly long flight, but for as light as Hiccup had tried to pack, there were too many things he had to bring with him.

Even if the Hooligans plan to run him back off the island as soon as he arrives and let Astrid get on with it how she will, Hiccup must still offer gifts of goodwill— the spoils of travel, knowledge, and gold— to his people. Five years gone, a world of hurt between them, and he still loves them.

He wants to be able to love them.

The wind, seeping through the narrow slits in his mask, keeps his eyes dry and for that Hiccup is grateful. He has a heartful of tears to shed, sure, but something in him refuses to let them even leak. There will be time for tears when he is dead in the ocean.

He and Toothless land on a small island familiar to them both, home to the small fishing village of Old Ait. The people here tolerate the two of them, but they’re always more willing to be near either of them after Hiccup has jangled a coin purse at them. He understands. Knows that the mysterious stranger who never shows his face and rides on the back of a Night Fury isn’t someone he would easily trust either.

He helped them deal with a dragon problem two years back, though, so now there’s respect in the way the villagers fear him. Not much, but it’s enough to get them to allow Toothless up on to the docks.

They land on the beach, just close enough to the village and docks for anyone looking up to see them, but not near enough for it to look like an attack.

Hiccup’s life has become one of very thin lines and very delicate peace.

Toothless walks just a step behind Hiccup as they come up the beach. It’s not anything either of them like, but it’s expected here and everywhere else that they prove that Toothless has been ‘tamed.’

Hiccup, too, must prove he’s been tamed, so once he’s sure that several of the fishermen on the docks have seen him, he makes a big show of throwing his weapons down in the sand and raising his hands, his palms turned to the sky.

“I’ll— I’ll go get the chief,” one of them shouts from the dock before tearing off towards the village.

Hiccup sighs and drops his hands. “Just stay here this time, bud,” he tells Toothless. “I won’t be long anyway.”

He growls once and rolls his eyes before tramping around on the weapons and laying down in the sand. 

By the time Hiccup’s made it to the docks, so has the chief of Old Ait, Frode the Waterborn, his eleven year old daughter, Bodli, at his side. Hiccup leans his head to the side— the closest he can get to a friendly smile without taking off his helmet— and waves to them. “Chief Frode, Bodli,” he says. “Nice to see you again.”

“Dragon Rider,” says Frode, bowing his head to Hiccup just so. “To what do we owe the honor? Do you require food or rest for you and your dragon?” He, out of all of them, is certainly the least frightened of Hiccup and Toothless, but in his voice, there is still a noticeable anxiety, betrayed by both the nervous set of his massive shoulders and his overeager need to please.

“Oh, nothing like that, no. I was actually hoping to buy a boat from you.”

“A boat?”

“Why do you need a boat for, Rider?” Bodli asks. And, to be perfectly honest, out of all of them, she is probably the least frightened of the dragon and his rider. Hiccup has always found himself quite fond of her.

“I need to sail somewhere, Bodli.”

“Yeah, what about the dragon? Innit how you get places?”

Hiccup laughs. “Yes, normally he is, but this is a different kind of trip than usual.”

“Where are you going then?”

Chief Frode claps his hand down on his daughter’s shoulder and pulls her close to him. “I’m sorry about her, Dragon Rider,” he says quickly. “She asks too many questions at all the wrong times.”

“Not at all, Frode. Curiosity is not a flaw. And we were all eleven once.” Hiccup lists his head to the side again. “To answer your question, Bodli, I’m sailing home.”

Bodli, emboldened, steps again away from her father. “Where’s home, Rider? Is it a long way?”

Hiccup shrugs. “Not as far as it could be, but I return with gifts for my people. Too many to carry on Toothless’ back all the way.”

Her face lights up. “Things from your travels?” She asks with shining eyes. “Rider, please, can I see some of the things you’re to gift to your people?”

He can’t think of a good reason why not. Bodli reminds him of himself in a small way— an insatiable desire to know and see and understand flows through her veins, and he can see it. Hiccup smiles, a smile that is real and just for him, and turns to the beach. “Toothless!” He calls, beckoning the dragon with his hand. “Bodli, have you met Toothless already?”

“No, I—” she shrinks back towards her father as the dragon comes up the beach. “I— I haven’t met—”

“It’s okay,” Hiccup says softly when Toothless stops behind him on the dock. He hasn’t really understood what’s so frightening about Toothless in many, many years now, but he knows that no one can quite read him the way he can. To many, he’s still a wild animal. “Would you like to?”

“Dragon Rider,” Frode says sharply, putting himself between Toothless and his daughter. “I’m not sure if that’s a very good idea.”

Hiccup ignores him and looks at Bodli, who’s leaned around her father to look at Toothless. She catches Hiccup watching her and, somehow, the two of them manage to make eye contact. The curiosity that burns so brightly in her eyes is mystifying.

“I want to,” she declares, moving away from her father and cautiously closer to Hiccup and Toothless. “Can I meet him, Rider?”

“Of course. Hold out your palm to him and let him come to you, alright?”

Bodli nods and holds out her hand hopefully to Toothless. He considers her for a moment, cocking his head and flicking his ears. Bodli watches him back, unflinching. His eyes get big and he bumps his head against her hand. She yelps, but doesn’t move, a grin the size of the archipelago growing across her face. “Oh my Thor,” she whispers and Hiccup laughs again.

He takes one of his smaller saddle bags off of Toothless and opens it for Bodli. “Here, look,” he says, holding out a bronze disk to her. “This is an astrolabe I was given in Greece.” He releases it and the saddle bag into her insatiable hands and Frode clears his throat.

“You’ve long been a fascination of my daughter’s, Dragon Rider,” he says awkwardly, a watchful eye attached to Bodli.

Hiccup cocks his head— less of a smile, more of a confused motion, he thinks— and folds his hands behind his back. “I should probably apologize for that, shouldn’t I, Frode?”

He clicks his tongue. “No, no. Not yet anyway.” He smiles, a shy camaraderie in his eyes. “I’ll come knocking once she sets off on a boat in search of adventure beyond the archipelago, though.”

He chuckles politely and the two of them watch Bodli trace the stars engraved on the astrolabe with her fingertips quietly, her back pressed up against Toothless’ side. Hiccup wants to tell Frode that it’s not so bad out there in the great big world. There are beautiful places and clever people and fascinating dragons.

There is a part of the human soul that longs to be free, Hiccup has realized, and that freedom can be found in the open sea and sky, and in the company of perfect strangers.

But a great pain in his heart can’t bear to tell Bodli to ever leave her father’s side. She is loved here, that much is clear, and Hiccup couldn’t let himself convince her to give that up for something so small as an adventure.

Freedom, he sometimes thinks in quiet moments, might not be worth the price you have to pay for it.

“So, where do your people hail from, Dragon Rider?” Frode asks after a while. “Is there a whole village of strange creatures like you?”

“Afraid not,” Hiccup tells him good naturedly, by now used to being seen as something only tangentially human. “I’m just as much an oddity there as anywhere else.”

“Will they welcome you back, then?”

“Hard to say… It’s been a long time, hasn’t it?”

Frode studies him. Looks at him like he’s trying to see right through the helmet to his unguarded face. “Why go back, Dragon Rider?”

Hiccup shrugs, somehow unable to lie with Frode’s eyes burning holes into the sides of his mask. He trusts the old fisher, though, in a way that surprises him. “My father died,” he says. “Our tribe must mourn and, oddities or not, I suppose I’m still a part of it.” It’s a lot of information to give up— villages mourn for all deaths, sure, but there is a gravity to the confession that wasn’t quite intentional— but Hiccup feels less alone for having divulged it.

Frode’s face flickers through several different emotions in rapid succession, before it settles on a very diplomatic frown. “My condolences, Dragon Rider— I am truly, truly sorry that you must face such loss.”

“Ah,” Hiccup says stiffly. “Thank you.”

He nods and reaches into his pocket, producing a ring too small for any of his fingers. He takes Hiccup’s hand and presses it into his palm. “A gift,” he says. “For your chieftain. Wherever you call home, Dragon Rider, let me call myself your ally. In times of war and times of peace, the Deep End tribe of Old Ait is a friend of yours.”

On its face is the crest of the Deep Enders— a fish run through by a spear displayed across a tall evergreen tree. Hiccup stares at it in his palm, his breath stolen from his breast, letting the weight of it wash over him. Tokens of friendship do not come often to the Dragon Rider. They are always hard earned and easily lost. Never have they been so unconditional.

“You have always been kind to us,” Frode continues. “This village would have starved three times over if not for you and that dragon of yours, you know that. If ever a time arose that you needed anything, I hope you would call on me.”

“I… I would, Frode,” Hiccup says, tucking the ring away into a secure pocket. “Thank you. You know, always, I will be a friend to you as well.”

The chief nods and settles his great paw of a hand on Hiccup’s shoulder and tries to look him in the eye. “I may not know your name, lad, but I see what you’re made of,” he says very quietly. “You’re an odd man, Dragon Rider, but you are surely a worthy chief.”

A lightheadedness comes over Hiccup and something in him wants to rip off his helmet and let Frode see him for what he is. He wants to be known. Understood in some small way. It burns at him, tears up his insides with claws of iron.

“Woah,” Bodli interrupts breathlessly before he can do something recklessly stupid. “Rider, what’s this?”

He looks quickly away from Frode, blinking tears out of his eyes, and finds her holding up a sword with a wicked curved blade that she’s found strapped to Toothless’ saddle. The dragon nudges her in the belly as she swings the thing in a slow arc, pushing her ever so gently away from anywhere she could accidentally hit somebody.

“That,” says Hiccup, “is called a khopesh.”

“Khopesh…” Bodli echoes, keeping her eyes on the blade, entranced by the way it shines in the afternoon sunlight. “It’s beautiful.”

“The great pharaohs of the kingdom of Egypt carry them into battle. They’re said to be a gift from their gods.” The weapon looks good in her hand as she wields it, she’s unpracticed with a sword like this, but Hiccup can see absolute mastery over it in her future. “You know, Bodli, I think you oughta keep it.”

Her attention snaps to him, bewildered. “You… want to give it to me?” She asks with cautious excitement.

He nods, leaning his head.

Bodli’s eyes grow wide and she drops the khopesh, and she runs to him, throwing her arms around him and hugging him tightly. “Oh my Thor, thank you, Rider! Thank you, thank you, thank you!”

He hesitates, just for a moment, then hugs her back. He’s confused and delighted and taken aback, and Bodli’s joy is contagious.

The smile that pulls at him is so big it hurts.

“Let’s see about that boat, Dragon Rider,” says Frode when Bodli breaks away from Hiccup, resuming her interest in Toothless and the khopesh.

“Yes,” he says, all sorts of knots tangling and untangling in his stomach. “Yes, thank you.”

Chapter Text

Hiccup had not told Bodli the full truth of why he needed a boat for his journey. Not that he tells the full truth to anyone, really.

Toothless is certainly a consideration, as he always is, but mostly Hiccup has decided that, in order to communicate peace to his people, he must not arrive with the dragon directly.

It makes sense, then, that he comes to Berk, at first, under cover of dark, maneuvering his boat through the heavy late-winter fog to a cove tucked away on the far south side of the island. It’s small, cold, and abandoned and more than perfect for sneaking around.

He beaches the boat and begins climbing out, beckoning for Toothless to follow.

Here they stand, on the precipice of something that could get them both killed if they’re not careful.

Hiccup has feared for his life before. He has lived more last days than has ever seemed fair. He has stared death down, and he has flinched but not faltered.

This, though, is the most terrified he’s ever been. The fear only hits him when his feet touch the sand. This is home. This is Berk. This is the place part of him wondered for five years if he’d ever see again.

The specter of death has felt impersonal as it loomed over him everywhere else, but here—

Hiccup has never been enough here. Always, he has been looked upon with scorn, the son of an unfortunate Stoick the Vast. A mistake to be pushed to the side lest he cause damage, lest he touch something he shouldn’t and ruin it.

Here, on Berk, in this place that he should’ve been able to call home, all he has ever been is a failure.

And isn’t that a kick in the fucking teeth.

Five years and what he thinks must be a respectable amount of personal growth later, and still this island makes him feel small and wretched. Like less than what he knows himself to be.

He could die here, never having been anything to these people or this village or this island.

Toothless warbles kindly and Hiccup shifts his helmet up to wipe an errant tear from his cheek. How it got there is really none of his business.

“Thanks, bud,” he says, petting his big black nose.

He swings himself into the saddle quietly and they take off, headed for the highest peak on the island. As they fly, he wills himself not to look down at the sleeping village below. He can’t look, he won’t look. Not yet. If he doesn’t look, for just a little longer he can pretend that this isn’t really happening.

“Alright, bud, you’re gonna stay up here, okay?” They land, Toothless’ feet soft and soundless against the grass and rock. “I’ll call you down when I need you.” As if Hiccup won’t need him the moment the sun comes up.

He dismounts and locks Toothless’ prosthetic tail in the neutral glide position before giving the dragon’s head a solid pat to steady himself.

This is a terrible plan.

It catches him around the middle and knocks the wind out of him when he turns— this really, really is a terrible plan. Below him, sprawling, is Berk, the village of the Hooligan tribe. It’s bigger than he remembers, though not by that much, but even the buildings he doesn’t recognize are older than they have any right being.

Five or so years older, if he had to guess.

Distantly, there is a joy— soft and tiny. A pride in himself and the fact that perhaps he hasn’t always failed this island or its people.

It remains a terrible plan, but maybe— hopefully— his love for them will pull him through.

Still, he stands above the half-finished carving at the doors to the Great Hall. His father’s eyes watch over the dreaming Norsemen of Berk as though protecting them, even in death. A lookout from Valhalla.

Hiccup stows all thought of Valhalla and Valkyries and dead chieftains away. When the sun rises, he will be forced to face them, but until the moment comes that he must, he will not think of them at all.

The wind whips around him like an omen from the gods. Take heed, little one, it whispers, and go forward carefully; the path before you is the true course of your life.

All Hiccup hears is don’t fuck this up like everything else.

He gives Toothless one final scratch under the chin, then runs and jumps off the cliff, catching himself on handmade wings and letting the wind carry him back down the cove. He lands in the icy water, not trusting his legs to fall right on the sand, and swims back to shore, letting his arms and the waves do most of the work. The current, mercifully, is with him.

Hiccup reboards his boat and sails it back out of the cove and away from Berk.

The boat comes with the sunrise. It rides in from the south-east, flying a sail bearing no crest, colored gold and orange with the light of the new day.

Someone sounds a horn and the whole tribe comes out from their houses as the night dies to watch from the cliffs. It’s quiet in a way that makes Astrid shake something awful. She wants to shout and break the silence, wants to clap her hands and slam doors— anything to ease the pressure building in her chest.

She does none of these things. She stands, instead, still and quiet as death, with her people at her back, unprepared for what this day will bring.

A baby wails somewhere in the crowd and the dam breaks. Young parents mutter to each other about their restless nights and children come together to take bets on which myths are true and which aren’t— a sword made of human bones and flaming eyes are the big ticket items, it seems.

It’s absurd.

All of this, everything. It’s insanity enough to end the world and Astrid feels tears prick in her eyes and a laugh bubble in her stomach.

The sun and the cliff and the solitary boat out on the waves— it all feels like a drawing in a book, like a woven tapestry, the codification of some strange ancient story that’s been passed down through the long history of the Hooligan tribe. The man on the back of a dragon returning home by way of sea is just a character whose story will serve to teach a lesson.

The moral, as of now, is unclear.

The boat drifts to the docks below and the village looks to Astrid expectantly.

“Gobber,” she says softly. “Will you come with me?”

“Of course, lass.”

“Snotlout, keep everyone here for now.”

“Astrid, what if he—“

“I’ll handle it if it comes to that,” she decides. Part of her still wonders if she could actually do it— really kill Hiccup— but as she and Gobber begin their descent to the docks, she realizes that if Hiccup would come here to kill them, then he isn’t the same person she’d known.

The safety of the tribe behind her is more important than the memory of a boy with kind eyes and a compassionate heart. The axe slung across her shoulder is no longer just for show. She will, if she must, put an end to all of this.

The silhouette docking the boat is almost eerie enough to make Astrid turn back and run— it’s human in loose shape only, drawn in long lines and sharp angles, looming tall over its own shadow.

They draw closer.

There is no face to the creature, only a mask made of black and brown leathers, embossed with the dark and shining scales of a dragon, and it’s a profile she recognizes from the briefest glimpse of a wanted poster that had made its way into Berk a while back. Upon its brown leather pauldron, the crest from the letter— a black dragon curling in on itself, one tail fin painted red.

The creature shifts on its feet and—

There was, years ago, a rumor of a rumor that floated in from the archipelago about the one legged man who was more dragon than viking and the thought it could be true—

Astrid and Gobber stop a few paces away from where he stands and for a long while they watch each other, waiting for the first move to be made. She forces herself not to reach out to the familiar man beside her, wishing quietly that he would draw her behind himself and protect her from the beast before them.

Eventually, the Dragon Rider makes the move, reaching very slowly for the dagger sheathed upon his arm. He seizes it, one hand outstretched in a placating sort of way, by the pommel with two fingers and lays it with a gentle thunk on the wooden planks between them.

He moves cautiously in the manner of a wild animal, stooping low to the ground, making himself small despite his height. He keeps his face turned away from Astrid and Gobber, leaving himself exposed to any attack they could surprise him with in an act that can’t be anything but fully intentional. From a hook on his belt, the Dragon Rider withdraws what appears to be the hilt of a sword, no blade upon it. This, too, he discards on the ground before he pulls himself back upright and lists his head to the side.

It is quiet among them once more.

“You came by boat,” Astrid says at last, breath coming short.

The Dragon Rider nods once.

“Why?”

He looks past her, up above her head. She whips around to follow his eyes and sees the tribe up on the cliff, staring down at them, their faces, even at the distance, apprehensive and fearful.

“Oh. Right.” When she turns back, she finds him watching her again, eyeless. “Will you take off the helmet?” She asks, heart pounding.

He hesitates, hand coming up to cover the cheek of his mask and she swears she can hear his breath catch.

“Please?” She says, barely loud enough to be heard. “Hiccup?”

He nods again, slow and uncertain, ducking his head and creeping the thing up with both hands and raising his head and then—

There he is.

Hiccup, the same in as many ways as he is different. He’s grown into his face, she can see, but his eyes are still as frightfully wide as they ever were, brilliantly green like the leaves of a sapling. His hair is wilder, like he’s caught in a windstorm even though the air is calm, but still he is himself.

His eyes flicker between Astrid and Gobber and back again like he doesn’t know which of them to address first. Like he’s searching them for the words he’s supposed to say.

Whatever it is he’s looking for, though, he finds, because he opens his mouth and says in a voice so familiar yet distant, “I— I— I brought gifts.” He gestures to the boat behind him. The little stutter, it appears, he has not grown out of. “For the tribe. If— If you’ll accept them.”

“Gifts,” she repeats, dumbfounded. “Gifts?”

Hiccup’s face brightens in a hurried kind of way like he’s some merchant or another trying to hawk his wares at the market. “Yes. I— There’s a lot of places I’ve been and—“ He pulls a large basket from the deck of his boat and drops it onto the dock, then goes back for another one, talking all the while. “Well, some of them were given to me as— as gifts, you know, and some of them are things I bought. Quite a bit is just knickknacks and things, but they’re from far-flung lands like you could never dream of— these beautiful places— All that to say, I didn’t want to come empty handed—“

He’s brought them gifts.

Astrid wants to cry. She doesn’t— not yet— but the lump forms in her throat, blocking the words she wants to say from escaping. Words that sound like thank you and why and your face is still kind in all the ways I remember.

Gobber speaks, saving Astrid from herself. “You’ve grown up, lad,” he says, his voice breaking.

Hiccup stops his rambling and looks back at them, and the way his eyes shift to the side is embarrassed and, somehow, apologetic. “I, uh— I suppose I have. Haven’t I?”

“And what happened here?” He asks, gesturing to Hiccup’s left leg.

He looks down like he’s surprised they even noticed the prosthetic at all, lifting it slightly off the ground and examining it. “Fought a bear,” he says after careful consideration of its intricate metalwork.

”You’re lying,” Astrid says before she can stop herself.

He grins, looking suddenly exactly like the fifteen year old boy she remembers him as— brash and playful and defiant. “Of course I am.”

She isn’t going to get a straight answer out of him, she can tell. Not for a while yet.

Instead of pressing for the truth or asking any questions she knows he won’t answer, Astrid stoops down to where Hiccup’s weapons lie. She collects them in her arms and examines them— the dagger is largely unremarkable, though it is certainly very well made, but it’s the bladeless hilt that draws the greater part of her attention.

Both the guard and the pommel are fashioned after the head of a dragon and she supposes, allowing for artistic interpretation, that it might be a Hideous Zippleback, its two heads joined by the neck of the handle.

“Be careful,” Hiccup warns as Astrid’s fingers find a small latch on the pommel.

She nods slowly, acknowledging him, but she flicks the latch aside anyway. The hinged jaw of the pommel falls open and Hideous Zippleback gas erupts from the thing’s mouth, filling the immediate air around her with clouds of green stink. She wrinkles her nose and pushes the latch back closed before flipping the hilt over and finding a small lever hidden at the base of the guard.

Hiccup is upon her before she can pull the lever, moving faster than she would have expected he could, all things considered. She flinches, about to reach for her axe, but all he does is cover the guard with his palm. He doesn’t take the hilt from her though, which she thinks she finds surprising.

“Be careful,” he says again, his voice very soft. Their eyes catch for just a moment, but he looks quickly away, gently taking her by the arm and guiding her away from the Zippleback gas, very careful not to touch the sliver of exposed skin of her forearm. He releases her and takes his hand off the guard, taking a step back. “Alright, go ahead.”

Astrid’s finger moves back to the lever, but she doesn’t pull it down. Disarming himself, she can understand. But letting her mess around with his weapons— that he had to have made himself— while he stands vulnerable and unarmed?

She wonders, not for the first time since seeing the boat on the horizon, where Toothless is right now.

When Astrid finally does flip the switch, she nearly drops the whole thing in her surprise. A blade, sharp and flaming, explodes out of the hilt; heat rolls off of it as the fire dances and it’s all she can do to watch the bright orange glow.

The light catches on Hiccup’s face and he’s smiling at her. Not a grin, nothing so big as that, but smiling in a soft sort of way. The sun is higher now, pulling the full morning along with it and dimming the fire in contrast, but still—

Still, when the wind blows, gentle and patient, the flames light him up with a brilliant sense, as though all of the light in the universe is somewhere inside him, hiding.

The children’s bets may not have been so foolish after all.

“Did you make that yourself, lad?” Gobber asks loudly and the smiling stops and wind fades.

“Yes.” Hiccup’s eyes stay on Astrid. The fire about him remains, even as the wind goes. “The blade is coated in Monstrous Nightmare gel,” he explains, the Zippleback gas evident on its own.

“Gel?” He asks. “What gel?”

Hiccup, it’s clear, has already forgotten more about dragons than every Norseman alive or dead has ever even thought to wonder. “It’s how they set themselves on fire,” he says patiently, his hands folded neatly behind his back. “Their scales excrete and light it.”

Astrid doesn’t ask how he came to learn this in the first place or how he could get so close to the one of the most fearsome dragons alive and persuade it to give up some part of itself for him.

“It’s a matter of trust,” he says, answering her anyway.

She presses the lever back into place and the blade retracts, leaving nothing but the sharp smell of burning behind, and she holds it out to him.

He gives her a quizzical look, like he expected for her to keep hold of his weapons for the rest of time, but, very slowly, he reaches out and takes it from her. Their fingers slide against each other as they pass the fire-sword between them, and Astrid watches, fascinated, as his eyes widen and his lower lip tucks between his teeth at even the slightest touch.

Hiccup replaces the hilt upon his belt and his hands are shaking.

They haven’t killed him yet.

Astrid— Gods, Astrid, how can so much change? How can it feel like so little? Five years and her eyes still burn with an intensity to put lightning to shame— hadn’t even made a move for the axe she carries with her.

Hiccup wonders, fearful in a way he’d forgotten to be last night, what she’s said about him and Toothless to the rest of the village. Surely she hasn’t, for five years, held his secrets so close to her chest.

He wonders what knowledge his father died with.

And just like that, the Valkyries come riding back into his mind with their ravens and bloody spears, bringing with them all the thoughts he’d rather not think.

Now, as the three of them unpack some of his things from his boat, is not the time, but eventually Hiccup will have to ask how his father died.

There have been times, too many to count, that Hiccup has thought that he would be the first of the two of them to Valhalla. That he would greet Stoick the enhieri his father never thought he could become. That they, in death, could come to respect each other.

They may have a chance still, but it will be a while yet.

Maybe.

“We can have someone come down for the rest later,” Astrid says, a basket tucked under each arm.

“That— That’s alright,” he tells her, shouldering two baskets of his own. “I can get them.”

She looks at him— and, really, he thinks, the spirit of Thor himself must reside in her eyes because her gaze strikes him like a bolt of lightning, leaving him feeling raw and electric— then nods. “Later, at least.”

“Later,” he agrees.

“Should we announce him?” Gobber asks Astrid as they all begin to leave the docks. He, too, has changed in just as many ways as he hasn’t. There’s a tiredness to him that Hiccup noticed immediately. The vibrancy about him that he remembers from their long days shared in the forge is faded.

Maybe he’s just grieving.

Hiccup looks up again to the cliffs above him. “Oh, I think they know I’m here,” he says. And they do.

Their eyes follow him, piercing even so far away. It’s all he can do not to shrink away as they tower above him, looking but not seeing. The feeling that this is a very bad plan sets in again and a powerful gale crashes against the sheer rock face as violently as the sea.

But, all the same, what a figure they cut— the Hooligan tribe upon the cliff, one great eye to witness the morning.

Every step closer to them hurts him somehow. Something about it feels like learning to walk again— an ache where he doesn’t expect there to be one. A fear of falling. The place in his belly that fills with seasick anticipation when he starts to lift his foot to take another step.

It’s not physical, not exactly, but it drags at him like it wants to be.

Dread, he realizes. The fear has abated, but the dread has swollen like a stream in the springtime, flooding the bounds of its own banks and rushing down the mountainside uncaringly.

Death is something easy to understand, but—

The challenge he expected hasn’t come to pass. His gifts are being accepted without questions. He is being presented to the tribe, not as a sacrifice or an offering, but as a solution. A new gear to replace the one that’s been lost.

Death and rejection are easy to understand. Simple to prepare for. Death comes and you are no more, rejection comes and you move on. But this isn’t that.

Some strange part of him wishes it was.

Because he will, now, be expected to explain himself. He will have to say things he’s said before— five years ago he said everything he could, but it hadn’t been enough and it couldn’t have been enough and it won’t be enough.

Hiccup is, in many ways, more a dragon than a person. This he’s been told, this he understands. 

He supposes that it’s true.

When it comes to people, after all, his weaknesses flaunt themselves. Even before he left Berk all those years ago, he wasn’t someone to conversate with. Not someone to come to for explanations or justifications or reasons why.

But now, of course, he will speak and be spoken to and what he says will be taken to heart and peeled apart for intonations and inconsistencies.

This, he does not yet know if any of them understand.

The first person Hiccup sees, really sees beyond the facelessness of the crowd gathered just outside the village, is his cousin.

Snotlout has grown taller, has grown wider, has grown fearful. It’s odd to see him like this, so clearly struggling to hold Hiccup’s gaze when their eyes lock onto each other, looking much smaller, despite the growth, than he used to.

Hiccup realizes, slowly then all at once, how much taller he has gotten in the past five years. Snotlout used to tower over him, as imposing as the cliffs, but now Hiccup stands a full head above him or more.

 Clearly, like with Astrid and Gobber, Snotlout and the rest of the village are all waiting for Hiccup to move first, like he’s some sort of caged beast they’re waiting to kill.

That they’re all afraid of him makes him feel a sort of way that he can’t fully comprehend. Sick to the stomach with worry and, somehow, giddy and excited like a child. He hates it and, though every part of him itches to fly away now and never ever return, he unloads the baskets from his shoulder, takes a deep breath, and holds out his hand to Snotlout.

It hangs in the air for a long, long time, hopeful and empty and Snotlout watches it as if it’s holding a weapon to his throat. Hiccup almost drops it, almost gives it up and flies away, but Astrid sets her baskets on the ground with deliberate forcefulness, her eyes burning.

Snotlout caves like wet sand and takes Hiccup’s hand and shakes it. “Welcome home,” he says like it’s a curse on all of their heads.

Hiccup wants to scream. “Thanks,” he says instead. His hand feels like it’s burning.

“We’ll have a feast tonight,” Astrid announces. “In honor of Stoick the Vast and his son, Hiccup. Returned from his… travels.”

Travels. Travels like he went away to find himself, a journey he took on purpose, always knowing where his North Star, his true home, was. Travels. Like it hasn’t been an open wound since day one.

That everyone else cringes when he does is cold comfort.

“Sounds lovely,” says Hiccup awkwardly because there’s nothing else to say that isn’t going to start a fight.

Astrid smiles tightly and seizes Snotlout by the arm, growling something unintelligible and menacing in his ear and pointing in the direction of the Great Hall. He nods, meek as a child, and, with a fleeting fearful glance back at Hiccup, leaves the cliffs.

“He and I are going to prepare,” Astrid explains. “For the feast.”

“Of course,” says Hiccup. “For the feast.”

“Fishlegs, twins, help Hiccup with the rest of the baskets. Everyone else, about your business!”

The tribe is hesitant to disband, but they do, lingering and looking all the while. Astrid gives Hiccup a last look, a tight jaw and a nod that he can’t fully decipher, then heads off to the Great Hall.

“Come by the forge if you get the chance,” Gobber says abruptly as he’s about to go, looking very much at war with himself over saying anything at all. “You’ll tell me all about that sword of yours.”

“I— Sure.” Hiccup nods. “Sure.”

Gobber nods back, then goes, leaving Hiccup alone with Ruffnut, Tuffnut, Fishlegs, and the baskets.

They stare at him and he stares back, all of them unsure.

“Do you remember the way?” Fishlegs asks. “To your— to the chief’s house, I mean,” he clarifies nervously when Hiccup frowns.

The frown, unfortunately, deepens. “Oh. Of course I do.”

Ruffnut sighs and takes up a basket. “Wasting daylight here, people.”

Hiccup half leads them in the direction of his father’s house, refusing to let himself look anywhere but straight ahead. Eventually, though, the house is what’s straight ahead of him— which is just his luck— and the sight of it makes his stomach churn.

He stops at the bottom of the stairs and the others do not, carrying on to the front door and shoving it open like there isn’t an unending, bottomless pit of darkness on the other side.

There isn’t. He knows there isn’t. It’s got a floor.

Hiccup forces himself forward, counting his steps. Up the stairs— one, two, three, four, five. To the door— one, two. Over the threshold—

It’s one step over the threshold and the smell of his father’s home is the same as it was five years ago. Hiccup feels weak in the knees, suddenly.

“You look like you’re gonna fall over,” says Tuffnut, as unhelpful as Hiccup remembers him being.

“Shut up, Tuffnut,” Fishlegs snaps.

Hiccup shuts the door behind him, only letting himself lean back on it for a second before forcing himself forward again.

The hearth’s out— of course it’s out, nobody’s lived here in weeks, there’s no need to have a fire in an empty house— and he bites down on the instinct to ask Toothless to light it. Ruff kneels on the floor beside it and strikes a piece of flint until it sparks while her brother and Fishlegs watch Hiccup cautiously. He sets aside his baskets and frowns.

“Do you think I’m gonna try and kill you or something?” He asks bluntly.

“Where are all the dragons?” Asks Tuffnut. “I was kinda banking on there being dragons, like, flying around your head. In circles.”

“In circles,” he repeats.

“Yeah. Circles. Where the fuck are they?”

Hiccup lets himself smile just a little bit and extends his arms out to each side. Tuffnut and Fishlegs both flinch, but it’s only a shrug. “Sorry to disappoint.”

“Maybe, maybe that’s for the best,” Fishlegs says hurriedly, this strange, petrified smile stuck to his face. “Right? Leave the dragons to do what— whatever it is that dragons do. On days like this.”

Hiccup eyes him, frowning again and tilting his head like he’s still wearing his helmet. “If you say so.”

The fire finally catches in the hearth with, perhaps, a little too much urgency and all four of them jump right out of their skin when it does, the whooshing sound shocking them so badly that Tuffnut drops the basket he had been holding.

“Thank you for doing that, Ruffnut,” Hiccup says awkwardly. “I could’ve done it.”

She shrugs and stands up. “Astrid said help you.”

“With the baskets.”

She shrugs again. “You closed the door.” Before he can say anything else, she picks up the thread her brother had dropped. “So, where are the dragons?”

Fishlegs winces and Hiccup says, “Not here,” because, well, they aren’t here, are they.

“Fine. Where’s your leg?”

“Not here,” he says again because it certainly isn’t.

Ruffnut glares a hole right through him. “I guess it just walked off then.”

“I fought a bear,” he tells her, reusing the same excuse from earlier and tucking her comment away in his mind to use as an excuse later. He thinks he finds it funny.

“Hardcore,” Tuffnut says at the same time as Fishlegs says, “That can’t possibly be true.”

“Oh, it’s not.”

“What’s your game here, Betrayer?” Ruffnut continues, addressing Hiccup with a strange title and unmasked vitriol. “You show up— no dragons, no leg, no burning the village to the ground, no explanations. We know what you’re about around here, so there’s no use pretending you aren’t exactly what you are.”

Hiccup’s heart rattles. Here, now, is the challenge he has been waiting for. He braces himself and allows himself to regret closing the door. All four of them are armed, but it doesn’t really matter. He may as well not be for all he wants to fight them. “And what am I?”

Her lip curls.

“Ah.” He nods once. “Understood.” This is something he already knows of himself.

“If it were up to me, you wouldn’t be here.” She tosses aside the flint carelessly. “You don’t belong here. But Astrid said give you a chance.”

A chance. A chance?

“So you’ll get your chance. But the moment you do something I don’t like, that chance is fucking gone.” Ruffnut snaps her fingers. “Like that. Astrid wants to be soft on you, fine. I guess you can count yourself lucky. But I’m not gonna be.”

“Your loyalty to her is certainly something to admire.”

“Astrid Hofferson is the absolute best of us,” Ruffnut says, jutting her chin, daring him to challenge. “You included.”

And that’s something Hiccup has never doubted or wondered about. “I think I can handle the rest of the things from the boat,” he says, carefully edging away from the door to allow them a clear path that isn’t through him.

Tuffnut slings his arm around his sister’s shoulders and guides her right back out the front door without looking at Hiccup.

Fishlegs stays, hands clasped tightly together, lips pressed in a very thin line. He says nothing.

Hiccup indicates the door as gently as he can with his head, hoping to come off as kind rather than forceful. There’s no way to tell if it reads even remotely how he wants to, but Fishlegs does give him a wary look.

“I— uhm—“ Fishlegs starts haltingly.

“I’m sure Ruffnut’s gotten the whole point across already,” says Hiccup. “No need to threaten me a second time.”

He waves his hands frantically. “I wasn’t—! No, I just— I wanted to say that… it’s good to see you again. Yeah. It’s good to see you again… Hiccup.”

“Oh.” Oh.

“I’m not… I’m not fully in agreement with the others. So you know.”

“Oh?” Hiccup asks uselessly, his thoughts starting to get away from him.

“Astrid and I… Well, I guess it doesn’t matter.” Fishlegs flattens his palms against his thighs and walks past Hiccup to the door. “I’m sorry for overstaying my welcome.”

He shuts the door in a hurry, leaving Hiccup feeling as though whatever he was going to say mattered quite a bit.

“I just don’t like it,” Snotlout complains for what has to be the hundredth time in the past ten minutes. “I don’t trust him.”

“I know that, Snotlout,” Astrid reminds him, having given up on doing anything more than listening passively and nodding along where it counts.

He glares at her, which she thinks is rather unproductive, his nose all scrunched up in that displeased way that it does when he knows he’s acting like a child but isn’t willing to admit it.

She glares right back— also unproductive— and decides against saying anything else on the matter. If he wants to whine like a scared little kid, she’ll let him. It is, in fact, an unremarkably common part of her day already to listen to Snotlout moan about one thing or another.

“Also, what the hell about threatening me earlier? The fuck was that, Astrid?”

Astrid sighs. “I wasn’t threatening you, muttonhead, all I said was you’d better get your ass up to the Hall before I beat the shit out of you.”

“That’s a threat!”

She ignores him and leaves the main room to collect a broom from the little storage room next to the great big Hall kitchen.

“Maybe we can poison him,” Snotlout says, following her and letting her shove another broom into his hands even though they both know he’s not going to do anything with it. “How’s your cooking?”

“I already said we’re not killing him, didn’t I?”

“We really need to be on the same page right now, you know? A united front.”

“So unite with me on something other than assassination.”

“No— what? No, forget the poison. What-fucking-ever.” He trails after her with the broom back into the Hall. “I mean threatening me. We can’t be weak like that, okay? He’ll tear us right down if he even starts to think he can turn us against each other.”

Astrid bites down hard in her tongue because the thought of turning against Snotlout, in this moment, is incredibly tempting and the impulse to tell him so is overwhelming.

“We’re on the same team,” Snotlout finishes. “Right?”

She sighs. Tells herself not to say anything about how they’re all on the same team. Tells herself not to tell him he doesn’t know what he’s talking about. That he sounds like a child trying to play Maces and Talons without understanding the rules. “Of course we are, Snotlout.”

The Hall doors swing open and in march the twins, Fishlegs behind them. Tuff has an arm around his sister’s shoulder and they both look more high strung than they did the last time she saw them all of twenty minutes ago.

“Did he attack you?” Snotlout asks immediately, lacking, as usual, all common sense.

“Oh, for fuckssake,” says Fishlegs, then quits the conversation before it even begins, going off to the kitchens without another word.

“He’s bad news,” Ruffnut informs them, sitting down on the table top and crossing her arms. “I don’t trust him, and, Astrid, neither should you.”

“I knew it!” Snotlout exclaims. “He threatened you, didn’t he? Attacked? I knew we should’ve just made a plan to—”

“Enough!” Astrid throws down her broom and puts her hands on her hips. “Odin’s fucking eyeball, you three.”

“Hey!” Says Tuffnut, insulted.

“Tell me what actually happened. Please.”

Ruff shakes her head. “Nothing happened. But something’s going to. You can see it in his eyes, Astrid, he’s shifty. Up to something. He’s going to try and take us by surprise and we need to be ready. We can’t let him catch us off guard. Ever.”

More than anything, Astrid wants to talk to Hiccup. Alone, just the two of them, away from the rest of the tribe. Now that she’s seen him again, it’s all she can think about— Hiccup and Astrid, alone with the knowledge and understanding they share.

It’s not going to happen, of course, but the thought of it consumes her.

“I don’t know if I believe that,” she says finally. “Maybe he’s just…” She frowns. “Normal.”

Tuff scoffs. “The Dragon King? Normal?”

She doesn’t know what to say.

“We’re just trying to protect you,” Ruff tells her, her voice as gentle as she seems able to manage. “I don’t know why you’re so set on this working out—”

“I get it,” Astrid interrupts tightly, feeling patronized.

Ruffnut isn’t as deterred as Astrid would’ve liked for her to be. “If you really don’t want to be chief that badly, you could just let—”

“That’s not what this is about,” she snaps, letting a quick bout of temper get the better of her tone. She tamps it down and tries to calm down, but she feels that she’s trapped herself up against a wall and there’s no way for her to explain her way out without incriminating herself in something far worse than fear of the chiefdom. “That’s not what this is about,” she says again, then absolves herself of all feast related responsibilities for the rest of the day. “I’m taking a walk.”

Astrid leaves the Great Hall with her jaw set, frustrated tears pricking in her eyes.

Hiccup finds Gobber in the forge, as expected, and thinks only for a moment to feel like an imposition before the comfort of being surrounded by work and tools and metal and flame takes over and he feels himself relax quite a bit more than he has since first receiving word of his father’s death.

The place is much the same as he left it, he supposes. Berk is still an island of warriors, after all, and weapons must always be ready to wield. Swords and axes and warhammers, in various stages of creation, are strewn across a few workbenches; shields in need of painting hang from the walls, and plastered between them are design sketches and rough plans for inventions still half imagined.

Gobber at the center of it all, as much a part of the forge as the bellows, breathing life into everything with a skill Hiccup is, after all this time, still in awe of.

“Gobber,” he greets from the front window, not daring enough to invite himself in.

Gobber looks up from his workbench and an uneasy glint comes into his eye when he sees Hiccup. “All settled then?” He asks, his hand going to the top of his prosthetic— a hammer that Hiccup is sure is being considered as a possible weapon.

“Yes.” Hiccup presses his palms flat on the windowsill. “Yes, all settled.”

“No trouble with it?”

Hiccup curls his fingers into the wood, but keeps his face still. “No trouble at all.”

“Well, that’s alright then.”

He taps his fingers once and takes a sharp breath in, wishing again for the comfort of Toothless by his side. “So, you got a new apprentice, or what?” He asks, trying for a smile. It’s all teeth, he knows. A smile that threatens and challenges— teeth bared, hackles raised, growl in throat.

He doesn’t mean for it to be, but he knows. He knows.

He’s not made for smiling, anyway.

Gobber lets his hand fall away from the hammer, though, like he’s no longer threatened. “No,” he says with a little shake of the head. “Just me around here for quite a while. Quiet.”

“Quiet,” Hiccup agrees.

He screws up his nose. “You can come in.”

It isn’t worth asking if he’s sure, Hiccup thinks, going to the door and entering the forge proper before he can think better of it. The familiarity of it drapes itself around his shoulders like a soft blanket that smells of soot and tangy metals. Hiccup’s own island— Dragons’ Edge, he calls it— is itself home to a forge of quite considerable size, but its homey familiarity, he realizes, can’t compare to the place where he first learned how to properly hold a hammer.

“Haven’t made anything fancy lately,” Gobber says like he’s embarrassed by the work that surrounds him, as though he thinks it may be impressive, but not astounding.

Hiccup withdraws his sword from his belt and lays it, disengaged, across the table nearest him. He and Gobber stand face to face with the sword between them.

“Do you want me to tell you how I made it?” Hiccup whispers conspiratorially.

Gobber lights up like the sky. “Tell me everything.”

And so he does.

Chapter Text

Astrid goes for her walk. Finds herself on the other side of the village completely, nearby the forge and Gothi’s hut.

She has an impulse, naturally, to go and seek Hiccup out, go find him at the Chief’s hut or the forge, and speak with him. Unburden herself of five years of secrets. Discover what time has taken away from the both of them.

She doesn’t act on it.

Underneath Gothi’s hut is a good, hidden place to sit and think.

She feels sick. But she can’t help but wonder why.

She’d expected this, hadn’t she? Resistance? Confusion? Astrid has spent five years alone in her knowing more than anyone else. She should be used to this by now, shouldn’t she?

But he’d brought them gifts. He’d disarmed himself. Exposed the vulnerable skin on the back of his neck.

He’d reached out and asked Snotlout to shake his hand.

Astrid presses the heels of her palms to her eyes and rubs until she can see stars. Snotlout. Gods.

She doesn’t know what she’s supposed to do about him. She sees a fear in the eyes of all her friends, but the fear in his eyes is so different from the others and she can’t put together why.

Snotlout is no coward.

He may be twitchy and volatile and prone to fits of insanity, but when it counts, Astrid knows she can always rely on him. She knows that he is kind.

Maybe this is just too much to ask. Of all of them.

Gods, she really does feel sick.

They’re all just trying to protect her, like Ruff said, but all they’ve really managed to do is make her feel as though she’s the untrustworthy one. Everything feels so deeply and irreversibly unfair.

“Astrid?”

She nearly jumps out of her skin, wheeling around with her fists raised and her eyes wide.

“Sorry,” Fishlegs says, ducking under the stairs to join Astrid in her hiding spot. “Tuff said you stormed off and I figured I’d find you here.”

“It’s okay,” she replies, scooting over so he can take a seat next to her. “I’m just… trying not to lose my mind.”

Fishlegs looks at her. Studies her with open curiosity and interest, like he’s trying to read a book in a language he doesn’t quite understand yet. Astrid lets him. Secrets, probably, will all come out soon.

“You really believe this will all work out,” he says— a statement, not a question.

She crosses her arms and squeezes her shoulders tightly, folding into herself the best she can.

“Why?” Fishlegs asks.

“It’s complicated,” she tells him.

“Everything’s complicated.”

Astrid blows her bangs out of her eyes and squeezes tighter around her shoulders. “It’s not my place to say,” she amends quietly. “I need to talk to Hiccup. Just me and him.”

“Why haven’t you?”

“It’s complicated,” she says again, feeling very useless. “Everything’s complicated.”

Astrid hasn’t been sleeping well. Maybe that’s a part of it. If she told Fishlegs, he’d probably say so.

Her head hurts.

“If—” Fishlegs begins before swallowing the rest of his words.

Astrid doesn’t know what to do with if.

“It’s fine,” she tells him. “I’m going to figure this out. I’m going to make this work.”

He nods and they’re both very distant; far away from each other and Gothi’s hut and reality, probably.

Hiccup’s easy rapport with Gobber doesn’t return in full force, but it does return. In small ways.

But it feels… good. It feels good like this forge had always felt before— late nights spent drawing up designs and sweating over hot metal, creating things and learning how they worked as they went along.

“It’s a really simple mechanism,” Hiccup says. He has an empty Zippleback gas cartridge in one hand and is indicating a hidden point in his sword’s hilt with the other. “When you engage the switch, the rod inside here flips the lid of the cartridge open. After that, it’s just a matter of ignition.”

“D’you use it often?” Gobber asks with an unreadable look in his eye.

Hiccup hesitates. His fingers tighten around the hilt, the weight of it comfortable and familiar in his hand. Against his will, his mind dregs up things he’s trying very hard to forget— green tinged arrowheads, shackles and cages, a blue helmet wet with blood, flames dancing in the eyes of a dying man.

Aimless and directionless rage. An anger vast and unending and impossible to sate. The sky is full of smoke— always, it’s always been filled with smoke— and it’s all Hiccup can do to keep breathing in anyway, even though his lungs burn and all he wants to do is exhale every last flame trapped inside himself and burn everything around him to the ground.

“It makes a good torch,” he says eventually. “Good firestarter. For camping out.”

Gobber just nods, saying nothing of the distant fires he must see behind Hiccup’s eyes. “How—“ He too hesitates, but the light in his eyes is one of insatiable curiosity, bright like new daylight, not harsh like flame. “How do you get it?” He asks. “From the dragons?”

This— this is easier to answer. It is, of course, another invention of Hiccup’s own devising. He replaces his sword upon his belt, withdraws his charcoal pencil from its sheath, and draws a rough sketch of the contraption he calls a gas mask. It’s a wide bowl, big enough to fit the head of a Zippleback, with a long pipe connecting it to a holding tank.

“The Zippleback puts their right head in here and exhales the gas,” he explains easily, pointing at the bowl and tracing the line of the pipe. “Since it’s so heavy, it just sinks down into the collection tank, and I’ll just shut the valve before it can dissipate. There’s a nozzle on the tank that connects to the cartridges and a pump to force the gas out.”

Gobber is still looking at him weird. Like he’s done something wrong. It takes all of Hiccup’s willpower not to shrink, not to curl his fingers into a fist and duck his head away. He holds steady Gobber’s gaze.

“And it’ll do it?” He asks finally. “Whatever you tell it to do?”

“I—” Hiccup lets his eyes slide away from Gobber’s and he searches the room around them, a little bit desperate to change the subject. His eyes catch on something shoved back in a dark corner of the already dark room— his ancient bola launcher device. The thing that started all of this in the first place. But now, at least, Hiccup knows who he is. What he is. A dragon in everything but skin. “It’s more like asking a favor from a friend,” he says with a confidence he doesn’t know if he feels.

Gobber’s expression doesn’t change.

“I should probably go back,” Hiccup decides awkwardly. “Unpack. Get ready for the feast. And, uh—”

“I’ll see you at the feast.”

He all but runs out of the forge.

Astrid and Fishlegs part ways quietly and without goodbyes, and Astrid goes, before she can doubt herself, straight to the Chief’s hut to speak with Hiccup.

Her stomach continues to turn as she walks up the hill alone. She doesn’t bother to sneak through the village to avoid the vigilant eyes she knows are watching her through windows and the whispers that she can’t quite hear.

If she doesn’t shed these secrets soon, she’ll never breathe right again. The ache in her chest will never abate and the seasickness in her belly will continue to rise.

The wind picks up as she crests the hill and looks up at the closed door of the hut. It howls louder than the early afternoon justifies, angry and confused, blowing in every direction senselessly.

Astrid breathes it in and holds it before letting it out, long and even. Her loud and pounding heartbeat slows and the fog over her brain clears, just a little bit. It feels as though the wind is trying to push her away from the door, but she doesn’t let it. This needs to happen.

She doesn’t knock. She goes right up the stairs, to the door, and over the threshold without hesitating even for a moment.

The wind slams the door shut behind her with a thunderous sound that echoes.

Hiccup, standing by the firepit with his back turned to Astrid, leaps half a foot in the air, turns on her, and draws his sword in a jolty, panicked act of defense.

Astrid tries very hard not to flinch. The flame of the sword catches in Hiccup’s eye again and he looks nearly inhuman with the light dancing across his face. He’s only startled, Astrid thinks, not angry, but his face is twisted almost violently with surprise.

She does not apologize for the noise. She stands, straight-backed against the door and shows no fear, the wind from outside still blowing through her lungs.

“Astrid,” Hiccup says after a silence that feels longer than it probably is. He disengages the sword and returns it quickly to its place on his belt. The rest of his armor, though, he’s stripped since last she saw him. “I— I’m sorry, I didn’t expect the— I thought—” His hands find each other and he laces them together in front of his belly, pressing his thumbs against each other so hard that Astrid can see that they turn pale and yellow even at the distance she is from him.

“I’m sorry,” she says now. “I didn’t mean to surprise you. The wind,” she explains.

“The wind,” he agrees quietly.

Neither of them say anything, but Hiccup moves to the side and weakly gestures to the space next to him, inviting Astrid closer to the firepit to warm herself by the flames. She goes to him without hardly thinking about it, and the heat is welcome.

She’d barely realized how cold she’s been all morning.

“How have you been?” Hiccup asks after a very long while. His voice is low and unsure and he isn’t looking at her, but staring into the blazing inferno at their feet.

He’s close enough to touch without even reaching. She could bump their shoulders together like they’re friends with a long history and warm affections.

“Really good,” she says without thinking again. If she had been thinking, she would like to think she’d have said something different. Very different.

The lie— unintentional though it was— does, however, have the benefit of getting Hiccup to look at her.

His eyes narrow skeptically and scan her with barely concealed confusion. “You have?”

It’s Astrid’s turn, now, to look away and stare into the firepit like it’s a living thing with answers and a face of its own. “Yeah,” she says uselessly. “Yeah, I—” I, what? It’s almost worse than if. She decides on saying, “I’ve been helping with plans for a new farmhouse to go up next to Harald’s,” because at least it’s true.

“Harald’s?” Hiccup asks.

“Oh. It’s— Mildew’s old…”

“Oh…”

“Yeah.”

“How long ago—”

“Three years,” she says tightly. “Peacefully.”

He nods with a stiff neck. “That’s— That’s good, though. The farmhouse, I mean. Not the—” He makes a faint gesture with his left hand, then threads his fingers together again. “The other thing.”

“Village has been getting bigger, so…”

Hiccup laughs. It’s quiet and breathy and awkward and sounds a little surprised, but it’s a laugh and it floods Astrid’s ears like warm soup floods her belly. “I noticed!” He says with an abruptness that’s even more awkward than the laugh.

Astrid almost smiles.

She wants… She doesn’t know, really, what she wants, but the wind is still blowing wildly in her chest and the pressure is starting to build— to what relief, she can’t say.

She wants to bump her shoulder against Hiccup’s. She wants him to laugh again— in a way that’s true and loud and unguarded. She wants to not need to say anything, and she wants for him to just know everything that she does. She wants— needs— to tear through this barrier of secrets and long-buried histories, but she can’t find her voice in her own throat. A scream builds for the second time since that morning and, again, Astrid swallows it and tells herself she’s being brave.

“Have you really traveled as far as they say you have?” She asks like it’s been pressing at the back of her teeth this whole time, even though it hasn’t.

Hiccup must know this isn’t what she came here for, but all he says is, “How far have they said I’ve traveled?” in a low, almost conspiratorial voice, leaning in closer to her as though they’re sharing secrets that actually matter.

Astrid, despite herself, feels the pull of that confidence like the ocean’s undertow and she leans in too, raising her chin so her face and his are as equal as they can be. “Beyond the archipelago,” she whispers, unable to look away from him. “Down past the mainland, into places no one’s ever heard of before.”

His bright eyes are as vibrant as so many forests that she’s never seen when he tells her, “I flew out looking for the edge of the world and I never found it.”

“Never?” She asks.

Hiccup hesitates, his eyes flickering across her face, his pupils growing wider, and he wets his lips before he speaks. “It doesn’t exist,” he says. “There’s no end to any of it at all. I flew the length of the Silk Road and met with emperors and god-kings and I never found the edge of the world.”

He looks beautiful, Astrid thinks. Devastatingly so. His face is cracked open with excitement and promise and endless open skies. She almost thinks of diving into that promise with a recklessness she used to think she possessed. Everything this boy— this man— has represented to her for the past five years rises up to the surface of her mind and she almost forgets everything else in the world and leaps into that beautiful sky.

The fire crackles loudly as a log snaps and Astrid looks away as the shadows shift and Hiccup’s beauty is tucked away, back into the dark shade of things she can’t have.

“No edge of the world,” she says a little bit pointlessly, trying to reimagine what it is the world really looks like beyond this little archipelago.

“It’s so…” Hiccup begins, but he too seems to realize how the flames have shifted, and he doesn’t continue.

“I wanted to apologize,” Astrid says gently, apropos of nothing. “For the way… the way everything happened in the end.”

Hiccup cringes— it was the wrong thing to say, Astrid knows it was the wrong thing to say and she can’t take it back now and she doesn’t know if she even would— and everything about his face closes off completely, hidden away in a harsh neutrality that’s so much like Stoick it makes Astrid want to cry. “You couldn’t have done anything,” he says. “But thank you.”

She nods stiffly. “I should— I should go.”

He doesn’t respond, and when she moves for the door, he doesn’t stop her.

Hiccup wobbles weakly on his feet and, when Toothless isn’t there to catch him, he falls ungracefully to the ground, his legs splaying underneath him painfully.

He feels tears start to well, but he doesn’t know why because isn’t an apology something he wanted? Shouldn’t it have been? Shouldn’t he be grateful that someone has reached out to begin to mend what’s broken?

His heart is heavy as stone in his chest; his head is screaming with useless curses and hopes and the ceaseless wind. Not now, it says, not here, not yet. He doesn’t know what to make of it and it won’t go quiet— not even here, inside, protected from the outside air— so he screams, short and sharp, and decides not to care who might hear him.

The wind leaves his lungs all in a rush and he’s left gasping, but finally able to think.

He’d wanted, for a moment there, to lean all the way into Astrid and the possibility of the easy reconciliation he’d seen across her wide face. He’d wanted to take whatever offer it had been that he saw in her shock blue eyes. He’d wanted— He’d wanted to—

But no—

Because Astrid had flinched away from him like she’d realized all at once that he wasn’t something she could trust. Like she’d seen the sharp teeth and slitted pupils and fire and fire and fire and violent rage and vengeance—

Not now, not here, not yet. Not now, not here, not yet. Not now, not now, not now, not now, not—

Hiccup thrusts his right hand into the firepit and grabs a fistful of hot, disintegrating log, trying desperately to fill his mind with anything besides the howling, restless, angry wind. It’s hot, searing and painful, in his palm. The pain shoots up his wrist, up through his forearm, all the way to his elbow.

No fire, he thinks as the wind begins to blow away. No fire, no rage, no vengeance. Not here.

Never here.

The pain— the apology— is still bone deep and he still can’t understand it, but the heat in his palm tempers it. Pulls him in a more rational direction, brings him back from the angry brink of oblivion. He lets go of the embers and cradles his hand to his chest, holding his wrist tightly with his left hand.

Astrid hadn’t meant anything by it. Hadn’t meant anything but what she said. Hadn’t meant anything but I’m sorry that the world is unkind.

Astrid is kind.

Hiccup holds his burned hand in front of his face and studies it. He’s burned himself before— on accident and, every so often, on purpose— but the wounds always interest him. Something about it feels like reading tea leaves or unmarred palms— though both are arts that Hiccup can’t claim to be very good at, even having learned as he did from the masters that live on the other end of the Silk Road. On his hand, he finds a bubbling sore that looks to him like an abstract dragon in flight, surrounded by formless clouds.

Whatever that means. Whatever he thinks it should mean.

He stands— slowly, painfully, painfully— and limps to the wash basin on the other side of the firepit. It’s full, thankfully— though perhaps that’s something he should have considered before trying to burn a hole through the center of his palm— so he plunges his hand into the cold water and sighs at the immediate relief he feels.

Hiccup’s had too many burns to be able to count them all, so the way he cleans and dresses the wound is almost automatic. He pats his hand dry on the cloth by the basin and checks the blistering skin for any residual wood before applying a generous amount of yarrow and willow bark salve to it, a small pot of which he keeps always on his person for exactly this purpose.

Well. Not exactly.

He wraps his hand snugly with a long, thin strip of cloth and that’s that.

Want, the breeze whispers, dancing around the room, giddy and manic. Desire. Want.

He’d wanted—

Astrid is still as beautiful as Hiccup remembers her being. Still— Still as harsh and sharp like carved stone, unpolished and lovely. Her eyes, certainly, still make Thor jealous, but so too must her warrior’s hands. Her bravery shames all the gods and their ilk and—

Hiccup had wanted to kiss her.

He’d felt— it’s stupid, really, that he did, but he’d felt, as deeply as any pain he’d ever had, the desire to fly away with her and live forever between the dragons and the endlessly open sky.

In some other version of life, maybe, Hiccup can have that— maybe in some other version of life, he already does. In some other life, things are easy and the world is kind and Astrid can trust him freely and fully and he is worthy of it.

“Not this one,” he says aloud, shaking his head once and tucking every whisper of want and desire away in the deepest parts of himself where all of his other brokenheartedness lives. “There’s a feast.”

It’s a terrible feast.

Astrid keeps a tight grip on her knife the whole dinner long, sending sharp glances at Snotlout, who sits on the other side of Hiccup from her. Fishlegs and the twins sit opposite them, the five of them staring. Hiccup keeps his face turned down to his plate, his hands in his lap.

None of them eat more than a bite of their food, which is too bad, really, because the honey glazed cod is something beyond delicious. None of them say anything.

Astrid still feels sick to her stomach and she still feels like her lungs are going to burst and she still has no idea what the fuck she’s supposed to do now.

She looks desperately at Fishlegs, the only other person she can even conceptualize as an ally right now, and wills him to say something, damnit.

He takes the hint and clears his throat with a panicked twist to his face. All eyes turn to him. “Uh,” he says, floundering like, well, a fish. Figures.

The rest of the Great Hall is quiet, always in the same way as the five of them are, because today, here sits the ghost among the living.

Astrid watches his eyes flick from Fishlegs to the rest of the Hall, then back to the table. “Right,” he murmurs, bringing his hands up to the table. “What do I need to know?”

There’s a bandage wrapped around his right hand.

“What?” Astrid says.

Did he hurt himself somehow?

“The… state of the village,” he explains, still ever so quiet. He doesn’t look at any of them, but his words, she can hear, are, firstly, for her. “What do I need to know? How can I… help?”

Astrid sees the way Ruffnut’s fist tightens out of the corner of her eye and decides very quickly that she’s the one who needs to say something first. “We’re drawing plans for a new farmhouse to go up next to Harald’s,” she tells him, trying for the life of her to sound like this isn’t information he’s already been given.

He looks at her, eyes searching, before looking away again, nodding. “Okay. Okay.”

Fishlegs finally recovers and leaps into the dialogue gratefully. “We have a lot of land that needs clearing out up there,” he says. “Once spring comes. Then the building. It’ll take a month and a half, probably.”

Hiccup continues to nod, and Astrid gives the twins a hard look across the table.

“We’re preparing for retaliation,” says Tuff stiltedly, looking sideways at Astrid like he wants her approval before continuing.

“Retaliation?” asks Hiccup.

“As far as the rest of the archipelago knows, we’re in turmoil right now,” Snotlout explains, the edge to his voice defensive and accusatory. “Stoick died without an obvious heir, and nobody knows who you are. Somebody’s gonna wanna take advantage of that.”

“You’re vulnerable,” Hiccup observes, his head listing to the side with a neutral thoughtfulness Astrid can only hope is strategic, not conniving. The fact that she can’t tell is going to eat at her.

Snotlout’s face pales, the realization that what he just said could be used against all of them by an enemy dawning plainly on his face. “Yeah.” He clears his throat. “They— Other tribes think we are. We aren’t, but—” He clears his throat again.

“We can deal with threats,” Ruffnut says, and the emphasis she puts on the word is a threat in itself. “Wherever they come from.”

“We can only hope,” Hiccup mutters. He looks to Astrid. “Is there any chieftain we should be more worried about than the others?”

She shrugs. “Alvin the Treacherous, Dagur the Deranged, Briger the Unbalanced… Vikings.”

“Vikings,” he agrees.

“I— I can show you around the defenses we have set up,” Fishlegs offers haltingly, yelping when Snotlout kicks his shin under the table. “After the feast!”

“Let’s go now,” says Hiccup, standing.

“Now?”

“Neither of us are eating, are we?”

Fishlegs flounders again, his mouth opening and closing very quickly. “Well, I— I guess we— It’s sort of rude— I guess I’m not—”

“Great. Come on.”

Astrid feels like she should stop them, but, somehow, she knows that nothing that would convince him to stay would be appropriate to say; especially not in the company of Ruffnut, Snotlout, and every other skeptic on the island.

So, she lets them go.