Chapter Text
Stoick didn't look up from the hearth he was stoking when he heard Hiccup slip into the house and towards the stairs. A part of him wanted to lecture his son on sneaking out, but Gobber's words echoed in his mind.
“You can't stop him, Stoick. You can only prepare him. Look, I know it seems hopeless. But the truth is you won't always be around to protect him. He's going to get out there again. He's probably out there now.”
“Hiccup,” he called, making his son freeze on the stairs.
“Dad! Uh...” Hiccup trailed off and Stoick set the poker down. “I have to talk to you, Dad.”
"I need to speak with you too, son,” he said, turning away from the fire and clapping his hands together.
There was a beat as they both took a deep breath, not looking directly at each other.
“I think it's time you learn -” Stoick started, his words turning to nonsense as they mixed with his son's, “I've decided I don't want -”
“- to fight dragons,” they finished together. They both blinked and looked at each other. “What?”
“Uh, you go first,” Stoick said.
“No, no, you go first.”
He almost agreed, but the point was to let Hiccup test himself in a controlled, safe way. To do that, he needed to listen. “Hiccup, go.”
“Right, well, uh...” Hiccup fidgeted nervously. “I was thinking, you know, we have a surplus of dragon-fighting Vikings, but do we have enough... bread-making Vikings? Or small home repair Vikings?”
“Bread-making vikings?” What was he going on about now? Thor help Stoick if this was about some other invention his son was trying to make. If he set another house on fire, Mildew would never shut up.
“I mean... I'm just saying...” Hiccup looked away, then back at Stoick. “I don't want to fight dragons!”
The words had come so fast, it took a second for the chief to realize what was said. “You... don't?”
His son looked away again. “You-you were right. I'm not a dragon killer. I'll stick to helping Gobber in the forge from now on.”
He could only stare. “You... want to focus on your dragon-killing inventions?”
“No.” His shoulders dropped as he curled into himself. “I can't kill dragons.”
Not for the first time -- or the hundredth -- Stoick wished Valka were still with them. She was much better with stuff like emotions.
But she wasn't there, so he cleared his throat and clapped his hands again. “Well, if you're sure, then that's-that's good.” Maybe Gobber was wrong after all. If Hiccup wanted to stay away from the dragons, that should only be encouraged, right? “You have other strengths. Focusing on those will only benefit Berk.”
“Right.”
“Good. Focus on the forge. Do... whatever it is Gobber has you doing. I'm leaving on a hunt for the nest so we'll need new weapons to replace any that are lost.”
“Yeah, sounds great,” Hiccup muttered as Stoick turned to grab his bag.
“Stay out of trouble. I'll be back. Probably.” He slapped his son on the back and headed out the door.”
“And I'll be here.” Hiccup said something else, but it was lost to the closed door.
“The monstrous nightmare!”
Hiccup hesitated as he neared the training arena. He'd been hoping to catch Gobber before training began to ask him where he'd left a swage he needed for a repair, but it seemed he was too late.
“The terrible terror!”
Cautiously, he continued forward. Maybe there would be a chance to catch Gobber alone.
“Can you stop that!? And... the gronckle!”
“Whoa, whoa, wait! Aren't you gonna teach us first!?” Snotlout yelled and Hiccup rolled his eyes.
He still had small burn scars on his shoulders from his first experience with Gobber's teaching. You need to learn fast with him because he'll only tell you the information you need right before you need it.
“I believe in learning on the job.”
Hiccup stepped up to the bars just as Gobber opened a cage and released a round, brown dragon.
“Today is about survival,” Gobber instructed as the teens scattered and the gronckle rampaged around the arena. “If you get blasted, you're dead. Quick! What's the first thing you're going to need?”
“Plus five speed!?”
"A shield!”
"Shields! Go!” Gobber ordered as Hiccup turned away from the arena, leaving to find a place to sit and wait out the lesson. “Your most important piece of equipment is your shield! If you must make a choice between a sword or a shield, take the shield!”
Hiccup found a quiet spot near the path where he wouldn't be seen and pulled out his notebook. He tried to work on his plans for a couple of his inventions (his non-dragon-killing ones), but his mind kept drifting back to the night fury and he ended up sketching out what he could remember of the dragon.
“Excellent work, Astrid.”
“Yeah, you were -”
Hiccup looked up as his cousin was cut off by a smack to the back of the head from Gobber's hook. He scooted a little further into his hidden nook as the group came closer.
“The rest of you could learn from her example,” the blacksmith said pointedly, glaring at first Snotlout, then the snickering twins. “You need to keep focused. If you're distracted, then you're open to attack. And remember: a dragon will always -- always -- go for the kill.”
The group passed Hiccup's nook, but he barely noticed. He stared down at his notebook for a moment, two, then headed into the forest.
“Today is all about attack! Nadders are quick and light on their feet! Your job is to be quicker and lighter!”
Hiccup slipped up next to where Gobber was instructing the other teens from outside the arena. He got just close enough to talk without being seen, then said, “Hey, so I looked at the Book of Dragons after the others left last night.”
Down below, Fishlegs screamed before shouting, “I'm really beginning to question your teaching methods!”
"And I just happened to notice the book had nothing on Night Furies.”
“Look for its blind spot,” Gobber instructed, looking bored as he leaned through the bars that enclosed the arena. “Every dragon has one. Find it, hide in it, and strike!”
“Is there another book? Or a sequel? Maybe a little Night Fury pamphlet?”
“No,” Gobber said, glancing over at Hiccup briefly before focusing back on the teens. “Aren't you supposed to be sharpening swords?”
“Yep, all done. Was just doing some reading. You know, keeping out of trouble.”
Gobber snorted, and then a bright flash came from the arena and he smirked. “Blind spot? Yes. Deaf spot? Not so much.”
Hiccup shuffled a little closer as Gobber snickered. “So, uh, how would one sneak up on a Night Fury?”
“No one's ever met one and lived to tell the tale.”
“I know, I know, but hypothetically?”
“Hiccup.”
“They probably take the daytime off? You know, like a cat? Has anyone ever seen one napping?”
“Hiccup!” Gobber huffed, glancing at him again. “Unless you want to join them, I suggest you head back to the forge.”
Hiccup stepped a little closer, just in time to see Astrid break her shield over the nadder's head.
The dragon stumbled back to its cage, clearly disoriented and injured.
Hiccup turned and left. “Right. Never mind.”
“- and with one twist, he took my hand and swallowed it whole. And I saw the look on his face: I was delicious. He must have passed the word because it wasn't a month before another one of them took my leg.”
Gobber looked around the group of teens as the majority oohed and aahed over his story.
Fishlegs started talking, but Gobber ignored him after spotting Hiccup cautiously coming up the steps to the watchtower. That was good. The kid needed to spend more time with people instead of inside his head. Eating with them was a nice step up from how he usually went off to sit alone.
Even if Gobber had spotted him sitting a little closer the night before to eavesdrop on his lecture about the dragon manual.
He hoped the decision not to join training really had been Hiccup's as Stoick had said, and that Hiccup wasn't rethinking the decision.
At the very least, if he did change his mind, he hoped Hiccup would tell him before it was too late to get him into that year's training.
“I swear, I'm so angry right now! I'll avenge your beautiful hand and your beautiful foot. I'll chop off the legs of every dragon I fight. With my face!”
Gobber focused back on the other kids, shaking his head. “Uh-uh. It's the wings and the tails you really want.” He ripped the wing off his chicken to demonstrate. “If it can't fly, it can't get away. A downed dragon is a dead dragon.”
He glanced toward where Hiccup had been, but the boy was gone. He wished the kids goodnight and headed down the steps to see Hiccup slipping into the forge. He shook his head, but decided to leave the boy be.
“Well, I trust you found the nest at least?”
“Not even close,” Stoick said shortly, not in the mood for his friend's joking after the voyage he'd only just come back from.
“Ah. Excellent.”
“I hope you had a little more success than me.”
“Aye,” Gobber chuckled. “The Hofferson girl has made quite the showing. If she doesn't win the honor of killing the nightmare then I'll eat my hammer.”
“And Hiccup?”
“Quiet as a mouse.”
Stoick gave him a skeptical look.
“I'm serious. He spends most of his time either working in the forge or off somewhere reading. He's keeping to himself. I've barely seen him, but he's been keeping his head down when I have and doesn't seem to be working on anything troublesome. And no one else has reported anything either. Mildew even came around asking if you'd taken him with you, it's been so quiet.”
“Well, I suppose there's some good news after all,” Stoick sighed and turned his focus back onto getting the ships unloaded, seeing the injured off to Gothi, and tasking the shipwrights with the repairs.
He didn’t get a chance to go looking for his son until after dinner. He'd planned to track down Hiccup during dinner, but the boy had never shown up. Then he'd had to talk to Spitelout about problems with the night watch rotation and Mildew had a few things to complain about, as per usual.
When he did track Hiccup down, he was in the storage room of the forge that he'd claimed as his personal space. He was leaning against his desk, playing with his charcoal. Across the desk were papers and his notebook, all filled with drawings of dragons and whatever he was working on in the forge. Stoick tried to get a better look at the dragons, but Hiccup noticed him at that moment and pulled the papers and notebook underneath him.
“Dad! You're back! Gobber's not here, so...”
“I know. I came looking for you.”
“You did?” Hiccup stared at him with wide eyes as he closed the notebook and piled all the papers under it.
“Gobber says you've been doing well.”
“You mean he says I've been quiet,” Hiccup muttered, turning back to his work.
“Which is a good thing,” Stoick said, grabbing Hiccup's shoulder and squeezing it. “Sticking to your strengths is a benefit, remember.”
“R-right.”
There was an awkward silence for a moment.
“Oh, so… Tomorrow's a big day in dragon training. Gothi will likely be picking who gets the honor of killing the nightmare.”
Hiccup froze, looking off to the side. “Right.”
“Right. You, uh...” Stoick glanced at Hiccup's journal. “We could watch together.”
“Oh, I would, but I've got a bunch of... stuff to do here. Important, beneficial stuff.”
“Right, yes, that's... Yes.”
There was another, smaller moment of silence.
Hiccup yawned. “I, uh, should really get to bed right about now.”
“Yes! Good! Okay. Good talk.”
“See you back at the house.”
“We should do this again.”
"Great. Thanks for stopping by.”
“Glad I stopped by.” As they talked over each other, Stoick tried to back up and clipped his helmet on the ceiling. He cleared his throat and clasped his hands together. “Well, uh... good night.” He turned and slipped through a curtain into the forge's main room.
He sighed into the night air with a smile. Everything was good.
He took a step forward and knocked over some shields and a barrel of swords.
He fixed his helmet and quickly left, his mood only slightly thrown off.
Hiccup was behaving. And more importantly, he was safe.
Astrid glared out into the night sky as she tried to ignore Snotlout nattering on about something or other in a poor attempt at flirting.
She was really starting to consider accidentally breaking his arm again. It had certainly shut him up last time.
Then those stupid whispers had started up a few weeks earlier after she'd killed a devilish dervish quite spectacularly.
Most of them were about how the chief should name Astrid as his heir, but a few others had spiraled off to say she should marry Snotlout and he should be named heir to keep it within the family. She was pretty sure Mildew had started them off, but Spitelout sure hadn't helped the situation and his son had gone right back to flirting as a result.
She didn't really care for the whispers and had taken the chief's lead by ignoring them. If he did name her heir, she'd be honored, but she had no intention of pushing the issue and she certainly wasn't going to marry Snotlout.
Even Hiccup the Useless would be better than him.
“Is he still going?” Fishlegs whispered as he sat down next to her, having gone to fill their water flasks as an excuse to stretch his legs during the boring night watch.
He handed hers back as she nodded. “Yes, and if he doesn't stop soon, I'm shoving him off this tower.”
“- on my wall. So, Astrid, what do you think?” Snotlout asked, leaning towards her.
She pushed him away, saying, “I think -”
Roars echoed through the village and all three jumped to their feet.
“Raid?” Snotlout asked, grabbing his hammer and glaring out to sea.
“Wrong direction,” Astrid said as she and Fishlegs looked over the village.
“It must be another rogue.” The larger boy's hands twisted nervously around the grip of his sword.
Rogue was the term that had started popping up over the past year as it became more and more common to see random dragons flying solo or in small groups instead of in their usual hordes. While running into a dragon outside of a raid wasn't unheard of, those dragons usually stayed on specific islands or were the results of isolated incidents. It was strange and unsettling to see so many lone dragons in such a short time and such random places. The chief was planning to bring it up at the next Thing to see if it was happening all over the Barbaric Archipelago or if it was only around the seas and unsettled islands near Berk because they were the closest to Helheim's Gate.
Astrid wasn’t sure if anyone else had made the connection, but she and Fishlegs had wondered if all the rogues had something to do with the dragons disappearing from the training arena the night before she was set to face the nightmare. They’d started appearing shortly after and no one had ever figured out how the dragons had escaped.
There had been rumors, of course. Some said Astrid had done it because she didn’t think she could kill the nightmare (she’d proven them wrong by killing a nightmare during the next raid) and some said one of the other kids did it out of jealousy, but no one could figure out the truth. There had been no evidence of anything.
The dragons had simply disappeared without a trace.
Shaking herself back to the present, Astrid considered Fishlegs’ statement. A rogue dragon would make the most sense since the raids usually came from the sea, not the main island, and it only sounded like one, maybe two dragons. “But they've never been spotted this close to the village.”
“What do you think is happening with the dragons?” Fishlegs asked.
“Don't know. Don't care. Let's just kill them already!” Snotlout said, swinging his weapon in the air pointedly.
“There!” Astrid said, pointing to a bright spot in the night that didn't look like a torch or hearth. “Fishlegs, blow the warning horn and keep an eye out for more. Snotlout, with me.”
The two raced down the watchtower towards the roars.
“Stay behind me,” Astrid ordered as they got close.
“But -”
“Behind. Me.”
Snotlout grumbled under his breath, but otherwise didn't argue.
They found the dragon just over Farmer's Bridge. It was a blue and yellow nadder, very similar to the one Astrid remembered facing in training. It was prancing in place and roaring into the sky, occasionally sending up short blasts of fire. Strangely, the fire peppering the ground around the nadder looked more like it came from a gronckle.
“What is it doing?” she asked.
“Getting ready to die,” Snotlout said, raising his hammer and running forward.
“Snotlout!” she hissed, but it was too late.
The nadder eyed him before giving one last roar and disappearing into the darkness of the night.
They started to give chase, but she yanked him to a stop when she spotted something in the center of the fire, right where the nadder had been standing. “Is that a person?”
“Who'd be out this late?” he asked, staring after the nadder for a moment before rushing to catch up with her as she ran to help the person.
Thankfully, the fire was spread out enough that it wasn't endangering them, but close enough that there was no snow for them to be freezing in. Astrid still worried it was too late for them, though, as they didn't move even with the dragon gone.
“Are you okay?” she called, but there was no response.
Despite her worries, she hesitated when she reached them since she didn't recognize them immediately.
They wore unfamiliar, dark brown leather armor with a deep hood that hid the top half of their face. It wasn't something anyone from Berk or the nearby islands would wear so it pointed towards some sort of intruder.
That said, all hesitance fled her when her eyes reached their boots.
Boot.
“Snotlout, go grab something to carry them on. We need to get them to Gothi now!”
“On it!”
She dropped down next to them and belatedly realized she needed to check if they were even still alive. Thankfully, their heart was beating and they were breathing, even if both were too fast. She checked for any injuries aside from the obvious, but only found a few minor burns and scrapes on their cheeks. Finally, she pushed their hood off their face.
She only had a second to be surprised before Snotlout returned and she had to focus on getting the chief's son help.