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Hiccup Horrendous Haddock III x Reader

Always an Angel, Never the God- One, Two, Three, Four, Five, Full

Hiccup x Reader, Complete

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

Floret -One, Two, Full

Hiccup x Reader, Complete

Your heart’s gone sour, and like all dead things, seeds sprout in its wake. Eventually they grow too large for you to handle on your own. You’ve come to terms with it. For now, you just spend your time flying under the radar, taking long walks and giving good advice. It’s a lonely life, but it’s yours.

Sorry, but I Think I Lost Your Plot- One, Two, Three, Four, 4.5, Five, Six, Seven, Eight, Nine, Ten, Eleven, 11.5, Twelve, Thirteen, Fourteen, Fifteen, Sixteen, Seventeen, Eighteen, Nineteen, Twenty, Twenty one, Twenty two, Twenty three, Twenty four, Twenty five, Twenty six, Twenty seven, Twenty eight

Hiccup x Reader, Complete

You’re stuck on Berk. Somehow, you manage to get by.

All The Ways I Could Have Known You (And Some Of The Ways I Didn’t)- Full

Hiccup x Reader, Complete

Three verses, six parents and their many varied opinions. (SbITILYP+Floret+AaANtG)

Castoff - One, Two, Three, Four, Full

Hiccup x Reader, Complete

The gentle brush of fingertips as they slip apart, the pounding of blood as his heart falls out of your grasp. Those are feelings you are familiar with. Your relationship is one made up of meanings searched for where they are not, a deep care uprooted by a raging current and a single, meaningful mistake.

Better Left Unsaid - Full

Hiccup x Reader, Complete

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

The Jealous One - One, Two, Three, Four, Five, Six, Seven, Eight, Nine, Ten, Eleven,

Hiccup x Reader, Ongoing

An old friend starts to act odd. Snotlout is slightly less so.

Counting Coins - Full

Hiccup x Reader, Complete

On one cold morning, a small Chief’s son and merchant child are arranged to be wed. Now, Hiccup Haddock is your fiancé and you his. Despite your different walks of life, you find you come together quite nicely.

Just Like Magic - One, Two, Three,

Hiccup x Reader, Ongoing

Hiccup’s got both hands full with dragon training, never mind everything else he’s got going on in private, because, really, it’s not just the dragon. 

Hiccup’s got no one at his back- no friends, no Dad and a dead mother. He has got Gobber on most occasions, though if you asked Hiccup, he’d say that he doesn’t really count, mostly because he’s not much of a help even on the best of days. There is that one girl, though, with her odd appreciation for the world, colorful hems, twine and tassels- To him, she’s something new. Whenever he’s with her, it feels like things just might be turning up. Honestly, she might be exactly the kind of person he’s been looking for.  

(By some stroke of fate and probably coincidence, Hiccup makes friends with a weird girl in the woods and learns that life doesn’t have to be about fighting or proving oneself- sometimes it’s nothing more than a few stolen, happy moments shared between a lucky girl and a very unlucky guy.)

Wildflower - One, Two, Three, Four, Five, Six,

Hiccup & Reader, Abandoned

You never asked to be here.

Thistle, Scout and Scottish Bluebells - One, Two, Three, Four,

Hiccup x Reader , Ongoing

Things don’t happen the way they’re supposed to. The universe sends you to compensate.

One of These Days - Full

Hiccup x Reader, Ongoing

What you needed to perry about was more along the lines of old textbooks with thick, laminate, card-board covers. You needed Columb and Ohm and Plank, especially if they and their theorems might have a smidgen to do with all of this. Any of this. With- what? Mechanics? Violent gear infantry? Postulates and axioms and whatever else… Oh, bother.

Balancing chemical equations in redox reactions, titrating and Gel Electrophoresis- that, you might have been able to do. With the right tools provided, of course. You could deal in physics theory, but in mechanical practicality? That was a whole new beast. 

It was a fact that you were no expert on the ups and downs and mechanical sideways of technological genius. You were also loath to craft- half the things you needed, you were sure, were products of the forges and fires. Black lung was a worry… And soot, too, in a more general sense. And so, you were stumped. And lost. And miserable, and cold. 

It was very, very dark. Your hands clutched at your upper arms, your eyes blinking tiredly. It was much too early for this, and you felt much too useless to make a way for yourself. Really, no matter what you did, you were certain you’d end up dead in a ditch somewhere, anyways. 

You could nearly hear it, the low thrum of ominous horror-movie music in your ears. It wasn’t a tangible sound, more something you felt in the air. It was the breeze strumming against the baby hairs at the back of your neck and arms, it was all made up by the sound of the skin on your palms rushing over the prickled gooseflesh of your arms.

It was creepy, it was cold, and it was very-very gray out. It was just like Jaws or Scream, but in the woods, and you were alone, and there was less drinking and no teenagers. You were quite sure that you were no Final Girl, either. Or, maybe you were. You hoped so.

You didn’t have your phone. There wasn’t even a signal for you to search for, not that you felt that a phone signal would at all decrease the likelihood of you getting murdered. There were no park rangers- none of that modern-day security. Not that security had ever stopped anyone from getting lost in the woods…

 It wasn’t a magical forest or a particularly unique one. You hadn’t even really seen a dragon yet. It just felt dangerous.

You probably wouldn’t be fine, no, if anyone showed up. Any one or anything. You thought very haughtily that your ability to flee was outmatched. Still, it was odd- strange, even, that you hadn’t yet seen any much of a glimpse of a dragon.

If it hadn’t been for everything else, you would have assumed that this was all one big hoax. Like The Truman Show… But, at least, if your situation was being televised to the country, you would be liable for some good pay.  

It was very misty. And your stomach was empty, too. And you were very, very nervous. 

Hiccup. That piece of shit. You weren’t sure how or why you found him so responsible for all of this but you did. That dreaded, disastrous rat. That foul lump of ragged blanket on that dumb, rickety bed, back-turned and silent.

Your feet crunched and squished against the old and damp forest floor, along a path that felt not at all like a path. It wasn’t so ‘carved out of the forest’ as it was just the clearest way, dead plants and wilting fauna giving the area a wide berth. You assumed almost that perhaps the forest was sick, or something. Very hard on the, ‘or something.’

The hairs on your arms prickled even more so than they ever had before, which you hadn’t known was a thing that your arms could do. 

You stopped, suddenly, clenching your mud-crusted hands against your arms.

The sound of thumping grew louder. You thought it might have been your heart in your ears, or something in your head. Maybe a burst brain vessel, or the sound of a million medieval diseases trying to ruin your… Everything. Whatever.

You waited some more, and then were overcome by the thought that perhaps the sound wasn’t all coming from inside your head. It was less echoey, so perhaps not at all like a drum.

You fought a physical shudder. Or, well, you didn’t. You just shuddered.

Go away, go away… You started, thinking very hard.

You extended your palm, letting it graze against the side of a tree, wincing as your wrist scraped against a bundle of leaves and twigs.

You could turn your way around and probably find your way back, but you were still mad. 

You turned around to leave, lifting up a large-booted foot before pausing quite suddenly, your arms up by your sides. 

You were overcome by a sudden thought. What would Hiccup do? Or… have done? 

Well… You had no idea. None at all. You weren’t particularly sure what you should do. This was no twenty-first century, after all. If you were, perhaps, to consider your best course of action… You wanted to go home. 

And if movie-logic was at all a factor to be considered in relation to your strange and awful circumstance, the amount of progress that you made must have been equivalent to the proportion of main-character-ness exhibited by you personally. 

There might have been some flaw in your rhetoric. It was also a fact of life that you’d never get results if you didn’t first test your hypothesis. And that meant… Out of the frying pan and into the fire. Or, in Rome… What was it that people said? ‘When in Rome, do as the Romans do?’ Either, or.

It meant being strange. And stupid. Like Hiccup. Because he was both of those things. You could hear it now, his voice- Normal, mostly, but with an underbite. ‘Hand me the rag.’

Suck on it.

Damn, damn, damn.  You thought of all the mish-mash of scattered pieces at your feet, and at the poorly secured -and stolen- hammer that you had had in one hand before cursing and throwing it down into the mud. You did not have that pure talent. You did not have an inventive mind. No, all of this would have to be learned the hard way. And the hard way meant…

You grimaced. You had to suck it up.

You burst forth through the undergrowth, twigs scraping against your knees.

“Ah-ha-haha..!” You shouted weakly. You stilled. Your voice… tapered. Viking-ly.

There was a man there, and he was old.

He had a gnarled, thin face and a long beard with a limp moustache, in the Viking fashion. Despite his stick-like limbs, there was not a cane in sight. No helmet, either. He wore Viking clothes-looking rags. He just hardly paused what he was doing and gave you a hard, disinterested, distasteful sneer. 

His arms were all limp muscle and bone, stick-thin. His skin was deeply sun-spotted and of a slightly yellowish shade. He was a bony old man.

A second later, and there was another ‘thump’ as his axe once again hit the top of a piece of wood, which you noticed was already littered with an array of aggressive axe-marks. 

You didn’t relax though, no. He had the type of look about him that made you think about skinned girls in basements- a bundle of blonde hair and runny eyeliner. A city kind of alleyway and a mugshot. Number-one suspect.

If he had a basement, you were sure that's what he’d have put in it. He would dig a hole and bury them in it, maybe. Or maybe he never had a basement. Maybe he buried his victims outside. Or maybe he burned them- you saw, at the corner of your eye, something flickering. There was a weak fire just behind him, swaying pathetically with the… There were no breezes. None at all.

You weighed the pros and cons of body burning in your head. Burying, too. Burning… Pork was something that came to your mind, which didn’t sound all too bad, if, in context, it hadn’t come hand-in-hand with a burning human body. 

Your heart was beating like a madman against the inside of your chest. The man’s teeth were bared as he shouted at you, “Gerrotff!” 

You yelped, startled, and nearly stumbled as the man took a rough step forwards, axe at the ready.

You didn’t run, though, petrified, you pulled arms up by your chest as you jumped away, the sharpest end of the old man’s dull axe embedding itself into the body of a tree trunk. It went in by a few measures of something relevant. You had a hard time peeling your eyes away from it.

After a hurried loud moment of angry, incomprehensible yelling, the man, painting, stopped trying to pull his axe out of the tree. He turned to give you a hard look.

“Whatar’ yerh?!” He demanded, arms hanging loose and tensed by his sides, at the ready. His jaw ground into itself like a horse’s chewing. It was erratic, moving in time to the irrational twitching of the corner of his brow and to what must have been the seductive thrum of violence in his head. His eyes told you that, wide and way-too-focused.

You could try running into the trees behind him, but that would involve going near him. He could grab you, if he had the strength- he had the strength to swing an axe, so his looks must have been deceptive. Not necessarily in terms of… Anti-appeal, but in terms of other things. You could try running to your side or behind- you couldn’t see either ways. If you tripped or fell, or fidgeted or found yourself in any way delayed, it would be so easy to grab you by the collar and drag you back.

What had he said? What was he saying? Your mind was racing. You were going to die, you were, sure. Your eyes twitched in place. Look around- or stay put?

“You- You were- Hi.” You tried, finally. If you were going to die, you wanted to- to- you didn’t know what. “Hi-hi, hi. Ah- Uhm… need any help?”

You stepped back, shoulders hunched and your hands clasped down by your waist, though they never stopped shaking. Your head was ducked and your arms straining as you watched him. You fought the urge to scuff your boots, too, feigning bashfulness- and cowering. Fawn, fawn, fawn.

Did he understand you? It-that-whatever could have been a product of your poor English. Or… Your poor Viking-ish. Norse. That had… That had him acting this way. You didn’t know of a grammar mistake that would warrant attempted murder, but ah, well….

You took everything in. You focused deeply on the man. Despite the blurring in your periphery, though they could hardly be called piles, you saw those too, spotty and slim though they were. There were what looked to be crude likenesses of wooden dragons ripped from walls or supports or some other such thing all in them, and there were some other things, too. Wooden handles, all chipped and old, what looked to be an old fur, and some belts- 

“A ainae repea-”

There wasn’t really any place to hide. You might be able to run for it, but- You felt slightly behind you, the side of your hand whipping against odd, spindly bark in thick and thin formations, scattered through the air- in your panic, you’d lost your grip on the exit. Or, its whereabouts. The thought of which left you scrambling.

Your neck broke out in a cold sweat. You found yourself unable to look him in the eye, suddenly. If you’re going to kill me off, please make it quick. 

Your breath hitched the hardest it ever had, your eyes locking into a dark stain deep in the side of one discarded leather strap, seeping out towards the body from a great, big gash in its thick and ragged side. 

You looked just beyond the man’s feet. And then… Something fluttering at the edge of the fires caught your eye. A thin piece of parchment, covered in clumsy scratch marks and rune numbers in the oddest of orders-

“- Whit's yer kith-?!” He lunged forwards again threateningly. 

“Hey- wait! Don’t- that-” You ended weakly, pointing with stiff arms, though they felt much more like butter at that moment.  “What for it?”

The old man glared at you again, again. Then harder, when you didn’t run off. He wouldn’t eat you- you, well, you didn’t think that you would taste so good. Or, at least you hoped so. 

“It’s important! Please, please-” You begged hands clasping as you took a step forwards, almost matching him. There was a pressure building behind your eyes, though it wasn’t a sorrowful sort of cry. It was more… Stressed. Obviously so.

Your heart thumped. Once, twice, three times, four and then five.

Would he bury you at six feet or ten? You heard bodies took longer to decay the deeper they were set into the earth, so maybe two. Two feet. It’s not as if there was anyone out here who’d look for you.

The old man stepped back, features not softening but changing shape almost as he regarded you. “Aye, ye mad lass! What’re ye on abot?”

Who is he? Why is he doing all of- That? You took a hard moment to pant as he relaxed some. You felt a bit like a bug under a glass- you felt the heat most definitely, even though there was no sun to be had. 

It was silent. The old man didn’t ask again. Not the same question, or a clarifying one. He didn’t make a statement either.

“Just-” Your voice cracked violently, both stuck at the highest pitch and getting softer by the second, “I want to ask you for a- a-” 

A favor, a favor, a favor- What was the word? You swallowed in such a way that your throat caught. It hurt. “A fa- A ‘favor?’”

“A favor, eh? for an odd lass i’ these odd woods…” He let out a high scoff, verging on a cackle, all sardony, no intrigue. “If ye wander these halls, a stranger s'till an enemy! An Outcast ye be, an it’sa fool wha takes ye intae his woods! Why shouldnae ‘A cut yeh doun where ye stand?!”

The man sneered at you again, knobbly, hard-knuckled hand grasping at the handle of his axe. He took a step forward threateningly, though he halted suddenly as his axe still refused to budge from the tree. 

You felt slightly less intimidated.

“Please. Give-me.” After a very long moment, you spoke again. You wanted to kick yourself. “And- And, I’m not an outcast! I’m- I’ve been here for a while. I’m a- I travel, yes, but- I’ll find you anything you want!” 

“Anything, you say?” The old man spat, showing ugly, gnarled, yellow teeth, some there, most not. He turned slightly away from you for a moment, tugging against his axe and grinning wickedly under a messy, gray moustache as it budged slightly. Without looking, he shot out a booted foot, knocking a half-stack of parchment from the fires. “There’s nothin ‘a worth on this Gods forsaken island… But I’d like tae see ye try.”

Your eyes widened as he took a step forwards, knowing with your most animal brain what he was about to do before he did it. You glanced towards the array of junk by your feet. If it was there- if the paper was there, then maybe you could grab it and run.

But all in a moment, the man lifted his axe, and he began to run at you, yelling.

“I’ll find it! I prom- I promise I’ll-” With the highest scream you’ve ever let out, you started sprinting, arms scraping violently against dry and brittle branches that reachout out like claws. You didn’t wait for a path to appear to you, you just pushed your way through the spiny underbrush. 

As you burst your way backwards, tears trickling down your cheeks, cold and wind-bothered, despite the adrenaline, you couldn’t help but to think of about those strange and mysterious characters- the outline of a gear, and the inklings of something round and wooded sketched out onto paper, slightly hidden between two old, scratched leather covers.

What was on those papers? Well, you weren’t completely sure. But you knew you needed them.

Hypothesis: …

-

“God-damn it!” You stormed in place, letting out a grumble from way back in your throat. “It’s fine. It’s fine.”

Doesn’t sound fine. There was something smug about his silence… And him. There was alway something smug about him and his darned shuffling and everything else.

You huffed, cringing at the sound of your boots scuffing against the wood planking. Disgusting- that is what it was. Not that Hiccup cared- he stepped everywhere in his boots. Wore the same shirt and pants every day… At least he bathed. Maybe. You’d never seen him do it but you didn’t smell much, really, so he had to be clean. At least, he was as scentless as anyone could be without deodorant.

You mussed your hair with your hands, eyes clenched shut with frustration. 

He was sitting there, ignoring you. Back to that, are we, then?

Stupid, stupid- Happy.

I’m happy, I’m happy. I’m happy.

You were not happy, Glaring back, you sent him a look that said, ‘None of your business.’ Angrily, hastily,  you clenched your elbows.

“What do you want, Sherlock?” You snapped, finally. Of course, you were sure he didn’t get the reference. Though the result of geography and time that might have been, you still found him to be quite plebian for it. Sherlock Holmes.

He didn’t respond to you. 

You huffed, shuffling back slightly before throwing yourself onto the bed. 

Ouch.

You landed with hardly a bounce, though you stubbornly refused to readjust, crossing your arms over your chest and planting your neck awkwardly against the wall. You ignored the way your heels of your bootes felt against the frame and the slight layer of fabric over it, your neck prickling and wood creaking dangerously as you waited for the bed to collapse.

Hiccup sent you an awnry look, annoyed by the noise. Not ‘probably,’ no, the implication was clear. And, probably, he was annoyed by your own propensity to take up space. His shabby stool squeaked slightly as he shifted from where he had been hunched over whatever it was that he was doing in the corner of the room.

You glared back at him stubbornly.

Get out of my bed. You read it in his eyes.

You stared at him even more stubborn-ly. No.

After a very quick and tense stand-off, Hiccups turned away.

“I didn’t touch it!” Hiccup held his hands up, both empty above sagging, baggy sleeves -he’d forgotten to tie them down, it seemed- as if to show he had nothing over the larger Viking man. 

He looked sort of dopey in comparison, though he lacked the appropriate bashfulness for a boy in his circumstance, the most frequent victim of the wrong place and time and the sharp end of snappish and sometimes cruel words. 

The thin edge of a leaf tickled against your arm. 

A cool breeze rushed by the back of your neck, rising baby hairs like the hackles of a cat or a wolf.

He was much too bold for his own good.

“Didn’t grow legs and walk off, then, did it?” Bjorner had a hand pulling at the front of Hiccup’s green tunic, the strings of its front looking nearly split under his grip. 

He towered over the smaller boy, looking quite cross. It had been very rare to see the older Viking looking otherwise as of late, quick to anger and sharp on the draw.

It was no secret.

Hilde’s personality was the kind that attracted the sorest, grumpiest types, the ones who wanted to handle her with gentle palms yet who were most snappish and gruff. She appealed greatly to Bjorner, who, with rough home, was quick to scrabble at the first thing to be kind to him, though he very likely evaded her notice.

Bjorner would never have her fancy- it was obvious to you that he’d never been her type. To him, who hadn’t a clue about women, the negotiations must have been a sign that she was to be lost to him forever.

“I mean, it could use some sharpening, really, and some adjusting,” Hiccup glanced down at the sword with a grimace, laying flat, nearly hidden between two long grass fronds, precariously close to the ends of a deep overhang as the dull, scaled behind of a terror buried itself deeper into the woods, “but- You know, Terrors…?”

The ground beneath your feet was made uneven by a thick layer of leaves and roots and twigs. 

Your shoulders were tall and square as you stood and looked past a low-hanging leaf, green and shingin yellow through the middle where the sun hit it strongest, with nearly five prongs.

You grimaced and grit your jaw, feeling slightly bitter at the fact that despite all your efforts, this one time you’d still be dragged into one of his messes.

Stoick wouldn’t be pleased to know his son had found himself in another such conflict.

If he made his way out of it without a bruise, you were sorely tempted to give him one, perhaps on the arm or at the ankle or on the ear. You’d never done it before, though if there was any time to start, it would have been then but no, that was just wishful thinking.

You felt the weight of body heat of the others to your back, made worse by the still-lingering feel of buzzing muscles after a heavy exercise; Jorunn and Tove.

You’d only been looking for Bjorner, of course. The bully was always skulking off on his lonesome, getting into all sorts of brawls and squabbles. 

He looked quite seedy, face twisted up like that of a wrinkled hog. 

“Frunti,” Trove cursed as Bjorner let go of Hiccup’s collar and shoved him roughly by the shoulders with two hands, Hiccup’s booted feet landing almost much too close to the cliff’s edge, kicking up small pebbles and speckles of dust.

You grit your jaw, taking one hard step forwards.

Damn it.

-

Hiccup stepped back, weight shifting dangerously, leaves crinkling hardly against the sole of his boot.

“Leave the kid alone.”

Hiccup nearly startled- he was ashamed to say he hadn’t recognized the voice at first, but following it off- way off- to the side, yeah, he knew your face.

It was a great one- a pretty gorgeous one. He hadn’t any problems with it, of course, never would.

He was distracted momentarily by a hearty chortle, and wow, she was a looker- Gorgeous, long red hair, tall and very generously proportioned with thick arms and thickly wrapped arm-wraps, tight leather pants, form-fitting skirt, a narrow set of eyebrows furringed and wrinkled and the corners of her mouth pressed into a deep frown-

Whatever good will she’d had reserved for him had been… very, very lost, to say the very least.

“Ha! Ha-ha.” Hiccup said, more word than laugh, all forced.

He put his hands out in front of him, palms clearly displayed. I’m not a threat!

He grunted again at Hiccup, nearly sneering before turning his attention back to you. Pretty, fierce and completely uninterested in his wimpy, stick-like self. …Though I wish I was.

Hiccup knew this guy- not his name, but he’d seen him in the arena often enough. He was, dare he say it, almost cool-looking. But still, a minor difference in the weight of a handle or in the tightness of an axe head could mean the difference between life and death. His Dad had said so, and then Gobber- he was just doing his job. Even if his job might have meant, perhaps, melting down scrap metal…

Of course he wouldn’t like Hiccup. But- he hadn’t taken the sword! Sorta. Almost.

The look in the man’s eye said it almost didn’t matter, even if he chose to believe Hiccup’s lie.

The air between them was thick as the taller boy addressed you.

“What are you going to do? Beat me off him?” His voice carried the same bite as before, the same rasp, but his shoulder relaxed, their harsh angle waning, as if, just as much and Hiccup didn’t want to get beat up, he hadn’t wanted to talk to Hiccup either.

“Keep that nonsense to the bushes.” You grumbled, smacking him over the back of the head, an action that was abhorrently smooth even in comparison to the way he towered above the both of you. “And to yourself.”

A sneer.

“Least I don’t need Dreamgirl over there to come to my rescue.” The boy jerked his head towards Hiccup.

Hiccup dipped his head, brows furrowing with a half-mock, half-genuine worry. He shifted backwards slightly, taking half a step away. The hairs on the back of his neck prickled as dry dirt crumbled under the toe of his boot, vertigo-alarm causing his heart to beat faster as plants rustled behind him, growing fainter as their sandy disturbance tumbled ever-so-downwards. 

“Watch your mouth, Bjorner.” You furrowed your brows deeper, stepping closer to him with a solid grit to your grip on your axe handle. 

“There ought not to be any more lessons taught, eh?” The message was clear. Keep your words and your hands to yourself.

You stepped forwards, staring him in the eye, your own narrowed. “Watch yourself, Bjorner. You have a ways to fall.” 

Bjorner. Hiccup furrowed his brows. 

The other boy jerked forwards. You didn’t flinch- petty bolstering is what it was, and as Hiccup had often found, you were far above that.

His face only seemed to grow more stormy, though. The severe furrowing of his jaw did nothing but sharped the general angry point to it all. Hiccup knew this look, even if it looks slightly different on most others. It was the kind that usually spoke of upper-handedness and axe-handles to Hiccup’s crotch.

He knew what was coming to him as the other boy nodded roughly, lean shoulder muscles flexing under a slim arm-band.

“So’dse he.” Chief’s son. Runt.

Hiccup grit his jaw, softer edge clenching uncomfortably and tongue slightly catching between lower molar and spaced front teeth. Right.

In front, you huffed lightly, now more irritated than annoyed- he could see the deepening of everything.

What happened next was quite sudden, what with the way you swung your axe. Not to bleed, yet not to ‘keep safe,’ either- you rammed its flat end into the side of his leg, shoving him backwards as he shouted.

He didn’t have the balance to lift up his weapon the right way, his wrist twisting awkwardly and grabbing at air. He did have the wits about him to grab for your head-of-hair, rough, dirty hands grasping at a few loose strands from your head. They pulled out suddenly and probably painfully. You hardly winced, swinging back and rearing, knocking your axe-handle into his chest.

He shouted, stumbling backwards and tottering just before half-falling off the edge of the  ravine. Hiccup watched as his fingers clawed for a grip, turning his attention back towards you with what must have been ‘appreciation,’ as you hoisted the axe back over your shoulder, rolling your eyes as you turned. 

“Next time, I’ll beat you over the head for real.” You scoffed, boots kicking up dirt and mulch as you turned and sauntered away. Your entourage followed, a tall woman and a thick red bush of hair trailing after you like a monolith… or a human cloak. She shook her shoulders out, leaving behind a haughty smirk in her wake, muscles flexing as she levied her own heavy weapon.

 As you left, he heard you mumble under your breath, something both half-disgusted and mocking. “Dreamgirl.”

Gods, you were -well, he’d never used this word to describe anyone before, but- gorgeous. In that moment, it might have been less of a physical quality -you’d busted him out of a tussle, after all, maybe- but, still.

Something must have overtaken you. You respected his father- Hiccup knew that. Of course.

“Girl!” You shouted backwards. It was more an insult than a statement of fact and not quite aimed at him, or the Hiccup ‘him’ as it was, though it laid waste to no particular victim. He knew he should have been offended, but instead, Hiccup felt his lips part, the beginnings of an uneven, dopey something pushing at the corners of his mouth. His hands, still up, dropped slightly with the softer weight of his shoulders. 

His lilt nearly pushed into a full-blown, excited smile as. In his periphery, ‘Bjorner,’ arm braced against the edge of the forest’s cleft ledge, knee positioned right on top, fumbled and his knee caught. “Witch.”

Dreamgirl. Yeah, he could run with that.

-

This was no hoity-toity luncheon- it was a meal of Vikings, loud, boisterous and audacious in its crowding, not so much a celebration or a pleasant event as it was a battle, as it went with your sort of people. 

“I know he's annoying, but just deal with him,” You said over the sound of violent roaring, flicking the thick leather strap covering one wiry, muscled shoulder. It remained wholly unaffected thereafter, pressed so deeply as to inform an indent onto the cloth-covered length of his arm.

You smacked him on the back of his head with the finger portion of your hand and slid Bjorner a bowl of stew, feeling choked on the words as they left your throat, only dully aware of the sound of clattering wood, stew platter leaving your own calloused hands and landing flat against the body of the dinner table.

Dropping your axe from your shoulder to lean against the bench with a twist of your arm, you settled with your legs apart against a sturdy, uneven bench. You shook your head derisively, fighting the broiling discontent in the heart of your stomachs- not so much a physical reaction as it was a distaste rooting from the mind. 

Many Vikings avoided bringing their weapons to the smithy as long as possible and made minor and major adjustments to their tools right after. Of course, visits were unavoidable- still, most Vikings preferred to be able to make that choice for themselves. 

You’d sooner rather be skinned alive than have your weapon brought to the forge unawares, though you doubted he had the countenance to carry it this far without wheezing and whining and panting. He might’ve- but, well. Oh, your intrepid fiance. Why did you even bother with him?

You settled over a mug, already placed, your elbows boxing it in from the sides, your arms coming to guard it in front, all framing your hunched shoulders. It was yours and earlier’s, murky liquid swaying to and fro deep in the cup. 

All the bodies of your yearmates crowding around you, you glared at a smattering of tannish stew on the tabletop, bleeding into deep rivets before you turned your eyes back to Bjorner on your right. 

“Congratulations,” You grumbled. It wasn’t an apology nor a concession, but an unrepentant, ‘You’re here, still, and nothing has changed between the lot of you.’

You spoke, only half burdened by the weight of all the snapped twigs and stray leaves that still stuck out of long, blonde locks. Unburdened by the weight of a missing tooth and a large bruise bleeding up the side of his face- ah, that one was new. He must have had quite the tumble. 

You ignored his sneer, harsh and pinching all the corners of his face, returning it with a glare of your own as the stew in your own bowl sloshed. You raised a plaintive brow at his disgruntled look. It was just as much of a challenge as it was an assurance and a threat. You dared him to say something, anything.

Indeed, it was the prerogative of brothers in arms to rib at each other and make fun. You took full advantage.

Across the table, Trove’s long locks poured over wood. The whole hall seemed to shake with the fervor of your comrades, people bustling to and fro, knocking into shoulders and arms. Beside her, a healthy space away, Finn nursed a darkening, bruised eye.

You didn’t dare shift your eyes, not a glance. You ignored all of torn cloth and still-bloody arms, brown-rusted gauntlets and stumbling, limping, boisterous men.

It wasn’t your job to soothe a poor man’s ego, but if you left it he would have run ahead of himself and that would not do. Stewing made only fodder and the lot of you were already halfway to slop already. So, then, you merely forced into your eyes as much of the broiling discontent in your chest and stomach as you could, born not from a physical upset but all the force of your ailing anger and irritation. By none, you were matched in your intensity. Of that, you knew. 

Bjorner had a long scratch across his face, from just above his nose bridge to just above his jaw, a line drawn just as diagonally as it had been drawn violently. His cloth was torn where it would usually simply be ripped, charred where it should have typically been just singed. 

He grunted roughly, pointedly. You must have caught his attention from the corner of his eye. Agh, child.

You saw the look in his eyes, bitter and angry. Petty, almost. Honestly, he was such a bother. You hoped he turned his innards outwards. If not by the next battle, then you’d do it yourself. 

You glared back at him, adjusting your shoulders slightly as you settled further, aching in your meal with tense forearms.

He gave in first, his eyes rolling back slightly as he glanced, leaning back as he shifted and returned back to nursing his own meal and mead.

“...W’t ‘appened to Finn?”

“She wailed on ‘im.” You mumbled, thumbing forwards, feeling almost pleased.

He let out a proud, nasty laugh.

“Ah… S’ that a smile?”

  Your hands, now much more calloused than they ever had been, clutched at the thin, metal bucket’s handle. One of your sleeves had gotten stuck there as you trudged your way back from the docks and the one measly fish stand there. Getting it untangled was proving to be quite the task.

It was an old world that you’d been sent to, with untamed mountains and riled seas. It was unpredictable and dangerous, just as emotionless as every facet of it raged and roared. Each toil was made herculean, long and arduous not just by the times but by the sheer might and mystery of everything.

There was safety even in the dangers of the modern world, because at least the dangers were known, if not expected. More explored, less left up to the imagination- the untamed world was cruel, the might and anger of the ancient man even moreso.

As interesting as the loðinn-something-or-others were -or the Hairy Hooligans, as it was- they were a cagey, brutish people, even starved, or perhaps especially because they had been starved. 

The inhabitants of Berk were sparse and few in between, plagued by famine. What Vikings hadn’t been picked off by the dragons had been killed by the outcasts and thrown into the very literal fires by their very own brothers-in-arms.

Now, most of the huts were empty, some with the wood obviously burnt and rotting everything from the inside out.

You leaned over your knees, sitting on an old, unbalanced stool.

Their names were all stupid, anal- fitting, for a guy like Hiccup, but perhaps you were biased.

You heard the sound of shuffling leaves and dirt from outside right before the front door of the shack was pushed open, creaking and scraping against the dirt floor.

You knew who it was, marching inwards with semi-soft steps, muttering darkly to himself. You weren’t sure you’d ever heard him so stormy. It made you apprehensive, a tight grimace pulling at the corners of your mouth. 

You listened as the sound of footfall migrated from soft ground to harder ground. You were even able to make out a stray ”-eta-leg-” something, which might have had something to do with fish. You almost thought to ask, but he was quite typically very apathetic towards most of your colloquialisms. 

There was a pause. “...What are you doing?”

“Making, ah, dinner.” You said, glaring up at him defiantly, your hands falling downwards.

“...Right.” he said, eyeing the sloshing water-bucket.

You grimaced. He could probably smell it- so deep in the woods, the hollowness of salt against the bark, mulch and scattered leaves was probably strong. Bringing water along was also perhaps not so good for the dead fish. Damp things rotted faster and made already smelly things that much worse.

How else were you going to boil out salt, if not with seawater? You weren’t sure if it was going to work but now was more of a time than any to try.

He grunted as he slung the heavy pack of whose-whatsit off his shoulder and dropped it heavily onto the ground, lanky shoulders flagging as he then dropped himself onto the wooden one-blanket-ed frame of his own bed.

He would sleep, maybe, until the next day. You weren’t very versed on his schedule. To you, it seemed to be odd and erratic. He didn’t do much besides slog his way to the forge and back and be an ass.

It wasn’t as if there really was a reason to go into town.

“The arena.” You announced, after a moment of hesitation, into the dark silence.

You’d been into the forge maybe once, leafing through haphazard papers like office files, parchment mostly blank and slightly scribbled over, hard to read in the darkness. Desperate. Hurried.

It wasn’t too different from the one in the woods but there were a few more stall doors and also it was surrounded by huts, which, in a way, made it all the more eerie.

 Out the forge window, briefly, you’d spotted a man, handlebar mustache, not unlike the kind you’d expect on the face of a biker with prickly cactus-looking scruff littering the round dip of his chin. 

You shifted, minding slightly dry, already wilted plants. They had been hastily shoved into your pockets. Modern seams had torn quickly, forcing you into shambled hand-me-downs. 

Hiccup grunted.

You huffed, looking up at him from downturned eyelids. You spoke, “You’re bringing me there.”

He walked past you and stopped just before his bed on the far side of the shack behind, much too long at the legs and the wooden supports at its base much too far apart. He also lacked anything to cover the holes between them, meaning that if you laid at the wrong angle, your bent elbows would dip between the boards. He grunted again, slinging one arm over his face irritatedly, “Do it yourself.”

You smothered a brief spike of irritation, forcing down a scowl. Do it yourself.

Soft highlights made up of the waning sun-glow bounced off nearly imperceptible hairs on the back of his hand. You kept quiet for a moment longer, deep in rumination. It was quite odd to notice something like that- most particularly because you wanted to pick all of them off and then punch him over the head.

Since the beginning, you’d been forced to learn how to cobble up your own dinner, your own bedding and everything else. He hadn’t helped, not really. Everything you had was your own doing, besides maybe the odd repair shack repair or so.

You really only existed under the same roof. If he tried to kick you out, well…

The only thing that had held you together was the idea that maybe, if he hadn’t been born and raised there, or if he hadn’t become so jaded and heavily disillusioned, he might have been good company, or maybe that was just pity talking. You didn’t know much about him, nor had you seen anything clever or brave and bright come from him yet. 

Optimism was a hard thing to carry, and in times like thesis, where you had nothing more than frustration to buzz at the tips of your fingers and an empty belly, you found that all your faux goodwill was crumbling. You felt it deep in your chest, nestled right where all your spine’s nerves speared into your heart.

Saying ‘it felt like a dream,’ had never carried the right connotations- it couldn’t fully encompass all of the things you felt or the way you needed what you were sure wasn’t even real; a place where hard ground was limited to the outside, where you had a soft mattress to cater to the line of your back, the way bumpy asphalt felt beneath your sneakers or the way an old, hot car bounced over ancient potholes in abandoned roads- something deep in you reached for it, and yet all of those solid things passed through your fingers like hot smoke.

Your real life now was much colder. You hadn’t known who he was at first, or even for weeks after. If you had been told about any of this beforehand, you might have expected him to look like a cartoon, but with the uneven stubble at his chin and the not nearly as aesthetic a shape to his face, he really was just a man.

You opened your mouth to speak as he turned away, showing his back to you as he faced the wall, but then you caught yourself. You were going to call a name, any name, but he didn’t like those, not really- he was quite snappish when it came to those, in fact.

Names were tricky things, of course.

You felt that you were walking a thin line, at times; balancing over a tightrope a million miles up from the ground like you’d been thrust into some stupid, old, gaudy cartoon. Which, you had been, and it was just as inane as you imagined.

Instead you listened to the sound of white noise and fabric-on-fabric as the slow rumbling of the forest faded into something that was almost silence. You heard yourself as you breathed and the bucket and the legs of your chair rattled under you. You heard your feet digging and making low noise against dirt.

You ignored a very pointed rock of the bed frame as he shifted. 

 You made a lot of noise, to say the least. You didn’t care, though you could practically feel the air grow stiffer as you struggled.

Finally, with a hard jerk, you were able to tug your sleeve out from the handle and the bucket. You could hear the sound of fabric tearing as you sat back just above the sound of shifting over the threadbare sheet behind you.

Feeling wholly satisfied with yourself, you grabbed the tail end of the fish, pulling it off the bucket with a splash. You pulled it into the air, listening to the sound of water sloshing as it settled, water sliding off bumpy skin in rivulets.

It was nasty- it felt nasty, as most fish did, and as if you could drop it at almost any moment. 

There was a small spit set up in the middle of the room like a rig, a shoddy smoke hole framed above it in the roof. As you shifted towards it, by accident, you kicked over your bucket, cursing under your breath

Your hands shot back down to the corners of your stool, calloused palms scraping against wood and scale, fish still clutched unpleasantly in one hand, wetting the edge of your sleeve as it rolled itself back down.

There was a heavy thump behind you, the sound of boot meeting ground and the loud, frustrated creaking of wood. It startled you as you stood and whipped around, your grip loosening- the fish flew out of your hand with  what was probably a lot more force than you expected, meeting Hiccup nearly lip-to-lip. 

Stubborn coughed and spat, fish slime glistening against the lower half of his face, “Can you- stop?”

You weren’t sure of any of the things that made up his voice and those rolling tones. Was it Scottish or Gaelic something, Norwegian, Danish or having something to do with the Swedes? Or was it a mix of all of the above?

All of their vowels were deep and hitting a sort of hard to reach tenor, Hiccup’s voice especially grated with all the nasal and grumpy worn-ness of all the burden of having to live in such an old time. 

Compared to the voices of everyone else, his was sort of high. It was not what you expected, watching an animated face through a gaudy screen. 

The berth of everything you lived through now made everything you’d known seem so much bigger. It made you sad… And angry. To say it lightly, you didn’t feel pity for… A lot of people. 

Seeing him choke on salt water and slime -If he’d ever made out with Astrid, whoever she was, here-  there was a joke to be made there, something about ‘macking on’ and mackerel. It made you happy.

Cracks lay like gashes in the stone, deep like the strike of lightning… like the way a knife’s blade carved lines in wood.

Formerly bulky shoulders flagged, laying haphazard across rumpled cross. A crooked jaw lay half-open as a previously jolly man was rendered pale and nearly lifeless by sickness and infection. 

He relished in the cool shadow of the Arena’s overpass entrance for the moment it took to walk underneath, wincing slightly as he came to a stop just at where hard light drew a solid line over uneven stone. 

He sat, shoulders hunched and hands clenched, sitting over a rickety chair, chanting desperate apologies as he listened to the rages of battle outside and to the final-screaming battle-calls of the warriors outside, lost to the night.

For a moment, running his hand along the border between open grated frame and the outside world, he reveled in the contrast between his own freckled, scarred knuckles and the cool, mottled surface of the arena’s colorless walls.

He weighed a rolled-up, wrinkled notice in his other hand before letting them both drop to his sides.

The Chief’s hut was far from the safest place on Berk. Tonight, for him most of all. A cold sweat ran down his shoulders, his jaw, his back.

He’d much rather be wasting away, wearing his wrists brittle in the forge. He yearned for that place just as much he hated it, walls plugged and nailed shut with smoke and soot filling the air with a thick film.

After all this time, he very much preferred to be left on his own. Being back here brought back memories he’d much rather leave forgotten.

He stared forwards.

They hadn’t noticed him yet. 

They were all on the opposite side of the basin, where above, mounted along the rim of the arena, a cage that was once strong and well-taken care of was now crumbling in places, slightly bent and moved out of sorts. 

 Some cage doors were obviously offset and heavily dented, the logs used to lock them shut old and almost rotting, the pulley system levers and cogs and great draw-hinges attached to the sides and frame all old and slightly rusty and in need of oiling.

He stood, hand at his sides. 

It would need to be taken apart and scrubbed raw, resealed and a new log mounted or perhaps replaced by more metal and held aloft by chains instead of rope. The already frayed ropes were probably not enough to hold its weight, half-snapped and dangerous. A head and a half thick, he remembered, was the proper measurement for the right… log.

The sun lay heavily across his shoulders, as if he was being burned over a spit, sparks flying from his heart and dropping from his half-open mouth as he looked around with a smile. 

Every individual man made up one part of a whole, ripped sleeves, marching up thin ladders, boasting half-empty mugs and wives and a child running about.

A repair like this used to be a group event- throngs of Vikings gathering together, bumping shoulders and bolstering themselves up high, wielding hammers and hardy conversation like wooden play-swords. It was painstaking work made easy.

It was as if he didn’t exist- as if he was not so much an individual as one part of the merry-making, the festivities, the joy, even if there was no real holiday, even as he stood and watched. It was as if he wasn’t who he was; a runt, trouble… him.

…And it was the best feeling ever.

On his lonesome, with a ladder and a pulley, it might be managed. 

It was all work he wasn’t going to do.

He took his time, lingering for a moment, judging. 

 He had better things to be doing.

“I-I think my invite was lost…” Fishlegs said, palms spasming, balled in front of him as if searching for papers and things that might as well never have been there. 

He was different from the last time he’d seen him, though he was still a man just as large as he was tall, with a timid lilt to his shoulders that seemed quite unbefitting. His voice was just as squeaky as it was deep. The arena did a great deal to make it echo, just as it did the sound of patchy boots shuffling against uneven stone floors. 

“I got it.” He said curtly, waving the notice in one hand, feeling his already rolled-up sleeve scrunch against his elbow. His voice, still slightly nasal for a man of his age, echoed slightly.

It was immediate- as soon as He spoke, it was as if time itself stopped. There were no breezes or motions besides a jerk or two in his direction, the eternal dancing of hearts and bodies and nature coming to a pause.

Something bucked and festered in his chest. He knew what the feeling wasn’t- hope, camaraderie, acceptance. It was more bitter, drenched in shame and long-held resentment. It had been his one constant companion all these years.

 There were a set of two starved, wiry twins. They used to look nearly identical- now the male brother-half donned a mask of burnt skin and clumped hair on one side. Though his sleeves carried many holes and singes and stains from his time working in the forge, theirs was almost worse, covered in Nightmare-length, sticked claw marks and large, frayed, burnt patches.

There was a thicker, though somewhat short man there, too, standing besides a woman. He was just as scarred as he was stocky. His cousin. 

“Oh, great,” Snotlout snorted, squaring his shoulders even more so as he stepped forwards, studded belt-sash shifting over his chest. 

He glowered at the lot, his shoulders tall, cool air running invisible blades up and down his arms, standing all his hairs and giving way to prickled gooseflesh. He felt the grit of his jaw as he bit down on already gently clenched teeth.

“What are you doing here, Useless?” The woman asked, moving forwards when no one else would. She had a long, jagged scar running from just above her right eye to the curve of her jaw. Her voice wasn’t condescending, wielding Usless’s moniker more as if it was a simple factual statement than an insult, though he knew there lay plenty of bad blood between them.

Of course, it was his official title, now. That was unhelpable- as unavoidable as a blade held to his neck and a heavy, hairy hand lifting him by the scruff of his shirt, nearly choking him breathless.

Astrid Hofferson was her name.

Gobber was there too, thick cheeks now hollow, highlighting high cheekbones and a crooked jaw. A hunch that had always been there was now so severe he looked as if he might keel over at any moment, an ailing arm clutching at the top of a very short talking staff. His clothes hung thinly from his shoulders, moving in a way that, despite their solid color, made them seem so thin that they could have almost been transparent.

He was a shadow of a man- something dead walking. He turned his eyes away from Gobber just as he refused to cower as the Hofferson woman approached.

She stopped before him as he shoved down something a little bit like irritation, betrayal… grief.

He wheezed, crouching prone along the floor, his hands covering his head as thick smoke packed his lungs, making it harder to breathe. His chests ached, stinging and searing in lines, dull pain raging like storming waters just above his heart-

In the lilt of her brow, the intensity of her eye, the line of her mouth, the subtle scarring clawed into the side of her face and long since scabbed over, framed by dragon-skull shoulder pads and a hefty, patchy fur hood he saw what she thought just as clearly as she had said it all those years ago. 

He couldn’t think, the world muffled past the uncontrolled crackling of dragon fire, clanging shields and swords, yelling and roaring, deep claws scraping against solid stone.

In a look he almost returned, he could feel it aimed right back to her. The sentiments, he could have mistaken it for the sun singing against his skin’s hairs, what with all the concentrated heat and the nearly sense-rending prickling of the hairs on his neck. It was anger, mostly. Really, it would be better for them all -him most especially- if he was left alone.

Where there once lay a special portion of his mind for mooning and yearning and other rash teenaged things there now lingered something mean and hollow.

Are you ashamed?

Awnry ringing was made more intense by the sudden, hollow whistling through the spaces between bars and over hollow basin.

“‘Iccup!” A hand reached towards him, cloth strips wrapped heavily around it, thick, through green smog.

He couldn’t move- his limbs clenched and spasmed, still reeling from the force of the dragon’s blow. There was a ringing, sharp and never ending, spearing through his ears and filling all empty spaces between noises, uplifting and entwining with the sound of screeching metal and heavy body rushing through sickly-smelling gasses.

His finger, his elbow, his knees all pulling in- he forced up his head as if working endlessly against the rusted, stuffed hinges of his neck just in time to catch a glimpse of him.

His face, bearded braids trailing slightly behind, rushing towards him, jaw open- It was action, both fast and frozen enough to almost be one of the many great, carved murals in the hall.

He’d remember it forever. He wasn’t fearful. He’d never really been, but in that moment, like the rapidly foaming top of a large, cresting wave, doom rose in his guts, ravaging through his middle and tearing his insides to shreds.

He was no warrior, battle-scarred or otherwise. Despite his stature, his frame was lean and he was worn. Though his chin was heavily scruffed, he was not bearded or thick. He was stubborn, though, and he was angry.

She knew who he was and made sure he knew it too. Even after- standing at stall windows, making mild conversation, forcing words out past hard hearts- to search for some kind of acknowledgement from someone who mattered, even if it was just a greeting, to know that he was real, he was here, he was worth something. All of that had long since been put to rest- killed, slain like a hapless animal. She made sure of that.

“I don’t know what you want.” 

The world was still and bright outside, the shadow of the forge’s window covering him like an old blanket. He leaned back as she jabbed him in the chest. She was angry, her brows furrowed, leaning aggressively forwards-

He looked down on her.

”-Useless is your name, now After what you did in the arena? I don’t want to talk to you, see you or hear you. You sharpen my weapon and that. Is. It.”

He needed a drink. The taste of ale was phantom-strong on his tongue. It was a taste he’d become more familiar with in his late teens during times spent bitter and alone, but ale meant going up to the hall and he wasn’t soft on people.

That was where they gathered, mostly- those who had been left behind. Many abandoned their own homes for the safety and refuge of company and large, frigid hall walls, setting up old blankets and clumsy tents in abandoned, dusty corners.

Without looking away, he tossed the missive behind one crumbling barricade, propped up against the smooth arena walls.

You didn’t know when it started, nor were you sure how to feel about it, what with that odd thing sitting between the two of you. You could tell he expected something, what with the way he often shuffled closer than was necessary and fumbled over his own words in an effort to impress.

“Pass me the hammer?” He asked you without looking, lanky shoulders square, hands pressed against parchment, fingers sliding absentmindedly over scrawled-out charcoal and past thick-handled tools.

You snuffled, blinking from where you sat just beside him.

It was just to the right of you on one slightly uneven workbench, closer to the forge’s main window than away. You grabbed at it with slightly wobbly fingers, grimacing as it nearly fell from your hands.

At twelve winters, you still had some time left before you’d really be expected to bloody your hands, and by bloody your hands, you meant to be able to take down a full-grown dragon on your own.’ Of course, most children by now had done their fair share of slaughtering, both animals and otherwise, but none had been able to make it during a raid without help. While you hadn’t done any of it, putting you sorely behind, you were still fine.

For Hiccup, son of Stoick the Vast, feared dragon-killer, the deadlines were a little bit tighter.

You placed the hammer firmly, determinedly into Hiccup’s open palm, the tips of your fingers dragging against slightly sweaty skin.

Gobber had been generous enough to let you in. He didn’t often or ever stop the two of you from doing things. Even still, this was the first time you’d been invited into the forge, and he hadn’t said anything.

Hiccup had also been generous enough to invite you in. You hadn’t quite recognized the invitation for what it was, nor did you think Hiccup did, either. Really, the experience was proving to be rather close. It was the first time you’d ever seen him so enraptured in his work, though, to be fair, you hadn’t known him for long. He’d hardly talked about it.

You doubted he’d told anyone else- it was going to be a larger machine. He definitely didn’t have everything he needed to make it. Not the wood, which would make up a frame large enough to swarf half your body, or all the metals and ores he’d need to make all the levers and rods.

He wasn’t wearing any fur coat, just an apron and his green tunic. He scribbled notes down like the world might be swallowed if he didn’t. You could tell he’d never done that before- made such detailed instructions, thought up such an elaborate contraction.

You liked him happy. You’d seen him frustrated and you thought that was alright too, puzzling over his own work, tongue peeking out slightly from between two teeth, not comically. It was more a subtle, awkward thing.

With his back to you, he worked with a dedicated, single-minded focus, almost tireless. He worked from the moment he sat down to the moment he finished his task with a passion usually only meant for the battlefield, spotted in the eyes of the hungry past floating ashes and spraying gore. It was a passion that said that nothing had ever come natural to him.

He taught himself how to try.

You thought that he must be daring, more than any Viking warrior.

Maybe he wasn’t yet a man, but you could see the shadow of the man he would be-mature, confident, skilled, focused. The way he worked in the forge- his need to shoot down a dragon paled in comparison.

You wondered if anyone else would ever get to see him the way you did, red-and-orange firelight warming his cheeks.

He caught you looking and he smiled, something almost half-toothless and completely crooked, revealing brown-auburn hair made to glow in the light of the fires, spotted gaps in rows of teeth, freckles dusting over a nose’s bridge like speckles on bird’s feathers.

He spoke almost hesitantly, confusedly, as if he’d just realized he’d forgotten to respond, and hadn’t realized it was that important, or that you would have been expecting it, though that didn’t matter to you, because he’d hardly needed to, “Thanks.”

Even unsure, he was much more at home here than out in the open world.

You felt your head perk, shoulders dropping as a soft, gawky thing curled and writhed bashfully in your stomach, not unlike the way a worm reveled in soft, blooming dirt.

Wow.

It hadn’t occurred to you that during all of a fortnight, you hadn’t seen him smile. Now that you’d seen it, you weren’t sure how you’d ever lived without it. 

You thought you could feel the heat radiating from his body as you shuffled closer to him, your fingers curling around his bicep, slightly damp through thick cloth. Your legs were nearly brushing then, leather smock teasing against cloth trouser as you pondered what it might feel like to be handed back soft, honeyed flowers by those very same sooted hands.

You shifted, the grass beneath you wet, dew clinging to the sides of your skirt like a few shiny glass beads. You felt the warm sun against your face, tickling against small hairs and soft skin. Your journal was to your front, scratched up leather cover pressed to your hands, a charcoal stick laying abandoned across empty parchment.

Nearby was a trickling stream, water weaving past water, spraying hollowly against rocks and moss- you could have likened it to yourself and the feeling in your soul, knotting up your chest and mixing up all kinds of squishy insides.

The last you’d seen, Hiccup had been walking. Now, he was nearly falling over himself, legs jerking as his saddle’s straps and reins restricted the movement of his ankles. His shouts echoed around the whole cove, sound bouncing off cold, stone-basin walls.

His dragon slunk off in the distance, still apprehensive and avoidant. It hadn’t quite gotten used to you yet, which was fine, because you were alright with keeping your distance.

Even after you’d had your hand on its slightly-sticky snout, whenever you saw it, you thought of wide, razor-sharp maws and torsos torn from small bodies. A dragon was always going to be a dragon and they were very much deadly creatures- his reassurances of the fact that the Night Fury was just as harmless as any man did you no favors. After all, the only creatures as deadly as a dragon were, in fact, bears… and men. It made you nervous.

It had large, slitted serpent’s eyes, though its scales were flatter and its skin more leathery than warted or slimy as you’d expected from such a fearsome beast. Its face was oddly symmetrical and squat in an abhorrently off-putting way, its horns or fins or whatever else that came sproutings from its skull sort of floppy and bashful and sort of too-big and not-grown-into-yet, just like it’s bulky, soft-looking paws, sort of like Hiccup.

“T-Toothless!” Hiccup practically yowled, distressed and scolding as he fell over, face-planting into dirt and short grass, half helped-along by the wet nose of his dragon. The difference- you felt almost enraptured by it.

He was awful and very often sort of standoffish and sarcastic though not often crude. He was picky and sort of insensitive and he often trampled over boundaries like he was dancing hand-in-hand with trouble, except he didn’t know how to dance, and the hall’s fires hadn’t been lit in a while- not for a celebration, at the very least. 

In that moment, though, you remembered the way it felt to have his folded knuckle digging slightly into your shoulders as he nudged against you distractedly,  just out of view behind the wooden barricade as he was scolded by Gobber. There was something about it that you thought might be either meaningful or accidental that turned over something in your stomach, most particularly because -and not in spite of- the fact that it had come from such a scrawny, lanky, often very, very clumsy-footed boy. 

The way he’d seemed, looking off reminded you of his father a little bit. You saw it, really- all the good and awful parts of the Chief that he’d most definitely inherited, even when most others couldn’t see it. You were scared of it somewhat; of how confident it made him, how distracted and sort of brave-like he could be, even if it only ever ended up making things work for the worst.

Past all your yearning, aching, wanting, and needing-to-have-ings, it scared you just as much as you thought you could watch forever. Did he ever feel the same way about you?

You hadn’t noticed as Hiccup had untangled himself from his trappings. He must have though, and quickly, as during the time you’d spent thinking, he’d walked up close enough to you to cast a long shadow over your face, pulling you out of your own reverie. 

You blinked aimlessly as he settled down next to you. You spoke hesitantly, “So, uhm, how did the saddle…?”

“He didn’t let me put it on.” Hiccup grumbled petulantly. While nothing more or less than sort of scrawny, with the way you were slumping and the way he was sitting with his back straight, he looked sort of tall. It did nothing to erase the pout from his face or the nasal from his voice.

You started, squeaking as his dragon -for the dragon was most definitely his, now- stepped out from the shadows, melded to its back like a fresh set of armor as it stalked its way around the clearing, eternally predatory. 

Hiccup seemed to relax some as you leaned against him, sort of using his shoulder as a shield, scooting behind it as the Night Fury grew closer. You felt particularly offended, even as he let you drape his arm over your middle, leaving his hand dangling awkwardly in the air. Protect me!

“Wow. What did I do?” Hiccup asked, half-smiling, shifting where he sat, unintentionally pressing your shoulder into slightly jagged rock as he got comfortable.

Sometimes you caught him looking, eyes agonizingly blank though the rest of his expression looked to be somewhat soft, the corners of his mouth pressing into a sweeter-looking half-smile. 

You grumbled incomprehensibly as you felt yourself once again eclipsed by shadow, much bigger this time. 

You leaned harder against his shoulder, one hand coming to tangle in his sleeve. You eyed it apprehensively, feeling thin twine catch against the place nail met skin. He didn’t get it.

“Don’t leave me behind.” You said suddenly, abruptly. “Ever.”

Hiccup rubbed the back of his head with his free hand, freckles and thin fingers easily losing themselves under the mop of your hair.

“I-ah, yeah, okay.” Hiccup said, brows crinkled, slight confusion evident in his voice, though it didn’t seem any less calm or comfortable for it. He especially didn’t seem to mind as you clung closer to him, something in his face glowing a blotchy, raw pink. “Alright.”

You were in danger. Really, if enjoyment was all he could bother to feel for your predicament, then you took back all of your praises.

You scoffed miffed-ly at a brown, quirked, knowing brow. The devil- He was such a boy. 

It didn’t matter what configuration of the face you had or your height or size of hair color. That wasn’t what he thought of when he thought of you, at least not at first. 

He looked back at you, sitting in the grass, leaning behind him and he couldn’t help but to think about how pretty your smile was, the way the sun lay over the side of your face and made you look as if you were glowing. Something in his neck twinged as he did, probably sprung or pulled earlier while he was trying to wrestle the saddle onto Toothless.

You were smart- a lot smarter than him on a lot of fronts, though he was pretty ingenious on his own, something anyone, even you, was hard-pressed to match.

Now, he realized, you were just as squirrely as you were cynical.

He’d never really thought of you as someone that needed shielding. You were just as capable and incapable as him in equal measure… mostly. But  in that moment, the realization came to him that maybe you… wanted to be?

He looked at you as you muttered something foul under your breath, feeling the same way he did trying to figure out a puzzle and the same way he felt piecing axles, barrels, ropes and wheels together to make up something interesting.

There really wasn’t much else to it, was there?

Really, if that was what you wanted, Hiccup was anyone but the right man for the job, but, well, if you wanted him… Hiccup winced as you dug your nails into his arm, leaving what was probably a deep set of crescent-shaped imprints in his arm, even through his tunic.

Yeah, he still wasn’t sure how to feel about it.

“It’s cold,” You mumbled absentmindedly, eyes shutting some as a breeze brushed over your cheeks and past your ears. 

You were right. It was chilly, of course, so high up in the watchtower. It was only your second time up there.

“Yeah…” Hiccup said, leaning closer to the fire.

The two of you bumped shoulders, using a spare piece of kindling like a chair. Your ankles were hooked together, tied like a knot in a rope. The sides of your legs were so closely pressed together that they were nearly flush, despite the fact that no one else was there besides the two of you, everyone else having long since packed up their things and left. He wasn’t sure what they’d talked about. He couldn’t remember.

Hiccup kept his eyes exactly where he shouldn’t, watching you.

Your eyes were half-lidded. You leaned over your knees more than not as you turned over a small, split spit, a chunk of lamb speared over one end, his fur coat draped over your shoulders, one hand clutching at the opposite, empty sleeve. You looked very pretty like that, contented.

“They’ve got to add some walls up here, you know,” You said, your head tilting upwards as you examined a particularly soft bit of meat, thumb sliding up your skewer as you tilted it slightly downwards. 

Wow. Hiccup’s eyes were half-lidded, even as he poked at the fires with a stick, nudging the ends of charred logs closer to the fire half-heartedly.

He could hold you by the waist and sway with you and touch your foreheads together and you could play-wrestle and fight in the grass but he couldn’t kiss you and tug his hands through your hair unless he was braiding it and it was driving him crazy. He didn’t want to or have to but now that he knew he could, he thought about it pretty often. He was a teenage boy and you were a teenage girl and he’d always been curious, so of course he’d considered it.

He needed to. He had for years with all the force of a child who’d just learned how to dream. It was- It was… The feeling was surprisingly moral, but no less impassioned.

“One of these days…” HIccup mumbled distractedly. 

One of these days. He thought that every morning, now.

Hiccup blinked, the two of you standing in front of each other, curling your fingers around each other, with your fingers still relaxed. It was comfortable, warm… easy. He turned it over in his head, again and again. 

The cheering of the arena was nearly deafening to his back, the sound of metal weapons crashing against cage bars grating to his ears. They wanted him, blood, the Nightmare… Astrid was waiting behind you, eyes burning holes into him with all the conflicted feelings of a lost warrior. Even past all that, it wasn’t hard, he found, to focus on you; the lines of your face, the soft and hard curves, each and every blemish and soft patch of skin.

Huh. He thought.

He leaned forward and pressed his face against your bowed head, your forehead touching his shoulder dully past thick brown furs. He felt the split of your hairline against the tip of his nose. His eyes were closed tightly shut.

He reveled in the feeling for the moment, taking in the way your hair felt against his cheeks and the way the leftover grasses and burnt wood and juniper left a scent that laid thick over your scalp, both dusty and spiced, a lot like pine.

Ultimately, he was doing this for Toothless, but now, today, he thought that he might be doing it a little for you, too.

The whistling of Toothless' -no, the Fury’s- wings nearly stunned him, loud enough to make it more difficult to think.

Hiccup nearly choked on wind as he gripped onto the handles he’d built into Toothless’ saddle. For a moment, he thought they wouldn’t hold. After all, one small strap of leather was nearly nothing against the full force of the Gods’ cursed offspring.

They had never gone this fast before, his body felt hollow, both as if he was being nailed to the back of his dragon and as if he might just float off at any moment. The feeling It made him cautious just as much as he was focused.

Even past all of that, the space to his back felt abhorrently empty, and not just because of the way they pierced through the sky. Your tears staining the back of his shirt as he and Toothless dived and shot… He wasn’t sure he’d ever seen you cry before. He still hadn’t- it was silent for the most part, and he’d just felt it, really. If he ever had, it hadn’t been like this.

He couldn’t bring you up with him. He couldn’t. Just as he’d almost died in the ring, you had too.

It wasn’t merely a roar, more of a phenomenon, something that shook even the air around him. It was all-consuming and nearly inescapable. The Queen had followed.

Hiccup furrowed his brows and kept urging his dragon upwards.

Rain beat heavily against the roof of the Chief’s hut, making the world around you feel even more cold, weak and hollow. Thunder roared violently outside as the storm raged on.

“Hiccup,” You choked on air and spit and half a sob as you stared down at a sickly, freckled face, sweat running down both too-pale and blotchy red cheeks, staining his shirt dark. Freshly-changed bandages bled a deep crimson, changing with the color of hot blood and foul puss as his knees, one foot-less and the other not, jerked reflexively against the sheets of his blanket.

He’d been consistently out between long bouts of delirium and fever, his eyes rolling beneath his lids, just barely visible under the flickering light of a single, dying candle, twitching viciously. You clutched at Hiccup’s slick palm with both hands as he fitfully fought his way past conscious dreams.

You’d stayed- you’d stayed all night and day.

If dedication had ever really meant anything, if worship and hope and work had ever really meant a damn, if the Gods had ever been real and if their decree had ever meant anything, you hoped your will reached the heavens.

“Lass,” The Chief rumbled deeply from behind you, his heavy weight causing old floorboards to creak deeply as he shifted. 

You didn’t even have the energy to shake off the nearly unbearable heat of his father’s palm on your shoulder as you cried yourself nearly sick with tears and snot and spit gathering at every orifice. It was an ugly cry, an undignified, ungainly one, followed with all your fears and hopes and despairs.

You had your own injuries to tend to, yet you felt as if you couldn’t, not in that moment, not even if it meant that you’d have to be fighting off your own pains and fevers later, if you hadn’t already fallen under their grasp. The only thing you could do was watch and feel a need for Hiccup to be okay so deep it rendered you helpless. Ultimately, though, you knew his recovery had nothing to do with you.  

Hiccup’s dragon had left to cauterwal outside, to wail and wreak havoc and feast on the latest fisherman’s catch. He seemed less worried than you and the Chief but more worried than everyone else, and rightly so.

Suddenly, you started.

With a voice both intensely raspy and wet, Hiccup mumbled your name. It hadn’t been anything special, more a simple expression of his recognition, yet you sniveled as Hiccup clutched back at your hand, his grip weak compared to yours, his eyes dull with the force of his fever. For a very long moment, he held it.

“Hiccup.” You tried again.

The Chief’s hand tightened over your shoulder, squeezing already stiff and sore muscles.

The last time you’d seen his eyes, he’d been staring you in the face, mouth opening and closing pointedly and yet no words had come out. He’d dropped you then, right before rushing up into the sky on Toothless’ back.

Parts of you had been pinned by the rubble after and you had nearly been left behind. You could barely think past the pain, yet you still remembered how it felt to be left on the ground, hands clutched to your chest, mind completely fogged with pain and fear, hoping and hoping and hoping, cringing and in pain as the sky flashed. The terrifying outline of the dragon queen in the sky, smoke and fog larger than life, everyone certain Hiccup was going to die, himself most certainly… It seared a painful picture into your mind.

Part of you had been in danger, then. You weren’t anymore. Now, you really loved Hiccup Haddock, and you needed him to be okay.

He hoped you were safe. He didn’t know what he would do otherwise.

You sat, knees touching, head resting over folded arms. The chair below you was slightly wobbly, the table beneath your hands uneven.

You listened to the sound of gently sloshing water, watching as boxy, freckled hands dipped unevenly fired and sealed clay into an old, scratched bucket. One of the bucket’s handle’s hinges was broken and the metal bars holding it together were discolored in many places, scratched and dented in others.

A man crouched before the table on the side opposite to you by the door, donning a long, old worn tunic in green. It’d been torn and hastily sewn back together many, many times. That much was obvious.

“...And you have no idea how you got here.” He grumbled. He was crouched along packed dirt floors, wiping cribs and washing leftover bits of stew off your one shared plate.

He boasted a head of slightly fluffy hair, verging on auburn. It usually looked much darker, but he’d washed it recently, though ‘washing’ was a particularly strong word for whatever it was he’d done, going over it with a slightly damp cloth and ridding it of the thick oils and soot it’d worn like dressing.

“None at all.” You responded, the same way you’d been saying it for the past… However long you’d been here. The words spilled awkwardly from your mouth, tongue running over unfamiliar vowels and deeper tones.

Honestly, you missed home. You missed the convenience of a washing machine, for both dishes and otherwise. You missed the way the sun felt on your face, the way the sidewalk felt beneath your feet, the sound of people moving about, the sound of cars, the way paper felt beneath pen and the way the world sounded when it wasn’t filled with the constant sound of war, animals bleating and screaming and great, scaled beast letting out fervent death-cries and the dwindling numbers of a miserable warrior people.

“Any idea how to get you back?” Hiccup asked from the floor. He wasn’t near as quirky as he had been in the first movie, but that was just as well. He was a teen, then. He was a man, now.

“Nope!” You said, voice bordering on mischievous. As you spoke, something quite melancholy made itself known somewhere deep and sensitive. You made efforts to suppress it.

You weren’t lying when you said you weren’t sure how you’d gotten here. You were lucky, you guessed, that you’d been found by who you had been... Or maybe it was that you had been unlucky. 

You weren’t sure yet.

You thought he probably appreciated the company- or he detested it. It could go either way, really. Regardless, he never kicked you out.

“You… You’re....” He started, grumbling, “The worst.”

You heard the sound of drizzling water, watching small drops hit the bucket again as he stood, sighing.

“Says you.” You rolled your eyes. “Hiding away in the woods like a, ah, a hermit.”

“I was never this annoying.” He kept on grumbling.

The ‘he’ in question was your host. This was his shack, technically. His own miserable fortress of solitude.

You hadn’t… You hadn’t really figured out how to say his name, yet. Not in Norse. It was only the two of you here, see, which didn’t give you many opportunities to learn, even as you went romping around the village. 

It hadn’t posed a problem yet- it was mostly just the two of you, and so all you really needed to address him was ‘you.’

“You probably weren’t.” You shot back. “Maybe.”

It was mostly supposition, half based on what you saw and mostly gleaned from what little of the first movie you could remember. 

You weren't that close. You’d had maybe one or two conversations, some serious talks about life and other things that had only been half understood, at least by you. Now, whatever acquaintanceship had grown in the silence between you two as you struggled to learn more about Berk had dampened slightly as you’d begun pestering him.

You kept your arms carefully positioned over crinkled treatise, fingers gripping the edge of one splayed piece of cloth off to the side.

You were careful not to smudge the charcoal marrying each page, though your efforts were probably all for naught. Charcoal was a flakey medium, and your sticks had been perhaps left in the fires for much too long.

Perhaps too tired to say much else, he grunted and looked away, shaking his head slightly. 

You knew you were wearing his already thin patience even thinner.

“I want to shoot down a dragon.” You said, lifting your head and leaning it against your hand.

You’d been asking for a while now.

It was stupid, to keep pushing and pushing and pushing this way. You kept doing it anyway.

“Hand me the rag.” He said without looking at you, holding out one hand.

His hands were littered with scars, small and medium, from a life spent working in the forge. They dusted his knuckles, lying in wait in between and around patches of small freckles and moles and little croppings of baby hairs.

You’d never felt them either casually by accident, nor did you intend to, but still, his palms looked both rough and nice-to-the touch.

You shifted your elbows over your papers, slightly jostling your notes and resting your weight against a cleanly sealed note. The rough face of the cloth was scratchy against your thumb. “If it will lead me closer to dragon-shooting-”

“For just a moment, can you-” Your host stopped himself, gritting his teeth and looking you in the eye.

He had a nice pair of forest green eyes and tapering brows, moles and freckles scattering his cheeks. His face was slightly red from the sun, something which lasted the whole summer months, growing as the sun got brighter and staying throughout the colder nights. 

His chin was lined with a hearty dusting of fuzzy, peachy hairs.

His shoulders were set wide, mouth slightly handing open, as if to expel the force of all of his annoyance from his slitted open mouth, his head tilted downwards with a glint in his eye that might have looked menacing on any other person but only just looked a measure exasperated on him.

 He stared into your eyes, looking at you sideways for a very, very long moment. 

In that expression, you could almost see the shadow of the man he was supposed to have been; perceptive, determined, and a few other things, too.

Right now, those were the eyes of a man who knew exactly what you were doing

You kept your face resolutely blank.

“Help me shoot it.” You responded stiffly.

All in a moment, the man you saw was gone.

If you really thought about it, you might say that whatever spirit he’d once had had been killed a long time before you’d met him.

His brows were almost perpetually furrowed, his eyes weary, the lines under his eyes prominent, mouth stuck drooping. 

His shoulders were almost always dipped, too. If he wasn’t slouching, his shoulders were at a most imperceptible incline.  

While his face was not nearly wrinkled enough to be easily mistaken for the Chief, he looked a great deal older than twenty. He looked like his father- or, what you could remember of his father.

The darkness of the shack and the waning, settling light from the outside made it all look that much more severe.

“You’re not being serious.” With cinched brows, he looked at you as if to ask, ‘Are we really going to keep playing around like this?’

The answer was, ‘Yes-’ as long as the Night Fury remained in the sky and as long as your own project -the one hidden out back by his poor excuse for a well and hand-water pump- was in pieces, you felt quite obligated to keep going. 

“...No.” Your host finished, finally.

He looked down pointedly as you pulled your feet closer to you, heels just missing your chair’s legs as they came to rest before the pile of junk you’d hastily hid underneath. 

You dipped your head back towards your arms, miming bashfulness, though you didn’t feel too bad at having been caught. Stubbornly, petulantly, you continued on; “Why not?”

“Because-” He started, grimacing deeply.

You raised a brow, half expecting him to give up- to go silent.

“Because I said so.” He ended firmly, emotively.

“No.” You said, stubbornly.

“You’re- we’re doing this now?”

“As long as we need to,” You paused, “Until you help me shoot down a dragon.”

“You can just go and do it.” He snapped.

You didn’t mind it. You didn’t intend to stop, even if you drove him crazy.

You could be as crazy as you wanted here. You could run around naked, screaming in tongues and It’s not as if anyone would listen. Your words held no merit. The people were busy and you were just… not a member of society.

 You tried talking to people, once. People other than Him. They’d probably assumed you had brain damage. 

Honestly, you very well could have. When you’d woken up, your head had been aching pretty bad. 

Maybe this was all just an illusion and you really were still back in the real world, probably wandering around the streets, homeless, or locked up in a hospital or a mental facility somewhere, talking nonsense about Dragons and wanting to go home.

Wouldn’t that be a hoot?

There was also a very small part of you that didn’t want to say anything to these people. Really, you didn’t trust your host any farther than you could throw him. 

You hardly knew him.

“I need you to do it.” You insisted. Truthfully, you felt encouraged.

This was probably the most you’d heard from him. Ever.

You might have heard more if you’d spoken to him more, but to be fair, a man of little words attracted very little conversation to himself. Despite what you’d heard, he wasn’t… He wasn’t an easy conversationalist.

“Then you’re not going to be the one shooting down a dragon.”

“So, will you do it?”

He didn’t respond, shaking his head slightly, less so as if he was telling you no and more so as a general expression of his disapproval and of his frustration.

You tapped your finger against wood and paper, feeling at thick, packed paper ends.

It was time for a change of tactics.

“There was, uhm, a missive.” You said, “Someone delivered it while you were out. I think it’s from your dad. It says…”

Dried pulp felt rough against your hands, the wax seal clumsy and easy to peel apart as you unfolded the note. 

You wondered if opening someone else’s mail here was illegal. Hopefully you wouldn’t be arrested… Or thrown into the dungeons, or anything else. Beheaded, maybe?

You resisted the urge to snort.

You made a show of opening it and reading it, which was bullshit and you both knew it because you couldn’t read old norse. You kept your expression still, voice as serious as you could make it, “It says you have to help me shoot down a dragon.”

“No, it does not.” The man hunched for just a moment before turning back around quite abruptly, “Give me- Give me that.”

He reached over the table, snatching it from your hands.

“What does it say?” You asked curiously.

He shot you a look.

“...I think I’d rather shoot down a dragon.”

“So are we-” You tried again, feeling some sort of joy shoot its way up your chest and burst into a million little adrenaline-filled pieces.

You needed him to agree. Now, preferably.

You didn’t know why you were here. What you did know was what the movies told you and, well, you had two eyes, you could tell, quite obviously, that things had not happened the way you’d been told.

It was a one-plus-one sort of situation; a bunch of half-assed guessing and clumsy hoping, but you worked with what you knew. Maybe, if you made things right, then you’d finally be allowed back home from wherever this was. 

“No.”

You huffed. Instead of Hiccup the Useless, his name really should have been Horrendous the Stubborn.

You walked confidently, bolstered by experience and the knowing of a warrior having traveled the same path time and time again and having come out all the better for it. Despite that, the hairs on the back of your neck prickled, your neck feeling icy. 

The cold shivers that had often plagued you as a child threatened to return as you passed a gaping, light-less, uneven archway, natural, rocky spires looking a lot like jagged teeth contrasted against the awning darkness. 

That was the Thorstons’ territory. 

There was some large contention between them and the rest, what with the Thorstons being such an untrustworthy people, all of them responsible for handling all of Berks honored dead.

You couldn’t help but to find them odd.

It was nearly imperceptible at first, moving in time with your own step. Somehow, even after you stilled, the sound of footsteps did not. Sound traveled throughout the caves. It always had. It still did, peeling like the tinny creaking of wood, the deep groaning of a hollow belly. 

There was something small blinking in the darkness, shifting. 

It did not carry the awful sound of claw scraping against stone nor the sound of ever-spinning teeth and rapidly crumbling rock. It could be nothing but a man. And yet, your grip on the handle of your axe tightened.

Was it one of the Thorstons? The bulk of them spent most of their time enacting burials and spent even more time wandering in old crypts and tombs, skulking in all the great tunnels underneath Berk. The outer fringes of them and those too young to lurk so long underground spent their time wreaking havoc along the surface. It was perhaps the still air and the rotting must that must have led to their insanity and all their asinine behavior- at least, that’s what many supposed, mostly in the times they could be the least heard. It could have been merely a rumor. 

You stood stiff and grit your teeth as that small prick of light in the dark grew larger. You’d not let anyone get the jump on you, as the Thorstons tended to do to most unlucky wanderers. Admittedly, the darkness did something to foster uneasiness, to prickly something deep around your bones, where feeling was strongest.

One set of twins from the Thorston house had nearly undergone the same year of dragon-training, their father eager to be rid of them despite the fact that they were much too young for the art of battle. They had been there for a day.

Fortunately, they had been held by the laces of their waist-wraps by their mother, who pleaded to her husband for more time to let them grow and mellow- the arena was no place for baby-sitting. They had only become more reckless, something wild seeded in small hearts during that one terrifying day. They were not the sort to turn your back to- they were the sort to beat on, if you had to.

You waited, watching as soft form emerged from the darkness, a metal lantern handle grasped in one hand. It was dangerous wandering off the path with such a tiny, weak flame- she’d need more fuel soon, a new candle to keep the way lit.

It was Hilde, older sister of Fredis and daughter to Olfson Bonde. Hilde was a shy girl around your age, very clearly Ingerman, though she lacked the sharper drive and ambition for knowledge. 

Her eyes remained trained on the ground just up until the moment she reached the end of the tunnel.

“Ah,” She began timidly. It was hard to tell in the darkness, but the area just under her eyes was slightly extruded, the sides of her face looking wet and sore. She’d been crying; she was also an idiot, walking around without a weapon so deep in the tombs. 

“Off to hit the books, then?” You asked gruffly. You didn’t relax, though some of the tenseness in your arms didn’t feel as strong as it had before. 

“Ah-uhm-” She started, looking downwards.

On we go. You didn’t wait for her to finish before you turned again and started walking. Tension melted its way down your back as you kept going, though the awareness never left. 

The world grew a slight bit lighter.

It was not the natural sort of light- it was just as artificial as most of what had preceded it. Still, it marked an end. Through the darkness and past hazy grays, something else emerged- large and only just lighter than the darkness curling around you, sanded and carved and knotted at the borders in a way that made it seem as if, by some miracle of the Gods, it had merely grown from the dead rock around it.

Setting your shoulders and adjusting your burden, you headed straight ahead, reaching out and pressing a flat palm against a wide wooden door.

You turned and heaved, pushing inwards, feeling just as much give as you felt anything work in protest. You usually wouldn’t open it any more than a crack. It was a waste to press the doors open all the way, knowing that once they hit the inner walls you’d have to go about pressing them back into place.

It wasn’t just you this time, though. There was Hilde here, too.

They were heavy doors. You would have appreciated some help. It was a pity you got none. 

Generally a teary girl, she waited and wrung her hands as you finally felt the door jerk one last time before swinging open wide enough to come to a stop just before the wall.

She’d been the same way all throughout Dragon Training, just sitting around and waiting for help.

You ground your teeth.

Inside, the narrow cave walls opened up wide to reveal a hollow cavern. There was an insurmountable number of old books mounted along wooden shelves embedded into the library’s walls. It had two layers, connected by a thin wooden staircase, shelves and railings made up of a deep, dark colored wood, knobs and thick balustrade carved with a level of craftsmanship you were hard pressed to find even half-matched anywhere else on Berk.

It was much lower than it was wide, walkable enough not to pose an issue and yet with enough space to require nearly an impossible amount of care for each and every tome. Many had fallen into disrepair, not at all because of some lack of love. It was a shame that no one on Berk really read.

The only threat down here besides that of man was the threat of Whispering Deaths. While rare, they were a danger enough to have you with an axe at all times. 

The excitement was enough to nearly have you anticipating it; a risky fight to the death, a book well-read- the first rarely happened, but, well, what was the difference, really?

-

You walked past dusty shelves, not quite touching them but remembering what it felt to graze your fingers against smooth wood. 

Reading was a pastime of yours. Books of fiction were rare and valued; eddas, poems and sometimes the new, odd tale were snuck in onto the shelves by some wily author. Most of the texts here, however, were purely practical; How to fight, what to forage and how to forage it, records, the works.

You wondered if, one day, your small little cookbook might end up on the wall; if someone had picked it up, stolen it away, hoarded it for themselves- very unlikely, as you’d lost it deep in the woods. It had been a rainy, muddy day then.

You heard some shuffling from beyond the shelves, not unlike the twitching and twittering of mice. It was also something like fabric- and most probably none of your business. 

“-Got no fuel.” You caught the end of it, something old and gruff and rasping. 

It was a bastard from Ingerman house whose father was a meathead who managed the old tomes. He couldn’t ever have been accepted anywhere decent, hidden away in the darkness with knobbly fingers and knees, old wrinkling skin and a long mustache. 

He managed all the books sequestered away in the bowels of the Great Hall -who had them and otherwise- past winding passages and other things. 

“Oh, but it’s awfully frightening, isn’t it?” She pleaded. Your eyes threatened to roll at the sound of her voice, “If you’ve got just some to spare-?”

You weren’t sure exactly how long you’d been under the mountain, but it was still well lit. You knew that the Librarian replaced the candles inside the Library once every day in the mornings, which was a very sordid and lengthy affair. 

It took them until half a day to flicker out one-by-one down the library halls, so it couldn’t have been any later than midday- she’d have no need of any fuel unless she wanted to wander off the paths, but that was both her own prerogative; her own sordid responsibility to bear and to prepare for.

“You’ll have to settle like the rest of ‘em. With the…” He grunted, looking quite intensely annoyed, pale eyes flickering, “Torches.” 

It was very likely he had none he was, well, willing to spare. You knew he usually kept some for himself back behind the desk. 

You also knew he’d be able to make his way up from the Library’s belly in the pitch darkness. It was something about his nearly milky white eyes that guranteed it, you were sure. It was for that same reason he kept the passageways dim- the brights were painful to look at and he had all the passageways memorized just fine anyways.

“But-but-”

“Get on!” He said suddenly and quite loudly, seeming as if, in that moment, Hilde had worn out all his goodwill, “Always-Always-Always! Always takin’ my pens, my paper- not my candles! Stay away from my candles!”

”-But I need them.”

“And you’ll need my helmet too, then, won’t you?! Should I jus’ give any ol’ one of yeh's my worldy possessions any time you ask, eh?!”

Hidle yelped in response, sounding quite pitiful, shooting him a glance that was both wounded and offended.

Privately, you would admit that you didn’t think too highly of him either. Of course, it was the folly of anyone who thought themselves better to always fall in last and neither his complaints or musings had ever reached past the surface level.  

As the sole carer of all the books and tomes sitting under Berk, his superiority complex devalued the arts he loved so much in the eyes of all. You didn’t mind all of it most times though, most particularly because his biases made him quite easy to please.

You didn’t mind them much. You had your own set-up to tend to- some kindly pile of books and scrolls settled atop an old brown table. 

You let a thin, wooden container fall from your hands with an easy tap, the sound muffled by the layers of parchment already darning the tabletop. Your fingertips grazed lightly over the frayed, burned edges of a book, giving it one last once-over before you closed it with gentle hands, pulling out a chair with your ankle. It hooked around one leg as you settled back down, tucking yourself in quite nicely. 

In the records, you found nothing besides the usual discrepancies. You had very little to work with, but, well if you’d really cared for the conflict, you would have stayed by the Chief.

The Jorgenson head was a bastard child. A man from the Haddock clan, now long deceased -an uncle of your betrothed’s father- had bedded one of the Jorgenson’s women, their affair just barely hidden under the dark of night and only a thin guise of secrecy. She had been the sister of the head or a cousin or some other such thing. 

If the stories were to be believed, the Jorgensons had already been most prone to things like preening and blustering and roaring. With the birth of Spitelout’s son, who was spoilt and bulky and reckless as the rest of them, their wild behavior had only gotten worse. The reports told you so.

 You had to do some reading between the lines, eyeing records of birth and some council scribblings, which hadn’t at all been particularly well-taken. To your benefit, the families kept their most important records to themselves.

You frowned with some displeasure, holding back a displeased sigh, cloth shuffling over wood by your side.

You hadn’t been snuck up on- it was quite the opposite. You were much too aware of her as she settled beside you, fidgety. 

You didn’t grace her with a glance and yet you could tell she was watching you anyways. It was the force of her eyes that had done it; eyes that felt like the legs of a million pairs, all belonging to one long, buggy body. You felt that it annoyed you perhaps even more so than it had annoyed the librarian. 

You knew she was hoping to come up with you. Unfortunately for her, if there was one thing you loathed even more than petty arguments, it was company... Hers most of all.

She was plushy and gentle in nature as if she’d been born to be a mother, yet at merely enough winters to match Arne, she was surely unready to bear the life, her thoughts still too malleable, mind easily swept away by the currents of strong personality and opinion. 

She knew not so much of diction or lawspeak, having lived a life pressured to show loyalty to a clan she’d probably never once been considered by. She was naught but a small, carved piece, moved by the unfeeling, gargantuan hand of her ancestors’ player in this very large game. 

Some might have considered her a good wife or a kind companion- you thought her a pest.

“Take your hands off the tome.” You snipped roughly at the sound of shifting leather, “You’ll dirty it.”

Truthfully, some parts of the dragon are edible. 

Dragons can be prepared during times when too much food has been stolen and the air is tense. To its detriment, the meat is difficult to harvest, tough and light with little substance- at worst, it can make even the most hardy Viking easily sick, and at best, it makes great efforts to steal space in the stomach preferably used to harbor better things.

While most find it distasteful, for some, it can make quite the decent traditional meal-

You read the same line over and over, furrowing your brows as Hilde’s harassment of the librarian became her harassment of you.

“He likes Bjorner an awful lot,” Hidle said reservedly, displeased. 

You raised a brow, slightly surprised as you flipped pages- the Librarians didn’t seem to be the type to dish out praise to anyone. Bjorner didn’t seem to be the type to enjoy such pastimes, either.

She shifted in her seat again, brushing against the loose ends of scrolls and papers peeking over the side of the desk.

“What is it?” You asked suddenly, irritatedly.

“It’s-“ she started, quite timidly, “it’s a bit about wood. Some land. We lost the deed- a deed. It was- it was damaged in the raid.”

You rolled your eyes. ‘We’ was a strong word- she was barely a member of her house. “And you’re getting married in order to secure the land, because someone else’s put a claim on it. Yes?”

“Yes.” Hilde nodded tersely, muttering, “But I- uh, uhm.”

You grunted, returning your gaze back on to your hands.

Things like this happened all the time. Raids were chaotic. It was very easy to steal and to sabotage and to rob. It was a pastime of some people, which you thought to be a poor substitute for the raids of old.

Individual property was very difficult to maintain what with all the burning; it was a generally accepted rule that you got to keep nothing but the men at your back in battle. Power was in the plain and the easily accessible- whoever hoarded those had the most sway. In that sense, your relationships were your most valued possessions, for who else would have a vested interest in protecting your shared goods besides those with a claim?

“What?” You asked incredulously, “You want me to come to the wedding?”

“Ah! No, no, please- my father’s off at sea, so I can't get married now, really, but you-you’re the Chief's girl. You’ve got to be able to do something.” She pleaded, before adding hesitantly, “To stop it.”

“Chief’s girl?” You raised a brow at her.

“Well- well, you will be.”

You wanted to do something again, but you’d exhausted your list of things to roll, ways to excuse her brashness without excusing yourself.

She was deluded if she thought Hiccup was going to be Chief. She was the only one in the world who did. Not even his father himself had ever considered the thought.

Really, you were as much of a Haddock as she wasn’t a Bonde- of course, she would be losing the name soon. Knowing the Jorgensons -and all the clans, really, but they were surely the worst- if it all came to fruition, it would happen as soon as possible. Of course, once it did, she would be with child sooner than not, which would be quite unfortunate. But that was life

She was a few winters older than you- older by three, if you’d cared enough to count, so her partner could be no less than Jorvik. Older brother of Jorunn, a Jorgenson who was also a male of your year.

“Well, he’s handsome- You like him well enough, don’t you?” You asked, looking back down at your tome.

Jorvik was pleasant enough, if not a bit terse.

He had a flowing, short mop of dark hair and a well-muscled body. He was an honorable, avid warrior, and did very well during the raids though he cared not for the matters of the home, so if Hilde was to manage both the home and her in-laws, she would be very sorely alone- they would surely be the pair to be matched. They were the obvious one. He was dashing enough in personality for a Jorgenson if not a bit ugly in face, and so you were sure she’d have had a preference for him anyways.

“I-I-I- But there has to be something.” Hilde exclaimed, blushing blotchily, as if she really did think you might have known how to get out of things like marriage, and promises, and other such obligations. “I-I- Don’t want- I mean, I’ve tried to ad-dress the council-”

“No.” You said tersely. If this waa the one thing she’d ever decided to have a spine about, you’d rather she never have one at all, ever again.

The privilege of having choices- You looked at her, rather unimpressed. You’d never been offered the same courtesy, after all. Why should she be?

“It’s- I’m sure it has to do something with Grom Halfdan and his will, you see.” Hilde continued hesitantly after another moment of silence. “With the, uhm-”

“He keeps his spare candles under the desk, third drawer. You might be able to use it to find- Well, the Librarians keeps a record of all the wills and things, you see.” You suggested to her tersely. “Go off and find it for me, will you?” 

“Oh!” She said, sounding quite pleased with herself. It didn’t take long- she hurriedly moved to comply, pushing away from the table and whisking herself away.

You waited for a moment, until the sound of her shuffling became faint in the dark of the library then quickly picked up your axe and left.

You marched easily, slowly as you made your way through the fields. Past long fronds and heavy rustling, you heard the raspy, muted tones of invested conversation. 

Besides you was a large cart with wooden wheels nearly the height of the place just above your hip, chalk-full of bales and barrels of both the dusty and fishy variety, respectively.

“Y’hear? With old man Harald and Frode?” There was an interested lilt to his voice that had you tilting your head ever-so-slightly away. You had no time for mingling or gossip. The clear words made their way over to you anyhow.

“‘ckh, how couldn’ I? They were shouting louder than Heaven in Hell.” 

You grimaced, pausing for a moment as a particularly tough breeze ran over you, brushing down fields like a hand down one side of a gorgeous fur coat, bowing and coming back up smoothly. In a much similar fashion, in that moment, some small, wet patches were rendered nothing more than crusted patches of sweat.

 It seemed that Duckmaw and Bjorner hadn’t been the only ones locked in battles of words.

Exhaling deeply for a moment, raking in the fresher air, past dusty yellow and drying greens twitching and shifting under the breeze, your eyes grazed over Saint Livary, with his hunched back and downy gray hair. He was skinny for a fisherman but very, very tall with quite the exotic name.

You weren’t particularly sure where it had come from, but it was probably Christian.

“You saw it happen, then!” You didn’t know the other one. You didn’t spend much time looking at him, his likeness only half-caught as you glanced away. 

He was tall and large enough to nearly dwarf the both of you though not as much of an intimidating presence as the Chief. His voice was nearly obscured not just by the sounds of distantly bleating sheep but also the sound of heavy chewing, the slight cracking of wood against teeth as they were picked at.

“Saw it happen? They were right up in my ear! It was my fish baskets they were arguin’ over- Who had the right to ‘em.” He shook his head out, long hairs twirling in the wind, “Well, I wasn’t sellin’!”

He barked out a laugh, “Those clansmen, I tell yeh.”

Your shoulder blades ached slightly, head tilted forwards at an awkward angle as your upper back was pressed flat against wood.

Yearningly, you thought of wide wooden basins and warm, slightly murky waters. You thought of freshly-washed skin and the feel of all the day’s hardships being washed away- unfortunately, you’d only your rags to look forward to tonight. Two rags and a bucket of cold water.

It was nothing a quick trip into the woods wouldn’t fix, though it seemed that the majority of Berk’s woodstockers were growing quite lazy. 

“You’ll be whistlin’ by a different tune once they start houndin’ you for yer woods.” He paused for a moment, “Woods and coals.” 

The shade felt like cool ambrosia soothing your skin. The break in your journey upwards was enough for your twinging lower back to deflate, the muscles loosening enough that you knew you would have some trouble getting started up again. 

You leaned closer. 

And, well, trouble was a long way off, you were sure… but, if there was anything to know, you would surely rather know it.

“Was the Jorgensons and the Thorstons before, wasn’ it?“

“Get off it- Harald’s an Ingerman.” Livary rasped, something smacking against what must have been the large, hollow horns of his metal helmet.

 You didn’t know of anything else that could make that sound, contracting sharply against the one that marked the shifting wiry shoulders and bag-like clothing. “That whole bit’s done and over with. Couldn’t find the papers.”

You leaned back, drooping down your ax with a heavy thunk.

 It stood on the ends of its blades for a moment before following you and leaning against the cart, wood clashing against wood,

It was only the expression of suspicion by the suspicious that would be able to raise the hairs on the necks of the suspect, so you didn’t bother to hide. While gossip was by nature secretive, the subjects of gossip were no secret and the Vikings of Berk were both bold and brash. It wasn’t worth the effort, anyhow; even if they knew you were there, they wouldn’t care much, and their chattering was nothing a pint at the Hall couldn’t earn you less than a coin.

“Pity. Made ‘emselves a whole show- was a mite interested. ‘Specially with ‘ol Gorm… That Gorm Halfdan knew how to make business interesting...”

“Gorm was a drunk. A waste of clean air.” Saint Livary barked out. “But- Ah, don’t look so disappointed yet, son. You ever know a Jorgenson who stayed out of it?”

You rolled your eyes, picking dirt out from under your nail with one hand, the other draped over the crook of your elbow, your ankles crossed.

The Jorgenson clan was a full one fueled mostly by ego and pride. They boasted of more of their accomplishments in war and coin than any other family. If you thought right, they might have already come.

It was nearing noon when you finally made your way back up to the house, past shoulder-height stone Vikings and up uneven rock-and-dirt paths. 

It felt later than noon, cool as it was, with shadows and strips of light stretching and marking the flooring, setting the stage for small, glowy bits of dust, which had somehow kicked up in the stillness of the room, now slowly settling down under intense beams of warm light.

Cloth caught over cloth as you brushed against the slightly splintered wooden door frame of the Haddock house. 

You could feel threads pulling against each other, sensation pulling at your arms the same way it did running your hands against raw, matted sheep’s wool, listening to the sound of a hard nail dragging against dusty stone.

A measly loaf of bread, not even enough to dwarf the width of your own hand, lay discarded on a small, cracked plate by the side of one large, hairy, freckled elbow.

 It was a poor excuse for a snack and an even poorer excuse for a meal, but Berkian society was one fueled by war rations. As of late, the meals had been sparser and the stews thinner than you’d ever seen them.

Once, a long time ago, you had a measly cookbook. It had been lost alongside your first pot and a plate you’d hidden away in the fields to make and hoard your own food. You’d already known how to cook some small things by the time you’d arrived. Unfortunately, the knowledge you’d had had been sparse and much of it had been lost to time. 

Still, you were sure your cooking skills were still much better than anyone else on the island.

“Chief,” You greeted, waiting still and patiently.

Dwarfing the chair to his back the same way the hoof of a sheep looked to an ant, the Chief leaned over a small table, his head in his hands, bear fur spilling through crooks of his arms and over wooden top, mingling with the seams of his clothing and twining itself in with foreign threads in a way that made it look nearly sewn-in.

The room immediately felt fuller and the rest of the world much, much smaller.

His hands were large enough to fully grasp your skull, calluses rough enough to slice papercuts into the softest part of your arms, his forehead hidden by a wide-horned helmet and a generations-old thick, furred coat donning his back in a way that made his giant self all the more imposing.

A few, measly scattered scrolls lay by his elbows, slightly worn and yellowed, pages crumbling and delicate like the ends of a daisy flower you'd once held between small fingers. 

You’d much rather be messing with your notebook, relishing in the feel of old leather and twine, feeling nearly spellbound, flipping pages with casual abandon. 

 Onto the Chief’s papers, in clear, old handwriting, were runes, clearly inscribed using a mix of the liquids and pastes found in the intestines and guts of dragons, killed, turned inside out and disposed of.

 It left a very specific sheen- for many years, so long it was practically tradition, dragons have been used by the higher clans to make their inks and seal their woods, mixed with dyes and blood and plants and plastered onto paper.

It was a luxury for some. 

There wasn’t enough wealth on Berk for there to be anything like Jarls- they lacked the excessive gold and silk clothes, crowns and castles and whatever else might dictate such a fancy name, rules born from tales from distant lands… Or, perhaps, that had just never been the way the people on Berk did things. Even still, there lay many discrepancies between the people. In most cases, status was marked by smaller things, such as this. 

You stilled for a long moment, waiting. 

It wasn’t so often you saw the Chief in such a state, light and shadow casting over him, washing away his color, making the thick lines over his face look nearly skeletal.

“‘Been a long night, lass,” He grumbled deeply.

You hummed something terse, face blank as he sat up, pushing back his chair with his back as if he hardly noticed it, moving back with a thick, wooden scrape against the hut’s floor. 

You were an easy ear to rant at, your silence taken as permission, your person first in line to fall victim to loose words and heavy hearts.

You weren’t surprised by his answer. In fact, you felt somewhat eager.

“The Jorgensons-” His words spoke nothing of your intrepid fiance nor any of his unVikingly obsessions, his head full of odd wheels and cogs- Your fiance was quite noteworthy, though only because of his failures. It was a feat for anyone to outstrip him in that manner, but if it had to be anyone, it would have been Jorgenson. 

You cleared your throat awkwardly, still standing at full attention. You kept your eyes focused on him still, a beast named ‘Curiosity’ glowering from a place far behind them. 

You might have been silent, tamed, but you were no less hungry for it.

“They’re land-hungry. That lot knows better than to get ahead of themselves.” He went on, large arms stilling, boxed fingers coming up to brush against his large mustache. “...They’ll stop the trouble, one of these days.”

“I’ll hit the books,” You offered. The library was always open in time like this. Abhorrently, peacefully quiet. Always empty. Things to read, to learn, full enough to keep you occupied for hours.

He looked at you appreciatively, appraisingly. He’d never found a reason not to. 

You took to hard work with ease and did not complain if you’d even bothered to speak a word. 

 Of course, he’d only taken you in as a favor, a response to a plea from a stranger. He’d probably never expected so much of you. He probably didn’t expect anything from you now, though it was a rare occasion in which you offered to help with any politicking.

His words were gruff, “You’re good help, lass.”

You nodded, something in your chest feeling- it wasn’t necessarily good or bad, pride or pleasure. Still, it was bright, and the feeling was a very, very rare thing, slightly dampened. Under normal circumstances, you’d never allow it, though even the most hardy plants needed rain. 

As you turned to leave, you hid your grimace.

You crumpled new paper between shaky and to let it fall to the floor, knowing more than ever what it felt like to pull in the heavy weights of dewey tears- Of course, the boy- you’d rather not be his carer, so it was just fine. You hardly liked him at all.

You'd always known you could do things- you just hadn't always known how to go about them. But…

You stared at the crumpled piece of paper on the floor, small fists clenched around the body of your skirt, dark shadow of your small, curtain-sectioned-off sleeping place under the stairs making egg-ey white look that much more gray.

Messy scribbles and your neater, still clumsy handwriting, some small correction, a small, hesitant smile, a bold rebuke, a broken bond, made not by either small hand but one large voice- It hurt.

You had hardly a clue in the world how to go about things here, where everything was so harsh and bleak and cruel. Maybe it was better if you washed your hands of him.

“Lass… better not,” He said, voice nothing like it had been before, sounding tough and displeased. It was stiff, threatening flat tones, awkward, far from the comforting baritone he’d most probably intended.

You did your best to keep your mouth still even as your hands threatened to shake, looking over at him with watery, ornery eyes.

You stared at his large hands, pressed aside worn, dirty green-gray cloth, his crouched knees, his shoulders that barely fit halfway through your makeshift ‘doorway.’

He scared you twice as much as he’d ever been able to ease your spirits.

You kicked the small, crumpled paper aside with the toe of your boot as if you might be able to hide it. You knew you couldn’t.

It was fine.