#deviation meme

Hiccup feels the walls close in on him as his mentor delivers the news.  His father fell to the dragons.  Ships were destroyed. Dozens died.  He was an orphan now… he had responsibilities—but they could wait… the training would be cancelled… funeral preparations…

Gobber’s voice fades out. There’s a pounding in Hiccup’s ears and his throat feels tight. His skin feels hot.

He needs to get to Toothless. He needs to get in the air.

He utters an excuse to leave.  Bed, he thinks in hindsight. He might have said bed.

"Do you want me to stay the night?" Gobber asks.  He may have asked twice, with how he’s staring at Hiccup.

Hiccup shakes his head.  He goes home—the house he shared with his father for the past decade and a half—and escapes out the back door. He doesn’t think. He beelines for Toothless.

He flies for a bit but then spends the rest of the night curled up by Toothless, crying.  There was too much unresolved between he and his father for him to ever come to terms with his death.

Hiccup attends the funeral, as the dutiful son. He wants to spend all his free time with Toothless but he can't. Everyone is vying for his attention and he hates it.  He needs to grieve in a way he now knows is best for him and he can't.  The village looks to him to be chief but Hiccup isn’t prepared. He needs air. Time. An escape. Just for a bit.  Everyone looks at him with those sad, sad eyes and it drives him insane.  Even Snotlout, who is well within right to contest him for his position but doesn’t.

Spitelout is steward. He’s gung-ho about having Snotlout become chief. There’s talk of starting up training again… picking up where the courses left off.

Gobber tries to be supportive but the man is torn up as well.  Hiccup’s pushing him away likely didn’t help.

Hiccup declares he’s going on leave. Just for a bit.  A camping trip, he calls it, and he wants to go alone.  It's what he needs.  The village accepts it well enough.

Unbeknownst to Hiccup, Astrid follows him. She knows Hiccup can handle dragons in a way people can't. She sympathizes that he lost his father but she thinks his place is with the village; that he's not dealing with anything appropriately. She senses something is amiss.

When she follows, she stumbles upon Toothless.  She's furious.  Violent. Ready to tell the village the truth, knowing the sting will be worse after their chief's death, but Hiccup stops her.  He shows her the majesty of dragons.  They discover the nest.  The truth behind the war.  For the first time in days, something occupies Hiccup's mind other than his father.

Hiccup's learned the dangers of not communicating--he at least knows the pain of it, anyway.  They know the source of the war and he cannot handle it alone. He convinces Astrid to come with him to speak to Gobber. Gobber is his closest adult friend; the one he can relate to most. Together, they convince Gobber to see Toothless, and Toothless convinces Gobber of their cause.

With Gobber on their side they--Hiccup, mostly--tames the Nightmare before much of the village. Even Spitelout cannot deny what was before his eyes.  Hiccup's peers are the most enthusiastic about learning what he knows. They "train" the rest of the dragons.  Berk slowly, slowly brings dragons, and the training of dragons, into their lifestyle.

Hiccup sits on his porch and cups his hands around the head of his cane— hands gnarled and stiff from a life of using them.  That boy apprenticed in the smithy for a few months.  He was put on the docks for several weeks. In the tannery for a total of three days. He was pawned off, from shop to shop, trying to find a place to fit in.

Clueless was a disaster.  Meeker than the others, a little heavy, and, worse yet, as clumsy as they come.  He wasn’t Viking, and Hiccup would gaze upon the boy and feel a sour sort of empathy.  It was with this quiet amity that Hiccup predicted the boy’s life.  How it would play out; how his enthusiastic attempts to fit in would flitter off, and how reality would weight Clueless down until he was a very old man, tired and annoyed with the world.

Those predictions were shattered when the child arrived on a dragon.

No one knew at first.  Clueless was always a bit skiddish, so seeing him scarce around the village was nothing to complain about.  The first sign that something was different was when he signed up for dragon training out of the blue.  And he excelled.

The similarities between he and Hiccup stopped.  Where Hiccup fumbled his attempt at training brilliantly, Clueless did not.  He took down dragon after dragon in the most peculiar manner.   Clueless grew confident, social, prideful, and when the truth was revealed—when a companionship with a dragon was shown to be the source of his aptitude—Clueless flew the beast against other dragons.

It was a slow rolling ball from there, but eventually the nest was found, more truths were uncovered, and the beast behind it all was killed.  Clueless was a hero.

The changes didn’t end there.

The shadow of a Viking-laden dragon flies overhead and Hiccup bitterly recalls another ghost of his past.  The carcass of an unidentified dragon, discovered in the forests just off Raven’s Point by hunters.  Just barely fifteen, Hiccup had swore up and down that he was responsible for it.  That the remains of the rope were from his bola canon, which he had shot months before.  But no one believed him.  Claiming it was the remains of a Night Fury likely threw all credence out the window. Night Furies were bigger, sharper, more ferocious, they told him. The skull was too sleek and round, eye sockets too big, frame too small.

Hiccup was laughed into silence and he swore, right then, it would be the last time he would ever be laughed into silence.  He grew more cautious, more sensible, more repressed.  He quietly accepted his place in the village and focused on inventing practical appliances.

Now, decades later, Hiccup sits on the steps of his home, alone, and watches as Clueless laughs, surrounded by friends, their dragon companions lazing at their sides.  Hiccup watches what could have been him, green eyes alight with envy, if he had only searched a little longer, fought a little harder.

He watches a dream he gave up on come alive without him.

Hiccup thinks about confiding in her in private, as his father won’t listen, but she’s so Very Viking that he can’t bring himself to.  She’s adventurous and brazen.  She always seems so busy. So preoccupied with anything that isn’t Berk.

She leaves. Hiccup flies. She returns with his father, tired but proud upon witnessing the exalt of her son.  There’s a sadness in her eye as she congratulations him but for once it’s Hiccup who is distracted.  It is he who absently greets his mother with a smile and looks out to the horizon in the next moment.

Val is suspicious.  She sees the way his fingers tap the metal helmet, forged from an old breastplate.  There’s no excitement or pleasure.

After he wins the Gronkle match and is chosen as the Champion to kill the Nightmare, Val finds Hiccup in his room, throwing belongings into a fish basket.

She asks what he is doing. It’s here that Hiccup admits to her he doesn’t want to kill the Nightmare.  She asks why and he tells her, in slow, careful words, that he never had any intention of killing dragons.  That his power came from observation and application.  He never reveals Toothless or the extent of his understanding of dragons because she is, in the end, a Viking, but he tells her enough to feel scared.  It’s the longest, most intense conversation he’s had with his mother in many years.

At the end, Val stares at him for a very long time.  She pets his hair and says she’ll talk to his father.  She asks, one last time, what he is doing with the basket.  Hiccup tells her he was cleaning his room.  He doesn’t question her sudden understanding. For the rest of that afternoon he’s hopeful.

Hiccup can hear them yelling later in the night.  Duty. Propriety. Tradition. Listen. No. War. Choice. No choice.

Their voices raise. He has never heard his parents fight. Not like this.  This time in the war has left his father frazzled with a tight hold on his agenda. For once, Stoick’s adoration of Val does not quiet him.

It’s too much.  Hiccup finishes the half-packed basket and slips into the night. Into the cove. Onto Toothless and away from Berk.

He can breathe in the sky.  They fly a few islands over, set up camp, and Hiccup thinks.  He runs through scenarios of what he could do and what he should do. What is best done and what he wants done.  By dawn his gut twists with nerves and guilt; the window to return is closing. By high sun he knows its too late.  There is no champion but Astrid to kill the Nightmare.  Hiccup feels a strange sense of relief amidst the newfound homelessness. Time had taken away the stressing choice.

Hiccup stays in the Archipelagoes and continues his observations of dragons.  He marks out Fishing villages, Crafts villages, friendly villages.  He makes acquaintances, finds odd jobs, and survives with one foot in civilization and one foot in the sky.  He continues to keep both lives separate.  He uses another name.

Eventually, he meets the Red Death.  The heart of the war is revealed.  Hiccup—months after leaving—returns to Berk for a slow surveillance. He plans to find an opportunity to communicate his discovery to someone trustworthy, to help his former home survive…

He learns, instead, that his mother has left, that his father doubled the training and that, come spring, they would move to more offensive tactics against dragons.  Astrid is larger, stronger, one of the shieldmaiden. She is moving up the ranks and is so often seen by Stoick that Hiccup turns away from Berk once more.

Berk grows stricter, harder, and Hiccup grows into a creative athlete of sorts.  He keeps an eye on Berk from a distance, on other villages, and certainly on the War—breaking it down, marking territories and irregularities. His gear gets more intricate and intense, he and Toothless become a singular, flying being. 

I can go on forever with this, actually…

How (in the next book/movie?) there’s someone helping the dragons escape from traps and taking out catapults. Someone riding a dragon.  Hooligans are alerted and the mysterious rider is Viking Enemy Number one. Astrid is gung-ho about nabbing this jerk.

Hiccup doesn’t like this because it sure as hell ain’t HIM.  Then he’ll run into this pro-dragon vigilante, only to find it’s his MIA mother. They have different philosophies. Val is siding with dragons over people more. Hiccup just wants neutrality. To settle the war and be with Toothless.

Now this is where I was going to originally do the Guardian Ring plot, as described in this deviation.

I choose a Guardian Ring-type situation over a Hitchups-type one for a reason.  Hiccup has already been proven to that Vikings can learn to understand dragons thanks to Astrid.  He doesn’t abandon hope. He knows about the Queen and he feels obliged to do something with that knowledge.  He stays in the Barbaric Archipelagoes and works the war from his own angle.

He always keeps an eye on Berk as well. He makes quick contact with Astrid, first to assure her that he hasn’t given up on Berk, and also because she’s the first human he’s really bonded with in years outside of Gobber.  She’s more than his liaison; she’s his confidante and, much later, his lover.

The same Guardian Ring plot goes down. Hiccup gains allies, one-by-one, human and dragon, he helps humans bond with dragons, gains their loyalty, teaches them to fly, and then teaches them to use their knowledge to free dragons from the Queen.

The Queen is ultimately defeated, and Hiccup moves onto the next Queen.  He is, eventually, forgiven, and Stoick wishes for him to return “home” but Hiccup’s already taken on too much responsibility.

And Hiccup does. What he says is so unbelievable that Stoick’s ready to storm out again—dragons controlled?!—until Hiccup claims that Astrid can confirm it.

Hiccup says he’s been in that cove with Toothless for weeks, that he’s been flying and that the size of the dragon’s head could swallow Berk.  His eyes are glassy as he tries to describe exactly what would happen if Stoick went after the dragon. He begs and begs and begs Stoick not to.

So Stoick doesn’t. It doesn’t excuse the commotion that occurred in the Kill Ring, or the panic sweeping through Berk. Hiccup tells him that he’ll prove how amazing dragons are; that they won’t hurt him.  Stoick returns to the Kill Ring with Hiccup, with Astrid and Gobber, with the promise that he’d trust Hiccup.

Hiccup demands they keep their weapons down before he releases the Nightmare. Then he pets it.  He scratches its chin.  The dragon lays down next to Hiccup and its tongue lolls.

Stoick can’t deny what is right in front of his face.  He doesn’t like the secrecy, he doesn’t like the idea of working with dragons after a lifetime of fighting them, but Gobber’s already vouching to keep listening Hiccup. Gothi is as well. So is Phlegma. So is Astrid.

Toothless is released. Hiccup flies.

Dragon Killing is turned into Dragon Training.  Many Vikings are against the idea at first, so they start with those who are willing to believe the boy given the hard evidence.  Then it becomes a fad.

Hiccup teaches others to fly.  Slowly, over the winter months, he works with his father on how to stop the Death.  They both agree that battling the thing on dragon-back is their safest option.

They plan recon missions. Infiltrating the nest.  Stoick flies alongside Hiccup on Hookfang—the Kill Ring Nightmare he’s adopted as his own.  He sees the Death himself.  He sees the dead-eyed dragons.  He sees tactics and Hiccup sees behavior.

Naturally only veteran warriors from each clan is to go, but Camicazi stows away on her mother’s ship, determined to see the elusive dragon herself.

She gets to see Toothless, but is caught in the process.  She’s left on Berk after being berated by her mother, and told to stay put until they get back.

When the teens she demands to go with them. She rides on Hookfang along with Snotlout.

During the battle, when the clamor dizzies the Nightmare, she’s thrown from its back along with Snotlout. She takes great fun in stabbing at the Red Death’s eyes and shouting obscenities at it.  Snotlout is a little bemused but follows her lead.

The twins manage to get the kids off its back in time for Hiccup to strike it into flying, but the four of them are too much for the Zippleback and they quickly need to land. She watches, along with the other Vikings, as Hiccup takes it to the sky.  She didn't grow up with Hiccup, but she knows enough about him that if anyone could defeat a giant evil dragon amidst the clouds, it's him.

Even as they’re searching for Hiccup’s missing person in the wake of the great explosion,  Camicazi is more optimistic than anyone else.  She calls for him adding names like lilly-liver and faker to the shouts.

Upon finding him, and seeing his missing-leg, her optimism is subdued.

She returns to Berk along with several Bogs and Meatheads out of respect for Hiccup.  It’s decided, on the way, that dragons are going to be incorporated into all their clans lives.  The fast lesson Camicazi got before going off to rescue their parents proves fruitful for her tribe.  The Meatheads are at a slightly greater disadvantage.

She stays on Berk a full two weeks as Hiccup battles his coma, all the while working with dragons.

"He’s going to sire my heirs," she tells Astrid, matter-of-fact. "But you can have him after."

Astrid is so annoyed by the claim that she kisses Hiccup full on the mouth as soon as he awakens.