Chapter Text
It starts with a boy and a dragon.
It’s Jack's third decade as an immortal 17 year old and he’s tired. He’s tired of talking to himself, he’s tired of not eating, he’s tired of not needing sleep and constantly being awake, and mostly he’s just tired of being alone. Summoning snowflakes and full blast blizzards have lost their thrill and now he’s uselessly drifting from town to town, country to country, wondering if there’ll ever be a way out.
Every night, the moon watches over him, silent and unforgiving. Unmake me, Jack silently rages. Take me back to the darkness.
If the moon says anything back, it’s also silent.
It’s on one of these empty nights that Jack finds himself on a small, shitty island in the literal middle of nowhere. Despite the remote location, however, there seems to be some kind of celebration going on in the village’s Great Hall. The place seems lively and crowded, but there’s a few smoldering houses and too many testosterone fueled dudes for Jack to feel completely at ease, so he drifts away from the village and into the forests.
Jack decides that this is much better, and settles himself in a tree, ready for his nightly judgmental staring contest with the fucking moon.
If you don’t put me back in the fucking lake, I’ll do it myself, he thinks very hard at the white piece of shit in the sky.
“Hello?” a voice says, below him to the right. Jack glances down. There’s a child. A child with a plain face, red messy hair, and the brightest green eyes Jack has ever seen. And he’s staring directly at Jack.
Jack whips around, looking for whoever the child is talking to. Obviously, considering Jack is at least several meters up in the air on a frost bitten tree branch, there’s nobody there.
“Are you talking to me?” Jack shrills, whirling around.
The kid blinks. “Who me?”
“No, me! Wait. Oh my god. You can see me.”
“Are you a ghost?” the kid asks, putting his hands on his hips in the least intimidating gesture Jack has ever seen.
“What the fuck. Why would I be a ghost.”
“Because you asked if I could see you. And you’re all,” the tiny human gestures with one hand wildly, “white,” he decides.
“Huh.” Jack thoughtfully leans back against the tree. “I guess I can’t rule that out. Wait, you’re distracting me,” he gracefully leaps down from his perch, eliciting a sharp gasp from his companion. “Why can you see me.”
His companion shrugs nonchalantly. “Should I not be able to see you?”
“Yes,” Jack says fervently. “No one can see me.”
The kid tilts his head in a catlike manner. “Well…” he says, drawn out. “I was coming out here offer Loki a tribute. Maybe you’re a god,” he decides.
Jack blinks. “Why are you offering Loki a tribute. Who is Loki?”
The kid looks vaguely offended. “Tuffnut says that Loki will help me get revenge on my enemies,” he says at last, electing to ignore Jack’s second question.
“And just what enemies do you have, you’re like five years old.”
“I’m nine,” the kid huffs. “And someone tried to drown me.”
Jack stares down at the adorable pest of a child in front of him. There’s a smattering of freckles gracing his pale nose and checks that strangely enough brings out the brown flecks swimming in his large, red-rimmed eyes. He’s small for nine—about as small as the children he saw starving to death in a nearby Nordic village. Looking closer, Jack can see faded bruises around his wrists and neck, and a fresher one just blossoming on one of his high cheekbones.
Someone had been playing rough with this kid.
“That’s fucked up,” Jack says dumbly, feeling something strange throb in his chest.
The small child frowns, eyebrows drawing in. “What’s fucked mean?”
He winces. “Uh, don’t worry about it. And don’t repeat it!” he adds quickly, not wanting the kid to get in trouble. “What’s your name?”
“Hiccup.”
“Excuse me.”
“Hiccup Horrendous Haddock the Third.”
“That’s it, I’m having a talk with your parents.”
“But you said no one could see you!”
“Fuck that—wait oh shit.”
“Shit!” the child repeats after him, delighted. “Gobber says that one a lot.”
Jack presses the heels of his hands into his eyes. “Who’s Gobber?”
Hiccup pauses thoughtfully. “He’s like my other dad,” he says at last. Which explained absolutely nothing.
“Okay, you know what. Let’s table all this for later. Heaven forbid I be the responsible one, but it’s like midnight and you should be in bed right now.”
“It’s not as if Dad’s gonna notice,” Hiccup argues. “He’s busy right now.”
“Too busy to look after his bruised, waterlogged kid?” Jack raises an eyebrow.
Hiccup deflates, wrapping his arms around himself. “He doesn’t notice that kind of thing anymore,” he mumbles.
If Jack hadn’t already decided he was sticking around this kid for the relief of finally having someone to talk to, he was definitely sticking around for the foreseeable future now.
“What do you mean,” Jack grits out, starting to feel repetitive in his questions at this point, “he doesn’t notice?”
“Everyone else my age is like this,” Hiccup says, kicking at the dirt with is right foot. “I mean, Snotlout”—who the fuck is naming these children—“doesn’t try to drown me, but he’s not very nice.”
“Yeah? And what’s the name of the numbskull who tried to drown you?” Jack presses.
Hiccup puffs out a breath of air. It fogs in front of his face. “Dagur. He’s the Berserker prince.”
Great. Royalty. That probably explains why Hiccup seems to be severely neglected by any adult supervision. Not that it excused that behavior.
Jack sighs. “Look, it doesn’t matter whether or not your dad is going to notice, you should be in bed. I’ll walk you back.”
“But I—okay,” Hiccup gives in at Jack’s pointed look. “You’ll come with me?” he hedges, softly.
“Yeah,” he says, the strange throb back in his chest at Hiccup’s pleading face. “Yeah, I’ll come with you.”
Jack learns three things over the next few hours. The first is, the adults in Hiccup’s life aren’t nearly as neglectful as he previous thought. The second is, holy shit Hiccup’s dad is chief of this shit island which by proxy makes Hiccup royalty too??? And the third is, Gobber is the best thing to happen to this poor kid.
All three of these revelations come within minutes of each other, when a large, burly man slams open the door of the house Hiccup was about to enter, catches the small child in his arms for a brief, but heartfelt hug, and then pulls him into the house where he begins a longwinded lecture on the duties of a chief and how children disappearing in the middle of a “Thing” feast hinders said duties.
Hiccup looked overwhelmed, and on the verge of tears, until another burly man entered the house and told Stoick to calm down yer scarin’ the lad he came back didn’ he?
The chief—Stoick—calmed down enough to ask Hiccup where he’d been.
“I was offering a tribute to Loki,” Hiccup replies boldly.
Gobber lets out a barking laugh, slapping Stoick on the shoulder. “An’ yeh were worried about ‘im. That seems like normal Viking behavior to me,” the blonde haired man grins. “Did yeh find Loki, lad?”
Hiccup nods vigorously. “He calls himself Jack and he’s all white,” he replies as Jack slaps a hand to his face dramatically.
“They can’t see me!” Jack hisses as Stoick sighs heavily and says, “We’ve talked about yer imagination, Hiccup.”
Hiccup frowns and looks at Jack, “But—”
“Just pretend you can’t see me,” Jack says, ignoring the pained feeling he gets at the thought of the one person who can finally see him, ignoring him, “or they’ll think you’re crazy or—”
“Loki coulda visted him!” Gobber protests, in Hiccup’s defense, waving a metal prosthetic in the shape of a hammer for emphasis. “The gods have been known ta visit mortals!”
Jack decides he likes Gobber.
Stoick rolls his eyes. “It’s getting late, you should head to bed,” he tells his son, quelling Gobber’s rant with a glare.
Hiccup also rolls his eyes. Body types aside, Jack can see the resemblance between the two redheads. “Fine,” the kid sullenly mutters.
“Fine,” the Chief grits out in frustration.
“Fine,” Gobber says cheerfully.
Hiccup and Stoick stare at him.
Jack sighs. “Is it too late to go back in the lake, Moon?” He stares outside the window at the white orb hanging in a velvety sky.
The moon says nothing, but Jack has the oddest impression that it is laughing at him.