Chapter Text
“I’ve already told you, they’re not coming, ” Snotlout spits in Ryker’s face, his voice sharp and acidic.
“It’s been half a day already,” Ryker reminds him, his voice uncharacteristically calm and smooth as silk. “I’m certain they’ll fall for my trap.”
“Yeah? Well I’m not. And I know them better, so there.” He firmly crosses his arms with all the stubbornness of a toddler refusing to go to bed, and turns his back on Ryker.
“Suit yourself,” Ryker says, chuckling.
He continues anyway. “You should’ve got someone important and pretty, like Astrid.” He huffs, a lock of hair fluttering up. “Bet Hiccup would be here in a day.”
He silently waits for Ryker to disagree, but he doesn’t. Maybe he’s right. Maybe his pity party is a waste of his breath.
His irises, the same shade as the sea, the sky, the sorrow in his eyes, boil over with tears.
Maybe they aren’t coming after all.
.o0o.
He ends up breaking himself out, tricking the guard -an incompetent fool- into getting close enough to give him the key, and he leaves under the cover of night.
He prowls along the corridors of trapped dragons, all chained and scarred from arrows, and something tugging on his heartstrings. I’ll be back for you , he thinks to himself. Or someone will . His mind flashes to Hiccup, and how he’d never walk past the sorry sight without trying to free them.
But then again, he’s always been the selfish one. Maybe that’s why he remains uncaptured. Maybe that’s what allows him to find Hookfang, after seemingly hours of searching.
“ Hooky! ” He whisper-cries at the sight of eager, daffodil-yellow eyes that greet him through bars. “I am getting you out of there, Fangster.”
He roars softly, and watches his friend unlock the cage, swinging it open.
From there, it is smooth sailing. Hookfang blasts straight out of the deck, and they climb up, up, up, until the clouds conceal them from arrow range.
The flight back to the Edge is easy and difficult. He’s crowded with no end of horrible questions, like “what if they went out to get me and get captured themselves?” Or the much more horrifying “what if they never even noticed?”
The thought grows sharp edges in his mind, enough that he’s prickly by the time he lands Hookfang outside his hut. It’s around dawn, and everyone’s asleep, obviously.
Snotlout does the maths in his head: he was captured on patrol in the afternoon, meaning they would’ve only missed him at dinner. And he was making a point of sulking after Astrid told him to go to Niflheim after an argument between the two over lunch.
Maybe I should act like nothing happened, and then spring it on them later today, he thinks devilishly. Maybe he’d do just that, and show them all. Maybe-
Maybe it would prove, once and for all, that he doesn’t really matter to them.
With a sigh, he flies Hookfang back to the stables, hugs him goodnight, and goes to his hut to sleep in.
.o0o.
“Morning!” He says, a little too cheerfully when the others come into the clubhouse for breakfast. “I cooked!”
“Oh... thank you, Snotlout,” Hiccup says, trying -and failing miserably- to hide the surprise on his face.
Of course, he didn’t manage any sleep at all, and it was too cruel to wake Hookfang after his ordeal with the hunters, so he ended up wandering around the island until the sun rose, and decided he’d catch some fish for the gang. He can only hope his eye bags don’t show.
“Good morning to you too, Snotlout,” Tuffnut beams, and he gives a genuine smile back. The twins, cruel and clueless as they can sometimes be, are the closest he has to friends out here. They’re bonded by default, in a way. With Fishlegs, Astrid and Hiccup so busy with their dragons and missions and the whole taking-down-the-hunters spiel they’ve heard a million times, they’re all he has for human company.
He searches them for any sign, any indication they might be holding something back, but nothing. Either they’re exceptionally oblivious, or exceptionally good at acting. Probably both, he thinks, sinking his teeth into the fried fish he cooked.
“You seem brighter than yesterday,” Fishlegs helpfully observes.
“Oh yeah,” he says noncommittally, taking another bite of fish like he wasn’t kidnapped and held hostage yesterday. “Totally.”
He waits, suspense hanging in the air like smoke only he can see, to see if any of them will approach the tentative question. He can almost hear it in his head:
“Snotlout... where were you at dinner?”
He can’t tell whose voice it is, probably Hiccup or Fishlegs, but it’s someone’s, and it pulls cruelly on his heartstrings, playing them like a harp. Plucking out the tune of his demise, his funeral as the least important member of the dragon riders.