Chapter Text
“Did anybody see that?!” Hiccup exclaimed, arms outstretched as he circled himself. There was a massive crunch as the mechanical device Hiccup had created was forcibly dismantled under the weight of a Monstrous Nightmare. Hiccup turned back toward the ledge where the dragon was sitting proudly.
“You. Of course it’s you. How could it be anyone other than a Monstrous Nightmare?” The dragon lunged at Hiccup, mouth open wide, ready to snap its jaw down on Hiccup’s arm. Hiccup, smartly, decided that running away was the best course of action at that moment.
As he started to run down the hill, the Nightmare hot on his metaphorical tail, Hiccup began screaming in the hope that someone would be willing to help the village mistake. He got about half way down before he tripped, landing on his face. Hiccup stood to look behind him and saw the Nightmare wiggle its way slowly down the hill after him. The dragon seemed to be taking its time following him, because, if the creature was actually trying to eat Hiccup, it would have already. Once the Nightmare was closer to him, Hiccup took a step to begin running down the hill again, but did not quite turn around and nearly fell off the side of the would-be cliff. Nearly fell off, in that the Monstrous Nightmare caged the teen in massive talons. Said teen stared in shock at the creature that could kill him in a single breath, and saw a playful curiosity in golden eyes meant to be soulless.
Hiccup managed to push his body into a backwards roll, out of the claw cage above him. This time managing to get to his feet, Hiccup made his way down the hill in a tilted dash with a zag. Looking behind him, at the dragon still chasing him, Hiccup didn’t notice the dirt wall coming rapidly upon him. The dragon, on the other hand, did notice, and blasted the wall with lava. Hiccup jumped out of the way of the blast and hid behind a pole in the center of the walk-way. This, apparently, did not please the dragon, and so, it attempted to melt the pole with his final shot- which did not work. Hiccup looked around the right side of the pole, hoping to catch a glimpse of the creature beyond the pole. Feeling hot breath ruffle his hair, Hiccup turned to see the dragon looking down at him with a gentle tilt to its head. Hiccup would almost call it caring, if he didn't know any better. The Monstrous Nightmare dropped its head low, inching slowly forward, toward Hiccup's hand, when a large Viking, clad in green scale-like armor, fell from the sky onto the dragon's face.
The dragon tried to blast the big red haired viking, but nothing happened.
“You're all out.” Hiccup heard as he crept his way out from behind the pole. He watched as the two got into one of the lamest fights to ever be fought. The dragon, not trying, and the viking just swinging its arms around in a fake attempt to “get rid” of the dragon that attacked his son- not that Stoick would care to admit that. The punches thrown at the beast were only half managed and the dragon could have avoided them if it was trying to do more than see the small viking again. The fight went on like this for around a minute, but the dragon let himself be captured.
As the dragon was wrapped in ropes to be dragged away, the pole Hiccup had been hiding behind while watching this clash of foes, fell over and destroyed the ramp to the docks, along with other parts of the village. The teen watched the calamity he created and hoped that the damage was kept to a minimum. This hope- however- was completely destroyed when the flaming torch rolled over the net containing the dragons, freeing them. Hiccup felt Stoick turn his enraged glare toward him.
“Sorry, Father.” Hiccup said as he shrunk into himself, “Ok, but I hit a Night Fury.” Stoick proceeded to bodily drag Hiccup- by the back of the shirt- to the middle of the village as the teen talked.
“It’s not like the past few times dad. I mean, I really actually hit it. It went down, just past Raven’s Point, if we get a search party out there we could-” The teen was thrown to the ground in front of his father.
“ENOUGH! Winter is almost here and I have an entire village to feed. Thanks to you, the supplies we have for the rest of the year were cut in half!” Stoick screamed at his son and dragged the useless Viking to his feet.
“I think the village could do with a little less feeding, honestly,” Hiccup muttered loudly under his breath. The village let out aghast exclamations at that statement. Hiccup flushed red, not realizing he said that so loudly.
“That is enough Hiccup. You are going to go home. Gobber! Make sure he gets there, it was your responsibility to watch him, anyway. I have his mess to clean up.” Stoick pushed Hiccup toward the one armed blacksmith.
“Good going useless, getting rid of half of our supplies for the winter,” Snotlout said as he tripped the green eyed boy.
“Yeah, I’ve never seen anyone mess up that hard!” Ruffnut laughed as Hiccup started to fall towards the ground, but managed to be caught by an annoyed looking Gobber.
“Augh come on, peg leg, you're ruining all my fun,” Snotlout laughed.
“Don’ ye kids have more fires to put out?” Gobber asked sharply as he guided Hiccup away from the fire brigade, leaving the three bullies to laugh in their wake.
As Hiccup and Gobber made their way through the village they were chased by scoffs and taunts about how Hiccup is useless. Honestly, how could the child manage to lose half their food supply in one night? There were even talks of ‘how am I supposed to feed my family now’, when they always had more than twice the amount of food needed to survive the harshest winters. People even whispered of how he won’t have an issue staying fed as the Chief's son, like that afforded him any special privileges.
About half way back they ran into the Chief’s advisor, Ack, a large burly man with blond hair and a beard that was groomed to perfection. Hiccup was not looking where he was going- he was looking down at the ground and complaining to Gobber behind him- and physically collided with Ack, not for the first time that day.
“You know, Hiccup, we need to stop meeting each other like this! This is the second time that I have knocked you on your scrawny unhelpful ass today.” Ack laughed as Gobber helped his young charge to his feet again.
“Yeah you have a point there, I will add it to the list of things to work on.” Hiccup brushed the dirt off of his pants and shirt.
“Hiccup, we have to get you home.” Gobber said as he started to shove his way past Ack.
“Great, yeah, let’s go Gobber.” Hiccup started after the blacksmith.
“Good job Useless, doing just as Gobber always says. Just like a hound and her bitch.” Ack said quietly, but Hiccup heard him.
They continued their march towards the Chief’s house and Hiccup started to complain that he had, in fact, actually hit the nightfury.
“And he never listens to a word I say,” Hiccup said, his arms gesture wildly.
“It runs in the family,” Gobber tried to appease the teen.
“And then, when he does, it's always with this disgusted scowl like someone took all the meat in his sandwich. ‘Suse me barmaid, You must have brought me the wrong offspring. I ordered an extra large boy with beefy arms, extra guts and glory on the side, this here, this is a talking fishbone.’” Hiccup did a rather impressive impression of his father, with the puffed out chest and everything.
“Now, you're thinking about this all wrong. It's not what you look like, but what's inside- and your actions- that he can't stand,” Gobber tried to explain to the boy.
“Thank you for summing that up.” Hiccup opened the door to the house.
“Look, just stop trying to be something you're not. It would be easier on all of us, especially you.”
“How can I, when all there is to be on this island is one of you guys?” Hiccup said as he closed the door behind him.
Leaning against the door, Hiccup sighed. ‘It’s going to be a long night.’ he pushed himself off of the door and headed up the stairs, stepping on the left side of the third stair so that it didn't creak. When he got to his room, the first door to the left of the staircase, Hiccup moved around his- well made- bed to the desk in the corner. There he grabbed his most recent notebook and a charcoal pencil and made his way back down stairs. Hiccup knew that he had to move quickly, otherwise his father would get home and he would have no choice but to stay. Hiccup rushed out the door, but made sure that the door was completely closed, before making his way toward the forest to hunt down his missing catch.
“Okay, so if this is Raven’s Point, then it should be just…” Hiccup examined the map he had drawn in his notebook, “Or maybe not.” Hiccup crossed out that spot on the map.
“-but if the dragon fell to the south-east…” Hiccup turned the map again.
“I have definitely seen this boulder before… It’s a nice boulder though. Ugh!”
“No, no, it was this way. You can tell by the way the dragon fell that…”
“Ah! But, what if it is just- Ow! That was a very sharp rock I just stepped on.”
“Ugh! I haven’t even been…”
“Wait… is that that same boulder?”
“If it was just east of…”
Hiccup searched the whole of Raven’s Point for hours. He had skipped lunch, and breakfast, so he was getting rather hungry. Though the Village, as a whole, could do with less feeding, Hiccup was a growing boy who needed to have more calories in his day than the handful of edible berries he found on his search for the dragon. Finally, after all of this time, Hiccup gave up.
“Oh the gods hate me. Some people lose their knife in the mud… Oh, not me, I managed to lose an entire dragon!” He shouted as he smacked a branch in front of him, after which it slammed back and hit him in the eye. Looking at the branch Hiccup noticed that it was broken and connected to a tree. Said tree is leaning in a strange way as if it was pushed down by a great force. Following the trail of destruction Hiccup noticed that the dirt was heavily piled almost like something had pushed it out of the way, so Hiccup climbed the strange dirt mound and came face to face with a large black dragon. The dragon did not look like any of the dragons Hiccup had seen in his 15 years of life. Over the dirt pile, Hiccup could see that the scales were so black they almost absorbed the light, like the night’s sky. The dragon didn’t seem to be breathing, so Hiccup decided to take a closer look. He made his way over towards the dragon, cautious and uncertain, one footstep at a time. After seeing the dragon was, indeed, alive, Hiccup allowed his excitement to overtake him.
“I did it, I mean I really actually hit it, I have brought down this mighty beast!” Hiccup put his foot on top of the dragon’s leg and, as he exclaimed his victory over the Viking’s mortal enemy, he was shrugged off of it, like a heavy shoulder bag. Hiccup stumbled to his butt and when he looked back, the dragon- hopefully the Night Fury- was staring back.
“Okay, so, you're awake. Great! Well, I guess it's time that I kill you. I’ll, uh, I’ll cut your heart out and present it to my father. I’m a viking, you know. I am a VIKING!” Hiccup shouted at the, presumably, Night Fury. The dragon emitted a sad coo and let its head fall to the side. Hiccup raised his dagger a little higher, before he really saw the beast below him.
“I did this,” Hiccup said as regret filled him. Beginning to panic, Hiccup cut the rope holding the captured dragon in place. As he did so, the bindings became looser and looser. The young Viking did not notice the dragon start to move, until it was on top of him, growling in his face.
“Um…” Hiccup panicked. The mouth of the dragon was very close to his very delicate neck.
“Hi…” Hiccup waited to be eaten, it would be a just punishment for letting the dragon go.
“I’m- I’m sorry” He felt, more than saw, the dragon take a deep breath in ‘Well life, it’s been great, but now I must move on to my resting place. I, most likely, will not make it to Valhalla as I did not die in battle but that’s fine, I don’t wanna have to fight the rest of my existence anyways. I wonder who will find my body. Will dad even care?’ Hiccup closed his eyes and turned his head, and the dragon screamed in his ear before running off- deeper into the forest.
Hiccup sat there for a moment as his breathing returned to normal. Then he picked up his dagger to the sound of ringing in his ears. The blade was unbroken and just as sharp as the last time he had sharpened it. Slowly, Hiccup stood on his feet then, after taking maybe one step forward, promptly, passed out.
With a jolt, Hiccup woke from his highly uncomfortable, unintentional resting place. It's dark. Shit. Standing with a jolt, Hiccup rushed off toward his house. Managing to trip over that Giant freakin boulder as he did so. How that was even possible, he had no idea, it's huge, like larger than his father. Even so he did trip over it.
He ran through the forest, only tripping a few times, he was not counting the time that he tripped over the boulder, thank you very much. He tripped into it, not over it. After like twenty minutes of intermediate running he managed to make it to his, well, his father’s house. Staring at the imposing structure, Hiccup took a deep breath and took a step into the manor of the Chief. As quickly and as quietly as he could Hiccup started to make his way up stairs
“Hiccup.” A voice growled from the shadows of the fire.
“Hi Dad, didn’t know you were awake, it's kinda late isn’t it, I think I’ll just head off to bed. Yeah… bed. Night.” Hiccup tried to escape.
“Back. Here. Now.” The Chief demanded from his chair.
“Yes, Sir.” Hiccup dropped his head to his chest and made his way to stand opposite the Chief’s chair.
“Where were you? Because of you I had to go to the great hall for dinner. You are supposed to be here. Making dinner for me, after I had to clean up the absolute disaster you caused today. Every time you step outside disaster falls. You can’t follow even a simple order. I tried to teach you how to fish, and instead you go hunting for trolls. Always off to do something you’re not supposed to be doing. Going on useless adventures, you can’t even kill a dragon, how do you expect to be of use to the village.” Stoick stood and walked over to the teen, towering above him.
“Sorry, Sir. I will try harder next time” Hiccup did not make eye contact with his father.
“We’ve had this discussion one too many times boy, you always say the same things, for once in your life you need to mean them. Now I have duties to do as the chief. You will start dragon training in the morning, and you will do as you are told, you will not go off on your own and you will focus on your work. Keep the house clean, if I see one speck of dust you will not see the light of day for at least a week, and you can forget about going to the forge.” With that, the Chief made his way over to the wall to grab his favorite axe, the one with the intricate design and subtle stippling that he still believed Gobber capable of.
“Yes sir” Stoick made his way to the front of the house slamming the door behind him, leaving Hiccup to stand in front of the still burning coals. “Great, now I have to train to kill a dragon. I can't do that, I tried, it didn't work. The only other option is death… that didn’t go so well either. Maybe I’ll just see what happens.” Hiccup made his way to his room after he flattened the coals. With a sigh, he laid down for a long night of sleep in a bed barely big enough to hold himself, all thoughts of food forgotten.