Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

“Every time you step outside, disaster follows.” 

Drowning was an odd sensation. It was painful, and more chaotic than one would expect, with turbulent currents and unrelenting darkness. So far from the light, it was impossible to tell which way was up, whether every movement was a push towards air or a further pull towards the inescapable fate of the deep. The salt of the ocean burned, like fire, like blizzard winds, like a harsh fall against rough stones. 

Drowning was an odd sensation, in that it seemed so similar to so many other things. Fire. Wind. Stones. It was like a plummet through icy clouds. It was like being surrendered, limp, to the mercy of dreams. Nightmares. 

Drowning was an odd sensation, but it was none of these things. 

Hiccup knew what it was to drown.

This was something entirely unique. 

“Can you not see that I have bigger problems?”

Asphyxiation was an uncomfortable sensation. It was strange, and more peaceful than one would expect, with fuzziness and darkened vision. Without air, it was impossible to tell what was real and what was not, whether words spoken were true or false. Empty lungs strained, like hungry bellies, like churning whirlpools, like dying candles.

Asphyxiation was an uncomfortable sensation, in that it seemed so similar to so many other things. Starvation. The sea. Flames. It was like scraping the bottom of an empty barrel. It was like being tossed, defenseless, to a pack of wolves. Demons.

Asphyxiation was an uncomfortable sensation, but it was none of these things. 

Hiccup knew what it was to asphyxiate.

This was something entirely unique. 

“Why can't you follow the simplest orders?”

Neither of these sensations were foreign, and neither was pleasant. This, this unique thing, was an amalgamation of the two, of other things unknown, and it was foreign, and it was even less pleasant than either of its cousins.

“I have his mess to clean up.”

This unique thing brought with it other familiarity in the shape of words. Words spoken before, spat like poison, without thought, with anger like fire. Familiar words.

This unique thing brought with it the dizziness of asphyxiation, the confusion of drowning. How was one to tell what was real when a piercing ringing was forefront, when everything sounded muffled?

“Hiccup? Hiccup!”

How was one to tell what was real when his head felt like it was going to explode? How was one to tell what was real when everything hurt, when starbursts exploded across his vision, when fire danced across his skin, when—  

Hiccup choked on his own breath, and everything came rushing back—literally, if nothing else, the sound and feel of the wind whipping akin to the indomitable tide of a freezing river rushing over his head. He gasped for air, instinctively, and it burned in his lungs. The bright smears of color faded from his vision and he was left, instead, staring at his father’s beard as the winter night pressed down like a tide over him. Drowning. Asphyxiating.

“Dad,” he gasped, but by the time the sound had torn from his throat, his father was gone, and he was left staring at the dark night sky, stars overhead shrouded in smoke. Fear prickled at his spine, imbalance at his shoulders—something was wrong.

“Y’alright, lad?” someone asked, someone familiar—Gobber, when Hiccup turned his head to look. 

“I don’t—” His eyes jumped, from place to familiar place, almost too fast to recognize the changes, the differences, the people. The looks. “I’m…” 

“Hiccup,” Gobber called again, and he felt the cold hook of the blacksmith’s prosthetic against his shoulder. He flinched away, and the dirt slipped under his boots as he moved. 

Boots. 

He was unable to stop himself as his eyes drifted down, down, to lock onto two feet, ten frozen toes, wrapped in yak leather and sheep’s wool.

Wrong. 

His head jerked back up, and he glanced around again. Berk. The village square. Astrid’s house, the smithy—

Massive torches. Strewn nets, melted weapons. Fire and ash.

Wrong, wrong—

“Let’s get a move on, Hiccup,” Gobber tried again. “Why don’t I take ya back home so you can have a lie-down.”

Hiccup ignored him—his voice was like the distant crash of waves against Berk’s cliffs—and his hands scrabbled instead to himself, to his clothes. The thick fur vest, the warm green tunic. He felt the hard outline of his notebook and pulled it out. It was too small, too simple—his charcoal pencil fell apart in his shaky hands. The notebook slipped from his grasp into greyed, slushy snow and he didn’t bother to pick it up.

“This is—” he managed to gasp out, as he recognized how wrong his voice sounded, how wrong his clothes felt, how wrong everything was— “I don’t understand.”

Crowing laughter had his head whipping around, to stare at—at children, who were also wrong, in height and build and attitude and—and they were mocking him, laughing at him—

Malicious. Cruel. The bruises on his ribs twinged, and he touched them again, froze—they were real, and he knew that if he looked, he’d have markings of purple, blue, black, yellow, smeared across his skin like rotted fruit—

“Let’s go, Hiccup,” Gobber was not suggesting, this time, though Hiccup was too helpless to resist, and allowed himself to be pushed along the familiar path to his home up on the hill. His mind spiralled, however, unable to focus, unable to process—

“Your father wants you back in the house,” Gobber was saying, “And I think it’s best you stay there, for once.”

The looming building that was the Haddock household made itself known as Hiccup was guided up its creaking steps. He didn’t know if it’d taken them minutes or hours to get there, but his eyes locked on the door, charred and still smoldering, dirty, burnt—

—he remembered the peel of flames that curled around it, the heat that was all-encompassing, but as a memory, so distant it was hard to fathom—

“I don’t understand,” Hiccup managed, because he couldn’t think of anything else to say. It was all he could see, all he could hear, all he could think— “There’s—everything’s wrong.”

Gobber was looking at him. He looked younger, and older. There were less lines around his eyes, less joy in them, more anger, determination, something he couldn’t place. There were the marks of a frown, instead, prominent, and a downward tilt to his mouth Hiccup had grown unfamiliar with. It was wrong.

“Hiccup,” he said, and when he reached out to touch him, Hiccup flinched away again. He felt as though he would fall to pieces—feared he would. The door creaked open behind him, and he stumbled into the shadows of the house. 

“Hiccup,” Gobber tried again, from their new distance, from across the space Hiccup had created between them, “I know you an’ your father have had it out before, but—”

His father. Hiccup’s father. Stoick. He’d looked so angry, so—so big. His father hadn’t towered over him like that in years, been so angry with him in even longer—

“Why was he mad?” Hiccup whispered, low enough that he wasn’t sure if Gobber could hear. Didn’t know if he wanted him to hear. His voice felt small, childish. “He was—he looked like—”

“Hiccup,” Gobber started again, gentle as a man like Gobber could be, “You ‘eard him. You aren’t a dragon killer. And I think it’s best for everyone if you stop trying so hard to be something you're not.”

He knew those words. He’d heard them before. He’d taken them like a blow to the face, even though they landed now like shattered glass at his feet.

You are many things, Hiccup. But a dragon killer is not one of them.

It's not so much what you look like, it's what's inside that he can't stand.

Look, the point is, stop trying so hard to be something you're not.

The reply sat on the tip of his tongue, familiar and expected, tasting of ash, and he choked on it.

I just want to be one of you guys.

Gobber was staring at him, strangely, and Hiccup finally deciphered something like pity there. 

Wrong.

He hadn’t seen that look in… years.

He slammed the door shut in Gobber’s face, and turned, instead, to the house, to its high shadowed ceilings and cold, hidden corners. Dragon bones lined the walls, Nightmare horns spread across decorated shields, Nadder spines on the heads of spears. The fire in the hearth made monsters out of them, the enraged dancing ghosts of the wonderful creatures they’d once belonged to. 

Panic tightened his throat until it was nearly impossible to breathe.

Those things shouldn’t have been there, should’ve been laid to rest long ago—

He wanted—he needed—

“Toothless,” he called, begged, desperately, as his head spun and the fire crackled like it was full of pine sap, spat cinders like it was trying to reach him, grab him, burn him, “Toothless, Toothless, please—”

He tripped over his own feet and fell to the hard, unforgiving floor. He was cold, even with the fire just feet away, and his boots were full of snow—

Boots.

—stop trying so hard to be something you're not.

He gasped a ragged breath. No, no, no, no—!

He forced himself up, on weak arms and weaker legs. He pretended his boots didn’t exist, that his toes weren’t frozen as he tripped and stumbled his way deeper into the house. His breath came quick, faster than it should, and left him dizzy. 

His father’s chair was bathed in the same shadows and jolting light as painted the walls; it was empty, bare, and the shadows that melted into the seat seemed darker than the rest. Behind it were more decorations that lined the walls, more dragon trophies, and Hiccup forced himself to tear his eyes away. He couldn’t stand to look at it.

“Toothless,” he called again, pleading, even though now he knew he’d get no response. Still, he was helpless but to continue on, as he dragged himself up the stairs to his bed, as tears blurred his vision and he tripped dangerously over every other step. There’d be no one to catch him, if he fell, and even as his hands scraped against the worn steps and thick floorboards, he wondered which option was better. 

The latter, he decided, falling would have been less painful, he knew, when he lifted his head at the top of the stairs and found nothing. His room was painfully bare of what he’d become accustomed to—bare of the sketches of Toothless’s tailfin, bare of his prototypes and experiments, bare of Toothless’s slab of sleeping rock. In their place, instead, were crude drawings of weapons—of his attempts to fit in. He recognized outlandish axes, wild catapults, netted contraptions. 

It made bile rise in his throat, seeing them now—seeing, in the middle of his desk, sitting so proudly, another sketch.

The Mangler, he’d called it. The Mangler. The Mangler. Death and destruction like he’d never known before. 

The Mangler. His sketches of its thick barrel, the springs and coils and rope and stone hidden just beneath a ribcage of wood. The pain it wrought, the blood, the damage.

It froze Hiccup in his stumbling tracks, locked the air in his lungs. He couldn’t take a step closer. 

The Mangler. 

His heart pounded, too fast, too strong, made him dizzy. He couldn’t breathe.

It shouldn’t have been there. Toothless’s latest tailfin belonged there, Hiccup’s new leg, the ones he designed together— the one he’d smeared bright blue dye on, the one he’d made sleeker, stronger, faster, for them, for him, for Toothless—

But it wasn’t there.

Toothless wasn’t there, to lay a wing over his shoulder, to let Hiccup ground himself against his warmth and smooth scales. Toothless wasn’t there to stay with him until he could breathe, until he could think over the pound of his heartbeat in his ears.

Toothless wasn’t there.

Chapter Text

Between one moment and the next, Hiccup had come to stand in front of the hearth once more. The fire crackled, its fuel further reduced to ashes and cinders. It was hard to tell how much time had passed, but its flames were less volatile, calmed but still strong. In its midst, barely visible, was a crumpled piece of parchment, its edges red-hot and quickly burning into smoke. Even as it vanished completely, and even though he couldn’t remember throwing it into the fire, Hiccup knew exactly what the parchment was. Or rather, what it had been.

It was satisfying, in a way, to his tumultuous soul, to see it shrivel and burn away, until it was nothing more than a bad memory. Still, even as it did, the space it'd taken up in his mind filled instead with the heavy pounding of his heart, with the burn of panic in his throat—with guilt, shame, terror. 

The memory seared, like hot ash stuck in his throat. The memory of the words he’d heard before, the bone-aching hollowness of what it meant. It lasted but for a moment—something else took its place, rolling in that shame, that terror, that guilt until it stunk of it.

Toothless.

Hiccup’s mind raced faster than he could keep up with it—and, alas, his legs wouldn’t move, and his eyes remained firmly fixed on the last dredges of the parchment until it was reduced to nothing. As though it could do anything to assuage the feelings, the fear roiling in his body like a live thing.

Toothless. Where was—

The sketch was gone, and in the next blink, Hiccup held something else in his hands. It dug into his palms, but didn’t quite break the skin—sharp Nadder spines, along the edge of a large shield. It was wrong, it was bad, he needed to—

The shield ripped itself from his hands, and he heard it smash against the far wall. The spines rattled like dried bones as they fell to the floor. Wrong. Bad.

Toothless.

There were countless of them, though—shields and spears and skulls, knives, teeth, swords, hung up across the walls, the ceiling, the crossbeams and the rafters. With them, his father’s voice echoed and overlapped, the countless tales he’d told Hiccup as a child, the battles he’d been so proud of winning, the dragons he’d slain—a story for each horrific trophy. Hiccup couldn’t reach them all. He didn’t want to. He wanted—

Toothless.

Everything was wrong. Everything was foreign, strange—his home was wrong, hostile, out of place. It was scrambled, almost—the remains of dragon trophies that made Hiccup sick to his stomach, a lack of everything Toothless—

He couldn’t stand it.

The back door slammed open when he pushed it, hinges loose, and the cold bit at his face immediately. It wasn’t sobering, however, and it felt more out of place than ever—his mind was still racing, whispering nonsensical things. His father’s voice yelled unintelligible things, Gobber’s joined the fray to scold him with words he couldn’t make out. The fire from the hearth lingered, as if it were a real flame, burning at him from the inside out—the sketch of his horrid creation mocked him from the cinders, dissolving, floating up into his lungs to poison him, to choke the breath from his chest.

His feet carried him blindly, instinctively—into the woods, even as he tripped and stumbled, over roots and rocks and twigs. Walking was strange—he was shorter, thinner, his arms and legs moved in ways he wasn’t quite used to. The real presence of a phantom limb threw him off—his balance, his gait, every step felt like a slide in the mud. Instead, however, he landed in cold snow and on sharp rocks buried beneath. His palms were scraped raw before he even lost sight of the light of the village, bleeding bright red as the snow turned to dirt and the trees hung over him like looming specters. The cold in the air was tight in his throat, still, and the fear had energy pumping through his blood—every sound was magnified tenfold, roaring in his ears like a heartbeat. Every rustle of brush, the movement of trees, even the shouting from the village still echoed, deep in the forest.

Greenery and terrain passed in a muddled mess, even as Hiccup wiped at his eyes with the soft material of his sleeves to rid them of the blur. The moon flashed above, through the canopy of the trees, and in its light, Hiccup managed to see the way the cold burned the tips of his fingers into a bright, bright red, even through the dirt and soot that remained. They should’ve hurt, he realized absently, but neither that nor the scrapes on his palms produced any sort of sting or ache. It was outweighed by something deeper, something that made it feel like his ribs were pulling apart, his lungs were collapsing into themselves. Though every muscle in his body felt shredded and torn, he forced himself back onto unsteady feet with a determination that outweighed everything else—or, rather, a desperation.

He hadn’t even realized he’d fallen, yet again, but that same desperation continued to drive him forward—even as he had to claw at trees to keep his balance, even as it felt like he could not get a single breath of air into his lungs. Hidden voices mocked him with words he’d once heard, long ago. Words he’d never heard. Words that weren’t words at all.

Every time you step outside, disaster follows.

Absently, in some far off, distant part of his mind, the path Hiccup followed was familiar—but wasn’t a path at all, to anyone else. Dense shrubbery continued to trip him up, as though it was on a mission, fallen logs crisscrossing the uneven ground, the very world working against him.

It grew harder to tell left from right as the sky grew darker, up from down, progress from backtracking. Trees and rocks and streams blurred together. It was all Hiccup could do to keep breathing, one pull of air after another, to keep walking, one foot in front of the other. He was cold, freezing, disoriented—but it was laughably, terrifyingly easy to keep himself moving.

Toothless.

Grass finally turned into deep, trenched dirt. He didn’t know how long it’d been. The sky was still dark. Hiccup’s feet were frozen, certainly, from wading carelessly through streams, but so was everything else, from permeating fog, general winter conditions—average Berk weather, but warnings whispered themselves through his head anyway, his father’s voice, telling him to always be home before dark, to never fall asleep outside, to never leave the house without a flint and his knife—

The pitch black of the sky pressed down above him, the stars twinkling in pity.

Hiccup pushed forward on stiff knees, thinking finally, finally, reached for the splintered, cracked, ruined tree he’d seen in his mind’s eye for hours on end, as he trudged through forest debris, freezing cold, isolating darkness—and missed.

His leg, his bad leg, his wrong leg gave out, slipped out from under him—his ankle twisted, sharp and painful—through loose dirt. Hiccup had just a fraction of a second to think No, no, I’m here, I’m right here, I promise before the rest of him followed, hip and then ribs and shoulder against dirt and rock as he fell. The familiar hill provided no comfort, seemed to be enraged, instead, the way its protruding roots snagged against his clothes and tore, the way its sharp edges of stone drove themselves against his skin again and again. More bruises. More scrapes.

The breath left Hiccup in a rush when he hit level ground once more, uncomfortable against his spine and searing pain in his leg for just a fraction of a moment before his head cracked against the unforgiving earth and he knew nothing more, of anything, pushed unwillingly into unconsciousness. Darkness that seemed almost familiar.

The sky was lighter when he woke, and the canopy of trees was blurry. For just a moment, he drifted in blissful obliviousness. It was so easy to forget, when it all felt like a dream—but then, he realized, the sky was too grey. Pale. Smoky. Wrong.

Everything pulled itself into sharp focus, then—his surroundings, the razor-edged, unavoidable pain in his leg, his back, his ribs, everywhere. The splitting headache that had made itself at home in his skull, alongside the fear, the terror that came rushing back. The stress, the confusion, the not knowing.

Pine needles and fragments of rock dug into his bloodied palms as he pushed himself up. The world streaked together, and then froze, just as he did.

It was so close he could feel the heat radiating off—like a furnace, like hot coals, just far enough not to burn. Hiccup hadn’t realized that he didn’t feel cold, anymore—the ground beneath his hands was warm, his cheeks felt sun-tinged and tight.

So close.

“Toothless?” he whispered, and in the mass of midnight scales just inches from his face, one vibrant green eye flashed open to meet his.

Chapter Text

Hiccup’s hands were pressed against a familiar reptilian hide before he could even blink, flush against near-blistering heat that numbed the sting of scrapes and scratches. Beneath his touch, Toothless writhed, eyes wide with panic and desperation and fear—crushingly, devastatingly, mirrors of Hiccup himself.

“Oh, gods,” he whispered, “Oh, gods, oh, gods—”

Agony shot through his leg as he moved, and still, his boots slipped through torn-up dirt to get closer. His fingers slipped against smooth scales, wet with snow and blood alike. Vaguely, distantly, he felt bad, of his carelessness, the way the grime would stick in the grooves between Toothless’s scales. The stickiness, the smell of iron—he pulled his hands away, as if burned, and his breath came quick, panicked.

Toothless’s wing was bent at an odd angle—suspended a bit too high and a bit too back by a recognizable mess of ropes, ropes that dug in and squeezed even through his thick, armored skin. The other was splayed behind him, contorted uncomfortably against debris and the forest floor. His forelegs were pressed close to his chest, immobile, hind legs bound together, and his tail—his tail—

A sob burst from Hiccup’s chest, sudden and sorrowed.

Toothless’s tail was a mangled mess of rope, scales, and blood. The thin membrane was shredded, what remained of it, the rest sheared clean off, leaving a open, bleeding wound along the length of his tail where the fin had once been. Many of the ridges along the same side had been stripped off, as well, and in their place was tense, rough rope, steadily being stained with blood as it pressed against torn flesh, tangling the tail back into itself in a way it never would have bent, not naturally.

Hiccup scrabbled for his knife, stuck in the belt below his coat. The silver glinted in the sunlight, and for a moment, just one, Hiccup stared at it. It was the first knife he’d been given, as a child, the first in what should’ve been a long line of weapons for a young viking—and yet, it’d been his only, for many, many years. He remembered tossing it into the lake, throwing it away without a second thought, so much so that he hadn’t even taken the time to watch it sink into the frigid depths, never to be seen again. Even now, he couldn’t find much sorrow in its loss, despite how it sat in his hands with the weight of years it hadn’t been around to see.

It lasted for less than a second before his hands jerked into motion once more—familiar ones, with the rope was rough against one palm, the leather hilt of his knife stinging against the other. Above it all, Hiccup forced the blade through the tangled mess, fiber after fiber, until finally, with a sharp crack, the rope gave under the stress. Distantly, he heard the heavy thump of Toothless’s tail hitting the ground, uncoiled from its prison, the slump of his wings and legs. He didn’t realize how still Toothless had gone, before then.

He had the space of half of a breath to be relieved, to feel just a bit of that guilt and shame and horror lift from his shoulders. Just one second to think finally, finally, before the world turned on its head—quite literally.

Sharp pain exploded across his shoulders and the back of his head, reawakening bruises from the fall he’d managed to ignore, as a heavy weight pinned him against a boulder he only vaguely remembered. Toothless had moved in less than the blink of an eye—faster than Hiccup could see, faster than he could ever dream of being. Faster than he remembered.

He could feel the grit of his hair against his throbbing head where it was pressed to unforgiving, rough rock, felt the hazy heat of Toothless’s foot against his sternum and heavy breaths against his face. The corners of his vision were blurry, and though he couldn’t quite tell what it was from, he could still see Toothless above him, stark black, dirtied and scratched scales against the lightening grey sky. He could see those wild green eyes darting about, pupils thinner than even the finest thread the seamstresses at the village used, the tensed tightness of every muscle in his body.

The dragon’s jaw opened with a glint of silver-white and blood red, so sharp that for a moment Hiccup was certain he’d been injured. But no, his lip curled over pink gums in a dangerous, wild snarl, the bright red-pink of his tongue peeked between rows of teeth sharper and deadlier than any blade or axe Hiccup had ever made, and his eyes fixed on Hiccup’s face with a strength that drove the breath from his lungs even more than the pin-prick of claws through his thick vest. It was the low, rumbling growl that rolled like thunder through Toothless’s chest that finally forced Hiccup to breathe again, a stuttered, weakened gasp beneath the heavy weight above him. It was hard to think around the thick ache in the back of his head and along his spine, the fogginess of his mind and vision, but even so, instinct had him acting without consideration.

His hand, scraped raw and cold as ice, dragged through the dirt. It stung, once more, despite its near-numbness, and his knuckles were stiff as he forced them up, the tips of his fingers pressing against black scales and thick claws. He choked on his breath as those claws curled deeper, through the vest, through his tunic, into skin. Toothless’s wings snapped open with a sharp crack, black scales and thick membrane obscuring his vision from all angles.

Finally, he found his voice, enough to plead—

“Wait—”

—even though it escaped as a pathetic huff of air more than anything else. Those silvery, sharp teeth came closer, along with the heavy smell of smoke and seared iron. Heavy black claws continued to dig into Hiccup’s chest, ripping the breath from it once more by weight and pain alone. His fingers trembled above them, and he swore, for a moment, he could hear his own ribs creak under the pressure. He could hear the whine of the build up of gas in Toothless’s throat, could see the fear in his eyes, the constricted pupils that he’d grown so unfamiliar with.

“Wait, wait, please—!”

The difference in their sizes was even more noticeable now—Hiccup was scrawnier than he’d been in a long while, and though Toothless was a lithe, fast predator, he still weighed at least as much as four of Hiccup’s father put together. His wings were massive, splayed out as they were, and the sky above them seemed to turn to night, obscured by an endless expanse of shadowed scales. Only Toothless’s eyes were distinguishable, bright, frantic green against midnight black. It was suffocating, and Hiccup still couldn’t breathe—

“—Toothless, please!”

The whine cut off. The dragon’s big head turned, and one green eye fixed him with a heavy stare. Hiccup winced under the pressure of the claws that were still digging into his chest, the lack of breath in his lungs.

“Toothless,” he wheezed again, begging, barely-hopeful.

The wings fanned out above them beat once, twice, stirring about leaf litter and loose dirt, but, more pressingly, removed the heavy weight of Toothless’s foreleg from Hiccup’s chest. It settled by his ribs instead, the thump of it hitting the ground shaking it beneath them. That big green eye stayed pinned on Hiccup’s face, constricted pupil flicking from his eyes to his hair, his cheeks, his mouth, and back again. Analytical. Considering. Still so, so dangerous.

Hiccup didn’t dare move quickly, though he was helpless to stop his hand from raising once more, towards the familiar warmth above him. The need to feel Toothless’s great beating heart, sheltered beneath scales and muscle, outweighed everything else.

“Tooth—”

An ear-splitting roar cut Hiccup off, had him flinching back without thought as Toothless’s wide jaw revealed dangerous teeth once more, threatening to tear Hiccup apart without a moment’s hesitation. His eyes squeezed shut tight, the ache in his skull exploded anew with sharp pinpricks of pain as it scraped against the rock behind him.

The sound cut off an instant later, though the ringing in Hiccup’s ears left him uncertain. Toothless’s heat and presence vanished less than a second after, and when Hiccup pried his eyes open, only the swaying branches of a nearby tree showed evidence that the dragon had ever been there.

Hiccup’s chest constricted with something that had nothing to do with pain, and the breath was driven from his lungs by something that had nothing to do with the heavy weight of claws.

Toothless was gone.

Terror gripped his heart again—fear, that had been so strangely absent, even pinned under the weight and threat of a dragon, spread through his bones once more.

His legs shook when he stood. The ground beneath him seemed to sway. His heart pounded an unhealthy, jittery rhythm, and the exposed skin of his face and hands burned with the cold. Still, it was, somehow, the best he’d felt in hours—not great, not even good, but for just a moment, he could think, he could stop panicking. His scattered mind formed a goal without conscious thought behind it.

When he took his next step, it was planned—not the frantic, desperate movements they had been before, though terror still laced through it all.

Disordered memories guided him back to the village. It was still early morning, ashy grey skies still lightening with the choked orange-red of the rising sun. Vikings were bustling about anyway, despite the early hour, despite the ever-present chill. Sven guided his grazing sheep around the far-off mountainous fields, Bucket and Mulch made their way down to the docks, and even Mildew was as cantankerous as ever, Fergus at his heels.

Hiccup avoided them all—he ducked under waving hands that didn’t care that he was in their way, side-stepped laden carts whose owners snapped at him, dodged around warriors armed to the teeth who glared at him with such vitriol it burned. In the distance, he could hear his father shouting, somewhere in the direction of the catapult—the sound grated in his ears, in his pounding head, but still, he pressed on.

The forge rose before him like a safe haven, still dark with the morning—Gobber would be tending to repairs around the village until at least mid-afternoon, as he always did the day after a dragon raid. The thought was bitter on his tongue—the only thing that provided a stumble in his steps, a squeeze to his chest that he couldn’t quite press out, even with the pressure from the heel of his palm.

His path to the forge was unobstructed, and remained so until Hiccup reached it—guided by instinct, predictable in a way he thought he’d long forgotten. Still, his mind remained steadfastly focused on one, singular goal.

Getting the fire started was harder than he expected it to be, unaccustomed as he was, but determination won out easily enough, and muscle memory struggled to the surface. With his careful tending, the coals pulsed red-orange and breathed searing heat.

None of his sketches nor his notebooks lingered where Hiccup had long gotten used to them being, but it mattered not. This, this form and the meticulous precision required of it came easier to his hands and his mind than even the fire itself.

Like a man possessed, Hiccup pulled apart shields decorated with dragon scales, hammered sharp swords into the shapes he required. He took Gobber’s largest swath of yak leather, initially intentioned to be cut apart and used as grips for axes, swords, knives, and instead used it himself—cut instead to a different, precise, sharp form from nothing but his own memory as a guide. Swords were shaped into thin, strong rods with painstaking manipulation of heath that scorched the tips of his fingers, though Hiccup did not have it in him to care. The metal fastenings of shields were melted into tiny, intricate gears—every tooth and groove took him minutes, their size and shape so exact despite the quick beat of Hiccup’s heart that it was abundantly clear, even to himself, that the act was borne of something stronger than Hiccup’s burnt fingers. Determination, once more, made itself known, if not with careful calculation, then with the brute force of need. It needed to be correct, it needed to be perfect.

The sun crossed the sky in a slow crawl. It stretched the few shadows in the forge, hair’s width by hair’s width. Sweat dripped down Hiccup’s spine, his neck and his temples, and only his single-minded focus on his task kept him from faltering.

Everything was meticulously balanced. Without tending to, the fire and hot coals died down after a few hours—but it was more than enough to finish what he needed to do.

Afterwards, Hiccup sat by the ashes to keep warm, lamp nearby and thread in hand as he pieced the leather together. Every tense loop of thick thread was spaced evenly, pulled perfectly tight. The monotony kept his mind from spiraling, even if only for some slow minutes. He kept careful attention not to dirty the work with his scraped palms, the dirt under his fingernails, holding it all between the tips of his fingers as though it would fall apart otherwise, burn and melt to nothingness.

It was a shuddering bang that startled him out of his semblance of a trance, hours after he’d first set foot in the forge. Afternoon approached, the sun near its apex, but Gobber didn’t seem any closer to returning. The forge was still empty, the ashes steadily creeping towards cold once more. The shuttered shop window allowed only dredges of sunlight in, and the lamp at Hiccup’s side flickered warningly, its reserves of oil nearly depleted. The sound didn’t come again, and when Hiccup looked down at the project in his lap, he found his work finished—even the thread severed and the end sealed with the flame of the lamp.

With something like reverence, he ran the unblemished pads of his fingers over the smooth leather of Toothless’s saddle, stiff still in its newness, but its form familiar and a comfort. With similar veneration, he grabbed the saddle’s matching counterpart—the lighter, sleeker, complex tailfin. It, too, brought comfort with it—a heavier kind, that almost suffocated, squeezed the tremors and the terrors from his heart and soul.

Both were molded from his memory alone and with nothing less than perfection—he had none of his sketches, none of his plans, not a single of his measurements, but, in truth, he’d never needed them. There was nothing he knew how to do better than this. It was heavier than instinct, something buried deep within his chest, right next to his beating heart, that told him: three hand-spans along the width of the saddle, twelve along the length—four at the widest of the tailfin, three, seven, six, five, and two for the rods. Rings the length of his smallest finger—from elbow to shoulder for the braces. It was easy, innate. It soothed some part of him that hadn’t yet been able to settle.

Reverence and care showed their faces once more, as he wrapped both of his creations carefully in the thick yak’s hide of his vest, protecting them from prying eyes and sneered words. It was easy, again, to slip out of the village—to avoid gazes that did not want to land on him, mutters and sighs that came from the corners of downturned lips. So, so easy.

Outside, the cold bit at his skin again, but the feeling was numbed, finally, by the absence of terror. The forest called him like a warm hearth, welcoming and peaceful. He vanished into the trees anew, and, in much the same fashion, with not a soul the wiser.