Chapter Text
Hiccup wakes up to a rock in his boot and the quiet of solitude.
He whips his head around, looking for any trace of Viking, his braid brushing against toothless and tickling him in the process.
None found.
Still groggy but intrigued enough to stay awake, Hiccup bustles around checking every rock and bush around the cliff where they slept, only to find nothing. When that isn’t conclusive, he decides to widen his search. This can’t be what it looks like, they couldn’t have just left without telling him. They have to be somewhere on the island at least, maybe flying around with Loki? Looking for food? It has to be something.
Hiccup hops on Toothless’ back, and they jump over the side of the cliff, gliding down to the forested floor of the island.
Hiccup doesn’t bother dismounting to walk, he doesn’t even land, just whips through the trees and plants, keeping his eyes peeled for anything. He runs into a change wing, quickly changing direction, spots some gronkles, even smothering smokebreaths, but, in cruel irony, no night fury.
Worn out, he finally pauses in a small clearing to take a breath.
“No, they couldn’t have just…” he mutters to himself, but before he can start searching again, a voice calls out his name! In a moment, his heart flutters, and he whips around—
…only to find his riders. Not that that’s a bad thing! Just…
Anyway, he should be happy he’s finally found them, he thinks to himself, or, that they finally found him.
“Hiccup! Thank Thor!” Astrid jumps off Stormfly and comes running up to him. Honestly, he’s surprised Fishlegs wasn’t the first to do that. Though, in fairness, he’s only a step behind Astrid, sprinting up to him the same. He also squeezes the breath out of him just like Astrid, but he can’t blame them.
He reluctantly participates in a group hug while the rest of them splutter about how worried they were and how long they searched and what the hell happened to him.
“Guys, guys, I’m fine. It actually, wasn’t that big of a deal…” He tries to say, but the looks he gets tells him his friends refuse to take that as an answer.
“Okay it was a bit of a big deal but not as dangerous as you’re thinking.”
“Interesting, Hiccup making assumptions about what we think.” Tuff comments, and Hiccups already looking at them exasperatedly.
“Interesting indeed. Why don’t we take it a step further and make an assumption about what we think he thinks we think?” Ruffnut responds, and Hiccups already rolling his eyes.
“Rockslide?”
“Dagur?”
“Collapsed cave?”
“Giant eels?”
“Guys—“
“You got food poisoning!”
“Seduced by a razor whip?”
“Ooh good one, they are very persuasive”
“Ew Tuff!”
“You got kidnapped by night terrors!”
“Aren’t those the things that protect our whole island?”
“Everybody has a good and bad side.”
“True.”
“Kidnapped by dragon hunters ?”
“Okay enough— oh. Actually, that’s exactly what happened.”
—
“Okay, now, tell us again how the hell you managed to get snatched right out of the sky by some measly dragon hunters? That didn’t even have Dagur on board???”
Astrid and the others have now been interrogating Hiccup ever since they got back to the edge. The flight was pretty long so they’re tired, but apparently not enough to let him escape to his room before telling them the whole story.
He’s taking inventory of all his belongings on the round table, the fire at the center crackling comfortingly, but toothless, the one who’s supposed to be on his side sleeps away soundly in the corner of the room, no doubt taunting him.
Listen, he loves his friends, and he’d love to explain it all to them in the most excruciating detail if that’s what would make them feel better, but do you know what he would love even more than that?
TO SLEEP SOMEWHERE THAT DOESNT MAKE HIM FUCKING SEASICK.
The cliff side was a welcome change, but sleeping in his own bed would be like entering the gates of Valhalla right now.
“It wasn’t my fault! Their catapult had two nets, both set for different trajectories!” His hands come up to his head in annoyance. “W- how- how the hell was I supposed to know that?!”
“Uh, couldn’t you have just dodged both nets?” Tuff points out with a finger up but a blank, almost disappointed face, mind-numbingly.
“No! When I dodged the first net I flew right into the second! It was actually pretty clever…”
“Okay, so you got caught. What happened next?”
Hiccup calms down a little, focusing mostly back to his inventory, but relays the details as best he can.
“Well… I got hit with an arrow just before we went down, I guess that was probably the main reason we couldn’t see the net thing coming. The next thing I remember was waking up in a dragon proof cage in the hull. I was… bandaged up, given fresh clothes. Toothless was in a separate cage but right beside me. We were fed well, kept to ourselves… that’s about it.”
He looks up at his friends as he finishes and is met with blank looks. Snotlout looks at him expectantly. He raises an eyebrow. Snotlout does the same.
“Well?! Don’t leave us hanging! How did you escape?!”
“Oh! Uhh…”
He struggles for a moment. What does he say? The truth? If they know he knows who did that to him they’ll want to hunt them down, and if they hunt them down, there’s no doubt they’ll want to separate Loki from them. To protect Loki, but still, that wouldn’t be right.
“Um I stole the keys to our cages off a drunk guard. We let all the dragons go in the middle of the night then flew away as far as we could. We slept on the island you found us on.”
“Aw boring. You should have blown up the place!” Ruff exclaims. “Taking advantage of people under the influence is so lame.”
“I’m with you on that one sister. Lame as lame can be.” Tuff agrees as both twins walk lethargically away while dragging their feet, assumably bored away by Hiccup’s lame —but believable!— story.
He senses a little skepticism in the others (probably due to his apparent inability to lie with a straight face), but not enough that they’ll question his story outright. Which will just have to be good enough.
Later, when the conversation has died out and Hiccups gotten through most of his belongings between bites of supper, he’s digging around in his bag when he feels a small piece of paper. You’d think this wouldn’t be much of a surprise to him as he tends to write notes on whatever he can find and rip out little pieces of information when he thinks they might need them, and you’d be right. He isn’t surprised, at least, not until he pulls it out and reads what’s written on it.
“I’ll find you when I’m ready.”
And that doesn’t exactly sound like a note he’d write himself…