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Hiccup doesn’t think he’ll sleep better tonight than in his entire life, finally knowing the Skrill is safely back in ice and hidden from Dagur’s reach. He’ll be searching the sky for it, not another glacier. Even if he feels guilt, all the same – the dragon didn’t deserve that, but he had to get it off their tail before he and Toothless wound up dead.
They have a lot to catch up Berk on.
Hiccup doesn’t know how bad blasts from the Skrill hurt, but he knows a thing or two about lightning. He took a bolt to the head, after all. Skrills aren’t as powerful, but they have the same effect all the same.
And he hit Dagur with one of those.
He flew away with the boy’s scream echoing in his ears.
All that, for Toothless.
And it was worth it, but his stomach still twists in knots, and Hiccup feels wrong.
Tuffnut won’t stop humming, and he doesn’t know who’s getting more annoyed between himself and Ruffnut.
“Guys, could you please save the singing for when we reach Berk?” Hiccup finally pleads. He needs to report to Stoick, and mostly, to check on Snotlout. Hiccup hasn’t seen him since Astrid grumpily slung his cousin’s arm over her shoulder and dragged him off to Gothi. It was worrying enough that even Hookfang was lingering, quiet and worried, no puffs of smoke or fire following him this time. Hiccup and Fishlegs had been out searching for the twins ever since, until Meatlug just dropped from exhaustion and they had to pack it in.
And Hiccup and Toothless flew out to Outcast Island.
In short, they’ve been flying for days, and everyone is exhausted.
“Ohh,” Tuffnut whines. “What’s got you in a twist?”
“Yeah,” Ruff chimes in. “We ended the war, we froze the Skrill…”
“First of all, we didn’t end the war,” Hiccup interrupts. “Though the Skrill shouldn’t be a problem we need to worry about again.”
“Dagur got away?” Tuffnut asks.
“Sort of. He got hit by a redirected bolt of Skrill lightning. He’ll be out for a while.”
“Cool,” Ruff oohs. “I wish I could’ve seen that!”
Cool is not the term Hiccup would use. The muted, muffled cry still echoes in his head, and he feels awful. Even if Dagur was going to do so much worse to him and Toothless. He was defending his home. He did the right thing. So why does he feel like this?
“Yeah. Awesome,” Tuffnut agrees gleefully.
“I don’t really feel awesome,” Hiccup mutters as they keep flying, gliding over endless rolling ocean waves far below.
“But you should,” Tuff argues.
“Whether I should or shouldn’t doesn’t matter,” Hiccup mutters, staring blankly over the waves. Lightning crashes distantly, and he forces himself not to tense – the Skrill is gone. There’s nothing to worry about, but the dragons can’t pull through another violent storm without rest. He knows he can’t.
“You’re really freaking me out,” Ruffnut grumbles.
“I don’t mean to freak you out,” Hiccup replies in the flattest, dryest tone he can muster. Not that it matters. The twins are, well, nuts.
“Whoa, really broody,” Tuffnut supplies.
Hiccup sighs and rubs his already aching forehead. “Alright, guys, it’s just that we’ve fought in many, many battles together, and we’ve won many, sunk many ships, and probably hurt a lot of people, but this is really the first I’ve ever hurt somebody I know.”
Dagur could’ve been killed. Hiccup hadn’t thought about that, just the single-minded focus of protecting his home. He never thought about the consequences.
“Wouldn’t that be a good thing?” Ruffnut ventures.
“Yeah, I mean, I don’t know.” Probably. “But I still don’t want to kill.” Anyone. He doesn’t want to kill Dagur. Hiccup hates him, no question, but he still is himself enough to know he doesn’t want him dead. “Not even Dagur. I knew him, you know. He’s crazy, but he’s…. he wasn’t all bad back in the day.”
He remembers having fun.
It’s crazy, insane looking back, but he did.
Hiccup was just that desperate to have someone.
Even if he waited every year, terrified for the next treaty signing, he also… wanted the companionship. Even if he hated every minute of it. That’s not something he knows how to explain.
“Oh,” Tuffnut offers.
“There’s nothing wrong with a bit of crazy,” Ruff chimes in.
“If it comes in perfect slices,” Tuffnut agrees. “The right doses of insane are very pleasurable.”
Can this person please stop talking? “Guys, I’m serious.”
“So am I.”
Hiccup rubs his aching head, immensely tired. “You know what? Forget it.”
“Not to worry, my one-legged friend,” Ruffnut reassures unreassuringly. He tries, distantly, not to think about how that’s something Dagur would’ve said. “We know what’s happening.”
“Yes, absolutely,” Tuffnut agrees.
“Oh, Thor.” He can never stop facepalming with these two. “Alright, what do you think is happening?”
“It’s really quite obvious,” Tufffnut replies, his sister nodding along. “He hurt you, but you still attached to him. It’s this thing called Stockholm Syndrome. We had a cousin who had that once.”
A cousin who had? Did their cousin die? Never mind. “It’s not – I don’t,” Hiccup argues fiercely and instantly. “There’s nothing wrong with me.”
“It doesn’t mean there’s something wrong with you,” Tuffnut argues. “It just means you, my friend, are very lonely.”
“I’m not lonely. I have Toothless.” Though it doesn’t change the last fifteen years. Nothing ever will, not even the friends here now. But seriously, he’s not – there’s nothing wrong with him. He’s the leader of the dragon riders, future heir to the throne of Berk – he doesn’t have time to get bogged down by stuff like this.
He can’t afford to be hurt or anything other than perfect or…
This. Whatever this is.
“But you were very lonely,” Tuffnut argues. “Before Toothless.”
“Fourteen years, if I am not mistaken,” Ruff pipes in.
“You are finally not mistaken, sister.” He twists back to look at Hiccup. “Dagur spent a lot of time with you, maybe he was nice sometimes, and you started missing that niceness when we were…” He trails off.
“Still dragon killing,” Ruffnut settles on, though that’s not entirely the right term.
Hiccup wants to deny it. But then he thinks about those times, really, about Dagur’s rare moments of fussing, all the times the boy has hugged him – brother? That’s right, you and me – and he kind of actually gets it. “I… don’t know.”
Toothless looks up at him, making a soft, worried sound. Hiccup doesn’t even have it in him to hold that gaze.
“This is monumental,” Tuff settles on.
“But also… really sad,” Ruff agrees.
“That’s true,” Hiccup finally admits. “It’s crazy. But we did have fun sometimes. You know. A long time ago. And I know I would miss him.” And he always thought something was wrong with him for it.
“Don’t worry,” Tuffnut reassures unreassuringly, “Your secret’s safe with us.”
He really, really hopes so. The rest of Berk… can’t know about his uncertainty.
***
Snotlout’s still in with Gothi three days later when Hiccup and the twins make it back home, thoroughly exhausted. He’s awake when Hiccup goes in to see him, and visibly cranky about the entire world’s existence. “Nice of you to show up,” he gripes, hair plastered messily across his face, helmet on the pillow beside his head.
Hiccup takes his cousin’s snappiness the way he always does – with a perfectly calm appearance despite his instincts to get riled up. “I’m sorry I took so long. Are you okay?”
“Butter than okay,” he grumbles. “I’m ready to take on Dagur on my own!”
“Uh-huh,” Astrid scoffs dryly from a nearby chair. “Guess Tuffnut gut his post-lightning Snotlout speak right.”
“Yeah, he did! Well, some of it.”
“Oh, at least he’s admitted Tuff’s tougher than him,” she sasses.
“Dagur’s probably in bed, too,” Hiccup replies, ignoring Astrid entirely. “He took a good lightning bolt, just like you. A little worse, actually.”
Snotlout just got hit on the head.
Dagur got it through his entire body. That’s probably gonna scar. It would’ve hurt. It definitely hurt. And Hiccup did that. He knows lightning as well as fire – well, almost. But point is, he knows it, and he did that to somebody.
Dagur is going through ten times worse than what Snotlout is as they talk, and it’s… not a great feeling. Even if it should be. Revenge is supposed to feel good, you know? But Hiccup still hurt someone.
Who deserved it, yeah, but… Hiccup still did that, and it was awful. He knows he really wasn’t doing anything intentionally malicious – but that doesn’t change what he did.
He still nearly killed Dagur. And it was war, so he really, really shouldn’t feel so bad, but he does, and this is why he spared Toothless. Because that war, that fight isn’t something Hiccup has in him. he can’t do it. He can’t.
“That’s good,” Snotlout chirps. “One less thing to worry about.”
Hiccup’s throat tightens, gut churning with nausea. He feels sick, really. “That’s…” Not true, he wants to say, but that wouldn’t be true. It is good. “It won’t take him down forever,” he reminds instead and leaves, trying to understand why there’s a part of him that knows he’d feel so much worse if it did.
Fishlegs yelps as Hiccup nearly walks into him, and he jolts to a stop with an equally startled sound.
“Sorry,” Hiccup apologizes quickly. “I didn’t see you.”
Then, he realizes – Fishlegs is here with Snotlout? “I – I didn’t actually expect to see you here.”
“Snotlout got a lightning bolt to the head,” Fishlegs offers. “I couldn’t miss a chance to rub that in his face.”
“Yeah, one-time opportunity,” Hiccup replies, though he’s still a little surprised. The two boys’ relationship is… rocky at best, full of constant fighting that often drags the others into the mix. And it can get messy. “Still, I’m surprised you came.”
“I know, me too,” Fishlegs replies. “Snotlout drives me crazy. But… he’s still a friend.”
Yeah. He’s here because he’s a good friend, and has a heart way too big for the world. Hiccup doesn’t know what that says about him – he can’t imagine Fishlegs would ever do what he just did. “Yeah, he is,” Hiccup agrees. “He’s one of us, for as annoying as he can be.” And, he’s Hiccup’s cousin. Even if the family thing feels like it’s meant far less to Snotlout in the past than it really should have – it’s always meant something to Hiccup. For Snotlout, it never did until after Red Death and things changed, and even now sometimes, it’s infuriating.
“Anyway, are you okay?” Fishlegs asks. “You were gone for days.”
“Yeah, just a trip to Outcast Island and back. Nothing to worry about.” Though reality means everyone knows how those have gone in the past. Hiccup still has nightmares about that island. Really violent, dark ones. It’s almost a relief that Alvin is gone, though also not good, because it guarantees Dagur will be keeping the outcasts for a bit. Even if he’s gone for now, when he comes back, his fleet will be even bigger.
And the Outcasts are probably a bit more expendable to him than his own troops.
And he’s probably gonna be mad about the whole lightning thing. Hicucp should really have thought ahead a little better.”
“I was worried,” he replies. “We had no idea what’d happened.”
Hiccup doesn’t want Fishlegs to be worried, but at the same time, he’s beyond touched the other boy cares enough to be. He’s been a good friend ever since they… became friends? Or stuck their friendship up again, at least. “Thank you, Fishlegs. But we’re good. Right, bud?”
Toothless yips happily in agreement.
Okay, truth be told, they really weren’t entirely okay, but it’ll have to pass, right?
“Either way, I don’t think we’ll be seeing anything form the Berserkers for a while,” Hiccup replies, “And I think Alvin’s dead, so…” He can’t believe Dagur got rid of that problem, though it changes nothing if he has the Outcasts as his men already.
“That is something,” Fishlegs offers.
“Yeah.”
Hiccup passe shim, heading outside and sinking onto one of the many cliffs overlooking the ocean, lightning flickering in the far away distance.
Toothless makes a soft, worried sound, rubbing his head against Hiccup’s side, who instinctively reaches back for him.
“I know, bud,” he murmurs, “I… really hope this doesn’t come back to haunt us.”