Chapter Text
He should have seen the signs.
He should have known Hiccup—different from the time he could crawl, goes off chasing trolls when his father takes him fishing, bringing disaster wherever he goes Hiccup—could never become a Viking. A proper dragon killer like his father, and his father before him, talking like them and walking like them and thinking like them. Like Hiccup had promised he would.
How blinded Stoick had been, by his desire for a proper heir.
(His desire for a son he could actually connect with.)
“Stop the fight.”
Hiccup insists that they don’t have to fight dragons. That he will show them another way forward, when he has already declared for all the village to see that he is not one of them. He reaches for the Monstrous Nightmare’s red scales.
“I said stop the fight!” Stoick slams his hammer onto the bars of the arena.
The Monstrous Nightmare slams its jaw shut. Nearly taking Hiccup’s hand off in the process. His foolish, foolish boy.
Hiccup longer the only one in the arena, fearless Astrid Hofferson throws a hammer to the dragon’s face. Stoick rushes down from the platform, “This way!”
Astrid makes it to Stoick first. His hand curls protectively on her shoulder, as he watches Hiccup, still running, and then—
Stoick has been fighting dragons long enough to know when a blast is coming. He moves, shields Astrid instinctively with his body, hears the scream.
Hiccup’s scream.
- - -
Whistling is the only warning they get before a plasma blast destroys the bars of the arena.
“Night Fury,” someone calls out.
Toothless, Astrid thinks.
Smoke is everywhere. Almost as pervasive as the wrong-familiar smell of burned flesh.
By the time the smoke clears, and the Vikings get over their shock to move, the arena is already empty. Hiccup and the dragons are gone.
- - -
The ignite-at-will dragon that burned his Hiccup flies out after Toothless, escaping. Toothless can’t do anything about it—could barely get enough height to escape from the bad!-dangerous!-Vikings. He runs, as fast as he can manage it, after putting Hiccup on his back.
Humans are so fragile.
This never bothered Toothless before. Their dull teeth, their easily-broken-skin, their can-hardly-even-be-called-claws. When the bad!-cannibal!-queen had Toothless in thrall, all of these things were advantages in the fight against the humans to take their food. Countless dead dragons at their hands, anyway, thanks to their many weapons.
All the weapons in the world don’t make humans any less fragile, when it counts. When it is a human and a dragon, and fire-from-mouth.
Hiccup hadn’t even been holding a weapon. Toothless saw that, as he’d dived down to the cage-for-dragons Hiccup had been inside. Fitting, for Hiccup has a Dragon Soul. But a human body. Fragile. Burned. Burned.
Toothless runs all the way back to the cove, and he does not know what he’ll do when he gets there. He does not know how to help his human, but the Astrid-human does. If Toothless goes back to the cove, she might come. She might come, and she can help Hiccup.
She has to.
- - -
In their northern island, they have cold weather. Houses built of wood, dark and smoky within. A guttering candle, a string of drying mushrooms. A bed, a stool, a table. Viking lives are harsh and brief. Wild beasts dwell not just in the forest.
“That thing had a saddle, I swear I saw it with my own eyes—”
“Have you got yourself checked for eel pox?”
“Why would a dragon save Hiccup?”
”Save? Bah! Obviously, the beast wanted to take the Nightmare’s snack from it.”
“No, you heard Hiccup, the way he spoke, he’s thrown his lot in with them! He’s one of them now, that’s why they got him.”
“Please, you really think that was actually Hiccup? A lousy Viking he might have been, but he was all for killing the devils until just now! Can’t you see this is Loki’s work? All along, everything in the ring, Hiccup being good at dragon training, it was a trick! A lie.”
I can’t help myself, I see a dragon and I have to just kill it, Hiccup had declared in front of all the village after his last screw-up. It’s who I am.
They’d scoffed, then.
“Loki’s been impersonating Hiccup for weeks now. The real Hiccup is probably dead.”
“Died alone and unnoticed.”
“And so Loki arranged for a Night Fury to carry him off. That wily god loves his irony.”
“I’ll bet the dragon was actually Loki in disguise, and Hiccup really is a traitor. There’s always been something... not right about that boy.”
“I’ll bet the dragon was actually Nidhogg.”
“Enough!”
All the Vikings still on the platform look down on Stoick, still in the arena. Still staring at the scorch mark where the Nightmare’s fire hit.
“Enough,” he repeats, hand tightening on Astrid’s shoulder. She shakes beneath his grip. “We must find him.”
Or his body.
- - -
They search for Hiccup, even after night has fallen, holding torches and grim expressions. Berk’s warriors have become a mob.
Astrid has heard talk of banishment—heard Mildew suggest that if they do find Hiccup alive, they ought to send him out to Outcast Island and let him see how Alvin likes his dragon loving. That is, after they kill the Night Fury, of course, and Astrid feels sick.
She has been feeling sick, ever since she turned from Stoick’s protective embrace to see that ugly burn on Hiccup’s face.
But she’s a warrior. She repeats that to herself, like a mantra. She’s a warrior, and her battle is not over yet. So she pushes down the nausea, the guilt and the fear, and she goes straight to Gothi’s healing hut to pilfer what supplies she can.
Gothi is in her hut. Before Astrid can think of an excuse, Gothi’s gathered up medicine and shoving it into a basket, shoving that into Astrid’s arms.
...Medicine for burns, Astrid sees when she looks down. Her heart feels heavy, breath catching.
Looking back up at Gothi’s face, the elder’s expression is incrutable. Gothi says nothing, of course.
Astrid nods, once.
- - -
Toothless goes tense upon hearing someone’s arrival, body curled protectively over his human, but it is Astrid. She came to the cove. Just as he’d hoped.
She doesn’t see him right away, for he is a dragon with midnight-black-scales and it is midnight. Toothless croons, signaling to her, and she startles. Then her face falls.
“Oh, Toothless...” She approaches, and Toothless lets her, backing away from Hiccup so she will help. ”Hiccup. Gods. Oh, Gods, Hiccup.”
Astrid looks sick, which worries Toothless. One sick-flock-mate is bad enough, Toothless really does not need another. He has no idea how to help a sick human. He hates this helpless feeling so much, and lets out a cry.
“Shsh,” says Astrid. She has, Toothless notes, water-leaking-from-eyes. “I know. I know. But you have to be quiet. They’re looking for us.”
A task. An Important task. Toothless straightens. He can stay very silent and protect them this way. Nudging Hiccup with his snout, he looks up at Astrid. She will help now, yes?
- - -
Half of Hiccup’s face is burned, Toothless is looking at her like she can snap her fingers and just fix it, the villagers are still on the warpath, and Astrid—
—Astrid takes a few deep breaths. A warrior. She’s a warrior. She can do this.
She gets to work.
Cutting away the bits of long hair that stick against the burn. Washing Hiccup’s face the best she can, trying to make sure dirt won’t get into the burn and cause an infection. Lifting Hiccup’s head, coaxing him to swallow Gothi’s painkillers. No sleeping draughts, though Gothi did put them in the basket.
Hiccup will need to be able to fly Toothless to get them both out of here safely. Unless Astrid flies Toothless for him, but that would mean—her breath hitches in panic. Focus. Hiccup swallows, and Astrid waits for the painkillers to affect him, and starts cutting the dead tissue off of his face.
Abruptly, nausea rises in her throat. She turns away to vomit. So many gruesome sights she’s seen, growing up in war-torn Berk, but this... Hiccup...
She cries.
And she gets back to work.
Salving the raw and bleeding burn. Bandaging it. Putting the rest of the supplies—more burn cream and painkillers, as well as the sleeping draughts she didn’t give him tonight—in Toothless’s saddlebag.
There’s a whimper.
“I’m here,” Astrid hurries to say, “I’m here, Hiccup.” A lump in her throat makes it difficult to speak, as tears prick her eyes again. “I’m so sorry.”
Hiccup is white-faced and shaking, as he processes what happened. The moon is full and more than enough to illuminate him, the freckles that still dust his face, the ones that haven’t been burned away.
“No,” he croaks. “I was a fool.”
And maybe the plan was stupid. But declaring to an arena full of Vikings that dragons do not have to be their enemies? That was something else, too.
“You were brave.” Hiccup’s lower lip trembles, as she insists, “You stood up for what you believed in.”
Hiccup’s face—the half of it not hidden by bandages—crumples, and then he winces, for it must have pulled at the burn. He hisses out, “They’re—looking for me, right?”
Later, Astrid will remember that he didn’t sound afraid—but resigned. But that’s later. In the moment, the guilt is too all-encompassing to focus on anything else. Because, yeah. They’re looking for him. And they weren’t yesterday. When he wanted to leave, when he’d been picked to kill the Monstrous Nightmare over her and she’d just had to know what was going on. She just had to be there, waiting for him, when he told Toothless they were leaving. Forever.
And now he has to leave, anyway.
Only burned. Bridges burned, too. Hiccup can’t ever come back after this and they both know it. Astrid couldn’t come back if she went with him and she knows that, too.
She asks, “Can you fly?” And she doesn’t really know which one’s she’s directing the question at. Hiccup or Toothless. They’re so in sync, it’s like they’re one being. Sharing one soul.
Voices in the distance. Getting closer.
It’s like a shot of lightning into her veins; she shares wide-eyed looks with both Hiccup and Toothless. Time’s up.
“We have to,” Hiccup grits out, and...
Astrid wants to say that she’ll help. That she could leave with him, leave everything behind. Be branded a traitor and never see her parents again, to help a boy that she looked down on for the past fifteen years. A boy who’s changed her perception of the world so thoroughly in two days, she’ll never be the same again.
But the dragons are still forced to raid Berk, and they need her as much as her people do. Fighting in this war is what she’s been training to do, her whole life.
And when Hiccup said we, he already knew that. He’d been speaking of Toothless.
So Astrid helps Hiccup mount Toothless, heart in her throat.
“Don’t go too far, too soon,” she whispers. Above them, the stars are shining. “Just get out of Berk, lay low, and then keep going.”
Only yesterday, on a night just like this one, she had kissed Hiccup’s left cheek in this very cove. That skin is burned now. Hiccup-and-Toothless take off.
- - -
It hurts.
It hurts so bad. With every wingbeat, they get further away from Berk. With every wingbeat, Astrid’s painkillers begin to wear off a little more.
He should have listened to her. They’ve already passed both Outcast Island and the Berserkers. But Hiccup had kept flying, even when Toothless tried to urge him down. He thought he could make it a little farther, land somewhere safer, where Toothless wouldn’t be killed on sight if they were caught, but now he’s thinking he should have just taken his chances.
Hiccup blinks, and the clouds are different than they were before. He blinks again, and the seastack he’d been staring at is gone. His head is ringing. But he can’t pass out. He just can’t. If he does... He and Toothless both plummet into the ocean.
He blinks again, and they’re falling.
He thinks he can hear Toothless crying out. It feels so far away.
They’re suspended in the air. It takes a moment for Hiccup to realize that this should not be happening. He’s not moving. Not working the tailfin, and yet... Wingbeats—above them. With the last of his energy, head leaning forward against Toothless, Hiccup looks up.
And gasps.
Monstrous Nightmare.
“No,” he moans, the sight of the Nightmare beginning to blur.
Toothless growls, and the Nightmare screeches back, and it’s carrying them. It’s helping them, Hiccup realizes. It’s...
It wasn’t the dragon’s fault.
“Toothless,” Hiccup slurs, with the actual last bit of his energy, “Let ’im h’lp.”
They can’t afford to reject it.
Hiccup passes out.
- - -
The Monstrous Nightmare who would be affectionately known as Hookfang in another life makes sure to carry the plasma-blasting dragon and his wounded human to safety.
Guilt. It’s not just Astrid feeling it, that night.
- - -
“Hey,” a girl’s voice says, soft and quiet. “Hey, can you hear me?”
“Astrid,” Hiccup croaks. Her hands touch his face, soft and gentle.
“No,” the girl says, and Hiccup tries to open his eyes but it doesn’t quite work.
“My name is Heather.”