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Hiccup kept his head held high as Johann's men shoved him down the cavernous corridor of the underground base. It was easier than it should have been, lifting his chin and glaring defiantly ahead, at the broad, dragon-skin clad backs of more guards.
Just staying upright should have been impossible: Head swimming, blood streaking the side of his bruised and bloodied face; hands tied too-tight in front of him with layers of thin, coarse rope; blood-crusted tunic hanging off him in shreds, doing nothing to hide the whip marks beneath; left shoulder dislocated; stump howling with every step, covered in dozens of tiny cuts and burns; each labored breath a knife between his broken ribs; fatigue clinging to him like iron spiderwebs, the manifestation of two days of hunger, thirst, lack of sleep, and torture — lots of torture. Even the places they hadn't touched hurt, caught up in the swells of agony radiating from every wound.
His captors should have had to haul him, limp and lolling, between them, his blood-flecked boot and prosthetic dragging on the floor. But the moment Hiccup had woken bound and gagged in the bowels of Johann's base, the man himself leering down at him, a fire had been lit inside him. A fire ignited by the betrayal that still cut deep, but fueled by something much stronger, something that burned hotter and brighter and bolder than any anger could, something that welled up inside of him in endless abundance. Something that he could draw upon, fight for, die for, that would sustain him and bolster him and define him until the end.
One thought, one reminder, one mantra pulsing through his weary body with every heartbeat: Toothless, Astrid, his friends, his dad, Berk, and dragons everywhere — he was doing this for them. Because Johann wanted information. The location of lenses, intricacies of the Edge's security, sensitive information about his father and Berk, now that Johann was the enemy, unable to spy on his once-friends himself. He asked other questions, unrelated questions, questions that, if answered, would give him no strategic advantage, questions about Toothless and his friends, about Astrid, about the nature of their relationship. Questions that bit into the very heart of him, picked him apart, piece by piece, meant to expose insecurities and private thoughts that belonged to Hiccup alone.
Johann didn't care about the answers to those questions, Hiccup knew. He just wanted to get under Hiccup's skin, mount an attack on all fronts — physical, mental, emotional.
Does your oafish cousin treat you with more respect now, Master Hiccup? Or still like the weakling you are? Have you truly forgiven your friends for treating you so poorly in childhood? Are you aware of how Grimborn felt about you? About what he wanted to do with you? To you? Does your dragon still resent you, in his heart of hearts, for mutilating him? Does he look at you sometimes and see the human who stole the skies from him? Does your father respect you as a leader, truly? Or will he only respect you if you turn out to be a reflection of himself?
And so on.
The thing was, Hiccup had made peace with almost all of the long-gone hurts Johann had plucked at like strings of an out-of-tune lyre. (Except maybe the Viggo thing; he'd come to terms with the man's shifting loyalties, had even come to terms with the fact that he'd died for Hiccup. But the other stuff, the way Viggo had felt about him, whether it was love or lust or something in between… yeah, he preferred not to think about it. Like at all, ever.)
Hiccup had moved past everything else, found comradery and security and purpose and strength in Toothless, his dad, his friends — yes, even Snotlout. But even the dullest blades could cut with enough force, and Johann's barrage had been relentless. And yet, Hiccup had held his ground. Kept his chin up, his head high, his shoulders back, his back straight.
He hadn't answered a single question. He held his silence, gave Johann no information, refused to react to any barbed query meant to wear him down. Hiccup forged a shield from reckless defiance and an inexorable determination to protect his dragon, his friends and his family, his people, and his home.
At first, Johann had scoffed at Hiccup's refusal to bend. "Everyone has his breaking point, Master Hiccup," he'd taunted in the same foppish voice he'd used to deceive all of Berk. "I will admit, I am keen to discover yours."
Two days later, Johann's tune had changed. He had business to attend to. Krogan would soon return from his liaison with his employer, they had work to do and orders to fill, lenses to find and dragons to torment — and Krogan would not have the time or patience to deal with Hiccup. Johann admitted that his own patience had worn thin.
And so, he visited Hiccup's cell one last time. Asked for the answer to one question, any question, even a simple one. Proof that he was willing to compromise. Hiccup wasn't, of course.
Johann's mouth twisted in a malignant grin. "If that is truly how you feel, then I have no further use for you."
"You're going to kill me." It hadn't been a question.
"I prefer the term execute," Johann corrected loftily, sending bolts of unease flickering through Hiccup's veins, but still he did not falter. "I'm going to have you executed."
And there it was. Hiccup had known for a while now that it might come to this. That his life would burn fast and bright, and end in an early, violent death. Simply being a Viking was dangerous in and of itself — dying young and violently was an occupational hazard — but fighting a war made it much more likely.
He had not quite anticipated execution — slow and painful, if the predatory, hungry gleam in Johann's soulless eyes had anything to say about it — and he should have been scared. He should have been terrified. He should have been weighing his options, considering Johann's ultimatum.
And yet.
All Hiccup felt was determination and a fierce pride; he didn't see his life flash before his eyes, didn't bear witness to a grim parade of should haves and could have dones. All he saw in his mind's eye were the faces of those his death would protect.
He saw Toothless, sleek and plated in polished obsidian, with eyes that reflected the lush islands and a soul that reflected Hiccup's own. His best friend, his brother, who understood Hiccup in a way that no one else ever could. Who had seen Hiccup at his lowest and lifted him at his highest. Who protected Hiccup and loved him and would do anything, sacrifice anything, to keep him safe.
He saw his father, vast in body and in spirit, a force of nature, strong, unyielding, wild. A man who would die for his people a million times over.
He saw Astrid, beautiful and dangerous, bold and bright, dancing across the field of battle, dancing through the skies on dragon back, dancing in Hiccup's arms in the small hours of the morning when the clubhouse was empty and their dragons snoozed by the fire, serenaded by the crackling flames and the wind humming through the trees.
He saw Gobber, his mentor, his second father, his friend. Alternately gruff and goofy, always willing to listen, always trying to understand, not always getting it right but damn if he didn't try.
He saw Fishlegs, eyes alight, gentle but unswervingly loyal, sometimes scared but always brave for the people he loved.
He saw Ruff, loud, crass, unapologetically herself, wickedly smart but pretending she wasn't, passionate, vivacious, earnest.
And Tuff, absolutely batshit but in the best possible way, with wild ideas that should not work but somehow did. Compassionate, funny, utterly weird, and with a plethora of random, impossible knowledge and skills he seemed to pull out of thin air. Laughter incarnate. Warmth. Life.
He saw Snotlout, his cousin, brash and insensitive, always questioning, always defying. A reckless, loud, arrogant pain in the ass — except that wasn't him, not really, just the wall he'd built to protect himself from his father's cutting words and piercing judgment, from doubt and jealousy and insecurity. Always coming through in the end. Always trying, slowly growing, changing, maturing. Caring, though he hid that far behind the wall, too.
He saw their dragons: Stormfly, sharp and protective; Meatlug, calm and gentle, unless her rider was in danger; Barf and Belch, bizarre and lovable as their humans; and Hookfang, full of fire and heart.
He saw Berk, its forests and coves, its cliffs and valleys. He saw its people, tough and rugged and a little bit crazy. His people. His village. He saw Bucket and Mulch in their tidy little cottage by the docks, and Gothi with her runes and her staff, and Gustav goofing off with Fanghook.
He saw a whole archipelago of dragons — and beyond. Dragons wild and dragons free, dragons large and dragons small, dragons he knew and dragons he would never get to discover.
This, this was what he was protecting. These people, this island, these dragons. They inhabited every numbered beat of his heart, turned his blood to lava and his bones to iron. Hiccup didn't want to die. But he wasn't afraid, because he knew for whom and for what he would die.
He wouldn't answer any of Johann's questions. Because one question answered was a dark, winding trail to more compromise. Even the most innocent answer would lay the path to dangerous ones. If Johann killed him for his silence, then so be it.
So he'd looked Johann dead in the eyes and gave his brazen answer: "Then do it."
Johann had attempted to conceal his surprise and frustration, but Hiccup saw right through him. If Johann thought the threat of death would be enough to loosen Hiccup's tongue, to make him turn against his home and his family, then he truly had never known Hiccup at all.
So now Hiccup limped to his death, guards in front of and behind him, Johann leading the way. Through cavernous passages, gently sloping up, then a roughly hewn man-made tunnel and out the heavy iron door at the end. Into the muted early morning light of a dense forest. At least, however Johann planned to kill him, Hiccup would die outside. He'd get to feel the sun one last time.
Hiccup took a deep breath, ignoring the flare in his ribs. He relished the way the air felt in his lungs, the way the leaves shivered in the dappled sunlight, illuminating the woods in shining green, the way dew clung to each blade of grass, glittering like thousands of gemstones. He had always loved this time of the morning, just after sunrise, when the whole world held its breath and the air curled thick and misty around the trees. He hadn't realized just how much he loved it, though, until now.
As they led him away from the base and deeper into the forest, Hiccup was acutely aware of his body. Not just the way it hurt, but the fact that he had a body, the way the wind ruffled his hair, tickling his shoulders, and how solid the ground felt beneath his foot. Every beat of his heart reverberated through him, reminding him that he was alive. Every inhale was a gift. Even the pain held its own kind of beauty, because pain meant life and life was beautiful.
Hiccup wasn't afraid, but he wasn't ready to let this world go.
"Stop here."
Hiccup stumbled to a halt as the men in front of him stopped abruptly. He had a fraction of a second to glance around before the accompanying guards closed into a tight circle around him, hemming him in, preventing any chance of escape. The spot Johann had chosen didn't look any different than any other part of the forest. He was about to die; he'd half-expected his executioner to lead him to a dark, twisted wood where the trees grew gnarled and bare and no life grew through the blood-soaked earth. The sky peeking from between the leaves should be grey, he thought, or black. Not bird-egg blue, speckled with clouds.
"Secure him, and prepare your bows," Johann ordered, and despite himself, Hiccup's stomach clenched tight. "But do not shoot until I give the command."
He's hoping he can still scare me into talking, Hiccup thought. Good luck with that.
A guard grabbed each of his arms, and the rest of the men parted as they dragged Hiccup to a thick-trunked tree on the far side of the clearing. A metal stake had been driven firmly into the wood, and sticky sap had oozed and hardened around the wound, gluing it in place. The guards spun Hiccup around, slammed his back into the rough bark, and jerked his hands up above his head.
Hiccup didn't have the energy to fight, was too weak an injured to try to escape, but still, he raised his chin and glared into Johann's furious eyes, the very picture of fearless defiance even as the guards looped Hiccup's bound wrists over the stake, forcing him to his tiptoes, and wound yet more rope around them, tying him in place.. Johann glowered back, putting the full heat of his hatred into his expression, but Hiccup didn't waver. He didn't even blink.
Johann shifted, a minute movement, his eyes flickering to the side for less than a second. A blink-and-you-miss-it kind of thing. (But Hiccup wasn't blinking, so he saw it.) He felt a triumphant smirk rise within him and let it curl his lips.
Johann snarled, stalked up to Hiccup, who stood, back to the tree, on his toes, arms tied above his head, a semi-circle of Johann's guards taking position around him, nocking arrows, drawing bows. Aiming, but not shooting. Not yet. Johann stepped neatly into Hiccup's personal space.
"Look around you, Master Hiccup," he said, his voice frigid and Gronkle iron hard. "Six men, all with arrows poised to fly across this clearing and into your body." Hiccup set his jaw, didn't speak.
"I thought, to make this a bit more exciting, I'd have each of them aim at a different part of your body. They'll fire one at a time. One might strike your stomach" — he punctuated this with a harsh jab of his finger into Hiccup's bruised middle — "another might strike your shoulder "— another quick jab, this one in Hiccup's dislocated shoulder; Hiccup's teeth ground and his jaw creaked.
"One might bury itself in your ribs, or in your heart, or in the center of your forehead." Another series of excruciating pokes. "You might die quickly, of course. A hit to the heart or the head will do that. But if not, rest assured that I am perfectly content to stand here as long as it takes for you bleed out. Maybe, if we're lucky, you'll still be alive when Krogan returns, and he can join us to watch that pesky light finally leave your eyes."
And there was the fear, though still drowned out by the faces and the dragons and places he was dying to save. But he'd been right about Johann's chosen execution method: It was brutal, and had the potential to be drawn out and agonizing. Hiccup imagined standing here for hours, arms pinned above his head, riddled with arrow holes, slowly bleeding to death. Surrounded by his enemies, who would watch every strained breath, hear every pained wheeze. Hiccup would have no privacy, no dignity, in his final moments. Suddenly, an arrow to the head didn't sound so bad.
"Now," Johann continued, because he simply did not have the capacity to shut up, "I want you to think about how that could all go away. How you could live. All you have to do—"
"I'm not answering a single godsdamned question, Johann," Hiccup said simply. His voice was hoarse with pain and thirst but strong. "I will not betray my friends, my dragons, my father, or my people to you."
Rage bubbled, boiling hot, on Johann's face, melting his features. He backhanded Hiccup, rings splitting new gashes into Hiccup's already well-decorated face. The joke was on him, though — Hiccup was already in so much pain that he barely even felt the hit, couldn't parse out the new pain from the old. "Why — won't — you — break?" Johann growled.
"You wouldn't understand," Hiccup snapped. "It's because I care about others more than I fear you."
"More than you fear pain? More than death?" Johann sneered.
Hiccup didn't hesitate. "Yes."
Another ripple of wrath, and then Johann laughed, a high, hateful sound. "Well, then, if you're so eager to die, let's just get on with it, shall we? Your knowledge would be invaluable, but if you aren't going to cooperate, I'm not going to risk keeping you alive longer than I have to."
"Fine," Hiccup said. "But I hope you know that all of Berk will be out for your blood if you do this. Vikings and dragons." He paused for effect (Johann wasn't the only one who got to be dramatic, after all), then asked, "Are you prepared for that?"
Johann hesitated. Now he looked afraid. He obscured it quickly with disdain, and said, "Let's wait until you have a few arrows sticking out of you. See how much your tune changes. You'll be singing like a canary, mark my words." He stalked away, behind the half-ring of archers and prepared to send Hiccup to his death.
"Starting from the left," Johann announced, "one at a time, fire on my command." Hiccup shifted, braced himself, and — "NOW!"
It turned out, there was no bracing oneself for an arrow slamming into one's thigh. Hiccup jerked and his right leg buckled beneath him as his blood turned to acid around the wound and spread up into his hip and down to his knee. A cry escaped before he could contain it and involuntary tears sprung to his eyes.
"Are you ready to talk now, Hiccup?" Johann called out, his voice echoing from miles away, distorted by the fog enveloping Hiccup's mind.
Hiccup lifted his chin again, this time with difficulty, and shook his head.
"FIRE!" Johann screamed again.
With a wet thud, another arrow punched a hole in uninjured shoulder. A strangled shout tore itself from his mouth, taking a piece of him with it. His vision clouded, and the pain became the only real thing in existence. He couldn't breathe, he couldn't think, he couldn't take this anymore…
He barely registered Johann's gloating voice over the maelstrom of his own agony. "What about now, Hiccup? Ready to talk?"
Just say yes, the pain wailed, deafening him. You've held out long enough. Just let go.
No! Hiccup needed something, anything, to take his mind off the pain, to hold onto, to give him strength. He pictured their faces, all of them, pictured his Toothless and his dad and his friends and all of Berk… but the images grew fuzzy in his mind's eye, warped by pain and muddied by fear. He felt surrender gather on his tongue, felt his body begin to crumble against his will.
What was it Johann had said earlier? About singing like a canary? Why did that stir something inside of Hiccup? He wasn't a singer. He didn't even like singing (and no one else liked it when he sang, either). But—
When he opened his mouth, it wasn't to surrender. It wasn't to plead. It wasn't even to speak. The words tripped from his tongue, awkward, hesitant, unsteady, but pulled from a place deep inside of him, a place Johann could never reach.
"I didn't mean to come here,
And I didn't mean to stay,
It's just where the wind blew me,
One accidental day."
Johann sounded equal parts incredulous and annoyed. "What?" he said, stepping forward, "are you singing?"
His tribe's anthem. The song of his people, of home, of their soggy little island and everything and everyone on it.
Hiccup continued, voice stronger despite the pain and the darkness and the blood soaking through his tunic and his trousers.
"I was on my way to America,
But I took a left turn at the Pole,
And I lost my shoe in a rainy bog,
Where my heart got stuck in the hole!"
"Stop it!" Johann shouted, storming forward, breaking through the curve of guards. "Stop singing!"
"I didn't mean to come here,
And I didn't mean to stay,
But I lost my heart to these rainy bogs,
And I'll never go away!"
Even as his strength waned, Hiccup felt warmth flooding through him, like he'd just settled down by the fire at the Edge with his friends, He'd never really loved Berk's anthem, it had always seemed a little silly to him (everyone knew that America didn't exist, and Berk didn't even have a proper bog), but in this moment, it embodied everything and everyone he left behind. All he didn't betray, all he protected. It also proclaimed his courage and defiance, shoved it in the face of Johann and all the guards, forced to listen to his off-tune caterwauling.
And it was really pissing Johann off.
"Shoot him, all of you! Make him stop!" he shrieked. "After I get out of the way! Idiots!" he added, diving to the ground as four arrows hurtled in his direction, narrowly missing his head.
Hiccup blinked past the darkness, still singing ("I've heard the sky in America, Is a blue that you wouldn't believe, But Berk is my lobster after all, And now I'll never leave.") and watched the arrows flock to him in slow motion. One high enough to strike his face. This was it. He prepared himself to die—
A screech, a whistle, three tiny, precise flashes of purple obliterating the arrows, one right after another. One so close to his head that the controlled plasma blast temporarily blinded him; he felt heat scorch across his face and there was a real possibility that he'd just lost most of his eyebrows, but… he was alive.
Bruised and bloody and battered, with arrows in his leg and his shoulder, but alive. Safe. The others had reaaally cut it close this time; seconds later, and they would have been recovering a corpse instead of rescuing their friend. Hiccup couldn't decide if he was incredibly lucky, for rescue to come at literally the last moment, or spectacularly unlucky that it had taken so long in the first place. Maybe a little of both? Could a person be equally lucky and unlucky? And what was that racket…?
Shouts, screams, dragon roars, bursts of flame pressing red against his closed eyelids. Oh, right. He was being rescued from the jaws of certain death. He should probably do something, right? But everything hurt and he was so tired…
He drifted.
The next few hours he experienced in fragments, moments of awareness snatched from the darkness, his turbulent world illuminated by flashes of lightning. His senses came and went — a hand on his cheek here, a voice in his ear there, raised voices, pain, lots of pain, a hand in his own, the acrid scent of blood and unbearable pressure on his leg and shoulder, something cool and damp on his forehead, someone crying, warm scales pressing into his limp hand.
And then, nothing.
The next time he woke, he was back on Berk, under the excellent care of Gothi and Fishlegs. The pain had somewhat dulled, the air was filled with the sharp tang of herbal salves, the taste of willow bark lingered on his tongue, and he was wrapped in a shroud of bandages. He woke to see everyone crowded into Gothi's small hut, the greatest gift he had ever gotten, would ever get: Another chance to see the very people he had nearly died to protect.
They were furious with him, of course, and overjoyed, and more than a little overbearing. Toothless became such a mother hen that Hiccup was frankly surprised he hadn't sprouted feathers, all worried clucks and doting coos and chastising huffs.
His dad cycled through at least ten badly-concealed emotions in the first two minutes of Hiccup's waking. He kept circling back to anger (at Johann, who, thank the gods, was dead, and at Hiccup, and at anyone else who even kind of breathed the wrong way while he reunited with his son), pride ("You're the bravest of us all, son, and the strongest. You made your father and your chief proud today."), and unadulterated joy. He also said no less than five times that he was never letting Hiccup leave his sight again.
Astrid didn't punch him, though she promised to do so as soon as he was better. Hiccup didn't mind; the way she kissed him later, after everyone had left, slow and deep and hard and strong, more than made up for any pain in his future.
Gobber waxed philosophical in several lazy circles before forgetting his point, backtracking, and bursting into tears. "Just glad to have you back, is all," he managed between sobs. He hobbled out of the room, straight, Hiccup knew, to the forge, to take out his feelings on molten metal.
Fishlegs hovered anxiously, adjusted Hiccup's pillow way more than necessary, and eagerly answered any questions aimed at Gothi before the healer could write her first rune. Always eager to help, eager to please, eager to fix.
Ruff regaled the group with a very sensationalized version of the rescue, where all of Johann's men were on Titanwing Singetails, with so many ludicrous embellishments that Hiccup laughed so hard he wheezed.
Tuff burst into tears, and somewhere along the way, he went from wailing into Ruffnut's shoulder to half-sitting, half-lying on the bed, sobbing into Hiccup's arms. Hiccup patted him awkwardly on the back and glanced around helplessly at his friends, who made no move to help him. (Perhaps his punishment for almost dying?)
Snotlout, unsurprisingly, scoffed at Hiccup's earnest thanks and reminded him that he still had a terrible singing voice, so he almost couldn't blame Johann's men for trying to put him out of his misery (and therefore everyone else out of theirs). This had caused a chorus of uproars from the rest of the group, but when Snotlout turned away, Hiccup heard him sniffle, then mutter, "Glad you're back and, you know, not… executed and stuff." Hiccup didn't say anything, just smiled quietly at his cousin's retreating back as he shuffled out of the room. Because he knew Snotlout. He knew this was Snotlout's way of dealing with The Horrors. And he never stopped appreciating those little moments when the true Snotlout bled through the cracks in his mask.
Over the next few days, he ventured outside on Toothless's back as he regained strength. It would take some time for the arrow wounds to heal — especially the one in his thigh — but he was just happy to be alive to have a long recovery. The other dragons all flocked him on the first such outing, nuzzling, licking, cooing, growling affectionately. Hiccup lathered them with affection, to the point where Toothless got jealous and had to be bribed with fish before he'd look at Hiccup again.
And during his lengthy recovery, he regularly entertained a slew of visitors and well-wishers, all with food enough to share (some dishes were decidedly more palatable than others, but Hiccup appreciated it all the same). He smiled at every one of them, cherished every one of them, loved every one of them. His people.
This. This was what made it all worth it — the pain, the fear, the broken bones and dislocated joints and shredded back and arrow wounds. These people, these dragons, this island he called home.
He'd almost died to protect them. He'd meant to die for them.
But gods, he was so glad he hadn't. Because now he had more time to spend with them, to appreciate them, to enjoy them.
And he wasn't going to waste a second.