Starlight, Star Bright - The Story of a Fool, Through an Even Bigger Fool's Eyes

What with a stranger washing up on Berk and taking a special interest in his son and news of Outcast activity reaching his ears, Stoick the Vast is uncharacteristically uneasy. Sequel to 'To Be Loved the Way You Love Me'.

Chapter 1: No Reason

Well, here is my sequel. The title is kind of long, so I'm thinking I'll just call it 'Starlight, Star Bright' for short. Huh? Huh? Huh? What do you think?

It was supposed to be February, and winter on Berk was supposed to last for most of the year, but I was baking in the forge. I shed my vest and rolled up the sleeves of my green shirt, wiping my forehead free of sweat.

Gobber's face was pink with the heat as well and he stopped every few minutes to wipe his forehead free of sweat.

I focused on my work for about ten more minutes before remembering that in exactly seven days, I would be seventeen. I kind of smiled at the thought. Heck, I wasn't even sure it was seventeen; it could have been sixteen for all I knew.

I wasn't completely sure how old I was because of how I'd spent the last six years, but I knew exactly what day it was now and I knew it was only seven days until the leap year.

It wasn't like anything was going to happen for it – heck, no one on Berk even knew my birth date. It didn't matter. A birthday was still a birthday.

I'd heard about other kids getting parties and things, but I'd never gotten that. My mom – well, actually, I guess she wasn't really my mom after all – sneaked me a leather notebook once for one of my birthdays, because she knew how much I loved reading and writing. But she'd died a long time ago and now all of her secret smiles and winks were gone.

Technically, I guess she wasn't really my mom. My real mom was Valhallarama of the White Arms, but I had grown up with Freydis the Fearsome. My real dad was Stoick the Vast, but I'd grown up with Alvin.

I knew he couldn't hurt me, but my fingers stilled on the weapon I was trying to repair. I knew it was silly. Alvin couldn't get to me. I should've felt safe. I had people who were willing to protect me here. But, even though I knew, in my heart of hearts, that Stoick would fight tooth and nail to keep me on Berk, I would always get that little flash of fear when I remembered Alvin. Whenever I pictured his sneering face in my mind, I felt a flash of panic and I didn't want it.

I glanced over for just a moment at Gobber, who hadn't even looked over. I looked back down at my work and I heard Gobber speaking to me. Lifting my head again, I looked at him. "Yeah?"

"Stoick might be being gentle with ya, lad, but yer not getting off o' this one. C'mon. Keep working."

I smiled, shaking my head at Gobber's silly antics. "I wasn't thinking of getting a break, actually," I confessed. Actually, for the first time in a long time, the new addition to my body – the metal contraption protruding from my pants leg where my foot should be – was about the last thing on my mind.

I glanced down at the leg, glancing for a second over at the chair in the corner of the forge. The chair had suddenly appeared there after I lost my leg – Gobber had wordlessly told me that he understood how painful it was and how rough people expected you to still be after it.

Seeing as I didn't do well with words, either, I had let the care he'd put into making the forge more comfortable for me an unspoken subject, but I was still grateful to him. Just like Stoick and the others, he was doing too much for me – more than I deserved, anyway.

I glanced over at Gobber again – I knew he would hear the scraping of the chair. But, I reluctantly decided, glancing at my leg, sometimes, relief from the pain felt better than keeping your pride.

I slowly began to drag the chair over to my work place and Gobber took one look at me. He came over to help, dragging it over a particularly uneven patch of wooden floor, letting it rest in front of my desk.

"Thanks," I muttered, plopping down in the seat and picking up my tools again.

He a put a hand on my back. "It'll get better."

I knew he meant my leg.

I rubbed at it self-consciously, though I knew that there was no need to feel ashamed of my pain or injury around Gobber: the blacksmith was missing an arm and a leg himself.

Gobber stood there for another second and then he went back over to his own desk. My sleeves kept slipping down over my work, so I had to pause every few minutes to roll them up again.

Speaking of being ashamed of pain or injury…I thought to myself as my eyes landed on the scars. I had hundreds of them all over my body. On my back and chest and stomach and hands, my arms and legs and face and neck…

I turned my eyes back to my work, vowing not to think of that.

A few minutes later, however, my work was cut short again by Gobber sighing loudly and emphatically. "Oh, look at this – Stoick must have gotten off early. Again. What a surprise."

The door flew open and Stoick the Vast came into the forge. He was eight feet, three inches tall and I didn't think he knew how to do anything quietly.

When he talked, you knew who was speaking. When he yelled, you knew it wasn't good.

There was a gentle side to him as well, though – there was a part of him that didn't constantly have the somber, sad look. There was a part of him that was softened by laughter and smiles. But you rarely ever got to see that side, because he was so busy being a tough Viking chief.

I'd only ever witnessed it a few times.

He looked around the forge for a second and greeted Gobber with a, "Well, you must've been busy." His eyes flickered over to me for half a second and it made me feel weak to realize I was sitting down.

I stood suddenly as Stoick continued, "I'm taking Hiccup home now. Alright, Gobber?"

Gobber looked sullen about this, but he nodded.

"Nice to know I have a lot of fat hairy choice," I said sarcastically, turning Stoick's gaze on me.

"Well, Hiccup, frankly, you limp home every night, dead on your feet and you practically collapse from exhaustion – when I'm there to see it, of course. When I'm not, you sit up until I get home."

"I can't…" I stopped myself, looking down at the floor and deciding not to finish that sentence. The truth was, I couldn't really sleep if Stoick was there. I fell asleep, sure – but Alvin always sneered at me in my dreams, warning me he was going to get me again, telling me I was never getting away.

I hated the nightmares and I tried my best to stay awake to see Stoick, even if he didn't offer me any comfort – and it wasn't like I asked him to, either. Like I said, I'm not very good with words. If I could just tell somebody what I'm thinking and feeling without having to say it, I'd be quite the talker.

He probably didn't even know I was having nightmares. I blew out a breath and Stoick let it go.

"You need to give yourself a break, Hiccup," he informed me. "You can't keep going like this. You're running yourself into the ground. And you haven't even given your leg time to heal yet."

I tried to think up a good argument, but, unfortunately, I took too long.

"He's right, lad," Gobber put in. "You need to give it at least a few weeks before you're runnin' around, flying and training again."

I sent him a dirty look. "I'm doing fine," I emphasized.

Stoick looked disbelieving. "Look," he said quietly, "if you—

"What Stoick's trying to say is that if you run yourself into the ground, they're going to look at me," Gobber interrupted impatiently.

Stoick sent him an annoyed look. Gobber shrugged nonchalantly.

Stoick huffed and swept from the room, obviously expecting me to follow. I started to, with a few eye rolls and annoyed breaths myself, but Gobber stopped me halfway there.

"Don't be too offended about Stoick," he told me. "You have to remember, he hasn't had you for sixteen years. It's his job as your father to look after you. And seeing as he hasn't done that for your whole life, I think he's trying to, now."

Before I could even formulate a response, Gobber had shoved me out the door and slammed it behind me. I could tell I was going to get an earful about leaving the forge early the next day, but it didn't matter. Gobber hardly ever meant it.

A sharp pain seared suddenly through my leg and I bit my lip to stop myself from crying out, sitting down on the steps of the forge to rub at my leg. Stoick appeared around the corner and when he saw me, his expression softened in concern. "Your leg's hurting you?"

I nodded wordlessly. I forced myself to stand and limp alongside him as best as I could. On the way home, we didn't talk much, but that was alright. I was used to silence from him and he was used to it from me. Actually, normally, we kept so quiet because we had Gobber chatting between us – gossiping about somebody or other in the village, somebody we'd likely never meet or didn't care about, but Gobber still liked to spread gossip anyway.

I suppose we'd gotten so used to him that we didn't feel any need to talk. In fact, the only thing Stoick did was glance down at my leg and offer to carry me.

Everything in me balked at the idea of letting myself be carried. "Uh…I think I'll be alright," I told him, rubbing at the stump.

"You've overdone it enough," Stoick informed me in a hard voice. "If you can make it to the house, I'll be very surprised."

I could normally count on Toothless to help me, but right now, he wasn't here. The last time I'd seen him, he'd been playing with a Nadder that Stoick said had come from the Kill Ring.

I knew some people of Berk were still uncertain about dragons, but Stoick had freed the ones from the Kill Ring. Ordinarily, they would've flown off, but the other teens of Berk had gotten it into their heads to train them and befriend them. Occasionally, they'd still call me for help with them, but they didn't need it so much anymore.

As far as I knew, the Nadder belonged to Astrid – tough, blonde and good at everything. She'd asked me to help her train the Nadder only after she'd watched me do the same with Snotlout and his Monstrous Nightmare and after she'd witnessed Toothless and I and the Nightmare and Snotlout fly several times. It surprised me that that was what had made her warm to them, but whatever it was, it was good she had at all.

Astrid's path rarely ever crossed with mine, but lately, I'd begun really enjoying the times that it did – so much, in fact, that sometimes I would accidentally-on-purpose run into her in the village and strike up a conversation. Those afternoons were the best, because Astrid had finally stopped staring coldly at me whenever I approached her. She actually smiled at me these days. A smile spread over my own face when I thought about hers.

I tried shaking off my thoughts when I realized Stoick had glanced over at me and seen me smiling to myself for no reason at all. My cheeks heated a little and I sped up. The pain in my leg was now starting to recede and it offered me a sense of victory, that I had made it all the way to his house.

Technically, we weren't there yet – but I could see the roof in the distance and I quickened my pace a little.

And, also, it was supposedly my house too, but that made me feel weird to call it mine, especially considering it hadn't been mine for sixteen years.

When I reached the doorstep, the pain had come back a little, and I was ten minutes behind the chief. I reached the steps and sank down on the porch, yawning a little.

Stoick looked down at me. "Aren't you coming inside?"

I offered him a tired smile. "No. I think I'll sit out here and wait for Toothless to come back."

It was only dusk, but I was already tired enough to sleep for the rest of the night. Toothless normally showed up wherever we'd parted ways because lately, he had begun joining other dragons more and more. It wasn't that we were growing apart – in fact, this was the longest he'd stayed away from me since we'd arrived on Berk last summer. He was still my best friend and he was still always there for me, but we didn't spend every waking moment in each other's company or automatically panic when we were separated. In fact, the last time Toothless and I hadn't seen each other for awhile, I'd felt at ease about it, because I knew Gobber was taking care of him.

No matter where we went or what we did in the daytime, though, nighttime was our special time. We flew around the island every evening at sunset and continued until the sky was literally pitch-black. In fact, considering it was dusk, Toothless should be showing up to go flying with me anytime soon.

He did just that about ten minutes later, smiling at me hopefully. I offered him a tired smile and rubbed his head comfortingly, but he took one look at me and his gaze turned stern.

"What?" I demanded and then I looked down at myself, wondering what had upset him. The only thing he could've been looking at was my leg. The thought reminded me of Gobber and Stoick in the forge today and I rubbed at the painful stump. "Not you, too," I groaned at him.

Toothless huffed.

"I'm fine," I told him, making to stand. A searing pain shot through my leg, but I tried my best not to show it. I could tell I failed when he glared at me.

"I'm fine," I repeated. "C'mon, let's go."

Toothless gave me a long look.

"My leg will feel better if we go flying," I wheedled.

Toothless saw right through that one, that much was clear; but he reluctantly let me climb on him without too much argument and he even licked my cheek when we'd returned from our flight, showing me he wasn't too annoyed with me.

I knew Stoick was probably asleep, so I tried to be quiet as I entered the house. I gently pushed open the door so it wouldn't creak.

We were quiet up until the point Toothless and I looked at each other. And then I whispered, "Race you."

The stairs creaked as we ran – he beat me by only seconds. He gave me a smug look. I replied by grabbing the blanket off my bed and lobbing it at him.

He ducked the blanket and curled up next to the bed.

I grabbed the thin red blanket and curled up beside him, using his back for my pillow. He reached out a wing, wrapping me in it like a blanket. He breathed a few smoke rings through his nose to warm me and I scooted closer to him, clinging tight.

My eyes only remained open for seconds afterward.