A/N: I wrote this quite a while ago, but didn't post it because – well, I dunno, I guess I wasn't happy with it, and besides, this kind of thing has probably been done a thousand times before. But I thought it was a shame to leave it sitting on my computer after working pretty hard on it.

In any case, hope you enjoy!

Hiccup was picking absently at a splinter of wood that had dislodged itself from the edge of his table when a tankard of mead came pelting his way. He ducked with a cry of alarm and it smacked into the portrait of Hamish the First and Hamish the Second, its contents spattering in every direction. Hiccup wiped some of the sticky liquid off his face, which only made his hands sticky and his face only a little less sticky than it had been a moment ago.

"Hey!" he half-yelled, half-sighed as the offender vanished into the sea of burly, noisy Vikings crammed into the Great Hall. It was funny. The hall seemed to have shrunk a great deal since he and the other riders had returned. At least, that had to be the only explanation for the sudden lack of personal space and Hiccup's inability to focus his eyes on anything in the vicinity. Maybe this was simply what happened when virtually everyone on Berk got drunk at the same time. And they were very, very drunk. And they were Vikings. Which meant they had an endless supply of stored-up energy that made them go berserk when it wasn't under control.

The defeated portrait crashed to the ground behind him. "Oh, for Thor's sake," Hiccup muttered, lugging it back up to its former glory. "Where's Fishlegs when you need him? Fishlegs!" More out of irritation than anything, he cupped his hands in front of his mouth and shouted mock-dramatically, "Fishlegs, would you mind telling off whoever wrecked one of your favourite historical relics?"

His words were completely drowned out by a cacophony of cheering from a nearby table.

"He's not going to be any help now," said Astrid, who had suddenly materialised out of the chaos.

"Astrid," said Hiccup in relief. "Where've you been?"

Wordlessly, she grabbed his arm and dragged him past a group of huge men engaged in a violent argument and another three having a drinking contest. "There," she said, pointing.

Hiccup squinted through the gap between a man's arm and his torso and spotted Fishlegs, passed out on a table. With each breath he took, the table creaked dangerously and sank down a little in the centre. Hiccup slapped his hand to his forehead so hard it hurt. "Him too? Really?" He sighed and turned to Astrid. "So what happened? Enlighten me."

"Some idiots fed him mead," she replied disdainfully. "Now nothing will wake him up. Rumour has it that his great-great-great-grandmother's third cousin's father went a little overboard with his drinking one night and didn't come to until three years later. I guess it runs in the family."

"Right." Hiccup wasn't listening anymore. He knew Astrid was staying sober for his sake and he ought to be grateful, but somehow he couldn't quite work up the sentiment. Since the heat of the battle had died down, all he'd felt was exhaustion and hollowness – his ability to feel snatched from him like a ship being pillaged, leaving behind nothing but an empty hull. He muttered something like, "Sorry, I've got to check on – you know – things," before pushing blindly through the crowd, stumbling back the way he had come.

He could hear her calling, "Hiccup, wait!" somewhere behind him, but he ignored her, weaving between people while trying to avoid getting clubbed in the head. It did not help that there were actually clubs around, and that for some reason, they all seemed to be in the possession of the most dangerously intoxicated. His eyes landed on a glint of metal tapping lightly against the wooden planks of a table.

"Gobber!"

The blacksmith turned as Hiccup ran up to him. "Gobber, don't you agree that this is getting –" He faltered. Gobber, very red in the face, had picked up his panpipes and begun to play. The lilting melody rose absurdly out of the dissonant shouting of the other Vikings, and Hiccup frowned.

"Gobber, what are you doing?" He strode over and plucked the panpipes out of his hand.

Gobber only looked mildly surprised. "I'm celebrating, of course."

"Celebrating?" said Hiccup in disbelief. "Don't you think we should display just a little more tact in the face of what's happened? This . . ." He sighed and motioned at the turmoil around them. It was really quite a scene. All around them were people bellowing obscenities at the top of their voices and throwing each other against pillars and rushing about brandishing pieces of chicken. "This isn't what he would've wanted," he finished quietly.

Gobber took a swig from his tankard before answering. "We're Vikings, Hiccup," he said simply, as if that was the basis of all the philosophy in the world.

"Oh, and here I was thinking we were a herd of yaks," said Hiccup, his voice becoming low and harsh with sarcasm to cover up the sudden rush of pain in his chest, raw and sharp and fast.

Gobber, in the middle of lifting his tankard to his mouth, paused for a moment and looked as though he was about to say something, but Hiccup was already gone.

"Hiccup!" Astrid was trying to squeeze between the edge of a table and a man's large backside. She finally succeeded after a few tries, springing free like a cork from a bottle and almost losing her balance in the process. "Hiccup, I know you're not enjoying this." She caught hold of his hand as he began to turn away. "But you can tell them to stop. Demand some decorum. You're the chief now."

"I know," he said, his gaze lowered. "But that's . . . that's not it, Astrid."

"Then what is?" When he didn't reply, she pressed him, a warning tone in her voice. "Hiccup."

He sighed. "I just . . . I don't know. I guess I expected something different."

"We're Vikings, Hiccup."

He threw his hands up. "Why is everyone making this astounding discovery today?"

"Hiccup –"

He began to stride toward the great double doors.

"Hiccup!"

"Astrid." He sighed and laid a hand on her shoulder. "Please."

She looked at him for a moment, her clear blue eyes glowing with an intense, piercing light, and then her face softened. She stepped back and watched as he pushed open the doors and vanished into the darkness. The doors swung shut with a solemn finality, the sound echoing through the hall like the last heartbeat of a dying man.

"Hey, Toothless," said Hiccup softly, running his hand over his dragon's sleek, dark scales. Toothless growled contentedly and nuzzled Hiccup's cheek. "So here's your chance, buddy." He swung himself over the saddle, his prosthetic leg clicking into place in the stirrup. "Go all out. Time to show off your insane flying skills." Toothless cocked his head to the side and blinked at him in bewilderment. "I mean the extreme extremes. More extreme than our usual fare. Go on." He barely knew what he was saying anymore. He knew only that there was a constrictive tightness in his chest, and that he was possessed by an overwhelming urge to somehow get rid of it.

Toothless blinked again, and then his wide, reptilian mouth stretched into a delighted grin. He crouched low, his wings extending to their full width, and shot into the sky like a lethal arrow.

Hiccup bent low over his dragon, the icy wind rushing against him, whipping his hair back and stinging his eyes. He only had time to suck in a lungful of freezing night air before Toothless went into freefall, somersaulting and spinning so fast that Hiccup lost his bearings completely. He shut his eyes and yelled some gibberish about underestimating Night Furies as his hair slapped painfully against his face.

At some point Toothless seemed to decide that he'd had enough. The roar of the wind in Hiccup's ears slowly died down, and he opened his watering eyes to the wide expanse of sky and Toothless looking eagerly back at him, asking silently for his opinion on his performance.

Hiccup caught his breath and opened his mouth to say, "Let's go back now," but what came out instead was, "Oh, we're not done yet. Not even close." An absurd rush of adrenaline hit him and he angled his left foot sharply in the stirrup. With a surprised roar, Toothless shot forward, rocketing straight at a cluster of rock pillars up ahead.

It was like the first time Hiccup had flown Toothless properly, the time he'd fallen off and plummeted toward the sea at breakneck speed before managing to clamber back onto the saddle. He had been terrified out of his wits then, seeing nothing but light and dark blurs and swerving almost blindly away from the dark patches in fear for his life. Now he felt bolder than ever, manoeuvring nimbly around the piles of rock, urging Toothless to go faster. Excitement coursed through his veins, and the knot in his chest began to loosen. He was riding his dragon, and that was what he did best, and there was nothing else that needed to plague his mind. The world seemed to vanish and he felt as though he were being sucked into nothingness. A bizarre thought drifted into his head. Perhaps this was what the trip to Valhalla was like. He'd always wondered about the Viking afterlife. How was it that dead Vikings feasted there for all eternity? That was what his father was presumably doing, but wouldn't he get tired of it? What then?

He slammed into something hard. The impact sent a surge of pain up his arm and the world rushed back into sharp focus. Toothless screeched as he spun off course and sent a plasma blast at a rock pillar dead ahead. A section of it exploded into small fragments and dust, causing the entire thing to collapse in on itself. Hiccup yelled out and ducked as a lethal-looking rock flew over his head.

"Okay, Toothless, up!" he shouted, changing the position of Toothless' tail with a jerk of his foot. They dodged the flying debris and streaked toward the sky.

Hiccup exhaled in relief as soon as they were clear of the crumpling landform. "Sorry, bud," he said, patting Toothless on the head. "Are you okay?"

Toothless crooned reassuringly and looked up at him, his eyes shining in an amused fashion.

"Oh, you enjoyed that, didn't you? Well, I have to admit, it was . . ." He trailed off. It was what? Fun? Guilt stabbed at him, returning in full force – only now some of it was new. He tugged silently on the reins and Toothless flew higher still. Wisps of cloud enveloped his black wings and danced around them, swirling masses of white becoming denser and more opaque as they hid themselves completely from the world below. Hiccup closed his eyes and slumped forward in the saddle, letting the warmth radiating off Toothless' body calm him. Against the backs of his eyelids he saw another image of his dragon, black pupils narrowed to slits so thin they were almost swallowed by the surrounding green, his teeth bared, his whole body tensed and ready to strike. His father crying out his name with fear and desperation – the last word he ever spoke, before he was knocked to the ground, never to rise again.

To everyone else, that above all probably felt wrong, even impossible – Stoick the Vast should have died with pride, with a dignified acceptance of death against the onslaught of a merciless army. He should have died standing, with a mighty battle cry that would resound in the hearts of his people until the end of their days. That a chieftain who embodied such greatness should die amidst fear and confusion seemed as outrageous as a winter on Berk without brutal snowstorms.

And yet he had died saving his son.

The others hadn't been there. It was just words to them. They hadn't watched as flaming arrows lit up the ship, the wooden deck ablaze in glorious gold. Glorious, but destructive. Like everything in this world. Hiccup had stared unblinkingly at it, trying desperately to burn the images into his mind as the fire devoured every trace of his father that hadn't already been taken from him. But in the end, there had been nothing but the flames, climbing and climbing, engulfing the ship in a great flare of light, and then slowly dying down. By then his eyes had been too clouded with tears to see properly anyway.

Hiccup ran his fingers feverishly through his hair, swallowing against the dryness in his throat. Toothless made a low, concerned sound and glanced back at him. They were flying lower now, and the little specks of light in the village and the sharp peaks of rock jutting out against the sky were slowly becoming visible. Spiked patches of white marked the scars of the recent battle.

Berk. An island where only the stubbornest and most daring would settle. The Vikings who lived there were violent and aggressive and pigheaded, some of them with attention spans akin to those of Mildew's cabbages.

And Stoick had loved them. He'd loved them for their strength and their will to fight, for their terrible jokes at dinner and their reckless penchant for drink, for their steadfast loyalty and their grudging kindness. With a pang Hiccup remembered the day he and his father had ridden Toothless together, and Stoick had seen Berk from above for the first time. He had seen all of his people safe, where he could watch over them, and he had been glad.

Gobber's and Astrid's voices echoed in Hiccup's mind. We're Vikings, Hiccup.

And they were right. And not just on a literal level. In their own, strange, Viking way, they were right.

Hiccup flipped Toothless' tail fin up and they began their steep descent towards home.

When Hiccup re-entered the Great Hall, he stopped in his tracks and gaped. The normally freezing stone room was unnaturally, almost uncomfortably, warm. Large, brightly coloured shapes flashed across his field of vision and loud screeches bounced off the walls. Oh, for the love of Odin. Everyone had let their dragons in. Usually this wouldn't have been much of an issue, but nothing about tonight was usual. If there had been chaos before, now the Great Hall was a battlefield. Drunken Vikings and fire-breathing reptiles were evidently not a wise combination. A table had already been reduced to splinters, and as Hiccup watched, a Gronckle dived at a group of Vikings and bowled them over. They went down like matchsticks, laughing hysterically. With a resigned sigh, he beckoned Toothless with his finger. "Suppose you might as well." As his dragon bounded towards him, pleased, he spotted Astrid and his mother chatting animatedly at the side of the hall, flanked by their dragons.

"Hiccup!" said Astrid when she saw him, relief apparent in her voice. She smiled tentatively at him, and looked surprised when he smiled back.

"Is everything all right, son?" Valka put an arm around Hiccup's shoulders as he moved to stand next to them.

"I'm fine." Hiccup looked up at his mother and saw that her gaze was distant and pensive. "But what about you?"

She considered for a few moments before answering. "I've lived among dragons for two decades, you know. It's . . ." She shook her head. "But everyone here really was fond of your father, Hiccup," she went on, smiling. "Just listen to them."

He raised an eyebrow sceptically at her. "Listen to them doing what? Throwing up mead? I hope they're not getting that stuff mixed in with what they're drinking."

Laughing, Valka took him by the shoulders and steered him in the general direction of the havoc. "No, really." He shot a confused glance at her as she released him, flashing him a smile of encouragement. With a shrug, he turned to face the other Vikings and dragons running and dancing and shouting across the hall. Then he became aware of what they were saying.

"Remember the first time Stoick got drunk?" yelled Spitelout. "I thought he was gonna kill me, the way he looked at me. Waving that bloody axe too."

"Who could forget?" Gobber shouted back. "That day still haunts me in my dreams. My undies were soaked through by the end of it. My best pair!"

"Thank Thor he never got that drunk again," Phlegma giggled.

"Oh, he did," said Gobber menacingly. "He just made sure you never knew about it. I had to tie him up with all the ropes we owned, but he insisted."

There was a similar conversation taking place nearby.

"One time Stoick got half his beard incinerated by a Monstrous Nightmare. I hardly recognised him –"

"What? I don't remember that!"

"Oh, you were too little. He was angry at everyone and everything until it grew back. Those were the dark days. He shouted at Hiccup so much that he started crying, and then in a trice he was back to being a mushy father."

"Of course he would do anything for Hiccup."

Hiccup had moved forward, fascinated and touched. Everywhere he walked, he heard 'Stoick this' and 'Stoick that', 'Stoick got peed on by a yak' and 'Stoick made a Terrible Terror mad so it dropped his boots down the well'. His heart swelled.

It wasn't long before Gobber noticed him. "Hey, if it isn't the chief himself!" A hand grabbed Hiccup by the back of his collar and hauled him out of the throng.

"Whoa, hey, wait –" Hiccup felt his feet leave the ground, and a moment later he was dumped roughly onto a table. He rubbed his elbow, scowling. "What was that for?"

Gobber jabbed his prosthetic arm at his chest. "Come on, Hiccup! Your turn."

"I – what?"

"You're his son. I bet you know the juiciest ones."

Hiccup stared at him. The suffocating feeling was back in his chest again. "But I don't really –"

By now a small crowd had formed around the table. Snotlout, swaying so much that he was knocking people over and pouring mead on them without even trying, was spouting gibberish and punching the air, though Hiccup suspected he was egging him on. Ruffnut and Tuffnut were jumping up and down, chanting, "Hiccup! Hiccup!" and gradually others began to join in. Out of the corner of his eye, Hiccup saw Astrid and his mother approach the huddled group, their dragons and Toothless tailing them. Fishlegs was nowhere to be seen. Then again, he was probably still out cold. Either that or he was valiantly protecting the portraits of past chiefs from the dragons' flames.

"Uh, all right!" Hiccup waved his arms about wildly, fearing that the Great Hall might actually be reduced to rubble if the Vikings and dragons continued to run rampant. "All right, listen up! Some of you may recall my father's – uh –" he cast about desperately, "– chiefing troubles. Sometimes he would come home and put giant blocks of ice on his head." A few people nodded, their faces eager. "When I was a kid, I used to be amazed at how perfectly shaped they were." There was a burst of laughter. "It was one of life's greatest mysteries back then. I used to think, 'Why would he bother to make them perfect when he already has a headache? Wouldn't it just give him a bigger headache?' Eventually I concluded that the gods must have decided to grant him superhuman ice cutting abilities, however irrational that was," he finished, shrugging dismissively. His audience laughed appreciatively again.

In spite of himself, Hiccup laughed with them. He had hurriedly blurted out the first thing about his father that came to mind, hoping to appease everyone and save the Great Hall from utter destruction, but now he found that he actually wanted to go on. He looked around at all the bright-eyed, glowing faces around him, and his mouth seemed to move on its own accord.

"That's the thing about my father, though," he said, and the chatter died down again as heads turned towards him, eagerly anticipating what he was going to say next. Hiccup hesitated for a split second, but the words refused to stop spilling out. It was like a dam breaking, all the resistance coming apart and the seemingly endless torrent of water flooding out. "On the surface he seemed like every Viking warrior's role model – brave, determined . . . not to mention his – well – vastness. Having too many Viking qualities meant he didn't know his own strength sometimes, among other things. I remember when he got on Toothless and gave him a little nudge so he'd take off – you can guess how that turned out." He grinned apologetically at his dragon.

"But he knew how to be careful. Although most of the time he probably forgot. But he did know. Back when I first got this obnoxious thing" – he indicated his prosthetic – "it got unbearable after a day of babysitting dragons and chasing sheep and repeatedly falling flat on my face trying to do all that – unsurprisingly. One night I was feeling sorry for myself and my dad came and just looked at me for a minute." He cleared his throat, which suddenly felt as if a cord had wrapped itself around it. "You know when his eyes bore right into you and see through every lie you tell him? It's terrifying, frankly. But he just left the house without saying anything and came back with a couple of those perfectly shaped blocks of ice . . ."

His breath hitched in his chest as the scene came back to him, as vivid as though it had happened mere seconds ago. He could almost feel the startling cold of the ice and hear himself involuntarily sigh in relief before catching himself and hastily looking away, because he was a Viking, and Vikings did not show vulnerability to their fathers. But when he'd glanced back, Stoick had been smiling at him, the green eyes which were usually so fierce and intimidating softened with the glow of firelight.

Hiccup swallowed hard, his gaze fixed on the scratched, knotted surface of the table he sat on. "I just . . . I've always been amazed at how one man could use his hands to swing axes and throw maces, and yet still be so gentle with them. It was always like that. He could kill you with his hugs, but there were times when he could make you feel . . . you know when you bake bread, and it's tough and dense and flat? Imagine if you blew a lot of hot air into it and made it expand, slowly, into this soft, fluffy cloud. And imagine that feeling, expanding inside you. That's how it felt, to have a father like him. Warm and . . . safe."

He said this very quietly, but the hall had grown so silent that no one had to strain to hear it. The silence stretched on and on, and when he finally had the courage to look up, he saw that many people had tears in their eyes.

Without speaking, he stepped down from the table, every sound he made seeming magnified and echoing around the hall. His head hurt – he could really use one of Stoick's perfectly shaped blocks of ice – but he no longer felt the oppressive tightness like a rope binding him, crushing him until he couldn't breathe. He was almost light-headed with relief.

Astrid squeezed through the crowd and pulled him into a tight hug. He gladly returned her embrace, breathing in her scent of metal and smoke and letting her soft furs tickle his face.

Gradually the buzz of conversation resumed, though it was considerably more subdued than before. Snotlout could be heard muttering to the Eret and the twins, even if the only discernible word he spoke was 'chief'.

Hiccup and Astrid were still wrapped in each other's arms when Gobber stood up abruptly, thrust his tankard into the air and cried, "A toast!" Seeming to have lost the little sensitivity he had when he was sober, he ripped the two of them apart and shoved two more tankards, filled to the brim with bubbling, honey-coloured liquid, in their faces.

After a moment of uncertainty, Hiccup took his, some of the mead sloshing over the side as Gobber passed it to him. He hoped to the gods that it hadn't undergone passage through someone else's digestive system.

"To Stoick the Vast!"

There was a chorus of echoes, followed by the loud, grating clanking of tankards. Hiccup steeled himself and tipped the mead down his throat in one go. He had never particularly liked alcoholic drinks, not because he thought he shouldn't, but simply because they tasted almost as bad as Astrid's yaknog. The mead seared his insides and made his eyes water, but as the fire burned in his throat, he thought of his father, with his great shaggy beard like leaping flames and a roar louder than any inferno's, and he smiled.

"And to Hiccup, our new scrawny one-legged chieftain!"

And soon the Great Hall dissolved into chaos once more. Hardly aware of what was happening, Hiccup felt himself being tossed into the air again and again by several sets of bulky arms, and mead was being poured on him, and he was laughing and crying at the same time, and somewhere in the background he could hear Toothless growling in protest.

The Great Hall was filled with snoring and the muffled sounds of restless movement. Hiccup leaned his elbows on the table behind him and watched idly as Fishlegs rolled over in his sleep and cuddled the portrait of Stoick and Hiccup – which had, of course, been knocked down sometime during the frenzied evening – as though it was a stuffed animal. There were slow, uneven footsteps from behind.

"Still up, Gobber?"

The blacksmith sat down heavily beside him. "I should be saying the same to you."

"Yeah, but I never thought it was humanly possible for anyone to drink ten barrels of mead and still be functioning afterwards."

Gobber chuckled. "Heck of a night, eh? Looking forward to your first official day as Chief?"

Hiccup took in the thoroughly inebriated Vikings sprawled on the hard stone floor and groaned. "I am so excited. You can't possibly imagine how excited I am."

Chortling, Gobber cuffed him on the shoulder. "It'll be fine. You'll see. They all love you."

Hiccup shook his head. "Not like how they loved him," he murmured, his eyes on the portrait.

"Well, that's for sure." Hiccup stared at him. "You're not Stoick. You're Hiccup. And you'll run Berk your way."

"But my father is still part of me." He saw dawning comprehension in Gobber's eyes and hastily continued. "No, don't say it. I know. We're Vikings. And this" – he brought his arms up and gestured wearily to the hall at large – "is exactly what he would've wanted."

They smiled at each other. Hiccup knew he didn't have to say anything more. Anything about how Vikings grieved in all sorts of crazy, impulsive ways, or how he only realised that when he did so himself. How he learnt, the hard way, that Vikings weren't remembered only for their strength and bravery in battle. How proud he was to be one, despite all their shortcomings.

No, it was all there. In Gobber's simple philosophy was a world of meaning, but only for those who knew how to look.

"Well, I suppose I should prepare myself for the woes of dawn," said Hiccup, yawning and settling beside Toothless, who opened one eye lazily and encircled him with his wing.

As he drifted off, he swore he could hear his father's booming laughter bounce off the walls, echoing through the whole village – all the way from Valhalla and back.

Thanks for reading!