Whoever clicked on this story despite the punny title, you are awesome.
Sooo... this idea has been with me for a while. I always felt that Hiccup was very selfless for giving up Skullcrusher to Eret just like that, because, you know, that's THE DRAGON OF HIS FATHER, WHO HAS JUST DIED. And I guess I just wanted to explore that a little, so here we are.
I don't know Eret's backstory, so I kinda made one up for him. It's only a tiny itsy part though, so you can easily skip it.
THE TENSES OF THIS FIC WERE DRIVING ME CRAZY AND I'M SURE I MESSED UP SOMEWHERE SO TELL ME IF YOU SPOT ANYTHING.
This fic includes talk of grief and such, so just be warned if that makes you sad... :(
I hope you enjoy!
...
Sometimes, Eret, son of Eret, wakes up in the middle of the night.
Sometimes, this is because of a night terror. Dreams and illusions of reality, whispering of times since past, of deep guttural voices demanding payment and tribute, of dragons growling and clawing and attacking him, of something hot and metal being pressed against his skin, burning, burning, until he screams.
Sometimes, the nightmares go back even farther, to a lonely hut in a cold land, with only a sickly mother and a depleting herd of sheep for company. To a man, tall and strong and a mountain of solid furry, slamming doors wide open and shouting for his son, for training, even though the man himself had only just returned from who knows where and still had the smell of ale on his breath.
Sometimes, however, it's not.
Sometimes, he wakes up and there is no discernible reason, but he grieves. He grieves for lives he had taken, he grieves for a childhood wasted, he grieves for friends dead and possible friends forever turned away by what he had done.
And sometimes, sometimes there's just this slight discomfort.
There is something soothing about sleeping on a boat, once one got used to it. It as always simple, always with that constant, quiet lapping of waves on wood, always a gentle swaying.
It's colder, too, on the boats. The wind is always brisking past, the ice is always floating around oneself, and even though Berk is plenty cold around the year, for the most part, sometimes it's just not enough.
To suddenly transfer as Eret did, from boat to land, is hard. It is hard and uncomfortable, and sometimes he wakes up because of it.
And that's fine, that's to be expected, Eret can deal with that.
What Eret can't deal with is when his house gets invaded.
Not by a horde of dragons of course. No. Those days are long past. No, it's when he receives two visitors, a single dragon, and a single boy.
A single boy who now ran the joint colony of the Island of Berk as chief. A single dragon who ruled the dragons of their joint colony as Alpha.
It's the crooning that had awakes Eret the first time. The quiet crooning, and the deep humming, and the responding quiet growls and huffs, only to return to crooning moments later, a correspondence between two dragons if Eret has ever heard one.
And that would have been totally fine, totally, totally fine, but there's a problem.
Eret owns a dragon, not dragons.
And the fact that there is an unknown dragon in his shed scares Eret Son of Eret at the time- because his whole life, his whole life, dragons have been bad, have been the enemy, the target, and now they suddenly aren't and he's trying and he's getting there, he just needs a little more time- and so he gets up, his hand at his hip where a small knife rests.
Erest does not known what he will know soon. If he had, he very likely would have turned away and ran for the hills.
But he doesn't, and so instead he quietly opens the door that leads to his shed, now turned dragon's den.
The sight that greets him is this.
Skullcrusher, green scales flickering and seemingly glowing in the quiet firelight of a torch, giving small concerned grunts and grumbles, nostrils huffing into light brown hair, pressing low to the ground and curling ever so slightly around the young charge leaning against him.
Toothless, scales as black as midnight and as deadly as lightning itself, curling small and meek, wrapping around the slim figure of a young man in night clothes, giving off soft crooning noises and trading looks and noises with Eret's own dragon.
And Hiccup, looking so small and tiny and fragile in the midsts of the two beasts, chief of the village- chief of Eret's village, now- pressing himself against Skullcrusher and crying.
The crying is the ugly sort of crying, the kind that starts and doesn't stop, the one that makes your breath draw up short and your eyes squint shut and you chin tremble and your nose run and your eyes burn. The kind that only happens in grief, in mourning in it's truest form, in a deep sadness that lingers heavy on the soul.
And for the briefest of moments, Eret is confused.
Did the Chief of the village make a habit of sobbing over random dragons in the middle of the night?
But then he remembers. Then he remembers, and Eret doesn't get confused about why Hiccup occasionally comes and curls up with his dragon for hours on end, sitting on straw with his hair in disarray and letting loose streams of words that the former trapper never even bothers in deciphering. He doesn't get confused. Not anymore.
Because Skullcrusher wasn't always his dragon.
He used to belong to someone else, someone tall and strong and brave and good, stubborn beyond belief and massive in heart and size and spirit. Someone good, Eret often thinks, Someone worthy of such a beast.
But Stoick the Vast is dead, and Hiccup is without a father, and Skullcrusher….
Skullcrusher croons at Hiccup sometimes, like one might do to a baby, to a hatchling. As if he is small and precious and helpless. Eret has seen it sometimes with other older dragons, bonded to wives and husbands, to parents, as they played with their partner's children.
Eret wonders if Skullcrusher sees Hiccup a little like a lost cub, even though he's grown and his mother is there with him. Eret wonders if Hiccup sees Skullcrusher as some living connection to his father, even though none had ever really mastered a bond so strong as Hiccup's and Toothless', where they are so close they are essentially one and the same, even though for the rest of them it's different. Eret wonders if Hiccup cares. Eret wonders if Hiccup is tired, if he feels as if he can't mourn and run a village at the same time. Eret wonders if he should do something, say something, or if that would be out of line. Eret wonders what comfort Hiccup finds curled up with Skullcrusher in a dimly lit shed in the middle of the night, crying and talking and crooning filling the otherwise silent air.
Eret wonders a lot of things.
That first night, Eret quietly closes the door and heads back to bed, lying there still and silent in the dark even though he knew he would not be getting back to sleep.
And then it happens again. And again. And again.
And each night Eret wakes up. And each night he creeps down to the shed and stares for just a few moments at the boy- man, the man breaking a little unbeknownst to all except three, and each night he creeps back to bed, feeling guilty and small and insignificant and helpless.
But, eventually, the guttural sobs recede to soft tears, and from there to soft snuffles, and from there to quiet talks; long one sided conversations to someone who was no longer there.
And Eret wakes up one night, and he creeps down to the shed, and it's almost morning, it's almost dawn, he can just see the flicks of lighter night sky as it fades from black to purple. He knows he won't be sleeping again, and so he gets up and plans for an early flight; Skullcrusher will be happy.
And the shed is quiet. The shed is quiet for the first night in a while, and Eret assumes that Hiccup has gone home, vanished into the night just before Eret can 'wake up', disappearing without a trace and without mention.
But Hiccup is not gone. Hiccup is there. Right there, curled up on Skullcrusher foreleg with one of Toothless's heavy comforting wings draped over his small frame.
Hiccup is drooling, and Erik is staring, and the dragons are snoring, and he has no idea as to what to do.
A slit of acid green suddenly flutters to life as the prone black dragon wakes, but even that doesn't help much, because Toothless only flicks his ear to recognize Eret's presence before falling back to sleep.
Skullcrusher wakes as well, eyes drowsily shifting open. The beast lets out a soft drawn out gurgling noise, a sound Eret has come to recognise as a greeting, and closes his eyes once more.
(For such a vicious name, Skullcrusher is surprisingly dormant and relaxed, and at times Eret looks upon the beast and the only key defining term he can think of was lazy.)
And so Eret is left alone with two snoozing dragons and one snoozing chief, and no idea as to what to do.
Eventually, after much muttered deliberation and indecisive hair pulling and nervous flickers of his eyes, Eret slumps off to his room and grabs a blanket before dragging it back down; winter was setting in, snow starting to layer on the streets outside, and while squished between two fire breathing dragons would probably keep Hiccup plenty warm… Well, better safe than sorry.
He takes a step closer to the prone chief lying on the ground of his shed, and freezes when suddenly Toothless becomes awake and alert, letting loose a slow, menacing growl.
Eret hardly dares to breathe, but Skullcrusher is letting out a huff of a breath and nudging the black dragon with his nose, and Toothless relaxes with a grumble and lifts his wing to give Eret easier access.
For a few more silent moments, he stays still. Again, the former trapper is struck by how small Hiccup looks, curled on his side and face smoothed out and free of the furrowed brow that he so often wears. He wonders, not for the first time, how old, how young, the lad is, and what craziness had to happen to get him where he is today.
From what Eret hears from the others, it was a lot.
But he has no time to sit and ponder, because Toothless will get anxious again and it's cold and it's honestly none of his business, so he lies the blanket down on his sleeping leader- this boy, this boy who's younger than Eret, even, who can do such incredible things, such incredible, amazing things that Eret can hardly believe his eyes even when it happens right in front of him- and goes inside.
When he returns a few hours later, the sun is breaking over the cusp of the ridge, and the blanket is folded neatly and lying on top of a snoring Skullcrusher, and Hiccup and Toothless are nowhere to be found.
Eret doesn't see Hiccup for the next few days, always entering just as the brunette is leaving, or vica versa. He would get annoyed, but the whole thing seems to be by honest coincidence instead of planned keep away, so he lets it slide.
(It helps that he has no idea as to what to say, or what to do, and every meeting delayed is another few hours to think and plan and make up apologies or awkward I don't mind's.)
In the end, it happens like this.
It's early morning, the sun is just starting to rise, and they are walking down the quiet streets to get a fresh catch of fish for breakfast before all the good stuff is gone. Skullcrusher lets out a familiar little croon, and Eret tenses and turns, and there's Hiccup scratching the chin of the massive armoured dragon as if he were no more harmful than a puppy, letting loose quiet cooing noises all the while.
(Eret is pretty sure the younger man doesn't even realize he's doing it.)
And then Hiccup looks up and spots him, giving him one of his smiles, the awkward little crooked one which was anxious and apologetic and friendly all at once, the one that wasn't necessarily happy, but was most definitely expressing something, like an offering of a truce or the offering of an apology or an offering of friendship, but most definitely offering, offering…. Something.
It's then that the decision is made, and the shed is always left unlocked and a blanket always folded in the corner, an apology and an offering and an act of kindness and an act of friendship all at once, but Eret doesn't know that, not yet.
Because all he can do is try for a smile back, lean against his dragon, and close his eyes, soaking up the light of the sun as it finally rises and night breaks into dawn.
...
There we are!
I hope everyone enjoyed the story, and thank you in advance for all and any reviews/favorites/follows, especially to the lovely guests who I can't respond to! These things really brighten my day and encourage me to write, and so it's always so nice to see them!
Even if you don't do those things, thank you for taking the time to read the Mourning Till Morning.
Until next time,
Mashpotatoe Queen
PS: ALSO, SKULLCRUSHER DOESN'T HAVE HIS OWN TAG AND THAT ANNOYS ME SOOOOO MUCH. WHYYYYYY!? WHY IS THERE A TAG FOR 'THE BIG DRAGON' BUT NOT SKULLCRUSHER!?