It was the sounds of wailing that brought it to their attention.
It had just been a routine patrol to start with. Two Outcasts wandering around the southern shores of the island, making sure nothing had shown up from the storm the night before when the winds had been howling and the waves had been licking the shores in large crashes. Gromer had heard it first, turning around as he held his weapon up, eyebrow raising as he started moving away from Sigurd, tilting his head. It was a sound that was foreign to Outcast Island, for there were no female warriors, and certainly no babies, but still Gromer's curiosity got the better of him. Kneeling down by the water's edge, he pushed aside the dead reeds with his spear before he found himself staring down at it.
The child couldn't have been more than a few days old, pale as anything and dark wisps of hair stuck to the sides of its head, laying in a small wicker basket. The wailing stopped and for a minute Gromer swore it was dead before there was a gurgle and it reached up, grabbing the stick of his spear where it was hanging over its head. The movement made him fall back as he realized there was only one reason why there would be a child on the shores of Outcast Island.
It was a hiccup.
The smallness of its body was soon apparent to the Outcast warrior's eyes as it stared up at him with a wide green gaze, curiosity clear on its face as it stuck its fingers into its mouth. Gromer stared back at it before he turned his head, calling out for his patrol partner. "Sig, you better come see this!"
"What is it?" the older warrior snapped, walking over to where Gromer was sitting on his ass on the bank of the island, but his eyes widened just as Gromer's had when he laid eyes on the baby. There was no mistaking the fear on his face, even fear that was directed at a child. "That's a hiccup..."
"Bad luck it is." Gromer pushed himself up and dusted himself off, looking down at the child before turning to Sigurd, looking more than a little helpless. He had no idea how to handle children, nor how to pick one up. "What do we do with it?"
Sigurd snorted a bit as he sheathed his weapon and knelt, picking the child up in his arms. The baby shivered before it sneezed, and Sigurd winced as its snot landed in his beard. "We take it to the chief. He'll know what to do."
Alvin lifted the baby up in the air after it was handed to him, turning it around. Not many babies washed up on his island, and certainly no hiccups. He made a face as the two men who brought it in, raising an eyebrow. "Well, what do you expect me to do about it?"
"Well, we weren't sure what to do with it, sir," the younger one, Gromer or something, replied, sounding a little nervous as he tapped his fingers together in front of him.
The chief weighed the baby in his hands, earning a gurgling coo from it as the boy grabbed onto one of his fingers. He chuckled, pulling the baby against his chest. "You like that, eh boy?" Wide green eyes stared up at him as the boy pulled a thick finger into his mouth, gnawing on it with his gummy maw as Alvin considered what to do with it. He frowned, tilting his head as he looked at the boy before glancing to his lieutenant. "Savage, who do we know around the Archipelago who has eyes like this boy's?"
Savage closed the distance between them, leaning forward to examine the boy before a swipe to his beard was made and he pulled his head away, blinking down at the child. "If memory serves, I do believe they look remarkably like Valhallarama Haddock's, sir."
He let out a squeak as Alvin tucked the boy into one arm, placing his free hand on his hip. "Are you telling me I have the child of Stoick and Valhallarama in me hands?"
"Possibly! Er, well, I can think of no one else with eyes as green, and the boy's hair colour has a striking similarity to Stoick's."
The three Outcasts waited for their chief to make a decision as he pulled the boy away from the crook of his arm, watching him curl up easily in his hands with a yawn. A menacing smirk crossed Alvin's face, splitting his mouth as he started chuckling. "What do we say about things that cross into our waters, boys?" he asked, raising an eyebrow at his men.
"That they're ours by right?"
"Exactly. The boy's already been outcast from his tribe. Imagine the look on Stoick's face when he's all grown up and has him pinned, ready to kill him." Alvin lifted the sleeping boy up to examine him before he grinned at the image in his head. "I think I'll keep him." There was a noise to the left and the chief of the Outcasts turned his head, glancing in that direction before he turned to look back at Savage and his two marauders. "Get out of here," he growled, watching them stammer and fumble with their weapons before the door slammed shut behind them. Once they were gone, he shifted the boy in his hands, calling over to the figure in the dark of the room. "Why don't you come over and say hello to your grandson, mother?"
The woman that shambled across the room appeared to be old and frail, but looks were the last thing that should be accounted for on Outcast Island. Bright blue eyes gleamed as she crept closer, watching the way her son tilted the baby in his arms to show her. A grin split across her face, yellowed teeth showing as she reached out with a hand to touch the child, stroking auburn hair back as he slept soundly in Alvin's arms. "Yes. Yes. This is the boy. The one from my vision." Wrapping her hands around the small body, careful not to pierce him with poison-tipped iron nails, Excellinor lifted him from Alvin, holding him high into the air. The boy stirred, blinking open wide green eyes to look down at her as her grin turned vicious. "The next great King of the Wilderwest. Ohhh-ho ho, you have a great destiny ahead of you, boy."
"He's going to help me get back at Stoick first," Alvin sneered, pulling the child back from his mother's hands, carefully extracting him in a way that didn't include him being scratched by her nails. The last thing he needed was to lose his leverage over the chief of Berk. At the look on her face, he scowled. "I don't give a shit about your prophecies, mother, a delay of a few fifteen years ain't gonna change much."
She hissed, upper lip curling into a snarl. "If he's not raised properly, there will be complications when he gets older! He'll get attached to things! To people! I have foreseen it, Alvin. That will be his downfall!"
"Then I'll just make sure he doesn't get attached." The boy in his arms cooed and Alvin paused, lifting him in his hands to sniff the air under him before he flinched, passing him off to Excellinor. "Find a female slave to take care of him for now. He won't be of any use to me until he's old enough to wield a weapon."
"Bah. You just don't want to change his diaper."
Author's Notes: I decided to separate the interlude into their own little fic of Outcast!Hiccup's childhood and teenage years, to give everyone a bit of background on his interactions and relationships. For those of you just tuning in, this is an AU based on the idea that Hiccup was sent out to sea as a baby and washed up on the shores of Outcast Island. It has its own fic, the Other Side of the Coin, which is currently on hiatus and undergoing major surgery. I thought doing some drabbles would get me back into writing it. This debuted as the first interlude of four, and the other three will be included, along with many others.