So this will be the first time I'm writing for the How to Train Your Dragon fandom. This is an AU, Hiccup gave up trying to fit in at 12. No pairings as of right now. Magic may come into play later. Hope you guys like the story. I will try for weekly updates. Uh, that's it I think. Feel free to correct me on grammar and spelling if you see anything wrong.
This is Berk. It's twelve days north of Hopeless and a few degrees south of Freezing to Death. It's located solidly on the Meridian of Misery. My village. In a word, sturdy. It's been here for seven generations, but every single building is new. We've got hunting, fishing, and a charming view of the sunsets. The only problems are the pests. Most places have mice or mosquitoes. We have ... dragons.
Most would leave, but not us. See we're Vikings, and Vikings have stubbornness issues. Only, I'm not a Viking. No, I'm not much of anything to the village. Just a walking, talking fishbone that everyone wishes would disappear. My name is Hiccup, wonderful name I know, and tonight I'm going to do just that.
I've been planning my departure for a while now, once it became clear that there was no way I'd fit in here. Not that I haven't tried, believe me I have. Multiple times. It's just that each attempt went terribly wrong; sorry, I destroyed a part of your house when I grabbed the dragon's attention and ran away to sae you; oops, minor issue with the springs, didn't mean to almost cut your hand off with the axe thrower; my apologies, I didn't mean for anyone to get tangled in the ropes with water-filled buckets meant to help put out fires, I was sure I strung them up higher.
Each time I tried something, it went wrong in some horrendous way. I was tired of it. All of it. The bullying, the teasing, the mocking comments, the general apathy to me of the village. Hey, at least I won't be an embarrassment to my father anymore. Did I mention that my father is the Chief of Berk? Stoick the Vast. I would've tried to stay for a little while longer. Really I would have, I do still love him after all. But my father is the same the rest of the village, if not worse. It's not that he does anything to me. No, it's the fact that he does nothing at all except look at me with so much disappointment in his eyes whenever I do something.
But that ends tonight. Tonight I'd sail away from here, under the cover of darkness and a dragon raid. I had hidden my self-built boat in a smallish cove I had found on the far north side of Berk, its only entrance a long, narrow fissure in the cliffside. Of course I didn't want to give my father any reason to come looking for me. So I had built a new machine I called the Mangler and set it up atop the cliffside overlooking the village. Hopefully he'd think that a dragon got me up there when the village found it without me.
Maybe he'd be in grief thinking I was dead, but things would be better in long run. Right? Eventually he would get over the loss of me, everyone would be happy that I wasn't around to mess things up anymore, and they would finally have Snotlout for heir, like they always wanted.
I snorted at that, they didn't need the kind of chief Snotlout would be, but it would the kind they deserved in my opinion. This was it, I was finally leaving. After coming up with this plan three years ago I was finally leaving. I had finally run out of reasons to try and fit in. It was equal parts liberating and terrifying. I would be free of Berk and venturing into the wider world. This would be good-bye.
I quickly finished packing up my boat before pausing, to take in my cove. I had been through here so much putting everything together that I had never really stopped to look at it. I had built a small forge that I had used to make a number of projects, the boat and Mangler being some of them. A small cabin, maybe half a faðmr in length and width, completely furnished over the last three years and a nice little covered garden, I did take some pride in growing everything there and was a bit sad to leave it. And a dock meant only for my boat.
My breath caught for a second, I had never really stopped to appreciate what I had built here. Everything here was built by me, for me and no one else. That was when I heard a loud, piercing shriek and crash.