Behold: Chapter 4 of 10! Not my favorite of the lot, but if you've stuck with me thus far, keep going! We're almost halfway there! Y'all are awesome, and I appreciate and love every review! Enjoy!

Hiccup stared at the man opposite him, his mouth opening and closing a couple times as he tried to settle on some words. Eventually, he managed, "You're…you're Loki?"

The red haired man nodded once, looking far less happy about that fact than he could have been. "Demon of Chaos, wildfire incarnate, god of mischief…take your pick."

"Wow," Hiccup breathed, not wanting to take his eyes from the man in case he vanished.

Loki hesitated an instant before saying, "Hiccup, I hate to tear you away from your family, but I was hoping for a word."

Hiccup turned, glancing at his family, all of whom wore inscrutable expressions. After a moment, Gobber shrugged. "Sure," Hiccup told Loki. Then, to his family, he added, "I'll catch up with you guys in a few minutes."

Loki nodded his thanks to Stoick, Valka, and Gobber before turning, leading Hiccup down the center aisle of the mead hall. "Thank you," he told him. "I know how much your family means to you. Hel, of course I do; I watched you grow up." As they walked, Loki smoothly swiped a tankard of mead from a rather large man sitting near the middle of a table. He handed it to Hiccup without explanation.

Cautiously, Hiccup tasted the beverage, finding that it was in fact quite good. "Uh—what do you mean, you watched me grow up?" he asked, skirting the backs of people and trying very hard to keep up; Loki moved quickly.

After a brief pause, Loki glanced over his shoulder and said, "We all like to keep our eyes on you mortals. Follow me."

Hiccup took a sip from his mug, following Loki somewhat blindly as he wound his way through the crowded hall, moving very much like a man who knew where he was going. Which was good, because Hiccup had no idea. But Loki was fast, and Hiccup had to almost trot to keep up, skirting tables and avoiding collisions with others—all while without spilling his mead. "Hey, uh—Loki?" Hiccup asked.

"Yes?"

"Aren't you supposed to be bound to a rock for all eternity?" he asked, "You know…with the snake—"

"Yes, I know," Loki replied a bit testily. Apparently (and unsurprisingly) that wasn't the most exciting of thoughts. "Bound till Ragnarok and all. But see, Hiccup, things always move in cycles. Several smaller Ragnaroks have already happened. I'm released each time, with the knowledge that I'll be bound again before too long."

"Um…" Hiccup dodged a huge man with an enormous beard who staggered along drunkenly. "I thought Ragnarok meant the end of all things. How can it already have happened?"

"Like I said, Hiccup: smaller Ragnaroks." Loki shot a glance back over his shoulder. "Even Ragnaroks of other worlds. I don't have long—maybe a hundred years of so—before I'm bound again. Your Ragnarok, the total destruction of everything both living and dead, has yet to occur."

"Ah." Hiccup tried not to let on how confused he was. Instead, he asked, "Where are we going?"

In lieu of answering, Loki veered off to the side, sliding neatly between two tables and patting one of the men on the shoulder as he passed. He pulled open an amazingly ornate, golden door, ushering Hiccup through first. Then, before following himself, Loki shot a quick wink at one of the women at the table he had just passed. Hiccup noticed her blush a bit, but the door swung shut too quickly for him to see anything more.

"There," Loki said. "That place gets to be exhausting after a time."

Hiccup was too busy looking all around himself at the gorgeous gold architecture of the hallway to formulate a response. The high, sweeping ceilings were embossed with intricate knotwork, and the walls were draped with shimmering tapestries, each depicting scenes from the lives of various gods. Hiccup gestured to the closest one—Njord, by the looks of it. "Where's yours?" he asked Loki.

With a derisive laugh, Loki waved the question away. "I hope you never find it. In case you hadn't already guessed, it doesn't portray me in the most flattering light."

Hiccup turned to him. "Why does it matter?" he asked.

"Because, Hiccup," Loki said. "As is not the case with most mortals, you seem to have a relatively neutral opinion toward me. I'd hate for it to be shifted in the wrong direction before I'd done anything to earn it."

"So, what you're saying is, you value my opinion of you?" Hiccup clarified, and, after a beat, Loki nodded. "Why?"

Loki's straight, disinterested face cracked into a slight grin, and he said, "That is exactly what I wanted to talk to you about. See, Hiccup, I've been waiting for, quite literally, your entire life to meet you in person. You have no idea just how monumental this moment is to me. I've watched you from the time you were born, and you were always remarkable. I've dreamed for years about your arrival here in Valhalla."

Hiccup knit his brow. "Hold on," he said, trying to make sense of what Loki had just said. "Were you the...like...patron god of my life, then?"

"I suppose you could say that," Loki replied, flippancy somewhat forced. "Though, we gods don't operate on a patron-based system. Nonetheless, we all inevitably have favorite mortals; it just so happens that you were mine." He looked away somewhat uncomfortably, eyes following the elegant curve of the wall all the way up to where it met the other wall, forming a peak at the top. Despite Hiccup's overt stare, Loki did not say anything more.

After a silence laced loosely with tension, Hiccup muttered, "Of course you were. I should have known."

That got Loki's attention, and he turned to Hiccup again. "What do you mean by that?"

"Well, nothing in my life ever really went right, did it?" Hiccup shrugged. "It's just strangely fitting in hindsight that the god of mischief chose me."

Loki gave a little chuckle. "Hiccup, I didn't choose you at all. I just became so intrigued with you that anybody else paled in comparison."

Hiccup folded his arms, a bit defensive. "So you just…played more with my life? Like I was a favorite toy or something?"

"No, no!" Loki was quick to correct him. "It was nothing at all like that!" He ran a hand through his long, red hair, clearly a bit unnerved by the direction of the conversation. "Actually, I was less involved in your life than usual. I was really only responsible for about half of the irksome things that you had to deal with. The rest were, regrettably, your own doing."

For a moment, Hiccup gaped at him, a hundred questions vying for his attention within his thoughts. Then, he found his voice again and said, "Tell me which ones were you."

Loki raised his eyebrows. "That would take quite some time."

"Then give me the biggest ones."

With a sigh, Loki began, "That time when you were a child, and you got lost in the forest—I was moving the trees."

"You were—"

"More recently, when you met Dagur on one of your diplomatic missions—I was impressed with how you handled it, by the way."

"Well—"

"Another big one—the one that, to me, is my best work yet—was that dragon raid when you were fifteen." Loki paused, watching Hiccup's face intently. "You wouldn't have hit that Night Fury if I hadn't nudged your bola just a bit to the right."

At once, all of the words Hiccup had been trying to compile were sucked away, and he was left with a deafening silence in his thoughts. A second later, his mind was bursting again with questions so noisy that he had to work hard to figure out which one he should ask first. He settled eventually, meeting Loki's somewhat uncertain eyes and breathing, "Why?"

"I wanted to see what you would do," Loki told him quietly.

Hiccup couldn't stand still. He paced across the hallway a couple times, trying desperately to organize his thoughts enough to form a coherent sentence, but it was more difficult than he had imagined. "You…you made me do it?" he asked. Then, before Loki could respond, he waved the question away, instead reiterating, "Why?"

"For the same reasons you always fascinated me, Hiccup," Loki said. "I never could predict your course of action." A burst of sound leaked out into the hallway as a blonde man left the mead hall through the door; Loki glared at him, and he immediately went the other way. Then, Loki took a step closer to Hiccup, face softening, and put his hands on Hiccup's shoulders. "The point is, the very thing that made the other gods lose patience was the thing that kept me coming back. Time and time again, I found myself seeking you out, watching you. That's all I did for the vast majority of the time, I swear: just watch." His green eyes bored into Hiccup's, searing his words into Hiccup's mind. "I came to respect you, and my respect is not easily obtained."

"I gathered," Hiccup said, words coming more easily now. His mind still spun, but it was slowing; as he watched the man before him talk, he began to understand more and more of the things that Loki was not saying aloud. So he filled in the gaps. "You threw things at me as a way of testing me. To see if I was worth it."

"Yes, exactly!" Loki pressed. He looked hopefully at Hiccup, adding, "You never once disappointed me."

"Says the trickster whose moral compass doesn't exactly point due north," Hiccup scoffed, some of his sense of humor returning as his shock and resentment diminished. After a second, he added, "I guess I owe you my thanks, then." When Loki looked at him confusedly, he clarified: "For Toothle—the Night Fury. I—ah—I don't know where I'd be without him." He scuffed a self-conscious hand through his hair, glancing away the second at the memory of his dragon—a memory that he had not expected to cause him such an abrupt flood of emotions, especially from beyond the grave.

When he met Loki's eyes again, there was a slight edge of amusement there. Hiccup was only grateful that Loki apparently hadn't noticed the way that losing Toothless still clearly upset him. "You can call him by his name, Hiccup," Loki said gently. "I'll know who you mean."

Hiccup just nodded, repeating the hand-through-the-hair gesture once more, though the sorrow stayed back this time. "Right," he said. "And, by the way, still getting my head around the fact that you've seen my entire life."

Loki smiled. "Most of it anyway," he amended.

"Yeah," Hiccup said. He paused for a long moment, thinking of how he wanted to phrase the idea that his unbidden emotions had stalled earlier; Loki waited patiently until Hiccup eventually took a deep breath and said, "That dragon—Tooth…Toothless—was the best thing that ever happened to me. Thank you. For…whatever crazy impulse made you do it. I—um—I really owe you one." He offered Loki a shy look, and Loki smirked shrewdly.

"I'll remember that," he noted. "Odin knows I find myself in trouble more frequently than…well, than anyone, really. It will be good to know that I've got an advocate in the future."

At the end of the hall, a woman started toward them. She was too far away for Hiccup to see details, but she seemed lovely—dressed all in gold with hair to match and a gait that looked like she was floating on a cloud. When Loki glanced in her direction, however, she stopped, immediately turning around and heading back up the hall.

"That was Freyja," Loki supplied. "Not exactly my biggest fan." He hesitated, glancing around them and lowering his voice slightly. "Watch out for her," he said. "It is not uncommon for her to—ah—make offers to attractive, new men here. If you're not careful, you might find her crawling into your bed."

"That's…that's good to know," Hiccup said, making a mental note to stay as far away from Freyja, the woman in gold, as he could.

"She's beautiful, of course," Loki was saying. "Stunning. Just drop-dead gorgeous. And I have never heard of anybody who regretted a night with her, but—"

"Yeah, I get it," Hiccup asserted. "I'll be, uh, keeping my distance."

Loki looked at him for a second before saying, "Not a bad decision, if you ask me. And I hope you will. Ask me, I mean. If you ever have any questions or concerns, or if you need anything—anything at all—just come find me."

Hiccup nodded. "I will. Thanks." He offered the god a smile, and Loki returned it.

"I should let you get back to your family for now," Loki said. "You've probably got lots to say to them."

"Yeah," Hiccup said somewhat bashfully. He hated to cut the conversation short, but he hadn't seen his father in what felt like eons. His mother and Gobber had kept him company on the mortal plane for a while longer, though they were soon gone as well. He had much to tell them. Valka would want to know all about his children, and Stoick—he would surely ask about Berk. Gobber would probably be the one to ask about him, Hiccup. About his daily life. About the forge. About diplomatic relations, and his marriage, and…

Loki was absolutely right; he did have quite a bit to say to them.

"Well then—" Loki opened the gilt door again, gesturing for Hiccup to go ahead through. Once they were back inside the bustling mead hall, he pointed to a corner on the other side. "They're over there," he said. Hiccup couldn't see them, even when he tried shifting around to get different angles, but when he turned around to ask Loki where exactly he meant, Loki had vanished.

"Oh, okay," Hiccup muttered to himself dryly. "I'll just find them myself. And try not to get lost. Right."

Somehow, he negotiated the crowds, occasionally bumping into a person or two—thankfully, people who were too drunk to be offended. Most everybody in the hall paid him no notice, letting him wander through the throngs without feeling as if under scrutiny. Still, a select few people who had seen him walking with Loki earlier gave him strange, sidelong glances, like they suddenly weren't sure about him and his intentions. He shrugged them off; Hiccup was not unused to soliciting mixed varieties of attention from those who saw him. Still, he couldn't help but wonder if it was his association with the demon that had earned him such suspicion.

Once he found his way back to his family's table, however, their beaming faces were enough to make him forget the way those few people among hundreds had eyed him. He couldn't help but smile when he sat down across from Valka and Gobber elbowed him in the ribs. "What did Loki want with you?" he asked.

Hiccup shrugged, setting down the tankard that Loki had swiped for him earlier. "He just wanted to welcome me to Valhalla," he told them as he lifted the stein to his lips for a swig of mead.

"What was he like?" Valka probed, leaning forward slightly in curiosity.

"Um…" Hiccup scanned their faces; his father's expression was quite befitting of his name, while his mother seemed to be intrigued. Beside him, Gobber was busy nudging his false tooth back into place—it had evidently loosened in its socket. Still, Hiccup knew he was listening. "He was…pretty normal, honestly," Hiccup replied.

Stoick scowled, a reaction that Hiccup had been expecting from him. "Most of the people here don't seem to trust him," he said, eyes roving briefly around the enormous room.

"Rightly so," Gobber mumbled past the fingers that were straightening his tooth. "He is the god of lies and mischief."

"And a demon," Valka put in, though she didn't sound especially perturbed by that fact. Hiccup arched an eyebrow confusedly at her, and she rolled her eyes. "Oh come now," she said. "You all trusted dragons. How much worse could Loki be?"

"Quite a bit worse, Val," Stoick said.

Valka waved their concerns away as though they were paltry. "Have any of you—besides Hiccup—even looked at his face properly? He doesn't have mean features."

"Exactly," Hiccup added, supporting his mother. "He really just is a pretty normal guy. Besides, he liked me."

His family looked at him as though he had just said something incredibly controversial. Very pointedly, Hiccup closed his mouth, focusing intently on the rim of his tankard and tracing it over and over. He didn't look up again until he felt the weight of Gobber's hand on his shoulder. "Making friends right away, eh Hiccup? Seems like a good way to start eternity."

Hiccup smiled at Gobber, relieved that he wasn't being chastised for his rather inadvertent choice in acquaintances. "I really don't think he's a bad person," he told them, though he specifically directed the sentiment toward his father more than the others.

After a second's hesitation, Stoick shrugged. "You're grown up enough to make your own decisions," he said, and Hiccup knew he had at least made some slight progress in dispelling some of the unpleasant ideas surrounding his new friend. "Speaking of which, how is Berk?"

Hiccup didn't know how long they talked, but he covered everything that he had anticipated and more. By the time they had disbanded (with hugs and affectionate punches in the arm), he felt like he had little more to say on virtually any subject and was aching for some peace and quiet.

He didn't know how he found his room; only that he simply wound up at the door after a short period of wandering. Like the tapestries hanging in the hallways, commemorating each of the gods, the gold of his door was embossed in a pictorial representation of his life. Slowly, he ran his fingers over the images, recognizing each instance—from his birth to his death—and recalling it vividly. He traced scenes from his childhood, through his teenage years, and he was about to enter the section devoted to his more recent life when his touch settled on one of the handles. For a moment, he wasn't sure what they were sculpted to portray, but after only an instant, he recognized the long, serpentine figure.

The handles were a pair of Night Furies.

The dragons' heads were at the top, their wings folded and backs arched to form the handle. Then, the tail fused with the door again at the bottom. Upon closer inspection, Hiccup noticed that each dragon was missing its left tail fin.

Somewhere deep in the pit of his stomach, a dull gnawing began. He hadn't experienced this feeling in quite a while, but he knew it intimately and understood. The sensation only grew as he traced over the scenes from his adult life—his wedding to Astrid, the birth of his three children, the final dissolution of the Berk Dragon Academy. By the time he actually pulled the doors open, he was sure he was going to be sick.

He missed them. All of them.

The grandeur of the room itself was lost on him that evening as he stripped down for bed, removing his familiar metal leg and laying it gently on the floor. As he huddled beneath the furs in much the same way as he had done as a child, he wanted to cry. But there were no tears in Valhalla.

He pulled the blankets over his head, wondering why everyone wanted to come to Valhalla if it meant leaving everybody who was still alive. It seemed terribly unfair to him; while living, he had felt this aching for his mother, his father, Gobber—those who all had disappeared so immediately from his life. Now, here he was, in death. He was finally with those whose company he had craved more than anything in life, and he was missing those who still roamed the earth.

For the first time since arriving in Valhalla, he understood why some people living there would willingly give up their memories.