Chapter Seven

Okay! Hi! Um...I don't know if lovessnotlout has an account on this or not, but on Tumblr they are lovessnotlout and they asked me yesterday if I was going to update. They got me to write this. Thank them.

I don't own HTTYD or any of the characters or anything you might recognize. It all belongs to Dreamworks or Cressida Cowell. Also, if I owned HTTYD, that movie would have...actually, no, I wouldn't have changed anything xD But it would have a sequel by now and the show would be different xD

Snotlout stood alone on Hiccup's front porch, staring blankly, unseeingly at the door. He wondered if, maybe if he'd said something different he could've made things better.

He stood there for a minute longer, staring at the wooden door in front of him before he heard footsteps behind him.

Snotlout forced himself to look around. Stoick the Vast was standing there, walking closer and closer to him with every step. Either the man had not yet seen him or he was hoping the boy was a figment of his overworked, overtired imagination; Stoick certainly looked tired.

There were dark circles under his eyes and lines around them; he looked like he had not slept for days.

When he reached his porch, Snotlout shrank back, clinging to the desperate hope that Stoick would not see him.

Stoick seemed to have trouble focusing but, when he looked at Snotlout, his gaze grew distinctly colder. He stiffened slightly. "What are you doing here, Jorgenson?"

Caught, Snotlout mumbled something barely audible.

"I thought I made it plain enough last time," Stoick said coldly. "But clearly, I didn't. This is the last time I'm going to tell you to stay away from my son."

"Sir…" Snotlout tried, but Stoick silenced him with a look and then shouldered roughly past him, ripping open his front door and slamming it shut, wordlessly barring Snotlout.

Snotlout stared at the door, the familiar, hollow feeling of guilt chewing at him. He slowly turned and walked off the porch.

As the day wore on, everywhere Snotlout went, there seemed to be crowds of people whispering about Hiccup's condition. Snotlout only knew how his cousin was doing because he'd visited him earlier that day and whenever he tried to find out anything more about Hiccup from a villager, the person he asked would give him a dirty look and turn pointedly away.

Despite the fact that Stoick clearly hadn't wanted anyone to know about Hiccup's condition or why he was so badly injured, it appeared that the story had leaked out somehow and some of the facts had gotten mixed up in the retellings.

In one version of the story, Hiccup had been lying half-dead in the forest, from where he'd crawled back to Berk to seek help.

In another version of the story, Snotlout had gone crazy and attempted to take off the rest of Hiccup's bad leg with an axe, having dragged the smaller boy into Raven's Point Forest before doing so.

Exactly where people had gotten this version, Snotlout wasn't one hundred percent sure, but he had a sinking feeling Astrid was behind that one.

However, despite how confusingly jumbled the story got, one fact remained crystal clear: however Hiccup had gotten injured and however serious things looked, it was Snotlout's fault.

The worst part of that rumor, to the older boy, at least, was that that particular rumor was absolutely true.

Everywhere Snotlout went that day, people turned away from him or whispered coldly about him when they saw him coming.

Nobody spoke to him, but they were clearly all speaking of him.

But the hardest part, Snotlout decided wasn't that everybody thought badly of Snotlout; it was that things looked so serious about Hiccup that worried him. He told himself Hiccup was tough; the kid had survived having his whole leg chopped off once before, just a couple weeks ago. Why should Snotlout be worried?

But despite what he told himself, he was worried.

Sure, he made fun of Hiccup and teased him; but if anybody else so much as thought about doing the same, Snotlout would be all over them like stench on a Viking. As far as he was concerned, Hiccup was his to poke fun of at his leisure, and nobody else with the same agenda was allowed within a hundred feet of him.

But Snotlout wasn't thinking of anything like that when he thought of Hiccup today.

Instead, he was thinking of how to make things better between him and his cousin. Hiccup was furious with him; that much was obvious.

And after everything Snotlout had put him through on Halloween night, who wouldn't be?

I'm going to make things right Snotlout told himself fiercely, no matter how long it takes.

The problem was, Snotlout had no way to get to Hiccup.

For the next few weeks, he tried to think of ways to make it up to the boy, to show him he was sorry, but he dismissed all of his ideas. They were all too difficult, not enough or involved more than one person.

Since the prank, nobody on Berk had spoken to him or even so much as shown him a friendly gesture except Tuffnut and Ruffnut. Tuffnut waved eagerly at him when passing him to get into the Great Hall and Ruffnut nodded absently at him and sat down at his table in the Great Hall with him for a few minutes one time, but she'd seemed distant.

Snotlout began taking walks around the outskirts of the village, heading into the forest just to avoid the dirty looks and accusing glares.

He jumped over a tree root, bending his knees slightly to allow himself to slide gracefully, harmlessly down a hill without falling and thought miserably that he now had a good idea of what it had been like for Hiccup before Toothless.

He hadn't seen his cousin since the incident at Stoick's house almost a month ago and, when he did, he saw the boy in passing as he limped slowly from one place to the next. Call him a coward, but Snotlout had given the chief and his son a wide berth since Stoick had warned him to stay away.

Just as an idea began taking shape in his head, a new idea for how to make it up to Hiccup, Snotlout thought he heard his cousin's voice.

"Thor, Dad, I'm fine!" the voice insisted.

"I'll believe it when I see it."

"Look, I'll be with Toothless. I'll be okay."

Snotlout felt a flash of panic as he realized the voices were drawing closer and closer. How had he not noticed them before?

He guessed he must've been too wrapped up in his own thoughts to hear them.

He knew it was stupid and knew he was perfectly entitled to take a walk in the forest, but when Stoick was mad at you, he had a way of making you feel like everything you did was wrong.

Snotlout dodged behind a clump of trees and waited there, hardly breathing, listening to the boy and man argue.

"Look," Hiccup said in a placating tone, coming to a stop near Snotlout's trusty clump of trees that were still hiding him and seating himself on a fallen tree. Before Hiccup next spoke, Snotlout realized that they were in the exact same spot where the tree had fallen on Hiccup almost a month before.

He swallowed as he thought of it. Isn't fate artistic? He thought to himself as he crouched in the trees, but Hiccup's voice brought him back to reality.

"I'll have Toothless and you know I'll be okay with him there." Hiccup said insistently.

"Mmf." Stoick sniffed; the argument was clearly winning him over, but he didn't want to show it. After a few seconds, however, he sighed and muttered, "Not too far from Berk, alright? And the moment and I do mean the moment you hear something out of the ordinary, you two take off, alright? Head straight back."

"Alright," Hiccup nodded, offering the man a smile. "We'll be fine. You know us. Our lives are quiet and calm, Dad."

Stoick and Hiccup spoke quietly for another few minutes and, the instant Stoick had turned, shuffled off and was out of earshot, Hiccup punched the air with his fist in triumph. "YES!" he yelled, like he'd just won a great victory. "I never thought that would work!"

Toothless gave him a slightly stern look, like he was telling the boy to be gentle with himself until he healed fully, but if Hiccup caught the look or understood it, he gave no sign. He shifted a little, making to stand. "I'll…I'll be along in a second, Toothless. We'll fly in a sec."

Toothless gave him an 'I see right through you and I'm going nowhere' look.

Hiccup sighed and massaged his leg with his fingers, wincing as he hit a tender spot.

Snotlout only had a second to watch before an ice-cold hand had closed over his mouth like a gag and a voice like broken glass was whispering in his ear, "Yell for help and nobody will find your remains."

Yes, fate was artistic indeed.