A/N: SURPRISE

Yes, this is the surprise. Updating all of my eighteen in-progress fics at once. It was pretty crazy, but I did it, and it's here, and good day to you all! I had tons of fun doing this, so I hope you guys have tons of fun reading this!

Okay, so, this chapter was pretty eventful, I guess, but next chapter, ooh, next chapter is just like a bucket of angst. A whole freaking bucket. Plus two. xD

Hiccup couldn't rightly remember how he managed to get back inside his palace and bolt the door, but he came to himself on the warm lava floor, staring unseeingly up at the orange-yellow suns in the ceiling. The need to burn was gone now, but then, so was everything else.

He might have controlled fire, but he felt strangely cold from the inside out, as if he had been standing in a blizzard for so long that the snow had spread its chill down to his very bones. He lay there on the floor, feeling the tears spilling down his cheeks but not caring, because nobody was there to see him and what did it matter anyway?

The numbness he felt then made him remember those awful periods in the cell with Hollow Jack, how the frost boy would just go away and completely ignore everything around him. At the time, Hiccup had been angry with Jack, for leaving him there in that cell all alone, but now he thought he understood. Sometimes, living in the present was just too painful, as it was right then.

And Jack thought he had done it on purpose. He, like everyone else, now believed Hiccup a monster.

The tears started again as the numbness threatened to slip away, self-hate all too ready to take his place.

"I…" Hiccup's voice was shaking as he opened his pale, shaking lips. "I'm a monster."

Saying the words aloud changed nothing; he was only speaking the truth.

But he didn't want to be a monster. He wanted to change. He didn't want to hurt people anymore. He didn't want to use his power. All those people, those people whose accusations had made him so angry in the beginning…they were all right. He was a monster. He should never have started using his powers if all it led to was this.

Hiccup's gut wrenched painfully, and he thought for a moment that it was from guilt and sadness, but then he rose up onto his knees and vomited onto the lava floor, shaking and shuddering with a cold that pierced his heart instead of his skin.

He rocked slowly backward and forward, shaking, his head buried in his hands as dark thoughts blazed unchecked through his mind. He was a monster. He was dangerous. Everybody should stay away from him. He should barricade himself within his fire palace, and pretend that nothing had ever happened, that he had never killed hundreds of people. Everyone else could resume their daily lives, while he stayed alone, trying to find a way to burn himself to death, or waiting until old age claimed him.

Or sickness, he reminded himself as he leaned heavily forward and retched again. It appeared his stomach was done expelling its contents, however, for he shivered and shook, but nothing came up. Hiccup knew he should have cleaned up the sick from the floor, but he didn't have the energy. For how long he remained there, he didn't know. He knew that a night or so must have passed, for moonlight filtered in through the windows after a bit, and then it slipped away again, into sunlight, which made Hiccup's eyes water, and then back into dim starlight.

Hiccup did not eat or drink as he sat there, but eventually he registered tiredness, and, exhausted, he lay down and slept once more, but in dreams, there was fire and ice colliding again and again, and people screaming at him. One word, over and over again. "MONSTER! MONSTER! MONSTER!"

Hiccup jerked awake, very late into the night, and for a moment he wasn't sure what had roused him, until he felt an icy night breeze hitting his face, blowing his hair back and making him shudder with cold. He considered the merits of going back to sleep, but he could hear hushed voices from a little ways away, and he rose up on his knees, preparing to rise unsteadily to his feet. Somebody must have broken into his palace again. Many people around here did, though inexpertly. Mostly teenage boys who fancied themselves heroes and thought they were going to be the ones to stop Hiccup's fiery reign of terror.

When was it going to occur to these boys, Hiccup wondered rather grumpily, as he walked carefully towards the voices, and the cold breeze, that he controlled a whole element? The heat in the air on a summer's day – he could control that, too. They would have no chance against him…on a regular day.

But this time, this time there was to be no burning. This time, he was not going hurt anyone for his own gain, for his own protection. The need to burn was long gone, doused as though by a heavy downpour.

He came upon the group, oddly tall for teenagers, not that it mattered, and he spoke, resisting the urge to light a fire in his palm to penetrate the pressing darkness from the moonless night. "Come into the light, please," he called softly.

There was an outbreak of outraged hissing.

"You woke him, you nimrods!" But it wasn't a boy; it was the gruff growl of a grown man.

"It's alright!" Hiccup stepped into the circle, brushing by a few of the boys on his way in. Except they weren't boys, none of them. These weren't the regular, silly teenagers Hiccup usually had to deal with; they were hulking Viking men, and currently all of them were staring down at him in a furious way.

He backed quickly out of the circle again, stumbling over his own feet. He could have killed them. He could have shot the flames out of his fingertips and made an end of these men, right here and right now. But, as if to underline his new determination to quit hurting people, he mumbled, mostly to himself, "I'm not going to hurt you."

"You? Hurt us?" One of the men, who, by the smell on him had had an awful lot of mead before coming here, seemed to find this extremely funny. "We aren't scared of you, Desert Brain!"

"Desert Brain?" Hiccup repeated in confusion, his brows knitting. "That one was kind of lame. How about Flame Head? I don't control deserts, remember, I just control heat, so—WHOA, PUT ME DOWN!"

For the man had suddenly picked him up by the collar, holding him off the ground and clapping a dirty palm over his mouth.

Hiccup fought to get out of the rough iron grip, but before he could move more than a few inches in either direction, there was a great crash of metal on bone, and his world spun dizzily before darkness overtook him.