Several days of travel passed. The developing relationship between father and son began to take on a somewhat comedic family form due to the grumpiness of the father and the childish playfulness of his eight-year-old son.
The environment changed during the journey.Yes, whatever the war was in full swing. More than one village remained burned again. But it hasn't affected our two yet.
It was like walking on abandoned battlefields, sometimes a burnt village, sometimes going through the woods, sometimes going through a functioning village, and there was also a walk on a snowy wasteland. Other times it was hell in the winter, sometimes it looked like a fairy tale.
During the journey through the snowy meadow, the child began to playfully grin again his father.
Hiccup angrily growled as his son again provoked him, but Jensen continued.
"Come on, Dad! You're so grumpy all the time, so try to get up above things at least once!"
Hiccup again growled for himself, while his son was surprisingly in still happy mood.
During the stop at the wellspring, however, little Jensen began to pass on his playfulness to his father in an attempt to cheer him up a little.
The boy drank water, but began splashing running water on his father. Jensen swallowed, when his father looked at him with an angry face after he splashed cold water on him and Hiccup looked like he will due to it attack his own son.
But then to Jensen's surprise his father changed approach. He had closed eyes at the moment he was scared of his father, then the boy felt cold water on his skin.
His father also splashed water on him in response. They both eventually played with water.
It seemed that for some time after reuniting of the offspring and a parent, things were turning for the better. Hiccup was slowly losing his grumpiness and he enthusiastically wanted to catch up with those lost 8 years of parenthood.
Yes, the war was raging again and the warring parties of Hiccup had no idea, but now it was his least problem, especially when the joy returned back to his life counting now fatherly pride.
But the expedition was soon to gain momentum. The journey at that time took about 2 months. It started in a pretty dramatic way.
At that time, another of the battlefields caught fire and it started to look similar to 8 years ago. Fires, a lot of lumps of clay, the bodies of the dead and many forests were at least a little completely destroyed.
"They told me about the battlefields at school." Jensen said as he saw the battlefield from which was smoke coming. It was cloudy again and the depressing atmosphere still lingered. He continued: "It never occurred to me to see some live. It looks worse here than they explained to me."
"You're still small for this. They led you to fanaticism and obedience, and now forget it all. Enjoy your childhood." Hiccup said to his son.
"Small? According to what your older classmates explained to me, the children got on your nerves when you first visited the school. Why did you work with them and I was there when you were such a hero in the past, Dad?" Jensen turned at his father.
Hiccup was again in the grumpy and pessimisstic mood as Jensen said this, but immediately Hiccup pulled his son down as he heard very known sounds.
"These are the ones we run from. They're after us. Be quiet until I tell you." Hiccup said keeping his offspring by the cold ground.
What happened next scared little Jensen while he was in his father's arms. There was shouting.. dragon roaring.. sound of fire.. then sounds of cutting weapons.
Hiccup himself was silent and very tensed, but the fight took only 2 or 3 minutes.
"We found someone with a child."
Hiccup and Jensen at that moment realized that there were 2 armed men looking at them, but these guys weren't Drago's people.
"What are you afraid of? You are free, it is after them."
Hiccup with Jensen stood up and Hiccup realized that these guys are insurgents. So the war what was actually happening was actually a civil war and the stories about a movement successing to the uprising caused by him himself which was violently supressed 8 years ago was true.
Both of them got into the company of insurgents, who obviously could do it with dragons.
"We are setting up a new village that will serve as a new home for escaped prisoners and genocide survivors. I don't know if you know the word from Hebrew, but it will also be such a lazaret for the wounded." Said one of the insurgents to Hiccup.
"I do not know. I'm on my way through this wasteland with my son. I don't think my son needs any healing."
"You look exhausted. You can easily stop in the village for a few days, recharge your batteries and continue. There is no shortage of food or drinking water."
Jensen then began to pull his father's sleeve.
"Dad, maybe it wouldn't be a bad idea to relax for a day or two."
"I see your boy thinks logically. So will you come with us or not?" The insurgent asked Hiccup again.
"Probably it's not such a bad idea. I will go with my son to the village with you."
To the Jensen's happiness didn't even have to walk on foot during that trip to the village. For the first time in his life, he flew on a dragon and enjoyed it.
"So here's the village, gentlemen." Said the insurgent as Hiccup was with Jensen back on the ground, seeing the nearby village.
"Is there anything I can pay you for?" Hiccup asked, but the insurgent fenced off.
"You don't have to."
The village nearby was, in a way, a bit like paradise in the middle of hell.
The area was snowy and the insurgents kept it under control, but it seemed that people who had to leave their homes due to the current war also found refuge here.
But Jensen was still excited about his first ride on a dragon.
"That was awesome Dad! I would like to repeat it again!"
"I understand you, Jensen, but now we have to go to that village if you want to rest."
It was boiling in the village directly with an insurgent speech. Hiccup tried to find a suitable place to rest with his son, but then noticed a woman leading a speech that was listening to the local crowd.
"Eight years ago, they suppressed an uprising and a revolution that could restore this land's freedom. Eight years ago, we were deprived of our last hope by executing the only chief who could have stopped it-"
They didn't execute me, Hiccup at that moment thought for himself. Speech continued.
"Now we finally risen. Tyranny falls to my fellows, I promise you. And there will be freedom and peace again."
"Dad, where we are going to rest?" Jensen asked his father watching the speech.
"Instead, I'll find and get something to eat. You are small and you have to eat more than I do."
Jensen heard the speech. After a while, his father took his hand.
"Let's get out of here." Hiccup said and his son followed him.
The boy got cookies here. Sweet made him happy after a long time. Hiccup was hoping that nobody will recognize him here. If people recognized him and found out that he worked for the enemy as one of the cruelest and most bloodthirsty chiefs, they would probably execute him on the spot for treason, no matter what he went through. He still had the weapons Drago gave him. But what good was it to him now if it only confirmed his past?
"It's amazing here, Dad, better than my previous home." Jensen said satisfacted still helding cookie in his hand.
Hiccup noticed the infirmary and the look at the wounded who were getting help here drop his mood.
"Dad, what's the matter with you? Aren't you glad it's calm for a while?" Jensen asked him eating the cookie, while Hiccup was still watching the infirmary.
The problem was that the sight of the infirmary and the wounded and the survivors brought back memories of a suppressed uprising when, as a twenty-two-year-old boy, he was shaken on the battlefield and suffering from a shell shock in a fight that he had no chance of winning.
He only recovered when his son tugged at his sleeve. But Hiccup did not notice that, unlike other newcomers to this paradise, he became the target of the view of the woman who transmitted that rebel speech.
"The man with the child looks similar to the chief who was executed eight years ago. The one who started the uprising." She said to one of her colleagues watching him from the distance.
"Maybe he's just a double."
"I don't believe it. I'll try to make contact with him. If there is any of his zeal left in him, then the revolution and the overthrow of tyranny will take place much faster."
Hiccup after a long time he ate well again. Ever since the expedition began and the escape was about hunger, when he got the food he left it to his rediscovered son and he gave himself a little to keep from starving. Due to his emaciated and now slightly malnourished figure, he got here as an allotment to saturate the chicken leg a bit. He had never eaten as fast in his life as if the hunger he was beginning to experience awakened something of the animal in him.
He had just finished eating with his eight-year-old son by his side when he noticed that the woman from the rebel speech was coming to him.
"Sorry, I saw you at that speech." She said as she came to Hiccup.
"And what do you want from me? Can't you see I have a boy here to take care of?" Hiccup started doing theater.
"I understand that now you are in charge of a child who is either yours or who you have taken on, but this is serious. I'll want you and your boy to come with me."
"And why? I don't want to go anywhere now. I'm only here with my son to rest."
"You will have to."
Jensen started helding his father's hand. Two guards came to the woman's call. Hiccup started being nervous.
"And what about my son?" Hiccup asked, but at that moment he was violently pulled out by the guards away from his son.
He heard his son's scared crying. Like 8 years ago, he was again forcibly separated from his own child.
"Jensen!" He only screamed.
"This was to be paradise and a place to rest with my son for a while. Why did you have to forcibly tear me away from him against my own will and leave him poor there?" Hiccup began to complain immediately when he was taken somewhere resembling a medieval interrogation room.
"Don't make a fool of yourself. You know very well why. You represent hope for us, and our people thought that they executed you long after they suppressed the uprising."
The lady then looked at an 8-year-old drawing of the young chief, apparently drawn at a time when the young man was awaiting execution. Then she showed it to Hiccup and continued.
"That's you. Only now are you 8 years older and have a beard."
Hiccup swallowed.
"I'll let to you to shave your beard
and then I'll discuss it with you."
Hiccup had to shave his mustache and was tense over what would happen next. Especially now that he was worried about his son who is now abandoned here without him.
"Is it you. The memories did not lie." She said as she was comparing shaved Hiccup with the drawing of him 8 years ago.
"People will be happy with your return Hiccup Horrendous Haddock III, the chief of Berk. Freedom will rise again." She said looking at Hiccup.
"But I have two conditions. I want you to stop treating me like a rag doll and I want my son back." Hiccup said with a serious, still grumpy voice.
Then one of the guards stopped.
"He looks similar to one of Drago's chiefs."
Hiccup felt nervous now, because he knew they are talking about him.
"Cough it up, the hero will have to go back to the old coat. Odin knows what happened to him for those 8 years."
Hiccup but he was determined to do something else. Get out of here and find your son. His past no longer matters, he is no longer a hero like he used to be, now he is a renegade.
"Will I be able to see my son again? Where is my boy?"
The guards did not answer, but Hiccup still mumbled to himself.
"Well, if you consider me a hero, I would expect better behavior from you, but I have to go..." Hiccup said and he tried to leave the room.
Guards tried to catch him, but he as a seasoned and hardened man, he easily defeated them by force. He swore a little. His hands were weak from the starvation, and the blows on the guards now hurt.
"I have to find Jensen.. I have to find Jensen.." He was murmuring for himself as he was running his way out.
But then he was startled when he bumped into one of the people in the crowd.
"I am sorry," Hiccup said and he continued his way, searching Jensen.
"Jensen! Jensen!" He started shouting while walking around the place.
"Jensen.." He murmured as he found the boy by one of the lit fires and the boy warmed up sadly there.
"Dad!?" Jensen turned as he realized his father was talking to him.
"Jensen, listen to me, we must get out of here immediately. They forcibly tore me away from you, hoping to help them with the revolution."
"Why do you mind when you told me you were a hero?"
"Jensen, this is hard to explain.. especially when you're just 8 years old. What bothers me the most is the fact that they just pulled me away from you, apparently suspecting that I would no longer want to get involved in the new war."
Hiccup grabbed his son's hand and began to guide the boy from here. He noticed that the guards were chasing him and added to the pace. His son tried to keep up with him.
But then he was unexpectedly hit in the head. He heard Jensen's voice, but was stunned and lying on the ground.
"Dad!" He heard Jensen's voice and he saw his son with a foggy look. Hiccup tried to recover as quickly as possible.
He was forcibly captured, but little Jensen stabbed his sword with which he had previously trained at school into one of the guards who had detained his father. The man screamed in pain, and Hiccup stunned him with a blow. But then the father and son realized that people were watching them.
Sweat was running down his face now, because even though he was shaved, it was only a matter of time before someone recognized him.
At that moment, he was grabbed again and the fight began again. But then one man in the crowd spoke.
"By all the gods .. it seems to me?" Said the old man as he came to Hiccup.
Hiccup did not know the man at first, he was in his seventies and he lacked two limbs. But then as he remembered about his past, he immediately who the man is. It was Gobber. And for some reason he ended her between people here in this village.
"This man was supposed to help us all. Hiccup Horrendous Haddock III., the chief of Berk." The woman who was one of those in charge here flew back into the situation.
"What are you waiting for? Your miraculous chief is the chief and murderer. He's not a hero." Spoke the man who stopped Gobber.
"It can not be true. It can not be true." Gobber murmured for himself.
"This man was breaking up families, killing innocent people ... many villages burned down because of him, and many people died because of him. Or do you want a war criminal who has fought on our side before to help with war and revolution?"
But when they turned away for a while, the man was gone with the boy. Another of the rebel leaders took command.
"Forget the original plan, that man must be cought and executed. With his crimes he's no longer hero, but a traitor."
Jensen wanted to shout, but his father stopped him. The boy knew very well that that they were talking about his dad.
"Follow me." Hiccup said to him as he was leading him from the lazareth.
"Dad, why they want to kill you?"
"Now is not the time, just go with me."
"Please Dad, tell me. Everything always turns out well."
Hiccup stopped running as he heard the sentence. Everything always turns out well. The sentence made him angry as he remembered last damn 8 years of his life.
Jensen swallowed, it was obvious that his father was angry after this sentence and returned to the mood he had been in most of the way.
"No, Jensen, life hasn't any happy endings." Hiccup started and his voice began to increase as he spoke to the child, as did his tone "Life is not the same as the story of some heroic Viking warrior who saved the land where he lived and then found a girl."
Jensen looked nervous. His father began to ruin his childish and still optimistic view of the world, so the boy wanted to cry slowly. He wanted to help his father, and his father was angry with him instead.
"Do you know what hell I went through!?I lost most of my family, I had to do evil against my will, the last few years they tortured me, I dissapointed everyone who relied on me,your mother and I both had to give up your little sister to protect her, and as I was a prisoner, I had to kill your mother!" Hiccup was shouting at his son with an angry voice, but when he realized what he said he immediately realized he did a mistake.
"Y-you k-killed Mom?" Jensen asked, crying.
Hiccup try to approach him, but Jensen refused.
"Stay away from me, you killed my mom, you killed my mom." Jensen was saying and this time he shouted at his father "I wish you weren't my Dad!"
The words hit him more than he expected, but the crying boy had already run away from his father.
"Jensen!" He said and immediately started searching his son, forgetting that he is again in the danger of halt, this time from both warring sides.