this is the way that we love,
like it's forever
we'll live the rest of our lives
but not together
"Happy Ending," by Mika
...
There is…something. Something that is, something that isn't. An emptiness in his home, a heaviness on his heart. A silence. A reminder.
It's selfish and childish, so he pushes it away, pushes with all his strength, but it keeps coming back. Keeps stealing his breath mid-sentence, keeps stealing his thoughts mid-dream. It is everywhere, and yet, to his complete devastation, it is nowhere.
He tries to lose himself in work, in building and chiefing and everything else that can occupy his hands and his mind, but there's no longer anything in his life that hasn't been touched by it. The taint is inescapable, and it chokes him a little more each day. Oh, the others are upset, too, of course. Everyone's lost friends. Many have lost family. And he doesn't know if it just feels different, or if it really is different, but he didn't just lose a friend or a family member: he lost his first friend. His first family.
He's lost the first person – being, soul, spirit, whatever – that ever found him worthy, that ever cared for what he was instead of what he was supposed to be.
And it is selfish, it is so gods-forsakenly selfish of him to deny that person-being-soul-spirit-friend the same freedom that he himself now knows, to resent that there could be something better, something more, than just their simple friendship, to be hurt by the implication that he wasn't enough— but knowing that it's selfish doesn't stop it from hurting, doesn't stop it from worrying and tearing at him until he's flayed open and raw.
So he works, in silence and with an intensity he knows isn't healthy, avoiding crowds as much as he can and unable to stop himself from being snappish and terse when he can't, cutting and mending and forging and building and trying all the while to ignore the sounds that aren't there.
It doesn't work.
The others give him space, uncharacteristically (or not so much, in some cases) aware and respectful of his needs, and instead of trying to distract him they only stop him when they need him and speak to him in calm, quiet voices better suited to a skittish dr— yak, and he would despise them for it if it weren't so Thor-damned helpful.
He avoids building his own house for as long as he can, content (or what passes for it these days) to live out of a tent while helping get the rest of the village established, and there's so much to do that he rarely spends any time in it anyway. And when he does, well. It's barely big enough for him, so how could it be missing anyone else?
But as the sun sinks southward and the nights edge longer, push comes to shove, so he drops his plans into the arms of the next person to ask about it (Gobber) and stalks off to help haul rocks and scrub from what will be their easternmost pasture. This land seems more fertile than Berk (or, Old Berk), not that that's saying much, and the thick cushion of pine needles should make a good mulch. Some of the hills might be suitable for terracing, but that can wait until after the essentials have been taken care of. Still, it's probably something worth thinking about – he should get some plans going, draft some maps—
The something that is also nothing steals both his breath and his thoughts this time, and he drops the rock he'd been heaving into the wheelbarrow directly onto his foot. It's the metal one, so it doesn't hurt, but the impact drives it down into the earth far enough to unbalance him, and he staggers back.
A slim, strong hand catches his arm and rights him against both the original stumble and the violent flinch of being unexpectedly touched. He hadn't known anyone was anywhere near him; must've been trying so hard not to not see a certain something that he hadn't seen anything at all.
"Hiccup." It's his mother's voice, soft and husky like she too hasn't been speaking enough. "I think it's time for a break, now."
He can't argue with that – not that he agrees with her, but he literally cannot find and shape the words to say otherwise – so just nods blankly and lets her steer him away. She leads him off a ways, up the slope until the rest of the nascent village is spread out below them, and it's just the two of them at the line where cleared land meets untamed forest.
"It's all right to grieve," his mother says gently as she sinks onto a log and tugs him down next to her. "To let yourself feel loss."
"There's nothing to grieve," Hiccup says. Maybe if he repeats it enough… "He— They're gone, but they're happy, and safe, and that's— That's the most important thing. That they're safe. And we're— we're safe, too, and this is a new chance, a new start, and they're— we're happy here, so. So, everything is all right, everything worked out for the best, I'm just. I'm just too selfish to see it."
Valka leans against him, pressing her arm along his, but doesn't try to trap him or hold him.
"It's...possible, I think," she starts slowly, "to grieve for something that isn't gone, as long as it's out of reach. I certainly grieved for you and your father, when I was taken. I assumed you were both alive, believed you'd both be happy, but I couldn't be with you, and so I grieved. Toothless is still out there, somewhere, and you still have your memories of him, but you can't you can't build new ones, and that hurts. It's not selfish to miss someone you care about, Hiccup."
He huffs. "It is when you couldn't get them back without putting them in danger. I'm putting my happiness over his safety, and that isn't right. It isn't fair, to want something I know I shouldn't, but I can't stop. I can't stop wanting him back."
"But you didn't stop him from going. You made the right choice, Hiccup, and regretting it doesn't undo that. Feeling loss in the wake of departure is simply human – dragon, too, of course, but I've always thought we have the same souls."
He slumps into her a little further; she puts an arm around him and gives a little squeeze. It's soothing, grounding, and he feels himself relax a bit for the first time in days. Then he immediately tenses up again.
"Oh gods, I'm so sorry, this must be so much— I mean, you're obviously going through this too, and it's probably worse for you, since you lived with them so long, and with dad, and—" he pushes himself up, tries to pull his weight off of her and hold himself up like he's supposed to, "—I shouldn't be asking you for pity, you're probably the last person I should be whining to, I—"
She pulls him firmly back in. "I'm your mother, Hiccup. I may not have done a very good job of it, but it is always your right to ask me for anything you need, and it will always be my joy to provide it. And don't forget, I came to find you. If you want to be alone, I'll go, but I don't think you do. Am I wrong?"
He wars with himself a little, trying to sort out the, the everything going on, weighing needs and rights and acceptable outcomes at lightning speed, and can't come up with a good enough reason not to, so sighs, and admits it. "No. I don't want to be alone, but I need to get used to it."
"That is the last thing you need," his mother corrects brusquely, "because you aren't alone. You've lost one friend; that doesn't mean you have to lose the rest."
Somehow, that's what does it, because it isn't fucking true, is it? That was the one friend he'd thought he'd never lose, and if he can leave, if he can find something better and leave, then he, Hiccup, Hiccup the Useless, doesn't have a hope in midgard, hel, or valhalla that anyone else will stay. So it's not that he hasn't cried at all, it's just that he hasn't cried today, and was hoping to keep it that way but apparently that's not in the cards. So he cries into his mom's shoulder like a little boy, weeping as silently as he can to let out a pain that's become unbearable in his chest.
"Oh, Hiccup," Valka says, barely more than a whisper. "I'm sorry. That was thoughtless of me, wasn't it?"
He shakes his head against her, because how could she have known? He was alone, so alone that she hadn't even been there to see it, hadn't watched the village relentlessly try to hammer him into something he wasn't, something he could never be, hadn't watched his father grow cold and disappointed and walled off, hadn't watched as peer after peer turned their back on him, fearing contamination by the differences he refused to grow out of, hadn't watched as he'd found himself again with the help of the single most unlikely guide— she'd heard about it, but she hadn't been there, because no one was there.
No one had seen him, no one had listened to him, no one had cared about him, no one except the dragon who should have killed him but instead gave him the chance that no one else ever had.
The dragon Hiccup had endangered again and again, taken for granted and assumed as a fixture right up until he'd flown away with the rest of his kind to live the life that nature intended for him.
So he has no right, no right at all to be angry, or heartbroken, or anything because he's already gotten far more than he gave and to expect anything more is just greedy. He should be grateful for seven incredible years, not shattered because it isn't seventy. He should be honored and thankful that he'd been chosen as a friend, not furious that he was several steps down from a mate. He should be on his knees, thanking all the gods and fortunes that he'd been given the chance he had when he hadn't done anything to deserve it, but instead he's feeling sorry for himself because it hadn't felt like enough.
"There's nothing I can say that will heal this," his mother murmurs. "This is something that needs to heal itself, but you will find ways to soothe it until it does. The healing will come in time, but you have to let it."
It's nearly dark by the time he makes it back to his tent, but not too dark to see that it hasn't been left alone.
Tuffnut is sitting cross-legged on the ground beside it, a bowl of the absurdly-named "clouds of corn" in front of him, and Chicken hopping around a few feet away, trying to catch the puffy tidbits being tossed to her.
"What," Hiccup says, too empty to even dredge up some inflection.
"Oh, hey, H," Tuffnut says. "Ruff and I—" Chicken squawks indignantly, and Tuffnut corrects himself. "Ruff and Chicken and I have happened upon a heavenly new dressing for these delightful little morsels, and everyone else has tried it already but we need you to be the tie-breaker on name. It's between 'caramel corn,'" he says, making exaggerated air quotes and rolling his eyes, "and my personal contribution, 'stream of sugar trickling over rocks.'" He tosses another piece to Chicken, who manages to hop just high enough to snatch it. "Chicken was getting impatient, though, and I was getting hungry, so…" he pops a piece into his own mouth. "You get slightly less than the full portion – which I haven't figured out yet, but I think it'll be small, you know, just to make people feel bad about how much of it they're eating – anyway, it should still be plenty to decide on the best name."
Hiccup just stands there, wondering if he's speechless because he's a shambling wreck or because Tuffnut just has that effect on people, but Tuffnut doesn't seem inclined to stick around while he figures it out. He pushes himself up, leaving the bowl where it is, and cracks his back.
"It's a whole symphony of flavors, my friend, so I expect you'll need some time to really tease them all out. Maybe even all night, who knows? You are possessed of an exceptionally refined palate, after all, so I will leave you to taste, and dare I say savor, in peace. Bon appétit." He flourishes a bow, clucks to Chicken, and leaves.
Hiccup stands there a little longer, trying to make any sort of sense out of what just happened, but eventually gives up with a shrug and decides to go to bed. He takes the bowl into the tent with him though, and it's… it's good. It's really good. It doesn't exactly fix anything, but it helps.
He and Astrid have been officially betrothed for almost two years, and have been co-leaders, co-strategizers, and all-around brothers-in-arms for about five, so they can read each other pretty well by now. Or, well, Astrid can usually read him pretty well, and in return he does his best to be attuned to what's going on with her, but it's not as instinctive as it should be. As he wants it to be. Honestly, if he could just read people's minds, that'd probably be for the best. But he can't, so… He's just gotta do his best and hope that it's good enough.
His best hasn't been good enough, recently, not by a long shot, but she doesn't push him. Just plops down next to him with a sigh one early evening and says, "So. Wedding. You still want to?"
"Yes," he says, and tries to unearth enough of his heart to back up the words. "Gods, yes. Astrid, I know I'm not the best at saying it, or showing it, always, but you mean so much to me, and having you by my side – with your ideas, and your brilliance, and your trust – has made all of this possible." He gestures expansively to the village-in-progress, spread out below them, because he still retreats to the high ground, still draws comfort from the wind and the distance, even if the effort of hauling himself up the rocks leaves him scraped and bloodied and shaking, new dents and scratches in his metal foot.
"'But?'" Astrid encourages, when he stalls. "I know you care, Hiccup. You don't need to worry about convincing me, or trying to guess what I want. Just be honest, okay? What do you want?"
"I want to be happy," he admits, and gods, what a shameful confession, but the least she deserves is the truth. "Astrid, marrying you will be one of the most amazing things I've ever done, and I want to feel that. I want to be as stupidly, crazily happy as I know I should be, but I can't do that right now. I can't feel. I'm too..."
"Overwhelmed?" she says quietly.
He chuckles, but it's a dry and mirthless thing. "I was gonna say 'empty.'" He plucks a pebble from the ground and tosses it over the edge.
Astrid puts a hand on his shoulder, asking permission; when he doesn't shake it off, she wraps her arms around him from behind and rocks them both gently from side to side. He lets her, and lets himself be soothed by the motion. Between that, the golden light of the sunset on his eyelids, and the sea-sharp breeze on his skin, he feels a little more secure, a little more at home in his body.
"Hiccup Haddock," she says after a bit, still swaying, "you are not empty. You have never been empty. Your heart is enormous and your determination is astounding, and that's why I love you. Not because of what you do, but because of who you are."
"That's probably good, because I've done some pretty crazy things."
"You mean like changing the world?" she asks wryly. "Ending a war? Showing us a whole new way to live?"
He sighs. "That wasn't just me, Astrid. None of it was."
The something that is also nothing perks up its head.
"No," Astrid agrees. "It was you and your equally crazy, equally stubborn, equally amazing best friend. I know you miss him," she adds, and tightens her arms around him. "You don't have to pretend you don't."
"I don't want to pretend, I want to not."
She snorts. "Yeah, right. Good luck with that. I miss Stormfly every single day, Hiccup. Fishlegs cries every time he sees a piece of granite, the twins haven't even mentioned digging a boar pit, and Snotlout's practically in seclusion."
"I thought he was just hiding from my mom."
Astrid laughs. "He's not that smart. Besides, you know he was only doing that to annoy you, right? The point is," she goes on, sparing him the need to answer, "we're all still adjusting, and it's still hard, for all of us. And the bond between you and Toothless was the strongest one of all – of course it still hurts."
"I don't know." (Yes he does.) "I just… I feel like it shouldn't. I mean, look!" He gestures to the village again. "New home, no enemies, everyone's safe, we're on track to have all the building finished before winter, hunting's good, fishing's great, we won't starve, I haven't been overthrown as chief, you apparently still want to marry me, so what else do I need? What else could I possibly need to be happy?"
"A dragon," she answers simply. "Your dragon. Your father. The island you grew up on. Your home, the way you remember it. A lot's happened, Hiccup. A lot has changed. I don't know why you think you need to be the only one unaffected by it, the only one who keeps on going and doesn't let himself stop to adjust."
That's the problem, though, isn't it? He does need to keep going, and he doesn't have the time – or the right – to take his focus away from his people. He's already hit his lifetime limit for selfishness, even if no one else wants to admit it.
"Because I'm," he starts, but can't think of a way to go on without sounding self-pitying. "Because it's my job," he says eventually. It's true, he knows it is, but even saying the words – hel, just thinking them – is exhaustion and despair and loneliness all rolled up and set in an impossibly heavy bundle on his shoulders. He pulls his legs up against him and rests his chin on his knees. Astrid lets him, just keeping a light hand on his back.
"Everyone is already so proud of you," she says quietly, "and so grateful for the work you've been doing. You don't have to run yourself into the ground to try to keep them proud."
"I don't care if they're 'proud,' Astrid, I just want them to be happy. Nobody wanted to leave, remember? They were willing to if it would keep their dragons safe, but they didn't want to. So they go along with this crazy idea of mine, let me drag us all out here, thinking that everything will be the same, and then two days later the dragons are gone. Because of me. Because I thought I knew everything, thought I had it all figured out, thought I was so gods-damned smart." His arms are starting to ache from holding his legs so tightly, and all he can think about that is good. "So no, I'm not the only one who wants my dragon and my home, but I'm the whole reason they're gone, so I don't get to be upset about it. I can't ask for sympathy, or pity, or understanding from the people I hurt, just because I managed to hurt myself, too."
She's silent for a while, and he wonders if he's finally gotten his point across. But then, "Remember before Drago, that whole 'king of dragons' fiasco, when your dad was—"
"I remember," Hiccup says hurriedly. He really doesn't like thinking about that, especially in light of what happened so shortly afterwards.
"And do you remember what we talked about, that night? About how things happen for a reason, and there are so many ways for something to turn out that you can never say for sure what will happen, or how it would change if you changed?"
"Yeah."
"Well, think about it. You saw the truth in it last time, and I know you can find your way to the truth this time, too. I can't change your mind, Hiccup. I can't convince you that you shouldn't blame yourself for everything, or hate yourself because of it. Only you can change your mind, and you need to start trying to, because you're not gonna do any healing while you're still beating yourself up."
"I don't need to heal," he retorts, but he knows it isn't true.
He needs to, but that's not the problem.
The problem is that he can't.
He cries, that night, alone in his tent. Tries to muffle the sounds of it in his pillow, against his hand, but that only makes it harder to breathe, so he stops.
Let them hear. Let everyone hear their pathetic, sobbing chief, crying because he misses his pet.
He'd thought that crying was supposed to make things feel better, was supposed to let the sadness out.
He cries until his throat is sore and his chest aches, and he doesn't feel any better after.
The frame of his house is up by the time Dagur and Mala arrive.
Dagur grabs Hiccup up in a bone-crushing hug as soon as his feet hit the ground, and for once, Hiccup doesn't actually mind. It blocks the view of Dagur's triple-strike.
"We were so worried!" Dagur says, and sets him down. They're not that unevenly matched anymore, but Dagur can still lift him off the ground with relative ease. "We heard that Berk had been attacked, but when we got there, everyone was gone. It had burned to the ground! What happened?"
"Grimmel," Hiccup says, through a tight throat. "Grimmel happened."
It's inevitable that he should have to explain everything: Grimmel, the light fury, the dragon-killers, the hidden world.
Predictably, Mala shoots him a disapproving frown when he tells them that he'd been there, but her anger fades to wonder as he describes it to them.
Later, he sees her heart break when he tells them of the decision they'd had to make, to send their dragons away, to keep them safe by never seeing them again. Even Dagur looks on the verge of tears, glancing outside to where his dragon is probably receiving the love and affection of every single Berkian.
"Hiccup Haddock," Mala says softly. "I am so very sorry to hear of this loss." He's the only one left inside with them – the only one to apologize to. The others had all trickled out of the newly completed great hall as the telling got harder, more grieving and less adventurous. Astrid had stayed longest, but even she had left quietly a few minutes ago, squeezing his shoulder as she slipped out from the bench beside him.
"Have any of the other dragons followed?" Hiccup asks, instead of acknowledging the yawning emptiness inside of him. "I know distance can be a factor, but Toothless was the alpha, and he led the…" exile? exodus? retreat? "Group."
"We haven't noticed any strange behavior," Mala says, "but then, we are far from Berk, let alone this place."
"How about on Berserker Island?" Hiccup asks, looking to Dagur. "Has Heather said anything?"
Dagur shakes his head. "Not about dragons leaving, anyway. But she was the one who told us you'd been attacked. Berserker lookouts saw the smoke. Heather sent word to us and then rallied an army to ride to your aid, but when they got there, they only found ruins."
"Yeah, we were forced out pretty quickly. We should have stuck around long enough to make sure the nearby islands hadn't been attacked, but even so we barely got out in time."
"Word seems to have traveled only of the dragons on Berk," Mala puts in. "Why else would you be attacked while your neighbors are left in peace?"
"Because I have – had – the only night fury," Hiccup says tiredly. "Grimmel didn't care about the rest of the dragons, but he would have killed them just to get to Toothless. I'm glad no one else got hurt because of me."
"Even so, hunters are growing bolder, more voracious in their thirst for blood. I fear that one day all of dragon-kind will have followed yours into seclusion, into this 'hidden world.'"
"It's better than the alternative," Hiccup says firmly. His voice definitely doesn't shake. His vision definitely isn't blurring, not even slightly.
Dagur stands abruptly. "I gotta go...do...yeah," he says, awkwardly gesturing towards the door, and leaves.
"I am so sorry," Mala says again, quietly. "You have had to make a terrible choice, and while I believe you chose correctly, I cannot imagine how it must pain you. The love and companionship that you – all of you – shared with your dragons is very different than the respect with which we revere ours, but they are still a part of us, and our lives will be emptier without them. We, too, will have to find a new home, and learn to fill that empty spot, and create a way of life that honors it without tearing it wider. That will be difficult for all of us, but I suspect it will be hardest of all for you."
"He was my first friend," Hiccup tells her. It's the first time he's ever said it out loud. "He was part of me. I know I have to let go of him, but I can't. It— It would hurt even more than it does now."
"You're wrong," Mala says simply. "You don't have to let go of him at all. If anything, you must hold tightly to your memories, and honor him through them. To forget him would be to scorn him – apathy would be ingratitude, and he deserves more than that. You both do."
A tear escapes his eye; he swipes it away, but more soon follow.
If it were anyone else, he would feel ashamed, or at least uncomfortable. Somehow, though, it feels right that Mala stand witness to his grief.
This isn't the full-chested, breath-stealing sobbing of the last time he allowed himself the luxury of tears, after his talk with Astrid up on the bluffs, but slow and silent and unstoppable.
"I don't deserve anything," he whispers, vision flooded but voice steady once more, even if it's tight.
"You made the right choice," Mala says again. "You deserve peace in that knowledge, at the very least."
He used to think that peace and emptiness were the same thing, that stillness was identical to calm, that resignation was the equal of contentment. He knows better, now, but wishes he didn't. If he didn't, he might believe that peace was something he'd ever be capable of again.
If he'd never learned to be happy, maybe he wouldn't be so devastated by such a simple thing as sadness.
Mala and Dagur had stayed a few days to catch up and resupply, but they'd gone back to their home almost a month ago, flying off on their dragon and bringing New Berk's count back down to zero.
Aside from the final round of weatherproofing on their granary, all the building is done. There will be tweaks needed here and there, of course, as frames settle and beams warp, but it's nothing that needs to be attended to on a grand scale.
This part of the ocean must have slightly different currents; even with winter on their doorstep, the sea and the air are calm. It's cold, of course, and the days are growing shorter, but there are none of the raging squalls and lashing winds that made winter on Berk so miserable.
His house is done, but still bare, still empty; he'd brought nothing of his own with him, after all. His inventions and tools are stored with Gobber's at the new forge, his maps and diagrams kept in a side room in the great hall along with Fishlegs' collection of notes and writings, and even his notebooks and charcoal pencils are bundled away gods know where – probably the forge, again, if he had to guess. It'd been built with a private workroom for him, but he hasn't seen it. All of his plans and schemes have been public and above-board, so he's had no need to slip into the quiet, closed-in space and sit with memories too heavy for his heart.
He's trying not to have ideas, not to have projects. Work is fine, but projects are a whole different yak to slap. Projects are self-indulgent. Projects are wasteful. Projects are fun – or, at least, they used to be. Projects used to be about hope and excitement and the newness of exploration. They used to be him, but now he just doesn't do hope, or excitement, or exploration. He does work, and doesn't even try to pretend that it's enough.
So he doesn't explore the forge, and doesn't fill his house. He doesn't unroll his cobbled-together maps and start filling them in with this new corner of the world, doesn't doodle or scribble or invent. He just moves his tent into the main room and pitches it there in front of a hearth he hasn't yet lit, relying on the wood and thatch and canvas to keep out the cold, and he works.
His friends think he's gone crazy. The rest of the villagers don't seem to care.
Of the two groups, he much prefers the villagers.
The snow comes, falling thick and fast during the night and covering the island with a serene blanket of white.
There's ice underneath, though, and Hiccup's metal food sinks through the snow and skids on it as he steps out of his front door.
No one catches him.
He falls back with a whoompf of fine, glittering powder and hits the icy stone beneath with enough force to bruise his spine from his tailbone to his shoulder blades. He lies there for a while, in the curious calm of breathlessness, and looks up at the pale blue sky above him.
He's not looking for anything, he's not, so his breath catches for a second time when a dark shape swoops high overhead. But it's just a bird, he knows that before the surprise has a chance to settle. The silhouette is all wings and no tail – it's just a seagull, or maybe an albatross.
It's nothing.
The snow is gone again in a couple of days, but not before revealing some faults in roofs and joinings, which at least gives him something to do. Any of the villagers would be more than capable of fixing their own homes, and maybe they'd be grateful for the chance to do so – maybe they, too, have a something-that-is-also-nothing that they'd like to keep off their minds – but still they bring him their reports in the great hall, still let him decide whether or not to help.
He always decides to help.
Then the sun grows a bit stronger, and the winds fade, and the snow shrinks back into the ground.
"Hiccup!"
A hand lands on his shoulder from behind, and an instant later Snotlout is sprawled on the soggy ground before him, breathless and stunned.
For a second, they just stare at each other, Snotlout looking up and Hiccup looking down, then the shame hits, and Hiccup fumbles out an apology and reaches out to help pull Snotlout back to his feet.
"No worries," Snotlout wheezes, as he staggers upright, voice a bit higher than usual. "My bad, shouldn't have done that. Good throw." He gives a weak thumbs up.
"Did you need something?" Hiccup asks, just barely resisting the odd urge to brush Snotlout's shoulders off.
"Fishlegs wants to talk to you."
Hiccup sighs internally, then catches himself. If he's an asocial troll today, that's his own problem. "What about? Did he say?"
"I dunno, nerd stuff, probably. He's in the great hall. Sent me to find you."
Hiccup does sigh this time. The great hall is a decent trek away, and his leg is aching with the change in the weather. "All right, I'll go see him. Thanks, and, you know, sorry about the, uh." He gestures at the Snotlout-shaped indentation in the ground.
"Don't mention it," Snotlout says, still standing a bit stiffly.
"You sure?"
"Yep. Just gonna go walk this off."
"Okay," Hiccup says hesitantly, the turns and starts heading towards the great hall. He only makes it a few steps, then:
"Hiccup, wait."
He stops, turns back.
"I— Just— Well, thanks." He and Snotlout haven't been avoiding each other – at least, he hasn't been avoiding Snotlout – but fairly little in the way of conversation has passed between them since everything happened. They've talked, obviously, but they haven't talked. That's not entirely unusual, but it's enough to catch him off-guard in the moment.
"For…?" he finally says, after a too-long pause.
Snotlout gestures vaguely. "Everything, I guess? I mean." He stops, like maybe he's as out of practice with words as Hiccup has been lately. "There were a lot of really hard choices that had to be made," he says eventually, "and I think you made the right ones, but I know it was, you know, hard. And I know you're probably beating yourself up and second-guessing yourself about every single one, because that's just who you are, so I wanted to say that you did enough. Okay? You're doing enough. And anything that you're not doing, the rest of us can handle, so you can take that enormous millstone off from around your neck and stop carrying the weight of everything that could have been."
In spite of himself, Hiccup feels a smile tugging at his face. "What was it Tuffnut said that one time?" he asks. "'Dramatically impressive and logically sound?'"
"I dunno, but that does sound like me. Dramatically sound and…that other one." Snotlout smirks a little, too, as he says it.
"Sure you didn't hit your head on the ground, there?" This feels…familiar, and for a moment, he feels three years younger and infinitely lighter. "Remember," he starts to say, and then it's like the window's slammed shut and he's back in the present, but Snotlout's looking at him like he knows what he saw.
"Yeah," he says quietly. "I remember." He clears his throat. "Don't keep Fishface waiting much longer, or he'll send one of the twins after you."
"Probably, yeah. Hey, Snotlout. You know you can talk to me, right? If there's anything going on, if you—" need anything would be pushing it too far, even he can tell that in his half-brainless state "—if you want," he finishes lamely, half-expecting Snotlout to brush and bluster the insinuation away, but he doesn't. He just nods, eyes not quite meeting Hiccup's.
"Yeah, I know. And, uh, same to you, right? I know you're busy with stuff, but you don't need to do everything alone. We're still friends, even if we're not dragon-riders anymore."
The Nothing purrs and bumps up against his arm, and he just manages not to flinch. "Thanks," he says. "I'll keep that in mind."
Snotlout's looking at him a bit strangely again, with an odd expression Hiccup can't put a name to, but doesn't stop him as he turns once more and starts the trek towards the great hall.
Fishlegs takes him back to the room off the great hall that he he'd known about but hadn't been to before. It's small, and packed full of shelves and chests, which in turn are packed full of books and scrolls and loose papers. He looks around for a bit before his gaze falls on one that he recognizes.
"Is this mine?"
"I had Gobber bring it up from the forge," Fishlegs says. "I didn't go through it, I promise, but I needed everything in one place to get an idea of what we have to work with."
"To work with for what?" Hiccup asks, though he already has a pretty good idea. He knows what's in that chest, and it's the reason he hasn't gone looking for it.
"I'm compiling all of our dragon knowledge into an exhibit!" Fishlegs says, and once his excitement would have kindled Hiccup's own in an instant, but now he just feels the bottom drop out of his stomach.
"Oh. Oh, yeah, that's a great idea. What can I do to help?" He doesn't want to – there's probably nothing he wants less, right now – but he's the chief now, and if someone asks for his help, he does his best to give it.
But Fishlegs' flare of enthusiasm has died down, and he looks a little sad despite his smile. "Nothing for a while," he says. "I have to go through everything first and get it sorted and grouped and indexed and—Well, a lot of organization work. I just wanted to ask for your permission to go through your notebooks and stuff."
"Permission?" Hiccup asks, taken aback. "Fishlegs, you don't need to ask permission. What's mine is yours, right? This stuff has always belonged to everyone."
"It did," Fishlegs agrees, "but I thought you might want to keep some of it private."
Hiccup forces a laugh. "What, and get in the way of learning and knowledge? You know me better than that."
"You're still grieving," Fishlegs says quietly, and he knows he's been obvious about it, he knows he's been pathetic and foggy and wrapped up in himself, but being called out on it still lands like a punch to the gut. "And you have the right to grieve for as long as you need to," Fishlegs goes on, "and in any way you need to. I'm not going to drag it out into public if you still need it to be private. I'm doing this because I need to, and I wanted to let you know about it in case you needed it too, or in case you had any objections, but I'm not asking you to do anything."
Some of the air comes back into the room.
"Oh. Okay. I mean it, though – it's a great idea, and all of my stuff is at your disposal. And yeah, maybe… Maybe in a little while, if you have anything for me to do, I'll hop on. I think someday I will want to be a part of it, but…"
"Not right now," Fishlegs finishes. "I get it. And if that day never comes, that's all right. I just wanted you to have the option."
"Thanks, Fishlegs. That means a lot."
"And also…" Fishlegs shifts uneasily. " I just… I think you should have this back." He rummages around a shelf and pulls out a familiar leather-bound notebook with an embossed cover. He holds it out, determined, even as Hiccup flinches back from it. "I know why you're doing it, but I don't think cutting yourself off from it completely is doing you any good."
Hiccup stares at it for a long moment, torn by the twin urges to throw it into the sea and clutch it to his chest. "Like you said," he says after a bit. "I'm still— Working through some things. It's still too fresh, too… I need some more time, some more distance."
"You're never going to be able to forget, if that's what you're hoping for."
"I don't want to forget," Hiccup snaps, and finds that this time he actually means it. "I don't want to forget," he says again, more quietly, "but I don't know how else to stop it from hurting."
"You know yourself best," Fishlegs says, still holding out the book, "but if what you've been doing isn't working, maybe it's time to try something different."
Hiccup looks at the book, then at Fishlegs, then back at the book, and the nothing becomes a gentle nudge that lifts his arm up to take it.
He takes the notebook back to his house and sets it on the dusty mantle over the hearth, then ignores it for a week.
It's not entirely on purpose – winter's next probing advance has reached the island, and it's woken him up enough to actually do something about the fact that he's been living in a tent for months and that maybe might not be the best habit to continue once the season really sets in.
A couple of times, though, it catches his eye, and he thinks that maybe, this time, he could—Then he hears the echo of a chirruping trill and sees a flash of curious green eyes and has to leave the room.
Sometimes he wonders if he should follow Gobber's old example and go out into the forest to scream, or take after Astrid and sink an axe into target after target until the rawness of his hands drowns out the rawness everywhere else, or just give into his own eternal urge to tuck up into a corner and weep for days, but he never quite gets to the point of needing to choose.
So the week goes by, and at the end of it he has a bed in the loft and a table and some chairs in the main room and a decent pile of firewood by the still-cold fireplace.
It takes some of the urgency out of his restlessness, gets some of the long-rusted cogs in his head spinning again. Chopping wood and making furniture falls somewhere on the frontier between work and projects, and it's the farthest he's pushed that boundary in a long time.
He expects to feel guilty for relishing the feel of the wood taking shape beneath his tools, for enjoying the task of molding reality to fit a vision, but he doesn't. He feels strange, though, so he decides against elaborating beyond the simplest forms and sticks to function rather than fancy.
It's not until after he's done that he realizes that the strangeness had been contentment.
There's about a foot of snow on the ground, and his collection of furnishings has grown to include a desk in his loft and another table in the main room, this time to the other side of the hearth and low to the ground. The notebook has moved from the mantle to the desk, out of sight during the day.
His mom has her own house, of course, and he starts spending more time there. At first it's just the odd meal here and there – and he does mean odd, but it's better than he's been doing recently and it beats braving the great hall – but before long it's an afternoon, or an evening, or an afternoon and an evening, at least a couple times a week.
Sometimes he still feels weird about how much he doesn't know his own mother, or about how little they seem to talk, but she doesn't seem to mind. She doesn't talk much either, after all, and since being reunited they'd formed their own simple language of looks and gestures that does a lot to make the silence less daunting.
Well, not that silence is ever actually daunting to him, but he's learned to think it should be, and that creates its own sort of tension.
An extra setting at her table, a gentle touch on his shoulder as she passes, the smile he gets when he joins her in her wanderings or contemplations or undertakings.
She's like him, he's come to realize, so it's no wonder she'd chosen to stay at the Sanctuary. It'd taken her a while to reacclimate to human life on Berk, but New Berk, with its wider spaces and many quiet paths and hills, seems to be kinder to her. She's more at ease with herself here, even if she's grieving, and he supposes that makes it a little easier.
He's at her house now, sitting on the floor with his back up against one of the legs of her kitchen table, a notebook propped open against one bent-up knee. It's not the notebook, he still hasn't worked himself up to that yet, but the other day Valka had handed him this one, its pages all blank and the covers made of cloth-wrapped sheets of wood. It's different enough that it doesn't bother him, but familiar enough to be comforting, and he's taken to drawing again. Just abstract sketches, usually from memory, but maybe he'll take it on his walks sometime and start getting a feel for the landscape.
It was snowing when he trudged over and it probably still is, but the wood of her house is sturdy and the joins are tight, so the warmth of the fire stays pleasantly wrapped around them even when the wind around the corners rises to a shriek.
It's safe here, and he's comfortable enough in this room, in this company, that he's taken off his foot and untied the fabric usually gathered tightly under the stump of his shin, letting the skin there feel the air in a way it hasn't in ages.
He's always on, these days, always restless and expecting something to happen that needs his attention, but the village has been unusually peaceful – and peaceable – since the snow started to fall in earnest.
So when someone pounds on Valka's door hard enough to make the wood creak in protest, he freezes, unsure whether to scramble up as fast as he can or scoot across the floor to hide behind an armchair.
Valka goes to answer it, and his body decides that it's fine right where it is, so he stays.
It's Ruffnut, and she comes in with two large tankards and an uncharacteristically earnest expression on her face. "I know what I'm about to say is gonna sound crazy," she says by way of lead-in, and with no greetings, "but you have to trust me."
"All right," Valka says, apparently bemused, and Hiccup pulls himself up to balance against the table.
"Is everything okay?"
"Hiccup," Ruffnut says seriously, not even glancing at his missing foot, "this is better than okay. It's amazing."
"What is it?" his mom asks with the same trepidation that he's feeling.
"It's a full-on Snoggletog miracle. Astrid made a drink that's actually good."
"I'll believe it when I taste it," Valka says firmly, and there's a grim set to her mouth. She loves Astrid like a daughter, and wants to believe the best of her, but they've both experienced too much evidence to the contrary to not have some healthy reservations.
"I promise," Ruffnut swears. "This stuff will change your life."
Hiccup sighs, and sits down. "Might as well get it over with."
Ruffnut shoves one of the tankards at Valka, then stomps across the room to plonk the other down in front of Hiccup. "I know you haven't completely trusted me since the salted seabass—"
"Which you also hated," Hiccup reminds her.
"—but I swear to Loki, okay? I swear on my love of chaos, and you know I don't do that lightly."
He does. That's a vow the twins take very, very seriously. Then again, invoking it in order to cause chaos wouldn't really be out of character, but no (recent) evidence of that tactic comes to mind, so he shrugs, braces himself, and takes a sip.
He's so startled that he nearly drops the tankard. "That's—" he starts, looking up at Ruffnut then back down again in utter shock.
"Good, right?" Ruff agrees. "It's unbelievable. After all these years, I just didn't think she had it in her! Artistic ability and mixology – the two things you never see coming."
"So it's safe, then?" Valka asks wryly as Hiccup takes another swig.
"Jury's still out on whether or not it has healing properties, physical or spiritual," Ruffnut says enthusiastically, "but there've been no adverse effects in our sample population thus far, and we're confident that we can start rolling it out to the village. You two were the last group in our first trial phase."
"Who was in the first group?" Hiccup can't help but ask.
"Eh, the usual. Snotlout, Eret, Tuffnut. We had to do blind tests in isolation to make sure they weren't trying to prank us, you know, after the whole sheepsicle incident, but they all responded really well, so we were able to move on from there."
He blinks. "Right. Yeah. That actually makes a lot of sense."
Sometimes he thinks the twins really are brilliant, and just choose when and when not to act on it. Actually, somewhere over the years, he's gone from thinking that sometimes to thinking it usually. The fact that they're also, by several measures, verifiably insane doesn't really add to the evidence against it as much as it sits beside it, just another fact of life. The ocean is full of water, it hurts to fall from a great height, Astrid can kill anyone and anything she puts her mind to, and the twins are as likely to perform an act of jaw-dropping genius as they are to do something unbelievably stupid. They – Hiccup and the others, if not the entire village – have kind of stopped questioning it by this point. Hel, it's not like they're the only ones who do stupid shit, but they're damn near the only ones who will show up one day with an inexplicable interest in, say, gastronomy, or controlled-setting social experiments.
Where they actually get the information they choose to impart is anyone's guess, as is whether or not they're not just making it up on the spot, but there are greater and more pressing mysteries in life, so he lets this one go and takes another drink.
"What's in it?" he asks. "It tastes…encouragingly yak-free."
"Who knows!" Ruff declares grandly, and drops into the chair next to Hiccup's to drape herself over the table. "I don't make this shit, I just market it. Although she really should let me try some things – the market for exotic drinks on this island is practically untapped, and you know they say about a Nut and an untapped market."
"I really, really don't," Hiccup promises, and feels a smile tugging somewhere.
"Well, then, you won't hear it from me. Virgin ears, and all."
Valka's still holding her tankard and staring at Ruffnut. "Out of curiosity," she asks after a while, "do you ever, I don't know, think about the words you use before you say them?"
"Ugh, why bother?" Ruffnut rolls her eyes, then swipes Hiccup's tankard and takes a long swig. "If I already know what I'm gonna say, why take the time to repeat it? Life's too short for redundancy." That pearl of wisdom imparted, she lifts the tankard again, drains it in one go, then slams it down on the table before pushing herself up and sweeping towards the door. "Keep the mug, Haddock, it's novelty." It absolutely isn't. She's backed up against the door, reaching behind her for the latch. "Valka, drink up or don't, but I've got findings to report and focus groups to organize. Someone'll be by with a follow-up survey in three to five business days, okay? All right, you two, stay golden!" And then she's gone.
"What the hel is a 'business day'?" Hiccup asks into the resounding silence.
Valka stares into the fire, shakes her head, and tries the drink.
She doesn't spit it out, but she doesn't look enamored of it, either, and only takes a couple more sips before handing the tankard to Hiccup on her way past, back to her seat by the hearth.
He drinks it all.
Tuffnut wants, and he quotes, "a winter palace of special magnificence" for Chicken.
Hiccup, without any real reason not to, accepts the commission, and starts sketching out drafts and designs.
What even is his life.
The multi-level, intricately constructed chicken coop meanders its way across the rest of the winter, often interrupted by issues of greater importance. Building maintenance, primarily, but other things, as well.
One of the display tables Fishlegs is using for the dragonalia (his term; Hiccup's pretty iffy on it, but it's not his project) collapses under the weight of too many rock samples, and he asks Hiccup if can make a replacement that looks similar to the original but will stand up to the stress. They agree that the legs need to be reinforced with an iron rod in the middle of each, and the underside of the surface needs to be similarly braced, and Hiccup's gone through half the dusty chests in his workroom in Gobber's forge in search of this one particular lathe blade that he knows he has somewhere before he realizes exactly where he is. He stops for a second, half-expecting to panic or black out or whatever it is he's been trying to avoid, but then he sees the box he's looking for and doesn't need to linger.
That unlocks the door he'd put between his new life and his old, though, and he starts spending more time back at the forge – not just to help Gobber with the smithing work, but to discover the little surprises he'd unwittingly packed away and left for himself all those months ago. A scribbled note, a rough sketch covered in question marks, an untitled list of numbers that rings only the vaguest shadow of a bell in his memory… It's like exploring someone else's home, rather than his own, and he feels a sort of sympathetic loneliness for this person who woke up one day and then vanished, leaving his hope behind.
He finds other things, too, more practical things. Things he'd absently looked around for in his new house before remembering he didn't have them, only he did have them, just not there. Books, journals, maps-in-progress, some of his more esoteric surveying equipment. The carving tools he uses for finer work, with sharply honed blades of different angles and shapes. His sewing awl and spool of sinewy thread. The contoured board he'd made to use as a lap desk, that sits flat and level over his crossed legs. A sturdy waterproof knapsack he'd taken on long flights, with straps that connected at the chest and waist to take some of the weight off of his shoulders during hours spent shifting and adjusting his weight in the saddle. The worn patchwork nadder toy he'd had as a child, carried and snuggled and loved instead of attacked and wrestled with and used for target practice. Okay, so that one's less practical, but he takes it just the same, takes it to his house and puts it in a pile with the rest of his finds, to be sorted through and put away somewhere sensible.
Other things he finds and leaves, opens and closes again quickly, digs out only to rebury. Not yet, he tells himself, but it's better than never.
There are plows and spades to be made and repaired for the spring planting, many having been damaged in the long, arduous process of clearing away rocks from the would-be fields, and he holds the blades to the grinding wheel a little too long, thinking of swords and axes and ballista bolts. This new island seems far more remote than the last had been, and they'd been too busy settling in and getting established to start rebuilding the fleet, but they're still Vikings – sooner or later they'll get itchy feet or need to go further out for fishing, or just get the old Hooligan urge to attach something, and they'll need tools, weapons. It really hits him then that this is where they live now, this is where they'll live for generations, and it's not just about surviving anymore.
It's time to think about thriving, about making this place their own. By the time they'd left, Old Berk had been cramped, yeah, and not without its difficulties, but it had been theirs, made to measure, built to order, and it suited them down to the rocky, stingy ground.
This place, less used, more fertile, unformed by anything but nature, surely has just as much potential, if not more – the undeniable challenges that come from starting with nothing are almost always balanced by the freedoms that come from that same start – and gods, he's barely explored it, hasn't mapped any of it—
He just manages to focus on keeping the shovel in his hands from turning into an axe against the spinning stone, but it's a near thing. He even puts it in the right stack up against the wall, but his head's already somewhere else, cataloguing his parchment stash and ranking possible vantage points to start from. He'd been thinking about terraced fields, earlier, he'll have to talk to Sven about how much herd-land they'll need to keep open, and yeah, ships, but they'll need smaller rowing boats first, and he's pretty sure they've already got a couple in one of the northern coves, but is that going to be the best spot for everything, or will they want access to one of the more sheltered inlets on the southeast, which is better protected from the worst of the winds but is also pretty much straight cliff face all the way down to the water? It's not like they're wanting for timber, but even so, the sort of switchback structure they had on Old Berk will take ages to build and longer to design, and who's best at that sort of
thing? Oona, probably – Hiccup's good with small scale stuff, but Oona's the one who took over for Ancient Agnes when she died, and Agnes, he's pretty sure, had made the plans for that deceptively dangerous-looking ramp. So Oona and Sven for sure, and then he can go from there, they'll know more people in those areas he should consult with, but before he can do anything he needs to know what sort of canvas they have to work with—
He stops short, halfway from the forge up to his house.
The last time he'd even thought about mapping, the something that was also nothing had knocked him off course, because that was the only way he'd done mapping in years. But he'd done it before that, on foot (feet, funnily enough), wandering around Old Berk with too much attention on his charcoal pencil and not enough on not walking into a tree. But there is another way, although it won't be all that useful until the snow's melted and the shape and character of the land is clearer, and he waits for that idea, too, to be slapped out of the air by a too-playful tail, a flash of red against black, but it isn't. If anything, the something that is also nothing seems to be…waiting. Encouraging. Curious? Blinking, almost bashful, like…
Like that fateful Snoggletog, when he'd made the first mechanized tail fin and Toothless had smashed it before nudging the old one back at him across the snow, asking more clearly than words could convey for the two of them to still be a team, to still work together. Even though he didn't need him anymore, Toothless had chosen him, then, just as he had again and again and a hundred other times.
Toothless hadn't…left him, he realizes slowly, standing there in the snow. He'd had to choose between his person and his people, same as Hiccup had, and they'd made the same choice, but it wasn't because they didn't care. They cared so much that others could be hurt for it, if they didn't put that caring aside for the sake of the greater good, and they had. They had, and it had hurt, but the thought of losing each other for good was so much more painful than the thought of being separated by choice.
It's not goodbye, Astrid had said, in another lifetime, it's 'see you later.'
Hiccup…knows, more or less, where Toothless is. And Toothless, along with all their other dragons, knows where they are. That stretch of ocean between them could drown him, if he let it, sink him peg-leg and all, drag him down to the lightless bottom and never let him up again. But he doesn't have to let it.
In his mind's eye, the memory of Toothless replays, but this time it's not his tail that he's pushing back to Hiccup. It's Hiccup's flight suit, his own pair of wings, the wood and canvas and leather and spring coils that let him take to the skies. He isn't doomed to drown, and hasn't been since he made his first and single most unlikely friend. No matter how vast that ocean is, no matter how many years pass between their meetings, Toothless gave him something that time and distance can never erase.
Toothless taught him how to fly.
He's still not great at landing, but it's not like he doesn't have time to practice. He changes course, heading for the great hall. Beside him, the something that isn't nothing, never was nothing, never can be nothing, scrunches his face into a gummy smile and catches a snowflake on his tongue.
They've both been on the ground too long.
...
well I've been working on this for two years, just kind of waiting to see where it would take me, and here it is. I kind of thought there'd be more, filling in around the edges up to the wedding scene we pick up with in the movie, but in the end I think this was a story about hiccup becoming himself again, and realizing that moving forward was still an option. thanks for reading, and feel free to leave any feedback you'd like to!