Chapter 9

Stoic

It had been a long trip back. Too long. Much of the supplies they had brought with them on the raid, had gone down with the other ships, as well as the crew of those ships. Half of his party. That was all that he had managed to save. And very few of that half did not have injuries. Sheer luck had been the only thing that saved them from sinking.

Had the sea become even the slightest bit rough, they would have been dragged to the depths. But the sky had stayed blue and sunny for the entirety of their slow, painful voyage home. It was almost like the gods were mocking them. The meager supplies they'd had onboard the sole surviving ship had run out in just a few days. The conditions aboard were crowded and several of his villagers were beginning to develop an illness. The healer would have a long week ahead of him if they made it back alive.

When the ship had limped a good way into the harbor, he felt his heart drop directly into his stomach. Scorches marks and splintered wood covered the dock. Everywhere he looked he saw some form of damage. And the only villagers there to greet them on their return, were two Vikings with heavy bandaging, one had most of his upper right arm encased, while the other had the cloth wrapped around his head. Both cloths were saturated in blood.

With dull, almost vacant expressions on their faces, the two men, one of which he recognized as Hoark, pulled the ship alongside one of the few piers that remained intact, and secured the lines to both bow and stern. Slowly, he pulled himself upwards and rested his foot on the wood of the dock. It creaked with a mournful, pained sound.

"What has happened? Where is everyone else?" Usually about a quarter of the village inhabitants were down at the docks, either sending out the fishing fleet, or else receiving the catch of returning ships.

"A raid Stoic. Two nights ago. A horrible raid. They were out for blood. I've never seen dragons fight like that. They didn't just go after the food. They tried to kill as many of us as they could." As he spoke, Hoark's eyes took on a vacant expression, like he was staring at something in front of him that wasn't visible to anyone else.

He nodded to Hoark, though he wasn't sure if the man saw him, and continued past him, and upwards toward the village on the cliff's summit. It was a long trek, and his lack of real sleep over the past week only made it more difficult. Each small step, caused a pained creak from the scaffolding, and a silent groan that never reached his throat. All he wanted to do was collapse into his bed and let the entire world wait until he was ready. But it seemed that the dragons were not inclined to allow that. As he and the other villagers from the raid crossed the line between wood, and the stone solidity of the cliffs, a collective gasp rolled out from the group behind him.

His own throat was closed. Frozen.

The sight before him was devastating. Most of the villages dwellings and building had burned to the ground. Hoark had said the raid had occurred two nights ago and he had assumed that the villagers would have finished repairing the damage in one day, two at the most. And yet here it was, three days later, and the destruction was still visible, and hardly remedied. He should have deduced the intensity of the situation from the bandages that the two men had worn at the docks. Both had been completely saturated with blood. The healer should have changed them long ago. But from the look of the few villagers crawling over the roofs and wreckage, making what repairs they could, it seemed there wasn't enough bandages to go around. The smell of burning permeated the air. It wasn't even merely wood smoke either. He scented burnt flesh and sickly sweet smell of death. The sun glared down in an impudent fashion, the one time they had received warm weather in the autumn season, and it came on a day like this? Fate had an ugly sense of humor.

He felt the final hope of rest and bed drain from his mind. He could see Gobber limping toward him on a crutch, with what looked like a broken femur above his prosthetic leg.

"So! You've come back! Damn good thing too. I can only manage so well. To put things simply, we're in trouble. Most of our flocks are scattered, what little crops we had have been burned to cinders. We have about two shacks worth o' fish, but with the ice setting in, we don't have any chance to eat through the winter, even with our numbers so diminished. An' by the looks of you, and your face, you didn't manage to take out the nest."

Stoick sighed heavily. "We didn't even come close. Not only that, half of my party is gone. Drowned, or else burnt to ash." Gobber's face crumpled as what little composure he had left gave out.

"Half of the villagers you left behind were killed as well Stoic." He felt his face deflate, and he looked at the few villagers he could see. Most of them had the puffy red eyes of mourners. They wouldn't allow anyone to see their tears in public, but it was obvious who had lost someone. And those that had lost someone appeared to be the majority.

"Please old friend," he could feel his voice shaking and teetering, "let me take a moment in my house and let this sink in. I need a few minutes. Just to set things straight in my head." It pained him to display t of weakness to those who looked up to him, but he knew that he would be of no use to anyone until he could think straight. Gobber sighed.

"Aye Stoic I can do that for ye." He watched his lifetime companion limp away on his crutch, over the ash covered streets, then turned towards his own home. As he stared at his home he noticed that it was whole, and undamaged. One wall was scorched where the blazing house beside it had heated its surface, but beyond that, the house was completely untouched. This in itself was odd. Usually the house was missing its roof at the very least. It had been necessary to pull Hiccup out of the house as it came down around their ears when the boy was younger and didn't rouse so easily.

This thought brought him up short. Hiccup. His son. The destroyer of villages and killer of not a single dragon. Where was he? How much of the damage to the village had he caused? Was he safe?

It was then that Stoic noticed two things which brought him to a halt. One was his son who, to his relief, seemed mostly unharmed, though he did have a gash in his tunic, just where his shoulder met the rest of his body. Through the gap he could see a long straight line of red, though it seemed to not be bleeding. Hiccup however was rigid, and his eyes darted between his father and something beyond him. He glanced behind to see if he could see what the boy was looking at. The only thing he noticed behind him was Astrid, who seemed to be completely frozen, and staring past him towards Hiccup. She was breathing heavily and her shoulders shook with every breath, as if she had recently run to her very limits. She too alternated rapidly between staring at him, and Hiccup behind him, her eyes were hard and unyielding. What was going on?

Stoic glanced back and forth between the two of them. They were both intent on each other, neither moving or making a sound. Then Hiccup abruptly turned and began striding quickly towards the house. He turned and looked at the girl. She stared at Hiccup's back as he walked briskly away. She was pale, and looked more than a little scared. Now that his son had strode away, she seemed to be loosening, her arm moved slightly, and she crossed both arms and shivered.

"Astrid, what's wrong? You look like you've seen a ghost." Astrid's eyes widened slightly and her lower lip twitched. She slowly opened her mouth, and looked as if she was having difficulty forming words. After about a minute she finally said,

"d- Dr- Dragon." Her voice shook like a leaf in high wind.

"Dragon?"

"Dragon."

"What dragon girl? You're not making sense."

"i- In the w- woods. Dragon in the woods!" She was starting to make loud gasping noises.

"Oy!" Several villagers looked up. "One of you get her to the mead hall and see that she's fed and has something to wet her tongue. When she's calmed down a bit bring her to me." Astrid fell into hysterics as Stoic strode away and up the steps of his house. A dragon? In the woods? It couldn't be. Dragons never lingered on Berk. They came, they pillaged, they ran. That was how it always worked. The girl had probably just seen some shadow in the woods, a trick of light and texture.

Once he'd shouldered his way past the door, and let it fall shut behind him, he allowed his pack to slip from his fingers and he trudged slowly across the room to collapse in his chair. There was a fire lit in the hearth, Hiccup's work no doubt. Yet he could not see his boy anywhere.

"Hiccup! Are you here?" There were a few moments of silence, then very quietly a voice came from behind him.

"Yes dad. I'm here." The voice was very strange, flat and monotone. It had no emotional inflection at all. Stoic knew the many different changes that a man's voice could make, and what they usually signified. It was something he had slowly learned through his role as chief. You could tell a man's opinion and feeling, by how they spoke. But the sounds that emanated now from Hiccup's throat, held no inflection at all. It was as if Hiccup wasn't feeling anything. He turned and looked over his shoulder.

Hiccup sat on the stairs, looking straight ahead towards the house's front wall. His arms rested on his knees.

"Hiccup, did you cause any of the destruction out there?" It had been the first thought to pop into his head. It probably wasn't the best way to start a conversation after his extended leave of absence, but there was no retracting his words.

"No."

"No?" This was a surprise. Hiccup was truthful if nothing else, and during raids he almost always managed to break something.

"No. I was sleeping." Of course. The only time he wasn't breaking the various destructible parts of the village during raids, was when he slept right through them. His voice was still troubling though, it had yet to yield any kind of emotion.

"Has the healer seen at your arm son? I didn't get a good look but it didn't seem too bad." Hiccup glanced down at his right shoulder and shook his head.

"I'm fine." Stoic was starting to become worried now. Hiccup had never acted like this. He was always brimming with words. So many words as to prove a near constant nuisance. Now he was silent and stone faced. His features hadn't changed once during their exchange.

"You sound… Tired. Do you need rest? I'm sure you've worn yourself out helping with the repairs." Hiccup's expression remained blank, not even a single twitch of the eyes. "If that's the case then you should go get some rest." Silently Hiccup rose from his seat on the stairs, turned and disappeared silently into shadow. This was concerning. Something must have happened to him. Maybe he had been traumatized by the sight of so many dead and wounded. He had seen far older men than Hiccup become frozen with shock and grief. Yes, that had to be it. What else would cause such a sullen reaction from that little sprig of sarcasm?

He had no idea how much time had passed, when there was a knock at the door.

XXX

Hiccup

That could have gone far worse. He lay sprawled on his bed. "Did I sound even remotely normal?"

"No. You sounded like something dead. It was really rather disconcerting. Are you sure that was a good idea?" Hiccup remembered the surge of hate that had passed through him when he saw his father. One moment he thought they were doomed, and the next, he didn't care. Anger had flooded his mind and a red haze had descended on his vision. The burning pain that coursed through every part of his body peaked and felt as though his bones were aflame. At the sight of the helmet his father wore, he had wanted to leap upon him and tear his throat out. He had imagined how very satisfactory it would be. To feel the blood of his enemies flowing freely over his hands, to smell its salty tang, and to hear the flesh give way. For a brief moment he had been ready to rip his own father to shreds.

"Of course it was a good idea. My father would have thought me insane!"

Then Toothless had intervened. His vastly larger mind had enveloped him and frozen him in place. Then he had felt the anger slowly being siphoned off and into Toothless, who promptly released the tension by sinking his teeth with a guttural snarl into a bough of the tree he hung from.

Then when he had had to talk to his father, he had asked Toothless to do it again, but without the anger, there was no emotion left to fill the void. And he didn't even know why he was angry. Then just before he had trudged back up the stairs, he had looked at his father's back, and thought "Viking." The word had carried venom in his mind.

He knew he carried a distaste for the Viking way of life, but he had never imagined he was capable of imagining such horrible things!

"I think it might be partially my fault." Those words jerked Hiccup from his reverie.

"What? What do you mean?"

"I mean that some of my emotions and thoughts might have overlapped your own. I know for a fact that I hate Vikings, and I would not hesitate to kill them. Your mind treated my thoughts as your own when it saw a Viking."

"So wait, am I going to walk around town for the rest of my life trying to stop myself from killing people?"

"Oh I really don't think so. Now that you know how our joint minds work... sort of, you should be able to control your anger." Hiccup was silent then. And he thought for a long time about this new development. He could now share a link with Toothless. And be closer to him than he ever had the ability to be before. But that was having consequences. His distaste for Vikings had now waxed into anger. Hatred even. Was that a bad thing?

This last thought caught him by surprise. He was a Viking too wasn't he? No. He had never been one of them. He had always been apart. And now he had Toothless. He had a true friend and a true family. And maybe even something mor- He stopped that thought in its tracks.

Toothless snorted with amusement and then started to occupy himself by blowing smoke from his nostrils in such a way as to create patterns in the air. His chuckles were forcing him to unfold slightly.

"And just what are you laughing at?" He glanced out the window above his bed to see that the sky was already a deep shade of blue, it was probably progressing past noon about now.

"I am laughing at you." The dragon began convulsing and gurgling his amusement to the world.

"Well shut up would you? I'm trying to think!" Toothless stopped laughing and once again encased himself in his wings.

"You are thinking about questions whose answers are dangling right in front of you."

"What?"

"You were born to Vikings yet you are not one. You share a mental link with me, a dragon, a different species. You care not a single little bit for the wellbeing of other human beings, yet you have the ultimate concerns for me, a dragon. You are simply less human than those around you."

Hiccup stared at the ceiling. He didn't really feel the same anymore he now realized. He knew for one that if he had tried to remain in this exact position, with his arms behind his head and his legs crossed, for as long as he had, he would have cramped up long ago. Yet his body was utterly relaxed. He felt the difference in the pain that pulsed in time with his heart just below his skin. He heard the difference in the sound of his father shifting in his chair on the floor below him, something he would never have heard before. He saw the difference in each tiny minute grain of wood in the ceiling. He could see it in detail beyond any he had before experience. His room now smelt dusty and dry, he could smell the musk of the wool rug the middle of the floor.

He was different. He had not been like this until… When had these changes started?

"Right when you woke. After Astrid smote you with her ax. When you felt that ax bury itself in your flesh, I felt my own flesh rend, as if it had been me. The barrier between our minds suddenly snapped, and we joined for the first time." As Toothless spoke, Hiccup relived the memory only this time from his friend's point of view. He watched himself jump in front of the spinning weapon. He felt it as the ax pierced his flesh again, and this time. He heard Toothless roar in pain. Then he smiled slightly as Astrid was hit by Toothless' tail. Toothless really did care about him. A lot. A very lot.

His hand unconsciously drifted to the wound in his shoulder and touched it. He froze. He felt no pain, yet he froze nonetheless. The injury did not feel like an injury. It was hot and smooth. And as Hiccup prodded it, he discovered that it was above all, hard. Very hard. He glanced down at the wound. The blood that had sealed the seam was now changing, from its current amber-like state, and darkening. It already looked almost black. It seemed his physical body was changing as well as his mind. This could be tricky to explain.

Then below him, he heard a knock at the door.