Content - Hiccup is finally alone, but he is content.
He watched the sky, alone.
They called him leader and adventurer, defender and friend. They honored his name, built statues in his honor and wrote epics of his mythical youth amongst beasts. They built him into a man he never really was.
That man now sat on the cliffs of his new home, so different from the island he had grown up on and yet all too familiar to his weary eyes. Still, motionless – not a blade of grass moved for him. He had moved enough in his long life.
He had contributed all he could, built a great village of great people, kept the Great Secret for all he could to ensure the safety of humanity and of dragonkind. He had friends – some passed in glory to Valhalla, others gone to more natural means. He had loved, loved one, but when she finally went of old age, her blond hair withered to grey, he loved no more.
The demands of life he had finally accomplished.
Gazing upon the great oceans, his thoughts drifted to a distant friend. A friend of his he knew would still be out there, leading his great kind as was his destiny. A friend who was not his kin in family nor species, but whom had helped him find himself.
Yet, as he gazed at the great oceans of the world he had once explored with boundless enthusiasm, he felt at peace with himself, with that which he longed for and that which he yearned to see once more. Calm at the notion of him, so honored and cherished by others, perhaps leaving all earthly things behind alone.
And as he gazed at the setting sun alone, he thought he saw a speck of black – and maybe of white – shining against the sundown sky. And he knew that his friend, while just as distant from him for now as destiny dictated, was content. And then he heard the sounds of the village, of the children playing in the fields and of the men and women calling them to dinner, heard how, with their joy and fortune, they too were content.
And perhaps in the clouds, he caught a glimpse of her, her blond hair shining down on him from the heavens, her radiant smile ever persisting, and perhaps of them too, their smirks and good-natured shoving and everlasting friendship. And he knew that so long as it wasn't yet his time, for the little time left that she and they would have to wait for that time, they would wait. And they would be content.
And therefore, in his solitude, he too was content.
A/N: A very brief vignette inspired by HTTYD3. Hiccup in old age, basically, with everyone having left him thanks to fate and destiny. I think, eventually, he'd be fine with that and be fine with waiting to see them again.