Safe Out of Sight Chapter 12, a how to train your dragon fanfic

"And from out of the blue, and without any guide,

you know what your decision is…"

~On the Steps of the Palace: Into the Woods

Chapter Twelve

When Hiccup awoke, it was with stale lungs and a laboring pulse. He moved to sit up, but quickly thought better of it when the deep breath associated with the effort caught in his smoke- damaged lungs, leaving him coughing and spluttering. The air that filtered into the small room he found himself in, still stale with ash and soot, served only to exacerbate his wheezing. As he fought to regain his breath, his eyes slowly adjusted to the dim light. A waste of energy, really, as there was nothing remarkable to see. The room was completely empty save for the bed he currently occupied and a small table by the door. No outside noise clued him in to where he was. Most notably for Hiccup, this also meant that wherever this room was, it was devoid of Night Fury.

His stomach rapidly plummeted as his memory flooded back to him in a blur: dropping into the heart of the battle, facing down Mogadon, Stoick's assassin, the unintended target…

Hiccup swung his legs over the side of the bed. "Toothless?" He pushed himself up to stand, and instantly regretted it. The entire room tilted and slid across his vision, mixing a tinge of nausea with the knots in his stomach, which would have worried him more had he eaten anything of substance recently. The muted growling from his stomach confirmed that he hadn't.

Clinging to the bedframe, he inched across the room to the singular door that hung off its frame by its hinges. Leaning heavily against the wall, Hiccup lifted a hand to push the rickety door open, but was interrupted when it abruptly swung outward.

Stumbling backward, Hiccup clamped his eyes shut. The light, muted as it was, was overwhelming when it flooded into the darkened room, painfully shattering his already disoriented vision. Before he could do anything to right himself, another pair of hands hooked under his armpits, forcing him to stumble back in the direction of the bed.

"Sit your skinny behind back down before I sit it down for you. I don't need you passing out again."

Already dizzy from his trek across the small room and back, Hiccup obliged. Satisfied that he wasn't about to pull any other stunts, Regan strode back to the doorway to retrieve the bowl she had set aside. Through the opening, Hiccup could see the corner of the forge where not long ago (only hours, or had it been days?) he had been held hostage. What he could see of the forge had been reorganized to an extent, but evidence of the invasion could still be seen in the scarred floor and remnants of shattered debris. The light that filtered through the door mirrored the atmosphere outside: permeated by the still falling ash, diffused and gray.

"Where is everyone? Where's Toothless?" he asked the girl as she crossed back to him.

Regan avoided his eyes, seating herself on the edge of his bed and forcing the bowl to his lips.

"Drink up."

Remembering his gnawing hunger, Hiccup propped himself up on his elbows and did so, but didn't taste the broth for the rising fear in his chest. He firmly moved the bowl away.

"Regan. Where are they?" he asked again. Why wouldn't she look at him?

Relenting, Regan set the bowl in her lap. "The Meatheads are gone. We drove them away, and certainly did a number on their forces, but they moved inland. There aren't many settlements from here to Conaille Muirtheimne, but we've sent warning to them and to the kingdom." A smirk played at the corners of her mouth. "Not that you Hooligans left them in any state to do much damage."

Hiccup pushed himself up further. "And everyone else?" he pressed.

Regan bit her lip. She lifted her eyes to read his expression before shoving the bowl toward him again.

"You drink. I'll talk." Hiccup accepted the bowl, but only took a few small sips before he set it aside. Mercifully, Regan failed to comment.

"Your tribe went back to your island. They stayed for the first few days after – the chief hardly left this room actually – until you started coming 'round. Your girlfriend – oh, Astrid. She stayed too, running back and forth to get clean bandages and broth. When you started waking up long enough to get enough food in you, they left with the rest. We didn't have enough room or supplies here to treat your wounded."

Hiccup inhaled sharply, and she quickly continued. "Not too bad on your side though, you really gave those Meatheads a sound thrashing." When his furrowed brow refused to relax, she added, "It took all of Astrid's coaxing to get your dad to leave your bedside, too."

She was so uncharacteristically delicate that her explanation worried Hiccup more than it placated him. If she tiptoed around much longer, he thought his anxiety might escalate into a full-fledged panic attack.

"Where is Toothless?" he repeated.

"He's alive," she answered and Hiccup instantly felt ninety percent of the weight in his chest evaporate. The grimace that still wrung Regan's features held the remainder in place. "He's still breathing. He hasn't woken up yet, but he's been stable."

"Take me to him," Hiccup insisted, but the girl shook her head before he had finished speaking.

"He's not…in the best condition, and neither are you. You both need to just hold still and rest...Oi! Did you hear a word I said?" she shouted indignantly when the boy tossed his legs out of the bed and strode across the room, only lightly holding himself up by pressing a hand to the wall, with a new strength surging through him. He didn't even pause to glance back at the girl as she chased him out the door. It wasn't necessary really, since she quickly overtook him in his progress through the forge. When she planted herself in front of him, blocking his path, Hiccup made a conscious effort to suppress an irritated exclamation. She clearly didn't understand exactly how absolutely necessary it was that he get to Toothless, wherever he was, as quickly as physically possible. He let her know as much with a resolute stare that stopped her from retorting before she could finish drawing breath. As hastily as she had moved to block his path, she now moved to support him, throwing his arm around her shoulders and walking with him out of the forge.

It was immediately apparent to Hiccup that from what he'd seen inside the forge , he had only glimpsed the devastation of the battle. The village was unrecognizable. As they trekked through the debris that littered the scorched ground, Hiccup tried at first to focus on figuring out where Regan was leading them, but couldn't tear his eyes away from the destruction. Charred corpses of houses bore down on what remained of the village. Fire had eaten away at the thatched roofs and down the walls, leaving empty shells in its wake. When Hiccup began to identify which houses had been abandoned long before they had burned to the ground and which ones hadn't, he finally tore his eyes away.

Regan directed them around the corner. Singed remnants of the Samhain lanterns crinkled underfoot. The square, which only a few nights ago had been the center of feasting, music, and joyous celebration, where Hiccup had danced and laughed like he hadn't in ages, lay in utter ruin. The only elements that connected the present destruction to the scene from Hiccup's memory were the stones that had circled the céilí dancers' bonfire, now scattered through the square as they marched forward.

As they picked their way through the debris, Hiccup thought his right foot landed on one of the stones, but found he was mistaken when he felt it snap with a sickening crunch. He pulled his foot back in alarm. Underneath it, the little wooden goat mask that belonged to the child that recited his verse for them on the last night of Samhain lay splintered on the ground. His stomach jumped to his throat.

Forcing his eyes closed, he leaned against Regan's shoulders and numbly allowed her to lead them forward. He stopped looking at the ruin the battle had left in its wake and he stopped trying to piece together where Regan was taking him. He only funneled his energy into putting one foot in front of the other, trying to carry as much of his own weight as he could. The faster they walked, the faster he would get to Toothless.

When they were near enough to see the stables on the outskirts of the village, Hiccup nearly broke into a run. As soon as they reached the entrance, Hiccup pulled his arm from Regan's shoulders, anxiously scanning the stable for Toothless, and all but sprinted away when his eyes locked onto the black mass curled on the floor of the largest stall. Hiccup hoped that when Toothless heard the boy's frantic footfalls rushing toward him, he would have lifted his head or opened his eyes, anything to confirm he was okay, but the dragon remained motionless.

Hiccup dove to his knees with every intention of throwing his arms around Toothless' neck, but instead froze with arms held helplessly in front of him. Toothless hadn't budged. He was breathing – his nostrils flared almost unnoticeably and Hiccup could feel the warm air on his hands – but his breath was so shallow that his body barely moved. Gently, he pressed his hands to Toothless' snout. The scales burned beneath his palms.

"Toothless…"

The dragon's head rested on his front right leg, but held his left at an awkward angle, pulled into his chest. Hiccup trailed one hand from Toothless' snout to rub circles down his neck, wishing he could do more to soothe him. Toothless' chest burned hotter closer to where he shielded it with his leg. Hiccup shifted away from the dragon's face to inspect the scraped and battered area where his front leg met his chest more closely.

Under Hiccup's hand, the flesh beneath the scales seemed tender, inflamed. Try as he might, Hiccup couldn't recall the size of the weapon that had been fired at Stoick. He couldn't recall precisely where the shot had struck Toothless when he intervened. He had no data to help him guess at the extent of the injury, and nothing about Toothless' lack of movement or the way he clutched his foreleg to his chest stopped terror from clouding Hiccup's mind.

A low warbling distracted Hiccup from investigating further. He jerked his head up to see Toothless' eyes were cracked open, peering at him. Hiccup scrambled through the dirt to Toothless' face, running his hands over his jaw, his snout, his neck, his ear fins.

"Toothless! You're okay, you're okay…" Every minute movement on Toothless' part sent reassurance flooding through him.

The urge to cry, which he had repressed in battle, he indulged now. Toothless crooned. He pressed his cheek to the dragon's snout.

"I'm okay too, bud. We'll be fine," he breathed through shaky, relieved laughter. He knew they would be.

When Hiccup lifted his head, Toothless' eyes were drifting closed again, his expression now peaceful rather than pained. The boy's gaze fell again on the wound beneath the leg that Toothless still clutched to his chest.

"Can I take a look at that, bud?" Toothless almost imperceptibly nodded, before lowering the leg with a soft hiss and letting his eyelids fall completely closed.

Hiccup immediately understood why Toothless had so protectively shielded the wound. It was deep, gouged into the fleshier part of the left side of his chest. The arrow, judging from the size of the wound, had been larger and sturdier than most, fired with more power and precision than a standard crossbow. It struck at such an angle that upon entry, it had cut through the scales in its path, and was designed to dislodge even more scales along with an obscene amount of tissue when it was removed. The exposed skin was inflamed and discolored and Hiccup couldn't bring himself to imagine what kind of contagion the ammunition had been doused in to inflict this kind of damage on a Night Fury, much less what it would have done to the human originally targeted. Rage boiled in his gut, but Hiccup couldn't bring himself to focus his energy on anything other than the suffering he had indirectly inflicted on his soul mate.

I'm so sorry.

"It's better than it was," Regan said, kneeling at Hiccup's side. He could hardly imagine it being any worse. "It's healing so slowly. We tried everything we could, but we just don't have the resources. The first thing the Meatheads went for was the wine, and the vinegar ran out before we got to him. Astrid even flew back bring more here-" Hiccup allowed himself to smile. Of course she did, "-but they needed it on your island. It had stopped helping anyway.

"The brine the leighis is using now just isn't strong enough. It helped at first, but the infection is worse now than before. I…" She bit her lip. "I'm sorry." Hiccup didn't reply. She didn't need to be, obviously, but her rare show of sympathy was comforting. She knew how grave the situation was, knew why they were in this position at all, and understood. That was more than Hiccup ever could have asked for from the girl he had introduced to a dragon only days ago.

"I'll go talk to the leighis again, see if he's made any progress with other remedies. This is a bit outside of his area of expertise, as you might imagine." She rose to her feet. "I'll bring back more salve. Should help with the pain."

Hiccup nodded. Though Toothless' face had relaxed since Hiccup first saw him, the muscles in his neck and shoulders were still rigid under Hiccup's hands. Easing Toothless' pain would make it infinitely easier to focus on remedying the infection.

When she turned to leave, Hiccup called after her.

"Regan?" She paused. "Thank you."

She glanced over her shoulder to smile at them both before leaving the stables and jogging back into what remained of the town.

Toothless' eyes cracked open again as Hiccup continued to massage his neck.

"How're you feeling, bud?"

In response, Toothless licked the hand that Hiccup held up to the dragon's jaw. The boy chuckled, unable manage his usual ire. Even though the slobber still reeked to Valhalla, it was still cool on his palm, soothing against the blisters that had formed there.

Gasping, Hiccup clambered to his feet. He rushed to the entrance to the stables, squinting up the hill into town. He could still see Regan's tangle of hair in the distance, and took off up the hill after her. To his chagrin, he only managed a few paces before he couldn't breathe properly; the whole exhaustion bit was getting old really fast. Cupping his hands to his mouth, he called after her instead.

Night Fury saliva had incredible healing properties. He had flippantly said as much to Snotlout before, mostly to convince him that Toothless had spat in his allergy treatment for a swollen tongue for a reason other than to abuse the defiant boy. It didn't have mysterious healing properties, at least none Hiccup was aware of, but Toothless always made a point of cleaning his own cuts and scrapes. The location of the wound, and certainly the infection-induced fatigue, prevented Toothless from reaching it himself. It hadn't done anything to reverse the effects of an allergic reaction to wild berries, but as a disinfectant…

Miraculously, Regan heard him, and traced her steps back to the bottom of the hill, where Hiccup relayed his revelation.

"Aileag, that's brilliant!" Grinning, he took a hold of his arm and steered him back into the stables. "I'll go tell the leighis, you stay here."

Before Hiccup could protest, Regan waved her hands in his face to silence him. "You, son, are about to collapse, and I am not hauling your behind across town more than once today." Satisfied that he would stay put, she turned on her heel running back up the hill with more life than she'd had in ages.

"Plus, you need to go tell your buddy you've saved him!" she called over her shoulder, grinning ear to ear.

He liked the sound of that. Toothless had already done the same for him too many times to count. Allowing himself to grin, Hiccup headed back to his dragon to return the favor.

When he was abruptly awoken by his temple smacking into the ground for the third time that night, Hiccup seriously reconsidered their sleeping arrangements. His own bedroll had been moved into the stables, situated in the corner of Toothless' stall. The first night, he pulled the bedroll over to sleep at Toothless' side, using the tail that curled around him as a pillow. At first, when Toothless was initially recovering and lacked the energy to move much more than his head, this had worked much more smoothly. Now, as Toothless' mobility quickly returned, for which Hiccup was both eternally grateful and mildly irritated with, since tail twitches in the middle of the night now resulted in a smattering of bruises across his temples. However, Hiccup couldn't honestly complain that the interruptions were detrimental. His sleep was fitful and poor regardless. Exhaling through his nose, Hiccup scooted himself lower on the bedroll and threw his arm over Toothless' tail instead.

Before he could drift back to sleep, he was stirred by footsteps echoing through the stables. A flickering candle bounced shadows off the wall that Hiccup faced, illuminating the stall as it approached.

Hiccup heard the thud of a bag hitting the dirt floor and Regan's sigh as she knelt beside it. Jars of herbs and balms clattered against each other as she rummaged, the noise ceasing when she found the salve the leighis had created specifically for Toothless. She set the jar aside, reaching to remove Toothless' soiled bandages and prepare the wound for redressing.

It was then Hiccup decided to sit up, eliciting a quick glance from the girl, who otherwise appeared unsurprised he was awake.

"You need to sleep just as much as he does."

Hiccup ignored her, kneeling beside her and holding his hand out for the salve. Wordlessly, she surrendered it, stretching around him to grab her bag and prepare the new bandages instead. Reaching out to Toothless, Hiccup ran his hand over the still-tender skin. The inflammation was receding, the infection subdued by the specially formulated salve, and, though the exposed skin surrounding the wound was still tender, its normal color had returned. Even though the likelihood of the infection returning was miniscule at this point, Hiccup would only stop holding his breath when the dragon's scales had fully grown back to shield the scar.

"I told your father it was all an accident, you know."

Hiccup absently hummed in response as he massaged the salve into the healing wound.

"I told him you'd crashed far away from here, that you'd only just found the village and were repairing your flying gizmos and headed back home and all that."

Hiccup paused, his fingers freezing in administering the medicine. Honestly, he hadn't even thought that far ahead. Assured that his tribe – his father, Astrid, his friends – had escaped the skirmish relatively unscathed and were safe on Berk, he focused his attention on doing everything he could to help Toothless heal. Once he did heal, what then? He really hadn't given it a thought. Before Regan had come running with news of invaders, Hiccup had been living moment to moment, unsure of where he would be the next hour let alone the next day.

His father hadn't plucked him from Regan's forge the moment he regained consciousness or insisted Hiccup recover at home. He hadn't tied him to the mast of the first ship back to Berk. Hiccup was free to choose. He didn't have to go back.

The kind of casual, unspectacular, normal life he had been allowed to live here had been glorious. When he walked to the forge each morning, it was free from the stares of passersby, and throughout the day the villagers rarely looked twice at him. The majority didn't even know his name. Here, the nameless foreigner had unadulterated reign over his actions, his daydreams, his wants, his life. It was intoxicating.

But this place still wasn't his home.

"We're going back. As soon as Toothless can fly again."

In the ease with which he had integrated himself into the lifestyle of the people here, Hiccup had discovered that his own reservations were to blame for his discomfort among his own people. Here, he could go out and enjoy himself, participate in the same traditions that had always left him cold. The only reason that this hadn't happened on Berk was because he hadn't let it happen. Berk had moved forward, eager to embrace Hiccup's ideals and innovations and ready to mold their ideas of tradition to the future Hiccup envisioned. It was more than Hiccup ever would have dared to hope for, and now it was his reality. The belonging he felt so potently here only felt foreign at home because it was Berk. It was in the center of Berk's square that he had shrunk under the disapproving glares of every villager, Berk's hall where he was shut outside during every Thing, Berk's pathways where he had been trampled on and called Useless.

Forgiveness had been the easy part; he was fairly certain he'd deserved every glower or exasperated sigh he'd ever received when he was living up to his Useless title. Letting go of the fear of failure was a different story. He'd never feared being a disappointment, as it was essentially guaranteed every time he stepped outside. Now that he was on a pedestal, he actually had somewhere to fall.

Hiccup set down the jar of salve, wiping his hand on his tunic. He scooted over to Toothless' side, allowing Regan to apply the new bandages.

"You're brave, you know," she said evenly, smoothing the dressings. Toothless' jaw clenched almost imperceptibly at the pressure.

"I don't feel like it at the moment."

"Of course you don't." She smirked. "I'm no heir to a Viking chief, but the whole responsibility, duty-to-your-people thing, I get it. It's terrifying."

He exhaled, laying his arm over Toothless when the dragon shuddered in his sleep.

"It shouldn't be. I'm only being brave because I have to," he countered

"No. You're not." Dropping her hands from the dressings, she turned to face him. Her eyes held the same steely determination that he hadn't seen since the day he bargained with her for the use of her forge. "You don't have to do anything. You know that you could hop on your dragon and fly to the other side of the world, never to be seen again. If you were a coward, you'd choose that in a heartbeat. That's not what you're choosing.

"You don't have to go charging back into your village, ready to take the throne. You don't have to be ready to accept that role. Brigid, you don't even have to be happy about it! But you are going back and facing it head on. That's the part that takes guts."

She spoke with such finality that even Hiccup could believe in everything she said. Chuckling at his mildly dumbfounded expression, she rose to her feet, swiping her bag from the floor. "Oh, you can pick your jaw up off the ground, Aileag. It's about time someone told you."

She swiped the salve from Hiccup's hand and rummaged through her bag, pulling out a small pouch of herbs and tossing it to him. Hiccup shot his hands up to his chest to catch it.

"Those're for any pain when he wakes up," she said, retrieving her candle from where she'd set in on the stall ledge.

Smiling, Hiccup nodded. "Thank you."

"Not a problem, Hiccup."

When left, the stable fell into darkness once again. Rolling back onto his side, Hiccup stuffed the herbs under his bedroll and resumed his attempts to sleep.

He had been wrong to assume the village was at fault for Berk's stifling atmosphere. They were overly exuberant at times, yes, and his father still wasn't the most flexible of people, but he had been wrong to place blame on how they treated him. They believed that he could be their chief; it was Hiccup who was still afraid to believe the same. Now he could.

He still wasn't ready to think seriously about being a chief. Gods, was he far from it. But he could imagine the kind of chief he'd like to be. He could picture a future for the world he and Toothless had created. Berk could be like that one day, and he could bring them there.

For the first night in many, he slept well.

I liiiiiiied there's another chapter.

Hiccup's finally ditching Ireland for the Archipelago. And there are a couple people there who would like to have a word with him. Namely one blonde Hofferson who's been sharpening her axe. Eh ehhh.

Enough Hictooth to give you cavities? Enough Regan and Hiccup character parallels? Hiccup's growth making an iota of sense? Feel free to constructively let me know!