Not So Fireproof on the Inside

Chapter 4 Breaking Point

A/N: Surprisingly, I do have anything to say before the chapter so…I guess…here ya go?

Dull clangs rang through the village in the early hours of the morning. The sun had been shining over the horizon for a little while now, but most Berkians were just leaving their homes or emerging from the great hall. Hiccup had long since been up, unable to get a lick of sleep with all that consumed his mind. Graciously, he'd waited to get to work in the smithy until more people would have already been up.

He pounded on a luminescent ingot of metal, the bright orange glow denoting its heat. He was wailing on it harder than he really needed to, but he usually did that when he needed to vent. He took out his pent up aggression on the metal, unable to describe the catharsis that just being able to beat the Odin-loving piss out of something offered. He figured he might as well get some work done too, instead of running the risk of bludgeoning someone instead of something.

Toothless had gone back to the Haddock's hall not long ago, tired of his companion's incessant noise. Hiccup couldn't blame him. He'd had kept the dragon up with him for most of the night anyway. The big baby deserved a nap, he figured.

He'd stayed awake himself for most of the evening through to now, frustrated and upset with most aspects of his miserable life. He'd sat on the edge of a cliff, overlooking the entirety of Berk proper, swinging his good leg over the edge. Toothless snored behind him, the beast's scaly side supporting his friend's back. The soft, slumbering rumbles that reverberated through the dragon's body soothed the boy, almost like a purring kitten. It did nothing to calm his turbulent mind, though.

Clang.

It'd been a long day, making up for time lost with Astrid. He'd had to deal with Spitelout's ranting about how a chief has to put the village before himself, that he shouldn't have allowed for Berk to be left without leadership for a whole day. As if that poor excuse of a man had any idea of what it was like…

He'd also dealt with likewise impatient townspeople, all clamoring for his attention. Hoark was riled up about some nails and timber going missing the previous night, both in short supply with all the rebuilding. Bucket and Mulch were arguing about some incident with one of them falling off of a ladder because the other one may or may not have been holding it (he couldn't remember which one did what due to the lack of attention he gave the issue). He also had to deal with Silent Sven angrily signaling something with his hands that no one understood, making him even angrier.

Clang!

The village had been much more peaceful then, everyone settled down into their homes. The craziness of Berk had died down for the night. Faint candle light seeped out of some of the houses' windows, along with the few moving torches of sentries and the far-off glow of the statuesque braziers. The sparse illumination did nothing to undermine the array of stars above the halls and shops. He could still see their beautiful arrangements, though one had caught his interest, the one Astrid had spoken to him about; Stjörnu. The name hadn't left his mind since he heard it. He thought about the message of her story.

The best leader doesn't have to be the strongest one, just the one that would give the most.

Well, Hiccup sure wasn't the strongest Berk had ever had. In fact, he might have actually been the weakest, probably by a wide margin too. Though he had eventually come to accept that fact, Hiccup used to think he could make up for his lack of brawn with his mental strength. He thought that the few good qualities he could see in himself might make him at least a passable leader. He was persistent, cared for others, exhausted all means to find a peaceful answer if possible, and even when it wasn't, he was cunning enough to come up with something to minimize losses to Midgard. None of that could really help him if no one took the time to listen to him, though.

Clang!

At one point, he had leaned more of his weight back into his dragon, who accommodated him graciously, and sighed deeply. He crossed his arms which made him feel a little better about the stiff cold of the autumn night. The shared body heat helped as well. He was preparing himself to stay out for a while in quiet thought; a pleasure that no person who was unfamiliar with a chief's anxieties could exactly understand.

Berk needed another Stoick desperately; a strong, commanding leader to help them out of these times of strife. Hiccup asked himself what Stoick was probably thinking as he looked down at his son from his seat at the infinitely long table in Valhalla. He was probably disappointed, maybe frustrated with how his son seemed to make the wrong turn at every juncture. He may have wished he had trained him more or possibly that he had given the throne to someone else, someone who wouldn't lead the tribe to ruin.

Clang!

Hiccup had then looked to the stars once more, hoping to find some sign of his father, some message from him that would tell the boy what to do, because he had no idea. He couldn't do this anymore. He wasn't wired the same way a chief was. Maybe, just maybe, he could be ready for this one day, but it certainly wasn't now, when he was just a weak boy in his early twenties who still had a father to grieve.

Instead of Stoick, all that the lad was able to see among the heavens was that dumb constellation that he couldn't let escape his mind.

His next hammer-stroke spawned a completely different sound to the distinct, metallic one he had been expecting. Spark and bits of iron skittered across the room, all shooting off from one of three shattered pieces of what used to be one solid bar of metal. The hammer bounced away from the fragments, wrenching his hand slightly, and the shock transmitted painfully into his hand. He winced as he looked at the failed attempt at forging (1). He grunted a colorful obscenity at the offending metal.

"If I didn't know better, I'da thought the thing slept wit' yer sister" a thickly accented voice called out from behind him. Upon hearing it, Hiccup tensed, but, recognizing the voice, he groaned and sagged his shoulders.

"How long have you been standing there, Gobber?" he sighed weightily.

"Long enough to watch yer little vendetta against the metal" the old smith snarked back, taking a step forward from the far wall behind Hiccup, from where he had been watching the apprentice. Well, 'apprentice' was a bit dubious of a word to describe him. The boy he'd half-raised was becoming old enough to be his partner rather than pupil, a particularly proud thought in the man's eyes.

"Just a little tense, I guess" Hiccup answered the unaired question, rolling his shoulders and sorting out the mess he'd made of little, now dull red fragments. He'd have to weld them back together and start over, but at this point, he couldn't care less. He'd work all day in the forge if it meant he didn't have to go out and act like a chief.

"Ye know…" Gobber began with a distant smile, a wistful thought to come, "…I used to let yer father in here ev'ry blue moon to hit some steel". Perhaps he shouldn't have brought Stoick up, but if the way Hiccup turned and smiled at him pleasantly, if sadly, was anything to go by, then he hadn't made much of a mistake.

Hiccup found himself huffing a small chuckle at imagining his dad, a bit younger but just as short-tempered, being as frustrated at his son was right then, and pounding on an axe-blade to make himself feel better. Maybe it was funny to him because of how easily he could imagine that man doing just that. He'd known that his father and the master smith had been lifelong friends and he imagined that's why his apprenticeship had developed into something much more.

Gobber went to a wooden hook on the wall to retrieve and don his apron and get his forge hammer hand. On his way, he postulated "Now, I'da thought that ye'd be a little more chipper after yer rendezvous wit' Astrid". Because the boy was facing away from him, he couldn't see the deep crimson flush on the lad's face. Receiving no answer, he skeptically added "Unless…somethin happened wit' her?".

"What?! No!" Hiccup whirled around and now the older smith could see the blush. He snorted at the reaction.

"Ah, so yer little tryst went alright, then?" the witty man jibed back.

"It was not a tryst" Hiccup asserted.

"And what would ye call running off to bump uglies wit' yer fiancé if not a tryst?" Gobber laughed to himself, reveling in the horrified look on Hiccup's face before the boy turned around to grab his re-forged metal out of the furnace. Perhaps the older smith felt a smidgeon of guilt, but it was far overshadowed by his own entertainment. He patiently waited for his apprentice to respond.

"That did not happen" Hiccup said humorlessly, an even tone escaping his lips and the frown that had been on them earlier returning. This concerned his surrogate uncle greatly. If something happened with Astrid, not only would he be sympathetic, but Hiccup would be mopey, miserable, and insufferable for a long time after. Gobber wasn't going to willing deal with that again.

"Oh, what did ye say to the poor lass now?" Gobber accused him nonchalantly, even going so far as to roll his eyes. He knew of the boy's trouble with keeping his mouth shut when he really needed to and this wouldn't have been the first time he'd have to advise the boy on his woman. Hiccup scowled over his shoulder before quickly returning to his work.

"Nothing. Everything is fine" he grumbled, half-annoyed by the insinuation and still half-cross about everything else.

"Well, I assume it wasn't fer lack of tryin…"

Hiccup huffed another small laugh that didn't break his frown. "No…not on her part" he answered slowly, trying to reveal as little as possible.

"Yer not mutton-headed enough t' tell her 'no', are ye?" the old man asked rhetorically. Hiccup stilled, continuing to look away, which, after years of working together, was response enough. Gobber had thought that he'd taught him better. He groaned, "Aww, Hiccup! What have I told ye about when a woman offers ye her bed?".

"Far…far too much" the boy answered, shivering at his memories of terribly awkward and almost painful conversations from when he was a young teen, which usually left him more confused than before they started.

"And yet ye still didn't listen"

"Gobber…" the boy sighed, draining the mirth from his teacher's voice. He turned slightly to see the man's face, now more serious than it had been. He continued, "I wasn't going to…just…not now, I mean. Not with everything going on and how stressed I am and…that's not how it's supposed to be. Well, nothing right now is how it's supposed to be, but that's not how I was going to let it be". His face conveyed an unarguable gravity, one that had been there for a little over a month now. In the smith's eyes, he was on his way to becoming a man, one who worked too hard and worried too much, was sometimes clumsy and otherwise a bit of an idiot, but a man nonetheless. And this prospective man was hurting.

"I rather think ye could use a good lay"

Hiccup smirked, though inwardly he held no jollity. "I really hope that wasn't an offer…" he jabbed playfully. A loud, bellowing laugh erupted from the smith as he threw a rag at the boy.

"At least ye still have yer sense a humor"

Hiccup didn't really feel like correcting him on that point. It wasn't worth it. Gobber was one of the people on this island whom Hiccup especially cared for, the top of the list being him, Stoick (whom he'd be damned if he didn't include), his mother, and a special place for Astrid. The old Viking had half-raised him and had patiently and carefully taught him one of the greatest pleasures of his life, smithing. He'd taught him to have some confidence in himself, even if only the slightest bit and exclusively limited to his work.

The man was family and a particularly integral part of it as well. Without him, Hiccup would have been a completely different boy; that is, if he hadn't gotten himself killed with all the free time he would have had. All of which is why he couldn't stand to be hurting him, like he was everyone else on Berk. He was bringing shame to the tribe, to the role of chief, unable to even control his people for a day. They deserved better than him, someone who could actually do the job, someone who wasn't leading them to ruin.

He couldn't stand to hurt them any longer…especially Astrid.

"Hiccup, what's this about?" Valka asked, more than a hint of concern evident in her voice. Aside from the first time he had taken her to see him work (as she had so painfully missed that for the last 20 years), he had never asked her down to the forge, let alone in the middle of the night. She was sure that the moon itself wasn't present in the sky because it was too tired tonight. Still, her boy seemed more troubled and upset than usual.

He sat on the edge of a worktable, swinging his feet idly and looking at some of his wares. She knew something was very wrong instantly. Hiccup was a lot of things, but unfocused wasn't one of them. She wasn't just going to let him sit there silently for much longer. Eventually, he looked up to her and Gobber (who had also been asked to stay for this meeting under pretense of 'something important' that needed to be said).

"Mom…I can't do this" he murmured quietly and he felt as if he was once again a small child, ready to face the disappointment of aparent. He watched the man who practically raised him and the woman that should have with exhausted eyes, aging him beyond his years in the low candlelight.

"What do you mean? Do what?"

"He's talkin about bein a chief" Gobber interjected. Though he hadn't been told specifically what they were going to be discussing, he had gathered a good bit from Hiccup's terse responses throughout the day. Valka stared at him curiously and felt a little out of the loop of what was to come, though the smith truthfully hadn't much of a clue either.

She looked back to her son with a confused expression, which he met placidly. He nodded to confirm Gobber's assumption.

"Hiccup, it's never easy. You just have to learn, get used to it" she tried to reassure him, her tone so laden with softness and concern that only a mother could produce it.

"I can't" he responded simply.

"Sure you can. Do you think that you're the first to need a little time to adjust? We all know your father did"

"And I might have had time to do that if Berk wasn't in complete disarray at the moment" he grumbled petulantly, though he seemed more angry at himself and the circumstance than any of the two he'd entreated to talk with him. His mother's face took on subtle a mask of sadness. It made something twinge in his chest, so he changed his attitude, the whole reason of this conversation being to keep that from happening. "Maybe dad could have been able to manage it, but I'm not him. I don't think I ever realized how great of a chief he was. Any time that I spend making mistakes or being second guessed…it's time wasted" he said, a lump forming in his throat that was becoming very hard to speak around.

"You just have to wait and see" she offered gently.

"I have waited!" he barked as he jumped off the table. He didn't want to yell at his mother, but he couldn't stand not being listened to any longer. All his life, almost everyone had been doing just that.

"Not but a month!" his mother shot back, though not quite as forcefully as her son. She was only loud enough to make her point. She watched Hiccup's hard, stony face, something that was almost uncomfortably similar to many looks her husband had born. She considered him seriously, trying to take in his words as if he were a man, because she had squandered her opportunity to talk to him like a boy. "Hiccup, what are you trying to say?" she asked, her wealth of patience allowing her to keep her speech easy.

He looked away when she aired her question. He was ashamed of himself, ashamed of the weakness that his decision showed. He knew it was best for Berk, but that still didn't prepare him to brand himself a failure to his mother and one of his closest friends. After a moment of silence, Gobber spoke.

"I think…" the smith started pensively "I think he really means he can't". He examined his apprentice who simply sighed greatly as he stared at the floor.

Quietly, Hiccup admitted "I'm leaving".

"What do you…"

"…Berk. I'm leaving Berk. I'm not going to sit on a throne while I watch everyone suffer under my rule. I'm abdicating and then taking off" he clarified, interrupting his mother and eventually gaining enough courage to look them both in the eyes while he told them he was running away like a coward. He watched the horrified look on Valka's face and the almost unsurprised, but still speechless one on Gobber's. It took a few moments that felt like hours for either to respond, but Hiccup waited.

"What about Astrid? What does she think of this?" Valka asked, barely containing the water brimming her eyes.

"She doesn't know…" Hiccup said coldly, his face returning from the guilty look to a much sterner one, "…and you can't tell her. Not until I'm gone".

"She's goin t' be yer wife! The girl deserves to know" Gobber scolded him loudly. For all the man's talk of sweeping women off their feet in his youth, he was actually quite the gentleman. He'd raised Hiccup to have his own chivalrous code, which they both well understood this was breaking. It was Hiccup's turn to have a surplus of moisture around his eyes, but tears didn't fall.

"I'm calling off the wedding" he told them resolutely, though it felt like it was twisting the dagger already embedded in his heart.

"Hiccup…" Valka gasped. She knew that what the girl had meant to him and that he wasn't doing this lightly.

"I'm leaving Berk for longer than I know and I'm only coming back if I can actually do my duty. I-If…if they'll let me. Until then, my duty is leave, before I can cause any more damage. She doesn't deserve to have me kiting her along for years on end when I don't even know if I'll ever return"

"Then take her wit' ye" Gobber interrupted, his face showing that he shared in the same heart-break as well.

"No" Hiccup responded firmly, his voice brokering absolutely no argument, "She'll stay on Berk. She'll have a life here, a happy one. Maybe…maybe she'll find someone else and have a family. She'll be safe and not wasting her years with me on some gods-forsaken trip to nowhere!". The more he said of it, the more it pained him, at this point feeling like he was run through once more with every word. Still, he wouldn't change his resolve.

"You know she doesn't want that!" his mother yelled at him, now with her cheeks stained with tears. Hiccup could see that her hands were balled into fists. She probably wanted to slap him, and he didn't blame her, because he kind of did too.

"I know. Astrid…she won't want to now, but hopefully she'll realize that it's for the best"

"Then why not tell her?" his mother questioned him again and he winced at her yelling. The last thing he needed was for the person in question to hear them and come barging into the forge and probably cleave his head off his shoulders. He entreated Valka with his hands that she might lower her voice to keep this private conversation private.

"If I did, we both know she'd come after me. This way, I'll be long gone by the time she realizes" he asserted quietly, still trying to coax his mother to do the same. He softened after a great sigh and continued, "I know you're quite fond of Astrid, mom. And I know you've noticed how much I care for her too". He could see the way she understood that much in her eyes. "So if you loved someone that much, wouldn't you give everything up for them? To save them? I'm willing to if it means that she'll at least have a future…even if it isn't with me" he confessed. Suddenly he was out of words. His point had been made and he could further it no more. If he added anything else, it would just dilute it.

She took a few seconds to silently consider him. All the while, Gobber watched them, taking in every detail of this straining relationship. He admired the boy for how much he loved his mother too, even though he'd hardly known her. He was just so caring that way.

Eventually, after having collected herself, Valka nodded and said in a choked voice "You know I can't say I wouldn't. I did the same for you so many years ago". She stepped closer to him to cup his cheek in her palm and a single stream fell from his lashes to be tenderly wiped away with her thumb. Hiccup leaned into her touch. Twenty years of absence or no, he would always be her son.

Hiccup managed to look into her dark green eyes once more to see the sadness in them, before she pulled away. She gave him a quick hug and then turned towards the door. As she walked away, the silence of the room following her, she said over her shoulder "Just know...I never stopped regretting the day I left you". With that, she opened the door, stepped through, and closed it behind herself, walking out into the dark of night.

Hearing her retreating footsteps, Hiccup turned back to Gobber, who had witnessed all of the transaction. Hiccup again felt like an admonished child under his watchful gaze. The smith took the opportunity to place a hand on the boy's shoulder.

"I can nae say I agree wit' ye, but ne'er can I say I have a place t' argue"

Hiccup nodded solemnly and looked back to the door through which his mother had gone.

"Do you think she'll tell her?" he asked despondently, knowing that no one was going to come out of this decision unscathed for at least the time being, but he had the hope that Berk and it's people would be better off in the end.

"I don't know...but she is yer mother first, not Astrid's" the smith answered. Hiccup nodded once more and turned back to his mentor.

"I'm doing this for you" the boy said, meaning the whole of the island.

"I know ye think that, at least" the older man quipped. Hiccup thought for a moment, but then, he again nodded sadly. Gobber continued, "I still think ye should tell her, but yer a man now and it's yer decision". He was at least agreeable, if stubborn.

"Thank you" the youth said, receiving another pat on the shoulder, "…but there's one more thing". He got a wary look in return, but muscled through it "Mom's going to be next in line to lead…and I don't have any right to ask this of you, but…"

"I'll help her best I can" Gobber interrupted. Hiccup managed a small smile for the smith's benefit, but he was only shooed "Now get goin. Ye need t' get ready if yer leavin before sunrise".

Hiccup agreed and left soon after, though not before he gave his friend a big, lasting hug, knowing that it might have been the last.

A/N: Good? Bad? I honestly don't even know anymore. I thought it was alright, though a ton of you will be pretty upset. Hiccstrid is going to take a back seat for a while, but it will come back into play later on. Just have faith.

(1). In reference to the crumbling piece of metal, believe it or not, this is not that difficult to do accidentally. Smithing requires some finesse. I won't bore you with the complex chemistry of it, but if you simply pound on the metal, even with just the force of your arm, you can actually shatter it. Until it's tempered, heat-treated, and cooled, it can be fairly brittle.

-Nick (ncham9)