Disclaimer: HTTYD is not mine. No profit is being made.

Summary: A series of snapshots from Hiccup's early years. What childhood influences make a Hiccup? Add one boyhood crush, a tablespoon of Gobber's mentoring, two cups of childhood loneliness and ostracization, and a heaping helping of fatherly disapproval. Stir vigorously. Bake for fifteen years, then leave to cool in the brisk Berk climate.


Catching the Sun

By Saphie


Part 5

When they were twelve, he and Astrid had mostly stopped talking.

Every so often, he'd try to hang out with the other kids, hoping against hope that they'd get the mocking and teasing out of their systems. When a romp through the nearby woods led to rough-housing and Snotlout shoving him off the rope bridge and into the stream to the raucous laughter of the others, he was quickly disabused of that notion. He wasn't fast enough, he wasn't strong enough, and he said too many things that were straight-out weird, even weirder than the things Fishlegs said. Fishlegs had much higher regard in the eyes of the others than Hiccup-despite all the odd stuff he said, Fishlegs could lift a war-hammer now, a real, full-sized hammer, which was more even than Snotlout could do.

Astrid hadn't been there the day he'd been shoved into the stream, though, and when she was there, she tended to smack whoever was responsible for shoving him or making fun of him, something that made Hiccup terribly grateful.

He couldn't stand being mocked so unrelentingly and yet wanted to be able to hang out with the others so much it hurt. In the end, twisting it all inward was the only way to reconcile everything. He was weird and he was weak. If he could just fix it, if he could do something to prove himself, everyone would like him, and it could be like it was when they were all very young, when there seemed a chance he could grow up to be strong someday, when they almost liked having him around.

Most days, though, Hiccup found himself a loner by necessity rather than choice and could be found wandering aimlessly the island during his free time. The woods around Berk were full of interesting things to draw, and he still hadn't entirely ruled out the possibility of the existence of trolls, even though none of his sock-traps had been tripped. There were holes to poke sticks into, and angry animals to run away from after sticks were poked into their burrows, and notes to take about the behavior of said animals from where he took refuge in the branches of trees. He wanted to figure out answers to all the questions that could be asked that seemed obvious only to him. How exactly did birds fly? Why were some animals bright colors and others in drab greys and browns? What actually made the wind blow?

Sometimes he would spend a whole day lying in the grass somewhere, staring at the sky, thinking interesting thoughts that he felt like he couldn't share with anyone else in the whole world.

Avoiding the other kids his age had the unfortunate side effect of making it so he didn't see Astrid in more than fleeting glimpses around the village. She was training harder now, starting to take the prospect of fighting dragons very seriously. Between her training schedule and him avoiding her when she was with the others, he didn't really get to talk to her much. Days passed in between talking at first, then weeks, and after that anytime he did talk to her was awkward and halting, like they barely knew each other when they'd grown up in the same village and known each other all their lives.

At least he had Gobber to talk to. Because he was willing to listen to Hiccup, he often had to deal with his endless chattering, but he put up with it with incredible patience.

That said, Hiccup had long since come to realize that sometimes he simply tuned him out when the rambling got to be a little much.

"-so I was thinking about why exactly water reflects things when it's still, and I think it has to have something to do with light. Because if you really look at it, when a bright light shines on still water, the light that shines back is pretty bright. Somehow, it-it's able to take the light and send it back."

"That's nice, Hiccup."

"-only I can't really test anything, because you can't do more than see light. It's not like you can measure light, right?"

"Sure thing, Hiccup."

Hiccup frowned at the etching he was working on. (He couldn't lift things in the forge, but he had a great eye for detail.)

"And so I was thinking of climbing up on top of the Great Hall, setting it on fire, and dancing naked in an invocation of the gods summon Thor to bring down a rainstorm to put it out, just to show everyone I can," he said in matter-of-fact tones.

"Good idea, Hiccup."

Hiccup looked up from his work and frowned.

"You're not listening. Again."

Gobber looked up from his own work. "You're talking an awful lot. Again," he said good-naturedly. "There's work to be done and it's nae going to do itself. You can chatter all you like but yours might get done faster if you move your hands as quickly as that mouth o' yours."

Hiccup's mouth snapped shut and he went back to work, a sullen look on his face. Gobber let the silence carry on for a good long while, punctuating it with the occasional slam of his hammer.

Noticing the sulking of his apprentice, eventually he said, "Sorry, lad, but sometimes my ears get near worn out when you're around." He twisted off his hammer attachment and put on the tongs. "Why don't you save all this chatter for your friends?"

Hiccup's mouth opened slowly, and then snapped shut again. He didn't look up from his etching. Gobber ground his uneven teeth together slightly, lines of concern creasing around his eyes.

"What about Astrid?"

He knew Hiccup had always been on slightly friendlier terms with the girl, but Hiccup's complete silence on that subject and total absorption in his work spoke volumes. It spoke whole libraries, even.

Gobber didn't ask whether Hiccup had tried yammering at his father about this stuff. The boy had been doing it for twelve odd years and he knew it just baffled his best friend. The disconnect there was alarming sometimes, but Stoick was a stubborn man, Hiccup was a stubborn boy, and Gobber had no idea how to bridge the gap over a chasm that had stretched that wide.

There was near silence in the forge for a little while, other than the crackle of the fire and the hissing of hot metal in the water of the slack tub.

Finally, Gobber said warmly, "Alright, alright, I'm listenin'. Start from the beginning. Light, water, you've got ideas, right? Of course you do. What are they?"

Hiccup looked up at the blacksmith and written in the lines of Hiccup's face were words of gratitude that he didn't have actual words for.


One afternoon, during his wandering through the woods, he heard a strange "thock," over and over again, like the pecking of a wood-pecker in extremely slow motion. Climbing over some boulders, he peeked around a tree and-

"AAUGH!"

"HICCUP!"

Hardly any time seemed to pass between the moment he saw the axe leave her hand and the moment it was almost upon him. She'd almost managed to stop herself from throwing it, but hadn't reacted quickly enough and so it wobbled in its arc through the air. If it had been a larger axe, his head would have probably been cleaved in two. As it stood, the throwing axe passed perilously close to his face on its way towards hitting the tree and he was left standing next to where it was stuck, staring at it bug-eyed.

In shock over his close call, he fell backwards right onto his butt.

So apparently the woods were where Astrid went to practice. Good to know.

"Hiccup, you idiot! I could have hit you! What's your problem, sneaking up on me like that?"

"I didn't know you were here!" he said turning to her.

As soon as she did, she immediately covered her mouth with her hands.

"You're bleeding!"

"I am?" Suddenly realizing there was a feeling like something was trickling down his chin, he reached up his hand up to where the wet feeling was coming from and when he pulled it away, it was smeared with blood. The axe had perhaps passed closer to his face than he'd originally thought; close enough to nick it as it spun around. "I'm bleeding!"

"I'm sorry!"

"Why are we yelling?"

"I don't know!"

Astrid took a deep breath and rushed over to him, pulling out the cloth she used to clean her axe from one of the pouches on her belt.

"Don't pick at it, don't pick at it," she said as he prodded at it, and she lightly slapped his hand away. She held the cloth to his chin, putting on pressure.

"Ow! Ow ow ow!"

"Don't be a baby, it's just a nick," she said, frowning, and then the harsh expression on her face faded as she held the cloth there. "I'm really sorry."

He sat there for a moment, just staring up at her. She'd changed her hair. He hadn't even seen her recently enough to notice when she'd done it. Gone were the plaited pigtails that stuck out along the sides of her head. Now her hair was in a single braid at the back of her head and her bangs were starting to grow out.

Her eyes were still just as bright and sharp-looking as ever.

For a fleeting moment, he felt full of something when he looked at her. Looking back on it later, he would remember it as painful and wonderful at the same time, an ache in his chest that he couldn't explain, something pure and admiring, lacking both desire and limits.

"Hi. Hey. Hi Astrid," he finally said awkwardly. "Haven't seen you in a while." He paused awkwardly and then corrected himself, "Well, I have seen you. Around the village. But I've only seen you in the sense that I saw you. With my eyes. I haven't seen you as in talked to you or—or anything like talking. In the visiting sense. Of seeing someone. And having a conversation."

Deciding that he'd stammered and embarrassed himself enough, he cut himself off.

Somehow, even though she was looking right at him, she still didn't really meet his gaze.

"I've been busy," she finally said. It wasn't said coldly, but there was some distance in her voice.

It was also the truth. He could hear it in how she said it.

There was an awkward silence between them for a good long while as she knelt there, holding the cloth to his face. Eventually, he felt weird just staring at her and his gaze wandered around the little clearing.

"Practicing?"

"Pretty much."

Awkward silence again.

"That was really impressive," he offered. "The way you threw that." Another awkward pause. "At my face."

"It was sloppy," Astrid said in an honest appraisal of herself. "You surprised me."

There was some more of that wonderful awkward silence.

Finally, she said, "I think it's scabbing up already. You might even get a cool scar out of it. You should probably go home and clean it. You can keep the cloth."

She left the cloth to Hiccup, and stood up to go pull her axe out of the tree. Hiccup climbed to his feet, holding the cloth to his face, and for a moment, he stood there, watching her, trying to think of something to say, trying to think of just the right thing to say to get her talking to him again, but she raised both her eyebrows at him.

"You really should go." She frowned when he kept standing there slack-jawed. "I don't like people watching me practice."

Hiccup knew without asking that it was because she didn't like people to see when she messed up, just like it bothered her when they were all younger and she messed up a tumble or a flip in front of them all.

He struggled for a moment, trying to figure out something, anything, he could say that would make her want him to stay, but he couldn't actually think of anything particularly compelling.

So he turned to go, leaving the silence behind him, wondering if he'd lost something important or if he'd never had it in the first place.