This part comes right after the last scene in the previous chapter, where Hiccup is training the children with their dragons.

Thank you to all those who participated in the multimedia-reading experiment.

Berkian Eddur - 1

Becoming Lífþrasir

Day 3

Afternoon

Hiccup dragged himself to Gobber's forge, leaning slightly on Toothless, who was making disapproving little croons, which started them off on a grunt-verbal spar that made Hiccup look mad in everyone's eyes except his dragon's.

And he wasn't even winning.

"I am seriously not bailing out on him, so stop the hairy eyeballing," he said, narrowly avoiding a whack with a wing-tip. "You know, I'm not quite convinced that you give a damn, save making sure the fish-giving doesn't stop, seeing as you keep insisting on inflicting bodily harm." Toothless promptly proceeded to laugh at him, and whack him a good one on the bum.

Arriving at the forge to find it empty was a surprise, as Gobber had said he needed help with something. It must not have been unattended for long; the coal was still running hot enough to swelter the air, despite the open side. Hiccup took his helmet off, wiping the sweat on his brow and feeling the exhaustion creeping in, wishing Gobber would come soon so they could get some work in and he could go to sleep, early, after he was done with the second part of the new recruits' lesson. This was only his third night on Berk, and he was already feeling three years older.

What he really needed was a rag of snow. Hiccup often used a snow-soaked rag when he wanted to get himself going again, even if only for a jot of time. He began to look around, Toothless giving him a hand, but they didn't find any. The trapdoor up into the small attic Gobber didn't fit in had been barred closed, so they couldn't be there anymore. Gobber used to keep a wealth of rags in the smithy – they were good to clean newly made weapons, not to mention, good to slap against a sleepy apprentice's face after being dunked in snow. Hiccup supposed Gobber had made him some sort of masochist by tradition.

Reluctantly, Hiccup moved towards the tiny back room he used to occupy. He had avoided that room since he'd returned, not only because he didn't want to see what had been done to one of his only havens on Berk, but he also didn't want to remember that particular conversation with his father. It felt utterly strange to have to stoop down to go in, especially when he remembered passing through the door with a good gap above the top of him. It was pitch black in there, so he fished around until he found a candle.

"Give me some light, bud?" he asked his friend, who promptly supplied just the right flame to light the candle without burning Hiccup's face off. He smiled at the dragon, who butted his belly with his black head. The control Toothless had with his fire was something Hiccup would someday have with his smithing hammer; it was a personal goal.

Any thought of personal achievement left him when he turned back towards the room. Oh, he found the rags, alright. They were neatly piled in a corner, on two smallish – by Viking standards – stools as soon as you crawled into the room. The ones Hiccup used to use in fact. Hiccup wasn't prepared for the rest of what he found.

His desk was still here. The sketches and the larger prototypes he'd hidden in the far corner of the attic and under a loose floorboard in the smithy were strewn not only on the desk, but all over the room. Hiccup lit some more candles, looking around open-mouthed at his workshop, which looked almost as if he hadn't left at all. Toothless followed him in curiously, neck craning as he couldn't come in beyond his wings, then whined as he nosed a hanging piece of leather which had yesterday been on a wooden knob outside.

And with a jolt, he recognised it. It was his old apron, the one he'd flung on a hundred times, during a normal calm day, during a raid, during a sleepless night of planning and painstaking smiting on one of his projects. More of his work and prototypes – and some things that almost seemed to be Gobber's attempts to bring his blueprints to shape – were pinned all over the sides, strewn on tables and shelves that were new. Nailed to the wall above his desk, Hiccup recognised his own handwriting. The letter he'd left for Gobber was the centrepiece, surrounded by all his best sketches and blueprints. Gobber had written five words underneath Hiccup's own in his rough, uneven hand.

Make it up to him.

Hiccup touched the bottom of the letter incredulously, lifting it slightly off the wall to give it a better look. He had to be seeing things.

"Oi, get your hands OFF that!" Hiccup jumped and turned to see the smith trying to shoulder his way in, despite the dragon in the way. "Who told you that you could go in there, ya stupid piece of du- …"

Gobber stopped mid-sentence, looking at Hiccup with the same slack-jaw that Hiccup seemed to have developed. The younger smith didn't quite comprehend why at first.

"Hiccup?"

Something cold and terrified ran up Hiccup's spine. His eyes went wide, and he slapped his own face when he realised that he hadn't put his helmet back on in his quest to find the stupid rags. He looked at Gobber in total panic, and realised too late that he should have just acted confused, and now he'd given himself away.

"Sons of Odin and Frigga, it's really ye…"

Before Hiccup or Toothless could react, Gobber managed to somehow squeeze himself into the room and engulf Hiccup in a hug.

"Praise Thor and Asgard, yer really alive and well," Gobber muttered into his shoulder – shoulder! Hiccup couldn't remember a time when Gobber hadn't towered over him, but though he was certainly broader, there was no denying that Gobber didn't reach his nose. Still, damn the man had a grip. Hiccup couldn't wriggle out no matter how he tried until the older man let him go long enough to slap his shoulders and give him a light shake. "Look at you, you've grown like a weed! Still thin as one, but you've got strength in those arms if the smithy's any witness! Oh, boy, look at you!"

Beaming up at him through his moustache, the old smith looked happy enough to burst, and Hiccup found himself smiling back with some gladness, and simply surrendered and returned the hug. Gobber proceeded to squash him until Hiccup had to slap his back or choke. Toothless kept making curious croons and trying to nudge his way in, causing Gobber to back away slightly.

"Can't believe it, still can't believe it, my boy Hiccup, all grown, hopping onto dragons and leading a small army into battle. Ha ha!"

"Gobber," Hiccup finally said, some of his happiness at Gobber's enthusiastic reaction to his identity dampening. "Keep it down!"

"Whatever for!" the other Viking said, face still split in a grin. "All 'a Berk should know! This is news worth the Hall's caskets of the best mead – oh, wait till yer father finds ou" –

"No!"

The smithy went quiet. A raincloud let loose above them, so that the sudden pitter-patter filled the silence. Gobber's smile slowly faltered and fell off his lips into a questioning look. Hiccup swallowed.

"Look, Gobber, I'm glad to see you too. Very glad; so glad you'll never know how much, but …"

"Bu` …?" Gobber asked leadingly, and already Hiccup could hear the palpable disappointment in his voice, and see a very distinct shadow in his eyes that had never been in merry smith's face before. Guilt was added in spades to the feelings Hiccup associated with Berk.

"I don't want anyone else to know." Gobber opened his mouth right away, but Hiccup cut him off. "Please, Gobber. They can't know they're following the direction of 'Hiccup the Useless'. If even one of them starts protesting, we'll waste precious time. If they go back to the council, we could waste days, and we don't have days. The village needs to be prepared when this thing comes, and even I don't know how long we have. Please, Gobber."

"Hiccup…" a sigh, "At least yer father, Hiccup, he should know" –

"No Gobber, him most of all!" Hiccup said, dread forcing him to stop the other man before he could finish that sentence. At the smith's look, he went on, "telling him will be like telling everyone. He'll plough through things, ask questions later, ignore who he topples and what plans he squashes on the way. And … he won't listen, not to me." He swallowed a lump. "He never has, and if you take off the helmet and the debt the village has, all that's left is 'Hiccup the Useless'." He swallowed more sharply because his throat was closing. "Again."

The pitter-patter took over the smithy again, along with Toothless's more insistent crooning and the hissing of the coals as water droplets randomly splashed the hotter parts of the smithy's interior. While Toothless somehow managed to wiggle himself into the tiny room with them, Gobber looked at Hiccup with an expression the young smith couldn't decipher. There was just too much going on behind his eyes for Hiccup to read, until the older man's only hand came up to cup Hiccup's face.

"You were ne'er Hiccup 'the useless' to me, lad," he said fondly, and Hiccup finally gave in, and let himself be hugged to within an inch of his life as he buried his leaking eyes in the man's shoulder. "I've missed ye, lad. Missed yer constant prattle keeping me sane, and the inventions, and someone to give me my 'ands and …. I've missed you, lad."

Something inside Hiccup welled sharply, and then eased into a soothed throbbing. At least someone, one person, had missed him.

"Promise, Gobber." It came out choked, but somehow it didn't matter, because it was Gobber. "Will you promise on your anvil?"

"Ah, lad, you drive a hard bargain," Gobber replied, and Hiccup pushed away to look at him. The older man ran a hand down his face, rubbing his knotted moustache, before nodding resignedly. "I promise, just on one condition." A look that was almost shy. "Don't you disappear on me like that again, aye? You'll send word, wherever you are?"

"Unless I'm in Asgard or in Hel's realm, and even then I'll try," Hiccup laughed with relief. Gobber slapped his back, and Toothless nudged him for nearly toppling Hiccup over.

"Oi, you have to tell me everything about this big boy of yours," Gobber said with a snigger, looking at Toothless with something akin to fondness now. Hiccup's mouth twitched into a happy smile, a lightness in his chest he'd forgotten how to feel a long time ago, so he dragged two stools, closed the door, and told Gobber everything.

=0=

Shorter than usual, perhaps, but I'm sure most of you will agree that Gobber deserved his own little niche.

And again, most of you guessed that Gobber would be the one who would find him out first; it makes logical sense. Despite Stoick being his father, he paid little attention to Hiccup that wasn't deep apprehension for his well-being, or anger and frustration at his messes. Astrid and the teens were his peers, but though Astrid was more observant than the others, it is still Gobber who was closest to the boy.

I do love Gobber. Very, very much so. There will be none of that ridiculous reduction of him into a stupid bufoon that happened in 'Viking for Hire' here. I'm beginning to detest that TV show for making stupidity look entertaining at lovely characters' expense, like Gobber and the twins, and sacrificing continuity on the alter of 'big bad dragon of the week'.

(PS: No, the letter to Gobber shall remain between these two. I wrote it, but deleted it. No words are profound enough, or touching enough, to bring the amount of emotion Gobber or Hiccup must have felt. Like this, each individual reader's version is as valid as the other; it is the emotions that are important, not the words).