Chapter Text
He woke with the distinct feeling that something was wrong, as always.
His head felt like that time when he had banged it during the swimming tournament-achy, throbbing and absolutely gods-awful.
But it wasn’t that. There were no bodies radiating warmth beside him, no calming heartbeats.
He was alone.
Over the past year or so he had never slept alone- his dragons had never left his side. So, clearly, the conclusion he jumped to the second he was fully awake was that something was wrong.
He shot up, or rather tried to and flopped again against… a bed. Which was even worse because he couldn’t remember how he got there. His leg pounded and he felt like he had been run over by a wagon.
Now, a reasonable person would have tried to pull themselves together, remember and stayed calm.
Hiccup however immediately stumbled to his feet, crashed into a table and to the floor, taking quite a few things with him, which perfectly executed his goal of not attracting attention under any circ*mstances.
He winced and attempted to stand again, wobbling like a newborn deer.
He certainly looked the part: in the past few months he had grown quite a lot, but not eaten enough to keep up with it. Still, in comparison to any other Viking he had remained a tiny thing.
The whole ordeal sent a stab of pain through his leg.
Judging from the feeling, someone had stitched it- he wasn’t sure how much time had passed, but judging by the constant throbbing, it hadn’t been enough.
His shoulder on the other hand felt vastly better- just slightly tense.
Scratch. Scratch. SCRATCH.
He turned around and found himself facing a door. A door from which, very audibly, came a scratching sound.
It sounded like something a cat would do.
Or a very little, very spoiled dragon.
Of course, when he wrenched it open, he found said little spoiled dragon sitting in front of it, looking all proud.
„H-Hiccup!“, he squeaked. „T-Toothless is h-here.“
„I can see that“, Hiccup croaked, stopped in his tracks for a moment before he snatched the little dragon and hugged him against his chest.
„E-ew. P-put Toothless d-d-down“, he protested, although he was only struggling half-heartedly in the boy’s grip.
Hiccup laughed as relief flooded him and he cradled the dragon like the big baby he was. “Sure, sure”, he finally said when Toothless started squirming and let him crawl onto his shoulder.
The movement made him slightly dizzy, like the world was misplaced below his feet.
He noted he was wearing things that did not belong to him. The thought that he had stayed unconscious during that quickly sobered him up.
“Do you know where we are?”
Toothless huffed.
“O-o-old weird la-lady’s h-house. W-with w-weird o-other dragons. B-but Toothless didn’t b-bite h-her be-cause Wodensfang s-said I couldn’t.” He seemed rather dissatisfied with that.
“W-wodensfang also t-told me to w-watch out. Because he is i-investing-gating. B-but it’s a-a SECRET.”
“Is that so? And Windwalker?”
Hiccup eyed the dark room ahead of them and decided that getting out would be the most reasonable action. He currently had none of his weapons or his fire suit, and it felt unsettling. Like they had stripped him of his second skin.
“T-they are with o-other dragons. T-theres a-a lot.”
Hiccup frowned. He had just found them and now he had again not much of an idea where they were. And that either meant that they felt safe enough- or that they had been separated.
“A lot?” He asked and limped around the house’s fireplace, laying his hand upon the heavy wooden door.
“A LOT”, Toothless repeated.
Hiccup forced the door open to a very bright and very cloudless winter day.
And Toothless was right.
Riding the strong cold winds were dragons, all across the island they could see perfectly from the ridiculously high spot the hut was on. More than the average number a viking village would keep around, all soaring free and unchained.
“Oh”, Hiccup breathed, the wind whipping around him, turning his face to the sky.
He hadn’t seen something like this since the war. He hadn’t had the hope to expect to ever see it again.
Fly-of-the-Storm apparently hadn’t been lying when she told him the humans here were friends of dragons. He recognized only a few of the species, but many he did not. Just how far were they from home?
He turned and almost FELL off the porch.
Next to him, perfectly silent, stood the old woman Toothless had mentioned, scrutinizing him.
She was rather short, with gray hair and clad in fur- the strong winds didn’t seem to bother her.
“O-old lady!”, Toothless crowed unnecessarily directly into Hiccup’s ear.
She looked like she had been sitting there for a while, holding a bone staff, surrounded by other little dragons Hiccup couldn’t quite place. They reminded him of Toothless, but their heads were too round and they also babbled in that rough dragonese accent Fly-of-the-Storm had.
Hiccup clutched at his chest, letting out a little OOF. “I’m sorry, I didn’t see you”, he said very politely for someone who just got almost scared to death.
She raised her brows and slammed her staff onto the wooden planks.
Hiccup flinched unwillingly, smiling nervously. Toothless hissed.
“Well I’m just- going to…”
The woman extended a pair of boots towards him, pointing at his feet, then at the beginnings of a very long stair that presumably led down.
“Thank you?”, he asked, taking the boots, wobbling as he tried to get them on. As soon as he was done, the woman pointed at the stairs again, petting one of her little dragons.
Hiccup shuffled towards the edge of the platform and peered down.
It was very, very high.
“C-crazy lady”, Toothless grumbled.
Hiccup gulped, then began his clumsy descent.
His leg still throbbed, slowing him down. He did not dare to actually look at the ground. The wind tugged at his many layers as he stiffly clambered down.
How did that old woman even get down?
He was a little off-kilter despite Toothless’ counterweight on his shoulder, and the snow made the wood rather slippery.
He almost missed a step not far from the ground, his injured leg uncoordinated and he yelped, before catching himself and finally reaching the snowy ground.
He tried calming his breath and then followed the path into the village.
The houses reminded him of ships, a little different from home but still vaguely familiar and very colorful amongst the white of the snow.
Toothless stretched crawling under his tunic and curling up above his heart. “T-t-tired.”
Hiccup sighed.
His stomach roiled, if from anxiety or hunger, he couldn’t tell.
MAYBE walking around after suffering an injury to his leg wasn’t the best idea, but Hiccup was pretty sure that it was better than staying up there with the old woman.
Also, he was bound to find out something out here.
Now that Toothless had decided sleep was his priority, he might as well try making sense out of the muddled mess- blurry, half aware pain and fear. He was pretty sure he had elbowed the rider.
He hoped he hadn’t turned someone else against him now.
The last time he managed to do that with someone in these parts his leg had almost been severed by a dragon trap. He was mostly just glad that he and not Windwalker had stepped into it.
His companion already had enough of a limp and decidedly, had been through enough for a lifetime.
He was ripped from his thoughts upon seeing a young man saddling his dragon. It was a great day to take flight today- his heart ached when he thought about the last time flight had felt exhilarating instead of terrifying.
Curiosity made him stop. He hadn’t seen a dragon like it before- then again, that was almost always the case here.
It was red, with large protruding teeth and wavy spikes on its back. Still, its rider seemed to have found a way to ride it, with the saddle on its neck. Hiccup wondered whether the weight could cause pain.
Then again, the dragon didn’t seem like it would tolerate it if that were the case, grumbling at its rider.
The rider Hiccup did not recognize either, until he heard his voice.
It was the one from the group that had been at the dragon trapper camp. He looked short and compact, like a brick, and appeared to be arguing with his dragon (rather one-sidedly, Hiccup noted).
That was, until the dragon noticed Hiccup awkwardly standing in the middle of the village path, watching them.
“Small dragon human”, he huffed.
Hiccup froze, begging for the rider not to notice him, too. Begging that his hair actually COVERED the dragonmark this time.
The rider did, turning around and looking decently surprised that someone had been watching him make a commotion.
“Oh well. If it isn’t the Wildfang kid”, he said. “What are you doing out and about?”
“Walking”, Hiccup answered stupidly.
He kept staring.
The rider crossed his arms. “Never seen a Monstrous Nightmare before kid?”
A Monstrous Nightmare. He was pretty sure they were supposed to be… smaller?
“No”, he lied.
The rider grinned. “This is Hookfang. Impressive, isn’t he? Best flight partner there is.”
Hookfang didn’t look like he wanted to fly.
Hookfang, a Monstrous Nightmare. Toothless, the other rider’s dragon. Hiccup felt like he had been spun around thirty times and then been told everything he knew was wrong.
“What’s your name then? The rider asked, scratching Hookfang’s neck.
“H-hrafnar”, Hiccup blurted out, fiddling with the ends of his sleeves.
“The Wanderer.”
He could feel his ears growing hot- he waited for the rider to point at him and scream “LIAR!”
Instead he said: “I’m Snotlout Jorgenson.”
Hiccup hated it. It felt impossible. But then again, this Island was also named Berk- and then again, he never knew the past.
Because this island was Old Berk, and people with the same traditions tend to have similar names.
But Hiccup had lived on because of his paranoia in the past year. So instead of making that connection like before-him perhaps would have, he turned around and limped away as fast as he could.
“HEY!”, Snotlout called after him. “WHAT’S WRONG WITH MY NAME?”
Hiccup ignored him until he was out of sight.
Exhaustion and fear pumped through his veins. He wasn’t sure which would win, but he was absolutely sure that his hands were numb.
He was going to be absolutely pragmatic about this. Calm. But his breaths were flat and ragged- still, he told himself all the same, he had to stay calm.
He had no idea what he was doing, actually. He had told himself he had a plan, but truly he was just lost in a strange place far from home.
He walked further and heard the noise of a hammer hitting metal.
The blacksmith shop was near a cliff- the wind hit Hiccup full force, finally knocking sense back into him, but making him shiver. The snow had clumped in the fur of his boots and old hand-me-downs that were slightly too big couldn’t hold off the cold too well. Only Toothless radiated warmth above his heart.
It had a sign with a tooth and was open at the front. The air was so warm it felt like it was burning his face after all the cold.
It smelled of leather and iron and other things he couldn’t quite place.
The hammering had stopped- the owner, a large blond man had gone over to stamp holes into leather with something attached to where his hand should have been.
Now, dear reader, you should imagine exactly what the blacksmith saw when he looked up in that moment- a shivering boy that looked like Hel had personally run him over standing in front of his shop.
A boy who very much matched the description of the bad-omen-dragon child that had been apparently destroying ships, freckled, with a very unremarkable face.
The blacksmith waved at him.
“Hallo. I have yer sword. Come here.”
Hiccup took a careful, small step in and then glanced around.
“I’m the blacksmith here, but I also make saddles and look at the dragon’s teeth. But let me tell you”, he stood up and retrieved the sword, “I don’t handle things like these often, laddie. T’is a very grim but beautiful thing.”
It was the sword Hiccup had stolen. Its scabbard and hilt were a beautiful, mossy green. Sigrænn, evergreen like the giant moss that grew in the Archipelago.
“It’s not mine”, he uttered. “It was a hunter’s.”
“Well, it’s yers now. Better like that. Can’t have these idioter possessing something like this.” The blacksmith held it out to him.
“My name is Gobber. What’s yers?” He asked as Hiccup hesitantly reached towards the sword.
It was long and heavy, almost a reassuring weight in his palms, but different from his own, his own that now was in the hands of Alvin.
It was a hand-and-a-half sword instead of a one-hander, and much fancier, something that was usually passed down through families.
“Hrafnar”, Hiccup answered softly, torn between awe at the sword and the realization that this man had the same name as his former teacher.
He swallowed.
“I wanted to ask… I’ve been to another place called Berk once, further north. They had similar names there.”
“That’s because this is Old Berk, laddie. You probably came across new. But that’s a long way from here. How did ye get here?”
Hiccup tried to not let his relief show- no the gods hadn’t cursed him with another strange thing, he was perfectly sane.
“I’m a Wanderer. I’ve lost my friends and was searching for them.”
Gobber nodded, as if it made absolute sense that a teenager would put such a distance behind him just to find his friends.
“Well, yer a brave one. But are ye suppose to be walking around just yet?”
“Well actually no”, another voice deadpanned, “But I imagine Gothi didn’t stop you.”
The other rider with a dragon named Toothless leaned against a table. “I never knew it was so easy to lose someone here.”
