As soon as they set down in the cove Toothless came bounding up to greet him. "Hey bud," Hiccup said, tumbling off Stormfly's back. Toothless darted forward and caught him with his head. Sharpshot squawked and flew off to perch in a nearby tree. Toothless warbled happily and nuzzled his rider as well as he could in their current position.
"I missed you too," Hiccup laughed. "Now put me down, I'm going to try and put your tail together." Toothless chirped and lowered the scrawny Viking to the ground, then bounded around in excitement as Hiccup made his way over to a convenient rock.
Fishlegs patted Meatlug, then made his way over to join his friend, stopping to pick up scales as he went. Meatlug shuffled over to Snotlout and Hookfang. The rest of the dragons had been content with a quick sniff and nuzzle the night before to assure themselves of Snotlout's survival. Meatlug, however, was a particularly gentle and caring soul, and had only gotten more kindhearted after she had laid a clutch and become a mother.
Hookfang growled at her when she got close, but she just chuffed at him softly and continued her approach. She sniffed Snotlout from boots to helmet, then circled him, eying him over the entire time.
"I'm fine," Snotlout said, shuffling awkwardly under the Gronkle's scrutiny. Meatlug crooned at him worriedly as she came around to stare into his eyes. "Really," Snotlout insisted, by this point exasperated with everybody's overprotective worry, but unwilling to snap at Meatlug and her earnest concern. The Gronkle gently nuzzled his cheek, then turned her attention to Hookfang.
Astrid gave Stormfly a quick hug and seemed to steel herself before marching over to her friend. "Snotlout can we talk?"
Snotlout looked bewildered and a bit wary at her sudden seriousness; not five minutes earlier they'd all been laughing and screaming in reckless happiness. "Uh, sure," he said, sounding unsure. With a firm nod, Astrid grabbed his wrist and began tugging him around to the other side of the lake.
Hookfang did not like that. The Monstrous Nightmare had been hovering anxiously over his rider and was not inclined to stop any time soon. As soon as Snotlout and Astrid got out of range of his wings the firedrake got up to follow them.
Meatlug stopped him with a chuff. Hookfang growled and made to ignore her, but she moved in front of him and chuffed again, pointedly. The Nightmare snarled at her angrily, then hissed when she didn't flinch back. Meatlug took a step closer, looked him in the eyes, and crooned.
Hookfang jerked back like he'd been struck, then flared out his wings and roared, lighting himself on fire. Fishlegs shot to his feet from where he'd been sitting on Hiccup's impromptu crafting rock, and the scrawny blacksmith barely managed to snag his wrist before he could throw himself between the two dragons. The burly scholar shot Hiccup an incredulous look, but reluctantly trusted their leader's instincts when he just shook his head.
Halfway around the lake Astrid and Snotlout both jumped and spun around at the sound of the Nightmare's roar. "Hooky?" Snotlout called out worriedly, taking a couple of steps back towards his dragon.
Hookfang's eyes flicked up towards his rider, but his attention was drawn back down to the Gronkle when she shuffled closer. He snarled and took a step back, then lashed his tail angrily when he realized he was backed against the side of the cove. Meatlug crooned again and got close enough that the heat from Hookfang's fire coat must have been uncomfortable, then laid down in the smoldering grass. Hookfang let out one last half-hearted snarl, but Meatlug only gave a soft, gentle huff. The Monstrous Nightmare let out a long whine as his fire coat went out, then buried his head against the Gronkle's flank.
"Oh," Fishlegs said softly, relaxing out of his tense and wary stance. Seeing that he wasn't going to try and interfere, Hiccup let go of his friend's arm. Across the lake, Hiccup could see Astrid and Snotlout slip out of their own battle-ready positions. The twins, who had jumped up at the commotion, went back to quietly conspiring under a tree.
"Poor Hookfang," Fishlegs muttered as he lowered himself back down onto the rock. The dragon in question had pressed himself against Meatlug's side. The Gronkle gave off the low rumbling sound that was her version of a purr. "We were all panicking so much, we still are a bit, but Hookfang's his dragon…" Fishlegs trailed off. Hiccup nodded in agreement and reached out to pull Toothless into a hug. The bond between dragon and rider was indescribably wonderful and sacred. Hiccup couldn't even imagine the pain of it breaking.
Hookfang's head snaked up and he looked over at his rider. Snotlout noticed and waved. Reassured, Hookfang buried his snout under the Gronkle's chin. Meatlug did her very best to drape one of her short, stubby wings over her larger friend.
Fishlegs let out a long breath and leaned down to pick up the leatherworking tools he'd dropped when he jumped to his feet. Hiccup let go of Toothless so he could continue to attach the metal ribs of the tailfin to the main control shaft. He wanted to have the fin's skeleton assembled before cutting the leather so he could triple check his measurements.
"We're going to need a plan," Fishlegs said grimly as he unrolled a sheet of sturdy hide.
"Well, I wanted to try and come up with one last night," Hiccup said flatly, "but I was overruled."
"You know that's not what I meant," Fishlegs said, but his lip twitched up in the barest hint of a smile, so Hiccup counted it as a success.
"Our first priority has to be the Red Death," Hiccup said as he laid the now assembled tailfin skeleton over his sketch on the leather. "There will never be peace between Vikings and dragons while she lives. Besides, a lot of our later problems are too far away to even think about tackling without the Edge." He smudged out a line a drew a new one a quarter inch further out, then leaned back to study his work.
"But not all of them," Fishlegs said darkly, eyes far away as he unconsciously rubbed his hand over his arm.
"No," Hiccup said, voice equally dark. "Not all of them." He turned away from the fin to meet his friend's eyes. "But they'll come to us. Until we start to interfere, they'll be predictable. And we'll be ready for them."
"Yeah," Fishlegs said. He took a deep breath to steady himself and chuckled. "The twins will be happy. You know how much they like traps."
Hiccup grinned. "They'll never know what hit them." The twins were a special kind of devious. No one the riders had ever fought could match the sheer chaos of their plots.
Hiccup went back to work on the tailfin while Fishlegs began to crush a handful of Night Fury scales into a fine powder.
They worked in silence for a few moments, Fishlegs fiddling nervously with the makeshift mortar and pestle while Hiccup carefully cut out the fin. Fishlegs kept his entire focus on his task until his current batch of scales had been reduced to a very, very fine powder. He stared blankly at the tools in his lap for a couple more heartbeats, before speaking rather suddenly as he turned back to Hiccup.
"He was dead." Realizing how blunt, unexpected, and generally awful that statement was, Fishlegs blushed and looked down to fiddle with the mortar and pestle before setting them aside. Hiccup put the tailfin down and moved to sit next to his friend, worry tightening his brow. "It just didn't hit me until now. I mean, yeah, I saw the wound, and knew he couldn't survive it, and then he st-stopped … he stopped breathing, but then everything got weird and five minutes later he was fine. We do that a lot you know, get captured or injured or lost or trapped, then barely escape because of some crazy weirdness. But this wasn't like that, he wasn't just hurt or a prisoner. He was … h-he was gone, j-just like…"
Fishlegs trailed off with a sob, and Hiccup wrapped his arms around him. The larger Viking buried his face in Hiccup's shoulder as he began to cry in earnest. Hiccup winced when he felt his ribs creak from Fishlegs' hug, but he made no move to push him away.
Hiccup looked up and met Tuffnut's worried eyes over Fishlegs' shoulder. The twins, now liberally smeared with dirt, had stopped messing about with their pile of sticks and stones when they noticed their friend's distress. They both frowned and tilted their heads in sync.
Is he okay? Can we help?
Hiccup shook his head and tightened his grip on Fishlegs' shoulders.
I've got him.
They looked at each other, then turned back to him and nodded. Ruffnut tugged her brother's sleeve and the two went back to evilly shoving pebbles around on mounds of dirt.
Once Fishlegs' sobs began to subside, Hiccup pulled back enough to see his face. "They're back," he said. "They're all back. It's going to be okay."
"We'll make it okay," Fishlegs said with conviction and determination that would have surprised those that didn't know him well. "No matter what."
Hiccup nodded in solemn agreement. "No matter what."
The somber atmosphere was broken with by outraged yell. Apparently, Snotlout had said something Snotloutish, as Hiccup saw Astrid manage to punch the shorter Viking in the shoulder as he attempted to run away. Hiccup smiled, glad that everything was back to normal between the two. Yeah, they were going to be okay.
No matter what.
oOoOoOo
Snotlout let out a breath of relief when he realized he wasn't going to have to go break up a dragon fight without his fireproof pants. Hookfang gave him a worried look, so he wiggled his fingers in a wave. Reassured, Hookfang went back to cuddling with Meatlug.
Well, Fishlegs' girly dragon was cuddling. Hookfang was clearly doing something a lot like cuddling, but manlier and more warriorlike. Obviously.
Astrid pulled his attention away from the dragons with a tug at his sleeve. He tilted his head at her questioningly, but she shook her head and walked further around the lake. She looked worried and upset, and now he was getting worried because it took a lot to properly worry Astrid. He looked around suspiciously, searching for dragon hunter assassins, Ragnarök, or mortally wounded friends. He couldn't find the threat. The birds were chirping, the twins were plotting, and the nerds were nerding. The only thing not normal for a dragon rider day at the cove was the not-cuddling going on with Hookfang and Meatlug. He turned back to Astrid, and she was giving him a look.
"What?" he asked. She stopped walking and took a deep breath, and Snotlout was horrified to see tears in her eyes. Astrid was the toughest of them all, she didn't cry. Whatever was going on, it was clearly beyond even a Screaming Death level threat.
"I'm sorry," she said roughly.
"What?" Snotlout asked again, baffled.
"I'm sorry," Astrid repeated. "I'm sorry I got you killed."
The memory of falling and pain, painpainsomuchpain, and darkness rose up unbidden, and Snotlout quickly shoved it back into a deep dark hole where it belonged. Then he processed what she said and was even more confused. How was that her fault, and what did it have to do with whatever horrible thing had made her cry?
He gave her another baffled look. "Dragon hunters got me killed."
She forcefully strangled a sob and dashed a tear off her cheek. Remembering one of only three times he'd seen her cry like this, without murderous rage behind it, he gave their friends and dragons another quick once over. Nobody was missing any limbs. Hiccup even had one extra.
"I should have stopped it," Astrid said.
Snotlout felt a sudden jolt of dread when he realized it was worse than dragon hunter assassins or a Screaming Death. It was feelings.
"How could you have stopped it? There were a ton of dragon hunters, and you were shot," he said.
"I shouldn't have left your wing," she answered.
Snotlout quickly realized that Astrid was not as good at ignoring any and all emotions as he was. It was just as well, as the thought of his friends doing that made Snotlout uncomfortable in a way he very firmly ignored. So he sighed, reached into the deep dark hole, and got very serious.
"Remember Gustav?" he asked. He didn't wait for an answer. "I hated that kid. Sent him to patrol an empty island. It was out of the way enough I wouldn't have to deal with him, and safe enough the distance wouldn't be a problem. Except it wasn't safe enough and he died."
"That wasn't your fault," Astrid argued. "If it hadn't been for that traitor…"
"I would have still been a horrible Marshal that sent one of his soldiers to an empty island in the middle of nowhere to get rid of him," Snotlout cut her off. "If it hadn't been for the dragon hunter ambush screwing up everything, you would have done nothing wrong."
"Snotlout," she said, and now she looked worried again, for a different reason. Worried about him.
"I'm fine," he said. "I'm better. I made myself be better. It's just," he shook his head, and looked at her. "Do you really think I'd blame you?"
She grabbed his hand and twisted their forearms against each other, pulling him into a warrior's embrace. She tilted her shoulders back to keep from stabbing him with the spikes on her shoulder guards, and he made sure not to hit her with his studded armguards as they pounded each other on the back. He took a minute to just exist there, pressed up against his shieldsister, and thought about all the horrible things that were but weren't anymore. He let the memory of dying, painfeardark, press against his skull, and reminded himself that he was alive now and it was okay.
Then he felt his eyes grow wet and remembered that he really hated feelings. So he loosened his grip on Astrid and got ready to run.
"So you know," he started, waggling his eyebrows preemptively as he had no intention of sticking around after he said his piece. "Actual fifteen-year-old me would have loved this, what with, you know…" and he shoved his chest against hers.
Although he started to run before she even processed what he said, he was still too slow to dodge her punch.
oOoOoOo
Gobber was not an idiot.
Having calmed his panic somewhat, Gobber continued to think over the surreal training session as he made his way through the Great Hall. There were inconsistencies there. Even if he ignored the entire part with the dragons, things didn't match up. He headed towards a somewhat secluded table in the corner of the Hall, stopping at the main bar to grab a mug of ale along the way.
"Hey Gobber, how did dragon training go?" Ak asked as he served himself a plate nearby.
Gobber grabbed a mug of ale, chugged the whole thing in one go, and slammed it back onto the counter.
"That bad huh," Ak said sympathetically. Gobber only grunted in response before grabbing a second mug and continuing on his way. He settled down in the corner of the Hall and cast his mind back to the events of a couple hours ago.
He'd known something was wrong from the second the trainees had entered the arena. Although Stoick might be too bullheaded to see it, Gobber had always known the other teens weren't kind to his apprentice. Hiccup had always possessed a nervous energy and used biting sarcasm as a shield, and it only got worse in the presence of his peers. The boy possessed no confidence, and his desperate attempts to prove himself had led to the near destruction of the village on more than one occasion.
Gobber had been surprised when Hiccup had been the first one into the arena, and at first he had assumed that the other teens had shoved him ahead so they could watch him get thrown around by a dragon. However, that idea had been thrown on its head when the others showed up right behind hiccup, marching in formation of all things. And if that wasn't strange enough, it was clear they were all following Hiccup.
The entire group had been strangely quiet. He had hoped that the teens might act a bit more serious as they started dragon training, but he hadn't expected much. He'd expected Snotlout and the twins at least to be their usual loud selves, but all six of them had been silent as they gathered around the Gronkle's cage…
… And wasn't that strange, that they somehow knew which pen to go to. He supposed they could have asked an older Viking which dragon Gobber was most likely to start with, but how did they know which cage held the Gronkle? No one was allowed in the arena until they started dragon training, and the kind of dragon held in each cage changed as easily as blood was spilt.
They'd been angry. That much was obvious. Fists clenched, teeth grinding, glaring at the world kind of angry. Gobber hadn't thought much of it at the time, they were about to learn how to kill their tribe's worst enemies after all, but now that he thought back on it Gobber could see the wrongness. When Vikings were angry, they yelled and shouted and beat things up. If they didn't have a convenient target to kill, they would pace like a caged animal, sling insults or weapons amongst each other, or break their knuckles against a handy boulder.
Their anger had been cold. It was the kind of anger he usually only saw in the eyes of war veterans, Vikings that had fought against things worse than dragons alone. It was the kind of anger he saw in Gothi when she scribbled about a cowardly blockade in her youth that prevented Berk from getting medical supplies, in Phlegma when she spoke of how her young son was killed by pirates, in Stoick when he recounted the treachery of Drago Bludvist. It made no sense for that cold anger to be present in the eyes of a bunch of teenagers who'd been shielded from anything worse than the occasional dragon raid. Oddly enough, the trainees had actually settled down once the dragons…
Gobber took a gulp of ale and shook his head before his mind could go too far down that rabbit hole. He needed to think things through before he got too drunk to remember his own name.
None of the teens had shown the proper emotion at the prospect of proving their worth against a Nightmare in front of the village. If anything, they'd seemed upset. In fact the Jorgenson boy looked almost sick…
Gobber choked on his ale. The boy had been upset about killing the Monstrous Nightmare, the same dragon he'd ended up riding out of the arena, before Hiccup had proved it could be trained! That meant that he'd known ahead of time that he'd be riding a dragon, and had already picked his out. In fact, he'd already had a name for the beast while being eaten and thrown in the air. And if Hiccup actually told that loudmouth a secret, then chances are they all knew.
The whole thing was staged!
It was all planned out from the moment he let the Gronkle free! Snotlout had been there to slow him down as soon as he realized Hiccup was in danger. Once he got rid of him, Fishlegs had been there to stop him again. Then Astrid, who Gobber had believed to be a rather sensible lass, had stepped in. They had all had arguments, perfectly timed with the situation, almost scripted. The Ingerman lad, who Gobber knew as rather book-obsessed and a bit of a coward, had been far too fast to go up to the beast if the whole thing was unexpected.
Then, before Gobber could recover from the shock of it, the Nightmare had been set loose. The twins had disappeared earlier, but they were in the perfect place to carry out that fiasco. Now that he thought about it, none of the teens had been worried when the dragon tried to eat Spitelout's idiot son. If anything, they'd been exasperated, annoyed at worst. He'd been too stunned to notice at the time, but looking back it was beyond obvious the boy had been lying.
His attention was then immediately diverted from what he now suspected was the weak link in their plan. The Hoffersons' daughter, who he'd pegged as the most likely to succeed in dragon training, had walked up to the Nadder as confident as a bear fishing in a shallow pool. She'd made perfect arguments in the dragon's favor, and spoke of its dangers with respect and admiration.
The twins and the Zippleback had pulled his attention away from Astrid, though he had been careful not to show her beastie his back. He wondered if their destructiveness was another weak point in the plan. Astrid was certainly more logical, and more credible to boot. The twins, as always, were more interested in attacking each other than anything else.
Gobber ran over that though again. There was something wrong with it. Then he realized he was completely focused on the twins' chaos. The dragon hadn't done anything particularly terrible after the first explosion. In fact, it had stopped the twins from getting more violent. The twins who instantly stopped fighting at a few words from Hiccup, when their own mother was incapable of controlling them for more than five minutes.
That was another thing. His apprentice wasn't acting like the apprentice he knew. None of the teens were acting like they were supposed to, but he knew Hiccup best. The boy in the arena had been too confident, too commanding. When the boy had had his hand on the Gronkle's snout he'd sounded so much like Stoick it'd broken Gobber out of his protective rage.
Not only that, but the others had listened. They'd clearly been following Hiccup when they came into the arena. The Ingerman boy immediately moved to the Gronkle at Hiccup's call. The twins had stopped arguing on his word, and Gobber couldn't help but wonder if they'd started on his orders as well. Gobber had been distracted long enough for him to grab the Terrible Terror after all.
And what was going on between his apprentice and Astrid? As far as he knew, Hiccup wasn't even able to talk to her in complete sentences. If he didn't know better, he would have said the two were flirting in the arena!
Whatever was going on, Gobber would have answers.
After he had a few more drinks.