Hitchups: Axed

Chapter 2: Axed

Hiccup leaned his back against Toothless, curling into the body heat and allowing the sounds of his surroundings to soothe his uneasy mind. Crickets, owl hoots, and the occasional wolf-howl played a vibrato to the background noise of Highland winds and popping kindle. The moderate fire he constructed flickered sharply against the blue-black setting, further augmenting the hypnotic effect.

After a lengthy, aerial trek—nearly a full-day fly to the south of Berk—Hiccup found himself stretched out under the stars on an uncharted island. He knew he would not have to worry about being immediately followed—it could be days for a ship to reach their point, what with the numerous low-hanging crags and rock stacks acting as obstacles.

And that was if the Hooligans knew where to look in the first place. Flying was hard mode of travel to track.

Fed, warm and waiting only for the pull of sleep to take him in, Hiccup had nothing to occupy his mind other than reflection.

He had been accepted as a Viking among his tribe—everything he had worked for since he first recognized an anomaly within himself—only to have it taken prematurely. All of it: the gratification, the prestige, the option of actually becoming chief...gone. Granted, it was built on falsehoods and deception, but at least people were listening to him. At least people looked at him and saw potential. That was all he needed to get his feet off the ground, anyway. Soon people would take his inventions seriously, they would see him at face value and accept what he was, despite not being brawny and boorish, and they would listen to his alternatives to fighting...

Or not. In all honesty, it was too soon to tell how far his newfound fame would have gotten him. None of it mattered at this point anyway. He left. He made his choice. There was no point in reminiscing on what could have been.

Then, without prompting, Hiccup thought of his father—of the pride he heard in his voice. The boy could not remember a time when he'd heard that tone...a tone he'd waited to be directed at him for years and years. He felt as though he was given a taste of utopia before having it cruelly snatched away from him. He was taunted with the phantasm of what his relationship should have been with his father, had he only been born right.

Emotion welled; not just at his own loss but also at the subjugation and scrutiny his father would endure because of him.

"I hope my Dad's okay."

Toothless lifted his head and the great reptile's eyes flashed in the bright moonlight. Through forces unknown, Hiccup could completely understand the dragon's mindset.

"He's not that bad. He's, really, a good guy...he's just...the chief, you know? He's so Viking that he couldn't possibly understand someone who's..." Hiccup paused to look down at himself, "Uh, not so-Viking. Which is why its good only Vikings really live this far north...and for his own son to be, well, like me, must have been hard. I know he probably had a rough time facing other tribes and seeing their perfect heirs..."

Bitterness had crept into his voice before he could stop it and he only just recognized it.

"Sorry," Hiccup muttered, rubbing a hand over his face. The part that hurt the most, more than leaving his father childless, more than smothering that far-but-bright glint of a possible future on Berk, was the cold, unarguable truth that everyone's lives would be better now that he was out of them. His father could focus on running the village and Snotlout was the obvious next heir (there was a good chance he would have taken over anyway). Hiccup wouldn't be around for Astrid to hate, or the twins to pull pranks on, and there were tons of candidates who would be a better apprentice in the smithy than he was...

"I made the right choice," he whispered to himself and he found confidence in making the announcement. Toothless chuffed against his hair, morally backing him.

Hiccup smiled.

"So where do you want to go?" he asked, brushing several strands of dislodged hair from his eyes.

The dragon whirred and directed his triangular head southeast, according to the stars.

"That way, huh?" Hiccup asked, more for conformation, pointing with his arm in the same direction Toothless looked. "Yeah…that's heading towards Jutland. Hey, if we keep heading in that direction we should eventually reach Miklagard. I heard it's the largest city ever built! They have this really big wall to keep Vikings from sailing in there, but that won't be a problem for us, will it buddy?"

Toothless crooned his agreement, almost absentmindedly, and motioned towards the axe that Hiccup decided to drag along seconds before their departure. The weapon lay amongst Hiccup's meager belongings, its blade gleaming in the quivering firelight, majestic and mocking.

The dragon did not like that axe for many reasons—the first of which being that it belonged to the awful girl who hurt his sweet boy (who in their right mind would try to hurt Hiccup? It would be like kicking dragon eggs!). The second being that it was one more sharp object just waiting for a chance mishap with Hiccup. Not that Hiccup was a walking disaster as his people seemed apt to believe; Toothless had seen Hiccup move and run and play with grace only seen in dragons.

Lastly, it implied that He was not enough protection for Hiccup—which he was.

Hiccup, for his part, felt a sudden and inadvertent need to defend himself from the dragon's stare.

"Hey, don't judge me! I just couldn't leave it there!"

You could have.

"It would be a waste to have a perfectly good blade destroyed by the elements."

She would have returned for it.

"Okay—maybe I wanted to piss her off a little."

Toothless cocked his head to the side.

"It's just..." Hiccup ran his hand through his hair in a gesture of frustration. "It's just that I had this whole "escape plan" sort of formulated. You see I left a note for my dad, basically playing up my inability to fit in. I sort of hinted that I had been outsmarting the dragons rather than defeating them...and I mentioned how I simply could NOT kill a dragon—which also played into my 'not-fitting-in'—and that I'm choosing the life of an outcast." He sighed, breaking off from his babbling. "Look—what I'm trying to say is that I tried to make it look like a self-exile...whereas Astrid finding out my true reasons for leaving and tattling—oh come on, you know she did! You saw her!—will make me look like a traitor. Which, I am, I guess...I just wanted my dad to feel more disappointment than betrayal about this."

The Night Fury lowered his head to the ground and moaned with sympathy for his human. Eyes trained on the fire, Hiccup inattentively reached over and scratched the scales just over Toothless' left eye.

"Maybe it's unfair of me to pin all my anger on Astrid...but she didn't even give me a chance to explain. No curiosity or sense of judgment told her to hear me out; she was just a mindless slave to the Viking code. If she had just waited a few moments—listened for a bit—she would have seen...she could have realized...

"And now everything is so messed up."

Toothless realized Hiccup was getting upset again when he stopped scratching to muss his hair up some more. Deciding to take the situation into his own claws, Toothless shifted his weight to curl his heavy tail across Hiccup's lap, further encasing the human in warmth.

Troubled as he was, Hiccup couldn't help but smile.

"I guess I should sleep on this, shouldn't I, Bud?"

Toothless gurgled shortly.

"And then we'll head out first thing tomorrow. I don't know what I'd do without you," Hiccup yawned, just then realizing how his emotional day physically drained him. "You keep me sane..."

Watching as the thin, human eyelids slipped closed, Toothless accepted this as Hiccup's bid goodnight. The dragon remained awake for much longer than his human, his ears twitching at every sound in protectiveness bordering on paranoia, all the while sending the inert axe looks of the deepest loathing.

######## ########

When Stoick entered his home it was for the purpose of escaping the questioning stares of his people, the accusing glower of that girl, and to enjoy the comfort of his favorite chair while he waited for his son to return and sort things out. He had not expected to find a letter that would both terrify and agitate him, driving him to order Astrid Hofferson to take a number of his warriors to search for clues at this cove she spoke of.

"Self exile..." Stoick muttered, scanning the letter for the hundredth time; it was formal, tersely worded, and addressed to "the Chief" — not to "father", though the writing was unmistakably Hiccup's. In it spoke of Hiccup's inability to embrace the Viking lifestyle and the overall benefit for both parties of his leaving.

His boy had not even signed his family name "Haddock", let alone the "III". Just "Hiccup".

Self-imposed exile indeed.

Stoick's eyes lingered on phrases such as "used methods to give the illusion of taking down dragons" (meaning tricks) and "renounced any birthrights" (meaning quitting), trying to make sense of it all. He had not seen this coming; Hiccup would have spoken to him first if it were simply a feeling of displacement. Exile was a serious thing, after all. Anyone who held a grudge against the boy would now be entitled to kill him on sight.

No, Hiccup was smarter than that, there had to be more to it.

However, if the reason for his absence were of another nature, a more sinister nature...

Stoick shook his head. It couldn't be—not his Hiccup. He was far too innocent and frank to engage in deceitful ventures.

Although...young Astrid mentioned Raven Point, and a Night Fury of all creatures. While it could have been a coincidence on either point—

"Stoick!" a deep voice boomed from the other side of his home's door, accompanied by heaving banging. Recognizing it as his brother, Stoick quickly wrenched the door open, seeing Spitelout and Hoark looking remorseful.

"Well?" Stoick prompted impatiently. "What'd yeh find?"

He would have known himself had he gone with them, but after finding the letter Stoick's legs felt unusually unsteady. He tried to conjure the illusion that he simply was confident enough in a reasonable misunderstanding to not go. He had a feeling his brother could see right through that farce if his stark-white knuckles gripping the door were any reflection of his complexion.

Hoark stepped forward and held out a handful of perfect and gleaming black dragon scales.

"They were everywhere," Hoark reported. "Undeniably dragon, and none we've ever seen. They definitely match that of the girl's description of a Night Fury."

Stoick opened his mouth to give his old friend an angry thrashing for even suggesting the wild story was true when Spitelout cut in.

"There was evidence of human habitation as well. A scorched campfire with burnt kindle, sharpened sticks, several footprints and body prints—some barely even a day old...and not all of which were human. And the human prints...the size...well, there's just no getting around it."

Spitelout spoke in an unusually slow, low voice, as though he were trying to soothe the chief as he simultaneously delivered such incriminating evidence about Stoick's son.

The chief of the Hairy Hooligan tribe could feel his entire world crumble. A certain sort of misery he had not felt since his wife died resurfaced, a misery of isolation and loss. A child's wild story he could discredit, but only a fool would refute the hard proof in Hoark's hand and Spitelout's expert tracking skills. And no fool had ever made a half-decent chief.

His title of chieftain was now the only thing he had left in his life. He had no family, no heir, but he had his tribe.

"Chief," Hoark tried after a long moment of silence on Stoick's part, "the evidence is overwhelming...what the Hofferson girl said about your son—"

Stoick crushed the letter in his hand.

"I have no son," he hashed out in a strangled undertone. Hiccup had betrayed them; the letter was a ruse, an excuse a devil-sympathizer used to escape having to kill one.

Stoick felt an unusual sort of passion ignite within him. He was angry, hurt, and still fighting off the natural pull of denial. Admitting his only son had gone rogue in the worst sort of fashion was no simple task, and throwing himself into his chieftain duties would be his only way to ease his troubled heart and mind. It was familiar, and it was a comfort.

He wanted to hit something, to tear it apart and to commit grisly kills. The dragons would pay for enchanting his son away from him, and he looked forward to the next raid. Unfortunately, the ice would be setting in within the next couple of months and leaving on another empowered Nest-excursion was unwise.

Come spring, the dragons wouldn't know what hit them.

######## ########

The village had learned of what transpired before the next morning sun could fully separate from the horizon.

Stoick the Vast's son was in league with the dragons. That sentence in itself should have been enough to induce a heart attack on the village elder— but once the prospect was carefully considered, it really wasn't surprising that Hiccup the Useless would find a way to turn himself against their village.

The majority of the consensus declared "good riddance", with a healthy dose of sympathy for their chief.

Several villagers agreed they had seen it coming, that the boy was touched by the hand of Loki himself and doomed to bring misfortune.

Some villagers, particularly his former classmates, were in varying states of dubiety.

Fishlegs seemed heartbroken, crushed that someone who he looked up to for several weeks would betray them. Seeing Hiccup's rise to fame gave the nerdy Viking hope that one day he too could impress the village. Learning that it was a fluke destroyed the boy's cautious optimism.

Ruffnut was too focused on Astrid's actions to belie Hiccup for his.

"What I can't believe is that you would see a dragon—a Night Fury of all things—with a saddle on and not try to ride it," she argued for the umpteenth time.

"Why would I ever want to ride a dragon?" Astrid snarled back, looking close to striking the other blonde. "It's disgusting, disgraceful. I kill dragons, I like killing dragons—love it—I don't ride them!"

"There was a saddle already on the friggen' dragon! That's practically a sign from Odin saying 'Hey! Ride me!'"

"I'd rather ride a Roman horse!"

"Sacrilege!"

Tuffnut felt at a loss to see his sister fighting with someone other than himself.

Snotlout was caught between outrage and glee. While he was one of the last in his class to be impressed by Hiccup—second only to Astrid, who never fawned over Hiccup, and finding his cousin's success suspicious for most of their training—he eventually joined the masses in their admiration for the boy's effective handling of the beasts. That hiccup had chosen their side was a bit of a slap in the face for everyone—and Snotlout did not take kindly to being upstaged by posers.

At the same time, he was now next in line to be chief and the most eligible suitor for Astrid—provided she didn't get married off before he became of-age. Other than a bruised pride, Hiccup's decision to ride off into the sunset on the back of a Night Fury provided more pros than cons as far as he was concerned.

Astrid was pleased overall—aside from constantly having to defend herself from the psycho Thorson twin. She had her reputation back while getting rid of her competition at the same time.

Sometimes, when she would see the chief's disparaging scowls he tried to hide, or the empty spot at the Mead Hall where Hiccup used to sit, she would question her brash actions. Any and all feelings of doubt would be dealt with quickly and swiftly, in the same manner she handled everything else in her life. In the end, she knew she made the right decision. Vikings were upfront, no-nonsense people. It was how they kept their government from falling corrupt. Allowing Hiccup to continue his charade would only begin the plague of lies and deceit that had destroyed countless cultures before. This was her way of preserving the peace. Nothing to feel ashamed of, at all.

Besides, she could never forgive him for stealing her axe.