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Chapter Text

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Hiccup would've said he was in the middle of a relatively nice dream if it wasn't interrupted by a deafening roar followed by a bright orange flash that promptly caused him to forget about it.

He sat up straight from the borderline splintering wooden frame of his bed and heaved in shocked breaths.

He just couldn't catch a break, could he?

Even after only having been awake for not more than a few seconds, Hiccup immediately knows what had awoken him. Which meant he could also guess the reasoning behind the screaming and clashing of weaponry that could be heard outside.

Hiccup hopes he is wrong, though. That perhaps maybe some of the villagers of the tribe decided to host a spontaneous early morning feast that consisted of large bonfires and mock sparring between good friends.

"Please don't be dragons, please don't be dragons." He mumbles to himself, swinging his legs onto the floor before making his way down the steep stairs and towards the front door.

He prayed to any listening god to grant him just a little bit of luck this one time. But maybe that was too much to ask for because once he reached the other end of his house and began pulling open the door, the white-hot flame of a Deadly Nadder strikes a few feet in front of him. And if the near-blinding light didn't scare him enough to slam the door shut again, the painful amount of heat that hits his face from the blast did the trick.

Of course, it's dragons. It is always dragons. They don't care that Hiccup hasn't had a full night of sleep for weeks, whether that's because of an actual attack or having to help rebuild the village after one. All they seem to care about is stealing their food and burning down their houses.

As Hiccup pants quietly and leans against the door, he hears the flapping of strong wings get further away until it mixes with the surrounding sounds of battle. He lets out a trembling breath and sags his shoulders in momentary relief before taking in the area in front of him.

The light from the moon is dim as it peeks through the cracks and open spaces between the windows, indicating that the night is reaching its end and will soon bleed into morning. Despite this though, it still manages to illuminate the space revealing the main living area of his home with the extinguished hearth in the center, an empty wooden table on one side and his father's artfully carved chair on the other, and what appears to be his hastily vacated bed at the far end hidden in the corner.

Another flash of orange lights the space again and finally causes Hiccup to react. He dives for his brown woolen boots he'd left by the entrance last night and reopens the door that now thankfully leads to a dragon-less staircase angling down to the heat of the battle.

The noise is louder out here. He can clearly hear the varying roars and screeches of several dragons as they seem to dip into and out of existence with the help of the darkness of the morning, sending attacks down towards the hundreds of battle-ready and hollering vikings below. It's an absolute mess.

And he has to go down there.

Pushing back the fear he can feel climbing up this throat, Hiccup begins his descent down the stone staircase while attempting to put his boots on at the same time. Which results in him clumsily hopping the steps and almost tumbling to his death numerous times. But once he manages to get both shoes on successfully, he races down the rest of the way and joins the fray at the bottom.

Villagers in all different kinds of metal armor and thick clothing race by and around him, their eyes locked on the writhing sky of flame and scales. Hiccup tries his best to dodge and move out of the way, but even the most evasive viking would struggle weaving through the rush around him. And he is far from the most evasive viking, almost like the exact opposite.

"Who the hell let you out, boyo?"

"Get back inside!"

"Gods, yeur gonna get yeurself killed!"

Hiccup isn't new to the insults, especially on nights like these when the battle is hot and violent. It used to hurt knowing his peers thought so little of him in terms of self-defense, and just about everything else too, but Jack had helped him learn to not take it to heart. Though, it was still difficult at times.

At the thought of his childhood best friend, he reminds himself of their plan for tonight and the first step towards it is to wake up that sleepyhead. After eighteen years of living with Berk's fire-y pest problem, Jack had learned to sleep through the raids without a stir. How he did it, Hiccup has no idea since he always got woken up by the screeching despite him having been through the same amount of them as his brunette-haired friend.

Just another thing that Hamingja refused to give him. Awesome.

Instead of going further down that road of self pity, Hiccup busies himself with making his way towards where he knew the Bennett's house was. Dodging and jumping out of the way as he ran, not always avoiding the occasional knockout with another viking where they would pick him up like he weighed nothing and put him back on his feet before racing back into battle.

Luckily, he didn't have to think too hard about where his feet were leading him to, having taken this path almost everyday of his life. Jack and him had been attached at the hip since he first found out what the word friend meant, having done remotely everything together from playing pretend on the beach behind Jack's house all the way to becoming the outcasts of the village.

It didn't take a genius to figure out why the two boys had been bullied and put down by their peers once they had become old enough to start helping out around the village. They were smaller than the other kids and never interested in training with weaponry or the glory of battle. Instead of joining in the sparring matches others would set up, Hiccup and Jack spent their time lost deep in the woods trying to catch trolls and spot fairies. And even when Hiccup would begin to doubt they would ever find one, Jack's stories of them would inspire him to keep searching. And they would, despite no one ever understanding why.

It was the reason they get along so well. That no matter what anyone thinks of them, the boys always believed in and were there for each other. Without Jack, Hiccup has no idea where he would be. Probably yearning to be friends with the group of losers that was the water brigade, except Emily of course. Jack's sister got a pass.

Coincidentally, that's the first person he sees when he enters the Bennett's home. Emily Bennett's dark brown hair is tied into a braid that looks very similar to a blonde haired viking girl that she trains under, but she swears there's no relation. She adjusts her leather armor as she runs by him standing in the doorway. It's a top piece that covers her shoulder and wraps around her chest underneath her opposite arm before clasping in the front, the material matching the braces around her forearms. Underneath it all lies a simple light brown, quarter-sleeved tunic that reaches down to her knees which are covered by dark brown pants. A pouch belt is secured around her waist causing the whole look to appear more dress-like.

Emily is the closest the Bennett family has to a viking child, and she plays the part well as she secures a freshly polished axe onto her back. She then turns to shout across the room of hurried bodies to her younger brother, asking about her misplaced daggers.

The boy in question claims he doesn't know as he tightens his belt around a similar tunic to his sister that is less flared and has longer sleeves. Though, Jamie Bennett's pants were black and mostly covered by knee high leather boots. The hair that he continuously keeps blowing out of his face as he looks down matches the shade of his siblings with a few small braids hidden within it.

Hiccup thinks of Jamie like the brother he never had, and he knows the younger boy adores it even when he attempts to play it cool.

"Hiccup!" A weight is thrown against him and arms are wrapped around his shoulders, "It's so good to see you! Gosh, I feel like it's been forever."

Hiccup immediately knows who it is and automatically returns the hug with the shorter woman, chuckling, "Tooth, I was here just last night."

Toothiana Bennett releases him at this and lightly hits him on the chest, "You know what I mean! You know you're always welcome."

The freckled boy smiles at this, because he does know.

Jack's mother never fails to tell him this every time he visits, making it her sole duty to provide Hiccup with a second home if he ever needs it. Which he usually does given his relationship with his father and absent mother.

Though she didn't mean to, the dark-skinned woman in front of him has become a mother figure to him. Being there for both him and all the Bennett siblings when she was needed and giving all the love she could to them. She was truly a great mom, and Hiccup could not be more glad she brought Jack in that day he washed up on shore.

Just like her wayward family, Toothiana stands out from her viking peers. Her long brunette hair is crowned by a leather strap that dangles a various array of colorful feathers from it. She wears a bright ankle-length dress with arms of damp yellow, a bodice of sage green, and a skirt of amber orange. Along with her strange choice of clothing, she also has the odd job of being the tribe's dentist. Removing and replacing teeth as well as giving gifts to the children who brought the ones they lost, teaching them responsibility and that it's normal for them to fall out.

Hiccup believes her to be the sweetest woman he's ever met.

Her warm gaze is removed from him when Emily picks Jamie up to search for her missing daggers on his person. Toothiana is quick to separate the two and help her daughter in her search, bidding Hiccup a short goodbye.

Now that Hiccup's presence had been acknowledged, though, he is quick to receive many greetings from the rest of the Bennetts, save for Jack, of course. And, once free from his older sister's wrath, Jamie runs up to give him a hug of his own before dragging him further into the room.

"Don't just linger, you creep, Jack's in his room. I have no idea how he sleeps through this!" Jamie whines, letting go of Hiccup's arm in favor of pointing to a door at the back of the room.

"Why do I always have to wake the beast?" Hiccup playfully complains, his fingers coming up to rub at his eyes. He knows Jack isn't actually a problem when he's woken up, but he definitely isn't a morning person either.

"Cause you're the only one he actually bloody listens to." The voice comes from the side where Jamie isn't and Hiccup jumps, snapping his head to look at the new addition to the conversation.

Beside him, looking disappointedly at Jack's bedroom door that he's surely snoring behind, is Toothiana's husband and the father of the Bennett siblings. Bunnymund Bennett stands a head taller than Hiccup with long gray hair pulled into a bun at his nape and long sideburns. He wears a long medium-gray tunic that falls past his knees with matching side slits on either side stopping near the waist, dark gray pants worn beneath. His long sleeves covered the tattooed arms hiding beneath that he'd received from a distant tribe he was no longer apart of. He almost looked out-of-place within his strange family if it wasn't for the twin boomerangs hanging from his thick leather belt that contained intricate engravings that Hiccup couldn't even begin to pick out even if he had hours to look. Or if Bunnymund ever decided to leave them lying around, which he never did.

"I guess there's that." Hiccup quips causing the oldest and youngest Bennett boys to laugh before the former raises a hand to ruffle auburn hair.

"Enough dilly-dallying, go get 'im up and head to the forge," Bunnymund pleads, heading back to his wife with what he's sure is to help find Emily's daggers and taking a disappointed Jamie along with him, "I'm sure Gobba's waitin' for ya."

Hiccup groans at this, dreading his shift of repairing weapons and standing near molten hot metal for hours on end. That is, until he remembers him and Jack's plan they had created for the next dragon raid. Suddenly, he is much more eager to wake up the brunette.

Taking the few last steps through the house, Hiccup reaches Jack's door. On its surface are various paintings and carvings that all the Bennett's, including Hiccup, have added to throughout the years. He knows without looking that there are similar ones decorating the other bedroom doors as well, adding to the lively-ness of the home. Some of the villagers think the family as too eccentric, but Hiccup finds it endearing that they enjoy expressing themselves so loudly despite the looks they sometimes get. Nothing is ever boring if the Bennett's are involved, and it's something Hiccup loves most about the family.

He finally reaches out and takes hold of the door's cool handle, pulling it back to reveal a dimly lit bedroom caused by the closed window to Hiccup's right. Shelves scatter the walls holding all different types of items: books, wooden carvings, hung up cloaks, a viking helmet Jack's never worn, and spare pieces of armor. A desk is built into the wall on the opposite side of the window where Jack's drawings and written stories are thrown about completely unorganized along with two daggers that look suspiciously like the ones Emily is looking for.

Hiccup chuckles and rolls his eyes at his best friend's tendency to borrow things and forget to give them back. Classic Jack.

In the center of the room pushed up against the back wall is a bed with a snoring Jack hanging off the edge and at its side, a wooden bow staff rests against the wall. Hiccup approaches it and picks it up, admiring his gift to Jack. The brunette had never been interested in training with any actual weapon when he first started defensive training with his father's second-in-command, Nicholas St. North. Opting, instead, to use a long hooked stick he'd found in the woods once. Unfortunately, it continued to break causing Jack to go searching in the forest for another every couple of weeks. So, Hiccup snuck into the forage one night before Jack's birthday and crafted him a bow staff that he reinforced with metal, added a iron grip in the middle, and carved in images of snowflakes along the wood.

Jack had loved it and it hadn't left his side since, becoming increasingly skilled with it thanks to North's training. It left a warm feeling in Hiccup's chest knowing Jack carries a part of Hiccup every where he goes.

He then takes the staff and throws it onto Jack's sleeping form, hardily hitting him in the stomach. The reaction is immediate with hazel eyes springing open and pale hands flying to the offended area. The shifting of weight causes the brunette to lose his position on the edge of the bed and tumble onto the floor, resulting in a loud thump and a laugh from Hiccup.

"Huh?" Grumbles from the heap on the floor and Hiccup's stomach hurts from how hard he's cackling.

"Gods, you're such an ass." Jack states as he glares at his friend from below, bed-head poking up in every direction. "Why can't you just wake me up like a normal person instead of violently attacking me?"

Hiccup takes this opportunity to crouch down to where the other's head lays on the floor, looking down at his upside-down face. Even if he sounds pissed, Jack's expression reveals differently by the way his eyes are showing his crow's feet and the smile slowly creeping onto his lips.

"Neither of us are normal people, now come on," Hiccup stands before helping Jack to his feet. "Gobber's going to kill us if we don't at least make an appearance."

Once Jack is standing again, he pulls Hiccup in by the hand he offered until they're face-to-face, a sharp smirk gracing his features. Which is never a good sign in Hiccup's book, but it always means adventure is in his near future.

"Only an appearance, though. Cause we've got a dragon to shoot down." Jack says smoothly, morning voice now gone.

His smiles have always been contagious to Hiccup, so he isn't surprised when a determined grin of his own matches the one in front of him.

"Well, we better get going then."

Jack nods before letting Hiccup go and picking up a dark blue wrap cloak from a shelf and clipping it around his shoulders, the clasp sitting near his right. The three-quarters sleeved tunic he wears is a lighter shade of blue that falls slightly below his waist ending with a dark brown trim, darker brown pants beneath. Jack then reaches for another strip of clothing that hangs on the closest bedpost to them and wraps it around his waist before tying it off, letting the rest hang off to the side.

Hiccup bends down and picks up the discarded staff and points one end to Jack, which the boy grabs before slipping past him and out the open door. Hiccup isn't far behind as they walk through the now empty living space. He guesses Emily gave up on her search for the daggers or found an alternative, the thought sends a shiver up Hiccup's spine. Emily could be quite creative when it came to her weaponry given her family.

"Honestly, I'm glad they're already gone." Jack starts, bending over in front of Hiccup to put on his medium-high leather boots causing the auburn boy to avert his eyes suddenly. "Really not interested in Emily's disappointed looks this morning, or mom's pitying ones."

Hiccup rolls his eyes, "They love you Jack, don't say that." Though Hiccup finds himself relating, knowing he avoids his own father every chance he gets for the same reasons.

Jack stands straight again and they enter into the night, the fight just as lively as Hiccup had left it. To prove his point a Gronkle flutters multiple feet in front of them, lava oozing from it's slacked jaw as it goes. Both boys cringe slightly before going around the lazily flying dragon.

"I know they do. Weirdos." Jack jokes from in front of a chuckling Hiccup, leading the way to the forge.

The conversation falls away as the two of them focus on safely getting to their destination, avoiding attacking dragons and vikings alike. Jack is much better at it then Hiccup is, but they both manage the trip unscathed and they step into the heat of the blacksmith's shop.

"Bout' time you two showed up!" A heavily accented voice calls from deep within the smithy.

Hiccup could recognize that voice anywhere and he knows Jack could too.

The forge is a little wooden structure near the center of the village that holds all the basic requirements of weapon crafting. A hot hearth burns in the center and is surrounded by numerous shaping mechanisms, various metals hanging from the low ceiling, and drying leathers of all types. Its scent of molten iron permanently seared into his nostrils as he breathes it in. While not being the most appealing smell, it reminds Hiccup of hours of goofing around with Jack during the early days of his apprenticeship which makes it manageable.

"Don't be so uptight, Gobber my man." Jack says as he saunters ahead of Hiccup, lifting his staff to rattle the dangling equipment above him as he passes.

The large blonde viking limps around the corner at this and fixes a glare at the two of them, "The only thing that should be tight in here is yuer grip on these weapons as you sharpen them."

He emphasizes his point by dropping an array of axes, swords, and maces into Hiccup's arms. This sends the boy out of balance and forces him to lean against a nearby workbench to avoid fully collapsing onto the floor underneath a pile of sharp weapons.

Hiccup squints his eyes towards the chuckling brunette as menacingly as possible, which only results in more laughter. He then clumsily deposits the items in his arms onto the table he fell against and rights himself as Gobber continues.

"You lot know the drill," he says, hobbling to his vertical rotating conveyor of arm replacements to switch out his hook for a wooden hand carved to hold the hilt of a weapon, "Hiccup's on welding, Jackson's at the counter, and I'll sharpen these puppies 'nough to send even the nastiest of those beasts screaming for the hill tops."

Jack's face shifts to an expression of mock-seriousness before standing straight and hitting Gobber with a sharp salute. The blonde viking doesn’t give the Bennett another second of his energy though, as he simply pushes past him to resume the sword he was working on before they had entered.

Hiccup laughs as Jack wipes off his cloak in offense, but he melts into giggles almost immediately.

"Never a dull moment with that guy." The brunette sighs, twisting around to follow Hiccup to the front of the shop.

"Well you certainly don't make it easy for him." Hiccup responds as he lifts a leather apron from a hook on the wall and slides it over his head, tying it around his waist.

"Eh, I don't make it easy for anyone. He's not special." Jack pokes his friend lightly in the side then, causing Hiccup to huff before pushing him towards the closed window counter.

"Clearly." Hiccup grumbles as he watches Jack finally get to work, using his staff to slide off the lock at the top of the panels before pushing the flaps open to reveal the line already formed outside.

Once the other started to accept weapons in need of repairs and write down requests, Hiccup turns to his own station and gets to work.

The three of them quickly enter an efficient flow of order taking, metal shaping, and weapon sharpening before being returned to it's original owner. It's a rhythm they have near perfected over the years Gobber had been training them through raid after raid. Work within the forge was extremely quick-paced and highly demanding, especially when having to also deal with angry, battle-crazed vikings. At least Hiccup was good at one thing, he could proudly shape the hell out of any piece of metal.

"Oh great." Jack says suddenly, causing Hiccup to raise his head for the first time since they had started, which he guessed was a good amount of time given the shortness of the line in front of Jack now. Unfortunately, the brunette wasn't disappointed by the ending of the rush but rather the duo that could be seen passing by the window into the smithy.

Twin blonde vikings walk past in a way they most definitely think is cool but is anything but, swinging a large bucket of water between them. Ruffnut and Tuffnut Thorston chuckle meanly between them as they peek into the opening of the shop, spotting the two boys inside.

"You better sharpen those weapons quick before they sharpen you!" The boy, Tuffnut, shouts.

His sister laughs loud and nasally beside him, "Yeah! What he said."

They promptly clash their helmets together in celebration before stumbling slightly at the impact. The twins seem to recover quickly though, and they snicker as they begin to walk back into the night, clearly only having come this way to insult them.

"What does that even mean?" Hiccup asks exasperatedly, dragging his arm across his forehead to wipe away at the sweat that had gathered there.

Jack doesn't respond. Instead, he leans his staff against the counter in front of him before reaching beneath it to reveal a loose meteor hammer. Before Hiccup can stop him, the brunette bends around the remaining people in front of the window and chucks the throwing weapon directly towards the backs of the two Thorston's.

Hiccup isn't surprised when the weighted net hits it's desired mark around the legs of the twins and sends them toppling into each other before hitting the ground. Even though Jack couldn't properly swing an axe if it costed him his life, his aim was scarily accurate.

When the two Thorston's turn to their offender with wet hair and endless curses and insults, the brunette simply chuckles softly to himself before returning to his line of annoyed but slightly impressed vikings.

Hiccup takes a second to just watch his childhood best friend in the safety of the dark corner he was working in.

The other's brunette hair was far less messy than this morning, but now it had begun to stick to the dampness of his forehead. Hiccup could relate to the sweatiness of his friend, feeling his own sliding down the back of his neck in that moment. Despite the obvious heat Jack was experiencing, though, he still refused to lose any of his layers. The wrap cloak that the boy had placed on his shoulders earlier remained in place, but no one could convince him to rid himself of it. Not even Hiccup.

Jack had always defended him throughout the ups and downs, and they were mostly downs, of their lives. Just like he had just done with the twins, it was Jack's automatic response. Not a single thought went into fighting back and it left Hiccup feeling warmer than before, which he didn't think was possible due to the heat of the forge.

"Stop yuer starin', it's gettin' creepy." Gobber grumps as he limps past him, grabbing the newly repaired sword Hiccup had just finished. Hiccup nearly jumps out of his skin and quickly dismisses the accusation, rubbing at the hotness of his cheeks.

Luckily, Jack was too busy chatting up a bored-looking viking women to notice the exchange he just had or Hiccup knew Jack wouldn't let him live it down.

Before Hiccup could lose himself back into his work, a door to his far right slams open, hitting the wall attached to it. Within its wake enters the towering, wide-set frame of Nicholas North. Long, white beard adorned in braids and silver jewelry swaying against the deep red of a knee-length vest which covers his dark tan long-sleeve beneath.

"Gobber! Fiery morning, am I right?" His accent is thick, but undeniably jolly as he approaches his blonde friend. When passing by the two boys, Hiccup and Jack's eyes met. The annoyance toward his mentor clear within the hazel color across from him, causing Hiccup to cover a snort that escapes him with a cough.

"Couldn't describe it better myself! Issue with yeur swords?" Gobber greets, continuing to hold the edge of an axe against a fast-turning stone in front of him.

"A correct guess, my friend! Their sharpness is to be desired." North proves his point by taking the double swords out of the holsters on the thick belt around his waist and turning around to throw them across the room.

The identical weapons zip past Hiccup's wide eyes before finding their target into the far wood wall, one sticking on either side of Jack's head who had left his position at the counter to place the last couple orders onto the table for Hiccup.

"They seem pretty sharp to me..." Jack breathes out, visibly shaken as he ducks underneath a sword and remove himself from the shooting range.

Hiccup checks to make sure the other is alright as he approaches while North laughs heartily at the incident, "Apologies Jackson! Did not see you there! Must have overlooked you." He strides across the room to retrieve his swords before lifting to point one at each of the boys. "What doing in here, hm?" A white eyebrow raises in their direction.

While North is nowhere near as intimidating as Hiccup's own father, he still never fails to make him highly weary while he's around. Especially when he carelessly swings around his swords like he's doing now.

From beside him, Jack takes the tip of his finger and lowers the blade in front of him slowly by what should be the sharpest point. Luckily, North wasn't wrong when he complained about their dullness or Hiccup was sure the brunette would be bleeding.

"Well, you know, the usual. Fighting the front lines and saving babies, no biggie." Jack snarks, leaning against the hardened wood of his bow staff and gesturing briefly with his free hand.

North is hardly convinced as he lets out a dry chuckle, "You two? Front lines? A viking can dream." He turns then towards Gobber, who happily takes the offered swords and begins sharpening them against the spinning stone.

"Don't have to make it sound so outlandish." Hiccup mumbles.

A deafening roar then rattles the equipement around them and a flash of amber fire can be seen lighting up a faraway home. Hiccup can't help the cringe that seizes his features as the flying reptile flies further to continue pillaging more buildings, no amount of weaponry thrown at it stopping it's attack.

"It's the truth, laddie." Gobber speaks up finally, having made quick work of North's twin swords as he hobbles towards the man to return the weapons, "You fishbones don't stand a chance against that."

Hiccup can tell Jack is reaching his limit of receiving insults this morning if the stiffening of his posture is any indication. He goes to change the subject off of them when North surprises him, "Don't know til you try! Come, what's worst that can happen?"

The boy's gazes snap to each other then, not at all expecting this response from the chief's second-in-command.

Gobber seems to have similar thoughts, "Absolutely not! Neither of the two have any dragon training."

Jack looks about to speak up, most likely to plead their case, but the two older men decide that they don't get a say in their own futures when North speaks over him, "Pish posh, we need reinforcement out there!"

Hiccup ultimately loses hope of ever getting a word in when his father's two best friends begin heatedly debating on whether or not him and Jack would immediately get killed the second they tried to join the battle effort outside.

"Well, this is really reassuring." Jack says as he comes to stand closer to Hiccup, arms crossed with his staff wedged in between.

"Yeah, I really feel like they believe in us. Real validating." Hiccup quips back.

His friend's face turns towards him to cackle softly, Hiccup's own following along. This was another part of their friendship that the auburn-haired boy always treasured, their ability to find the humor in every situation despite it's direness. While it was mostly Jack keeping him out of the pits, Hiccup had picked up some of his own methods to lightening the mood.

A decision seems to be reached when Gobber walks between the two of them to remove the hand attachment he'd been using for weapon sharpening and replacing it with a large mace. One that Hiccup knows is his personal favorite for dragon raids.

"North and yuer father need backup, it's my time to shine!" The blonde viking hobbles back over to Jack's grinning mentor to slap him on the shoulder, "You youngin's stay put and hold down the fort."

Hiccup knows neither him or Jack are surprised at this outcome, but he also knows it doesn't hurt any less.

The brunette beside him swings his staff across the plane of his shoulders and lays his lanky arms over the wooden ends, "What happened to giving us a try? Come on Northy! Give us a shot, the dragons won't know what hit em'."

"Sorry Jackson." North smiles apologetically towards him before flipping his twin swords in his hands, "Next time, hm?" The two older vikings then disappear into the darkness of the morning with a final warning from Gobber to not try anything.

Though, that was exactly what they planned to do.

Jack turns to look at Hiccup and he isn't shocked at the devilish grin painting his sharp features when he knows a similar one is on his own lips. The situation they had hoped for tonight had finally come to pass, meaning that their plan could begin.

"So, where is she hiding?" Jack asks, dropping the bow staff from his shoulders to simply hold it in his hand.

Hiccup bites his bottom lip in excitement as he nods towards the direction of the back exit, "Behind the forge back there."

Jack laughs, an equal amount of zeal within it as he takes Hiccup by the shoulders and pushes him out the door he had just indicated.

The outside air is chilly as they leave, giving Hiccup a sense of relief from the heat as it cools the sweat on his exposed skin. The sounds of battle are still loud and active, but they're distant because of their position behind the large blacksmith building. It's seclusion from the main hussle and bussle of the village makes it the perfect spot for Hiccup and Jack's latest invention.

Once fully within the shadow the forge casts, Jack lets go of Hiccup to saunter towards a large object covered by a leather cloth flush against the back wall.

"This it?" He asks, poking at the tarp.

"Yup, just hope it works." Hiccup replies. He steps up beside his friend to take the covering by the corner and slide it off, revealing a massive wooden bolas launcher.

"Just as beautiful as I remember it being." Jack remarks, throwing his arm closest to Hiccup over his shoulders and gently knocking their heads together as if they were proudly gazing upon their child. Which, in a way, they were.

The past couple of weeks the two of them have spent hours brainstorming, building, collecting supplies, scouting shoot-off areas, and test-running the launcher for their outing tonight. The boys knew their abilities in combat were lackluster at best, resulting in their current standing with the village. But as they got older and finally hit the very-adult age of eighteen, the two realized that it couldn't stay that way forever. Especially with Hiccup being the chief's son and heir to the role, and Jack being from unknown origins and adopted into their ranks. They both needed to prove themselves before they were put on a boat and shipped off.

A tribe was only as strong as their weakest links, afterall.

"That Night Fury is no match." Jack's face is inches away from Hiccup's, so close he can feel the heat radiating off his almost-touching skin. His sunny hazel eyes are lit with determination Hiccup can't quite feel yet, cause yes, they have decided to take down a Night Fury of all things to prove their point. The least known and most evasive dragon species known to viking-kind. No one has seen one and lived to tell the tale and their dumbasses have set their targets on it.

"Does it really need to be a Night Fury? I feel like a Deadly Nadder would definitely show the tribe we're worth their time." Hiccup looks up into the dark sky above them, watching apprehensively at the occasional dragon that files at the outskirts of the battle below it.

Jack jabs his staff into Hiccup's stomach then, to either to bring his attention back to their conversation or chastise him for wanting to back out of the plan, he isn't entirely sure. But Jack's narrowed eyes seem to tell Hiccup that it's most likely both.

"Hiccy, come on! We agreed either go big or go the hell home. Where's that competitive spirit from a couple days ago, huh?" Jack's in front of Hiccup now, having released him after wrongfully physically assaulting him.

The auburn-haired boy sighs, "I'm finding it." He then gives the launcher a good long stare. Like perhaps if he looked at it long enough it would roll away and capture the Night Fury on it's own without them having to be right next to it if it fails.

"Gods! Aren't you supposed to be the Pride of Berk? Let's go!" Jack exclaims before grabbing the wooden handles and lifting the mechanism onto his wheels, pushing it forwards and into the night.

Hiccup watches the receding form of Jack's back for a couple of seconds while attempting to push down the feeling that what their about to do will heavily affect the rest of their lives. And as he finally gets his feet to race after his friend, he just hopes it's for the better.

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Chapter Text

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Despite the hours of battle that had passed during their time working the forge, the clanging of weapons and the screeches of dragons was still at its peak.

It had taken Jack and Hiccup longer than either would like to admit to push the large bola launcher around the outskirts of the fight that had stuck to the main areas of the village. They took turns hauling the mechanism towards the cliff face they had agreed on days before, even at times each taking a handle to propel it collectively. Though those moments usually ended with them running over toes or bumping into things, resulting in them worrying about an accidental early launch which they could not risk if they wanted any chance to catch this dragon.

Hiccup couldn't be certain on how much time it actually took them to reach their desired destination, but it was a relief to finally park the launcher where it needed to go, Jack beginning to set it for fire.

While the brunette worked, Hiccup takes the chance to look out over the steep drop-off of the cliff. Glancing down, he estimates about a twenty-foot drop into the denser part of Berk's forests with trees spanning for miles. The dragons were few and far between out here, the majority of them more focused on discovering where the tribe had hidden their livestock, but a spare Gronkle or two could be seen lazily buzzing in and out of the treeline.

"Okay, she should be ready to go now." Jack says from behind him. Hiccup turns back to see his friend crouched in the front of the launcher, wooden handles firmly gripped in his hands from the top. His staff is tucked safely into a sling fastened to his back and he smiles sharply towards Hiccup, waiting for his reaction.

The invention itself is a site to behold.

While Hiccup wasn't confident in much considering his stature, he was proud of him and Jack's ability to build and invent. The mechanism in front of him is made of smoothed Berkian wood and is held together with sturdy metal bindings they had to sneak into the forge to weld. Though it couldn't be seen from the outside, he knew that the functions within were precise and tediously arranged, with no thanks to Jack of course.

While it was true his friend helped him build and create the idea for it, the brunette's strengths weren't in fine-tuning and engineering. Thankfully, he made up for it with his aim which he was currently doing with one eye closed to search through the sky.

Hiccup squats beside Jack as he works on spotting their target, silence wrapping around them as they look.

Several moments pass before Hiccup decides to speak up, "Are we even sure it'll be out tonight? It doesn't always show up to these raids." He turns his face slightly to look at the boy beside him who is still aiming into the darkness.

Jack removes a hand from the handle closest to Hiccup to smack him lightly on the chest without ever looking away, "Don't think like that. If you don't believe it will happen, it won't. So let's start thinking tankard half full."

Hiccup rolls his eyes and opens his mouth to quip back when a ear-piercing screech unlike anything they'd heard that night echoes around them. Every muscle in his body tenses at the sound, automatically identifying it as the Night Fury they were looking for.

Hiccup snaps his attention back to the sky in time to see a rocketing dark mass dip from the night and shoot a flaming purple blast towards a nearby watchtower, effectively hitting its target and sending the structure into flames.

"There, Jack! It's right there!" Hiccup points at what is now obviously a sleek black dragon as it emerges from the smoke that had risen from the attack, wings outstretched to make a quick exit.

"Got it, Hic." Jack replies, annoyance clear in his tone, which is fair considering they're both looking from the same vantage point so Jack clearly sees the thing. But it doesn't seem to bother him too much as the brunette suddenly cracks the launcher to the right before triggering the mechanisms and firing a bola into the sky.

The kickback from the machine sends Jack spiraling onto his ass, but Hiccup pays him no mind, too concerned with watching the capturing weapon sail. He didn't risk to even breathe as he stares, even when he feels Jack quickly right himself and kneel beside him.

Then they hear it, the sound of something being wrapped in rope followed by an animalistic yelp of surprise.

"No fucking way." Jack whispers to Hiccup's right as the dragon they had just successfully hit barrels from its position in the sky and disappears into the treeline just past Raven's Point.

A wave of disbelief passes between them before Hiccup shoots to his feet and pumps a celebratory fist, "Oh gods! We shot down a Night Fury!" The shock and awe that courses through him is almost nauseating, and he can tell Jack is just as excited when he wraps his arms around Hiccup and sends them spinning.

"Great Odin, I cannot wait to see Snotlout's face!" Jack laughs out, finally putting Hiccup down before he made him sick. He instead places his hands at the sides of Hiccup's jaw and gently shakes him, a snow-colored smile at his lips.

Hiccup brings his hands up to take hold of Jack's wrap cloak to steady himself, but it ultimately sends the two of them onto the ground.

The breathless laughs of relief and excitement never stop as they fall, giggling beside each other. Hiccup can feel Jack's arm beneath his back and the other's knee is digging into his side, but neither of them care enough to move, too lost in the high of finally doing something right. Maybe even something that could change their lives for the better.

Suddenly, a heavy thud is heard behind them and Hiccup feels the blood drain from his face so quickly it leaves him dizzy. He meets Jack's eyes and sees a fear he can feel within his own chest, confirming what Hiccup already knows.

A dragon had found them.

A huff sounds from outside of Hiccup's vision before Jack is staring beyond him and dragging Hiccup onto his feet, removing his bow staff from his back holster in the process. When the brunette releases him, Hiccup finally has a chance to look at what they're up against and any positive outcome quickly becomes highly unlikely when a Monstrous Nightmare glares down at them.

It's large, red-scaled body is crouched several feet away from them but the distance slims with each step it takes, yellow eyes staring daggers into Hiccup's very being. A growl rumbles deep in it's throat at it approaches before releasing an angry roar. The light that erupts at the back of it's opened mouth kicks Hiccup into action and he wraps around Jack's lanky body, sending them onto the ground and behind the empty bola launcher.

Thankfully, it's enough to block a majority of the dragon's fire as it blankets around them and when Hiccup opens his eyes he's met with blackened, smoldering wood. And he knows that the next attack would give them the same fate.

Jack seems to also understand this as they both simultaneously bolt to their feet and race down the hill.

"Shit, shit, shit! Hiccup, it's right behind us!" Jack shouts from beside him, looking backwards from what Hiccup could tell from his peripheral. The roar that follows only proves his friend's statement for it feels like only feet behind them.

"I am aware!" Hiccup pants, pumping his arms harder in a desperate attempt to run faster.

Jack is working just as much to quicken his own speed as they sprint through the night, "Well, at least it's not on fire!"

Hiccup would groan if he had the breath to, of course the brunette would say something that would infinitely fuck their situation more if the gods decided to jinx them, which they tended to do.

And it really isn't too much of a surprise when a sweltering heat ignites at their backs.

"Why did you have to say that?" Hiccup is near breathless at this point, not daring to look backwards, knowing it could be the last thing he did.

Jack isn't able to respond when the dragon releases another angry roar and they run with all they have in them.

Together they sprint past burning houses, dragons and vikings mid-battle, and several exclamations of horror as they are hunted closely by one of the most dangerous dragons that appear during the raids. The stone path that appears beneath their feet signals they are entering the main hub of the village, which isn't ideal but it also means more people to help them chase off the flaming reptile behind them.

"Damnit!" Jack shouts before splitting away from Hiccup's side in order to avoid colliding into a pillar, resulting in the auburn-haired boy racing the opposite way to escape the same fate.

After rounding around the thick wooden pole, he watches as his friend darts behind one a few meters away and tucks himself out of sight. Being the only thing he can do, Hiccup follows suit and ducks into the back of another closest to him before squeezing his eyes shut and holding his breath.

Hiccup knows realistically this won't work since dragons have an incredible sense of smell and can track down remotely anything, but there was no way either of them could have kept on running. Hiding was now their only option.

Hiccup fears the worst as he hears the releasing of gas that comes moments before a blast of flames before the air around him lights up, fire spouting a line from his pillar to the one Jack chose. A couple more seconds and they would have been dead but the attack suddenly stops, followed by a wounded yelp.

A deep, guttural yell can be heard above every noise around him and it's familiarity sends his heart straight to his toes. A second strangled cry is preceded by the sound of something heavy smacking against scales. Hiccup slowly removes himself from the now charred pillar and steps back into the open.

In front of him is his father's massive back and a cowarded form of the Monstrous Nightmare that had been chasing him and Jack. Stoick takes another hard swing towards the dragon's face and it hits it squarely in the side of the skull, sending its head bouncing against the ground. The thing quickly recovers and unhinges his jaw to send another torrent of flames towards his father, but only a spurt of liquid fire is produced.

It realizes the fight is over when it watches his father's hammer lift to strike again and immediately launches back into the dawning sky, cutting it's losses and flying away with a deafening roar.

"And stay away, you nasty vermin!" Stoick shouts at the dragon's back.

He stands there for a second and Hiccup takes the chance to look back towards the other wooden pole that Jack had hid behind. The he was looking for brunette is standing a few feet away from where Hiccup had last seen him and when he sees his face it's looking slightly fearful towards his chief.

The relief that Hiccup feels for Jack being alright is short-lived for when he turns back towards his father, he is no longer alone.

Approaching either of his sides are each of the boys' mentors, Gobber and North. Their large forms only adding to the intimidation that he feels towards the situation.

Sure, they might have just been saved from an untimely demise by way of dragon flame, but there was nothing saving either of them from the wrath they were about to face. While his father, Gobber, and North were all terrifying vikings on their own, together they could send the toughest of tribes running for the hills. And they have. On multiple separate occasions.

"Hey dad..." Hiccup mumbles, "Sorry about... all this." He gestures vaguely to the scene surrounding him: The blackened and actively flaming pillars, the several dragons flying into the distance with nets full of livestock, and the burning buildings caught within the attack they had caused.

Jack is now beside him when his father finally turns around, his face scrunched in anger, "What in Hlodyn's great green Earth are the two of you doing outside during a raid?"

A good sized crowd has formed around them at this point as the three highest ranking individuals within the tribe loom over the boys. From beside him, Hiccup can see Jack white-knuckling his staff placed against the ground in front of him, the only indication of his nervousness as a grin slowly grows on his face, which was not good news for Hiccup.

Before Jack could say something stupid enough to get them into any more trouble, Hiccup speaks up, "We caught a Night Fury. That's why we were out, okay? Jack and I shot it down from the sky and it fell just past Raven's Point."

There was a beat of silence before the gathered group of vikings burst out into laughter, even Gobber was giving his father's back a good smack as he chuckled with North alongside him.

Stoick's face remained neutral as he stepped up to the two of them, "I don't care if you were chasing Odin himself, neither of you are trained for battle with dragons and look where that led you." His large hand points to the smoldering wooden pillars that were surprisingly still standing, but the same couldn't be said for what laid beyond them. Two village houses were halfway eaten by the flames that still raged over them and dark smoke was billowing into the morning sky above.

"While this is definitely not the best outcome," Jack starts, his father's gaze turning onto him, "we really did catch a Night Fury, shot down by yours truly. Which I feel cancels out all the bad stuff that just happened."

Hiccup really should've stopped him from talking when he had the chance.

His father's eyebrows dip downwards as his face scrunches into annoyance and rage. He looks right about to take Jack by the shoulders and offer him to the retreating dragons as an after-dinner treat before North steps in.

"As much as I want to believe you, I do not." His ice blue eyes are full of disappointment as he speaks, "I thought the two of you would be ready for battle, but I was wrong to think this."

"I've been tellin' you!" Gobber hobbles into view from behind Stoick, pointing a mace-hand towards North who presses his lips into a thin line and shakes his head.

"I can't deal with this right now," Stoick interrupts and pins Hiccup and Jack with a stone cold glare, "You both know how close we are to devastating winter, but you still go and pull something idiotic enough to put the whole tribe at risk."

He turns to his second-in-command, "Get them out of here. I need to clean this mess up." Then, he stalks off towards the crowd behind him and begins rattling off orders and giving out jobs before disappearing from view.

"We still caught a Night Fury." Jack states. Hiccup is quick to shove a elbow to his side to reprimand him since it was clear no one here was going to believe them and continuously bringing it up was only going to make things worse.

He guesses Jack didn't seem understand that when he looks at him with a confused face. Hiccup just shakes his head in a way that tells his friend that they'll talk about it later. The brunette huffs but doesn't bring up the topic again. Thank the gods.

Jack's ear then becomes victim to the strong pinch of North's fingers before the man drags him across the short distance between them.

"You." He gruffs, Jack squawking and struggling in his grasp. His hands come up to attempt to swat him away, but it's ultimately fruitless as North's grip remains firm.

"What about me?" Jack grits out.

"Do not think we are done. You will help rebuild here then meet me at training arena. No dilly dallying." He finishes with one final sharp tug before breaking away and heading towards a pile of wood that had been set out for the repairs needed.

Jack is left rubbing at his ear sorefully and grumbling under his breath. Something about how he'll dilly dally if he damn well pleases.

Hiccup's attention is taken away from the fit being thrown by his own mentor approaching him, his mace-hand now directed towards him.

"Don't think yuer off the hook either. I better see you in my forge this afternoon." He turns to leave as well, but angles back to shout one last thing, "And no... messing around!"

"Wow, real original." Hiccup quips, resulting in a head smack from Gobber's actual hand before he hobbles away in the direction of the smithy.

The boys sit there and nurse their respective injuries in the wake of their lectures as the crowd of angry vikings finally disperses.

The night they had planned for weeks had gone just as they had hoped but also so far from it.

On one hand, Jack had managed to shoot down what was known as the most dangerous dragon within The Book of Dragons with Hiccup's invention and they finally had a chance to prove themselves to their tribe, but on the other they had also led a Monstrous Nightmare into the heart of the village that had burned down several houses in the process of trying to kill them. Hiccup already wanted the day to be over and it had barely even started.

"Hey," Hiccup turns towards the voice, meeting Jack's hazel eyes, "I can see those gears turning in that head of yours. Coin for your thoughts?" The brunette flips one from out of his pant's pocket and it lightly bumps into Hiccup's forehead.

The auburn-haired boy sighs, "No surprise I managed to fuck up what was supposed to be the greatest night of our lives."

A laugh of disbelief escapes Jack, "Did you forget the part where the launcher you built shot a Night Fury from the sky?" The brunette steps into Hiccup's space to look him dead in the eyes and places his hands on either side of his face. "This is still the greatest night of our lives! We're gonna be legends thanks to you...we just have to prove it first."

Jack's face is inches from his own as he talks sense into him, his flawless olive skin wrinkled by the wideness of his smile. There is a joy in his eyes that no one other than Jack could feel after being yelled at in front of the eternity of their village. But that doesn't make it any less contagious and he feels the edges of his own mouth twitching upwards.

"We invented and built a bola launcher." Hiccup says and Jack nods for him to continue. "We successfully got it to the launching point." Jack nods again. "And we shot down a Night Fury."

Jack's hands then slip to Hiccup's shoulders before shaking them back and forth as he repeats after him, "We shot down a Night Fury!"

Hiccup holds his friend by his blue tunic for stability as the two of them dissolve into cackles and giggles of celebration, finally understanding that the night was a success. Sure, they might've gotten publicly grilled, but what's new? Jack and Hiccup were used to being the disappointments of their tribe. But it wouldn't be like that for long. They just needed to get through the rest of the day before slipping away to bring back evidence of the Night Fury to present to his father and all their problems would disappear.

Their quiet celebration is stopped by Jack, and when Hiccup looks to face him the other's eyes are fixed on something behind him.

"Oh, hey Bunny." Or someone.

Hiccup untanlages himself from his friend and turns towards Jack's father. The tall, grey-haired man is standing a few feet away from the boys with both his underarms full of building lumber. His blue eyes roll in their sockets as he approaches them and dumps one armful onto Jack and the other onto Hiccup.

"Get to work. Bloody hell." Bunnymund grumps before stepping between them and walking back to the wood pile without another word.

"Yikes." Jack says with a laugh and Hiccup is helpless but to join in as they follow in the man's footsteps.

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The sun had well passed the horizon and now hangs behind a cover of clouds when Jack and Hiccup finally placed the last wooden plank onto the final of the newly repaired houses. A glance around at the rest of the renovations within the village is lackluster at best, but the tired vikings do what they can after what is most likely the fifth time fixing up the town after an attack that week.

In the midst of the boys nailing the materials provided to them into a decent ceiling, Jamie had finally managed to escape his wild group of friends and meet up with them. Despite only being eleven, he does his best to help where he can, but Hiccup knows he's really only there listen to Jack's stories as he works.

And Hiccup can't blame him.

The tales that Jack spins off the drop of a helmet are nothing the auburn-haired boy had ever heard before. It's what made Jack the favorite amongst the tribe's children, giving him a following whenever the two of them were out in the village's main plaza.

His stories also made for a great distraction since it seemed like no time at all had passed before they started towards the main hall for what they saw as breakfast but what most would say was an early lunch.

"So, is it true you guys really shot down a Night Fury?" Jamie asks, not wasting a moment to beat around the bush after leaving the reconstruction effort. They had received more than a couple nasty glares any time they tried to mention what had really gone down that morning because it had ultimately resulted in the clean up they were all helping in.

"Sure is. All thanks to this guy's genius and my impeccable aim." Jack says and reaches around his brother walking between them to poke Hiccup's side with his bow staff. It causes the boy trips over his own feet as a result but Hiccup manages to avoid face planting into the dirt path they were on.

Hiccup attempts to snatch the staff from the other's grip in retaliation after righting himself, but Jack's reflexes were a fraction quicker than his own as he dodges the grab and returns it to its holster on his back. The brunette then begins another one of his stories, but this time retelling him and Hiccup's run-in with the elusive Night Fury.

Hiccup already knows this particular tale having been there, so he decides to tune them out and allow Jack to fill Jamie in however he liked. Instead, he just watches as Jamie listens with that dreamy-eyed look he always got whenever his brother was involved.

Hiccup's childhood best friend was all large gestures and impersonations as he spoke, really bringing Jamie into each moment and plot twist. There was only one thing Hiccup liked more than actually hearing one of Jack's stories and it was watching him tell it. He never spared one expense when it came to acting out each part or pausing for dramatic effect, which he loved to do and his brother ate it up every time. While it was true that the hazel of Jack's eyes always held a sort of sparkle, it seemed it's brightest when he was storytelling and Hiccup couldn't find it within himself to look away. Something he'd have to think more deeply about another time since Jamie had asked another question that gotten Hiccup's attention.

"Are you gonna go looking for it? You have to, right? No one's ever seen a Night Fury before!" His eyes that were a darker brown than his older brother's shined bright with anticipation for the answer, obviously hoping he'd find a way to tag along.

A shadowed look passes over Jack's face the same time Hiccup's own heart sinks slightly in his chest.

There was a clear response to the question. Of course they should go track the dragon down, it was the entire purpose of their plan to kill the Night Fury and bring back something to prove to the village that they had what it took to be a viking. A dragon-killing viking.

But something within Hiccup told him it was wrong to go through with it, but he wasn't sure what part.

"I guess, yeah." Hiccup looks away from their small group to instead focus on the sky.

"We'll probably go later today once we can get away from our responsibilities." He hears Jack laugh on the other side of Jamie, who's high-pitched giggle follows along, and when Hiccup turns back to the boys, light hazel eyes are already on him.

From Jack's slightly worried but trying to cover it up expression, he knows something's up with Hiccup. It sends the auburn-haired boy's heart racing beneath his ribs, but whether it's Hiccup's luck or the opposite, the subject is forgotten in favor of who was approaching them.

Hiccup groans under this breath when none other than his and Jack's ex-childhood best friend Astrid Hofferson and her friend group of Snotlout Jorgenson, the Thorston twins, and Fishlegs Ingerman can be seen walking in their direction with Snotlout in the lead.

"You three muttonheads better not be talking about that Night Fury you didn't shoot down today!" Snotlout is the shortest of the group, but the way he holds himself shows he thinks he's anything but. He has a Jorgenson axe slung over a shoulder as he passes by, looking them up and down as if they were the yak dung on the bottom of his boot. "You guys seriously need to get a life! Making up fake stories is not gonna make you one of us."

Hiccup sees Jamie's face scrunch in childish anger next to Jack, but before he has the chance to do anything about it his brother places a hand on his shoulder to stop him. The younger brunette makes an undignified sound of complaint but ultimately relents and steps back beside the older boys.

"And I thought I was delusional." Tuffnut says a few steps behind Snotlout, the front of his teeth poking out as he laughs meanly.

"Who said you weren't?" His sister appears next to him, leaning close to his face as she throws the insult, an identical chuckle shaking her shoulders.

"Okay, but I'm not that delusional." Tuffnut replies, pointing at them.

Following the twins is the stocky form of Fishlegs who has his head stuck in a deck of dragon cards as the group moves, clearly doing everything in his power to avoid being associated in what was happening around him. While Fishlegs never joined in on the bullying that Jack and Hiccup had experienced throughout their lives, he also never stopped it which put him within the same category as the rest of them in Hiccup's eyes.

Suddenly, Hiccup hears Jack laugh from his side and he turns to see him smirking elfishly at the lanky blondes in front of him. "Y'know, I think I have another meteor hammer on me if you wanted another taste from earlier." The brunette then reaches within his wrap cloak as if to look for what Hiccup is positive the weapon he does not have.

The twins don't know that though, and Hiccup watches as the Thorston's eyes shoot wide open before they begin tripping over each other to run ahead of Snotlout, pushing him out of the way, and disappearing towards the direction their group was heading. After righting himself, Snotlout is quick on their tails, yelling about how the twins had ruined the nonchalant exit he was in the middle of. Seeing the majority of his friends running off without him, Fishlegs shoves his cards into a chest pocket before joining them in the distance.

"Thank the gods they're gone, I can breathe a little better." Hiccup sighs, running a tired hand down his face. They all laugh and agree before turning to head back towards the Great Hall, thankfully the opposite direction in which the rest of them had gone.

Unfortunately, their run-ins with all the village's young adults wasn't over for when Hiccup steps a foot towards the food his stomach was yearning for, an axe is pointed at this throat.

Shit, he forgot about Astrid.

"As much as I hate to say it, he's right you know." The iciness of her eyes sends a physical chill through Hiccup's body as she glares at him, the blade of her weapon glinting inches from his face and his hands rise in surrender by his ears.

Hiccup snorts but the action is restricted by her axe, "What, Tuffnut? Now that's a new one." He glances to the side to silently plea Jack for help, but when he looks the other's way his back is turned and slightly bent down to chat with Emily and Jamie. She must've been tagging along with Astrid to wherever they had been heading to before stopping them. He won't be helping Hiccup anytime soon, then.

Astrid rolls her eyes hard before looking back at him and re-angling her weapon under his chin, "Snotlout's right. This story you two are concocting needs to end here. And maybe instead of wasting your time on fairy tales, you could be training to actually live them."

"We're telling the truth, Astrid. I don't know what else you want me to say to convince you." He says, leaning back as far as he can to try to avoid the edge of her blade.

Her blonde eyebrows dip in frustration as she bring her face closer to his, "Words are empty. But maybe if you started acting like the son of the chief you are, people would believe you. Get the hell out of fantasy land and back into the real world where everyone else is."

Hiccup's heart clenches at her words, each one hitting straight to home, which was exactly where she was aiming. He attempts to hide the hurt with a playful grimace until Jack decides he's paying attention again and his wooden staff is held over Hiccup's shoulder and shoved into Astrid's chest, pushing her back.

"Alright, pipe down you little ray of sunshine." Jack's actions are rewarded by another icy glare, but the girl surprisingly takes the hint and lowers her weapon. And while Jack seems to be joking, Hiccup can almost feel the irritation radiating off him in waves.

Astrid stands still for a moment afterwards and looks between the three boys in front of her. Silence stretches between the group as they all wait for the other's next move and obviously the blonde girl does it first, beckoning Emily with her head before turning and finally following the rest of her friends. Her apprentice is right behind her, barely giving them a goodbye as she leaves.

Jack dims slightly as he watches her go, but Jamie just rolls his eyes. Emily has always been a good sister to the two of them, being younger than Jack by three years but older than Jamie by four. But Hiccup noticed her difference in demeanor once she started training under Astrid. The young Bennett girl became tougher around the edges and less willing to engage in the stories her older brother told. Of course, it was to be expected that she would change while growing up, he just hoped it wasn't affecting the way she saw her family.

Then Jamie's stomach growls and the boys break into laughter, the tenseness of the situation sliding away with it.

"Guess it's time we eat, huh?" Jack ruffles his brother's hair and swings his bow staff up to rest on his shoulder, beginning to lead the way toward the Great Hall again before stopping dead in his tracks after a couple steps. "Oh, you got to be kidding me."

"No jokes here, only training to get to." North says as he walks down the path ahead of them, clearly having just gotten back from where the boys were currently heading, Gobber hobbling at his side.

"We can never catch a break, huh?" Hiccup mumbles beside the brunette and Jamie chuckles beneath him while Jack just sinks further into himself.

"After the stunt the two of you pulled this morning, keep dreaming. I need your scrawny ass in my forge. Lots of weapons in need of fixin'." Gobber breaks off from North's side to limp over to Hiccup. "Neither one of yuhs are gettin' any breaks today."

Jack is quick to complain as always, "But we need the most important meal of the day! Isn't that what you always say North? That I need to eat more to get some meat on my bones." Jack says the last part in a heavy accent that is no where near accurate to his mentor's.

The white-bearded viking does not dignify the brunette with a response and instead continues to walk towards the distant training arena as he shoves a large piece of mutton into Jack's chest, clearly expecting him to follow as North stalks off.

An annoyed groan escapes Jack before he relents and says his goodbyes, ruffling Jamie's hair and giving Hiccup a soft smile and wave before he turns to catch up with North. The boy is quick to spark an animated conversation between the two of them despite his mentor's obvious irritation towards Jack. Hiccup guesses it wasn't too deeply rooted though as the larger man lets out one of his jolly-filled laughs as they disappear behind a building.

The auburn-haired boy almost acts on his instinct to follow them but is stopped by a beefy hand taking him by the arm and dragging him in the opposite direction of the training arena where he knew the forge was located. He lets out a breath of disappointment as he allows himself to be dragged, but he brightens slightly when he realizes that Jamie is walking right along with him.

At least he didn't have to suffer in the hot smithy alone.

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Chapter Text

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Hiccup wonders absentmindedly what torturous conditioning his father's second-in-command is putting Jack through as he pounds a hammer onto a red-hot sword that Jamie is holding the hilt of.

The two boys have been at Gobber's beck and call the entire day, from running around the village to personally ask every member of the tribe if their weapons needed repairing to cleaning all the blacksmith's hand replacements. Poor Jamie wasn't even required to be there, he just wanted to help Hiccup out and support him, which the boy appreciated from the youngest Bennett.

In the background of Hiccup's never-ending train of thought, he can distantly hear Gobber rattling on about the habits of the trolls within Berk, specifically how they continuously steal his socks. Beside him, Jamie's dark brown eyes are dulled with boredom similar to the one Hiccup himself is lulling into.

Neither one of them had ever found any interest in the blonde viking's stories about his 'encounters' with troll-kind since they are usually very off-base or just flat out wrong to what they believed to be true. Years of running around deep in Berkian forests in hopes of catching sight of mythical creatures while Jack rambles on and on about their history will convince about anyone of anything Hiccup thinks. He knows for a fact that the brunette at least has Jamie and him hook, line, and sinker.

Hiccup takes a break from shaping the metal below him when the color of the sword fades from orange back to silver and finds himself laughing when Gobber says a particularly incorrect fact about trolls causing Jamie to full-on facepalm. The blacksmith is none-the-wiser, however, since he was too busy shining the newest hook of his collection near the open order window, which is finally empty for once.

Hiccup goes to reheat the metal of the weapon they were working on until Jamie suddenly grabs him by the arm. He looks at the younger boy questioningly before seeing his head twitch in the direction behind him, clearly indicating that he should turn around. Hiccup's thoughts would have immediately jumped to someone being there that he didn't want to see like his father or Astrid if it weren't for the small smile growing on Jamie's lips.

When Hiccup turns, he is silently awed by the sight he sees. Leaning against the doorway of the forge's back exit is a slightly worn-out looking, but smirking Jack. His deep brunette hair is pushed back onto his head by a thin leather strap and Hiccup can see leftover sweat glimmering on his forehead in the hearth's light from his no-doubt treacherous training session with North. The wrap cloak that is almost permanently on the boy's shoulders is nowhere to be found, revealing the olive-ness of his arms poking out of his rolled up sleeves.

The heat of the smithy suddenly doubles and Hiccup can't understand why, but ultimately decides not to think too harshly about it as he watches Jamie wave enthusiastically at his brother who laughs silently in return, putting a finger up to his mouth to shush them.

They all glance over to Gobber to see if he'd caught on to the forge's new addition, but he remains oblivious as he continues his troll stories. When Hiccup and Jamie look back at Jack, he points a thumb in the direction that Hiccup knows is the forest and beckons him with a tilt of his head. Immediately Hiccup understands what the brunette is asking and it seems his brother does too for before Hiccup can say anything, Jamie is heading across the smithy to Gobber.

Jack redirects a point questioningly towards the retreating boy and Hiccup only shrugs as they watch the younger Bennett at work. Jamie finally makes it to the side of Gobber that's away from the direction Jack and Hiccup are standing before completely bombarding him with multiple questions about his stories that the boys know will cause the viking to talk for the next three hours. Exactly enough time for Jack and Hiccup to sneak off to Raven's Point and back without him even noticing.

Jamie sends a wink to the two of them as Gobber gets up to lead him deeper into the shop with a hand on his shoulder and Hiccup has never been more grateful that at least one of the Bennett brothers had a brain. The other one just crosses the distance between them to grab Hiccup by his tunic and drag him outside.

"I absolutely owe that boy a game of Maces and Talons." Jack laughs breathlessly as they walk away from the forge and towards the forest.

"I swear, sometimes I think he's smarter than you'll ever be." Hiccup grins cheekily before dodging an expected jab of his friend's bow staff. "Hey! I gave you that, don't use it against me."

Jack smirk sharpens and Hiccup knows he's in trouble. "Keyword gave, which means it's mine now and I can use it however I want. Which is to teach your scrawny ass a lesson."

The brunette then attempts another poke at Hiccup's side, who's now decided to quicken his pace to escape the wrath of Jack's wounded pride.

"We are both equally scrawny!" Hiccup says, now running away from his friend as he is chased up the path and into the woods where Jack quickly gives up when he runs out of his already expended energy.

They laugh at one another as they catch their breath against their knees and after a longer period of time than Hiccup would like to admit he rises to look at their surroundings. Glancing around, he realizes that him and Jack had only reach just slightly past the forest's entrance, the path they had used up till this point still within sight in the distance behind them. Which only meant they still had a lot of ground to cover.

Hiccup takes out a hand-sized notebook from his back pocket and flips to the first empty page behind numerous of his sketches and notes to draw a quick map of the woods surrounding Raven's Point, having the layout memorized at this point.

He feels a presence hover over his shoulder as his choral pen finishes off the raven-shaped boulder that gave the area it's name and feels a soft smile creep onto his face as Jack tilts the sketch to an angle where they can both see properly.

"Gods, sometimes I forget how good you are at drawing until you whip up a masterpiece without even thinking about it." Jack says almost directly into Hiccup's ear. The auburn-haired boy slants his head to side-eye his friend whose eyes are still focused on the page in front of him.

"Oh, whatever." Hiccup snaps the notebook shut with the pen still inside before pushing a finger into Jack's cheek to create some distance between them. "Anyways, you usually chase me for a lot longer than you did. What the hell did North put you through?"

Jack groans at the reminder of his earlier torture, slinging his bow staff across his shoulders and hanging his arms off the sides. "I must have really pissed him off this morning cause not only did we spar multiple times over and over again both hand-to-hand and with my staff, but he also had me run to the Great Hall and back until I won. I have never won against him and he knows that!"

Hiccup cringes at the details Jack goes into about some of his worst matches against his mentor and cannot help but feel glad Gobber took him as an apprentice instead of North, not sure if he could survive something like that. Hiccup couldn't deny there were times he was slightly envious that Jack was gaining combat-skills, but it was only slightly since it's clear how exhausted the other is despite the smile on his face. Jack hasn't been able to hide anything from Hiccup since they were kids no matter how hard he tries.

But unfortunately for Hiccup, the sentiment went both ways.

"Speaking of torture, that run-in with Astrid earlier was harsh." Jack is walking beside Hiccup now, his staff gripped at it's metal hilt as he uses it as a non-needed walking aid.

Hiccup swallows thickly at the reminder of the interaction.

But maybe if you started acting like the son of the chief you are, people would believe you. The words have been echoing in his head since he heard them growled in his face that morning with an axe shoved under his chin. He's heard the insult a thousand times from multiple different people, but hearing them from someone who used to run alongside him in these same woods hits him differently, closer towards home.

Hiccup's hip gets bumped softly and he looks up from the grass beneath his feet to Jack's concerned gaze.

"Hey." Jack's voice is soft in that comforting way of his. "She's wrong, Hic. You know that right?"

Hiccup hums before looking forward again and away from his friend's prying eyes. He doesn't escape them for long, however, and suddenly Jack slips back into view when he steps in front of Hiccup and stops him in his tracks.

"Hiccup, I'm serious. You are the smartest, most caring, resilient, and bravest person on this whole goddamn island. Maybe even in this whole archipelago, but I haven't travelled much so I can’t prove that yet." Hiccup snorts at the joke and rolls his eyes as Jack continues. "Astrid hasn't been our friend in years, so by the logic you love so much she doesn't know yakshit about you or the fact you will be the best chief those vikings have ever seen."

Somewhere during his speech, Jack had taken Hiccup by the back of his neck and pulled his face close, their noses inches apart.

Hiccup finds no reason to lie when Jack is looking at him with such sincerity, so he decides to open up. "You know I can't tune her out. She makes it almost impossible to."

Jack breathes out a laugh, "I know. But you trust me, right?"

Hiccup blinks at the question before answering, "Of course I do." And it's true. Jack was probably the only person he's ever fully trusted with everything he had.

"Then trust my judgement." Jack says after a beat and smiles at him softly, his eyes so warm Hiccup can almost feel them against his cheeks. His breath hitches slightly at the words and his self-conscious wants nothing more than to fight back and say he's wrong, but Hiccup can't seem to find any flaws in Jack's reasoning to offer up another argument. So he doesn't, and instead lets the words sink into his thoughts, Astrid's statement becoming slightly more quiet than before.

Jack's smile brightens when he sees Hiccup relent, releasing his neck and ruffling his hair before stepping backwards out of his space. He strangely feels a chill at the loss.

"Now," Jack says, nodding his head backwards, "Let's go find that Night Fury."

"Please." Hiccup groans, which only makes the other cackle as they resume walking, Jack falling back into step with him and thankfully switching the conversation to lighter subjects.

༄  

Hours have passed by the time almost the entire map Hiccup had drawn is covered by little black Xs, which indicate a dragon-less area. At this point Jack and Hiccup had begun to stress that their catch had managed to escape the bola it was struck down with and flew away, most likely with a revenge plan already forming.

"Duh-duh-duh, we're fucked." Hiccup sing-songs jokingly while very real dread tingles at the tips of his fingers that mark another part of the forest off from his sketch.

"That is not a very positive dragon-finding attitude." Jack says from on top of a medium-sized boulder, leaning up onto his tiptoes to search the area around them.

"Yeah, I left it behind about...five Xs ago?" Hiccup doesn't even see the brunette chuck the small pebble in his direction until it hits him in the back of the head. Hiccup glares at Jack before bending down to pick up a pebble of his own and turning around to throw it back at the other. "Alright, but you started it-" But Hiccup cuts himself off when he catches a glance at Jack's confused face, hazel eyes focused somewhere distantly behind him.

He's about to ask the reason behind why his friend looked like that when Jack beats him to it. "Hic, come check this out."

Hiccup's burning curiosity has him complying instantly and climbing the large rock with a helping hand from Jack, coming to stand beside him to look over the shrubbery he was originally standing below.

The green of the forest stretches wide around them in every direction until it reaches the area the boys are staring at, where it suddenly fades to a dead yellow color. While Hiccup knew it was normal to come along an occasional dying tree or golden patch of grass, a whole clearing of withered plants and bare trees was not.

"Why is that whole area dead?" Jack questions, squinting at the spot like maybe it was a trick of the evening light.

But it wasn't because Hiccup can see it too. "Maybe it's a disease outbreak? But it doesn't look like its spreading other than right there, which is good?" Jack hums and they stare for a few more moments.

While Hiccup did believe what he had said, having seen the same thing happen before, something within his gut told him something was off. The whole situation was just weird.

Wanting to take a closer look, Hiccup climbs his way back onto solid ground before approaching the golden patch of forest. When he reaches them, he struggles through the bushes that had initially blocked the area from Hiccup's view but manages to pop out the other side successfully enough, a rustle from behind telling him that Jack was close behind.

Hiccup walks to the center of the area and each step he takes onto the yellow turf has a strange feeling sinking his heart, further convincing him that something was wrong.

Being right next to the barren trees reveals that the bark is actually black, almost as if it's wood had caught fire and became charred. But that couldn't be the case because there would be ashen evidence surrounding it's trunk along with nearby things being caught up in the flames as well, and all of those things were nowhere to be found.

Overall, the whole place just made Hiccup feel strange and the setting sun didn't help the creepy aura the clearing held.

"Maybe we should just leave this place alone." Hiccup suggests, taking one last slow glance at his surroundings as he flips his notebook back open. His eyes land on Jack whose closely inspecting one of the blackened trees and dragging a finger down it's wood.

He pulls it back to reveal no residue and makes a confused face. "Yeah, I agree. Its kinda giving me the creeps."

"I'm getting that feeling too." Hiccup looks down at his map to refocus on their mission before realizing that the last place without an X marked over it is just behind where they were standing now. He glances up as Jack approaches his side to the green of the forest beyond the dead patch and heads for it. "Looks like the only place we haven't checked is right up here."

Leaving the dead area behind was like a breath of fresh air, the feeling he had when within it immediately subsiding as he steps foot back onto living grass. Weird.

"Well, I guess we saved the best for last." Jack says from slightly behind him as he follows along, also seeming eager to leave the dead trees behind.

"That's not necessarily true. We could have been completely wrong." Hiccup replies, head back down to mark down the last X onto his sketch.

"I wouldn't be too sure about that." Hiccup feels wood of Jack's bow staff come underneath his chin to lift his head up from his notebook and towards the scene in front of them.

Just behind a thickly trunked tree laid a thinner one snapped from its midsection near a line of torn-up earth that lead up and over a small hill beyond it. It was clear from the splintering of the wood that it wasn't purposefully cut but rather crashed into and broken by something large. And Hiccup had a feel he knew exactly what had happened to it.

Hiccup slips his notebook back into his pants before approaching the crash site and starting to follow along the wide divot in the dirt, Jack on the other side of it with his staff clutched in a defensive position. It only took the two a few steps before they were rounding over the hill and what they saw sent the both of them dropping to their knees to hide behind the grass hump.

No more than a couple of meters in front of them laid the proof that they really did shoot down a Night Fury that morning as it was now tangled up and limp on the forest floor. Because of them, one more dragon that terrorized their village was dead.

A strange weight settles on Hiccup's shoulders at the thought. He should be thrilled at the fact he finally killed his first dragon, but none of the feelings he was supposed to be experiencing were there, and instead were replaced by a weird sense of dread.

He attempts to shake it off in favor of looking over to Jack, but he only sees the same conflict Hiccup feels within his hazel eyes. The two stare at each other for a brief moment before Jack makes the first move to un-crouch himself and go back over the hill towards the downed dragon. And a few hesitant seconds later, Hiccup follows suit.

Walking slowly down the slope, Hiccup finally get a good look at what vikings have named the Unholy Offspring of Lightning and Death Itself. Scales as black as night cover the entire length of it's surprisingly small body with wings of the same sleek color being bent at odd angles due to the rope wrapped around them. It's short legs are tied tightly to its underbelly while an oval-shaped head is slightly obscured from view.

Overall, it is nothing Hiccup had imagined when he had first heard that deafening screech ripping through the sky above him with purple blasts of instant death.

"Huh, not really what I was expecting." Jack says, squatting to kneel a few feet beside the beast before reaching out with his staff to poke at a wing. A low weak growl rumbles in response causing Jack to jump back to his feet and quickly return to Hiccup's side.

The thing was alive. Despite all the odds of surviving a crash from as high a height as it had fallen, the Night Fury still breathed on the ground in front of them.

"What now?" Hiccup doesn't turn to Jack at his question as he stares fearfully at the dragon. The dawning realization of the fact that their mission wasn't actually finished after all sends claws of anxiety at his heart. He had been so sure that striking something down from that altitude would cause an immediate death on impact, but the evidence from how wrong he was was now at his feet. Which meant it was now up to them to make that final blow.

"We–" Hiccup clears his throat. "We kill it." He hears a sharp intake of breath from Jack as Hiccup steps forward, not finding any more courage within himself to look at his friend's reaction. Coming within a foot of the dragon made it so its head was now in view and a shock shoots up Hiccup's body when he locks eyes with the very awake Night Fury.

The green inside them fills the entirety of its irises while the pupils are thin and slitted, jumping back and forth from himself and Jack. While Hiccup knows the creature cannot move to defend itself, it doesn't make him feel any safer with the way it was looking at them with so much anger.

It was when the dragon's gaze rests for slightly too long in Jack's direction that Hiccup suddenly hurries to retrieve the dagger he always had strapped to his belt per Gobber's request. The action brings the attention back onto him, but the hilt is already firmly gripped in his hand, the leather rough and unfamiliar against his palm.

"Careful, Hic." Jack says behind him, but his words barely register to Hiccup whose only focus was on the dragon in front of him. After a brief moment of glancing down the reptile's body to make sure it truly was securely tied up, Hiccup looks back into his acid green eyes.

They stare at each other intently as Hiccup raises the dagger above his head with both his hands, trying his best to ignore the temor that shakes his limbs. He knows without having to look above him that the weapon is at the correct angle where all he had to do was swing downwards and it would be done. But the longer he looks into the beast's eyes, the more he realizes that anger isn't the only thing present within them.

Hiccup could suddenly see the fear as well.

He knew that any other viking wouldn't have hesitated long enough to truly look into a dragon's eye like Hiccup was doing, but he wasn't a viking. Not yet.

But he had to become one eventually. Right?

"Come on, Hiccup." He mumbles to himself, repositioning the dagger in his palms. "You have to do this. This is your one and only chance to prove yourself to your dad, so just do it." His eyes never leave the dragon's as he speaks and it does the same, staring at him with the same look as before for several more moments. Until it doesn't.

Something breaks in Hiccup's chest when he watches the anger and fear melt into resignation before slipping its eyes closed, accepting the fate that was the weapon raised above Hiccup's head.

Weakness takes over his body and he lowers the dagger slowly.

Suddenly, Hiccup becomes dreadfully aware that everything that anyone had ever said about him was proven right in that moment, that he didn't have what it took to kill dragons. And if after eighteen years that hadn't changed then it was clear it never would.

Hiccup doesn't look up from the ground his gaze had become attached to when he turns around and softly puts the weapon he had failed to use into Jack's hands.

"I can't do it." The words are barely audible even to his own ears, but he knows the brunette heard him when he takes the dagger from his grip.

There's no response from Jack as Hiccup walks past his still form and away from the scene behind him. Jack would do what needed to be done. He had to, because one of them needed to prove themselves worthy of their tribe and Jack was a far better candidate than himself.

Hiccup releases a shaky breath from his lips as he waits for the killing blow, but there is only silence behind him and nothing happens for several moments. Maybe Jack needed a moment to talk himself into it just like Hiccup had, but in his case he'd actually go through with it.

Suddenly, the quiet is broken by what was not blade through scales but instead the cutting of a rope.

Hiccup whips his head around in alarm to see Jack sliding the dagger back and forth against the dragon's bindings before snapping them and moving onto a different area. The auburn-haired boy nearly trips over himself to race towards his friend while a mix of dread and relief fight for dominance in his brain.

"What are you doing?!" Hiccup shouts.

Jack doesn't turn around and continues his task of releasing the Night Fury they had just tried to kill as he responds. "I have no idea. You should stop me."

There's a logical side of Hiccup that wants to listen to Jack's advice and rip the dagger from his hands, but another part that he's listened to all his life takes action of his body before he's down beside his friend and untying the knots in the rope while Jack cuts. It only takes them a few seconds working together to fully release the dragon and its reaction is immediate.

It's newly freed tail whips violently at Jack's side, sending him a couple steps backward to avoid being hit as the Night Fury stands. Its head snaps in Hiccup's direction and the fear within its eyes from earlier is nowhere to be seen, leaving only anger in its place. The dragon is on him in an instant, it's clawed paws pushing him onto the forest floor and caging him between his legs. Terror and adrenaline seize Hiccup's muscles and clench his heart so fiercely that he wouldn't be surprised if he slips into a heart attack in the next moment.

He hears Jack calling for him fearfully on the other side of the Night Fury, but there was nothing stopping the dragon from doing what it wanted as it stood above Hiccup.

He hopes Jack has enough self-preservation to look away from what is surely Hiccup's death as the creatures jaw unhinges inches from his face, a single row of sharp teeth lining its gums.

He clenches his eyes tightly shut and braces himself for the blast, but receives a deafening roar in its place, the sound rattling his brain and straining his eardrums to their limits. Then it stops and the large presence disappears from on top of him, only leaving him with a ringing in his ears instead of a hole through his head.

Hiccup's eyes snap back open as he gasps in breaths, unsure why he was still able to do that. He watches with even more confusion as the Night Fury leaps from the ground away from them and takes to the air, crashing clumsily into a thick tree before landing harshly back onto the ground. Seconds later it tries again but it yields the same result until it finally disappears into a grotto.

The scene is blocked from Hiccup's view when Jack's face suddenly obscures his vision, his hazel eyes wide with worry and fear.

"Gods, Hiccup are you okay? Are you hurt?" Jack's hands are on either side of his face as he cups him gently, his gaze flitting about his face and body to look for injuries. Hiccup can only shake his head slightly in response, but it's enough for Jack to bring him into a crushing hug. "I thought it was going to kill you."

Hiccup begins going limp from the adrenaline quickly leaving him but manages to rest his head against the other's. "I thought so too."

So why didn't it? Hiccup is bewildered as he remains tight in Jack's embrace, staring off in the direction the dragon had gone. It had every opportunity to take its revenge after they had shot it down, but it chose to spare them instead, something he's never seen a dragon do before.

Hiccup hears another roar similar to the one he just experienced echo from the grotto and a pull within his chest yanks in it's direction. It's a strange feeling he'd never felt before, but exhaustion stops him from thinking too deeply about it and darkness soon creeps over his vision until everything turns black.

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Chapter Text

❄︎  

Jack had been incredibly worried about Hiccup after he passed out in his arms, but it was instantly squashed when it had only been from the adrenaline rush and not from a major head injury. The boy had actually re-entered consciousness moments later after a few good shakes and the two of them had quickly decided to called it a night.

Now, it was the next morning and much earlier than Jack would have liked, having been dragged out of bed by his insistent mentor to start their day off with a sparring lesson. The only thing that made the situation even slightly better was that Jamie had been woken up by Jack's loud complaining and decided to join them, which meant the older brunette could catch a break every now and again since North enjoyed training his brother too.

But unfortunately for Jack, he wasn't currently having one of those breaks and is instead several feet in front of North's large form in a defensive position.

In the way his mentor had spent hours drilling into his brain, Jack's hands grip the strengthened wood in a firm yet easily moveable hold with one placed on each end. His legs are wide in a sturdy stance and he angles his staff horizontally before he's ready for combat.

Across from him North's round face is wrinkled into a determined grin, which should not be present this early in the morning, as he raises his twin swords into a wide-angled position in front of him, knees bent and legs apart just like Jack.

From his peripheral, Jack can see his brother standing off to the side of their match near the wall of the training arena, one hand raised above his head as his signal to be on their marks.

While Jamie wasn't quite old enough to participate in an actual spar, he still enjoyed being evolved and at North's okay had begun refereeing their matches. Even going as far as to provide side commentary and jokes to keep himself entertained.

Jack was just glad at least someone was having a good time.

"Ready!" Jamie shouts, voice youthfully high pitched with a sunny smile to match.

Jack's grip tightens around his bow staff at the word while North just casually flips one of his swords within his grip before raising aged white eyebrows towards him in challenge.

And Jack was never one to deny one of those, so as soon as his brother yells for them to go the older Bennett leaps into offense and charges. Being the man that Jack had learned from, his mentor reacts quickly to the spin attack of his staff and maneuvers out of the way, side stepping him entirely.

For being a viking of his stature, North was surprisingly agile. In the beginning of their training, it had taken Jack off guard multiple times with how quickly the man could dodge his strikes, but now it was only a matter of telling which way he'd try to slip off to.

Jack knows he's guessed North's plan right when the blue of his eyes twitch slightly to his left where he would finish his dodge maneuver before attempting to attack him from behind. Jack wasn't going to let that happen though.

From his grip on the center metal handle of his staff, Jack follows through with a final spin before sliding back into a backwards bow stance to swing up the wood at face-level and halt it with his other hand. His grip is now further down the staff, making the remainder of it stick out and hit a sword aiming for his neck.

A wild smirk spreads Jack's face at North's surprised laugh, but he doesn't stay distracted for long. His mentor quickly switches to a reverse grip and points the blades away before sweeping a leg out to Jack's ankles. The stance Jack is in should stop an attack like this from working, but he has the disadvantage of his own frailness so before he can test the theory of North's strength versus his own, the brunette slides his hands to meet at the same base of his staff and sends the other end into the stone below, effectively vaulting his body up and away from the attack.

"You are quick, I give you that." North huffs as he stands from his attack.

"Well, my dad is a Bunny." Jack responds, a laugh from his own joke escaping the smirk that had never left his lips. His mentor only rolls his eyes before rushing back into another attack.

They continue like that for a few more rounds of spin, dodge, attack, and block until the both of them are sweating and Jamie has taken a seat on the wall to watch, having given up trying to properly narrate the match.

Jack can tell from the way North's eyebrows are scrunched in concentration that his fighting is on par with his mentor's today, which only fuels his attacks more as they strike off each other again.

The only real thing that put Jack at any advantage was the fact he came up with a majority of his own moves and fighting strategies. While North tried his best to convince him to switch to a weapon like an axe or a battle mace, Jack had stuck to his bow staff and it left his mentor at a loss of what exactly to teach him since no one else on Berk fought with one. So, Jack had taken it upon himself to make up moves to go along with his weapon of choice and all North could do was follow along, though he did end up learning some tricks of his own to teach him despite his lack of knowledge.

With this in mind and North's slight weariness from the particularly long and active match they were having, Jack waits for his opening.

The second-in-command comes rushing in once more with an attempt at a kick and swipe before Jack sees what he's looking for. North's legs have widened to better support his weight and control his swing, but the gap between them is now big enough for Jack to slip through. Without any warning to his mentor of what he was doing, Jack twirls his bow staff into a few one-handed spins before launching it into the air.

Just as Jack had hoped, North's guard slightly lowers at the strangeness of the move and the Bennett quickly takes advantage. He makes a dead sprint towards the other and just when his mentor's eyes meet his, Jack slides underneath him and to the other side.

When Jack pops back onto his feet, he's looking at North's red-vested back and a spinning bow staff hurtling towards him from above. Having done this trick numerous times in front of the village's children, Jack effortlessly reattaches his grip to the wood and slams it into the ground. Then, before North can truly react to the situation, Jack hoists himself into the air and kicks the other's back with his full body weight.

Luckily for him, it works just as it's supposed to and North trips onto the stone floor with one of his sword scattering away from his grip in the process. The viking goes to stand back up and rejoin the fight, but Jack ends it by swiftly placing an end of the bow staff to the back of his mentor's neck where, with a good hit, would leave him with some serious damage.

Jack is panting as he stands his ground, shock slowly rippling into his senses as the adrenaline fades before he realizes he's won. From the first time since North had started training him three years ago, Jack has finally beaten him.

There's a beat of silence before a sudden shuffling is heard in the direction where Jamie was sitting bored moments before. Jack turns to look and is met with his slacked-jaw brother who seemed to have only just decided to pay attention again just to find him as the winner.

Jamie's face then morphs into a expression of enthrallment, looking about to run towards Jack and celebrate before Jack's staff is shoved into his chest causing him to lose his footing and fall onto the floor beneath him.

Once recovering from the surprise of the attack, the brunette whips his head towards where his downed mentor should've been to find that North was now standing, having pushed him onto the floor until the two had switched places.

The viking's face is unreadable to Jack as he releases his grip on his staff to stare at him from above. Jack isn't sure exactly what he did to offend the other, but he just hopes the punishment is swift and painless for whatever it was.

"That..." North finally speaks up, his face dipping forward until his features are shadowed from the morning light. He stays there for a beat and Jack's dread only deepens with every second he waits.

"Was brilliant!" When Jack sees the man's expression again, it's completely devoid of the emotionless mask it was before and is replaced with the widest grin the brunette had ever seen on him. The apples of North's cheeks are flushed in excitement and the whiteness of his teeth are on full display as he laughs joyfully.

Jack's heart races for a few more moments before it slows down after realizing it was all a ruse. The boy scoffs softly in annoyance at the almost-heart attack his mentor had given him, but he also can't stop the grin quickly returning to his face at the praise.

North bends down to where he had sent Jack sprawling onto the floor and picks him up by the shoulders as if he weighed nothing more than one of his swords. The large man then brings the brunette close and Jack cringes in anticipation for what he knows is next. Two scruff-lined kisses land on each of Jack's cheeks before he's left dangling at arms length, his feet pathetically hanging inches off the ground.

"You nearly sent me to an early grave, North. Now put me down before I pin your ass again." Jack chuckles as the man's eyes roll playfully before placing him back onto his feet.

"Ah, you wish." North then gives Jack another proud smile. "Excellent work, Jackson. That was definitely improvement."

The brunette coughs suddenly at the comment, taken slightly aback. "Improvement? I just beat you for the first time and that's all you have to say? That that was only improvement?" Jack raises a dumbfounded eyebrow.

"Well, yes. That was only first time, Jacky. You need lot more before you're anywhere near where you must be to join Berk Guard." His mentor explains like he isn't actively taking away every ounce of excitement that Jack had had.

"Jack!" The older brunette turns at his name and watches Jamie run up to them. For a moment, Jack can ignore the condescension he was surely about to receive from his mentor in favor of catching the sprinting form of his little brother as he jumps onto him. Jamie grips Jack's shoulders as he spins them around, the younger Bennett's laughter echoing against the walls of the stone training arena around them as he does.

"You did it! You finally won!" Jamie shouts once Jack finally puts him back down, but he just reaches out to tug on his sleeve instead. "You did the flip thing with your staff! And then you totally just threw it into the air and did that awesome dive between North's legs before you caught it again!"

Jack doesn't think he's ever felt higher than when Jamie looks up at him with those awe-filled eyes that may not be his blood, but are still a reflection of his own. The older Bennett smiles softly down at his brother before ruffling the other's hair into his eyes. The younger boy chuckles again before batting away his hand.

Jack shrugs. "Eh, it was nothing."

"While that may be true." North returns to the conversation and Jack rolls his eyes dramatically causing Jamie to giggle. "It was good technique and quick thinking. Things that are good for dragon training."

Jack's world suddenly stops. Did he just say dragon training?

"Did you say dragon training?" Jamie expresses Jack's thoughts, that wide-eyed look of his turning towards the older viking.

The dread from earlier comes back doubled and Jack decides to look away from the two, not wanting to hear or see the news he knows is coming being given to him.

North hums from behind Jack, letting him sulk a few steps away. "Indeed. Jackson has been enrolled in dragon training program effective today. Decision was made last night."

"Oh, that's awesome! Right, Jack?" Jamie is so painfully excited for Jack and he can't even blame him for it.

If you had asked Jack twenty-four hours ago if that was what he had wanted, he would have immediately agreed. But after everything that had gone down with that Night Fury in the woods last night, Jack's whole perspective was forced to change. He witnessed first hand that neither him or Hiccup had what it took to kill dragons despite one being tied up and presented to them for the taking. It just wasn't in them, something within Jack stopped him from doing the one thing he had to do to make right by his tribe.

And the worst part, he hadn't told Jamie yet. He couldn't bring himself to let down the only person that looked up to him. What kind of example would he be for Jamie if he knew his older brother couldn't kill a dragon even if it costed him his life?

Jack didn't respond immediately, instead he glances around the arena before landing eyes on his staff laying uselessly on the ground a few feet from where they were all standing. He crosses the distance and flicks his foot underneath the stick before launching it into the air and catching it around the handle, bringing it up to let it rest on one of his shoulders.

"Jack?" Jamie asks again, curiosity and doubt creeping into his voice. Jack hadn't hoped he would be having this conversation with Jamie in the training arena of all places, but it was starting to look like he didn't have much of a choice.

Jack slowly turns around to meet the eyes of his mentor and brother, both looking at him expectantly. He lets out a long sigh before ripping off the bandage, "I just don't think the whole dragon-killing thing is for me anymore. I'm sure some other kid can take my place."

Jamie looks like someone told him pigs could fly and spit fire the same as dragons when Jack looks at him. The older brunette almost laughs, but keeps it in. At least the boy wasn't angry or disappointment.

Yet.

"Oh nonsense! Of course you want to kill dragons, everyone wants to kill dragons. That is what vikings do and you will be a viking!" North bends down to retrieve his discarded weapon like how Jack had just done and sheathes it back into the holster at his side. The large man then casually walks past Jack, patting him on the back in a way that Jack thinks he means to be reassuring but is just slightly painful as he goes. It was clear the topic was not up for discussion, but Jack was never one to listen to rules, even unspoken ones.

"Well, I'm not sure if you've noticed, but I'm not everyone." Jack says, turning around to jog after his mentor. Jamie seems to snap out of whatever shock he was in and slowly follows behind them. Jack feels guilt gnaw at him for leaving his brother in the dark like he was doing, but he'd have to explain it another time when North wasn't several feet in front of them.

"I'm aware, but you will get there. You will do just fine." North continues, ignoring the obvious message Jack was trying to get across. It wasn't that Jack didn't want to kill dragons anymore, it was that he flat out couldn't. Despite growing up in a village full of people who lived for the craft, something within him said it was wrong. And you can't really argue with who you are beneath everything else, no matter how much you want to.

"Let's try this. I can't kill dragons, is that what you want to hear?" Jack is exasperated at this point, gesturing his arms around to emphasize his words. He looks back at Jamie for help but thinks better of it when dark brown eyes are only staring at him in confusion, a questioning tilt angling his eyebrows. He's going to be no help to Jack until he's able to explain the situation to him, so the brunette just turns back towards his mentor.

Before Jack can properly react, his legs are swept from below him and his staff is wiped from his grip. The loss of balance sends the brunette crashing onto the stone floor, his side getting the majority of his weight as he lands.

When Jack looks up at his attacker, he is instead met with the sharp end of one of North's twin swords and a smirk from the man holding it. "All I hear is voice of boy who let his guard down." The jewelry within his white beard jingles as he lowers the weapon and leans in closer. "Do not worry about details. They are unimportant."

Jack groans before going fully limp and rests his head back on the stone beneath him, clearly not getting through to his mentor at all. "And if those details include a dragon eating me in the first minute?"

A pshh slides past North's lips as he brings himself back to his full height, which is unnervingly tall from Jack's position on the ground, and returns his sword back to it's holster once again.

"Gobber won't let that happen. He is best dragon tamer in all of Berk! Now," North points a thick finger in Jack's direction. "go get ready for class. Make me proud, hm?" Then the man winks before finally taking his exit, ruffling Jamie's hair as he leaves.

"Yeah, no problem. Easy." Jack mumbles, sarcasm being his only defense against the amount of dread he feels as he stares up at the clouded sky.

It quickly doubles when the face of his brother comes into view. "What do you mean you can't kill dragons? What happened to the Night Fury you and Hiccup shot down yesterday? I thought you guys went to find it."

Jack lets out a long breath before he brings himself to a sitting position, the rest of his brother coming into view as he stands a foot to the older brunette's left with hands shoved into his pockets. Jamie looks so young as he stares at Jack patiently waiting for his answer, light brown hair hanging slightly in front of his eyes and a large pout on his lips. Despite being adopted into the Bennett family, Jamie is still every part of Jack's brother. So he wants nothing less than to make the awed look in his eyes turn to disappointment, but he also refuses to lie to his face.

"We let it go, Jamie." Darker hazel eyes widen at the statement, but Jack just continues, wanting to get it over with. "We found it fallen in the woods and when Hic wouldn't kill it, he gave the dagger to me to do it. And I honestly thought I was going to, but when I brought it down I used it to start cutting the rope and Hiccup ran over and helped me."

"But you're alive. How did you guys manage to escape if you didn't kill it?" Jamie asks and Jack can't help but breathe out a laugh as he catches a sparkle of amazement within his little brother's eyes. Leave it up to Jamie Bennett to still think he was cool even when he was freeing a dragon back into the wild, which had never been done in all of viking history.

"It didn't attack us. It definitely gave Hic a good scare for almost killing it, but it just flew off." Jamie laughs softly at Hiccup's expense within Jack's story and comes to sit beside his brother, bumping their shoulders together as he does. When Jack turns to look at him though, his expression slowly slips back into confusion and he knows Jamie isn't done asking questions.

"So...why couldn't you do it? I don't blame you for anything, but it's all you ever used to talk about. How you needed to kill a dragon to be accepted by the tribe." Jamie's eyes leave no room for Jack to redirect with a joke or avoid the question altogether. The older brunette knows how impressionable his little brother is, and when he looks at him like that Jack understands he needs to choose his next words carefully because Jamie is really listening.

"I-" Jack pauses for a moment to look around the arena and away from his brother. His eyes land on his discarded bow staff again that had been taken from him by North earlier and leans over to snatches it back into his hands, immediately feeling a sense of security. "When I went to do it, Jamie, something stopped me."

At the younger Bennett's alarmed face, he quickly clarifies. "Not like an actual something, but more like something inside me. Like that feeling you get in your gut when you know what you're doing is wrong, that's what it was like. So I listened."

Jamie nods after Jack finishes and sits next to him silently for a bit. Jack lets him think his explanation over, allowing him to come to whatever conclusion he needs to. It was then Jack realized he could live with it if Jamie decided to call him a coward and refuse to understand how he let something like this happen, but there wouldn't be a day that went by where he wouldn't do everything in his power to earn his admiration back.

And on the off chance he did understand...

"Okay. I think I get it." Jack's head snaps to his brother and he feels all the tension he had been building up ever since North had told him about his enrollment slide off his shoulders. Jamie was offering him a small, lopsided smile that would convince anyone who didn't know them that they shared the same blood. The awe that Jamie always looked at Jack with finally returning to his dark hazel eyes.

"You do?" Jack asks, a smile of his own growing on his lips.

"I mean, yeah. I sometimes get that feeling when I'm sneaking another cookie from mom's batch and when I listen I don't get caught. So, it makes sense you would listen to it too." Jamie explains, his grin from earlier forming into a full-on smile and he leans over to bump Jack's shoulder again.

The older brunette chuckles at the childish analogy, but he couldn't be happier at the outcome. Jack raises his hand closest to Jamie that isn't holding his staff and ruffles his hair the same hue as his own, glad he wouldn't have to fight to get him back after all.

The two of them were like a Zippleback dragon, two different heads that exist individually but one can't live without the other. And the same could be said about the Bennett brothers. Jack could never thank Toothiana and Bunnymund enough for giving him Jamie.

"You're so smart, you know that?" Jack says and Jamie only rolls his eyes before the two of them burst into laughter, the younger of them leaning onto the older for support that he would always provide.

Before Jamie can snark a comment in reply that his brother knew was coming, their moment was interrupted by someone entering the arena.

The scuffing of boot on stone has Jack looking up from Jamie's beaming face to another that looks near identical except for the feminine touch and lack of smile. Emily looks between them as she approaches them sitting in the middle of the arena, her axe moving in it's back holster with every step she takes.

Jack is quick to regain his feet under his body and stands to greet her. "Em! Whatcha doin all the way out here squirt?"

Emily's expression doesn't change from the stony look in place and she ignores her older brother's greeting in favor of turning her attention to her younger one. "Go find your friends, Jamie." She says, her tone holding no room for argument.

Jack inhales a sharp hiss and rolls his staff between his palms. It's obvious there's something Emily has to say to Jack that she preferred if Jamie wasn't present for, which meant Jack was in for it.

Jamie groans from where he is slowly getting up from his earlier sitting position before he meets eyes with his sister. "What? Why?"

"Just go, please. He'll see you later." She responds, her arms crossing in front of her chest and continuing to ignore Jack who was now behind her.

There's a moment where Jack considers booking it out of there, but a stray ray of sunlight glints off Emily's axe and he quickly thinks better of it. She may be younger than him, but she beats him in almost every other category when it came to vikingness, especially the fighting part.

When Jamie turns to Jack for his opinion on the matter, Jack shakes his head softly. "It's best we listen to Scary Mary over here." For the first time since entering the arena, Emily finally turns to look at her oldest brother. Her eyebrows swoop down over her eyes at a pissed off angle and her lips downturn in a angry frown.

Case and point.

Jack raises his hands in surrender, holding his staff in one by two fingers. Emily just rolls her eyes and returns to looking at Jamie expectantly.

The youngest Bennett glances between his two siblings before huffing dramatically and taking his leave, saying a quick goodbye to his brother and disappearing into the entryway.

Once Jamie is fully out of ear shot, Jack swings his bow staff into its usual spot across his shoulders and hangs his arms over the ends. "Alright, lay it on me, sis. What's on your mind?"

Emily reaches around her back to take out her axe and slings it up and in her brother's direction. It's not as close as when Astrid was threatening Hiccup, but Jack is definitely getting some flashbacks. Feeling a little defenseless, he flips his staff into his right hand to hold it beside him.

"You are going to the academy and you are doing the dragon training." Emily says. Her eyes are a closer hazel to Jack's own as she glares at him from over the silver of her weapon. He briefly wonders if she'll ever again use them to look at him the way she used to when she was younger.

He quickly saves the thought for later because she never will if he doesn't respond to her now. "If you know about that that means you talked to North, who definitely told you I didn't want to join even though he never actually responded to me when I said it." Jack knows his guess is right when his sister straightens the arm holding her axe towards him.

"Our family are outsiders as it is, we don't need another reason for them to look down on us. Jamie deserves to have a normal viking childhood, and running around the forest chasing after fantasies with you and Hiccup isn't going to give him that." Emily states.

Jack's smile slips slightly, but he tries his best to not make it obvious that her words had struck a certain cord within him. He lifts his staff to slowly bring down the weapon pointed at his face and Emily lets him, but her expression never changes as she continues to look at him.

"You know," Jack starts, leaning against his bow staff casually though he feels anything but. "You used to believe in those fantasies, too. What happened to that girl who said she'd never give up until she saw a forest sprite with her own eyes?"

Emily stares at him for a second more as she returns her axe back to its holster before she responds. "She grew up, Jack."

He cringes slightly at the clear innuendo, another pang striking his heart but he keeps it off his face. She couldn't know just how much the distance growing between them truly hurt him. If this was the path she decided to choose, then Jack had no right to stop her just because he wants things to be the way they used to be; when both Jamie and Emily looked at him as if he hung the stars in the sky as they created the most fantastical stories after hours of getting lost in the woods. Time was moving forward no matter how badly Jack didn't want it to, and he just hoped that Jamie stuck around a little longer before he too decided he had outgrown Jack.

"Well, you'll always be my little sister. No matter what." Jack looks at her softly and comes over to lightly boop the roundness of her nose. She looks at him strangely before she shakes her head, her glare returning.

"Just, please take this seriously. For Jamie's sake." Emily says with a sense of finality. Jack sighs before he brings two fingers to his temple to give her a small salute, both of them knowing it was the closest he would give to a yes. His sister doesn't say anything else then, and turns around to leave the way she came.

Jack watches her go, still leaning against the wood of his staff and can't help but feel another few inches of distance grow between them with each step she takes away and out of the arena from him.

❄︎  

Chapter Text

❄︎  

Jack seriously can not believe his luck. Enrolled in dragon training? And not even twenty-four hours after his realization that he couldn't kill a dragon before he proceeded to release one back into the wild to do who-knows-what.

But when Jack thinks back to the way the Night Fury had run away, it wasn't very efficiently.

It had tried numerous times to fly away but it continued to crash into trees and fall before leaping back into the air until it disappeared into that grotto. It was strange that a dragon Jack had seen ripping through the sky hours earlier was now struggling to fly straight.

Had it been injured during its fall and he just hadn't noticed? He wouldn't doubt it, it had to have come down from several hundreds feet worth of speed. Nothing could go through that unscathed, not even the Unholy Offspring of Lightning and Death Itself.

Jack thought vaguely if he could convince Hiccup to go check out the grotto after he got out of his lesson as he crossed in front of the Great Hall's stone staircase towards Hiccup's house. The town was alive around him as he went, vikings going about their days as if they weren't attacked by a horde of angry dragons the day before. But that's how it was on Berk, a raid on their village's livestock one moment and eating dinner back at home the next. It could be seen as insane from an outsiders point of view, but it was Jack's life. A life he quite liked aside from the sneering looks he'd occasionally receive from his peers and now his added responsibility of dragon training that he needed to complain to Hiccup about immediately.

Jack figures Hiccup is still holed up in his bedroom working on another project, but when he goes to turn into a gap between two houses he stands corrected. None other than his childhood and current best friend can be seen walking down the path alongside the row of huts Jack was about to slip through and he watches as Hiccup looks up and around, seemingly searching for something.

"Well if it isn't the Pride of Berk himself. What's up Hiccy!" Jack takes a few steps backwards out of the alley and redirects himself onto the same path his friend was heading down. Hiccup's eyes that always reminded Jack of their days deep in the forest flick over to meet his own at the call and Jack immediately picks up his pace at the look on the other's face. He guesses he was the one Hiccup was looking for afterall, and it appears not to be good news.

"What's wrong?" Jacks asks once they finally meet up, getting a better look at his best friend's expression. His thick brows are scrunched together at his forehead and his lips are downturned into an anxious frown, hands curling and uncurling at his sides in the way he always does when he's anxious.

Hiccup groans before gently grabbing Jack's upper arm and dragging them off to the side, out of the way of the main traffic of the village.

"It's my dad." He says once they stop against a medium-height stone wall. "You will not guess what this man says to me this morning."

Jack chuckles and puts his hands on top of the wall behind him before hoisting himself up on top of it, his feet barely skimming the dirt below them. "Probably something stupid and not true." Jack says as he brings his staff from its back sling to lean it into the ground, placing his chin onto his hands rested on top of a end.

"Unfortunately true but definitely stupid." Hiccup leans against the stone beside Jack's sitting form. "He's enrolled me in dragon training! The nerve of this man, I go to tell him that I can't kill dragons and what does he do? He puts me in lessons to do that exact thing."

At this, Jack suddenly realizes that they have both been conspired against by their respective mentors. Not only did North convince the chief that Jack should be put into this year's dragon training session, but it appeared Gobber had done the same for Hiccup. He guessed he shouldn't be too surprised though, since they did everything else together. Why not get eaten by fire-breathing reptiles together too?

Jack sees Hiccup turn to him when he doesn't immediately respond with the sympathy he would usually give out and watches the other's shoulders visibly slump when he gets a look at Jack's expression. "You got enrolled too, didn't you?"

Jack breathes out through slacked lips before responding. "Yeah, North just let me know this morning. I was actually heading up to complain to you, but looks like we're both fucked now."

The groan Hiccup lets out before dropping his head into his hands is something similar to what Jack feels within himself, the sense of utter dread and defeat. There was no running into the woods to escape this, the both of them knowing they'd be searched for the second they didn't show up and dragged kicking and screaming to the arena.

While their situation did look dire, Jack was always the first of them to see the light at the end of the tunnel. "Well, let's just agree to get through this without dying. We can manage that, right?" The brunette glances down to Hiccup as the other slowly raises his face from his hands to look back up at him.

"I guess we'll see, won't we?" Hiccup responds and though he sounds bleak, there's a small smile sliding onto one cheek and Jack can't help but to grin back. The burnette then hops down from the wall to gently bump his shoulder against Hiccup's who rolls his eyes and softly shoves him away, Jack softly chuckling all the while.

He then follows Hiccup's lead and leans back against the stone behind them. The smile he'd gotten from the auburn-haired teen slowly melts away as they continue to sit beside each other, both of them taking a moment to allow the information of their nearing doom to sink in as they stare out at the villagers in front of them.

The two of them had always enjoyed people watching after not being given much choice to do anything else when their tribe had begun outcasting them. If they couldn't actively talk and join in with their peers, the two of them were satisfied enough to pick a secluded spot and watch the hours of the day go by within the village. There was a lot someone could learn by just watching from a distance.

Without meaning to, Jack's mind slips back to earlier that morning with his sister. Emily's words weren't necessarily new to Jack since she's been hell-bent on 'snapping Jack into shape' since her apprenticeship with Astrid had started, but that didn't mean they affected him any less.

It never failed to surprise Jack how much someone could change in such little time. He knew Emily was still the sister he watched grow up alongside Jamie and himself, but it had been buried deep underneath all the new things she was experiencing outside of the safe haven that was the Bennett house.

Jack understands realistically that the way he is going about his life isn't what Berk is used to, but what everyone fails to remember is that Jack wasn't born Berkian.

It shows in the lankiness of his body and the lightness of his eyes, and even in his interests. Despite having no idea where he originally came from, Jack had diverged so far from many of Berk's customs and it had landed him where he was today. But he wouldn't want it any other way if it meant Hiccup was by his side. He just wished Emily had stayed there too.

"Okay, what's up?" Jack is snapped back from his thoughts by Hiccup's question and he turns to see the other already looking at him, emerald eyes squinted and an eyebrow raised in suspicion. Sometimes Jack forgets they spent their whole lives stuck to each other's sides, so of course he could tell when something was upsetting him.

"The sky? Come on, Hic, that's an easy one." Jack deflects, knowing he won't be able to for long but any chance to tease Hiccup is a chance well taken.

The boy rolls his eyes before they land back on Jack. "I'm being serious Jack, I know somethings up. I can see it in your eyebrows."

Jack immediately feels the scrunch on his forehead and quickly releases the tension. He sighs before conceding to his friend's imploring eyes. "It's just something Em said to me earlier. She found out about me being enrolled in dragon training from North and came to make sure I went."

The brunette tosses his bow staff from one hand to the other and hopes that Hiccup won't say anything more, but when has anything ever gone his way?

His best friend straightens his back and turns to face him with crossed arms. "And?"

Jack side-eyes Hiccup who only raises another eyebrow at him, clearly not caring that Jack wants them to move on. Typical. "She said that I should do it for Jamie and the family so the tribe doesn't have another reason to look down on us. She just doesn't believe like she used to, Hiccup."

Jack takes a breath in and pauses, Hiccup remaining silent beside him waiting for him to continue. The brunette tilts his face to meet the other's and glances over the worried look growing there, convincing Jack that Hiccup deserved the truth of his thoughts. "And I'm starting to think that maybe she's right, you know? Should I stop telling stories and searching for what I want to believe is real so Jamie has a chance at the real viking childhood I missed out on?"

Jack watches as Hiccup's eyes widen and the other breathes out a surprised laugh before reaching out a hand to place it gently upon Jack's shoulder. "Am I talking to Jackson Frost Bennett, right now? I swear he was right here a second ago."

The brunette feels none of his usual playfulness as he rolls his eyes in Hiccup's direction and he turns his gaze back to the villagers walking past them. He isn't entirely sure what to say to that, but Hiccup's hand is burning a hole through his cloak the longer he leaves it on there.

Jack can feel Hiccup's imploring green eyes lingering on his face as he continues, his voice now faceless to the Bennett's gaze. "Jack, I'm gonna need to you look at me."

Jack ignores the request in favor of picking at a loose splinter at the end of his bow staff, immediately regretting letting it show how much he was affected by some simple words from his eager-to-be-a-viking sister.

Doubting the things he believed in wasn't who he was, Jack knows that, but everyday that went by where he didn't catch sight of the magic from a elemental spirit or the twinkling wings of a fae is another day where his peers believe him to be crazy.

He isn't even entirely sure why he thinks the mythical world exists. But at times it feels like the only thing that he feels he might remember from where he came from, his birthplace.

Jack is softly taken from his thoughts when the heat of Hiccup's hand slides up his shoulder and across the back of his neck to turn his face in the other's direction. He's met with a small, lopsided smile that warps the freckles on one of Hiccup's cheeks into a soft dimple.

Jack's gaze is brought back up to the green of his friend's eyes when he speaks again. "Remember what you asked me yesterday? I'm asking that to you now."

Jack thinks for a moment back into the chaos that was the last twenty-four hours of their lives and is suddenly reminded of a very similar conversation they had had in which their roles were reversed. Hiccup had been the one distraught over the things Astrid had said to him and Jack had asked him if he trusted his judgement. He lets an airy chuckle escape him at the absurdity of the situation but can't help but find the humor in how alike him and Hiccup had become over the years, especially on how they react to situations like this.

"Alright, you made your point." Jack says and Hiccup looks a little too smug for someone who was supposed to comforting him. "I trust you, Hic. Always have."

His friend nods proudly before releasing Jack's face, most likely knowing he had his full attention now. "Well then, trust me when I say I wouldn't have followed you around for eighteen years if I didn't believe in you, Jack. And that means that if you think something is out there because there's something within you telling you there is, then I believe in that too."

Jack feels his jaw slacken in speechlessness as he allows the words to sink into his stubborn skull. He isn't sure if this pep-talk has cured all sense of his self-doubt, but it definitely kills the mood he had been stuck in all day.

Jack suddenly reaches up and wraps an arm around Hiccup's shoulders much to the other boy's surprise as he lets out a confused yelp. But the sound is quick to dissolve into words of protest and deep chuckles when Jack takes his fist and rubs it into Hiccup's skull. "You're so sentimental sometimes, Hiccy."

Hiccup eventually manages to get Jack to release him after catching both wrists within his grip and holding them at an arm's length away. "Well remind me to never do it again if this is the thanks I get."

Jack cackles at the glare his friend gives him before escaping his hands and returning his own to his staff he had previously leaned against the wall beside him. He then softly bumps the other's shoulder and Jack smiles brightly at the way the annoyed look on Hiccup's face melts into a smile of his own.

"Nah, I won't do that. It's one of my favorite sides of you." Jack finally says. "Thank you."

Hiccup simply bumps him right back before responding. "Yeah. Anytime."

❄︎  

An hour later finds the two boys meeting up after readying themselves for training at their respective houses.

Jack had chosen to swap out his usual oversized blue tunic for a more breathable white cotton short sleeve, but his wrap cloak still remains hung over his shoulders. And when Jack looks over to Hiccup walking a few feet beside him, he notices that the other's wardrobe had hardly changed either, now only missing his brown fur vest.

The wind whips at the back of Jack's neck from the gorge below the bridge they're crossing. He had always thought the destination of the dragon training arena was a clear warning towards the dangerousness of the lessons held within it, with all it's creaky wooden overpasses and the steep cliffs underneath them that lead into frigid cold water. It would only take a strong enough gale to blow a lesser viking over the side and into an early death and Jack tries not to think about how well he fits the qualifications for that specific category.

The two of them don't talk much during their unfortunately brisk walk towards the arena and it's all too soon when they see the chained dome in the near distance. Its larger than the combat arena Jack frequents with North, but it's to be expected with it's added room for five separate dragons that wait behind the thick wooden doors he knows line the walls. It's a daunting structure to be near and Jack and Hiccup have avoided it almost entirely for that very reason.

Well, up until this point at least.

"Are you ready to be torched beyond recognition?" Jack tries at a joke, but he knows his nervousness is clear within his tone.

He doesn't have to turn to his side to know Hiccup feels the same way when he replies. "Not even close."

The two of them continue on and eventually they see the entryway with multiple figures already walking below it's arch and into the arena. Jack groans and throws his head back causing him to softly hit it against the strengthened wood of his staff in it's holster. Of course they were going to be the last ones to arrive, why not add another thing to make this day more terrible than it already was.

Jack hears Hiccup snort behind him, but turning to look at his face reveals the other's shoulders hiked up almost to his ears as his swaying hands clasp and unclasp at his sides. The brunette decides to spare the other of a sarcastic reply in favor of focusing on the group gathered in the center of the stone structure as the boys pass through its entrance, the various amounts of weapons hung on the walls of it glaring as they do.

When they finally make it within earshot, it's Ruffnut's voice Jack hears first. "I hope I get a scar out of this. Preferably one that's really ugly and takes forever to heal." Her voice is gruff as if she had swallowed buckets of gravel when she was young, which could actually be a true story considering her and her brother's history.

The entirety of the group's backs are obliviously turned to them as the boys join several meters behind. Jack can see the blonde of Astrid's braid as she slings it over her shoulder and to her back before she responds. "Yeah, it's really only worth it if you get one."

"Totally get it. Pain. Love it." Hiccup speaks up and Jack chuckles when every one of the heads in front of them whip around with faces that vary from shock all the way to deep annoyance.

"Good of yuhs to finally join us. Yuer late." Gobber hobbles into view from a position Jack didn't notice before, a hook attached to his missing limb as today's hand of choice. His blue eyes glare at them from all the way up front, but Jack's never found his malice intimidating so he only winks in reply. Much to the older viking's displeasure.

"They were probably out chasing trolls while the rest of us actually did something with our lives!" Snotlout says nastily, tossing his signature axe by it's hilt from hand to hand.

Jack hums and looks upwards as if he was thinking seriously hard about something before he pops his bow staff up from it's holster and into his grip by his side. "Hm, I don't remember chasing you today." Jack points one end of the stick in Snotlout's direction and is immediately rewarded for his joke with the boisterous laughter of the Thorston twins to his far left.

"The man's got jokes!" Tuffnut snickers, placing all of his weight upon his sister's shoulder which ultimately sends them both toppling onto the stone floor. They become quickly engrossed in another petty argument and are deaf to the rest of the situation as they wrestle.

A quick movement of silver metal catches Jack's eye and he looks in the direction of Astrid who looks about to say a comment herself but Gobber beats her to it. At least someone seems to be looking out for them.

"Alright, listen up!" The large blonde viking walks forward from his place in front of the group and makes a line through them, speaking as he hobbles along. "This is day one of dragon training. Meaning each one of yuhs in 'ere have been enrolled in this year's session."

When he makes it up to where Jack and Hiccup are lingering in the back, he pushes through them as well and gestures offhandedly towards them. "Which includes these two muttonheads."

The boys in question lock eyes after Hiccup's mentor passes and a chorus of disgruntled sounds of disappointment are made from the peers around them. Other than Astrid of course, whose gaze Jack can feel burning a hole in the side of his face. Across from him, Hiccup just gives a helpless shrug and Jack twirls his staff before they both redirect their attention back onto Gobber.

He's now standing at the other end of the arena right in front of the entrance they had all just came through, suspiciously close to the lever that lowers the gate above it and the one beside it that releases the nearest dragon behind triple reinforced doors. "In these lessons you will learn about the dragons that attack our village and eventually how to defend yourself against them and kill them." The viking then reaches up and effectively closes off the only way out other than the gaps in the chains above them.

Jack glances around to find he isn't the only one suddenly put on edge. Astrid has finally released him and Hiccup from her infuriated glare to instead place it upon Gobber with her axe secured tightly in front of her. Snotlout is white-knuckling the hilt of his own axe as he tries desperately to remain in a nonchalant stance. The twins are locked elbow-in-elbow beside each other as they warily watch the gate lower, all the while still trying to get in occasional jabs and punches between them. Fishlegs has his deck of dragon cards trembling in his grip as he flips through each of them, mumbling undecipherable facts to himself.

When Jack gets to Hiccup, he's staring fearfully at his mentor as he hesitantly speaks up. "What–What are you doing?" The brunette follows his friend's gaze and a fear very similar to the one he had seen within Hiccup's eyes pangs through him at the sight of Gobber leaving the first lever behind and placing a hook onto one of the release ones.

The older viking flashes the few teeth he possesses in a malicious type of smile as he glances over the group of seven uneasy students. "Well, the best way to learn is on the field."

Before any of the more logically thinking young adults can do anything to stop him, Gobber brings the heavy looking lever downward and instantly triggers the opening of the door a few feet away.

Jack's body reacts quickly due to North's relentless training exercises and he spins his bow staff into a defensive position before taking a step into Hiccup's space, knowing the other boy was currently weaponless and had no way to properly defend himself against whatever fire-breathing lizard decided to burst out of those slowly moving doors. His heart pounds beneath his ribcage as he hears the shuffling of the rest of the students do the same, the quickening of Hiccup's breaths beside him letting him know he wasn't alone in the fact neither of them were ready for this.

He watches for a moment, muscles tense and ready for their next burst of movement as the meters high doors finally thud to a halt, revealing a dark opening within the stone wall. No one moves as they wait.

Jack hears one of the twins begin to ask where the dragon had gone before they're interrupted by the loud buzzing of Gronkle wings.

It races from the shadows of its prison and into the air of the arena, it's wings beating so fast that Jack could barely see that they were brown like the rest of its bump-riddled body. It's club tail swings violently from its position above them as it tries to catch its bearings in the brightness of it's new surroundings. Jack begins to hope that the dragon will be too confused to properly attack as it tumbles clumsily in the air until its shattered by a high-pitched scream from Snotlout that effectively focuses the reptile's attention.

The yellow of it's irises widen as the pupil slits in the direction of Snotlout's quickly retreating back and promptly dives downward on the boy's tail.

With the Gronkle momentarily distracted by the awful swinging of Snotlout's axe and his girlish screams, Jack finds movement within his limbs once more and pushes Hiccup to move in the opposite direction of the dragon. Hiccup seems not too far behind in getting his own senses back and quickly follows his lead, both of them hightailing it to the other end of the arena.

In the depth of the chaos, Jack hears Gobber yell from his position back near the entrance, the man's voice somehow carrying over the noises within the arena. "Grab a shield!"

The brunette chances a glance backwards to watch as multiple members of his group immediately stop their random scrambling and change course towards the armory stand. Gobber is leaning against the wall casually as if he was watching Bucket herd in his sheep for the night and not his student actively running for their lives.

If Jack didn't believe the blonde viking was crazy before, he definitely believes it now.

When Jack turns back around, him and Hiccup are feet from where various shields have been set leaning against a slab of wood holding numerous types of weaponry. Jack hears Gobber say something about choosing a shield over obtaining a weapon as he quickly grabs the nearest one to him and shoves it into Hiccup's chest.

He's rewarded with a grunted oof, but Jack finds no time to apologizes as he yells. "Take cover behind this!"

While Hiccup usually didn't follow Jack's orders blindly, the brunette is relieved to discover he did in the heat of conflict and he watches the boy stumble around and behind the weapon slab. Jack turns to grab a shield of his own but is met with Snotlout's frightened face and a ready-to-fire Gronkle feet behind him.

"Get out of the way, moron!" Snotlout borderline shrieks and Jack is glad to oblige, sending his bow staff into the stone floor and vaulting himself up and over the mounted weapons stand. He lands beside Hiccup's huddled form and quickly hunches down as a blast rattles the slab behind them.

"What the hell is that man thinking?" Jack hears Hiccup grumble from next to him with the shield Jack had given to him trembling in his grip. Their eyes lock and the Bennett watches green quickly scan over his body before returning to his gaze with an annoyed flare. "And where is your shield?"

Jack just shrugs with a smirk and spins his staff by the metal grip at its center. "I've got my staff, it's all I need." Hiccup looks about to make an obviously sarcastic comment when Gobber's voice shouts out within the arena again.

"How many shots does a Gronkle got til it's all out?" The viking asks. Jack takes the opportunity to ignore Hiccup's insistence on needing a shield to turn back around and stand from their spot behind the armory mount. He locates the Gronkle quickly as it chases down a whimpering Fishlegs, who is surprisingly the one who answers.

"Six!" The stocky boy shouts before he remembers what exactly is pursuing him and raises his shield up just in time to block the molten lava thrown at him.

"Fishlegs, yeur out!" Gobber exclaims, still not having moved from his casual posture against the wall. What Jack would give for the Gronkle to go after him for a change.

Fishlegs doesn't seem all that disappointed however, and just takes the chance to run away from the heat of the battle.

Hiccup finally decides to join him and stands slightly crouched beside him. The two of them watch as the dragon seems to understand that Fishlegs is done and switches its direction towards the Thorston twins off to the boys' right who are playing tug-o-war with one of the shields set out for them.

At first, Jack is confused as to why since there were at least two more right below him until he hears Tuffnut shout, voice equally as gravelly as his sister's. "No! My shield, I saw it first!"

His sister ignores his accusation and only grips on harder to the side she's tugging. "It has flames on it, flames are totally a girl thing. Do you want a girly shield Tuffnut?"

Their petty argument is cut short when a lava blast from the Gronkle finds its way through the shield between them, destroying the thing completely and causing them to fall back on their asses at the same time Gobber announces that they were out. The growling dragon doesn't deter them though, and they continue to bicker as they collectively get back up and run away.

"I don't understand how they've survived this long." Hiccup says and Jack turns to chuckle with him in agreement. But the laughter on Hiccup's lips suddenly turns into curses when his green eyes lock onto something behind him.

There's really only one thing within this arena that could cause a reaction like that and Jack is quick to push Hiccup away from him to avoid the blast that shoots onto the spot they were previously standing.

Jack glances up as the Gronkle lazily licks the residue lava from the sharp teeth lining it's jaw but perks up when a battle cry sounds from behind its back. The Bennett catches a look at Astrid sprinting towards the dragon with an axe raised above her head at the same time the Gronkle notices her approaching. Despite the size of its wings compared to its girthy body, the reptile is able to quickly whip itself around to fire a shot at Astrid.

Unfortunately for her, the Gronkle's aim is true and it hurdles straight towards her head, but she quickly raises her own shield to take the hit before dropping into a side roll when the dragon tries to take its chances with a physical attack. She lets out a scream of annoyance when Gobber yells that she's out.

Jack expects the thing to round back and strike again, but it continues to buzz forwards and leave Astrid to raise to her feet confused and unharmed. Jack isn't exactly sure where the dragon was going either until a familiar yell of terror echoes in the arena around him.

Jack's eyes immediately search for the source and soon finds Hiccup who had run to the other side of the structure after Jack had pushed him out of the way. But what was surely supposed to be an attempt at escaping the conflict just made him the Gronkle's central target and it hurries through the air right in Hiccup's direction.

After several realizations during their run-in with the Night Fury, Jack knows that Hiccup isn't going to kill the dragon currently gearing itself up for a death blow even if he had a weapon to do so with. He couldn't blame Hiccup though, not sure if Jack himself would be able to bring himself to kill it even if it ultimately costed him his life.

So, Jack does what he knows he can do and starts into a sprint to help his only friend.

He notices as he runs that Gobber has finally risen from off the wall and is now hobbling as fast as his stump of a leg allows him towards Hiccup's terrified shouts. "Hiccup! You need to fight back or get out of there! Now!" The blonde viking's voice carries significantly well across the arena to where the commotion from other members of the class immediately falls away in favor of paying attention to the situation at hand.

From Jack's position now near the middle of the circular structure, he can tell that with Gobber's pace the man had no chance of reaching Hiccup in time to stop the blast he could see forming in the dragon's mouth.

And to worsen the circumstance, the clumsiness of his friend's lanky legs makes a unfortunate appearance in the form of the boy tripping over the shield he wasn't used to. The metal of one of the sides scrapes against the stone floor and before Hiccup can stop his own momentum, his feet collide with the wooden surface and he's sent sprawling onto the ground.

Jack's heart sinks when he sees Hiccup's head hit against the closest wall on his way down, but it doesn't seem to be enough to knock the boy out thankfully. Hiccup attempts to scramble back to his feet, but the Gronkle's snapping teeth and glowing mouth do nothing to aid him.

"Hiccup!" Jack shouts as he pushes every ounce of energy he possesses into pumping his legs and arms towards the other. Fear grapples at his heart when the dragon stops in front of Hiccup's trembling form and unhinges its jaw, clearly readying itself for one of its final blasts.

Jack feels what he thinks is adrenaline, but the wind at his back suggests that it's not, surge through him at a speed that almost leaves him dizzy as he sprints forward. The scenes from Jack's peripheral blur together when his speed suddenly increases tenfold and sends him right where he needs to go in the perfect amount of time.

Questions for how it was even possible for him to move like that were shoved back in Jack's mind for a time less dire before he's putting one end of his staff into the Gronkle's open mouth and forcefully angling it away from Hiccup. He seems to have timed it flawlessly when the developing blast finally exits at the exact moment its head is redirected, the molten lava instead hitting feet above Hiccup's head and immediately beginning to incinerate the stone it touches.

Jack rips away his staff from the dragon's mouth before it can decide to send him flying across the arena and secures it safely back in it's holster at the same time Gobber finally makes it to them in order to take his hook to the beast's jaw.

He knows it must be uncomfortable for the dragon in the way it whines and attempts to shoot its last blast at its offender, but with the viking attached to its mouth it only lamely splats on the ground beside them.

"Alright you big ugly beast, to bed with ya!" Gobber says from behind Jack's back, but the brunette doesn't pay attention to what happens after that and focuses himself on Hiccup, who is now clumsily moving himself away from the lava dripping down from the blast made above his head.

"Hiccup, are you alright?" Jack comes down into a semi-crouch to try his best to block his friend from the view of their peers that he can hear further within the arena shouting curses at the dragon being put away.

"Uh, I think so. I just hit my head but it wasn't hard." Hiccup replies, his fingers coming up to rub at his eyes. While Jack trusts Hiccup with his life, he doesn't necessarily trust him with his own so he performs his own check.

He delicately takes Hiccup's head within his hands to tilt it forward in order to get a better view of the top and back of his skull, searching carefully for blood or bumps. Jack runs his palm over the entirety of the other's head much to Hiccup's insistences that he's fine and breathes a sigh of relief when his hand comes back clean.

Then, just to be sure, he glances over the rest of his body and again finds nothing putting his friend in any immediate danger. Just the occasional scrape and developing bruises on his legs and arms from the fall.

"Gods, Hiccup. Can there be a day where you don't scare the living Odin out of me?" Jack sighs as he helps Hiccup up from the floor, brushing off the dust that had developed across his tunic.

"Well, where would be the fun in that?" Hiccup says, smiling in a way that looks almost awkward but Jack knows is just the leftover nerves. The Bennett rolls his eyes dramatically before giving the other a soft shove to his shoulders causing Hiccup to slightly stumble back with a laugh.

"A dragon–" Gobber interrupts their quiet conversation after the loud thump of large doors closing signals that the Gronkle had been put back into its cage. "–will always go for the kill shot. No matter what."

When Jack and Hiccup turn around, the blonde viking has made it back to the front of their group that had assembled in the middle of the arena again. All of their stances hold a tense sense of embarrassment as they stand around each other, all respectively nursing their bumps and bruises but none of them looking particularly injured.

All except for Astrid, who was fuming off to the side.

Despite the awkward atmosphere around them, Jack feels a sense of pride that him and Hiccup had made it through their first dragon training lesson relatively unscarred.

He comes up beside his friend and throws a friendly, but gentle arm around the other's shoulders and walks them up behind the group. The only sound of complaint Hiccup makes at his new arrangement is the silent roll of his eyes, so Jack runs with it.

"You know," Jack starts and everyone turns back in their direction. "I could've sworn I heard a little girl screaming when that Gronkle first came out, but I'm not seeing any around here. So strange." The brunette's face slips into a mischievous smirk when Snotlout immediately understands the comment is about him and quickly picks up his axe that had been discarded on the floor as he makes his way over. Blue eyes blazing and eyebrows scrunched together in annoyance and fury, and maybe a little bit of embarrassment.

"Okay Blizzard Baby, at least I didn't almost die!" Snotlout shouts when he's a few feet away from Jack and Hiccup. The brunette feels a pang at the notorious nickname and his face drops a few fractions.

Thankfully, it wasn't enough to warrant another reaction from angered boy in front of him before Hiccup jumps in. "Well, it definitely sounded like it."

Jack looks over to his friend whose still slung beneath his arm and catches a defensive look flare in his eyes as he glares at Snotlout. A sense of warm spreads through Jack's chest at the thought of Hiccup feeling protective enough about him to leap to his defense, but he quickly chorals it up to the appreciation he feels towards his friend.

The boys snicker beside each other when Snotlout is left speechless before the boy throws one last cursing insult, stomping away from them.

Gobber soon resumes discussing the exercise they went through and what to expect for their next session. But Jack doesn't get the chance to tune in when Ruffnut suddenly appears at his side twirling one of her long blonde braids around her finger. "Hey Jack."

Jack becomes increasingly more confused by the second as she bites her lip and begins fluttering her lashes in his face. It was nothing Jack had ever experienced before and an uncomfortable feeling starts to grow in his stomach.

"That thing you did with your staff to that dragon was pretty hot. Can I go next?" She says, voice as gravel-filled as ever.

She tries her luck by leaning even closer towards him but when she enters Jack's immediate personal space he removes his arm from Hiccup's shoulders in favor of grabbing his staff and pushing an end against her and away from him.

"I have no idea what's happening." Jack says through a grimace as Ruffnut waves strangely at him from where he had put her several feet away.

Hiccup is weirdly silent beside him, so Jack angles his head to catch a look at his friend while also keeping the girl within his peripheral. Hiccup's face is scrunched into an expression that edges the line between pissed off and disgusted as his eyes stare sharply in Ruffnut's direction. Jack can understand the latter, feeling it himself, but the first makes him curious as to what is upsetting Hiccup so much to the point where he's becoming visibly angry.

"Alright you lot! That's it for today. See you tonight in the Great Hall." Gobber talks over the words Hiccup seems about to say and the group's attention dissipates from the viking. Well everyone that was paying attention to him, anyway.

Jack's staff is dropped from its other end as Ruffnut's brother becomes aware of the situation his sister had put herself in and quickly takes her by the underarms to drag her away. She groans loudly in annoyance before smashing her lips to her hand to blow a kiss in Jack's direction much to the visual disgust of Tuffnut.

Jack dramatically ducks downward to dodge the unwanted affection invisibly thrown his way and Hiccup snorts from his side, the emotions displayed on his face earlier now replaced with humor. Jack finds himself relieved, not sure where to start deciphering the expression thrown Ruffnut's way at Jack's expense.

"What was that about? I didn't know she even knew my name." Jack says as he watches the rest of the students file out.

Astrid had left right after Gobber had finished up, a desperate Snotlout on her trail and Jack could see Ruffnut's boots finally leave his sight underneath the archway entrance with her brother still dragging her against her will. Gobber and Fishlegs brought up the rear of the group with the latter grilling the older viking with an endless stream of questions.

"I'd rather not find out, actually." Hiccup says with a soft curl of disgust poking his lip before he shakes his thoughts away and Jack immediately sees the idea that takes place in his green eyes before he speaks it. "Are you thinking what I'm thinking?"

Jack's mischievous smirk from earlier easily finds its way home back on his face. If Hiccup is referring to a certain Night Fury that could perhaps still be in that grotto they had seen it fly into, then they were definitely thinking along the same lines. "When am I not?"

The grin that was slowly growing on Hiccup's face finally becomes fully formed and he takes Jack by his bow staff before sending him stumbling alongside him in the direction of the arena's exit.

❄︎  

Chapter Text

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Jack is panting under his breath after an unnecessary but extremely fun game of chase-Hiccup-all-the-way-back-to-his-house that he was, of course, the reigning champ of.

The chase-ee in question is now sitting on the corner of Jack's bed playfully glaring at him from across the room while he waits for Jack to get ready. The brunette simply ignores him in favor of rummaging around in his drawers before pulling out his signature blue tunic and sliding it on over his head, immediately feeling the comfort that it brings along with it.

However, when he catches a glimpse of what lies underneath it, the joyful energy that had resulted from the impromptu game sinks into something damper.

The world around Jack seems to fade away as he lifts up a dark blue sash of cloth from where he had left it nestled deep within his drawer. The length of the material dangles from his hands and pools onto the clothes beneath it, the slight itchiness scratching at his fingertips as he rubs a section of it between his fingers.

While Jack would usually wrap the sash around his waist without a second thought, today seemed to yield differently as he stares at the aged blue coloring of the cloth. The nickname Snotlout had called him hours before only helping in bringing up the old memories from his early days of Berk.

Jack was about Jamie's age when he first started questioning where he had come from, never bothering for the answers to ever bring it up before. It had never concerned him that he wasn't born in Berk, despite the disdain he would receive from his peers, because he had Hiccup and the Bennetts. Toothiana and Bunnymund raised him in their own Berkian ways and Hiccup was his first and only friend. Jack never needed anything else, especially when Emily and Jamie had eventually come along.

But the older he got, the more Jack would look around and notice how different he was from the rest of his village, the kids his age never letting him forget it. So, during a particularly frigid day of devastating winter that had brought up strange nostalgic feelings within him, Jack finally asked the question.

Off in one of the newly set up bedrooms of the home, Jack can hear the distant sounds of his father tucking Emily into bed with his newborn brother Jamie cradled in his arm. The oldest of the Bennett siblings had convinced his mother to let him stay up past his bedtime only if he helped her with washing off the dishes from that night's dinner. So when she hands Jack another clean dripping plate, he bites down a groan of boredom before beginning to dry it off with a cloth.

With the day as cold as it is during devastating winter, the Bennetts, along with the rest of the village, have been stuck inside their homes for the past three days as they wait for the worst of it to pass. Jack had been through eleven of these winters at this point, so he isn't scared when he hears the howling of the winds beat against the walls around him as he sets down his freshly dried plate onto the rack beside him.

He is, however, feeling quite strange.

He stares at the soapy water sloshing within the sink as his mother's hands dip another dish into its depths when suddenly the splashes begin to resemble waves of the ocean and the suds become piles of freshly fallen snow.

It's cold, but Jack isn't shivering as the movement of the water sways him this way and that, a small itchy warmth wrapped around his body being the only warmth he needs.

He feels so small. The smallest he's ever been, and at the same time as if he was born to be great.

And Jack is crying. Not the same as if he had fallen and scraped his knee, but like these are some of the first breaths he's taken.

"Jack?" The boy is broken from whatever trance he had found himself in and looks up to his mother's worried face. Jack stays oddly silent as he watches one of her hands, now free of soap water, rise up to brush at his cheek gently. "Why are you crying, my love?"

Jack feels his eyebrows crease in confusion before lifting his own hand to wipe at his face. When he brings his fingers back, there is a dampness to their tips.

He looks back up to his mother and without really knowing what he was about to say, he speaks. "Mom, where did I come from?"

The green of Jack's mother's eyes become surrounded by white as they widen in surprise, her features slackening into soft shock. The boy can tell from the look alone that she wasn't expecting the question, but no part of him wants to take it back, so he doesn't, only continuing to stare and wait for an answer.

His mother then sighs softly before bending in the knees until Jack was suddenly looking down at her from the stool she had stood him on so he could reach the sink.

Her expression is now gentle as looks at him tenderly. "You've never asked me that before. Did something happen?"

Jack bites the inside of his cheek as he thinks, not entirely sure he could put what he had just experienced into words yet. Instead, he goes with a half truth. "Some of the older kids were calling me Blizzard Baby again. I asked why they call me that and they said to ask you."

His mother nods in understanding before taking his small hands in hers. "It was the name the village called you before we gave you your name."

"I wasn't always Jack?" He asks with childish confusion and his mother chuckles softly before shaking her head.

"Nope, not always." She looks at their hands for a moment as if choosing her next words carefully before continuing. "About eleven years ago, on a night like this one, your dad and I were getting ready for bed in this very house back when it had just been built after our wedding."

Jack is silent and his eyes are wide as he listens with the most attention he's ever given anyone. His mother's voice is gentle against his ears as it begins to calm the echoes of the cries he had felt earlier.

"Suddenly, a strong wind blew against our door and slammed it wide open. It filled the whole house with a chill. I was scared at first, but it was when it started to calm down that I heard the sound of a baby crying. It grew louder with every step I took towards the door until I realized it was coming from the shore just beside our house. So I threw on some shoes and raced to the sound, and when I arrived, there you were." His mother squeezes Jack's hand at this and smiles at him softly. He could tell it was a tender memory for her to relive, and it warms his heart from the freezing cold of the ocean.

She reaches up to hold the smallness of his cheek. "We found you in a basket, swaddled in cloth and no idea where you came from or how you survived the cold so long. Your father and I rushed you back inside and we spent the next few days convincing Stoick and the rest of the village that you weren't sent as a threat. The village called you the Blizzard Baby until you were welcomed into the tribe and into our family as Jackson Frost Bennett."

The green of her eyes were a multicolor of various shades of the same hues as they twinkled up at Jack. "It was the best day of my life when your dad and I walked back into this home with you as our first child. I like to believe you were a gift from the gods."

"Woah." Jack breathes out once she's finished and his mother chuckles softly at his response, not really expecting anything different from the young boy.

Suddenly she rises from her crouched position and ruffles his hair as she asks him to sit tight for a moment. With so much new information racing through his mind, he isn't much to refuse as she quickly slips out of the kitchen and into her and his father's room a few doors down.

Jack looks back up from where he was fiddling with his fingers when she re-enters the room with something blue held in her hands. Once she's a few feet away, Jack realizes it's a long piece of cloth folded into a neat square. The boy stares at it curiously as his mother returns to her original spot in front of him and gently hands off the blanket-esque item to him.

In his grip the article has a scratchy, yet soft texture and when he begins to unfold it at his mother's nod of approval it's much longer than he initially thought, falling past his spot on the stool and nearly grazing the floor beneath him.

"What is this, mama?" Jack asks, voice light almost as if this was a secret he wasn't supposed to know.

His mother dips her hands downward to catch a dropped end of the cloth and softly rubs a thumb over the article. "This was what I found you in all those years ago, the only thing that kept you warm in that horrible storm you showed up in."

She then returns her eyes back up to meet the hazel of Jack's own. "I don't know where you came from, Jack. None of us do. But I know one day you'll figure it out, so keep this until you do. But just know that you will always have a home with us here on Berk. You are a Bennett, no matter what those other kids call you."

Jack smiles brightly as his grip tightens around the fabric in determination, a certain type of nostalgia humming within the fabric below his touch. He jumps from his wooden stool and swings his arms around his mother's neck to which she quickly reciprocates before standing to spin them around the kitchen, Jack giggling all the way.

"I'll find where I came from. But when I'm done, I'll come back for you mom." He promises in the crook of her warm neck that he grew up in.

He feels more than he sees her chuckle beneath him before she responds. "I know you will, Jack. I believe in you."

And after so many years later, Jack wishes he still had that same determination he used to feel.

"What are you thinking about?" Jack avoids outright jumping at the sound of Hiccup's voice suddenly across the room from where he had been pouting before and now standing a few feet behind him. But there's now a tenseness to his shoulders that wasn't there before.

Hiccup seems to notice this too and urges him again. "Jack?"

The brunette in question turns around to face his friend and as discreetly as possible slides the cloth behind his back, meeting Hiccup's soft questioning look with a crooked grin. "You done moping now, Pride of Berk?"

Hiccup doesn't seem to be deterred by Jack's attempt at a tease and instead drops his gaze to the arm shoved behind his back. "What are you holding?"

"I have no idea what you're talking about. That tumble of yours in the arena must've hit your head harder than I thought." Jack says as he tries to slowly lower the cloth back into the drawer behind him and deep into an out-of-sight crevice.

Hiccup decides not to respond, and instead begins walking to Jack's right, angling his head to look over his shoulder. The brunette follows his friend with his body, but quickly regrets his underestimation of the other as Hiccup shoots an arm around Jack's other side and rips the cloth from his unprepared grip.

Sneaky bastard.

Jack extends out a hand in protest to grab the article back, but Hiccup simply takes several quick steps backwards and out of his reach. Of course he chooses now of all times to figure out how to be agile.

Jack drops his arms dramatically against his sides in defeat as he watches Hiccup look over the cloth curiously before raising his eyes to meet his own. "Is this your sash?"

Jack purses his lips into a thin line and he nods once in confirmation. Hiccup raises an eyebrow in the other's direction and opens his mouth to seemingly ask another one of his questions before he cuts himself off, realization dawning over his freckled face.

"Oh." Hiccup breathes out and Jack whips his head to the side to avoid the pitying look that enters onto the other's features.

He hears Hiccup release a grumbled groan before speaking up again. "Of course Snotlout had to bring up that nickname. He's such a sore loser."

"Honestly Hiccup, don't worry about it. It shouldn't even bother me that much anymore, it's been years." Jack continues looking off to the side as he responds, shoving his hands into the pockets at the sides of his pants in the absence of his bow staff that sits across the room against the frame of his bed.

Hiccup sighs before Jack watches him within his peripheral walk back into the brunette's space. The Bennett lets out a similar breath of air as he begins to understand that Hiccup isn't going to let this conversation go, no matter how much Jack wants to forget the whole thing even happened.

Hiccup is in front of him in seconds with the earlier rumpled cloth now laying smoothly in his hands. "You're going to find them, Jack. I know you are."

Jack slowly returns his gaze to the article he's held close ever since that day with his mother several years back. His usual joyful smile exchanged for a rare moment of vulnerability that he really only lets show for Hiccup to see, being the only person to be persistent enough for Jack to relent to him.

"It's been eighteen years, Hiccup. If they were out there, I would've found them by now. But not a single surrounding island or traveling trader has seen this material before or even heard of a baby lost at sea." Jack chances a look up at Hiccup's face and is surprised by the sheer blaze of determination he finds there.

"Then we'll keep asking!" Hiccup takes the cloth in his hands and leads one end around Jack's back through his arm and around his other side, the brunette's skin warming slightly at the contact. "You know they're out there, you said it yourself. So trust that feeling." Hiccup finishes by tying the cloth around his waist, ending at the usual spot at Jack's hip before offering him a lopsided grin.

Jack shakes his head softly as he chuckles. "You believe in me more than I believe in myself sometimes."

Hiccup just shrugs before replying. "Someone has to." He turns to walk over to Jack's bow staff before tossing it gently towards him to which the brunette catches with ease. "I learned from the best about how important it is to believe in things you know are true."

Jack glances down with a grin at the careful engravings that cover the wood of his staff as he traces a particularly beautiful image of a snowflake with the tip of his thumb. "Okay, you got me there."

They lock eyes again and Hiccup rolls his eyes. "When am I not right about something?"

The other then barks out a laugh when Jack pokes him in the chest in the direction of his door with his staff. "Alright wrap it up. We've got a dragon to see."

The Bennett smiles softly at the excitement that paints Hiccup's face before he's rushing out the door with Jack hot on his heels.

❄︎  

The sun is low in the sky as Jack and Hiccup approach the grotto that they had seen the Night Fury dive into barely twenty-four hours ago. The towering trees cast large shadows onto the ground before them as they search for a way into the clearing below that didn't require them to scale down the steep cliffs surrounding the clearing.

Jack twirls Hiccup's small leather-bound notebook between his fingers in one hand while the other holds his bow staff as he follows in his friend's trail, looking up and around at the colors beginning to paint the sunset sky.

He knows Hiccup has found an opening when his friend suddenly disappears from in front of Jack and nearly trips over the shield in his hand as he races down a small hill. The brunette luckily catches a glimpse of the gap between two boulders before Hiccup vanishes within it, the fish he'd grabbed before leaving the village being the last to disappear behind the rocks.

Jack quickly follows his friend between the foliage-covered rocks and dips into the darkness inside. It takes a moment for his eyes to adjust to the dimness of the tunnel, but there isn't much time to look around before he's thrust back into the light of the evening.

He blinks a few times before he's able to make out his surroundings, but he eventually spots that they've made it to the floor of the grotto, being hidden behind multiple mossy rocks that had enough space between them to weave between and deeper into the clearing. Hiccup is a few feet in front of him already, attempting to get further into the grotto and it's obvious from his wide searching eyes that his curiosity is driving him.

Hiccup had always been slightly more cautious than Jack ever was, but if he was truly determined to see and understand something, there was little that could be done to stop him. Like how he was currently trying his best to get up close and personal with a Night Fury just because of the mystery that surrounded the dragon. It was a side of Hiccup that was overlooked by their peers but that Jack always yearned to see come out, a type of stubbornness that paralleled even the chief himself.

Jack loses Hiccup again behind a large boulder as he continues deeper and Jack has no other choice but to follow in his footsteps.

He hears the commotion before he sees it and comes around the edge of the rock to see Hiccup struggling with his shield that had become wedged between a gap the boy had underestimated the smallness of. Jack chuckles silently at his friend's attempts to pull and kick at the shield before he thumps his forehead against its wood in defeat.

Before Jack can even try his hand at dislodging the shield, Hiccup just slips underneath it and leaves it behind. The brunette isn't so sure it's the best idea to go into a potentially Night Fury inhabited area without any means of protection, but he also trusts Hiccup's judgement. So Jack simply climbs on top of the wedged shield with the help of his bow staff and decides to watch the other from there, knees bending into a crouched position and toes balancing effortlessly on its edge after years of sitting up in tree tops.

From his newly gained height, Jack can now clearly see the entirety of the grotto's clearing. Steep ninety-degree cliffs reach up several meters high around the perimeter of the area with random outjuttings of caves and ledges scattered within its walls, vines and moss covering almost every inch of it. The green grass surrounding the large pool of water in the center looks to have been completely un-treaded considering the lack of paths, other than what looked to be a large charred patch off in the corner which was most likely the resting place for the dragon that had been there.

Or was still there, if the large black-scaled reptile he could see crawling up onto a nearby boulder did anything to persuade him.

Jack's whole body tenses, and his first instinct is to jump to Hiccup's protection to warn him about the Night Fury, but the wideness of the dragon's pupils and its relaxed posture make him hesitant. It was as if the creature was more curious of their return than upset at what they had almost done to it.

There was nothing about the Night Fury that made Jack suspect it wanted to kill the boy wandering cluelessly into the clearing with a fish gripped in his hands, but that didn't necessarily make the brunette lower his guard entirely. Instead, he remained perched on the shield's edge with his staff tensed into a position where Jack could easily throw it in the creature's direction if need be. And he trusted his aim.

The green of the Night Fury's eyes don't give Jack any of its attention, despite the obvious weapon in his hands while it stares curiously in Hiccup's direction who was still glancing around him trying to spot the dragon.

Jack almost laughs at the obliviousness of his friend, but stops himself when the reptile begins inching off the rock it was crouched upon, sliding in an almost serpent-like motion onto the grotto's grassy floor. Its tail is the last thing to drop off the boulder and the dragon makes no move to quiet its approach as it thumps onto the ground, immediately alerting the boy in front of it of its presence.

Hiccup yelps as he whips around to see the Night Fury staring at him from behind, clutching the fish to his chest as if it would provide him any protection. Green eyes side-eye Jack without fully taking his gaze away from the dragon feet away from him. "Thanks for the heads up."

With everyone now being aware of each other's whereabouts, Jack finally allows himself to laugh. "You can handle yourself." The dragon finally glances over at the brunette as he speaks before looking back at Hiccup, causing Jack to scrunch his eyebrows slightly at the reptile's odd behavior. "Plus, it doesn't look like it wants to hurt you."

"Why is it still here?" Hiccup questions and the dragon in front of him cocks his head in response, ear plates flicking on the back of its head. It twitches its nose before taking another step in Hiccup's direction and the boys' conversation is instantly forgotten in favor of watching the Night Fury's movements.

Jack quickly becomes uneasy when the dragon takes another hesitant step forward and attempts to get closer, but when his feet hit the ground, the reptile snaps its head towards him with a deep growl of warning. The brunette immediately halts his movements and the Night Fury quiets, making it clear it didn't want Jack any closer. He relents and stands down, but keeps himself tense depending on what the dragon does next.

The reptile seems to understand that Jack will stay put and turns its attention back on Hiccup who had watched the whole interaction in silence, unsure on how to handle the unstable Night Fury. Thankfully, it doesn't get any closer to Hiccup and instead leans back into a sitting position, much to Jack's surprise, having never seen a dragon so relaxed around a human before. Much less a human that had tried to kill it.

It suddenly opens its mouth and releases a strange warble sound before nodding its head at Hiccup. Jack raises an eyebrow at the strange behavior, but when he turns to look at his friend he sees the other's face light up in understanding.

How Hiccup seemed to decipher the creature's request, Jack had no idea. But the boy acts as if the thing had just spoken fluent Norse when he slowly hands out the fish that had been cradled to his chest towards the dragon.

The pupils of the Night Fury widen in pleasure as it rises to lean forward with a open, gummy mouth.

Jack squints his eyes from his position several feet away to see if perhaps his eyes were playing tricks on him, but upon closer inspection there truly were no teeth inside the dragon's mouth. The brunette feels the confusion on his face almost cement in place as he questions if they were ever there in the first place or if he had just assumed since all other dragons seemed to have them.

Jack watches Hiccup jump when the jaw near his hands suddenly gains a row of sharp teeth and snatches the limp fish from his grip before returning to its original seated position and swallowing the thing whole, a wide pink tongue poking out to wipe the area around its mouth in satisfaction. The slackness of Hiccup's jaw matches the state of Jack's own as they both stare at the dragon in complete shock.

Jack had never heard of a dragon with retractable teeth, and he's seen his fair share pillage Berk multiple times throughout his life. But he guessed there wouldn't be a reason for them to be away in the heat of a battle, so Jack couldn't be sure how accurate that assumption really was.

At their silence, the dragon stops in its post-meal cleaning to glance back and forth between the shellshocked boys before slitting its pupils in warning. It releases a soft growl that flashes its now present teeth and makes a quick exit deeper within the grotto around them.

With the Night Fury now busy creating as much distance between itself and the boys, Jack finally takes the chance to walk up to Hiccup's side. His friend doesn't look at him as he approaches and instead continues to stare after the dragon as it finally stops on the far side of the clearing.

"What was that?" Jack asks, coming up beside Hiccup to watch the reptile from afar along with him.

"What do you mean?" Hiccup replies.

Jack gestures with his bow staff towards the Night Fury taking a few laps of water from the calm surface of the pond. "You knew it wanted the fish. How?"

Hiccup crosses his arms in front of his chest. "I don't really know how to explain it, it just felt like I could understand it in a way." He turns his head to look at Jack. "I can feel its fear. Its scared of something."

Jack frowns at the admission before feeling the tingle of a pair of eyes staring at him. He looks away from his friend to meet the acid green irises of the Night Fury as it glares at them from across the grotto, clearly no longer comfortable with them being there when they had nothing else to offer it.

Without warning, it bursts from the ground and launches into the air, getting a few flaps in before tilting strangely off to the side and somersaulting into the grass. The dragon yelps out an animalistic growl that sounds an awful like a yell of frustration and it gets up again. Its large tail whips downwards against the ground behind it resulting in a loud thump in the same way a child would beat on the floor in a fit of rage if they were refused something they had asked for.

"Maybe it's hurt. It doesn't look like it can fly." Jack suggests, and Hiccup seems to perk up at that before snatching the notebook the brunette had shoved into his pocket and flipping to an empty page. A choral pencil that seems to appear from thin air now gripped in his hand before it's scribbling over the paper, Hiccup's concentrated face inches away as he draws.

Jack leans into his bow staff and up onto his tiptoes as he peers over the book to see what his friend has decided to sketch and a soft smile slides onto his face when the rough image of a Night Fury starts forming within the hurried lines. Jack is content to simply wait and watch as the other finalizes his work after taking several glances up at the pouting dragon meters away from them.

When Hiccup draws his last line, Jack is again impressed by his friend's artistic ability as a near-perfect rendition of the black-scaled reptile looks back at him from the page below. Hiccup doesn't see the awe in Jack's expression however, instead too busy squinting over at the dragon as it finally gets up to move from the spot it was previously in.

"I can't tell it's injured at all when it walks, only when it tries to fly. But from what I can tell over here, it has both its wings fully intact. So why is it having trouble flying?" Hiccup brings up the non-tipped end of his pencil and bumps it repeatedly against his jutted out chin.

"Not sure how we're gonna figure that out when it hardly lets us get anywhere close to it." Jack says, looking away from Hiccup's drawing and into his face, still leaning against the wood of his staff.

Hiccup looks at the Night Fury briefly before slowly lowering his pencil from its assault on his chin. "You could distract it while I take a closer look?"

Jack's lower jaw un-attaches from its counterpart at the remark, but it's promptly closed by Hiccup with the edge of his now closed notebook before it could collect too many flies.

"Are you really that surprised?" Hiccup tilts his head and smiles at him with a lopsided grin, mirth twinkling in his eyes. Jack feels like he's being brought back to life from the look alone, not entirely sure when he had died for him to do that.

Jack can't help but mirror the other as he responds with a joking tone. "Nah, I just thought I was less expendable to you is all." Hiccup just rolls his eyes before pushing the brunette in the direction of the Night Fury before taking the other way around the pond to catch the dragon's back.

Jack cackles and begins waltzing towards the reptile that had found its way back onto the charred patch he had seen earlier, laying down upon it with its head rested on top of its two front paws and its eyes closed.

"Wakey-wakey Mr. Night Fury. I think we got off on the wrong foot earlier, so why don't we get to know each other a little?" Jack stiffens when the dragon in question snaps its eyes open at the sound of his voice and slitted annoyed pupils find his own. The brunette spins the staff in his hand in the way he does when his nerves are high before he continues forward, the creature rising onto its feet with every step he takes towards it.

Jack doesn't look in Hiccup's direction when he spots him creeping up on the other side of the Night Fury, and instead focuses on putting on a performance for the grumpy dragon in front of him.

He begins twirling his staff into various different tricks, flipping it behind his back, throwing it up and into the air before catching it with the top of his foot, and balancing the wood against the bridge of his nose; all things he would usually do when entertaining the younger children of Berk.

All the while he would occasionally chance a subtle glance towards Hiccup, who had taken a seat on a small rock several feet away behind the Night Fury, notebook resting on one of his knees as he scribbles something onto its pages.

The dragon's eyes stay trained on the spinning motion of his staff when Jack performs another rotation around his body. Its head tilts this way and that along with wherever the brunette decides to swing the wood next and it's almost endearing at how curious the creature had become throughout Jack's show.

Ever since its first violent outburst after getting released, it hadn't shown any other signs of attacking them other than just being borderline annoyed at their constant presence.

It was strange to see up close, a dragon who didn't want to immediately incinerate the flesh from his bones. And with the reptile now sitting a few feet near him, he could watch as it gently flicks its ear plates when he does a particularly impressive move or as it releases a disappointed huff of hot air when he drops the staff after failing another.

It still seemed to be hesitant of him though, keeping its distance between them as it observes from afar. That was until the Night Fury perks up and rises to his paws before taking a tentative step towards Jack with wide acid green eyes.

"Hiccup~, I think it's starting to like me." Jack says through a smile.

The sun had finally set around them which casts a darkness across the grotto, the moonlight that had been steadily climbing since sunset now twinkling against the pond's water and providing the space with a soft illumination.

"Uh huh." Hiccup mumbles from inside the pages of his notebook, still sketching away at whatever he was working on.

Jack chuckles at the obliviousness of his friend that results from him getting passionate about a project and refocuses his own attention back onto the slowly approaching dragon. But when he really looks at the creature's expression, it isn't looking at him and rather above. Which was strange, since Jack had stopped balancing the staff there a while ago.

The brunette follows the awed acid green gaze and glances up, a soft glowing green light suddenly obscuring his vision. He's forced to squint his eyes and take a few steps back to properly gauge what he's looking at.

Floating above his head is something Jack could only describe as a misty circular wisp that looked about the size of his hand. It shifts its shape the same way a flame would consume a piece of wood, the strange whips of color flickering about itself.

It was nothing Jack had ever seen before.

"Hic, are you seeing this?" Jack asks, his wide eyes never leaving the hovering orb of light.

"Seeing what–?" Hiccup finally raises his head from the drawings within his notebook and cuts himself off when he catches a glimpse at the wisp above Jack. "Oh gods, what is that?"

Jack shrugs as he watches the light slowly descend from its spot above him before coming to hover inches from his face. The brunette stares into its flickering circular body and from within its hues he begins to hear whispers of hundreds of soft unintelligible voices almost beckoning to him. They harmonize in an almost lullaby type of way and it feels like Jack was just a boy again being tucked into bed by his mother.

Suddenly the whispering quiets and the wisp dips downwards to swirl around Jack, slipping between the limbs he flares out in surprise and around the wood of his staff before shooting away from him. The brunette feels an emptiness at the loss of the green light before the feeling is quickly replaced by chuckles as the orb begins twirling around Hiccup and the Night Fury in the same way it did to him.

The latter watches as the wisp runs over to Hiccup first to gently knock the notebook from his hand before sliding through his hair and around his body in large swirls. The dragon cocks its head at its newly discovered company as the boy chuckles at what Jack knows is the tickling sensation the light brings against the skin.

To Jack's surprise, the Night Fury isn't upset that the other had snuck up behind it and just sits to follow the light with its wide green eyes.

The wisp then dashes over to the dragon and spins around its body just like it did with the two boys before it. The reptile snaps its jaw when it gets too close to its face and the orb quickly skitters away at the clear warning before returning back to Jack.

"It seems to like you." Hiccup points out from the other side of the Night Fury as the wisp goes back to twirling around the brunette's body, sending chuckles up his spine and into the night air.

The floating light then stops again before Jack's nose and hovers there, the lullaby from before returning to his ears. "I think it wants me to follow it." The brunette says softly against the flickering hues before him.

Hazel eyes remove themselves from the orb to look over at Hiccup who raises his eyebrows up his forehead in question. "How do you know that?" He asks, but seems to get his answer with the look Jack sends his way.

Whatever Hiccup had been referring to earlier about knowing what the Night Fury had been asking for, Jack now understands as he looks back to the wavering mist. Something about the feeling the light gives the brunette makes him have the inexplicable urge to follow wherever it leads him to, and perhaps that's what it also wants as it begins bobbing up and down in front of him.

Before the two boys can discuss further if it was truly a good idea to chase after a mysteriously magical wisp, the orb suddenly shoots up from its position in front of Jack's face and lands over by the shield that still remains stuck between two rocks leading to the grotto's exit.

Jack doesn't think twice about adjusting his grip on his staff to its silver handle in the middle before racing after the light. He hears Hiccup release a disgruntled yelp from behind him before his friend bids a quick goodbye to the surely confused dragon and races in Jack's footsteps.

Jack will have to remind himself later to thank Hiccup for being such a good friend to blindly run after a strange wisp with him that neither of them know anything about. But first, he has to figure out what it is and what it wants.

He can't explain it, but he just has to.

❄︎  

Chapter Text

❄︎

Before Jack can truly think better of his actions, he sends one end of his bow staff into the grotto's floor and vaults himself up and over the shield Hiccup had previously permanently wedged between two rocks.

The early night is cool and dark around him as he lands effortlessly back on the ground, his only light being the moon and the glow of the green wisp disappearing into the tunnel Jack and Hiccup had entered from. The brunette follows the orb's lead and races behind it, eyes not needing the same adjusting they had earlier as he slips back into the cave.

The pounding of Jack's feet against the slight dampness of the tunnel's flooring echoes around him as he runs, and if he was unsure about how far Hiccup was behind him, he isn't any longer when another set of ragged panting breaths joins his own within the enclosed darkness.

From several feet in front of Jack, the wisp finally exits the cave before disappearing again in a sharp right turn deeper into the forest. A few seconds later, Jack is back out into the open air and turning to run in that same direction, Hiccup groaning as he, too, quickly switches his momentum to follow.

They continue like that for several more minutes with the wisp randomly changing course and dashing away while Jack and Hiccup try their best to keep up despite the fatigue creeping in. Jack can feel it in the way he begins to stumble over his own feet and he can hear the exhaustion dragging down Hiccup's breath from behind him.

The pull within Jack's chest is the only thing that keeps him pushing forward as the green light dips down a hill and over a particularly large branch that the brunette uses the aid of his staff to jump over.

"Where are you taking me?!" Jack shouts breathily, suddenly noticing how deep within the forest they had actually gotten at this point. The trees have become denser around them and the foliage less treaded, making it more and more difficult to maneuver their way in the wisp's wake.

"Jack! Wait up!" He hears Hiccup yelp, his voice much further away than it had been moments ago. He couldn't blame the other with his struggle to keep up though. While Jack had his bow staff to help him vault over bushes and around thick trees, Hiccup was having to fight his way through the foliage.

Jack has to resist his instinct to go back for his friend and help him when he isn't sure if the wisp in front of him would wait or continue racing to its destination, leaving both of them behind with no idea where to go next.

So Jack continues on, trying his best to smack away outreaching branches and kick away loose rock to better clear a path for Hiccup. He swings out his staff to slash at a particularly large bush and almost hits the wisp that appears there.

Luckily, Jack has enough time to dodge the light before he obliterated the poor thing and it blinks at him in thanks before racing off again. The brunette wrinkles his eyebrows as he jumps over the now slightly smaller bush and watches it scurry away.

When did it stop and run back to him? He could've sworn it was still several feet away when he went to cut down that bush.

When Jack jumps around the trunk of a tree, he gets his answer as the orb he had just seen floats over to join the one he had already been running after.

"There's another one?" Jack says mostly to himself, panting between each word.

"What?!" Hiccup yells from behind him, but Jack doesn't have the chance to answer before multiple more soft green wisps begin flickering into existence around him.

Awe flows over Jack as they begin to circle him, twirling around his pumping limbs and ruffling his windswept hair as he runs. They seem to urge him in the direction of the original light, giving him feather-weighted pushes forward; never enough to actually shove him, but the demand is clear within the sensation.

Despite the weariness creeping into his bones, Jack manages to speed up at the encouragement and the wisps seem happy at the change of pace, blinking softly around him. Within the dimness of the forest around him, the amount of wisps gives the illusion of a night sky full of green stars. Some twinkling in the distance while others are closer and more bright.

Jack thinks it's one of the most magical things he's ever seen.

Without much of a warning, Jack bursts through a particularly thick brush and suddenly finds himself in a wide, circular clearing. The misty orbs that had been zipping through the air moments before stop along with the brunette and begin to float lazily around the area like embers fluttering from a bonfire. A sense of quiet falls over the place and Jack understands that this is where he had been led to.

A few seconds later has Hiccup tumbling into the clearing beside him, breaking the peaceful silence that had once been with the raggedness of his panting breaths. Jack looks over to his friend to find the other bent over his knees, chest heaving in exhaustion.

"Let's..." Hiccup takes a couple more deep lungfuls of air. "Let's just take a break, yeah?"

Jack doesn't respond in favor of trying to catch his own breath and turns back toward the main area of the clearing.

Similar to the grass within the grotto, there are no paths or trails marring its floor as if no one had ever found this place before them. The denseness of the forest surrounds them in an almost perfect circle while the canopy of its treetops reach up and over the majority of the space. Save for a small spot in the center where moonlight spills through its opening, creating a spotlight effect onto the ground.

And, of course, tens of floating green wisps hover all around them, no longer in the hurry they had been in before. A couple of them seem to shake out of whatever daze the rest of its group had fallen into when Hiccup decides he's recovered enough to stand and walk the few steps to be at his side.

Like how some of them had done earlier, the orbs twirl and spin softly around Jack's body. They collect at his back before giving him a push this time he actually feels, causing his feet to trip enough to where he has to shoot out his staff to catch himself.

"What are they doing?" Hiccup asks, and when Jack glances over at him the bewilderment is clear on his flushed face, soft green light illuminating his features.

Jack receives another gentle push deeper into the clearing. "I'm not really sure." He chuckles, a stray wisp fluttering past his neck before coming up and over his crown to softly shove his head forward.

He continues to allow himself to be guided until he's led to the very center of the clearing where the moonlight shines brightest before being left standing within its glow. The orbs closest to him stay to dance across his skin in their own form of a farewell before floating off and vanishing into the night.

Jack blinks, shocked at the loss and glances around himself to find the other wisps had disappeared as well, leaving the place even more quiet than it was before. Except for the soft shuffling of Hiccup's feet side to side against the grass as he watches Jack from where he was left standing several feet away.

Hiccup gives him one of his signature awkward waves that causes a soft smile to grace Jack's lips before the brunette takes a look up into the treetop canopy opening. Hovering at the peak of its trek across the sky, Jack's vision is suddenly filled with the image of the moon being framed almost perfectly by the overhanging branches.

For a moment, Jack's breath leaves his body at the sight as it shines distances above him. Seeing it so intimately brings back some of his early memories where he would find himself sitting at the edge of a dock on a quiet night, trying to speak to the moon. Though it had never responded, it didn't stop Jack from believing that it was indeed listening and he would return to the same spot every couple of nights. He would simply chat about his day; what he and Hiccup had gotten into, how cool Jamie was, how mean the village's children were, and just about everything that came across Jack's younger mind.

He isn't really sure when he had stopped showing up, but it had been a long time since the moon and him had had a conversation. And now it was right there, as if the moon itself had called Jack here tonight. Perhaps those wisps were its only means of communication, and Jack had never ventured far enough to catch sight of them. Maybe this was finally the moment he would hear the moon talk back.

So he waited. Just like he had all those years ago on the chilly wood of that dock, he stands and stares and waits.

A tingling twinge begins to creep up the back of his neck as time goes on, but he refuses to look away. Even as he hears another shuffle followed by the soft thump of Hiccup sitting down on the edge of the clearing, he continues to stare.

But nothing happens. And of course it doesn't. Why should Jack be surprised?

He had spent so many hours of his nights doing this exact thing and it always ended in the same way.

Silence.

Jack suddenly remembers why he had stopped showing up.

The brunette breaks the quiet that filled the clearing with an almost shuddering sigh before finally letting his head drop to a regular position. He hisses softly at the soreness that had gathered within the muscles at the back of his neck and he raises a hand to rub it away.

Hiccup is rising from his spot on the forest floor when Jack looks over at him and a million questions seem to sit behind those green eyes. Questions the brunette wasn't sure he was ready to answer.

Jack goes to take a step out of the spotlight from the moon when his ears are suddenly filled with the roaring of the wind. It's deafening to a point where Jack winces against the noise and it only deepens when a harsh chilly draft soon accompanies it. It's as if he was transported into a tornado but all the wind was rushing downwards instead of in circles.

The strength of the draft is almost debilitating and it takes everything in Jack to prevent himself from collapsing onto the ground and submitting to whatever was happening.

He can hear nothing over the sound of racing winds blowing past his ears except for a strange crackling sound from beneath him.

Was the floor cracking under his feet? He wouldn't be all that shocked considering the harshness of the gusts drilling downward around him.

Jack manages to slightly tip his head down without snapping his neck to glance at the sound, and his eyes widen at what appears to be ice covering his boots, the floor beneath them not looking much better. While Jack knew that the wind had a particularly chilling bite to it considering the goosebumps peppering his skin, it was definitely not cold enough to warrant that kind of reaction.

So why was he watching frost creep into frozen fractals around his feet?

But before he can think too hard about it, gravity seems to switch gears and Jack suddenly feels his weight lift off his bones. In a disorienting turn of events, the wind that had rushed into the clearing through the canopy opening was now retreating back out with the same amount of force. While it wasn't enough to send him flying above the treeline, the gusts racing up around Jack come up to support him midair inches from the ground below.

A jingling laughter bubbles out of his throat from what feels like the depths of his core as he hovers, the wind whipping his cloak every which-way and sending his clothing fluttering against his skin.

It was the most exhilarating thing Jack had ever experienced.

As soon as Jack starts to become adjusted to his new position, the draft changes from a chilling rush to a borderline gentle caress. His body still remains in the air, but instead of feeling like there was a wind current blowing right below him, it's as if the wind flows around his limbs and holds him up.

Jack can feel an almost greeting ruffle of his hair before he's suddenly playfully flipped and spun gently. His bow staff wiggles in his hand for a moment like the draft was familiarizing itself with the stick as well before leaving it be.

"Hiccup!" Jack finally finds his words through awed laughter and manages to turn himself towards his friend. "The wind! It's alive!"

Almost like it was proving his point, he's flipped upside down and shaken softly before another friendly ruffle sweeps through his hair.

From his inverted angle, Jack takes a moment to look at Hiccup who was now much closer than where he was moments ago. His freckled face is lit up in an amazement similar to the one Jack feels buzzing through himself. His auburn hair whips around his face once Hiccup arrives at his side and he stands smiling up at him with one of the biggest grins Jack had seen on him in a while.

The wind is loud around them, but Hiccup makes himself louder. "How are you doing that? It's incredible!"

"I don't know!" Jack shouts back before he's flipped back to a natural upward position. "It's like the wind just accepted me as its own for some reason!" Hiccup's laugh rises up and around him through the air and Jack meets it with his own until they're both chuckling like kids again.

All too soon, Jack feels himself begin to lower back towards the ground before his feet rest solidly on the forest floor once again. It's almost stupid how devastated the brunette feels at the loss of the cold embrace despite him having never felt anything like that before, but being up there had just felt like home. And now he was back to where he had been, with the weight of gravity hanging heavily from his shoulders.

"Jack?" Hiccup's voice seems hesitant to break whatever limbo Jack had found himself in, but the brunette doesn't respond. Instead, he finds himself glancing back up towards the moon with a new kind of hope burning a forest within his chest.

Had that been the moon's answer to him after all these years? Were the endless amounts of one-sided conversations not for nothing after all?

For once, Jack didn't have to wait long for his answer.

Another chilly breeze rustles the treetops above him before it swoops down to caress the back of his neck. But when Jack finally hears a voice, it doesn't come from the glimmering moon above him and instead it's a whisper from within the draft itself.

Jack inhales a ragged breath as the wind takes its final leave and disappears through the canopy clearing, leaving behind the natural sway of the forest behind.

Hiccup is by his side in seconds with a warm hand against the chill of his cheek. "What just happened?" His voice is laced with worry, but his eyes still hold onto his awe from earlier.

Jack raises a trembling hand to the other's wrist and squeezes it tightly to ground himself. "Would you believe me if I told you?" He asks.

"After all that?" An airy laugh escapes from under Hiccup's breath as he responds. "Yes."

Jack stares straight into the depths of the other's green eyes to portray the seriousness of what he says next.

"The wind just said my name."

༄

A few hours later after a reflective walk back to the village finds Hiccup digging his feet into the stone floor before heaving the Great Hall doors open, him and Jack silently slipping into the dim light within.

Hiccup had always appreciated the emptiness of the hall at this time of night, having found himself wasting hours when he couldn't sleep at one of the tables either reading or inventing. It was where he would usually go for peace and quiet when Jack was busy or when Hiccup just wanted to be alone with his thoughts. He enjoyed the aura it held within its old-as-time crafted pillars or the smell of past celebratory feasts, it gave him a sense of community that he greatly lacked within his actual life.

The only real issue he ever had with the place was the large golden-plated dragon that held a serpentine-like pose on the ceiling directly above the massive hearth in the center of the space. It hung feet above where the flames could barely lick at its frozen head at their highest range, a similar plated sword striking through its heart and attaching it to the arch of the ceiling.

It was a brutal depiction Hiccup never really thought was necessary in the place where he was supposed to eat his meals, but it wasn't like anyone else agreed with him.

Maybe other than Jack, whose staff clinks against the stone floor with every step he takes beside him, its noise softly echoing in the empty dining area.

Well, mostly empty.

Hiccup realizes as the two of them enter further into the Great Hall that they were, again, the last to arrive. Sitting at a table a couple down from where Jack and him were walking sat Astrid, Snotlout, the twins, and Fishlegs. They were chatting animatedly amongst each other and seemed to still be obliviously unaware of their newest additions.

Which was perfect, because Hiccup needed a few more seconds to process what in the name of Odin had just happened to him and Jack.

Not only did they sneak back to the grotto in hopes of spotting the Night Fury they had released the day before, but they had gone into that same grotto where Hiccup proceeded to be willingly inches away from said Night Fury before somehow understanding what it was asking of him. Then they had decided to stay and figure out why the thing wasn't flying away by having Jack distract it while Hiccup discovered its missing tailfin before beginning to create the idea of a prosthetic.

Yes. Hiccup was going to invent what will probably be the first ever prosthetic made for a dragon in order for it to have what it needs to get as far away from Berk as it can. The whole time Jack had been pulling out every trick he'd ever learned, Hiccup was busying himself with sketching down several different ideas and mechanisms he would need to perfect to give flight back to the downed Night Fury.

Was it Hiccup's best idea? Most likely not with the great chance of it backfiring if the dragon ever decided it did want to take revenge on him and Jack for almost killing it. But he felt like he owed it to the poor creature since Hiccup was the reason it was downed in the first place.

And then, of course, the events that occurred after the grotto with Jack's run-in with those strange green wisps and his sudden ability to fly. After the brunette's comment about the wind saying his name, he hadn't spoken up again, remaining deep within his thoughts during their whole walk back into town.

But Hiccup couldn't blame him since he himself had also been at a loss for words. It was a lot to process. Both of their worlds had just been dramatically altered in different ways and neither one of them knew what to do with that information.

Why could Hiccup suddenly understand dragons? Why did the wind decide to make friends with Jack? Why wasn't the Night Fury attacking and trying to kill them with every chance it had? What were those floating orbs and what did they have to do with what had happened in that clearing?

So many questions with absolutely zero answers. So yeah, Hiccup could understand why they both decided a few moments of silence were needed.

"Ugh, look what the yak dragged in." The gravelly voice of Tuffnut echoes from the table, effectively deciding for Hiccup and Jack that those moments were over.

At the comment, the rest of the group's heads snap in their direction as they finally approach the table with varying looks of displeasure across their faces.

"Awh, now my dinner's spoiled." Snotlout whines before immediately slipping into chuckles, the twins joining in with him.

Unfortunately for them though, Hiccup didn't have the energy to offer up one of his usual sarcastic replies and just rolls his eyes. It seemed Jack was in the same boat as he simply slides his bow staff into the sling upon his back before leading them to an empty adjacent table, not even attempting to sit with the others who had scooted to cover up the remaining seats next to them.

Hiccup ignores the strange looks the boys receive as they settle themselves onto a bench, especially the one belonging to Astrid that was trying its best to drill a hole into his skull.

A few more awkward chuckles trickle out from Snotlout. "Anyways." He drawls before turning to ignore their table right back, returning to whatever previous conversation they had walked in on.

Hiccup tilts his head slightly when the attention is finally taken off of them towards Jack and offers the other an encouraging smile. It seems to break the brunette out of the daze he had fallen into and the boy gives him a sly one in return, a front that Hiccup knows all too well but decides to let go just this once.

It probably wasn't the best time to talk anyways as Gobber suddenly appears from behind one of the large pillars supporting the hall to hobble toward the groups' tables.

His eyes scan the students before him and his brows raise when they land on the newest arrival of Hiccup and Jack, all the while a filled tankard of mead sloshing in his relaxed grip. "Oh, look who finally decided to join us."

A look similar to the ones that had graced the other group's faces crosses the blonde viking's features when all he gets is a nod in response from Hiccup and a low-effort salute from Jack.

The man quickly recovers though, and a large bounded book Hiccup hadn't seen him carrying before is thrown from Gobber's grip and lands onto the more crowded table. The auburn-haired boy has to lean slightly off the bench amongst the gasping and exclamations of the others to catch a proper glance and his eyebrows raise at what he sees.

"This is The Book of Dragons." Gobber begins, taking a swig from his drink. "In order to properly fight dragons, you lot need to know everything about them. Read this and live by it."

Snotlout and the twins immediately gawk at the assignment they had just received and complaints of all sorts are thrown about. Hiccup isn't paying too much attention to what is said, but it's not hard to tell that they won't be opening those pages any time soon. Which is good for him, since he's going to need to look through everything it has on Night Furies, preferably how to make them docile enough to attach something to their body.

"I've read it like six times! The information it has on each species is like nothing I've ever seen before. You guys are in for a treat!" Fishlegs squirms in his spot as he speaks, eyes bright with wonder.

Ruffnut suddenly stands from her seat next to her brother and leans across the table in front of the pudgy boy. "I don't know what kind of treats you're into, but count me uninterested."

"I don't usually agree with anything that comes out of her mouth, but yeah. What she said." Tuffnut has also risen to lean an arm over Ruffnut's shoulders to which she gags dramatically before harshly shoving him off her.

"I didn't want to read it before, but after all that, that I want to even less now." Snotlout grouches before he's also standing up, swinging his arms up and behind his head as he starts his way towards the exit. The twins are close behind and the three of them quickly dissolve into a worryingly serious conversation about the dangers of reading.

Hiccup almost feels bad for Fishlegs as the boy gets up from the table to follow the others' lead, his spirits clearly lowered from before. But then again, he'd never been there for him or Jack when they had been the target, so Hiccup says nothing and lets Fishlegs disappear from his sight.

Hiccup's eyes drifts from where the larger boy once was and accidently makes eye contact with Astrid, who was slowly getting ready to leave herself. Her expression is odd as she glances between him and Jack, but whatever she was thinking she doesn't seem to dwell on long before she's, too, slipping out into the night.

"Alright then, laddies." The accented voice immediately brings the boys' attention back to their now shared mentor, whose tankard was now empty and being placed on the recently vacated table. "See you bright and early tomorrow!" Gobber then dismisses himself after a goodnight from Hiccup and a nod from Jack, easily reopening the Great Hall doors and slamming them behind him.

A strange silence follows the groups' exit as Hiccup and Jack briefly seem to lose themselves in their respective thoughts. Hiccup turns to look at the brunette beside him after a moment and catches sight of a rare contemplative expression that looks odd on the other's features that are usually upturned with mischievous looks. The auburn-haired boy can't bring himself to be surprised though, knowing he probably has a similar one upon his own face.

Hiccup finds himself unable to just sit by and watch the thoughts cross Jack's eyes, suddenly needing to know what was happening inside his friend's head.

"Do you want to talk about it?" Hiccup breaks the quiet, his voice softly echoing around the empty space around them.

At the question, Jack finally brings himself out of the recesses of his mind to meet Hiccup's eyes with the hazel of his own. He doesn't respond immediately and instead seems to search Hiccup's face.

For what, he was unsure; but he let Jack do what he needed in order to feel comfortable enough to open up.

"That was real, right? I didn't just make that up in my head. You saw it, too?" Hiccup feels shocked at the vulnerable tone of Jack's voice when he finally speaks. It's raw and careful in a way unusual for his friend, who was known for his seemingly eternal stock of joy and childish humor.

Despite this though, Hiccup lets out a breathy laugh. "If those wisps and you flying weren't real, then we're both going crazy and are somehow having a joint hallucination." Luckily, Hiccup's response seems to have its desired effect and Jack's expression cracks a soft smile, the boy shaking his head as if trying to get rid of his previous thoughts.

It appears to work when the brunette's posture relaxes and he runs an olive-skinned hand through his hair. "Right, so what about you?"

Hiccup raises a questioning eyebrow at Jack. "I'm not sure what you mean?"

"That thing you did with that Night Fury. That definitely wasn't normal. Even I didn't know what it wanted, and I'm excellent at reading people." Jack says, placing his elbows on the table in front of him and resting a cheek against one of his hands.

Hiccup gives Jack a deadpanned look, receiving a bark of laughter in response before thinking back to those moments in the grotto. The pull he had felt in his chest towards the creature as they had looked at each other, the warbled noise it made somehow letting Hiccup know exactly what it was asking for. What he was asking for.

It was a strange feeling Hiccup almost couldn't put into words, but he decided to try his best for Jack. "Like I said before, it was like whatever he felt I could feel. Like his emotions were my own for a moment, just enough to get his point across."

"He?" Jack asks, taking his turn to raise an eyebrow at Hiccup.

Hiccup shrugs before setting his arms next to Jack's on the table in front of him. "I'm not sure how I know that one either. He feels like he's our age, too." The auburn-haired boy turns at the sound of a chuckle, but before he can get that pang of offense at being laughed at, Hiccup sees the awed look twinkling in Jack's eyes.

"That's incredible!" The brunette's voice matches his expression as he turns to face Hiccup.

He suddenly feels awkward at the praise and brings up one of his hands to rub at a forearm. "It is?"

"Hiccup." Jack leans into his friend's space, but the boy is used to having his personal bubble popped whenever the Bennett was around, so he didn't feel the need to lean back when his face becomes inches from his own. "You can understand dragons. How awesome is that? It's like...like...."

Jack takes a second to mull over his words before his face lights up into the childlike wonder Hiccup has seen there thousands of times before. "Like magic."

Hiccup releases a breath at the statement, like he wasn't exactly expecting it but also knowing there was no other word to describe it.

While he likes to think the mythical world does exist thanks to growing up with Jack's stories and long-winded adventures, the brunette had always done most of the heavy lifting when it came to their belief. Jack had been the one to teach Hiccup everything there was to know about what lies right outside their human vision, but he had never experienced it firsthand.

Until tonight, that is.

"Yeah... I guess that's what that was, huh?" Hiccup's voice is full of awe and Jack's expression beside him only gets brighter at the admission.

"It has to be!" The brunette backs up to give his friend a bit more space, but he still finds a way to be close by placing a hand on Hiccup's shoulder.

At the touch, the boy brings his full attention back to Jack and truly allows himself to admire the expression on the other's face. More specifically, how the light in his eyes has never been brighter than it was right now, to the point Hiccup felt he almost had to squint when in its direct line of sight.

"We did it, Hic. It's real! I knew it was. These past couple of days I was actually starting to doubt myself, but it must've felt that and decided to finally let us in! With the wisps and that clearing. The wind. It said my name. My name. It knows who I am, it knows who you are. It knows us. How cool is that?" Hiccup laughs when Jack has to take several deep breaths when he realizes he hadn't given himself time within his rant to breathe, too excited to think about simple things like air.

Jack's hand suddenly leaves Hiccup's shoulder and jumps into his own brunette hair. "Wait until I tell Jamie. He's going to freak."

Hiccup lets out a string of airy chuckles as he gently takes the wrist of the hand that seemed to have an almost painful grip on the other's hair before helping him remove it. "Let's just take this one step at a time. It's probably smart to limit the amount of people we tell about this."

At the confused and almost pissed off expression that crawls up Jack's face, Hiccup quickly adds to his statement. "Of course we can tell Jamie, but we should make sure he knows to keep it to himself. We just don't know how the village is going to react to all this, especially when we don't even know what all of this is or means."

Jack's look from before falls and is replaced by one of understanding as he nods, seeming to agree to what Hiccup was suggesting. An idea flashes across his face and before Hiccup has the chance to ask him about it, Jack is already speaking. "Maybe we should tell Sandy then? If anyone knows what's happening, it's him. Also, I haven't visited him in a while so I'm probably due for one."

At the mention of seeking aid from the village's medium, Hiccup easily agrees with the suggestion.

Sanderson Mansnoozie, or Sandy as the short man so often encouraged, was a relatively close friend to the Bennett's and in relation was also dear to Jack. When he wasn't spending time with the wayward family, he could be found not far from their house in his small home atop a cliff on the other side of the shore.

It was one of the many similarities Sandy shared with Gothi, the tribe's witchy medic. Along with their choice of living location, the two of them also never spoke, were exceptionally short, and had a job taking care of the people in the village. If Hiccup didn't known any better he would've assumed they were related.

They really only diverged when it came to their personalities and how exactly they treated their patients. Sandy had a much more welcoming and warm presence than his counterpart and focused more on mental and emotional issues while Gothi focused on physical. Hence him being considered the tribe's medium, because the way he was able to know every bit about everyone who talked to him wasn't something that came naturally. But it also made him give the best advice.

"So, do you think we really have to read that thing?" Jack asks wearily, breaking through Hiccup's thoughts as he straightens himself to catch a glance at the book that rests untouched on the table behind him.

At the reminder of the assignment they had been given, Hiccup shoots out of his seat and quickly approaches the table before picking up the large book. It was lighter than Hiccup had expected considering the sound it had made after being thrown, so it didn't take much for him to bring it back over to Jack.

"Of course you're excited about a book. Not sure why I even asked." Hiccup rolls his eyes at his friend's annoyed comment as he sits down beside him again, but there's a fond look in the other's gaze when he glances over that he wasn't expecting. Weird.

Hiccup quickly forgets those thoughts though, in favor of opening the first couple pages of The Book of Dragons. "Maybe they have something about Toothless in here."

"Toothless?" Jack snorts, now settling in against Hiccup's side and leaning an elbow on the table beside the opened pages.

Hiccup shrugs as he glances over the introduction of the book. "Yeah, that's what I named him."

"Fitting." Jack hums and a smile immediately graces Hiccup's lips in response.

The two of them fall into silence when Hiccup finally flips to the first species the book covers. On one of the pages is a detailed drawing of a dragon called the Boneknapper with various arrows pointing to identifying traits and areas of interest. The page next to it lists multiple descriptions of how the dragon likes to attack its prey, its danger level, a few key characteristics, and ends with an ominous message that claims to kill it on sight.

Right, Hiccup will get right to that.

As Hiccup continues searching through the book's pages with Jack reading over his shoulder, the rest of the dragons are described in the same way with the same ending message.

Kill on sight.

It takes a few minutes for Hiccup to get progressively fed up with the repeated warnings until he begins skipping pages to get to what he was actually looking for. It's near the end of the book when he finally finds it.

The Night Fury page.

"It's blank." Jack whispers near his ear, leaning his head down to get a better view of the page.

Hiccup comes to the same conclusion as he glances through the limited information. Other than the species listed at the top and multiple areas being listed as unknown, the section was practically just blank space.

Hiccup reaches into his back pocket suddenly and pulls out the notebook he had shoved there hours ago, being totally forgotten until this moment. He can feel the confused look of Jack's eyes on him as he searches the small pages before locating the sketch he was looking for, splaying the book onto the empty space where the Night Fury drawing should've been; replacing it with an image of Toothless from an aerial perspective that he had whipped up back at the grotto, missing tailfin and all.

Hiccup then turns to look at Jack and meets his hazel eyes with a new fire of determination sparking to life inside him. "I guess we'll just have to do our own research, then."

༄

Chapter Text

༄

"So, I read The Book of Dragons!" Hiccup shouts over the commotion happening around him.

Just like Gobber had said before departing from the Great Hall the night before, the class had returned to the dragon training arena bright and early the next morning with a new dragon to encounter. Hiccup cringes slightly when he hears the loud squawking of the Deadly Nadder currently loose in the wooden maze around him that Gobber had set up that morning, and by the sound of Fishlegs' resulting scream it must have chosen him as its newest target.

Hiccup is standing at the utmost outer edge of the makeshift maze with an axe held loosely in his grip, trying his best to pick at his mentor's brain while said man leans against the chain dome from the outside.

The blonde viking looks completely uninterested as he picks at his teeth with his spiked hand, but Hiccup isn't one to quit easily, so he speaks up again. "And it didn't have anything on Night Furies! Do–do you know anything about Night Furies? Or maybe have a sequel that does?" Hiccup uses the hand not holding his axe to cup around his mouth to be better heard over the screaming of the other students and the banging of scales against wood.

"Hiccup, no one's got nothin' on those demons. Anyone that's gotten close enough to even see what one looks like never came back to tell the tale." Gobber replies, seeming to have gotten out whatever was stuck between his teeth before coming to lean over the chains in front of him to point back into the arena. "Now get back in there!"

Hiccup is about to ignore the request in favor of asking another question when someone comes up beside him to shove a large object at his chest. A slightly winded oof escapes him and he turns to glare at his offender before meeting a familiar hazel color.

Jack grins at him. "I think you'll need this." The brunette gently bumps whatever object he had given to him against Hiccup a second time. The boy's annoyed expression immediately drops once he realizes who had joined him before looking down to find a shield being shoved into his free hand.

"He's gonna need a lot more than a puny axe and shield if he keeps standing around like that!" Gobber shouts from his position feet above them, causing Hiccup to roll his eyes as he adjusts himself to the new weight of the shield.

Jack just slings an arm around Hiccup's shoulders as he turns to face the blonde viking. "You know how he is, Gobber. Just answer his questions."

But the man isn't given a chance to fulfill the request when the wooden wall directly behind the pair gives out a loud creak. Hiccup immediately tenses when something within his body clues him into what exactly had joined them, feeling the arm around his shoulders stiffen in response.

A heave of hot air blows over their heads and sends their hair ruffling over their eyes. Jack's arm slides off Hiccup at the same time the auburn-haired boy tilts his head back to see if the Deadly Nadder had noticed them before locking eyes with bright yellow irises.

"We should probably run." Hiccup says through gritted teeth and Jack doesn't seem to need to be told twice before the brunette is taking his arm and booking it down the aisle they were in. A deafening roar follows in their wake and the blue-scaled dragon jumps off its perch and onto the stone floor after them.

Hiccup hears Gobber yell something about finding a dragon's blindspot, but doesn't have the time to truly pay attention in favor of finding his footing beneath himself and catching up to Jack's side, who releases him once he's there.

The two of them dart into the maze and around corners until the thudding of the Deadly Nadder's steps recede and Hiccup hears what sounds like one of the twins yelp in surprise as the dragon seems to find a new interest.

Out of the immediate danger they had found themselves in, Hiccup follows Jack into a crouch at a corner of one of the walls and they glance around its edge to check if the coast is clear. The corridor beyond them seems dragon-free, even after waiting a few moments, and Jack jumps back into action, reattaching his grip onto Hiccup's upper arm and taking the boy with him.

It works out in Hiccup's favor though, as he no longer needs to focus on where he is going which gives him the opportunity to return his attention back to his mentor who was much further away now, but still easily in hearing distance.

With Hiccup's hands both still occupied, he's forced to raise his voice to project over the arena. "So, what would you suggest to someone who was trying to get close to a Night Fury?"

Hiccup watches Gobber roll his eyes before he looks in his direction again after yelling something at one of the other students. While the man may look reluctant to answer his question, Hiccup knows from spending so much time under the other's wing that he'll get his answers eventually, even if he was in the near vicinity of an angry Deadly Nadder.

So that's how him, Jack, and Gobber found themselves spending the next couple of minutes; Jack being Hiccup's guide throughout the maze, steering them this way and that while avoiding where he could hear the cries of the dragon and Hiccup continuing to grill Gobber with all the questions he could think of as the blonde viking gets more and more exasperated after each answer.

It works for a bit, but eventually Gobber isn't the only one who becomes agitated at the seemingly never-ending stream of questions.

Hiccup opens his mouth to shout another one over the arena when he's suddenly yanked to the side by the grip on his arm, barely avoiding being grilled alive by a blazing white-hot flame that strikes the spot he was just standing in. It was exactly the wake up call that Hiccup needed, and the boy wastes no time snapping his attention back to the exercise.

Looking around reveals that during the time Hiccup had occupied himself with his Night Fury questionnaire, the dragon training arena had been sent into a state of complete disarray. The wooden panels that had been used as the walls for the maze were now laying tipped over onto the stone floor with various small fires scattered around them, and the other students didn't look much better.

"Hic, sorry to interrupt what I'm sure is a very productive conversation, but I'm gonna need you to start running on your own if you don't feel like getting eaten!" Jack yells beside him, face flip-flopping between glancing behind them at the Deadly Nadder at their heels and forward looking for the best route of escape. But unfortunately for them, there wasn't much to work with with the entirety of the maze having been knocked over.

"Right! Sorry!" Hiccup shouts back and quickly angles his body in the right direction before pumping his legs underneath him, Jack's hand on his arm releasing once again when he hits the same speed as the other.

Another roar rips from the dragon behind them as they skirt around a downed panel and around another, but the blue-scaled reptile just hops on top of the wooden surface before sprinting across it to catch up with them easily.

Hiccup realizes with a thundering heart that the boys stand no chance at outrunning the dragon, especially with its newly acquired open range access. If they wanted to make it out of this arena with their lives, they were going to have to fight back, but the both of them knew that that wasn't an option.

For what was most likely the first time in Hiccup's life, he's thankful to hear the war-like scream of Astrid rip through the air before the girl comes barreling past them and towards the Deadly Nadder. There's a glint of silver from her axe when she runs by the boys as it's held over her head in a two-handed grip.

Hiccup startles at how close the dragon had gotten to them when Astrid stops no more than a couple of feet beside them to strike at the squawking reptile. The four of them are in such near proximity that Hiccup can see the determination lighting up the blue of Astrid's eyes as her axe swings.

Suddenly, Hiccup is flooded with an anger that is not his own and when he catches a glance at the Deadly Nadder, he knows for a fact it's from the raging dragon. The shock he feels from the flood of emotion is enough to stop him in his tracks before he's seething in the blonde girl's direction, watching as the reptile dodges her attack. There's a flash of surprise that crosses Astrid's face at the miss before it's suddenly inches away from Hiccup's own when her axe becomes lodged within his shield.

"Get out of my way, Haddock!" She screams at him, beginning to yank at the wedged axe's handle. Hiccup can't help but wince at her volume before he glances down at the objects connecting them. Despite each pull from Astrid shoving both him and the shield forward, the blade remains firmly stuck halfway through the wood.

"Believe me, I would if I could." Hiccup says and the only response he gets is an annoyed grunt before she's ripping the shield from his grip with the axe still attached to it to swing the weapon harshly to her left. The auburn-haired boy gawks as he watches the attack hit the very close Deadly Nadder square in its jaw. The wood of the shield splinters on impact and shatters onto the floor below, the area the blade had slid through being the only part remaining.

Astrid pants heavily as both her and Hiccup watch the blue-scaled dragon whimper at the look the blonde girl pins it with before it quickly scurries away and back into its cage.

Hiccup stares after the retreated dragon as it hides within the darkness of the cave when he feels Jack approach his side. The emotions from before strip themselves from Hiccup at the distance between him and the reptile, leaving him with a feeling of unease despite it being his third time experiencing the sensation.

"Nice one, 'strid. Really gave her a good wack." Jack quips from beside Hiccup, twirling his staff in one hand. The auburn-haired boy glances over to his friend and sees the sly grin painting his face, but he can tell it's not truly genuine by the way it doesn't quite reach his eyes. Hiccup wonders silently if perhaps Jack feels the same guilt towards the shunned dragon as he does.

It becomes alarmingly apparent that Jack should've kept his mouth shut though, when Astrid snaps her head to look at them with a furious expression. She re-adjusts the grip on her axe with part of the shield still wedged onto it before pointing it in their direction, her eyes narrowing threateningly.

"You." Her voice is low in her throat before she's stalking towards them. Thankfully, Hiccup and Jack's years of being around the short-fused girl gave them the quick reactions they needed to step out of her blade's range before it could actually harm them.

"Al–Alright! Let's not get too hasty, now." Hiccup says as he raises his hands in front of him in surrender, but with the trajectory that Astrid seems to be on, there wasn't anything that could stop what she had in store for the boys.

"Do either of you realize how important this training is for our futures? For Berk's future? Because with the way you've both been acting, it seriously doesn't seem like it." Astrid borderline growls.

Hiccup can feel the way Jack steps up to touch shoulders with him, but he also has a loose grip on his axe still. So, if worse came down to worst, he could handle his own. It was nice to know Jack had his back, though.

"We need to be ready to join the Berk Guard when the time comes to help our parents in the war we currently are in." She blows a bang out of her face fiercely before fixing her glare at Jack. "And you clearly aren't taking that seriously with that stick you bring in here."

Hiccup sees Jack's eyebrows dip on his forehead before white begins to paint his knuckles due to the other's sudden tight grip, but there's still a grin on his face. Astrid gives them no time for rebuttal before she's speaking up again, but this time directing her attention at Hiccup.

"And you with your thousands of questions that ruined the whole exercise! You didn't even attack when that dragon went for the kill." Astrid's expression angers more if it was even possible as she goes back to lecturing the both of them. "The two of you need to choose what side you're on before it's too late and you're left behind."

She's left panting as she finishes, leaving a moment for them to finally speak up. But when Hiccup goes to do it, the opportunity is taken as Snotlout appears beside the group.

"Yah! Grill 'em babe!" The short boy chuckles cockily before he's immediately silenced by the growl Astrid shoots his way.

For once, Snotlout seems to grow a brain cell and takes a few steps away from the raging blonde to allow her to storm by him and towards the exit. She shoots Hiccup and Jack one last seething glare over her shoulder as she slings her axe back into her holster, shield and all, before turning away.

Hiccup watches as Astrid leaves but finds himself snorting when Gobber takes several steps away from the girl on her way out, a nervous grimace on his face. He can't blame the viking though; when Astrid got like that she became extremely terrifying and unpredictable. Which, in turn, made her a danger to be in the near vicinity of.

She was going to fit perfectly among the warriors of the Berk Guard.

"She's not wrong, you two." Gobber says as he hobbles the rest of the way to the group that had gathered around the boys during the altercation. "You put you and the rest of the class in danger with whatever shenanigans you lot were pullin' in there."

Hiccup lets out a sigh before giving a small nod to show his understanding, wanting nothing more than the class to end and for him and Jack to be free of it. Until they had to come back the next morning, of course.

Jack just rolls his eyes beside Hiccup before leaning against the wood of his bow staff next to him. The position isn't held for long however, when Ruffnut suddenly appears inches from the brunette's side. "I'm disappointed in you, Jackie."

Her voice causes Jack to quickly straighten off his staff and jump away from the blonde in surprise. The way Ruffnut looks at Jack sends an ugly feeling crawling across Hiccup's skin without his permission as she bats her lashes in an unnatural fashion with a strange pout against her lips. Thankfully, the emotion ebbs slightly at the disgusted look growing on Jack's face.

"I'm sorry?" Jack's voice is pitched up in a confused tilt as he speaks and he takes a few more steps backwards into Hiccup's space when the girl tries to get closer.

"It's okay. I know you'll get 'em next time." Ruffnut then makes a bizarre biting gesture as she sends out a clawed-hand in Jack's direction.

And that ugly feeling is back.

Hiccup's body seemingly moves on its own when he takes a step forward and slightly in front of Jack, trying his best to avoid the look Jack gives him in return. But the brunette doesn't back away, so he doesn't either, remaining slightly in front of the boy when Ruffnut's twin comes up beside his sister.

"Yeah! Maybe next time you'll actually get eaten." The blonde boy cackles, throwing an arm around Ruffnut's shoulders. He immediately retreats when he notices the flirtatious looks she's still sending Jack's way and does everyone the liberty of shoving her onto the floor. She shouts indignantly before kicking the feet out from under Tuffnut to send them both into another wrestling match on the ground.

"If we're lucky." Snotlout rejoins the conversation, laughing loudly as he slaps Fishlegs' back who Hiccup suddenly realizes had been there the whole time.

The larger boy cringes at the contact before speaking timidly. "I seriously don't think this method of teaching is ideal..." Fishlegs turns to look at Snotlout when the other stops smacking him to catch a look at the exasperation now there before the short boy is groaning loudly in annoyance.

Hiccup can't help but agree with the statement. He wasn't exactly sure that this was the safest version of training for dragon fighting, but then again, it wasn't exactly safe to do that either. So who was he to comment on his mentor's teaching methods? They had gotten him this far, anyway.

Hiccup sees Jack send a look towards Gobber that's clearly meant to instigate a reply out of the man, but the blonde viking just shrugs nonchalantly as if the question had been if the sky was blue and not if throwing them into a locked arena with a wild dragon was a good idea. "It's the only proper way."

Hiccup senses that they were coming to the point of the class where Gobber would debrief what had happened during the lesson and suddenly found no more interest in being there. "This has been... awful, but we have to go."

Jack perks up beside him at the same time the group pins him with various confused looks. Hiccup nods again before taking Jack's hand and leading them through the others, heading towards the exit.

"Yep. Really important idiot stuff to get to, you know how it is." Hiccup says over his shoulder when Gobber questions where they were heading off to, and Jack does his best to keep his snickers under his breath. Hiccup pins the boy with a playful glare and feels a thump in his chest at the grin sent his way that was part way obscured by Jack's fist.

The feeling is quickly forgotten when one of the twins yells after them. "Sounds fun! Could we join?" It sounds like Tuffnut, but Hiccup would be lying if he said he could accurately tell their voices apart without looking at them.

"Absolutely not." Hiccup responds and isn't surprised by the two groans of disappointment that follow. If Hiccup had anything to say about it, Ruffnut would be as far away from Jack as possible. He couldn't properly explain why he was so adamant on it, but it kept that ugly feeling from earlier at bay the further the two were apart, and that's all that mattered.

Jack's sly grin appears by Hiccup's face and he smiles back at the realization it's a real one this time. "We're gonna go build the tail fin, aren't we?" Jack whispers, hazel eyes shining with mischief.

Hiccup nods, smile growing at the same time Jack's does at the confirmation. "We just need some parts first."

Jack chuckles outright before running ahead to take the lead. Hiccup doesn't mind how exactly they look to the others as they leave, all he can focus on being the fact him and Jack's hands are still attached warmly together.

It's a fuzzy feeling that starts at the contact and slowly lights up the rest of his body before it's all Hiccup can do to just grin widely and allow himself to be dragged out of the arena and back into the safety of their own world.

༄

Hiccup tries his best not to laugh at Jack as they make their way to the Bennetts' house. Beside him, his friend's arms are piled full of various tools, metal rods, and leather pieces that Hiccup had asked the brunette to carry for him after they had spent the last couple of hours gathering it all.

Could Hiccup probably help out and carry a few things? Sure, he only had his notebook and charcoal pencil in hand. But after spending so long at Jack's side, he learned that the boy would do almost everything Hiccup requested of him if he asked nicely enough. So shoot him for taking advantage of it every once in a while.

"Do I really need to be carrying all of this?" Jack asks after a particularly loose wooden cylinder almost falls onto the ground before the brunette manages to catch it midway, almost dropping the rest of the items in the process.

Hiccup snorts and tosses his friend a grin. "Yes, I need both of my hands to think."

Just like Hiccup expected, Jack only groans in complaint before re-adjusting his grip and continuing on without another word about it. Hiccup just shakes his head fondly before returning his attention back into the depths of his notebook which is progressively getting filled with more and more designs and diagrams of Toothless' tail fin. It was probably overkill, but Hiccup never took any chances when it came to his inventions.

Hiccup doesn't notice the thin metal rod swinging in his direction until it's far too late and it's softly smacking him in the back of the head. The attack immediately brings his attention up and out of his pages to catch Jack snapping his head forward and darting his eyes around suspiciously.

Hiccup realizes two things at the same time.

First, he must have had his nose shoved in that notebook for much longer than he originally thought when he noticed that they were now only a couple minutes out from the Bennetts' house and far from where they started in the center of the village.

Which also explained the second thing he realized; Jack had gotten bored of no one paying attention to him and decided to attack Hiccup while he was obviously working.

Why was he even surprised? But instead of annoyance that he's sure any other normal person would feel, he can't help the fond smile that curves his lips before he's snapping his book shut to hit Jack on the back of the head with it lightly.

"Wha– Ow! Why would you do such a thing?" Jack's hazel eyes are bright when they turn back to Hiccup, looking the picture of ridiculousness with his arms piled high with various things all while trying to play innocent.

"Because someone got sick of no one talking to him and decided to take it out on his oblivious, hardworking friend." Hiccup says as he raises an accusatory eyebrow at Jack.

The other's eyes widen before taking a quick glance around himself. "I seriously have no idea what you're talking about. I think Toothless might've scrambled up that brain of yours more than we thought when he yelled at you all pissed off that first time."

Hiccup crosses his arms in mock offensiveness before pinning Jack with a playful glare. "Oh the audacity–"

"Who's Toothless?"

Both Hiccup and Jack whip their heads towards the voice at its question, but every ounce of fear that had started to climb up Hiccup's throat immediately vanishes at the sight of who it belonged to.

Jamie stands several feet in front of them with a slacked bow in his hands off to the side of his house. It's obvious by the various arrows littered across the lawn from the youngest Bennett that he was in the middle of practicing, but it looked like it wasn't going very well if his empty target board had anything to say about it. Instead of anywhere on the striped slab of wood hung upon a nearby tree, the arrows struck a few inches below the board, deep within the grass at the trunk, and even a couple sticking out of the bushes next to it.

But you couldn't tell Jamie had been the one to shoot those arrows by the sunny look on his face as Hiccup and Jack approach. That was one of the things Hiccup really liked about Jack's little brother, the kid never knew when to give up.

But it was definitely going to get him into trouble one day.

"Uh–" Hiccup started, unsure of whether or not letting Jamie in on the whole helping-a-Night-Fury-to-fly-again was an entirely good idea.

But Jack seems to make the decision for him when he cranks his head around the various things in his hands to look at Jamie with a wide smirk. "A dragon."

Jamie's reaction is immediate, dropping his bow onto the grass floor before sprinting the rest of the way over to them with a smile that could light up Berk on its darkest night. "You found it!"

Hiccup's head ducks slightly at the volume with a shush before he places his hands on Jamie's shoulders to begin leading him around the side of the Bennetts' house. Jack just chuckles beside them as he follows along, little snickers echoing from beneath the hand Jamie had slapped over his mouth all the while.

When the three boys finally come around to the back of the home, Hiccup can feel Jamie almost vibrating with excitement as they approach a small shop set up a few meters back from the building.

The size of the whole thing was probably not much larger than Jack's bedroom, the construction behind it mediocre at best.

Hiccup can say that though, because it was him and Jack who had built it.

Several years back, the two of them decided they needed their own space for Hiccup to work on whatever invention he wanted to tackle next and for Jack to have a space to himself within the full house that was the Bennetts' home. But what had started out as their secret hideout eventually became their makeshift forge and base of operations when they started growing up. Now however, they were planning on using the space to hide their work from Gobber and any other prying eyes of the village.

Jamie leads the way into the singular door at the shop's front and they step into the cozy area inside. Directly across the way sits a decently-made fireplace that Hiccup knows has a less-than-stellar chimney attached to it on the outside and up the side of the building. Along the same wall hangs various tools, metals, and unused leathers that the boys had gathered throughout their time at Gobber's forge.

Hiccup watches as Jack makes his way to the right to drop off his load of things onto the long table that was built into the wall and spanned the entire side with numerous papers, unlit candles, and folded up magnifying glasses scattered across its length. Jamie, on the other hand, dashes to one of the rolling chairs nearby and does a quick spin before settling in the seat with crossed legs, pinning Jack and Hiccup respectively with a wide-eyed expression.

"You've actually been surprisingly patient." Jack says once his hands are finally free of whatever Hiccup had gotten him to carry. There's a signature sly smirk on his face, but his eyes are bright and joyful, betraying his true fondness towards his brother.

"I can when I wanna be." Jamie tilts his chin upwards as if there was a crown being placed on his head and Hiccup laughs along with Jack at the young boy's antics.

"Right, well–"

"Tell me what happened!" Jack raises an eyebrow at Jamie when his voice comes barreling over his own. It doesn't deter his brother however, only causing him to lean forward in his chair even more in anticipation.

"Alright, if you let me finish I can tell you all about it." The older brunette then slides his bow staff from his back holster and uses it to propel himself up to sit on the edge of the table. Hiccup takes a seat right along with him, but opts for another wheeled chair on Jack's other side.

And then the story begins.

Hiccup loses himself in sorting out his new materials and laying flat his sketches as he begins the very basics of his first design, all the while Jack's smooth voice plays in his background. Despite most of the auburn-haired boy's attention being focused on making sure each piece within the prototype was the correct length, he also made sure to keep up with the story being told.

Jack's descriptions of their first run-in with Toothless almost make Hiccup forget he was there too, the half of his mind that was listening hanging onto every word and itching for the next. It was interesting to hear what Hiccup experienced first-hand from an outsider's perspective, and he suddenly comes to the realization he'd never asked Jack what it was like through his eyes.

He guessed he was getting that now, though.

After a while, Hiccup had managed to construct a very rough base design that held up well enough to transfer onto his lap before he's turning to face the brothers.

As he had mentioned before, Hiccup's favorite part of Jack's stories were his expressions and the movements the other would use to tell his tales. The Bennett always tried his best to integrate whoever was listening into the action he was describing, which easily made Jack one of the most compelling storytellers Hiccup's ever met.

So, with a screw in one hand and a loose mechanism in the other, Hiccup watches as Jack finally gets to their most recent encounter with Toothless.

"Hiccup knew what the dragon wanted? Woah." The way Jamie says his name in awe brings Hiccup's full attention back to the conversation in front of him, who he was now seemingly the star of. "I didn't know you could do that!"

Hiccup shrugs lamely as heat simmers on his cheeks at Jamie's childish amazement being sent in his direction. "Neither did I, if I'm being honest."

The auburn-haired boy then shakes his head to rid himself of his meek embarrassment before lifting his screw in Jack's direction. "I feel like that's nothing compared to what happened to you, though."

At Hiccup's statement, Jamie's attention is immediately brought back to his brother before he plants his feet onto the ground to shove himself in Jack's direction, almost crashing into his dangling legs if it weren't for the bow staff that stops the motion just short.

"What happened to you? Did you do a cool thing with Toothless, too?" Jamie's smile is wide as he looks up at Jack, revealing his recently missing tooth that had been excitedly given to his mother before receiving his new bow and arrow in return.

Hiccup suddenly feels guilty when the older brunette's face falls slightly at the mention of the previous night's events. While the auburn-haired boy was beyond confused at the fact that he could somehow understand dragons, he couldn't even begin to imagine what Jack was going through.

But the feeling is thankfully short-lived when Jack suddenly snorts and leans over to ruffle Jamie's hair, who chuckles in response. "Nah, talking to dragons is Hic's thing. My story is a lot cooler."

Hiccup knows that Jack was most likely trying to cover up whatever he had gotten a glimpse of seconds before, in favor of his little brother being inches away from him. But now wasn't the time to bring it up. Hiccup will have to talk to him about it later, when it was just them.

"It's a little bit of a crazy one, though. I barely believe it myself." Jack says, sending a smirk Jamie's way.

At this, the younger Bennett shoots out a small hand to wrap around the staff that was still holding his chair in place and looks his brother straight in the eye. "Come on, Jack! You know I'll believe anything you say, just tell me!"

Hiccup sees the slight widening of Jack's eyes before the boy quickly schools his features into another lopsided grin before leaning forward towards Jamie. "That's a lot of pressure, little man."

"Little?!" Jamie borderline shouts, his voice cracking in shock which causes Jack to fall backwards onto the table with a mouthful of chuckles. Despite the pout that had formed on the younger Bennett's face in result, Jack's laughter had always been infectious and Jamie and Hiccup aren't far behind before they're all temporarily lost within their giggles.

During his fall backwards, Jack had left his bow staff in Jamie's care, clearly trusting the boy to hold it while he collected himself. When Hiccup glances at him, the youngest Bennett is spinning the wood between his palms and is looking at Jack expectantly, ready for his explanation after seeing everyone recovered.

So, once again, Hiccup just leans back to listen as Jack jumps animatedly back into what happened in the clearing with the wisps. Jamie's eyes almost shimmer in wonder when Jack explains how the wind had picked him up and granted him a couple seconds of weightlessness. Somewhere within the story, the older brunette stands from his spot on the edge of the table to tower over them before he begins acting out exactly how the gale had tossed him around; Jamie and Hiccup laughing along with every awkward position he pulls out.

The tailfin rests almost completely forgotten in Hiccup's lap when Jack gets to the part about hearing the wind speak his name and the oddness of the frost covering the forest floor around him after the fact. Jamie is leaned up against the table where Jack stands, the staff tucked into his arm and against his cheek when the story finally comes to a close.

"You flew?" Jamie stage-whispers against the wood pressed to his face.

Hiccup smiles softly when Jack lowers himself into a crouch in front of his brother with a head-tilted grin. "Like I said, cool right?" Jamie nods enthusiastically in agreement to which Jack chuckles lowly along with.

The younger brunette suddenly jumps from his seat with an idea shining behind his eyes. The movement sends his chair rolling several feet backwards and Jack has to dodge the near collision with his jaw, but Jamie doesn't seem to notice as he beams at his brother before speaking. "We have to test it! See if you can do it again!"

Hiccup would be lying if he said he hadn't thought the same thing after everything had happened. Afterall, it wasn't everyday you see someone use the wind to make themselves fly, and Hiccup was nothing if not endlessly curious. But he had wanted to give Jack some time to come to terms with it before he had Hiccup throwing him off of high ledges in an attempt to see him fly again.

Jamie though, didn't seem to have those same reservations.

Thankfully, Jack just quirks an eyebrow before gracefully hopping back onto the floor. "I'm not just some test subject you can do experiments on." There's nothing about the boy's tone that portrays he's anywhere near serious, so Jamie just rolls his eyes before grabbing onto his brother's arm and beginning to drag him out the door.

"Well, I guess I don't have much of a choice, then." Jack chuckles as he lets himself be escorted out of the shop. Hazel eyes glance back at Hiccup to smile at him in a way that sends his heart strangely stuttering in his chest. "Don't work too hard."

Hiccup takes his turn of rolling his eyes at the brunette before he loses sight of both the Bennett boys as they slip out into the evening to do who-knows-what. The auburn-haired boy questions briefly if Jack had gone so willingly because he had wanted to give Hiccup space to work on the tail fin or if he just couldn't say no to his brother.

A smile creeps onto his face fondly when he decides it was most likely both before he turns back to the table to place his work-in-progress onto it and easily loses himself within his work.

༄

Hiccup isn't sure how much time has passed when he begins putting the finishing touches on the tail fin. The wood constructing the prosthetic is finally free of rough patches after a few good run-throughs with a buffer and the mechanisms within the moving parts are at last able to move smoothly between positions.

Hiccup grins down at his project with a stray bit of tongue poking out the side of his mouth as he fiddles with the straps meant to wrap around Toothless' tail, attaching them in place and checking the strength of the connection. Thor knows that giving the Night Fury a weak tail fin would only end with Hiccup on the receiving end of a plasma blast and he'd like to keep breathing, thank you very much.

The auburn-haired boy barely registers the sound of the shop's door opening and closing behind him and nearly falls out of his chair when something is placed heavily on the table beside him. A glance to his left reveals a wooden plate with what looked like whatever the Great Hall had served for dinner that night, muttonchop with a side of some kind of gray paste that was made of gods-knows-what.

Hiccup merely raises an eyebrow at the questionable meal before turning back to the straps, not even having to look up to know who exactly brought it to him. "Yeah...I think I'm good. Thanks, though."

The snort that sounds behind Hiccup confirms what he already knew to be true before an olive-skinned hand plants itself on the side of him opposite of the steaming pile of mystery substance, Jack's face coming into view soon after it. "You haven't eaten since this morning. Come on, Hic, what doesn't kill you makes you stronger."

Hiccup turns his head slightly towards the other to offer him a deadpanned look before it dissolves into a grin at Jack's snicker. The auburn-haired boy then notices the lack of a higher pitched giggle and glances around the room. "What'd you do with Jamie? Too much experimenting for one day?"

Jack lets out another low chuckle before brushing away the numerous sketches and materials Hiccup had littered the table with to clear a space for himself to sit. When the brunette settles himself onto its edge, bow staff placed randomly onto the space behind him much to Hiccup's dismay, he shrugs his shoulders nonchalantly. "I told him to go meet up with his friends. He was around me for too long. Didn't want people to start giving him looks, ya know?"

Hiccup's eyebrows scrunch his forehead at the same time a frown pulls at his lips at the statement. He realizes with a pang that Emily's words must've been getting under Jack's skin a lot deeper than Hiccup had originally thought. He couldn't blame the brunette though, the girl had been laying it on pretty thick the last couple of days.

If it was because of their enrollment in this year's dragon training session, he couldn't be sure. But, with the conversations Jack and Hiccup had been having recently, it didn't appear that the oldest Bennett was brushing off the comments as well as he said he was.

First, it was Jack questioning his own beliefs. Then, it was the sash that Jack was thankfully still wearing around his waist. And now he was sending Jamie away?

With Hiccup having finished adjusting the straps on the tail fin a while ago, he leaves the prosthetic behind in favor of rolling his chair in front of Jack's knees to look the brunette in the eye. "Jack, Jamie is old enough to know what he's doing. You don't have to send him off because you're scared of what others will think. Jamie hanging out with his brother isn't going to make him the village outcast, so you have to stop worrying about that before it eats you alive."

Hazel meets forest green eyes for a moment and the two of them slip into silence. Hiccup watches as Jack's gaze flickers over his face, almost like he's searching for something, before the brunette is shaking his head and redirecting his attention onto the tail fin beside him.

"Lookin' good, Hic. You whipped that up pretty fast." Jack compliments, completely changing the topic.

Hiccup looks at Jack for a bit longer and opens his mouth to bring them back to what they should be talking about, when the brunette glances at him with an almost pleading expression painting his face. So, Hiccup just sighs before dropping it entirely, allowing the other to avoid the conversation. For now, at least.

The auburn-haired boy offers his friend a small smile as he wheels back to his original spot in front of the tail fin."I just hope it works, is all." Hiccup mumbles, biting the inside of his lip as he stares at his newest project.

"It will." When Hiccup looks up at Jack, the boy is leaning back onto his hands with a soft smile painting his face.

Hiccup just snorts before reclining back into his chair. "How do you know that?"

At the question, Jack's smile widens before he takes his weight off his hands to instead lean his elbows against his knees in Hiccup's direction. "Cause I know you. And if it doesn't work, I know you'll figure it out. You always do."

The words render Hiccup speechless for a few moments and it's suddenly all he can do to just to stare at the other. The way Jack is looking at him does nothing to bring any intelligible language to his lips, and instead just sends sensations across his skin that he can't even begin to decipher.

The low light from the evening sun gives Jack's hair a richness it usually lacks during the day and the hazel of his eyes have finally lost the last traces of the sadness they had held moments before, making way for the shine that usually makes its home there. His skin had become ruddy from the chilliness of being outside, but it could never truly cover the pretty olive tone just beneath.

Being so close to Jack in such an intimate setting like this within the secluded space of their shop gives Hiccup the opportunity to just look at the other without distraction.

It's times like these that Hiccup remembers just how foreignly beautiful Jack is.

Wait, what?

The cough that erupts out of Hiccup's throat not only startles him, but causes Jack to raise an eyebrow at him strangely. "You good?"

"Yes! Yeah, all good here." Hiccup clears his throat once more for good measure before grabbing the prosthetic and standing from his chair. "We should probably get out there before we lose light."

A suspicious look replaces the earlier ease in Jack's eyes as he slowly removes himself from his seat on the edge of the work table, dragging his staff along with him.

Hiccup just shrugs when the other squints his eyes at him in question before the brunette is walking into the auburn-haired boy's space. "This isn't over." Jack states before ripping the tail fin from Hiccup's hand and exchanging it for the muttonchop Hiccup never saw him grab.

The action immediately has Hiccup's eyes rolling which results in a low chuckle from Jack and, thankfully, the loss of his questioning glare. "Gods, the amount of times you do that I'm surprised they haven't rolled away by now."

The brunette then lets out a squawk of shock when Hiccup makes a grab for him, but the boy manages to dodge the attack before he's turning around and booking it for the shop's exit.

The two of them then disappear off towards the grotto, laughing loudly and chasing each other all the while with the muttonchop Jack continuously keeps making Hiccup take bites of.

Hiccup thinks he's the most lovable idiot he's ever had the pleasure of meeting.

༄

Chapter Text

༄

Hiccup inhales a few silent, shuddering breaths as he takes another step forward. The prosthetic that he had spent the last couple of hours on clutched tightly in his grasp as he watches Toothless swish his tail unconsciously on the grotto floor in front of him.

Hiccup hears a nervous chuckle from Jack as the brunette stands several feet away from the front of the Night Fury, feeding the dragon a variety of fish one by one to keep it distracted. Thankfully, the boy is trying his best to extend the time Hiccup has before the creature notices him creeping up behind him, but with the way he flicks his tail every couple of seconds the auburn-haired boy isn't sure if it'll be enough.

The evening air cools the sweat collecting as a sheen upon his skin and Hiccup manages a few more steps towards Toothless. The grotto the dragon has been forced to temporarily call home is quiet around them in the tranquillity of the approaching night, and it helps that the place is several meters out from any part of their village. So Hiccup attempts to make his footsteps as light as possible to hopefully blend in with the noises of the dragon eating and Jack's nervous chatter.

An annoyed growl rumbles from deep within Toothless once Hiccup is a few feet away and he looks up to see Jack with his hands in the air in surrender.

"Alright, alright. Have it your way, you greedy reptile." The brunette says before he takes two hands to the side of the large basket full of fish that the two of them had lugged to the grotto and pushes it onto its side, the slimy amounts of bream, brook trout, eel, and halibut sliding onto the floor.

It seems to be just what the Night Fury was asking for when the dragon immediately lets out a happy-sounding warble before diving into the pile and swallowing several fish at a time. Jack just lets out a frazzled chuckle as his eyes meet Hiccup's, who shoots him a questioning eyebrow to which the brunette shrugs in reply to.

Hiccup is about to proceed with his mission of attaching his newest invention to the missing fin portion of Toothless' tail when the reptile suddenly jumps back with a threatening snarl. The auburn-haired boy has to scramble away to avoid getting knocked over and immediately alerting the Night Fury of his presence behind him as his heart hammers in his chest.

Before Hiccup has time to question what had happened, Jack speaks up from the other side of the dragon. "Not a fan of eel, huh? Can't blame you." Hiccup watches as the brunette slowly sticks a hand into the slippery pile of fish with a disgusted look before pulling out the black and yellow striped body of one of Berk's eels.

Hiccup had felt the spike of revulsion when Toothless had been close enough to almost knock him down and it had left an upset feeling within his stomach.

So Night Furies hated eels? It seemed like Hiccup had come to the right answer once Jack tosses the long creature into the water beside him and the dragon perks right back up before continuing his feast. The auburn-haired boy's hand twitches around his grip on the prosthetic, itching for his notebook to write the new information down at the same time Jack wipes the slime from his hands onto his pants.

He'll just have to slot the information into his brain for another time, though.

With the dragon now thoroughly distracted deep within the basket of fish, Hiccup finally takes his chance. As quietly as he can while still hurrying, he gets up right next to the tail and lays the prosthetic onto the ground beside it. With the ease of the inventor of the prototype, Hiccup unlatches the straps from around the main section before crouching slightly to push the device up against the scales.

He doesn't have time to feel victorious though, when Toothless suddenly moves forward to get closer to what Hiccup is sure is the almost empty basket of fish, taking his tail along with him. The movement completely messes up the alignment needed to attach the prosthetic to the dragon and Hiccup has to resist the urge to groan loudly at the disruption.

He attempts a few more times, but despite not being aware of his presence, Toothless continues to snatch his tail away at the last second before Hiccup has the chance to properly connect it.

Hiccup would think it was adorable if it wasn't pissing him off.

The auburn-haired boy can hear the snickers coming from Jack, but Hiccup just rolls his eyes before throwing caution to the wind and fully mounting himself onto the tail.

Thankfully, the tactic does the trick and Hiccup makes quick work of wrapping the straps around the base of Toothless' tail and clipping them securely into place. The action doesn't take him more than a few seconds and it isn't long before he's sitting back to admire his work, flipping the fake fin from its open and closed position to check the smoothness of the transition.

And it works like a charm, the mechanisms within the prototype running just as they did unattached. But when had one of Hiccup's inventions not?

Don't answer that.

"Uh, Hiccup?" Jack suddenly says, voice still behind him along with the rest of the dragon's body he had honestly forgotten he was on top of.

"What–" Hiccup's question is cut off when the ground is ripped from beneath his feet.

A scream Hiccup would be embarrassed to admit had come from him rips through the grotto as Toothless launches into the air. With nothing else to do but pray to any listening god and hold on, Hiccup wraps his arms and legs around the tail tightly before assessing the situation.

With the dragon's initial leap, they had gotten a decent amount of height with the help of a few wing flaps. Unfortunately for the both of them though, it doesn't last long before gravity begins pulling them back downwards towards the quickly approaching ground. From the altitude they were at, a crash would be seriously painful, if not downright life threatening in Hiccup's case.

Being so close to Toothless sends enough waves of frustration coursing through Hiccup to break him out of his fear before he's shooting out an arm to reopen the flapping tail fin prosthetic. The effects are immediate and the dragon beneath him is able to right himself before they're no longer barrelling towards the floor and instead gliding around the grotto.

Toothless' anger recedes at the change as the creature seems to re-adjust to flying, leaving Hiccup an opening to experience his own emotions for a moment. The wind ruffles through his hair and the auburn-haired boy chances a glance downward where he's met with a breathtaking aerial view of the grotto.

Hiccup quickly comes to the conclusion his feet have been on the ground for far too long, for up here he's never felt more free. Sure, his position being whipped around at the end of Toothless' tail wasn't ideal but he was still flying and it was still every bit of incredible.

Hiccup lets a cheek-stinging smile break onto his face and barely registers himself shouting out a holler of excitement. He quickly dips the prosthetic to accommodate the sharp turn the dragon beneath him makes to avoid crashing into one of the grotto's walls before they're gliding along the rocks in a vertical slant.

Hiccup picks up his head once more when he hears a similar enthralled whoop to his own coming from below him.

He spots Jack where they had left him beside the empty basket of fish jumping and pumping his fists in celebration. "You're flying! You did it!" The brunette shouts.

Hiccup laughs in disbelief as he shoots what he's sure is a blinding grin Jack's way. He's about to respond to his friend when Toothless seems to suddenly remember Hiccup is still attached to him before the creature lets out an annoyed huff and goes for another sharp turn, making sure to fling the auburn-haired boy off in the process.

The flick of the dragon's strong tail paired with the sudden change in direction was enough to send Hiccup hurling into the grotto's pond with a surprised yelp that effectively gets cut off when his head goes underwater. There's a couple of moments where Hiccup isn't sure which way is up or down, but he eventually figures it out before he drowns and resurfaces at the top. He shakes the water from his eyes just in time to hear Toothless grunt in distress as the creature loses control of the prosthetic and crash lands into the water not far from where Hiccup had.

Hiccup worries for all of two seconds before Toothless re-emerges with an annoyed look in his eye the boy is sure he would be able to feel if the dragon was any closer.

Suddenly, a boisterous laughter fills the grotto and Hiccup turns to send a deadpanned look Jack's way in response. There's no real heat behind his glare though, as he watches the brunette bend over his knees while the giggles take over his body and a happy, warm blush paints the other's cheeks.

Hiccup guessed he couldn't be too annoyed at Jack finding humor at his expense if he looked like that because of it.

He could, however, get a bit of revenge.

After checking to ensure Toothless got back to shore alright, despite being visibly angry at him, Hiccup swims the short distance to where he can touch before running out of the water to wrap his arms around Jack's waist. With the brunette being too occupied with catching any breaths he could get between laughs, he yelps in surprise when his center of gravity is shifted and he's lifted from his feet by Hiccup.

"What are you doing?!" Jack shouts, voice strained from the giggles still escaping around each word as he struggles within Hiccup's grip. While Hiccup wouldn't say he was particularly strong in any sense, after years of rough-housing with Jack he learned he could easily pick up the boy if he wanted to.

"Teaching you a lesson!" Hiccup says before he begins shaking out his dripping wet hair right against Jack. The brunette's struggling immediately doubles as the layers of water that had been logged into Hiccup's clothes and hair begin transferring themselves to Jack.

Hiccup receives a hand against his face during Jack's attempts to dislodge himself from the auburn-haired boy's grip. It ultimately works out in Hiccup's favor though, when the change in position causes his boot to slip beneath him before sending them both backwards and into the shallow water behind them.

When Hiccup rights himself from the fall, he catches Jack sitting up with his pants thoroughly soaked and his now damp cloak hanging up and over his face. The picture sends Hiccup into a laughing fit similar to the one that had started this whole thing and Jack isn't far behind him after he flips the blue cloth back onto his shoulders.

A cold splash of pond water is thrown in his face as he loses himself in his giggles and he looks up to playfully glare at the culprit. Jack smiles at him devilishly with a mischievous tongue poking out between his teeth before he's cupping together his hands to send more water Hiccup's way.

"Oh no you don't." Hiccup says and collects his own handful of water, effectively canceling out the one tossed his way before sending a second one that hits Jack square in the face.

Jack gasps much more dramatically than was warranted and wipes a hand over his face to rid the excess of water that Hiccup had placed there. "So you wanna play dirty?" The brunette questions, a smirk replacing the offended look that had taken over Jack's face before.

"Well you started it." Hiccup replies, but he can hardly contain his laughter. It was moments like these where he could forget about the trajectory in which his life was currently going. It takes him back to when he and Jack were just kids running off into the forest every evening to catch a glimpse of something mythical or to just escape from their reality into a world of make-believe.

Of course, the boys didn't play knights or sorcerers any more, but the hope that they had held for magic was sparking back to life. Hiccup could see it in the brightness of Jack's eyes and he could feel his own excitement for the unknown returning just as it used to be when he was younger.

It was thrilling just as it was slightly terrifying. But, now wasn't a time to think about the latter. Now, Hiccup had to soak Jack head-to-toe in pond water while their new reluctant Night Fury acquaintance pouted across the way from them.

It was crazy how fast someone's whole life could change.

Hiccup is about to shove Jack backwards by the shoulders into the water when he's interrupted by an annoyed yelp from Toothless. He looks up from Jack's wet, grinning face to glance at the creature, who was now sitting near the edge of the pond on the opposite side as them with narrowed eyes in their direction.

Without having to be anywhere near the dragon, Hiccup immediately understands that the boys have overstayed their welcome and this was Toothless' way of kicking them out.

Unfortunately for the reptile though, Hiccup wasn't quite done being there.

"Awh, buzzkill." Jack mumbles when Hiccup releases the brunette's shoulders and helps him up and out of the shallow water. The auburn-haired boy just rolls his eyes before he's stripping off his dripping fur vest to let it dry on a nearby rock, Jack following his lead and setting his cloak down beside it.

When Hiccup turns back around to face the dragon, it's still staring at them with slitted irises and squinted eyes.

"Sorry about earlier. I'll work on it." Hiccup says. Toothless slides his head into a tilt and the boy feels a simmer of confusion tickle his skin, so he points to the prosthetic still attached to the dragon's tail. "Your tail fin. It needs a couple of tweaks, but I'll work on it."

Hiccup watches as the Night Fury's eyes widen slightly before filling with suspicion as he glances between the boys. He couldn't blame the dragon though, considering the fact he had probably spent his whole life defending itself from viking-kind.

Jack joins Hiccup's side and slings a casual arm around his shoulders. "If you have any chance of flying again, it's gonna be thanks to this guy." The brunette says towards Toothless and the reptile's eyes flick to the boy when he speaks. Jack receives a considering look that eventually switches over to Hiccup before the Night Fury lets out a barely satisfied huff and turns away.

"Well, he took that well." Jack says by Hiccup's ear, eyes never leaving the retreating dragon. The auburn-haired boy tilts his head slightly to raise an eyebrow at his friend before stepping out from beneath the arm thrown over him to follow in Toothless' steps.

It takes him a bit to round the large pond in the center of the grotto, but when he gets to the other side the dragon has made his way over to the charred ground Hiccup had spotted during their first visit. He knows Jack has followed him when he feels his presence lean over his shoulder, but he doesn't say anything as he watches the Night Fury release a contained plasma blast onto the floor in a circular motion before laying down upon it.

So it's his bed. Makes sense since if dragons were anything like lizards they must be cold-blooded, meaning it preferred being up against something warm.

As the new information files itself away into Hiccup's brain, the boy is quick to retrieve his notebook from within his pocket and begin scribbling down his observations. Like he had said to Jack when they had found that empty Night Fury page, it was going to be up to them to find out everything they could on this species since they weren't going to find it anywhere else. And for some reason, this Night Fury had chosen not to kill them despite the obvious annoyance they were causing the poor creature.

So if Toothless was going to allow him to get this close, Hiccup was going to wholly take advantage of that. And knowing him, probably test the limits from time to time like what he had done with the prosthetic earlier.

Before Jack can even attempt to talk him out of it, Hiccup leaves the boy's side several meters away from the dragon and takes a few steps closer until he's once again near the slumbering reptile.

Well, not quite slumbering for when the auburn-haired boy approaches he can feel that while Toothless was trying to sleep, he was still keeping himself aware of his surroundings.

So Hiccup wasn't all too surprised when, after sitting down, the Night Fury immediately opens his eyes and slits them in the boy's direction; the warning within the green is clear even without the help of the annoyance prickling Hiccup's skin.

"Right, right. My bad." Hiccup says as he shoots up from his seat and sends his hands into a surrendering gesture, taking a few steps back at Toothless' responding growl. The dragon sends out another huff, but seems satisfied enough at the distance created between them before the large, black-scaled creature curls his tail to send his one working tail fin over his face.

With the prosthetic now within the reptile's vision, Hiccup watches as Toothless suddenly remembers the foreign object attached to his body before rolling its acid green eyes and hitting the device onto the ground, effectively breaking it off and onto the grotto floor several feet away.

Hearing the resulting snap of the prototype's wooden mechanisms causes Hiccup to cringe and let out a sigh of disappointment as he thinks about all the hours it's going to take to repair the thing.

"Okay, your opinion is heard loud and clear." Hiccup mumbles and Toothless just gruffs before returning his own tail fin to fan over his face, ending whatever communication the two of them had had going on.

Well, the dragon wasn't pushing him onto the floor and roaring into his face, so Hiccup is counting this as progress.

The auburn-haired boy finally decides to take the hint that Toothless had been trying to get across the entire evening and turns around to see where his friend had run off to, the absence of his usually mocking laughter leaving him curious.

After a quick glance around the evening-lit grotto, Hiccup finds the head of brunette hair not far from where he had left the boy before. Jack is standing with his back facing Hiccup and dragging one end of his bow staff around into the dirt before him, dark blue cloak swaying along with his movements as he works.

It doesn't take Hiccup long to get to Jack's side before he's crossing his arms and staring, unimpressed, at the drawing of himself sketched out in the soil below him.

"Ah, very flattering." Hiccup grumbles as he tilts his head slightly to get a better look at the barely legible stick-figure. The only reason he could even tell the drawing was meant to be of him was the vest on the person's shoulders and notebook being held in its hands.

Other than that, the wild, unruly hair and comically large nose just sent Hiccup's eyes rolling in his head at Jack's responding snicker. "I think it captures you perfectly." The brunette finishes the drawing at that and takes a few steps back to admire his art, one hand resting on his hip while the other twirls his staff casually.

"My nose is not that big." Hiccup responds mock-offendedly, pointing towards the large circle in the center of the figure's face.

Jack chuckles. "It's like I'm looking right at you!"

Hiccup is about to say something that would hopefully defend any sort of honor he had left, but he's interrupted by a warble that sounds an awful lot like a laugh of its own. The auburn-haired boy whips his head around at the sound to reveal that Toothless had left his charred-ground bed to join them near the dirt drawing, seemingly finding humor in Hiccup's horrendous portrait (pun not intended).

Jack looks back over to Hiccup after he had also quickly turned his attention to their newest addition and sends the boy an awed smile to which Hiccup happily reciprocates. He guessed the dragon wasn't as fed up with them as they had originally thought, or the reptile had decided to give another chance.

And what the auburn-haired boy could sense from the dormant annoyance he can still feel simmering from the dragon, it was most likely the latter.

But the reason didn't matter. What did was the fact that Toothless was interacting with them willingly without them initiating it. Hiccup glances down at the drawing of him and assumes the creature had gotten curious as to what they had been talking about when arguing over the accuracy of the sketch.

So, wanting the dragon to stay, Hiccup picks up a nearby stick of his own before he's adding a new piece near Jack's original one.

He drags the wood into the dirt in broad, practiced strokes in the form of a dragonic head. Hiccup feels more than sees Jack slide up next to him to watch the drawing come to life, but doesn't lift his head from his work as a mellow-looking Toothless begins to take shape. The drawing comes to him easily, the endless other sketches he's done of the dragon that were starting to fill up the pages of his notebook being great practice.

But what can he say? Toothless is one of the most interesting things that had happened in Hiccup's life since Jack washed up on Berk's shore all those years ago. Nothing really goes on within their village other than the repeating dragon attacks, so his friend's sudden appearance had been the talk of the town for years after the fact. Even more so when Hiccup decided to become best friends with the kid.

Jack had a few of his own sketches in his notebook as well. But none that Jack knew about, and he'd like to keep it that way.

"Hiccup." Jack's soft voice in his ear almost sends Hiccup jumping out of his skin if not for the gentle hand that lands between his shoulder blades. The auburn-haired boy turns his head to look at his friend, but is redirected by Jack's nod to his other side. For a second time, Hiccup has to resist the urge to flinch when he sees Toothless sitting a few feet to his left staring at the drawing being made.

The dragon's head is tilted curiously to the side as its green eyes flick over the sketch before noticing Hiccup's attention on him and turns to meet his eyes. There's a moment for Hiccup where the rest of the world quiets around him as he stares into the acid green of the Night Fury's irises; and just like that day when him and Jack had released the reptile from their own attack, Hiccup sees a bit of himself within them.

But instead of the fear and resignation that had been there before, the auburn-haired boy is thrilled to see curiosity. Hiccup's breath leaves him slightly at the proximity between him and the dragon and it's all he can do to lamely raise his hand in a small wave towards the creature.

Toothless' eyes snap down to the action and the irises that had slowly been widening go back to their normal slitted nature before he gets up and bounds away behind a set of rocks ahead of them.

Hiccup sighs disappointedly as the reptile leaves his sight before turning towards Jack, who was looking after where the dragon had gone.

"Guess you got his bad side." The brunette says, shrugging.

Hiccup just tosses his stick that he had used for his drawing at the side of Jack's face in response. "We should probably head back now."

Jack gawks at the attack, but despite Hiccup trying his best not to look disheartened, the way his friend quickly recovers before slinging a comforting arm around his shoulders proves he doesn't do that great of a job at it.

"I'm sure he'll come around, Hic. It's not like he exactly has the best experience with people–" Jack is suddenly cut off from his attempt at comforting Hiccup when Toothless comes trotting back into view and towards them again.

Jack slips his arm off of Hiccup when the boy immediately perks back up at the dragon's return and the two of them watch as the reptile struggles to balance the large branch clutched in his jaws. Before either of them can begin to wonder what the Night Fury planned to do with it, the black-scaled creature hops back over to the dirt patch they were standing in and shoves one end of the wood into the ground.

Hiccup can't help the laughter that bubbles out of him as Toothless starts to draw his own picture into the grotto floor. The auburn-haired boy looks over to gauge Jack's reaction and finds an awed, but amused look on the boy's face that reflects his own.

"Guess he was feeling left out." Jack chuckles, leaning against the wood of his bow staff to trail the creature's movements around them with hazel eyes.

"It's incredible." Hiccup breathes out, not even reacting when Toothless drags his branch through the sketch he had made of the dragon as well as Jack's own. The brunette doesn't seem to mind either, only rolling his eyes playfully at the display.

The boys fall into a comfortable silence as they spectate the masterpiece being made around them, the dragon continuing to push around the dirt with its comically large stick.

There were moments where Toothless would halt and stare intensely at whatever scribble he had just made, before swiping his tail over the lines and trying again until he was satisfied with the result. The drawing grew bigger and spanned further with each stroke from the dragon, wrapping around Hiccup and Jack in an illustrated tangled web of pushed-around dirt.

Hiccup feels a giddiness that he understands is not only his own, but also Toothless'. It almost makes the boy emotional at how comfortable the creature was beginning to become around them, but he tries his best to push it down in order not to make a fool of himself in front of Jack. Though Hiccup knew the brunette wouldn't mind in the slightest.

Toothless seems to finish up whatever picture the creature thought he was making before sitting back onto his haunches and finally looking to the boys standing in the middle of it. Hiccup snorts at the gummy smile the dragon shoots their way, the large branch he had ripped from whatever tree it had been attached to still clutched in his mouth.

The auburn-haired boy can feel a tingle of a question in his chest at the same time Toothless starts to glance back and forth between Hiccup and Jack and the large amount of scribbles winding around them.

The freckled boy understands immediately before he's softly bumping his shoulder with Jack. "I think he wants to know what we think." Hiccup glances over at his friend whose eyebrows raise in surprise, but a smile follows soon after.

"It's better than whatever I had going on." Jack says, twirling his staff casually before pointing it at where his drawing had once been. "Good thing you covered it up."

"Yeah, I'm glad he did too." Hiccup snarks. Jack just sticks his tongue out in reply, causing Hiccup to snicker softly.

Hiccup looks up to the warble Toothless makes to see the dragon had dropped his branch in favor of watching them curiously. The two of them lock eyes and Hiccup suddenly finds an inkling of courage flicker within himself at the inquiring tilt of the creature's head in his direction before taking a step towards the Night Fury.

But whatever had sparked to life wavers at the resulting growl he receives from Toothless, acid green eyes slitting into their usual warning nature.

Immediately, Hiccup searches for what could've caused the angry reaction before coming to a quick conclusion after discovering he had stepped on one of the lines the dragon had just drawn into the dirt. The auburn-haired boy glances up again to see the black-scaled creature still snarling in his direction, going as far as to twitch up a side of his lip to reveal the sharp teeth waiting there.

Being a mind of research first and his self-preservation second, Hiccup slowly removes his foot from the now smudged line and watches as Toothless perks back up into his earlier relaxed and happy posture of observing from afar. He then returns his appendage to a spot further down the line to test the theory and is fascinated by the same threatening growl and slitted eyes from before.

"Don't step on the lines." Hiccup says, removing his foot from the drawing for good this time. "He wants us to avoid messing it up, I guess."

Hiccup turns to Jack at his laughter. "Oh! It's like a game. I like the way this guy thinks." The brunette smiles lopsided up at his auburn-haired friend before hopping up and over the nearest line, landing cleanly on its other side without any damage to the dragon's drawing.

Hiccup rolls his eyes at the other boy's antics as he starts to spin and twirl through the maze of scribbles with the help of his bow staff. Of course Jack would immediately think of being threatened by a dragon for messing up its work as a chance to play a game.

Hiccup chuckles as Jack slips and almost lands on a line. He manages to barely avoid stepping on it and the brunette wincing at the resulting warning snarl sent his way. The Bennett doesn't let that bring him down though, and he immediately jumps back into the activity, completely losing himself in the fun he's having.

What the heck.

Hiccup fixes his gaze downward to the seemingly infinitely intercrossing array of scribbles and hops over the one he had previously stepped on. He stumbles slightly at the landing, because of course he does, and lets out a laugh before throwing himself into the game as well.

Hiccup is pleasantly surprised at the amount of fun he starts to have once he manages to get a rhythm into the backwards steps, jumps, and spins required to make his way across. Though he isn't sure why; Jack's games were always a favorite among the young children of the village and he, himself, can remember all the ones he and Jack played throughout their childhood.

And he guessed, still played.

Suddenly, Hiccup's back bumps into a warm presence after a particularly difficult arrangement of lines before he's snapping his head forward as fear spikes through his body. He knows it's not Jack by the feeling of being loomed over, and Hiccup can currently see the brunette across the way from him almost out of the maze and still completely oblivious.

A warm animalistic breath huffs across his neck and there's a few moments where Hiccup doesn't move. Not a single breath leaves his body as he assesses what exactly to do. He can see the large dragon-shaped shadow being casted over his own and knows by their proximity that running isn't exactly an option.

However, when Hiccup feels around for the dragon's emotions within the area of himself he's beginning to understand is for that ability, there's only that same curiosity.

So, taking whatever ounce of courage Hiccup can scramble together, he slowly turns around and looks up at the Night Fury.

Before him, Toothless looms inches above him in his seated position and looks down at him with wide, intrigued eyes and a tilted head. There's nothing about the creature's stance that reveals any sort of animosity towards their closeness, so Hiccup allows himself the chance to just look.

Up close, the black-ness of the Night Fury's scales are much richer in their darkness than one could appreciate from far away. The dimming sunlight around them almost seems to absorb into the color, leaving no room for any kind of light within them. No wonder Toothless seemed to disappear into the night whenever Hiccup had the chance to see the dragon in action, he was born to be night.

And within the evening, his eyes have become such a deep green that, for a moment, Hiccup almost feels like he's looking into a mirror. At the distance he's used to being at, the color feels acidic and dangerous, but at this angle the boy can see the gentleness buried there underneath years of needing to protect himself.

Hiccup doesn't realize that he's slowly been raising a hand towards the creature until Toothless' eyes flick downward and rumbles out a soft growl from back in his throat. He stops his movements immediately almost halfway raised and watches the curiosity grow within the dragon's gaze.

The Night Fury glances over Hiccup for a moment before the boy feels a pull from deep within his chest, and he finds himself completely weak to the almost instinctual request.

Simply reaching out to touch the dragon hadn't worked so great before, so Hiccup attempts a different approach and turns his head away. His eyes slip closed and he releases a shaky breath before he's moving his hand up and towards the creature. He hopes that Toothless understands that by facing away, Hiccup is placing all of his trust into the dragon; and, in return, perhaps the Night Fury could trust him enough to do the same.

A few moments of silence pass by. Hiccup knows his hand is trembling as he tries his best to stand as still as possible, but the knowledge that he could be needing an arm-replacement in the near future wasn't helping his situation. Even the grotto around them seems to quiet as he waits for anything to happen.

But just as he's about to cut his losses and retreat with his head hung low, the pressure of a scaled snout presses against his outreached palm. The feeling is warm against his skin as steady breaths from the creature puff against his hand.

Hiccup can't help the small gasp that sneaks in past his lips at the contact and he snaps his eyes open before slowly turning around to face the dragon.

"Woah." Hiccup hears Jack breathe out from far behind him, and the auburn-haired boy is inclined to agree with the statement. Beneath his hand holds the very tip of Toothless' nose as the dragon leans into his touch with his eyes shut.

Hiccup isn't sure he's ever seen the Night Fury with his eyes closed since that time during their first interaction when he had been tied up under Hiccup's knife. But he refuses to fester on the guilt that he can feel bubble within his throat when that same dragon is now allowing Hiccup to touch him, something that no recorded viking had done and walked away unscathed from. And it wasn't because Hiccup was forcing the creature to submit to him, but rather it was out of their own free will.

Soft green eyes reopen below his hand and the dragon meets Hiccup's eyes. The boy isn't sure if he would be able to form any intelligible words even if he wanted to, so he goes for a soft, greeting smile instead as the animalistic eyes flicker over his face.

It's a moment Hiccup will think about for the rest of his life.

But then it's over. Toothless suddenly slits his irises at Hiccup with an indignant snort before he's slipping away again and back towards his area of charred-earth.

Despite being slightly devastated at the loss of that momentary trust, Hiccup mostly finds himself being so breathlessly happy that the moment even happened at all. That a dragon, a species that has been at war with vikings for centuries, had taken a leap of faith and put his trust in the hands of Hiccup of all people.

Incredible.

"That is definitely progress." Hiccup jumps almost a foot in the air when Jack speaks, the boy now standing next to him. The action sends the brunette into a laughing fit that Hiccup has to shove out of him before they both return to watch as the now distant Night Fury burns another layer of soot into his bed.

"It just felt right." Hiccup starts once the dragon had laid down. "It was that same pull I felt the first time we met him. I think he wants this just as much as I do."

Hiccup looks over to Jack when he doesn't immediately respond and falters slightly when the other is already faced his way with a fond expression on his face. The warmness in the boy's hazel eyes sends Hiccup's heart hammering in his chest for the hundredth time that day, but for an entirely different reason.

But, for what? Hiccup isn't sure he knows quite yet.

"Looks like it's time for tail fin 2.0." Jack says, a smirk that promises mischief and fun replacing the look that had been there before.

Hiccup takes the opportunity to forget his previous thoughts and smiles happily at his friend. "How is it that you always know the right things to say to me?"

Jack shrugs as he swings his bow staff up and across his shoulders. "Being your best friend for the entirety of our lives taught me a thing or two." The boy turns on his heel before starting their trek towards the grotto's exit. "Or five."

Hiccup lets out a laugh at the comment as he takes a moment to just watch Jack go.

Jack was right when he had said they had been at each other's sides for their whole lives. Hiccup isn't sure he can recall a single core memory of his that didn't somehow involve Jack. The boy had always been there, within reach when everyone else in his life was so far out of it. Supporting him in every way he ever needed and then some. Hiccup tried his best to reciprocate, he did, but he isn't sure he'll ever be able to repay the brunette for all he had given Hiccup.

Not only as a friend, but as someone to belong to. Maybe it sounded stupid, and it probably was, but in a village full of vikings that looked and acted nothing like Hiccup with a father that couldn't understand why that was, it was hard to find somewhere to stand.

But with Jack, it was like breathing. He had never once doubted himself when it came to his friend. Never once doubted where he stood with the boy.

And whatever Hiccup could feel fluttering in his stomach and climbing up his throat, only made him believe in that so much more.

Jack turns around then, a confused but happy look gracing his pretty, olive features. "Are you coming?"

Hiccup nods, starting into a casual walk to Jack's side. "Always."

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