Archive of Our Own ^beta

“I remember this,” Hiccup murmurs, cradling the small, stuffed dragon in his hands. It’s sort of a distant, wispy thing – something he can barely scrap memories off, but it’s still in his head all the time. It was the only real toy he ever remembers having. It’s from… a time before.

“Aye, you should,” his father answers with a soft chuckle. “Your mother made that for you when you were just a baby. Scared you half to death. You didn’t sleep for a week.”

From… this? “What?” Hiccup asks, incredulous, though he remembers his own panic, as embarrassing as it is now – ducking every time he saw a flare of fire, panicking when Meatlug cornered him instead of reaching out to her. Berk before Red Death feels like a nightmare now. A dream, not part of him. Maybe because nothing in his life mattered before Toothless. “I was afraid of dragons?”

“Oh, terrified! One day, we were out fishing, and you threw that thing into the sea.”

And today, he nearly got all his friends killed trying to find it. He doesn’t remember that. Not really. “How did you find it?” he asks instead.

“Well, it showed up in a fishing net. Trader Johann got it in trade and contacted me.”

Yeah. That makes sense.

This was from his Mom. Something he missed…

He missed everything about a normal childhood. Family, siblings… a mother. Parents, really. Stoick was always gone. Away, cheifting – and Gobber took care of him where needed, and the rest of the time, Hiccup was just… wandering. Alone.

Valka Haddock is in the faintest shards of his memory now, nearly disappearing. Almost faded. Something he’s been too afraid to ever bring up since they took your mother, for god’s sake – if she could see you now –

And he hasn’t been able to say a word about her since.

The guilt, the grief, it’s smothering.

“I was so little when Mom… you know,” he mutters, unable or unwilling to say what they both know happened. He’s afraid to bring it up. “I was starting to get afraid that I’d forget her.” He has nothing left of Valka. The dragons… they lost their home the same night as her, and once or so since then. Damage from the fire, from storms – it’s bound to happen.

All he has from her is his helmet, which he hasn’t dared to wear since that day either. It’s shoved, hidden, in his room somewhere – Hiccup doesn’t have the heart to look at it since.

His gut clenches with nausea every time he think so fit.

This, though, it’s…

Who he is.

And he finally has something to remember her by.

“But now… I love it.”

“Oh, Hiccup… it would make your mother very, very happy to finally hear that.” There are so many emotions there, hidden by the grief Hiccup has seen on his father so many times. The time after Valka was taken had been the hardest days of his life. He’d spent so long alone. He remembers Stoick’s months of desperation, as if she could somehow have survived, leaving Hiccup alone on Berk for so long –

Before he finally came back a broken wreck, accepting the truth Hiccup had already accepted. (He remembers being so, so afraid Stoick wouldn’t come back. He left anyways.)

He wishes he could’ve told her. That she could have seen this peace. But his mom’s gone because of the war he finally, finally put an end to over a decade too late.

“What was she like?” Hiccup asks finally, daring to voice the question he’s been meaning to say for years, maybe – the fragmented bits in his own head too distant to even remember.

Stoick’s sigh carries heavily. “You take after your mother, Hiccup. She was rash, stubborn, but she loved you so much.”

“I wish I knew her.” The words come out so soft, trembling a little with the emotion he always feels whenever he thinks of her – a face he has never seen, not even in paintings or drawings, and if were, none of them could truly be his mother’s face.

“Aye.” Hiccup just stands there, heart aching, clutching the stuffed animal close to his chest, Stoick’s hand settling on his shoulder. He has something from her. He still missed her his whole life. “You see her every time you see yourself. You get your heart from her. She used to believe peace was possible.” Stoick’s sigh is heavy. “We should have listened to her.”

The dragon. That’s not… something Hiccup ever knew about her. He just knows what he missed. How everybody on Berk has a sibling, has someone except for him, because family is a natural part of a Viking’s life, and Hiccup really has next to nothing.

All he has is Toothless.

“I wish she could’ve seen this world.” She won’t. His mother will never get to see the world Hiccup helped forged. Would she be proud of him?

The question hovers in his throat, but Hiccup doesn’t dare to let it out. Instead, he gently lifts the stuffed dragon and goes upstairs. “Everybody on Berk has a family,” Hiccup murmurs, still cradling the toy in his hands. Tears stupidly prick at his eyes and linger. “Everyone, except you and me.”

He remembers when he was little. Well, not what happened to this, but he remembers that fear. It’s so strange to think of how he’d cowered from every one of their dragons. Toothless, Meatlug, Belch, and Hookfang. Stormfly is the only one who never quite sprung that chance, even if she nearly killed him, too.

It’s stranger, sometimes, to think that he tried so hard to kill Toothless to prove himself to everyone, that he could kill dragons, that there was ever a time he wanted to.

He was terrified of them. He had no idea what he was afraid of.

Toothless coos softly, gently nudging his snout into Hiccup’s knee, the moon glinting over the candlelight onto his scales. Ah, night flying rounds.

“Do you like it?” Hiccup asks shyly, holding it out to Toothless, who sniffs at it softly. “I guess at least I have something from Mom now. I wish I had it all this time.” He sets it onto the headboard of his bed, turning back and hopping off his bed’s edge. “All that time I was afraid of you, I had no idea what we were missing.”

Toothless laughs and licks his face.

“Whoa, no, bud!” Hiccup squeaks and laughs. “Alright, I’m getting on.” He hops into the saddle, and off they go.

And to think there was once a time he was scared of Toothless.