Soul of the Sky (HTTYD Runaway Fic)

Story Of My Life

Hiccup
An uncomfortable silence blanketed us as we sat around the campfire.
No one seemed to know what to say. Finally, Astrid spoke, breaking the tension. "So what have you been doing for the past six years?" she questioned dryly. "Living." I responded, sarcasm practically visible in the air. "But, in all seriousness, it's a long story."

"Well, we've got plenty of time." She was giving me that painfully familiar look that said 'talk or else'. The same look she'd given me at Dragon Training when I'd used the things Toothless taught me. I momentarily contemplated running away, but she would probably hunt me down and threaten me with a painful death.

"It all started with a dragon..."
That night when I shot down a Night Fury, no one believed me. So I'd run into the forest, determined to prove to the world at large and Berk in particular that I wasn't a useless disappointment. I'd found Toothless in the cove and hadn't been able to kill him. He spared my life in return for his own.

"He didn't really like me at first."
Toothless hadn't trusted me in the beginning. I'd come again later, watching him from a distance. After a while, I'd mustered the courage to try and make peace. My 'peace offering' - a fish - had been well received. Later I'd built the first tail replacement, which I learned years after was the reason Toothless had decided I wasn't an enemy. As he had said, "Why would you give someone who you wanted to kill an escape route?"

"After a while, we slowly became friends."
I'd spent my afternoons with Toothless. Sometimes we'd go flying, sometimes we would draw, sometimes just nap in the sun. He'd learned drawing pretty quickly. His first sketch was supposed to be of me, but ended up a bunch of squiggles. A few months later, I'd looked at one of his patterns and seen a night sky. One far distant and alien, my first clue that my new friend had wandered further than our maps could ever show.

"He taught me his language,"
Dragonese had been difficult to learn, but I'd picked it up surprisingly fast. Toothless had been a patient teacher, and all those weeks of confusion had been worth it when I'd come in one day. I'd said 'hello' automatically in Dragonese, and son after that realised that I no longer thought in Norse. That night I'd dreamed in the new language. It had been somewhat hard to resist hissing and growling in the weeks that followed, especially when I was trying to explain a concept that made perfect sense in Dragonese but not in Norse.

"and we spoke of wonders, ones that he'd seen and ones that I'd dreamed of."
We'd spent hours just talking about the world. I'd never left Berk, but Toothless had explored far beyond the Archipelago. There seemed no end to the things he'd seen and done, and now we could fly to those places together. And I'd talked about my inventions and my crazy ideas, and all the things I wanted to see one day.

"That dragon was my only ally, ironic in a world where his kind were mine's worst enemy."
Flying with Toothless was an escape from my day-to-day life. Lonely, pushed away for being different, the freedom of the sky seemed like Valhalla to me. Toothless had seen the longing in my soul long before I had, the wish to fly freely just like dragons did.
During raids, I'd stared at the carnage and destruction and wondered why. The Night Fury had shown me that dragons weren't beasts, but still they took our food and burned our homes. The Red Death was the reason, though I didn't know it.

"One day I was chosen to kill a dragon, and I finally snapped."
I was constantly told that I was a disappointment, useless, unworthy. I'd been picked on as an easy target, beaten up and bullied. On top of all that, I was more of a danger to society than anything else. If I left, I might no longer be a target and Berk wouldn't have to worry about the accidents my inventions caused. Running away had been contemplated many times. Toothless had been a strong proponent of that notion. I hadn't thought he'd want me with him, but he'd apparently decided I was a dragon too.
At first I'd had many doubts. But when I'd been told I was to kill the Monstrous Nightmare, I knew I couldn't do it. My alternatives had been a. Show the Vikings dragons aren't beasts or b. Run away. Knowing of my father's stubbornness, Plan B had been my only viable option.