He opens his eyes in a world of color.
Katsuki sits up, eyes widening fractionally as he takes in his surroundings. It looks like his island, his village, but it's not---it can't be. Bright colors decorate banners and rooftops, patterned like dragon scales. A glittering building plated in some silvery metal and multicolored glass has been built into the side of a mountain, accompanied by something that looks like a stable, but for something at least several times larger than a horse.
For...dragons? There's no fucking way...
He pushes himself to his feet, staggering slightly as his brow furrows. The last thing he remembers is falling, hit by the monster's tail and plummeting into the flames---
"Striker!" he gasps, whirling around, but that's when he realizes the other weird thing about this dream-Berk: it's fucking empty. There are no heroes, no civilians...there's just this eerie silence.
Katsuki shakes his head, trying to clear it, and makes his way down to the docks. Maybe he can take a ship to the Nest, find out what happened---except he should be fucking dead, shouldn't he? How the ever-living fuck did I get here, then?
He halts on the edge of the cliffs, staring out over the empty ocean. The sky and the sea are almost the same shade, the two blending together into a cloudless, ship-less expanse of blue-green. Katsuki hesitates, fingers twitching restlessly as he gazes out over what looks to be an endless ocean.
"Beautiful, isn't it?"
He whirls around, lunging forward and dealing out an explosion immediately. His target dodges, sidestepping easily as a black wing springs up like a shield. Katsuki recoils, tensing as a(n all-too fucking familiar) growl echoes. "Striker?" he demands.
"Not quite," the voice chuckles, and the wing is pushed aside, revealing a snarling Night Fury and a smiling someone of about twenty. "Down, Toothless." The dragon whines, looking remarkably like his Striker, and the man rests a reassuring hand on its---his---head. "It's okay, bud," he assures the Night Fury. "It's just his natural reaction. He can't really hurt us anyway."
"And why the hell is that?" he growls, baring his teeth. The Night Fury---Toothless, where the fuck has he heard that name before?---snorts and flicks his ear-flaps.
The man gives him a disgustingly easy smile, sitting down with the dragon at his side. "Because we're dead."
Katsuki stares at him for a moment, but concedes that it's the only explanation that makes any fucking sense. Why else would Berk look like it did in his darkest dreams? Why else would there be gods-damned dragon stables, of all things, next to a newly rebuilt U.A.? Why else would no one else be here? "So you're the messenger come to take me to the damn afterlife? Because newsflash--I'm not going until my goddamn dragon joins me."
"Oh no, you're not dead," the man says amicably. "Not yet, anyway. Toothless and I, though, we're dead. Have been for years." The Night Fury croons and he reaches over and scratches the dragon's chin.
The ash-blond boy frowns, taking a moment to actually look at the two fuckers. The man has the smallest of scars just beneath his lip, and a head of messy brown hair, two bits of which are braided. His eyes are a brilliant forest-green, incredibly different from his own hellish-looking red ones, and the lower half of his left leg is missing, replaced with a prosthetic that would've made Mei fucking squeal with delight. The dragon is pure black, missing his left fin just like Striker, but his prosthetic is bright red instead of plain brown.
And the name clicks, finally. Toothless was the name of the Night Fury in his ancestor's notebook.
Which means... "You're Hiccup."
YOU ARE READING
The Brave Men Rode Them
Fanfiction"In front of him lies the Night Fury, the most dangerous dragon in the known world, one that he's felled, the one that could prove that he does have what it takes to kill dragons. But its eyes are open, shining and white-gold, and he sees himself re...
