Soul of the Sky (HTTYD Runaway Fic)

The Downed Dragon

Haha. Yay. I'm screwed.
The Night Fury I'd shot down was most certainly not dead. It was, in fact, currently struggling against its bonds in a clear attempt to get free and kill the person responsible for its current ignominious position. I stared at it with a kind of paralysed horror. Any minute now, it would do something Night Fury-ish and call down Thor himself to obliterate me.

Then I realised that it couldn't move.

The machine I'd made out of cast-offs and scraps from the forge had immobilised a freaking Night Fury. I allowed myself a moment's surge of pride at that. Maybe, just maybe, I wasn't so useless after all. Maybe I could have a chance to make up for all the times I'd disappointed Dad.

I looked at the dragon on the ground, my breath coming in short gasps. "I'm gonna kill you, dragon." I said shakily. "I...I'm gonna cut out your heart and take it to my father." As if it could understand me, the dragon's eyes met mine. What I saw shocked me. It looked...afraid. Resigned to the fact that it was doomed to die.

I raised my dagger, trying not to look into its eyes. "I'm a Viking!" I cried. "I'M A VIKING!" My grip faltered on the dagger, wavering as its eyes met mine again before slumping back with a sound that was half groan and half sigh. Do your worst, Viking, it seemed to say. I'm doomed either way.
I didn't bring the knife down.

Staring at the fallen Night Fury, I was consumed by a sense of guilt. "I did this." I whispered. That dragon was more than an ancient enemy. It was a thinking, feeling, sentient creature who probably had a dragon family somewhere. And I had shot it down, probably ending its life one way or another. A helpless, bound creature can't fly. And as Gobber had told me countless times, "If it can't fly, it can't get away."
A downed dragon is a dead dragon.

Toothless
The crash had been like awakening, bright sparks of pain dancing behind my eyelids.
The fog that shrouded the Queen's domain had long since crept into my mind, obscuring all I was but the need to findhuntflamekill and the hunger. I had stayed in one place for far longer than any Fury should, the shame of being controlled locked away in the secret corner of me that was my feeble attempt at defiance.

Freedom is everything to me. And ofttimes when I flew further for prey and the Queen's hold weakened, I had contemplated just how much I would give to get it back.
Now, suddenly and painfully, my mind was my own again. But I was trapped in body now, bound by strange vines that I was too weakened to blast or chew through. And fire raced across every square inch of my scales, the pain of the abrupt impact sending my newly-freed mind reeling.

I wasn't sure how long I lay there, fading in and out of consciousness. Until I felt another presence in the cove with me. A human hatchling, armed with little more than a tiny sharp-claw blade. In normal circumstances, it would be a pitiful caricature of a threat. But now, bound and weakened and injured, I faced the very real probability that it could and would kill me.
I closed my eyes, waiting for the small Viking to snuff out my life. It spoke as if through water, talking more to itself than me. "I AM A VIKING!"
I hadn't expected it to end like this. I'd thought I'd die peacefully of old age on Vanaheim, not at the hands of a hatchling that looked barely twelve winters old. My mind drifted into semi-darkness as I waited, a few minutes seeming like an eternity.
End it.
Then a sudden snap roused me. I cracked my eyelids open, seeing an unexpected sight. The hatchling crouched at my side, hurriedly cutting through the ropes binding me. As the last rope fell away, I pounced, pinning it under my claw.
It - no, he - looked terrified. Up close, he was tiny. Much smaller than any Viking I'd ever seen.

I moved in for the kill, but the look in his eyes stopped me. I had seen in him what he must have seen in me. A kindred spirit. Alone. Afraid.
I roared half-heartedly at him, then released him, bounding awkwardly away over the trees. I wasn't usually this unbalanced in flight. I flapped my wings desperately, trying for more altitude, but my flight path was too much off-course and I crashed down onto the cold, unforgiving ground again.

My last thought before succumbing to unconsciousness again was a deeply unsettling prospect. How much had my freedom cost?
Hiccup
I watched in shock as the dragon flapped awkwardly away. Why hadn't it gone for the kill? I had injured it and nearly murdered it. Or maybe...

Maybe it had seen in my eyes what I saw in its. Maybe, just like me, it had seen that I was afraid too. Lonely too.
My mind whirled with the implications of what I had witnessed. If my theory was true, dragons weren't the real monsters. This whole war was a pointless, mindless conflict. And if the dragons were intelligent and felt emotions, it could end without genocide.

Just as quickly as it had hit, the adrenaline high faded, leaving me shivering and exhausted. I turned to leave, but the shock of the attack sent me reeling. I collapsed onto the floor, and my last thought as I passed out was - why didn't you?

* * * * *

Much later that night, I snuck back into my house. My father was poking at the embers of the fire, looking preoccupied. I almost made it up the stairs without him noticing. Almost being the operative word.

"Hiccup." I froze, halfway up the stairs. "Dad. Uh..." He stood up, taking a deep breath. I spoke before he could. "Dad, I...uh, I need to talk to you." Just listen to me, just this once.

"I need to speak with you too, son." We both spoke at the same moment, my father's voice overriding mine. "I've decided...." "I think it's time you learn to fight dragons." I stared at him in disbelief. "What?" I sighed. "You go first." He repeated his previous statement. "You get your wish. Dragon training. You start in the morning." I groaned mentally. After today, killing dragons was the last thing I wanted to do. Not with the lonely green eyes of the Night Fury still seared into my brain. I briefly wondered where it had went. Back home, wherever its home was? Did it have one?

"Oh man, I should have gone first. Uh, cause I was thinking that, you know we have a surplus of dragon-fighting Vikings. But do we have enough bread-making Vikings, or small-home repair..." I trailed off as he glared at me, my list of pretexts sounding a lot stupider than in my head. "Vikings fight dragons, idiot!" the voice in the back of my head which sounded suspiciously like my dad yelled.

He dumped his axe in my hand. "When you carry this axe, you carry all of us with you. Which means you walk like us, you talk like us, and you think like us. No more of...this." I looked at him, miserable. "You just gestured to all of me."
Was it too much to ask that my own father have faith that I could get better? That I didn't have to be a different person to be the son he needed?

"Deal?"

"This conversation is feeling very one-sided."

"DEAL?"
He never listens.
I sighed resignedly. "Deal." What was the use of arguing anyway? Dad nodded, satisfied with my answer. "Good. Train hard. I'll be back. Probably."
My gaze flicked to the basket he carried. Yet another useless attempt to find the nest. Too many people never came back, and every time he did this I feared that he would be one of them.
I turned to go up to my room. "And I'll be here. Maybe."