Chapter Text
This was, to put it mildly, not the best turn of events.
"You've been acting very strangely since the blizzard yesterday," Tuffnut crossed his arms, peering upside-down at Hiccup with narrowed eyes. Somehow, despite their positions, the twins helmets were still firmly in place, and Hiccup wasn't sure if he wanted to know how they were achieving this.
"W-what? No, I'm fine!" he chuckled awkwardly, leaning a hand on Toothless.
Ruffnut sent him an unimpressed look and slid off Barf's neck, "Sure you are, and you weren't just now skulking about Adda's hut and talking to the air."
"Wait, you two have been following me?" Hiccup tried for an indignant tone to his voice.
Undeterred, Ruffnut stared at him with a raised eyebrow, Tuffnut dropped down from Belch's neck with a cackle.
"Right, stupid question," Hiccup mumbled, matching grins curling on the twins faces.
"Me and Tuff, we notice things you know, how twitchy you've been, going off to have secret meetings with Astrid," Ruffnut leaned towards Hiccup, up at the ceiling hatch that he should've definitely been keeping an eye on Jack's voice and the tweeting from the fairy had gone silent, and he just barely heard the gentle creaking of the hatch opening.
"Wait, of course!" Tuffnut's eyes went suddenly wide in realization, cold dread gripped Hiccup's core in response. Tuff turned to his sister and grabbed her by the arms, exclaiming, "Hiccup and Astrid are getting married!!"
"What?!" he exclaimed, voice high.
"What…?" Jack's voice sounded somewhere to his right, surprised laughter woven into it.
"Acting nervous, going off with Astrid by themselves, skulking about Adda's hut who must I remind you, is the best tailor in the village, it makes complete sense!" Tuffnut declared triumphantly. He pivoted on his heel and pointed at Hiccup's chest, causing him to take a step back, "And! The two of you were dating back when we were living in the Edge."
He opened his mouth to rebuke Tuffnut, but his sister beat him to it, hitting her brother's helm hard with her fist and making him yelp, "Don't be stupid, they broke up months ago."
"Well, they could've gotten back together! What do you know?!" Tuffnut pushed back indignantly, pulling one of Ruffnut's braids.
"Hey!" In response, she took hold of one of the horns on her brother's helm and wrenched his head down by it.
As the twins began to tussle, throwing barbs at one another while trying to push or pull the other to the muddy ground, Hiccup took advantage of the distraction and looked around for Jack. A little ways to his right, leaning against the exterior of the hut Jack was watching the twins in amusement, and perched on his shoulder looking more confused than anything, was the fairy.
Seeming to notice Hiccup's eyes on him, Jack looked his way, nodding at the twins with a grin, "That sure escalated quickly, huh?"
The fairy tweeted and chirped on Jack's shoulder, turning her eyes towards Hiccup. When he met her gaze she cocked her head to the side, and where he might have expected to see overt surprise or shock at him being able to perceive her — like it had been with Jack — she only looked curious and very mildly surprised. She pushed off Jack's shoulder, wings buzzing in that insect-like manner and becoming a blur as she darted in his direction.
Hiccup took an involuntary step back as the fairy hovered in front of his face. This close he could see that one of her eyes was blue and the other a light purple. What he at first had mistaken for a beak was in fact a very long and pointy nose, her face featherless and a pinkish purple color. She was beautiful in the way colorful birds from warmer lands usually were, her iridescent feathers gleaming even in the dark of the night, but also eerie in the uncanny marriage of human and avian features.
"Told you he'd be able to see you," Jack said to the fairy, pushing off from the side of the hut.
"We should go, while the twins are busy" Hiccup whispered to Jack once he got closer, the fairy was still hovering in front of him, making him more nervous than he already was.
Before they could make their exit, twin sounds of hissing and chittering had Hiccup looking back in the direction where the twins had been fighting. The sound was from Barf and Belch, who were following the fairy's movement with their heads, weaving and crossing their long sinuous necks. Normally slitted pupils were blown wide in interest, and two forked tongues darted in and out between their needle-like teeth, tasting the air. Still, they kept their distance, unwilling to approach Jack even now.
"Woah, what is that?" Hiccup wanted to mentally slap himself for hesitating as Ruffnut gasped, looking in their direction.
It seemed that Barf and Belch's behavior was an excellent trigger to get the twins to stop messing with each other and focus.
"Is that a bird?" asked a confused Tuffnut. Could they see the fairy?
When he looked at them, they were definitely looking at the tooth fairy with wide eyes. Much like Barf and Belch, their heads almost seemed to follow the fairy's twitching hovering. Hiccup looked at Jack, who looked back at him, his own shock echoed on the spirit's face.
It seemed like the only one that wasn't too particularly surprised by this turn of events was the fairy herself. She looked over at the twins and once again cocked her head to the side, peering at them, and tweeted something unintelligible to him and waved shyly.
This kicked the twins into a flurry of movement, as they scrambled up from the muddy ground and barreled closer to Hiccup and the fairy, the latter letting out a tiny squeak and darting to hide behind Hiccup's head.
"No way!"
"Is that a fairy?!"
"Hiccup get out of the way, I wanna see it!"
"No I saw it first!"
He put his hands out as they came closer, using what strength he had gained from years of blacksmithing to keep them at bay. Still, if there was something the twins were good at, it was getting to places where they weren't supposed to be, so as they began to slip from his grasp he frantically looked over at Toothless, "Uh, a little help here bud?!"
With a put upon grumble, Toothless came over and around them, leaned back on his haunches and grabbed both twins with his front paws by the back of their vests, dangling them just barely above the ground with an annoyed growl at the two for good measure when they immediately began to squirm.
"Alright," Hiccup sighed, lowering his hands. "Can we settle down? Please? I don't want the whole village to wake up because of you two, it's bad enough already that I have you guys on my case."
Both twins crossed their arms and glared at Hiccup, a glare that didn't hold much force to it as they kept trying to steal glances at the fairy still hiding behind him. Still, they seemed to relent, especially when Toothless gave another warning growl as if to warning them to agree with Hiccup.
"Fine, we can be quiet," Ruffnut said with a sniff.
"Mostly," Tuffnut grinned. That earned him an elbow to the side from his sister, and he let out a pained grunt.
"Toothless, I think you can let them go. Thanks bud," he smiled gratefully at Toothless.
Released from Toothless claws, the twins stumbled onto their feet and were quickly pushed as the Night Fury wedged himself between them to get back to Hiccup's side. Toothless gave a shake of his head and crooned softly at Jack, who had been watching mostly from the sidelines, with a mostly amused expression on his face. His expression morphed into a grin, and he went over to pat Toothless on the head and lean against him.
Pulling his gaze from the two of them, Hiccup's attention returned to the twins, who were fidgeting in place, still craning their necks trying to catch a glimpse of the tooth fairy. He could feel her tiny hands holding on to his hair, and he wasn't sure if he was mortified or amused at the idea that a fairy was trying to hide behind him.
"Ok, first off," he began carefully, "You can see the fairy, right?"
Ruffnut and Tuffnut looked at him like he was asking the worlds stupidest question, with Tuffnut saying, "Of course we can, should we not?"
He sighed, "I've been told that it's not so simple. Anyway, how about we move this to someplace else where we're not at the risk of having someone walk by?"
Finding a more secluded spot during the night wasn't a hard thing to do, especially at a time where most villagers had gone to bed or were still drinking the night away at the Great Hall. Unsurprisingly, as much as the cold didn't bother vikings much, if given the choice most would rather spend winter nights inside by a warm hearth instead of roaming the muddy streets of the village.
And as a brief sliver of cold wind slithered between them, Hiccup dearly wished he also was inside. Preferably in bed under his furs and blankets.
During their short walk the fairy had decided that Hiccup's shoulder was a good place to perch on, much like she'd done with Jack. He tried not to stare too much, or move his shoulder much at all, he still wasn't sure what to think about her. Still, he couldn't help sneaking glances. A few times his eyes would land on Jack who was walking besides him, and see him staring off into space with a distant, muted expression, worlds away from the joyful Jack he had come to know.
Eventually Hiccup managed to lead them down to the docks, empty at this time of night. Frost had began to collect and harden on the hulls of the boats anchored there, a marine fog creeping over the water, moving almost liquidly with the gently lapping waves.
"Alright, I'm gonna need you two to promise me two things before we continue," he turned to the twins, hands on his hips.
The twins shared a glance, and with wide grins they looked back at Hiccup and nodded.
"First," he raised a finger, "Please don't try to paw at the fairy."
"Paw? Please Hiccup, we're not animals," Tuffnut huffed, crossing his arms.
"Yeah," Ruffnut said indignantly, "We just wanted to take a closer look at it, we haven't seen one since we were kids!"
"Wait? You've seen them before…?" he then shook his head and raised a second finger, "Second, can you promise me that you won't tell anyone about this?"
"This being, you making friends with fairies or you and Astrid getting married?" Tuffnut narrowed his eyes at him.
Hiccup groaned and slapped a hand a hand against his face, meanwhile Ruffnut let out an annoyed sigh and turned to her brother, "I told you, you muttonhead, they are not together anymore!"
"Please just promise me you two will behave?"
After a moment of silence that had Hiccup wondering if it was too late for him to just hop on to Toothless and flee this whole conversation, the twins finally said, in unison, "Promise." The mischievous grin both of them had on their faces didn't ease his worries, but he figured this was as good as he was going to get.
"How long have you two been able to see fairies?"
"Since we were kids," Ruffnut shrugged. "Uncle Henrik would tell us that there were fairies in the woods that could snatch a man's soul, and we figured we had to see it for ourselves."
"Could never pass up an opportunity to get your soul snatched, those are hard to come by," Tuffnut nodded seriously as if that was a normal consideration to have, and knowing the twins, it probably was.
"We searched for a week, going back to the woods every day and when then one night we snuck out and finally found one," Ruffnut's eyes sparkled with glee at the memory, her brother grinning wide next to her.
"It was in the middle of this circle of mushrooms and moss, I think they're called fairy circles? And it didn't look exactly like that one," said Tuffnut, pointing at the tooth fairy that had been quietly watching them from Hiccup's shoulder. "It looked more like a tiny person? And it was covered in white tree moss, from head to toe."
"It glowed like a Fireworm! But it disappeared when it saw us," Ruffnut sighed, a small pout forming on her lips.
The little tooth fairy then tweeted something, it was a mixture of bird chirps and the squeaks of a small mouse, and by the way Jack tilted his head, it definitely was some sort of fairy language he could understand as he then said, "She says it definitely wasn't a tooth fairy, it was a…" he frowned in concentration as the fairy tweeted again, looking at him expectantly, "a-a wild fairy? Did I get that right?"
Making a so-and-so gesture with her hand she then shrugged.
"You can understand her?" Hiccup asked, curiously looking between the fairy on his shoulder and Jack.
"Kind of, it's hard to explain… kinda like when you know bits and pieces of a language you've heard over the years but never stopped to properly learn?" Jack scratched at his cheek, and when the fairy tweeted something again, giving him a shy smile, he gave her a crooked grin in response, "Thanks, I guess?"
"Right, can you ask her if she has seen the creature from the blizzard before?"
Jack raised an eyebrow at him, and grinned when the fairy said something in a series of squeaks and tweets. Hiccup felt goosebumps raise on his skin when her tiny hand patted the side of his neck, it was an unsettling feeling.
"She says she's perfectly able to understand you, and she doesn't need me to translate anything to her," Jack's voice almost danced with laughter as Hiccup felt his cheeks warm up with an embarrassed blush, he sent him a weak glare and the fairy piped up again with another series of tweets.
He looked from the fairy and back to Jack, expectantly. Jack again had a frown of concentration in his face, the slightest of lines between his eyebrows and a tilt of the head. After the fairy finished speaking, Jack nodded slowly, and opened his mouth to speak, only to be interrupted.
"Hold on, wait, pause," butted in Ruffnut. "Who were you talking to just now?"
It was as if he had suddenly turned into a Hideous Zippleback by the way the twins looked at him like he had grown a second head, confusion plain in their faces.
"Oh right, uh… you guys can see the fairy, but you can't see Jack?" Hiccup still wasn't sure how the ability to perceive magical beings worked, why he could see Jack when Astrid and Thorey couldn't even when knowing his name. And it seemed like, while the twins could see the fairy, Jack was still invisible to them.
"Jack?"
"Who's Jack?"
Great, how was he supposed to explain Jack to them without sounding insane? It was one thing to tell other people that he knew of a Jack Frost like he had done with Astrid, but the twins had just seen him speak, in their point of view, to the empty space next to him. This whole conversation was teetering on the edge of getting away from him once again, as it was wont to do with the twins. But maybe, just maybe, if there was someone that probably wouldn't cause much of a fuss about an invisible spirit that only Hiccup and the dragons could see, it would be them. He had seen them do stranger things, after all.
"Jack's a winter spirit, Toothless met and befriended him a couple days ago, and he's been hanging around. Met him the other day and apparently I'm the only human that can see him, " he sneaked a glance at Jack next to him, who had an inscrutable expression in his face. Hiccup had never been the best at reading peoples expressions and their emotional cues, something that caused him no end of trouble in his childhood, and all that he had seen how freely emotive Jack was — maybe as a consequence of never having to mask his emotions when no one could see them? — they still barely knew each other for more than a two days, so these moments where Jack seemed to withdraw was something he still couldn't quite decipher. He realized that figuring Jack out was something he desperately wanted.
"But there's no one there," said Ruffnut, still looking as confused as before, narrowing her eyes and looking between Hiccup and the empty space where Jack was.
The tooth fairy tweeted something soft and mournful, and Jack's demeanor thawed, cracking a lopsided smile that didn't reach his eyes and raising a single shoulder in a shrug, "It's fine Baby Tooth, it's not as if I didn't expect it to be this way."
"Trust me, he's here," he said, infusing his words with as much serious conviction as he could. The twins still looked skeptical, but he could see budding curiosity sparkling in their eyes now. "And he has been helping me with a problem, remember the blizzard yesterday?"
They nodded, and Hiccup crossed his arms tightly, "When I went to my hut to close the hatches, something tried to come inside, I caught it as it was just creeping up to the door. It was…" he lowered his gaze and looked a bit to the side to Toothless, who tilted his head and stared back at him, "… some sort of creature, I think it might have been a malicious spirit because later Astrid found a yak's carcass in the woods, completely dried out of any moisture and what looked like a path of blown out branches going through it. Jack thinks it created and was controlling the blizzard, and if he's right, that thing might be the reason we have to endure devastating winter every year."
"Ok, that sounds real bad," nodded Tuffnut. "But what does the fairy have to do with it?"
"Oooh, maybe it's a fairy curse?" Ruffnut whispered to her brother, not at all quietly. When the tooth fairy squeaked something that sounded mildly indignant, Ruffnut raised her hands apologetically and grinned.
"No, it's not a fairy curse," said Jack with a laugh. "At least that's what Baby Tooth thinks, she has been to the Archipelago before during devastating winter, and while she never saw the creature she could still sense it, and according to her it felt more spirit than fairy, a very angry and hungry spirit at that."
Hiccup hummed and raised an eyebrow at Jack, "This is the second time you've called her 'Baby Tooth', is that really her name or did you just decide to call her that?"
The next series of tweets and squeaks from the fairy sounded less indignant and more amused than anything, or at least he thought it did. With a chuckle Jack responded, "Just what I've been calling her, she says she doesn't mind it, especially because according to Baby Tooth, her actual name is unpronounceable in any language that isn't hers. And I don't speak fairy, soo…"
"Alright, makes sense, I guess," he shook his head. "Anyway, is there a difference between a fairy and a spirit?"
Baby Tooth once again spoke and Jack paraphrased, a deep frown had fallen on his face, that small pout of concentration pulling at his lips, "She says there is… I think she said that a spirit is something that something else turns into? And a fairy just has always been a fairy."
Something was bothering Jack by the way his tone seemed to become more far off and his expression grew colder and distant as he finished translating Baby Tooth's words. His gaze seemed lost in some way, as if trying to pull at some distant memory and coming up blank, Hiccup wasn't entirely sure but he bet that what Baby Tooth had said had perturbed him in some manner.
"Just saying, it's pretty weird that you're just having this conversation with some invisible guy," Tuffnut butted in, a grin curling on his face when Hiccup looked his way. "Not that you weren't already a weird guy, but this is on a whole other level."
"Thank you, Tuffnut. I'm well aware that I look like I'm speaking to myself right now," he said with a weak glare at the twins when they cackled. Jack also laughed, but sounded weaker than his usual airy and full bodied laugh. "Anyway, no it's not a fairy curse. But at least we have confirmation from her that it is a spirit of some sort, and that it's definitely malicious."
A tiny hand patted him again — it was still such a weird sensation — and Baby Tooth said something, a cheerful note to her voice, whatever she said had Jack grin and he said, "Oh, she just said that it's unlikely that spirit would be able to enter any of the homes on Berk. Malicious spirits are unable to come into places where a hearth is placed, and can only pass a house's threshold if invited inside."
Some things fell into place with that, and Hiccup's eyes went wide with realization. While at first Hiccup had thought the creature was trying to come inside, with the way it had forced the door open, it had just stood in front of the opened door, and made no move to come inside beyond that. And if such a creature was so hungry and had the power to control blizzards and open doors with the wind, why had he never heard tale of villagers and animals dying in their dwelling places in the way that yak had done? Of course he had heard stories of people disappearing and dying during devastating winter, only for their bodies to show up during the thaw of the archipelago's short spring and summer, looking very much like the yak had. It was why everyone was taught to never go outside during the worst of these blizzards.
Every year, the creature would come to Berk to attempt to enter the huts in the only way it could, by blowing roofs and blasting walls down with it's storms, trying to flush people out and into it's clutches.
Unfortunately for it, Berk's carpenters and builders had become some of the best in the barbaric archipelago in terms of building durable homes due to generations of enduring raids by dragons.
"Baby Tooth, are you able to find out more about how we could possibly stop this creature? If anyone else has actually seen it?" Hiccup asked, tilting his head to look at the tiny fairy on his shoulder.
She appeared to think, cocking her head in a very bird like fashion and after a moment, she nodded and said something before she launched off his shoulder. In the air she hovered for another brief moment, turning to Jack with a shy smile and wave, there was the slightest dusting of a blush on the pinkish skin of her face and then she was off, disappearing in a streak of iridescent green and blue feathers into the night. Hiccup wasn't sure if he had seen it right, but he swore she had batted her eyelashes at Jack.
"Aw man," he heard Tuffnut whine.
Of all the things Hiccup could've expected to happen this night, he surprised himself when he figured that getting ambushed by the twins and learning that they could see the fairies, without acting in fear as the generally superstitious inclinations of the other Berkians would lend one to believe, was the least surprising revelation of the night. At the very least he now had a good theory about what the creature wanted on Berk, and with luck, Baby Tooth would return with more clarifying information.
There was only one thing left to do.
"Alright you two," he turned to the twins, putting his hands on his hips and trying to project the image of a leader that he had been trying to grow into the past year on the Edge. By the way the twins returned his gaze, almost fox-like in their curiosity, he wasn't sure if he would ever succeed at that with them, but it was worth a try. "I need a promise from you guys to not go spreading word of this to anyone in the village, like I said Astrid has a general idea of what's been happening, but she doesn't know about the fairy and that Jack is a winter spirit, so if we could keep that just between us, at least until I can gently break it to her, I'd appreciate it."
The twins exchanged a glance, crooked grins on their faces before turning back to Hiccup, "Sure, it's not as if anyone would ever believe us," Tuffnut said.
"It's easy to keep a secret like this when most people don't take you seriously," Ruffnut shrugged, and while the admission that the twins were well aware of how they were perceived by Berk in general would have Hiccup frowning in worry, by the way Ruffnut and her brother's smile curled wider he felt like that was just how they liked it most of the time.
"We got your back H, not a word that comes from our lips will be spread around the village," Tuffnut winked, turning with Ruffnut to go over to their dragon.
As they pulled on Barf and Belch's necks to climb on to their respective saddles, Hiccup heard Ruffnut comment with a huff, "You two are acting so weird tonight. What? Never seen a fairy before?" to the dragon. Barf gurgled a hissing sound, a thin plume of gas escaping his nostrils, and bumped his head against Ruffnut as if urging her to get on the saddle, Belch doing much of the same to Tuffnut, as if they were eager to leave Jack's presence as fast as they could.
They left with a shouted goodbye to Hiccup, Barf and Belch launching into the air without hesitation as soon as the twins settled into their saddles.
Silence fell onto the three remaining like a constricting blanket, uncomfortable and itchy. Hiccup was tired and had too many thoughts running through his brain, worries mounting on worries. It seemed like whenever something became clearer, another problem peeked around the corner, demanding to be acknowledged. He was anxious to do something, anything, but for now he had to wait and get a better view of how to deal with this creature that they still didn't know all that much about.
When it came to dragons, Hiccup could cautiously observe them and learn from a distance, figure out their habits and what made them dangerous or approachable. How could he even begin to do that with something so elusive as a spirit that had the power to control blizzards?
He sighed, and turned to Jack and Toothless, the latter tilting his broad head and turning bright green eyes to him with a curious look, and the former still quietly staring off into space, uncharacteristically still. It seemed like Hiccup wasn't the only one whose mind was weighed down by far too many thoughts. Curiosity gnawed at his core over what had made Jack become so withdrawn, though.
"I'm beat and really need to catch up on sleep," he said to Jack, who blinked and appeared to realize Hiccup was talking to him as an edge of surprise crept into his eyes. Hiccup nodded towards the direction of the hill where his home was, and continued, "Walk with me?"
Jack smiled sheepishly, his posture returning to that laid back nonchalant quality of it that Hiccup had come to know. "Sure, it's not as if I have important spirit things to do," he said cheekily, swinging his staff over his shoulders and hanging his arms around it.
"Sure you do," Hiccup poked, a matching smile of his own.
Despite Jack relaxing back to his usual self, he was still uncharacteristically quiet during their walk up to the hill overlooking the village. Hiccup kept sending him glances out of the corner of his eye, and while Jack did pull Toothless into small impromptu games during the walk, he could tell that his attention was divided. Between the present, and before, likely to the conversation with Baby Tooth.
"A coin for your thoughts?" he asked mildly, taking advantage of Jack deciding to walk between him and Toothless.
A considering hum came from Jack, "Not much use for a coin when you're a spirit," an amused smile pulled at the corners of his lips.
Rolling his eyes he bumped Jack with his elbow, earning a chuckle from him in return.
Silence followed, and Hiccup began to worry that Jack simply didn't want to accept the offer to share his thoughts with him, not that he was entitled to it just because he was curious. Then with a sigh Jack said, "I was just… What Baby Tooth said back there, about a spirit being something one becomes, unlike a fairy that has never been anything else."
He didn't press Jack to continue, letting him gather his thoughts, whatever they may be. If he noticed Hiccup drifting a little bit closer to him as they walked in an offer of support, he gave no indication as his eyes stayed lost in thought.
"The thing is," Jack's fingers drummed a nervous pattern on his staff, the other hand pulling at the cord that tied his blue cloak over his shoulders, "I don't remember being anything but… this," he finished, gesturing to himself with a hand.
When Jack turned to look at him, there was such a painful earnestness in his eyes, and a sense of being adrift, that it pulled at his heart in a way he wasn't expecting. He looked so young like this, like he was just a lost boy and not this magical being with untold lonely years etched in the icicles of his eyes. Hiccup felt an almost overwhelming need to pull Jack against his side, tell him that it was ok, that he wasn't lost. Not anymore.
"Maybe," he started awkwardly, having surprised himself by the intensity of whatever that feeling that had bubbled up on his chest had been, "maybe you're not a spirit after all?"
Jack immediately shook his head, a frantic movement that let loose a number of the snowflakes on his hair, "No, I know I'm a winter spirit, I know my name, and I remember the day I woke up and just… was. The… the moon… told me as much."
"The moon? Máni?" Hiccup cocked his head at him.
"Yeah, I…" Jack's expression grew pinched, an angry shadow pushing through, it gave the impression of an old frustration that he had spent time gnawing on to, "It was the only thing he ever told me, after that… just silence."
Hiccup was as knowledgeable about the gods as any one viking generally was, he participated in the yearly blóts and offerings during the significant holidays of the year, but he couldn't say he knew much about Máni and his disposition.
"And you don't remember anything at all before you, uh… 'woke up'?" he asked.
Once again Jack shook his head, this time a gentler motion, his anger and frustration blowing away with the wind that came to briefly envelop them, "No, not a thing."
Toothless who had been silent during their trek, pushed his head against Jack's side with a low rumbling croon, the sound worried and sorrowful. Jack smiled slightly at him, bumping Toothless with his hip. He wished he knew what to say to Jack at this moment, but his mind came up blank, and he didn't know if there was even anything he could say that would help lift this shadow that had fallen over his friend.
As they arrived at the top of the hill where Hiccup's hut was, Jack sighed and chuckled, "Sorry for ruining the mood. Told you I was the fun kind of spirit, and here I am being all mopey."
He rolled his eyes and gently pushed his hand in a fist against Jack's shoulder, "Nah, you don't need to apologize for anything."
An impish grin curled on Jack's face and his eyes sparkled with mirth and barely concealed laughter, it had Hiccup looking at him with a raised eyebrow as he knew there was something behind that expression. As his hand reached for the door handle, Jack let out a considering hum, and said, "I don't know, maybe I should apologize for not letting you know that the twins had been following us since a little bit after we left the Great Hall."
"What?!" He exclaimed, maybe a bit too loudly, and turned to Jack. Quickly he lowered his voice and hissed, "What?! You knew they had been following us the whole time?! Why didn't you say anything?!"
"They just looked curious, and it was funny seeing them and their dragon sneaking around. Like I said, probably something to apologize for, so… sorry!" Jack shrugged, not at all looking sorry. "I'm sure Toothless spotted them too."
"You too?!" he turned to Toothless, barely concealing the whine on his voice.
Much like Jack, Toothless didn't even have the decency of looking apologetic, in fact he just mumbled something deep in his throat and yawned, not phased at all.
He turned and his dropped his head against the wood of the huts door with thunk as he grumbled, "I can't be that oblivious of my surroundings, can I?"
A cold hand patted him on the shoulder, "Hey, don't be hard on yourself, they were doing a good job of staying hidden. Especially with a big two headed dragon."
"Next time just, please tell me? At least so I don't make a fool of myself again?" he over his shoulder to Jack and Toothless.
The two exchanged a look that Hiccup wasn't sure if he liked, but then Jack chuckled and put a hand against his chest, "Sure, cross my heart I promise," a gust of icy wind blew around them again, picking Jack up like he weighed nothing as it always did. He flipped upside down in the air, a flurry of snowflakes around him and used his staff to poke Toothless with a grin, "Can't say the same about Toothless though."
Jack's laughter echoed in the night, carried by the same wind that was now blowing him away, as he shot off into the sky when Toothless attempted to playfully snap at his staff. He was soon to disappear into the gloom, going wherever it was that he usually went during the nights.
Hiccup's dreams that night were restless, and vivid.
Snow surrounded him on all sides, a flat field that was dark, cold and still. There was nothing, no trees, no homes, not even a hill as far as the eye could see. When he looked up, the sky was clear and empty, no clouds, no stars and no moon.
Something was deeply off about this place. The perfect flatness of it, just the grayish blue of the snow in the dark that abruptly turned into the inky black of the night sky.
He could feel the cold seep through his boot where it sunk in the snow, crawling up the metal of his prosthesis and burrowing deep into the sensitive flesh where it connected with him. Hiccup became aware of the chattering of his teeth in a detached sort of manner, his mind foggy and slow, was the cold getting to him already? Would he soon succumb to this endless expanse of snow?
How had he even gotten here? Had he and Toothless crash landed in a field of snow and gotten separated? What had they been doing until then? It was all so far away…
Last thing he remembered was walking with Jack back to his hut after talking with the tooth fairy and the twins. Jack had left and he and Toothless had come inside, finding that his father had already turned in for the night. He had added some more firewood to the hearth to keep it going until the morning and then...
The hairs on the back of his neck stood up, a cold sensation clawed up his spine.
He was being watched.
Slowly, he turned around, his pulse roaring in his ears and the crunching of the snow breaking the quiet stillness.
Off in the distance, something stood out that made his blood run colder than the surrounding snow ever could.
If it were closer, Hiccup swore it would be as tall as a hut, likely taller. White like the snow, and standing very still like a misshapen tree, unsettling and uncanny twitches of it's long head and thin arms the only movements he could see.
He felt like he was a sheep staring down the sight of a ravenous wolf.
A high pitched noise coming from all around, much higher than the noise that preceded one of Toothless' plasma blasts and much louder, invaded his ears and made him flinch. Involuntarily he curled into himself, pressed his eyes close and put his hands against his ears, trying with no success to block out the noise.
As soon as it arrived, however, the sound disappeared. In it's place, a mournful baying began.
When Hiccup opened his eyes, the creature was standing no more than a few feet in front of him.
A panicked scream ripped itself out of his lungs.
Hiccup woke up, shivering, in his bed.
His limbs, his fingers, the toes of his foot and the puckered scar of his stump were cold and numb, like he'd been standing outside with only the thinnest of summer clothing for protection. His heart was a furious drum in his chest, and his lungs heaved hungrily for air.
The worst of it all however, was that as he laid there, he realized he couldn't move. Body locked and unresponsive even as his mind ran. That sensation of being watched had followed him from the nightmare into wakefulness.
After what felt like an eternity of this torture, and no time at all, he took a deep shuddering breath and his limbs finally began to move.
He turned on his back from the curled position he had been in, steadying his breathing further and feeling his heart rate begin to settle from the frenzied panic it had been in.
Opposite of his bed, one of the roof hatches was propped open.
Only the empty night sky stared back at him.