Archive of Our Own ^beta

Hiccup grunted in pain as his knees hit hard stone, hands tied behind his back, prosthetic gone, a blindfold tied tightly over his eyes.

Fear thrummed through him like drumbeats of war. Even blindfolded, he knew where he’d been taken, knew who stood before him. He’d known who he would be dragged to from the moment the Hunter ship had shot him and Toothless out of the sky.

He could hear the slosh of water against the sides of the longboat and the scratch of a quill on parchment, could smell leather and sea salt and chamomile and smoke, could feel the weight of interested eyes on him as his captors threw him to the floor.

A chair scraped against stone, footsteps approached. Hiccup knew those footsteps: measured, controlled, somehow sinister, predatory.

“What do you want, Viggo?” Hiccup tried to project a facade of careless ease, not wanting his enemy to know just how terrified he actually felt.

A low rumble of a chuckle sounded from just above Hiccup’s head, and sure enough, the voice belonged to Viggo. “Sharp as always, my dear Hiccup.” Hiccup’s skin crawled at the pet name. To the Hunters who had hauled Hiccup to his chambers: “Leave us.”

Hiccup heard the two pairs of heavy footsteps clump away and Viggo’s door slam shut, then took a shaky breath and repeated, “What do you want, Viggo? And where’s Toothless?”

Viggo’s footsteps rounded Hiccup, stopping behind him. A slight squeak of leather as Viggo shifted, and then the man’s voice, right at his ear, hot breath spilling goosebumps down Hiccup’s spine. A thrill of panic froze his heart at Viggo’s proximity; he tugged uselessly at the ropes around his wrists.

“I want a great many things, Hiccup. Surely you know that by now.”

In spite of his fear, or maybe because of it, Hiccup scoffed. “Thank you… for that totally specific and not at all ominous answer.”

Viggo laughed; Hiccup stiffened as a hand rested on his shoulder, played with the pauldron protecting it. “As always, I appreciate your dry wit in the face of danger.”

Hiccup tried his best to ignore the way the fingers now tugged at the strap holding the pauldron in place. “What about Toothless? Where is he?”

Viggo sighed, clearly disappointed that Hiccup had no interest in sparring. “Your Night Fury is sedated but unharmed.”

Fury rose within Hiccup and drowned out the fear. “Sedated doesn’t sound like unharmed.”

“That dragon will fetch a fine price at auction. I could not risk it hurting itself trying to get to you.”

Viggo’s hand moved from his armor strap to his shoulder and then up his neck, skating through his hair. Hiccup jerked forward, desperate to shake Viggo’s touch off, stark terror and sick dread overtaking his anger. “Don’t you touch him!” he spat. “And get your hands off me!” His breath came fast and hard, fury and fear spiraling inside him, for Toothless and for himself. He gasped as Viggo twisted his fingers tightly in his hair and yanked his head back.

“I think you will find,” Viggo growled, voice colder and sharper than a dagger blade, “that whilst you and your dragon are my prisoners, I can do with you whatever I wish.” After a long moment flooded with palpable tension, the scent of fear thick in the air, Viggo shoved Hiccup’s head down and released his hair. “Besides,” the Dragon Hunter chief added conversationally, “Your position is presently far more perilous than your pet’s. I should think you would be more concerned about your own fate.”

Hiccup swallowed past the knot in his throat. His shoulders ached and his wrists smarted and his scalp burned, sick dread carved a chasm in his gut. Scared for his dragon, afraid his friends wouldn’t find them in time... And if he understood Viggo correctly…

“So you’re going to kill me, then.”

Leather creaked as Viggo stood once more; Hiccup relaxed marginally as the man’s foot falls circled again, this time stopping in front of him. Although he couldn’t see anything anyway, having Viggo behind him, breath tickling the back of his neck, voice rumbling in his ear, unnerved him far more than being face-to-face with him.

Until Hiccup felt the point of a knife rest on the hollow of his throat.

Hiccup’s heart slammed into overdrive, pumping so furiously he thought it might give out. His breath caught in his chest. Terror engulfed him; he resisted the impulse to swallow. The blade dug in but did not pierce; Hiccup feared that any more added pressure would change that.

So this was it. No more games, no more bluffs. Viggo had tired of playing with him. Hiccup was going to die.

“Vi-Viggo—” he stuttered, then broke off, barely containing a terrified groan as the knife traveled slowly down toward his chest, the point tickling his skin.

“I want you to understand, Hiccup, the gravity of your situation.” Viggo’s voice came from about eye-level. Hiccup hadn’t heard him move this time, but he must have been kneeling or even sitting on the floor right in front of Hiccup.

“I — I think I’ve got a pretty good idea,” Hiccup whispered.

“Perhaps you do. But just in case, allow me to summarize: You are dragonless, legless. Bound and helpless. You cannot even see when or how I will strike.” Nausea rolled Hiccup’s gut and every muscle in his body tightened, screaming for him to run, to flee, but Viggo spoke the truth. The Hunter chief had Hiccup completely at his mercy. “While I have you here, like this, my dear, I can do anything I want to you.”

Panic nearly obliterated Hiccup’s control; he just managed to choke back a sob. The emphasis Viggo put on the word anything, the way his voice lowered, horrified Hiccup even more than the knife.

Hiccup clenched his fists behind his back; his nails bit into his palms. He could feel himself starting to quake, from the inside out, but somehow he contained the tremors to his hands alone. But composure fled and Hiccup cried out in terror when the knife slowly sliced through the laces at the neck of his tunic. “Viggo, no, what are you—?”

“Whatever I want,” Viggo all but purred in return. “Were you not listening?”

“Please,” Hiccup gasped. A bead of sweat rolled down his neck and pooled in the hollow of his throat, exactly where the knife had just vacated. “Don’t touch me.”

“While I appreciate the attempt at good manners, my dear boy, I hardly think you are in any position to negotiate.” Heat pressed behind Hiccup’s eyes as the knife gently slid beneath the ruined tunic and began exploring his upper chest, following the curve of his clavicle, tracing the tops of his pectoral muscles. Hiccup all at once felt separate from his own body; distantly, he wondered if the building tears would slip out from beneath the blindfold or if the blindfold would absorb them.

“Why — why are you d-doing this?” Hiccup stammered.

Viggo didn’t answer. Instead, he moved the tip of the knife up, up Hiccup’s throat and under his chin, forcing Hiccup to tilt his head back as he increased the pressure. “It would be so easy,” Viggo said softly, almost intimately, and Hiccup’s skin positively writhed at the sound of it, “to drive this blade into your body, to be rid of you forever. Without their leader, your riders will crumble.”

That’s not true! Hiccup wanted to shout, but he couldn’t muster a single sound past the blade caressing his throat.

Viggo breathed an exaggerated sigh; Hiccup felt his breath ripple across his face. It smelled of chamomile. “Alas, I have never been one to take the easy route.”

So Viggo wasn’t going to kill him? Thank the gods. Hiccup knew his friends would be looking for him and Toothless. It would only be a matter of time before they were found. If Viggo didn’t plan to kill Hiccup immediately, then maybe—

His heart skipped madly in his chest, tripping over itself in its haste to get away, to escape, even if Hiccup couldn’t: Viggo had moved the knife to his cheek. “But I find,” Viggo whispered, “that there are still many ways to get my message across without killing you.”

A petrified whine escaped from somewhere deep inside of Hiccup. He couldn’t help it, didn’t even have the capacity to feel ashamed. Because the knife now pressed lightly against his lower lip.

“There are so many devastating ways to hurt a person, are there not? To disable, even. And so many are concentrated on the face.” Hiccup thought he might actually die from the raw terror coursing through him, speeding his heart and boiling his blood. He thought he might actually prefer that when Viggo pressed his lip down with the flat of the blade, a clear order to open his mouth. And if Hiccup didn’t want that blade to bite, he had no choice.

He barely kept his teeth from chattering as he slowly pried his mouth open, his hands shaking behind his back and tears streaking down his cheeks from under the blindfold. Gods, the blindfold made everything so much worse. If he could just see Viggo’s face, perhaps he’d know if this was a bluff or if Viggo really intended to maim him.

All thoughts fled his mind as the taste of metal nearly made him gag — gods, gods, gods, the knife was in his mouth. Hiccup forgot how to breathe, forgot that breathing was even a thing, as the knife traced his gums then came to rest on his tongue.

“For instance, as long as the bleeding is contained, losing your tongue will not kill you. You will lose the ability to speak, of course, which might make chiefing difficult someday. But you would have your life.”

Time stood still; the knife twitched on his tongue and the metal tasted too much like blood. And then the blade retreated, leaving the inside of his mouth unscathed and Hiccup’s chest heaving for breath he hadn’t even realized he’d been holding, face wet with tears, whole body now racked with tremors.

“P-please,” Hiccup managed. His tongue felt stiff, too big for his mouth, and he tasted salt. “Stop.”

“Again with the please,” Viggo said, sounding almost delighted. “Excellent job minding your manners; I shall make a proper gentleman of you yet, Hiccup.”

Hiccup didn’t answer. He couldn’t. He tried to focus on calming his breathing, on quelling the tears, on slowing his pulse — it didn’t work. Raw horror spread like sickness through every part of his body, weighing him down, tightening his lungs, engulfing his mind in a blinding fog.

“I see you are badly shaken,” Viggo observed in a caricature of empathy. “I will allow you a moment to collect yourself.”

Bastard.

Far too soon, the knife reappeared, this time scraping along his outer ear. He’s not going to do anything, Hiccup tried to assure himself. If he was going to follow through on his threats, he would have done so by now.

As if he could read Hiccup’s thoughts, Viggo lashed out with the knife, and a line of fire opened on the side of his ear. Hiccup shouted in surprise and pain. Warm blood trickled from the wound and crawled down his jaw. From what Hiccup could tell, the blade hadn’t cut deeply, but Viggo had made his point. Just because he hadn’t hurt Hiccup yet didn’t mean he wouldn’t.

“How much do you rely on hearing as a dragon rider?” Viggo mused. The tip of the blade made a slow circle around the inside of Hiccup’s ear. “If I were to push in this knife—” He applied the barest amount of force. “—and puncture your eardrum, would that slow you down?”

“D-don’t—” Hiccup gasped, breath shallow and far too fast.

“Have you forgotten the rules so quickly, Hiccup?” Viggo mocked, positioning the wickedly sharp edge of the blade above Hiccup’s ear; one slice, and Hiccup’s ear would be severed from his head. Hiccup ground his teeth together so hard his jaw ached, a keening groan straining to rise from the deepest part of his soul, as Viggo pressed hard enough to just break the skin. “You are mine to do with whatever I desire.” Hiccup’s heart thrashed in his chest as Viggo let the moment drag on, the anticipation building…

And then the knife lifted from his ear. Hiccup shuddered, every muscle in his body drawn tight as a bowstring. Vaguely, Hiccup felt sticky blood on his palms. At some point his nails had broken skin.

He knelt there, pulse thundering, body quaking, breathing ragged, and waited. Wildly, he almost wished that Viggo would just get on with it. Surely there could be nothing more torturous than this terror, the anticipation? Hiccup didn’t know how much more his body could take before it just gave out entirely.

But Viggo wasn’t done.

Hiccup jolted violently as Viggo grasped his jaw with one hand and tilted his head back. “I’d try to control that shivering, if I were you,” his tormentor said. “This next part is very delicate. You would not like it if my knife slipped, I think.”

“Wh-what are you—?”

Hiccup broke off when the point of the dagger wriggled carefully under the blindfold. The smallest sliver of light as the cloth lifted nearly blinded him, and he slammed his eyes shut just as the tip of the knife traced the skin under his right eye, so close to his waterline that he could be blinded if he breathed funny. So he didn’t breathe at all.

“If I took an eye, I am sure you would be able to adjust, much like you have to losing a leg.” A sob rose in Hiccup’s throat when he felt a small point of pressure against his eyelid. “But if I took both, well…” For one hellish moment, the pressure increased just enough to almost cut, and then the knife slid out from under the blindfold.

Hiccup couldn’t hold back the tide any longer — his body heaved with violent sobs that he couldn’t control any more than he could the tears.

Gods, please let it be over.

This time, the knife didn’t reappear. With immense effort, Hiccup quieted his juddering sobs and listened, heart hammering, pulse racing, as Viggo stood. “Wh-what are you d-d-doing?”

“Cleaning my knife “

Hiccup could hardly comprehend what this meant. “Is it… over?”

He recoiled as he sensed Viggo leaning over him. “Dear Hiccup,” Viggo said, almost fondly, and Hiccup stiffened as a hand tousled his hair. “Of course it isn’t over. Yes, I am about to call my brother to escort you to your cell. But I hope my lesson was clear: You are my prisoner, and I can do anything I want to you, take anything I want from you. There is nothing to stop me from visiting you in your cell later tonight and taking everything I have so graciously left you with for the present. There is nothing to stop me from slitting your throat or cutting out your tongue or doing any other number of terrible things to you.”

So lightheaded he could barely think, Hiccup felt sweaty and clammy and nauseated and physically ill. He could do nothing but wait in darkness for Viggo to continue, not knowing if this was all another ruse or if Viggo had actually finished tormenting Hiccup for now.

“Have I made myself perfectly clear?” Viggo demanded. “About where you stand with me, about where your place is?”

Hiccup nodded, then whispered, “The — the blindfold?”

“Stays on,” snapped Viggo. A strong hand wrapped around Hiccup’s right bicep and hauled him to his foot. His knee shook under him, and only Viggo’s steady hand kept him from collapsing. “Shall we call my brother to take you to your new quarters?”

Astrid slipped below deck while Stormfly, the twins on Barf and Belch, and Fishlegs on Meatlug kept the Hunters busy. Snotlout and Hookfang had been tasked with carrying a drugged Toothless away from the ship, cage and all. Thank Thor he hadn’t been taken below deck yet. That made their rescue mission a bit less complicated.

Astrid managed to avoid what few Hunters still lurked below; she silently swiped a keyring from one of them as he passed. Her mission: Get in, get Hiccup, and get out before anyone realized he was gone.

She found Hiccup locked in the last cell. She peered through the bars, not daring to so much as whisper his name. She couldn’t see much of him in the guttering torchlight, but the way he slumped motionless against the back wall set off alarm bells in her head.

Astrid unlocked the cell as quietly as she could and thanked Odin when the door opened silently. She crept inside, every sense on high alert.

Hiccup looked awful. In the dim, flickering light she saw that his prosthetic was gone — a wave of fury cascaded over her; for Viggo to take Hiccup’s leg, just because it happened to be detachable, to keep him from running, was despicable. Inhumane. His arms were tied behind his back and he’d been blindfolded.

Suddenly he stirred. In a hoarse, very un-Hiccup-like, panicked whisper, he asked, “Who’s there?”

Gods, Astrid had never heard him sound so scared, or broken. What the Hel had Viggo done to him? Several horrible possibilities chased themselves in circles in her mind, each one grimmer and more horrific than the last.

Astrid quickly knelt before him. “It’s me,” she whispered.

Hiccup shifted, tilted his head as if trying to decide if he could trust his ears. “Ast-Astrid?”

In response, Astrid reached out to cup his cheek — the entirely wrong move to make.

Hiccup threw himself backwards, foot scrabbling to push him away from her touch, but he had nowhere to go. “Don’t touch me!” he cried out, and Astrid withdrew her hand like she’d been burned.

Astrid had never realized that she had the capacity for two such strong emotions as her hatred of Viggo and her heartbreak for Hiccup until that moment.

“Shh, shh,” she soothed, glancing over her shoulder. No one had heard them, thank the gods. Hopefully all the remaining Hunters had been drawn up top to help fend off the other riders. “It’s okay, Hiccup. I promise, you’re gonna be okay. I’m going to get you out of here, but I need to untie you and take off that blindfold first. And for that, I’ll have to touch you.”

Hiccup’s voice sounded so small and fragile that Astrid felt tears pricking at the corners of her eyes. “It — it’s really you?”

“It’s me.”

A short silence as, Astrid assumed, Hiccup steeled himself. “Okay,” he whispered, tension etched into every contour of his silhouette. “Do it.”

The rest of the escape, for once, went smoothly. She supported Hiccup out of the cell, helped him hobble to the trapdoor leading above, and then climbed up the ladder first so that she could pull him up after.

They made it to Stormfly without being spotted, the Dragon Hunters, Ryker, and even Viggo thoroughly occupied with both the multiple fires on deck and trying to take down Ruff, Tuff, and Fishlegs. The riders and their dragons fought like a pack of Speed Stingers: brutal, precise, in perfect synchronization. Leaving carnage in their wake. Astrid made a mental note to commend them once this was all over.

By the time anyone noticed that Hiccup had been freed, it was too late. All of the dragons and their riders had retreated out of range, not in defeat, but in victory.

When Astrid looked back over her shoulder, she saw two things in the dusky light that, when put together, painted a very ugly picture. First, she saw Hiccup. Trembling, eyes closed. He had tear tracks down his face. And behind him, below, watching his captive fly to freedom as his ship burned around him, Viggo. She had never seen the man so angry. So out of control.

Gods. Viggo had done something horrible to Hiccup. And Astrid feared he would do anything to get him back.

They met Snotlout, Hookfang, and Toothless on a small island about halfway to the Edge. Astrid wished they could go the rest of the way — Hiccup needed to be home, back in his hut, to feel safe — but they had picked out this meeting place so that Hookfang didn’t have to carry a caged Toothless all the way back. She’d hoped that Hiccup would be able to fly Toothless, but Viggo still had his leg. Besides, whatever had happened to Hiccup had shaken him severely. Even if he’d had his prosthetic, she doubted he would be in any shape to fly.

Toothless had just begun to stir when the triumphant rescue party landed. Snotlout had been frantically pacing in front of the cage, Hookfang’s eyes following his every step. When his friends landed, he nearly collapsed in relief at the sight of Astrid helping a dazed Hiccup off of Stormfly.

“Oh thank Thor,” Snotlout snapped. “Next time you need someone to play babysitter to a sleeping dragon, pick someone else. I’m a warrior. I was made to fight, not stay behind and wait like a dainty housewife.”

Astrid rolled her eyes, but there was no heat in her voice when she said, “I know you were worried about Hiccup, Snotlout. But Hookfang is the strongest and—”

Snotlout cut her off as she helped Hiccup limp slowly, painfully, toward the cage. “Gods, Hiccup. You look awful.”

From across the clearing, Tuff admonished, “Rude! Do you know nothing about post-rescue etiquette, Snotlout?”

“Yeah,” Ruff chimed in. “Rule number one: Don’t tell the rescue-ee they look awful.”

“Rule number dos,” Tuff continued, “if said rescue-ee does look awful, then lie your snotty little heart out.”

“What the Hel are you two muttonheads talking about?”

“I… think they’re telling you to mind your manners?” Fishlegs guessed. Astrid startled as, for some reason, his words made Hiccup flinch.

“Hiccup?”

“Just get me to Toothless. Please.” His voice broke a little on the last word, and no one, not even the twins, spoke as Astrid helped him the last few feet.

Hiccup extricated himself from her arms and leaned his weight on the cage, reaching through the bars to stroke a warbling Toothless. He had been muzzled when they rescued him, but Snotlout must have been able to work it off through the bars; the muzzle now lay, discarded, at Toothless’s feet.

Astrid watched with a profound sense of relief as a true smile — small but genuine — spread over Hiccup’s face when he reunited with his best friend.

“Thank Thor you’re all right, bud.”

Toothless chuffed, clearly concerned. Hiccup gestured for Astrid to hand him the stolen key ring. “I’m okay, Toothless,” he said, sounding very clearly not okay as he searched for the right key.

Once the cage door swung open, Toothless wasted no time. He bounded out, any malaise from the sedative obscured by his joy. Astrid watched, smiling, as Hiccup threw his arms around Toothless and Toothless nudged and nuzzled and licked Hiccup.

Her smile faded as she realized that this lighthearted moment could not last: Hiccup still had tear tracks down his face, and a haunted look in his eyes, and a slight tremor in his hands that told her that this was far from over.

Physically, Hiccup seemed to be mostly okay. His only injuries were a couple of small cuts on his left ear, bloody crescents where his nails had cut into his palms (Astrid couldn’t bear to imagine what could have caused him to do that), and rope burns around his wrists. A small smear of blood smudged his right eyelid, but there didn’t appear to be a wound.

But whatever had happened to Hiccup during his short time as Viggo’s prisoner had changed him. In the days following his rescue, he barely ate, woke up screaming every night and then refused to go back to sleep afterwards, and pushed everyone except Toothless away. He shied away from any physical contact — again, save for Toothless. And that worried Astrid more than anything else.

Because when she’d had a chance to properly look Hiccup over, she had noticed that the laces on his tunic had been cut through. And although Hiccup’s armor had been intact over the tunic, one of his pauldrons had been slightly askew and a terrible, looming fear had risen within her, that Viggo had—

Gods, she couldn’t even think it.

So finally, on the third day after their return to the Edge, Astrid found Hiccup in the otherwise empty Clubhouse, Toothless curled at his feet, and admitted, “I’m worried about you, Hiccup. We all are.”

Hiccup gave her a flat, rehearsed smile that in no way reached his eyes. “I’m fine. Just tired.”

Astrid sat down slowly beside him, like he was a spooked dragon she meant to train. “Hiccup…”

“I don’t want to talk about it, Astrid.” His voice, like his eyes, like his smile, fell flat.

“And you don’t have to. But, Hiccup, I just need to know… You don’t want anyone touching you, you barely look us in the eye, when we rescued you, your — your tunic, it was…”

Gods, what was she doing? This wasn’t her place. If what she feared had actually happened, that was something deeply personal that she had no right to ask him to share. But at the same time, if what she feared happened had actually happened, what would become of Hiccup if he kept it all inside?

Realization dawned on Hiccup’s face and before her eyes he seemed to shrink into himself. “Oh. You think — you’re afraid that—”

“Forget it,” Astrid said quickly. “Whatever happened to you, it’s yours to tell — or not. I shouldn’t have asked.”

“No, it’s… it’s okay. I understand.” He took a shaky breath; Astrid’s stomach clenched, then she breathed a sigh of relief when Hiccup said, “He didn’t — he didn’t hurt me like… like that.” His eyes darted up to meet hers, then back down to his hands. “I… I can’t say that, that something like that wouldn’t have happened if you guys hadn’t rescued me, from some of the stuff he said…” He trailed off, voice lost in a quagmire of memory.

Astrid’s hands balled into fists. She’d had her suspicions about Viggo’s attraction to Hiccup for a while. She didn’t know if Hiccup himself suspected, but now, it sounded like he knew. And that simultaneously broke her heart and made her want to tear Viggo Grimborn limb from limb.

“I’m so sorry, Hiccup.”

Hiccup shrugged and leaned down to scratch Toothless’s head; the dragon purred in his sleep. “I’m not ready to talk about what did happen.”

Astrid’s chest tightened as a fierce battle waged inside her: her burning need to know, to help, to fix this, waging war against her relief because she wasn’t ready to find out what could make Hiccup this unsure, this scared. Closer to broken than she’d ever seen him.

She tentatively reached out, rested her hand on his. He didn’t pull away. “That’s okay,” she said. “You can tell us when you’re ready. We’re always here for you. I’m always here for you. You’re not in this alone.”

“I know,” Hiccup said simply, and this time the ghost of his smile reached his eyes. He flipped his hand over, twined his fingers loosely with hers. Squeezed gently. “Thanks, Astrid.”

She squeezed his hand in return, her heart beating a little faster than normal. “Of course.” She hesitated. “And Hiccup? You’re going to be okay.”

Hiccup’s eyes shone rich green, deep pain lurking just behind the surface. Freckles dusted his face and that little scar on his chin gleamed white in the firelight. He looked fragile and strong, terrified and brave, desolate and hopeful, all at the same time.

“Yeah,” he said, tentative and uncertain. “Eventually.”

And for now, that would just have to be enough.