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Hiccup grunted in pain as one of Johann's men shoved him to his knees, hard, onto the cold stone floor. He glared up at his captor with all the vitriol he could muster past the terror thrumming just beneath his skin.
He had known about Johann's treachery for over a month now, and it still hadn't fully sunk in. The magnitude, the sheer scope, of the betrayal was a bottomless pit, with Hiccup always hovering just on the precipice, trying to fathom out where the pit had come from and how he hadn't seen it sooner.
Because Johann hadn't fooled just Hiccup, but his father, his entire people. He'd woven himself seamlessly into the tapestry of their lives, solidifying himself as a staunch, if bumbling, ally. And all the while, he had been the puppet master, pulling all the strings, trying to chip away Hiccup and his tribe's defenses.
And now here Hiccup knelt, bound at Johann's feet, while the man sneered down at him like Hiccup was something disgusting he'd found stuck to the bottom of his boot. Hiccup cursed himself for the hundredth time for letting his guard down, for going on a flight alone when he knew he had a target on his back.
He'd just felt so stifled on the Edge; the energy on the island had curdled into something sour and frenzied with the news of Johann's betrayal and the ever looming threat of Krogan and his Flyers. He'd needed a short flight to clear his head. And because he'd flown Toothless out alone, they both had fallen into the enemy's hands.
The guilt that had unfurled inside him surged once more, but he shoved it down. Right now, their captors had Toothless caged and muzzled but unharmed. Hiccup could only pray that Johann's violent attention would remain on Hiccup instead of his dragon.
Hiccup was pulled abruptly from his worries when Johann leaned over him and crooned, "Oh, Master Hiccup, I am delighted you accepted my invitation!" Nothing of his former joviality remained; caustic sarcasm painted the welcoming words with a black pall that sent gooseflesh skittering down Hiccup's spine.
Hiccup glowered up at the man he had once considered a friend and ignored the churning well of anger and betrayal and humiliation in his gut. "You're telling me that shooting someone from the sky, tying them up... that's what we're calling hospitality nowadays?" Hiccup shook his head as if bewildered. "I mean, call me old fashioned, Johann, but that sounds more like kidnapping to m—"
The right side of his face exploded in pain and Hiccup's head rocked to the side violently. His ears rung, his head spun, and he could feel blood creeping from a fresh cut on his cheekbone. For a moment he just knelt there, stunned, so dazed he had no idea what had just happened. And then he realized—
Johann had backhanded him, a brutal hit that had split Hiccup's skin like an over-ripe fruit, felt like the entire right side of his face had caved in.
Tears sprang to Hiccup's eyes unbidden; he had no idea if they stemmed more from the physical pain or something deeper. Johann had done a lot worse than hit him before, and if rescue didn't arrive in time, he would be sure to do much worse now. But something about this attack finally slammed the last vestiges of unbelief and denial from Hiccup. Gods, this was real. No trace of the old Johann remained. The old Johann had never existed. And Hiccup… he was the fool.
Johann leaned in close, his breath smelling of a blend of exotic spices Hiccup couldn't place. Hiccup tried to shift away, but Johann grabbed a fistful of hair and held him in place. Hiccup squirmed; Johann's grip tightened painfully.
"Eleven years," Johann hissed, his blue eyes colder than a glacier, harder than an iceberg. "Eleven years I've had to put up with you and your father and your ridiculous people. Eleven years of pretending to be a bumbling but lovable trader, rambling nonsense. Pretending to care about you when nobody else did, pretending you mattered to me when even your own father was embarrassed to let you out of the house."
Hiccup gritted his teeth against the onslaught of emotion, perhaps the deepest hurt yet: Johann had been, from the time Hiccup was eight and the trader first arrived on Berk with his incredible wares, Hiccup's only friend and confidante besides Gobber. And Johann had seemed more interested in Hiccup's inventions, his hare-brained schemes, and his drawings than even his mentor had. And to learn that all of it — every bit of it — had been a ruse, that Johann had resented him as much as, if not more than, his fellow Berkians?
Johann's fist drew tighter and Hiccup couldn't contain a gasp of pain. Gods! It felt like his hair was being ripped from his scalp. "But then you went and made friends with the dragons, and the past three years, you've become far more than an annoying little fly. These last three years have been nothing but torment wearing your face! At every turn, without even knowing it, you slipped through the traps I placed, you foiled my plans and disrupted my business. And I had to keep pretending, to keep up this ridiculous ruse, stay close to you and your father when all I wanted to do was carve you up like a boar and serve you to my employer on a silver platter."
Hiccup's lip curled at the metaphor (he hoped to the gods it was a metaphor) and Johann snarled and shook Hiccup by the hair so hard his teeth rattled. Pain shot through Hiccup's scalp, his already aching head pounded and spun.
"And there it is," Johann hissed. "That insufferable attitude, that smart mouth that I have longed to silence for eleven long years." He finally released Hiccup's hair, but only so he could grab his face, fingers squeezing Hiccup's cheeks so hard they'd be sure to leave bruises. "I'll admit," Johann whispered, eyes gleaming, "that I am tempted to cut that insolent tongue right out of your mouth and be done with it."
Hiccup's entire body froze as panic bloomed in his chest; his mind went white, his fists clenched so tightly behind his back that he felt his fingernails break skin. His pulse rampaged, his throat tightened, his chest heaved for breath that wouldn't come—
Oh no, oh please, oh gods, please, not that, anything but that…
Johann, nose to nose with his captive, studied him for a long, charged moment. Then he scoffed and finally released Hiccup's face, shoving him away with a look of disgust. "Fortunately for you, the removal of body parts, while something I can do and have done when necessary, is a bit messy for my tastes. My preferred use of a knife is a bit less up-close and personal." Hiccup flashed back to the Sandbuster's lair, to flying knives, conjured like magic from Johann's sleeves.
"Besides, you have information that I want. So how about this, Master Hiccup?" He spat the name like yak milk curdled for weeks in the hot sun. "I'm due for some target practice, and you're just the man for the job! And if you tell me where your lenses are, I might even let you live!" A booted foot slammed into Hiccup's ribs and he curled into himself with a grunt of pain. "But probably not," his tormentor added nastily. To his men, "Take him to the interrogation room. Take his armor and tunic. Chain him but do not gag him. I will follow shortly."
Without another glance at Hiccup, Johann turned on his heel and stalked from the room.
They dragged Hiccup out of the main chamber (this entire base of operations was a confusing labyrinth of caves, many natural, but some so symmetrical they had to be manmade; Hiccup tried to remember the turns as they went, but his head hurt so much and so much fear frothed inside of him that he couldn't really focus) and into a large cave, almost blindingly bright from the excessive amount of torches lining the walls.
The back of the cave was obscured by a large wooden slab, presumably held upright by some kind of scaffolding at the back, rough but solid and sturdy looking. Attached to it were four manacles on short chains. The top two were obviously meant for arms, the bottom two for legs, but they'd been set so wide apart that any person unfortunate enough to find himself occupying them would end up almost spread-eagled.
Fresh panic rose inside him, and he bucked against his captors, but these men vastly outweighed him. In moments, they'd wrestled him across the chamber and into the chains. Each click of a lock sent another bolt of terror through him. His arms were chained up and out, his legs down and out. The manacle was too loose around his prosthetic, so they locked it around his upper calf, just below his knee, instead. This, of course, made an already horrific situation much worse; in addition to being chained to the wall, limbs pulled out into a wide X, he was now an off-balance X with a cuff far too tight digging into his leg.
And then it got even worse. Because of course it did. Following the orders Hiccup had dreaded the most, the men began trying to figure out how to remove his armor — would've been a lot easier to do it before he'd been chained up, or to just make him do it himself, but these men were obviously not the sharpest axes in the storehouse. To Hiccup's horror, they ended up giving up and just cutting it off of him, and then doing the same to his tunic.
Even with the cold terror gnawing at his heel, carving into his spine, freezing his blood, Hiccup felt a profound sense of loss and violation as he watched his beloved, carefully and lovingly crafted armor being thrown into an unceremonious heap at his feet. His only consolation was that they'd mostly cut on the straps or along seams, so it shouldn't be too hard to fix.
But it never should have been broken in the first place, and it took all of Hiccup's self-control to keep the tears pricking at the corners of his eyes from flowing. This wasn't right, it wasn't fair, and he was scared, for himself and for Toothless. Exposed and completely vulnerable, tiny chill bumps arcing across his bare torso. At least Johann didn't look at him the way Viggo had. Not a huge comfort, considering what lay ahead, but he supposed he would have to take what he could get.
"Where's my dragon?" Hiccup demanded the second his panic-frozen tongue decided to unstick itself from the roof of his mouth. "Where's Toothless?"
"I assure you, Hiccup," came Johann's voice from the mouth of the cave — every already-tense muscle in Hiccup's body coiled even tighter as Johann's men stepped aside to let him through. "For now, your dragon is safe and relatively comfortable. My employer would not wish such a magnificent, rare creature to be harmed — yet. Toothless will be kept safe, fed, and watered until he is sent to my employer. After that, well, I cannot make any promises."
Hiccup tried to struggle, but the chains gave him barely any slack. "Our friends will find us before then." Gods, he hoped so. Astrid had wanted to come with him, but he'd told her he'd just needed half an hour alone. It had been well over that by now, so he knew she and the others would be looking for him.
Maybe she'd even ignored his frankly stupid orders and had followed shortly after? Maybe she'd arrive, axe swinging, before Johann had time for any of his "target practice"? If his usual luck had anything to say about it, then she definitely wouldn't arrive before Johann could hurt Hiccup, but he still prayed for a miracle anyway.
Johann leered. "Perhaps. But either way, it will be too late for you." To his men, he snapped, "You can leave. I have unfinished business with this boy."
The men shuffled out, and Hiccup and Johann were alone. For a split second, Hiccup imagined Johann rushing forward, babbling in terror, reassuring Hiccup that he was only doing this out of duress, that he'd find a way to get him out, they'd escape together…
But Hiccup knew it for what it was — a childish fantasy — and refused to entertain it. He steeled himself the best he could, heart beating a frenzied tattoo against his ribs, and said, "I'm not going to tell you where the lenses are, Johann. You might as well save yourself the time and effort of interrogating me, because I'm not talking."
"Oh, but Master Hiccup, where would be the fun in that? You see, I have eleven throwing daggers on my person. One for every year you have plagued me. What say you? Shall we reminisce about old times as I practice my craft?"
The first dagger embedded itself just beneath Hiccup's left armpit. Johann, it seemed, had a terrifying talent for hitting his target precisely. The blade had come close enough to slice through hair but never touch his flesh — just as Johann had announced right before throwing it.
"I'm going to hold your hand, as it were, on the first few of these," he'd said, "tell you exactly where my knife is going to hit, seeing as you were a child when I first met you." Hiccup had wanted nothing more than to slap that smug expression off of his face.
Now Johann continued, "You were eight years old, yes? Just apprenticed to Gobber? Your father couldn't stand to have you underfoot all the time, chattering away about your silly little ideas, annoying the locals with your crazy tales of gnomes and trolls. But I listened. Granted, I thought you were as obnoxious and infantile as the rest of Berk did, but I hid it well, don't you think?"
Hiccup didn't rise to the bait; he'd long since dealt with the loneliness and isolation of his past, and he knew he had a place, had friends, had a father who cared for him and respected him as a son, a peer, and a leader in his own right. Who was proud of him. So instead he drawled out, as lazily and unaffectedly as he could (which probably wasn't very, given his current predicament), "Wow, Johann. Despite the complete personality change, one thing has stayed exactly the same."
Johann rolled his eyes. "And what is that?"
"You really love hearing yourself talk, don't you?"
Rage clouded Johann's face and fear thundered through Hiccup anew — as good as mouthing off to Johann had felt, he definitely didn't want to goad the man into killing him. He knew his friends would be here to bust him out, probably sooner rather than later, and how embarrassing would it be if he got himself killed five minutes before they swooped in to rescue him? The rage quickly settled into something more stable, albeit no less hateful.
"When you were nine, not much had changed," Johann continued, then added, as if an afterthought, "Same place, left side." And sure enough, the knife thudded into the wood beneath Hiccup's left armpit. This time, he managed not to flinch. "Are you feeling any more talkative?" Johann asked, using yet another dagger to clean under his thumbnail. He looked bored, like he'd done this a thousand times to a thousand other unfortunate souls — and Hiccup had a terrible suspicion that he had.
"You don't scare me," Hiccup growled.
"Lies are unbecoming for an heir, don't you think, Hiccup?"
"Just throw the damn knife, Johann," Hiccup snapped.
This time, Johann didn't tell Hiccup where the knife would hit, or whether it would hit at all. He just inspected the blade and said, "When you were ten, you traded me your first spyglass for a bottle of ink. I pretended to be impressed by your workmanship. It was only because I needed to be in your father's good graces that I traded with you at all; I could have bought three spyglasses crafted by a master for the price of that ink." A flick of his wrist, and the knife embedded into the wood less than an inch from his neck. The fear Hiccup had been trying to tamp down crawled its way up his throat and he nearly choked on it.
"Ah," Johann said, standing back and admiring his handiwork. "That's more like it."
Hiccup took a deep breath through his nose, tried to still his galloping heart. He looked Johann square in the eye but didn't speak, just raised an eyebrow in what he hoped was a very unimpressed fashion.
And so it went. Johann threw knife after knife, each one punctuated by a cruel commentary about how annoying Hiccup was as a child, how Un-Viking-like, how much of a disappointment. It got old very quickly. If Johann thought he was telling Hiccup something new, or if he thought he was hitting a sore spot, he couldn't be more wrong. It had been a long and hard battle with his insecurities, but he had come out triumphant years ago.
But with every knife that came within a hair's breadth of hitting him but (the other side of his neck, above his head, between his legs, by his right boot), Hiccup's fear only ramped up more. He knew that Johann wanted to draw this out, make him suffer as much in the waiting as he did from the eventual pain, and he knew, just knew, that soon Johann would stop playing with him and start hurting him instead.
And sure enough, on the seventh knife, something changed. Hiccup sensed it before Johann said a word, before the tip of the blade slipped from the fabric of his captor's sleeve. He saw it in Johann's eyes, the set of his jaw: cruel intention.
"Last chance to save yourself a lot of pain, Master Hiccup," Johann warned.
Hiccup told Johann in explicit detail what he could do with his next knife. Johann only laughed. "Ah, using bravado to mask your fear. Quite a cliche tactic, and I assure you, it is fooling no one."
And with no further preamble, he threw the knife. Hiccup watched its trajectory, saw it angle toward what remained of his left calf. Less than half an inch of flesh bridged the gap between his prosthetic and the metal cuff. Hiccup almost allowed himself to hope. Surely even Johann couldn't—
A shout of pain exploded from his throat as the knife sliced a deep cut through sensitive scar tissue on his outer calf before thudding into the wood behind him. Hiccup yanked against the chains, tried to shift the bulk of his weight onto his right foot, but the way he was chained made it difficult.
A chill broke out across his skin even as a bead of sweat crept down his chest. He couldn't crane his neck down to get a good look at the wound, not with the two knives so close on either side of his neck, but from the warmth soaking the cut-off hem of his pants and the strap of his prosthetic, he thought it might be a lot.
"I don't believe I need to elaborate, do I?" Johann asked. Hiccup glowered at him but didn't answer, too busy trying to breathe through the pain. But the answer was, of course, no — Johann didn't need to explain anything about what Hiccup had done when he was fifteen to turn Johann's dislike into full-blown hatred.
"At every turn," Johann growled, "you have impeded my work." He flicked another knife from his sleeve and Hiccup hissed as it carved a shallow line across his ribs on the right side. He glanced down to see a line of red stark against his pale, freckly torso. His stomach turned.
"You have cost me countless time and money," Johann continued, his voice growing steadily angrier. Another knife nicked the outside of his left ear; blood spurted from the gash, but Hiccup just clenched his jaw against the stinging pain. "And every time I tried to get rid of you, you would — not — die!"
With what appeared to be gargantuan effort, Johann composed himself enough to say, "Two knives left, Hiccup, for the two worst years of my life — and all because of you and your incessant meddling in my affairs and the affairs of my employer. Are you sure you do not want to tell me where those lenses are?"
Hiccup wanted to — gods, he wanted to — but he wouldn't. He would never put innocent dragons in danger like that, give Johann the means to hurt even more of them. It would be a betrayal of everything he believed in. So he gritted his teeth, gathered all his resolve, and spat, "Never."
Johann shrugged, smirking. "So be it. I probably would have done this anyway." And at the same time, the last two knifes slipped from his sleeves. Quicker than Hiccup could track, he flicked his wrists and the knives flew.
A ragged, desperate scream tore from Hiccup's throat and he jerked in his bonds as the knives hit home at exactly the same time. One buried itself into his right thigh, the other into his left shoulder, scraping the bone.
Hiccup's world began to unravel at the edges. His eyes slipped shut of their own accord, but before unconsciousness took him entirely, he heard Johann order, "Unchain him, treat his wounds, then throw him in a cell until Krogan returns. And—"
Hiccup never found out what Johann's other orders were. His hearing had finally fizzled into a high-pitched ringing. He tumbled into unconsciousness, with no idea that the high-pitched ringing was not, in fact, his hearing going out, nor that Johann had given no other orders. With no idea that Johann now lay smoking on the floor, a sizzling hole in the center of his chest, or that a newly freed Toothless stood in the doorway, smoke curling from his snarling mouth.
He didn't hear Astrid's voice, terrified and sick and small: "Oh, gods — Hiccup!"
He didn't hear Toothless's trills or feel Astrid's fingers on his neck, searching for a pulse, or feel Toothless's warm nose nuzzling his bare stomach. He didn't hear the manacles unlocking one by one, or feel himself slump bonelessly into Astrid's waiting arms as his wrists were freed.
He slept suspended in pain and nightmares, not knowing that when next he woke it would be in his hut at the Edge, bandaged and weak from blood loss, but surrounded by his friends.