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.*･｡CHAPTER FIFTEEN.*･｡

——

"Yeah, so..." Hiccup sighed as the girl reached out a hand to him, having finally pulled herself up and off of the floor. "This is what I'm dealing with."

"What did you tell him?" Vega asked excitedly. She brushed the dirt from his shoulder and smiled, glancing up at him expectantly. That was something that had changed about them over the five years: height. Whilst she used to be taller than him by an easy inch, Hiccup had suddenly sprouted and now looked down at her. "What did you say?"

"I-" he sighed as he he looked away, "I didn't. By the time he turned around, I was gone."

"Huh-" the girl nodded to herself as she bent down to pick up the map, folding it back up and placing the pencil with it. She thought about it and looked at him, "Well, it's a lot of responsibility."

She walked towards him and placed the items on his chest, his arms reaching up to grab them and she continued on in her tangent. "The map will have to wait, for sure, and you won't be around too much, so I can finish it, I guess. I'll have to tell the guys but they'll understand, right? And I'll need to fly Toothless since you'll be too busy, but-"

When he sighed, she stopped.

Vega span on her heel slowly and looked at the boy, her heart aching when she saw the glossiness of his eyes. He hadn't needed to say anything for her to know what was going on in his mind. She always seemed to know.

"It's not me, Vega." Hiccups voice was barely beyond a whisper as he shrugged helplessly, "All those speeches and planning and running the village - that's his thing."

"I think you're missing the point." She smiled softly, leaning down to catch his gaze when his head dropped. It didn't take longer for her to meet his eyes, again. "I mean, chief. That's a big deal, Hiccup. I'd be pretty excited,"

Hiccup adjusted his shoulder padding in hopes of distraction, shaking his head as he muttered to himself a string of things that she couldn't quite understand. He eventually sighed once more, raising his head from where he stared at the ground, pursing his lips as he figured out how to say what he wanted to. What he needed to. Vega listened closely, nodding and smiling, signalling that it was okay for him to get it off of his chest; she'd always been a good listener.

"I-" he hesitated, "I'm not like you. You know exactly who you are, you pretty much always have, but I'm still looking."

    "You have your mother's eyes and your father's talents, and you've always been a fighter, one of the best since we were all babies." He sighed as he turned around and walked for his helmet, picking it up from the ground. Hiccup continued to move and turned around to look at her every few seconds, "I know that I'm not my father, and I never met my mother, so..."

Hiccup frowned.

"What does that make me?"

With a small and pretty smile, Vega watched as Hiccup shrugged his shoulders and settled himself upon the ground. She let him think for a moment and stare off into the distance, giving him a minute to himself. When that minute was over, however, the brunette walked up behind him and sat down at his side, gently dragging her hand over his shoulder down his arm. Whilst Vega has never been one for motivation speeches and quotes, which Hiccup knew, it seemed that lately she had gotten much better at giving them. Perhaps it was because she was older and wiser, and not as blunt as before. Or maybe it because Hiccup was always needing them — who knew?

    "I've always been a fighter." She echoed his own words with a nod of approval.

    "You should've seen it today, Son!" He impersonated his father once again, finding it somewhere within his in him to shoot one last joke. "Vega is only three but the wee lass could rip the head off of a python! Best end up with a girl like that, one day, Hiccup."

   Vega laughed and shook her head at him, gently pushing his face away to look back at the skyline. "I've always been a fighter, but I didn't always know what for. For a long time I thought it was because that's who I am, because that's how my parents had raised me, but it wasn't. For a long time, it was for them. It wasn't for me."

   He let himself look at her out of his peripheral, smiling softly when her curls bounce in the wind. She'd always been so beautiful.

    "I found out that I wasn't doing what I was because it was who I am-" the girl sighed, "-I was doing it because I thought that's what they would have wanted. But one day, I realised that I was a fighter for the wrong reasons, so I made them right."

    "Was that because of Astrid?" Hiccup smirked and earned a shove to the side. "Kidding! It was me,"

"It was me." she corrected with a small scoff. It was silent for a moment and she noticed him finally pull his eyes fully away from the clouds. Vega rested a hand over his heart and gently tapped upon it, looking out at the world and then back at him. "The point is, what you're searching for? It isn't out there, Hiccup. It's in here."

He smiled in gratitude, the gesture weak but still heart warming to her. Vega admired his side profile and gently rubbed his cheek with her thumb, the hand no longer over his heart but caressing his face carefully.

"Maybe you just don't see it yet." She whispered lightly, moving in closer and pinching his cheek between her finger and thumb.

Hiccup whined and tried to bat her away playfully, but Vega simply wheezed harder, laughing when he admitted defeat and pain, "Ow! Okay, okay- Vega that hurts!"

   Grinning cheekily, the brunette dove foreword and planted her lips upon his cheek, only to quickly recoil and wipe at them feverishly. She groaned at the dragon spit that trailed from Hiccup's face to her mouth and spat it out, her head turning to glare at the Night Fury that chortled behind them. Vega huffed and stood up to her feet, waving a fist playfully at the dragon as she marched towards it.

"Okay, we can not keep kissing the same guy anymore, Toothless!" She lectured, showing the spit dripping from her palm. The dragon moaned, "Why? Because I've had enough of you and your slobber, it's disgusting."

Vega proceeded to flick the drool at him and cackled when the dragon blinked, taken aback by the attack.

Though the young woman was no longer laughing when Toothless bounded towards her, jumping up and pinning her down underneath him. She groaned dramatically and jabbed a few soft punches at him, Atlas squawking in pure amusement as the sight, and the black dragon growled as he returned the gestures.

"You nasty, dragon!" Vega jokingly scowled as she took another 'punch' to the side. She turned to look at her boyfriend who laughed, "Hiccup! Get this beast off of me!"

He contemplated it for a moment, then shrugged.

"Destroy her, bud."

• • •

    "Destroy her, bud?" Vega mimicked Hiccup's whiny tone and sent him a glare. She continued to pick the pieces of grass and petals from her hair, wiping the dust from her clothing with a huff. "Seriously?"

    "What?" Hiccup snickered, "You're the one who started fighting him, anyway."

The brunette rolled her eyes and kicks her legs as they dangled over the cliff edge, the pair perched on the very end of it, brushing her pants with her hands and watching as the particles of dirt flew off into the wind. Vega let out a sneeze when the fragments tickled her nose and Hiccup put his arm across her chest quickly, preventing his girlfriend from falling down to the misty depths below.

She muttered a thanks, too transfixed on adjusting her sleeves and tightening the knots around her arms that she hadn't even noticed his wide eyes as he looked out into the distance.

"You know-" His words were slow, "-there is something out there, Vega."

Sighing heavily, Vega shook her head and frowned. Had he not listened to what she had said before? About who he was being inside of him, not out in the open and for him to find - did he listen to anything she said, at all? She couldn't help but scowl at the thought. Her motivational speech had been for nothing. Hiccup had been rubbing off on her.

"No, Hiccup. Did you listen to me?" Vega interrogated him as she fastened the last knot and beckoned Atlas over, repeating her words for a second time. "There is nothing out there-"

Her words were cut off as the boy gently grabbed her chin in his hand, lifting her head up to stare in the direction that he was. Hiccup couldn't take his eyes off of the scene, so much so that he hadn't even taken note of the way that Vega squinted past the trees, catching sight of what he had.

The girl frowned at the smoke flowing freely from behind the clouds, wafting into the crisp air and sending it sour. She shuffled closer to the edge and took a good look at it, a real look. Hiccup had been right, there was something out there, even if it hadn't been what she had assumed. And her gut told her that he was going to do something about it, with the way it twisted and squirmed. The brunette turned to look at him with her brow raised, not needed him to have said a word to know how this was going to go. As always, he planned on saving the day.

And somehow, he always did.

"Atlas-" Vega called out to her dragon, "-time to fly."

Hiccup smiled. He bounced off of the ground and met Toothless half way, his blood pumping as he thought about what they would find. Vega rolled her eyes when he began mumbling about the endless possibilities, hopping into the Atlas and patting her head fondly. She squawked.

   It wasn't long before the pair were high in the sky, wings of their dragons skimming the clouds. Vega wondered if the feeling of flying would ever get old; whether she would soon lose the tingles upon her skin, the shivers down her spine, or the air tickling her cheeks. She still felt the same way that she had when riding Toothless for the first time when they were fifteen, way back when she had planned to kill him on the spot, or tell the whole village about him. It was the same feeling that had started to change her mind about dragons, and it was still present today.

    Even at age twenty, Vega would had never forgotten that feeling, or that moment. Neither had Hiccup.

"Stay close." The son of the chief told her, ignoring the way that she pulled a face. He had gotten used to Vega being at his side almost of the time, and with that had come the natural urge to watch out for her. Hiccup knew that she could protect herself easily, and probably everyone else in the group all at the same time, but he felt the need to keep her safe, nonetheless.

As the smoke grew nearer, as did the sheets of ice that froze the water beneath them. Vega frowned, already to question how likely it was that half of the ocean had frozen over in spring, but she had no time before they reached what they had been looking for.

"What happened here?" She spoke lowly, starting at the icicles with wide eyes. Hiccup didn't have an answer.

They had never seen anything like this, before. No one had seen anything like this. Was it possible for an explosion to freeze over? Or, at least, that was what it looked like. It was as though fire had met ice, erupting somewhere in the middle, and she wondered what could have made such a thing. A dragon?

    "Woah-" Hiccup gawped, turning back to look at Vega for a second, before they flew out of the forest and towards the ice structure.

   They flew in and out of the giant icicle, noticing the pieces of wood and debris lodged within it. Atlas let out a moan and Vega patted her head softly, whispering a few words of encouragement as they flew on.

   The two females followed closely behind as Hiccup and Toothless led them on, flying a little faster to catch up with them after Atlas' hesitance. She wasn't sure what had exactly spooked her dragon and caused her to whine, but it seemed that the same thing had happened to Toothless not long after. The Night Fury whined and shook his head, and Hiccup carefully calmed him before he could freak.

    "All right," He cooed his friend, "Easy, bud."

   Vega and Atlas flew a little higher than the pair. The brunette felt uneasy about the situation, a feeling which she rarely listened to, but there was something telling her that this was sketchy. She felt it in her gut.

   And she had been right to.

   She had seen the men abroad the ship long before her boyfriend had. She whispered a shout, "Hiccup!"

   Hiccup barely had time to look back.

    "Fire!"

   Toothless reacted quickly, shooting to the side before the net could have even come close to swiping them. The son of the chief swung his body around and reach out an arm.

    "Vega, look out!" He called, but it had been too late. Atlas hadn't been able to move in time and soon enough, they were both caught up in the net and falling to the ground, the purple dragon squawking as they went.

   Vega gasped as the feeling of air brushed past her face as a violent speed. She slipped from Atlas' saddle despite how hard she has tried to cling on, falling through the hole in the net as they span endlessly on their way to the ship down below. The girl screamed out as she hurtled down, watching her dragon hit the deck with a brutal thud.

    "No- Atlas!" She cried out for the animal, screaming once again when she hit the water with a splash. It wasn't long, however, until Vega was spluttering and choking as she was propelled into the air, her underarms grasped firmly between the claws of a Night Fury. She spat the water out of her mouth and coughed, the salty feeling at the back of her throat making her gag, heaving for air as they flew through the air.

   Looking up at the gummy dragon who looked back down at her, she let out a sigh of relief. "Thanks, Toothless."

    "Are you alright?" Hiccup called down to her and the girl nodded her head. Toothless let out a grunt and his human understood it as telling him that she was alive. He let out a breath and narrowed his eyes, clutching the reigns with determination. "Okay, lets turn is around, show them what we're made of."

   As they soared through the open air, the memorable whistle sang, slicing through the sky with a thwip. They dove down close to the boat, watching how the shipmen looked around them in a mixture of fear and curiosity. It was the whistle of a Night Fury, and they seemed to know that very well. Vega grit her teeth when they flew closer, the way that they gripped and pinned down Atlas made her cheeks warm. She kicked her legs as they readied to land, wanting nothing more than to take out each and every one of them for laying so much as a hand on her dragon.

    "Stop!" Hiccup cried out as they hit the deck, sliding down Toothless' wing as Vega propelled herself forward.

    "Atlas!" She called out. She rushed towards her pet only to be pushed back by an array of men with an array of weapons, guarding the dragon as if it were their own. Vega narrowed her eyes and swiped her sword from her belt, unsheathing the blade as Hiccup lunged in front of her with his inferno ablaze. As she raised her sword in the air, she frowned. "What are you doing?"

    "Back again!" The man holding down Atlas by the horns quipped, catching sight of Toothless. He stood on top of Atlas and the dragon drowned, "Soil my britches. That is a Night Fury."

   Toothless growled in response, his eyes sharp and narrow. Vega couldn't help but relate to how he felt. The sight of this man scaring her dragon made her angry — incredibly angry, the angriest she had been since Hiccup had beat her in Dragon Training five years before.

   Vega hadn't felt that kind of anger, since.

Noticing this, Hiccup calmly pushed a hand out in front of her, ready to both stop her if she threw herself at the man and protect her if anyone came even close to touching her. He knew that Vega could hold her own in a fight, but she had just plummeted into freezing water and was soaked from head to toe. He hadn't even had the chance to check if she was in perfect condition or if there was any damage done, and there was no way in Odin's name that Hiccup was going to allow anymore.

With a huff of annoyance, Vega shook the water from her hair and shivered. The salty sea water had started to seep through her clothes as soon as she had gotten out, and now she was left with nothing but a wet coat and boots to keep her warm. She scowled harder.

"Thought they were all gone for good." The man drawled as he turned to his crew, "Looks like our luck's had a turn for the better, lads!"

He turned back, "Don't think Drago has one of those in his dragon army."

Hiccup and Vega exchanged a worried glance, though the girl only turned back with grip on her sword tighter than ever. Hiccup, however, lowered his arm just a bit as he squinted at the man. Had they heard him right?

"Dragon army?" He echoed, skin paling.

Whatever it was, it didn't sound good.

——