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━━ chapter four
a chief protects his own

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     BERK was more than bright and joyful despite the storm brewing across its waters. Vikings went about their day, laughing and chatting. The forge, as always, was filled to the brim with heavy work━a line of eager customers stretched across the whole plaza, right past the steps up the slope to the Great Hall. In the air, those from the race were still milking in their experience, tormenting those on the ground who had to duck and curse after them. The Hangar was bustling with dragons and Vikings━the new and improved Dragon Sanctuary where Valkyrie's family spent most of their day, cleaning stalls, tending to sick and wounded dragons, and everything under the sun. 

     Valkyrie followed Hiccup down to the plaza. She landed amongst the cheers surrounding his arrival, slipping off her saddle to frown at Zephyr. Her husband ignored the greetings and pleasant voices of, "How's it goin', Hiccup?!" to stride right towards his father. Stepping out of the forge, Stoick the Vast was perhaps the happiest to see him of all. 

    With a proud beam through his greying hair, the chief bellowed out a, "Ahah! There he is! The pride of Berk!"

     "You okay, boy?" Valkyrie meanwhile murmured to her dragon, running her hand down his snout. He nuzzled against it to reassure her and she hugged him, just relieved he was okay out of all of this. She would worry about a Dragon Army and Eret son of Eret's words later (and this strange Drago Bludvist). Right now, Val was happy her dearest friend was okay. 

     In seeing them arrive, Hott and Asrifth made their way over. Both boys were holding barrels of fish to take down to the Hangar. Valkyrie arched a brow at the sheer amount in Hott's. He was straining under the weight as he made his way over, but as Astrid looked over and gasped in seeing Valkyrie back, he quickly fixed his stance and held it up better, face red with determination.

     Asrifth shook his head, annoyed at his younger brother.

     Valkyrie sighed, "Hott," she stressed, placing a hand on his shoulder before Astrid got here. "You're not going to get anywhere if you don't be yourself."

     He stared at her as if she had just committed blasphemy. With a hoarse voice in his strain, he grunted, "Easy for you to say. The love of your life liked you beforehand. Astrid doesn't see me as anything but your idiot younger brother."

     Asrifth thought about this, "Well," he said as she arrived, "you are an idiot."

     Hott shot Asrifth a sharp glare. 

     Astrid frowned at the brothers, and Hott put on his best smile. She scoffed, shaking her head and tugged Valkyrie away from them. As soon as she couldn't see, Hott dropped the barrel of fish at Spikemoth's feet with a relieved sigh. His dragon and Asrifth both laughed at him. 

     Valkyrie didn't know what to do if she was to be honest. She loved the idea of her brother and her best friend, but she also knew that Astrid was so sick of boys trying to impress her and fight for her. Hott was doing nothing except deter her even more. And Valkyrie didn't want to force her friend to like someone she didn't. But she also didn't want her younger brother to be disappointed. 

     But that seemed like such a small problem in comparison to the one she and Hiccup had just learnt about. 

     Astrid suddenly smirked at Val as they neared the forge where Hiccup was trying to get his father's attention, scurrying after him amongst the lamps and low-hanging tools. "You guys were gone for a long time," she said slyly.

     Val arched a brow at her, having a feeling she knew exactly where this was going. 

     Her best friend gave her a knowing nudge and whispered, "Should we expect any babes running around or━?"

     Valkyrie elbowed her in the gut and Astrid laughed, "Shut up," she said in a hushed, angry tone. "Say that any louder and Stoick will go off again━I want grandbabies!" she mocked his voice━the same sentence he had shouted in the Great Hall without thought not long ago. Valkyrie remembered Hiccup face-palming right into the wood of the table, and Val had never been more flushed and embarrassed. The entire village heard, and now it's all they wanted. While Astrid and the others had found it hilarious and loved to tease them about it (especially Snotlout and the Twins), Valkyrie was quite nervous on the factor. Yes, it was in their future, definitely━especially now that Hiccup was going to be chief quicker than she thought. But was Valkyrie even ready for a kid? Was Hiccup ready? And especially with this new threat on the rise? Gods, she was getting nervous and flustered even thinking about it. 

    Sensing her worry, Astrid's laughter fell away and she placed a hand on her arm, "I don't think you need to worry about it, Val. You'll be a great mother one day, trust me."

    Valkyrie appreciated it. She really did. But she didn't want to talk about it━not here, not now. So, she turned the conversation around and lied swiftly through her tongue, "That's not what I'm worried about."

     Astrid recognised the frown on her face. She absent-mindedly tightened her grip on her axe, "What happened?"

     Valkyrie nodded towards Hiccup for the answers and they caught up, listening to the chief and his son go back and forth. So far, Hiccup was still having no luck in gathering his father's attention. 

     She was sure she hadn't missed out on much. Passing Gobber, the two friends ducked into the workshop, hearing the Chief say: "Now, lesson one: a chief's first duty is to his people!" Hiccup hung up his apron that had been thrown at him, trying to see over his father's meaty shoulders as he stopped at the trading doors. The line of customers were relieved to finally be acknowledged. 

     Racing days always brought an abudance of customers to the forge.

     "So!" Stoick grabbed a number from the wooden chips hanging beside him. They were hand-painted using pigment from Toothless's scales━a discovery to which made paint fireproof! Valkyrie has seen more workings around these scales in Hiccup's workshop, been measured for a few things━she was very excited to see the outcome. "Fory-one!"

     Hiccup wrung his hands a little, shuffling right to the side to peer up at his dad, "Well, can we just talk in private for━"

     "Forty-one!"

     He sighed, frustrated. 

     "Oooh! That's me! I'm next━hey! I was ahead of you!"

     Starkard shoved his way to the front of the crowded line, his helmet loose on his fair-head. Reaching the trading doors, he took a deep breath, like he had just run a mile━well, to be fair, pushing past a lot of grown, angry Vikings was quite the daily workout. 

     Hiccup wedged himself in between the wet stone and his father, "If we could just talk━"

     "Excuse me," Starkard parried around Valkyrie's youngest two brothers━Mak and Erik who, as always, came to witness chaos at its finest. She frowned at them, knowing full well they were supposed to be at the Sanctuary this time of day. They were teenagers, now, and had shot up taller than Valkryie. Quite soon, she has become the shortest of all her siblings, and she was quite tall herself. Of course, while most people believed the boys to be twins, Mak was actually older, now standing a young man's age of sixteen. But he was smaller than his younger brother, Erik, who━looking more and more like their mother every day━was now fourteen (Valkyrie still had trouble believing it. But then again, she was married, and twenty ... so). "I've been here all day!"

     Starkard clapped his hands on the wood of the doors, excited to finally get to his turn, "Okay, okay. I want one of those high seaters, with lots of spikes and a big storage compartment!"

     The chief nodded, "Absolutely!" he said. "You got it, sir."

     As he turned, Hiccup had to quickly scurry out of the way, "Uh━dad━" he hunched up when he was brought into Stoick's side, led towards the saddle mould, "━this is actually a little more important than building saddles━"

     "Ah━uh━ah!" Stoick waved a finger. Hiccup went blank-faced, annoyed. "Lesson two: no task is too small when it comes to serving your people━"

     "━but, Dad━"

    "━Oh!" Stoick almost tripped, stumbling around Grump who snored in the centre of the forge. Grump was Gobber's Hotburple, in which Valkyrie often worried whether he was still alive sometimes, considering all he did was sleep. "Excuse us, Grump! Ah!" he grinned at Val in passing, "Good afternoon Valkyrie, Astrid!"

      Valkyrie and Astrid put on their best smiles. But as Hiccup passed, they both dropped them to give shrugs at his exasperated glance. 

     "Dad," stressed Hiccup, shuffling around the snoring dragon, "can we just talk━"

     "Argh!" Gobber realised his dragon was sleeping, and threw up his hands in fury. "Grump!"

     The dragon was startled awake, watching his rider storm up to him with a shake of his hook, "You let the forge die down again!"

     Grump moaned in annoyance, shuffling along the ground since he was far too lazy to get up onto his own feet. With a heave, he spewed out a spray of molten lava towards the forge━and it went nearly everywhere.

     Valkyrie yelped, ducking away with Astrid to avoid flying embers. Val scurried towards Hiccup, glancing back with wide eyes at the water gushing down from the buckets above, dousing the fire in seconds. Astrid followed, jumping over cooling lava. 

     Grump just went back to sleep, satisfied.

    "That's it, Grump!" exploded Gobber behind them. "You're going up for adoption!"

     Continuing on through the forge, Stoick swiped up a small box of tools, gathering a few more here and there to drop in and pass off to his son, who clutched onto it, still trying to grab his attention. "Yeah, but seriously━" Hiccup picked up a few he forgot, "━I really need to tell you about this new land we came across."

     "Another one?" exclaimed Gobber in disbelief, unclasping his tool off his stump and stopping by his shelf of many others to pick out a new one. 

     Hearing the conversation in passing, Fishlegs━out of nowhere━poked his head in and nearly scared Valkyrie half to death with his grin and gasp of, "Any new dragons?!"

     The others had joined as well. They most definitely heard their arrival, and came over immediately. Valkyrie wasn't sure whether it was to annoy them for taking so long, or to gloat about today's race, or to just spend time, but their interest was piqued either way by the conversation they stepped into.

    "We didn't exactly stick around to find out," added Valkyrie, grabbing a leather skin to help out. She carried it into the next workshop and flung it over the saddle mould. Stepping away, she rested against it with a cross of her arms. Stoick cranked the lever to shape the mould into what they needed. "These guys━" she met Hiccup's gaze as he set the tools down beside her, "━weren't the friendliest."

    "Oh, really?" Gobber's sarcasm made her arch a brow. He gave his shelves a roll, searching for the tool he wanted. "Your Windstriker and Night Fury didn't bring them cheering to the rooftops?"

     "No, this was different," Valkyrie's husband picked up a rough charcoal and sketched out the lining of the saddle. "Not the standard run-for-the-hills hoo-ha I've come to enjoy━" Val frowned at his choice of words. "These guys were trappers," he chucked the pencil back into the box, turning to face Gobber gravely. "Dragon trappers."

     The group of Dragon Riders who had come to listen in their curiosity all gasped, sharing uneasy looks. Hott crossed his arms, the stoic-square-shouldered-Viking look he had been trying to achieve previously for Astrid falling away as he started to take in the severity of the situation.

     "You should have seen their fort," added Valkyrie, stepping in next to her husband. He nodded at her. "All blown apart and suck in giant spikes of ice ... it was weird."

     "I've never seen anything like it," said Hiccup, meeting her gaze briefly. "A━and worst of all, they thought we did it!"

     "You know," began Gobber, swiping up his iron visor and finding the tool he wanted. He picked up the brush and twisted it into his stump, "you two are gonna get yourselves in serious trouble one of these days." He brushed away the ash from his beard and brow. "Not everyone appreciates this way of life."

     Hiccup sent him an unamused look.

    "Aye, Gobber's right, son," Stoick pulled down the leather and carried it off to the saw. "Best we keep to our own. Besides," he slipped it under the blade, bouncing his brows knowingly at his son. Hiccup set his jaw, "you'll have more important uses for your time! Eh?" He tugged the lever down and the saw began to cut through the leather on its own. "Once we make the big announcement!"

     Hiccup marched over and pushed the lever back into place. The saw stopped. "They are building a dragon army," he stated, loud and clear to his father. The Chief faltered━his attention had finally been grabbed.

     The Dragon Riders grew more uneasy. Snotlout scratched at his chin, frowning at Fishlegs━they were all thinking the same thing. Flyers, Dragon Hunters. Their past at Dragons Edge might just finally be catching up to them. Valkyrie sighed, pushing through them to reach Hiccup and Stoick, her stomach twisting. This was something bigger than what they faced there━she could just tell. And if it was bigger, gods help them all. 

     "Or━or at least the guy they work for is," went on Hiccup in the eery silence that followed. Even those outside, going about their day who had heard his words faltered, glancing around. Mrs Ack clutched her baby Gronckle tighter to her chest. "Uh ... Dargo ... Bloody Fist ... or something."

     Valkyrie saw the Chief's eyes widen and his cheeks grow pale. Her brows furrowed, startled at the fear she could see flicker within him, making their mighty Chief falter for a second and turn to Gobber, unsure. The two shared a silent exchange that only made Valkyrie's nerves worse.

      Not liking the silence, Tuffnut spoke up, "I'll bloody his fist with my face━!" he pointed an angry finger to his eye, "━if he tries to take my dragon!"

     "Or mine!" stepped forward Ruffnut bravely. Snotlout and Fishlegs sighed dreamily at her actions, and she was disgusted, but Valkyrie didn't focus on them. She tried to read the faces of Stoick and Gobber━the frowns, the no, it couldn't be, after all these years? that made their faces drop a little in shock (or was it horror?).

     Suddenly, Stoick took Hiccup by the shoulders and gave him an urgent shake. "Bludvist?" his voice was barely louder than a whisper. Valkyrie glanced between them, feeling her heart begin to rise in its tempo. "Drago Bludvist?"

     Hiccup arched a brow, taken aback, "Uh, yeah━wait ..." he frowned, as if it all just finally dawned on him, "... you know him?"

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      a/n: *sobs in httyd2*

     also, did i forshadow in this chapter? maybe. who knows ... hehe

     ps: any domestic headcannons for the newley weds? i wanna hear what you guys can think of!