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Viggo thought he was going to die from the arrows he took covering for the Skrill, but Hiccup comes back to pull him out… somehow, and he survives. And that means he intends to keep his promise on helping Hiccup destroy Krogan and Johann for their last betrayal.
The Skrill stays with him. The dragon’s loyalty is… strange.
Something he is well aware he has given no one, and…. not something he has truly gotten in return before either. The dragon has every reason to want to be anywhere but where it is, and yet… it stays.
Just like the Monstrous Nightmare that saved him, and perhaps it wasn’t until the moment that he considered that there is no one left out there who has any reason to ever want him alive again– least of all any dragon, but a dragon is the one who saved him in the end.
It was also after that that he began to consider for the first time, what it meant to be a game piece instead of a player. He’s always been a player… until now. Perhaps that knowledge is what left him considering that everyone he ever knew who he treated as a piece to be disposed of feels the same as he does now. But that is a matter he’ll consider more another time. Right now, his primary focus is revenge on his former allies for their betrayal.
And also… determining how to live amidst the chaos of Dragon’s Edge.
He thought all the dragons roaming wild would be the hard part. He was wrong.
***
“Dragon Fly Four!” Hiccup yells excitedly, leaping off the nearest cliff.
Viggo runs to the edge on pure instinct, entirely expecting to see the boy to have just killed himself for literally no reason, but no, he’s… flying. Actually flying. With wings. And laughing with glee like this is the most normal thing ever.
And instead of diving after his rider, Toothless just sits on the cliff edge, grumbling under his breath.
“Shouldn’t you be jumping after him?” Viggo asks, dubiously.
Toothless grumbles and doesn’t move.
…Very well.
He’ll just stand here too, then.
Hiccup finally calls for Toothless, who jumps down to fly his mentally questionable rider back to the clifftop.
“Have you ever considered what if your wings failed when you were hovering two hundred feet over jagged rocks?” Viggo asks mildly.
“I considered it,” Hiccup shrugs flippantly, “Didn’t sweat about it much. Although since you’re all about copying my inventions lately, are you going to ask for wings next?”
“Absolutely not.”
“Good,” he snips, “Because you’d look really stupid in them. Even if the screaming might be fun.”
“I wouldn’t scream.”
“Sure,” Hiccup sasses, “Anyway, second trial run!” He jumps back off the cliff.
Toothless buries his head in his paws and groans.
He rather seconds that reaction.
***
Fishlegs is acting strange. Usually, he’s gushing over the second Dragon’s Eye that Hiccup somehow built – Viggo still has questions for him about that but Hiccup takes off whenever he starts trying to ask – or gushing over some local fauna or flora or something else of the like. Not prowling around the island like he’s on a hunt or something else equally unclear.
“Fishlegs, are you alright?” Viggo asks finally.
The boy whirls on him, glowering and stepping closer to loom over him as if that could somehow be intimidating. “I will only tell you this once, senile old man, the name is Bonecrusher, Thor Bonecrusher.”
…
“What?”
“I am the answer to your prayers.”
“…What prayers?”
“I love me,” Fishlegs brags, “And I am here to help but I am an anti-hero so stay out of the way of my plans.”
“…Do you even know what ‘anti-hero’ means?”
Meatlug growls and moves in what looks like a clueless shrug meaning I don’t know what’s happening either.
“Of course I do,” Fishlegs answers loftily, already shoving past, “Now stay out of my way, old man.”
…Does Fishlegs have a twin he never heard about, by any chance?
***
“Should you not be at practice?” Viggo asks, when he finally successfully tracks down the last missing member of the dragon riders to a random cliff edge. Snotlout is sitting in the dirt with a bag slung over his shoulder. Hookfang is sitting next to him, looking decidedly grumpy.
“No,” Snotlout says with a miserable huff, “I quit the dragon riders. I will now be a beggar in the streets, all alone and cold, like my dead heart.”
“…oh.”
He waits for Snotlout to expand but he does not, in fact, say another word, resuming staring broodily off into the horizon.
“So… what precisely prompted this decision?” he prompts. The only thing out of the ordinary that happened recently was Spitelout visiting, as far as he knows.
“None of your business,” the boy mutters.
“Hiccup wanted me to find you.”
“I told Hiccup to leave me alone!”
“I believe he needs you at the moment.”
“No, he doesn’t. No one needs me.” Snotlout stubbornly turns away. Hookfang bonks him over the head, and he whips around to glare at him. “Stop it, Hookfang! Get used to sleeping in the dirt!”
Well, evidently the boy needs… some kind of morale boost, and Viggo has never been one to care about offering that to anyone in the past, so he can’t quite say why he doesn’t walk away now.
“Despite how it may seem sometimes, your friends would very deeply notice it if you were gone.”
“Really?” Snotlout sounds doubtful.
“I will admit I have noticed they are often very poor at showing it to you specifically, but yes.”
The boy side eyes him dubiously but doesn’t argue.
“And regardless, it is unwise to try and handle a difficult burden entirely on your own,” he adds, and hopes that helps whatever precisely is going through the boy’s head because he does not know him nearly well enough to know, “There is always strength in numbers. And besides, one extra piece can mean the difference between victory and defeat in Maces and Talons.”
Snotlout rolls his eyes but says nothing.
He has… probably done about all he can, and he does not know how to do emotional conversations, so he just leaves.
And some ten minutes later, Snotlout comes back to the clubhouse.
Apparently he’s their therapist now?
***
“Hey, man!” Tuffnut’s voice yells from right over his head, and Viggo will firmly deny that he jumped – he was maybe slightly startled – but seeing someone dangling upside down from a tree branch right above his head was not quite how he anticipated a walk through the woods as going.
“…Hello.”
Barf and Belch have their own heads dangling over a tree branch nearby, staring down at Viggo with a gaze that feels incredibly judging for reasons he can’t quite understand.
“What’s with all those spikes?” Tuffnut asks, waving vaguely at his shoulder armor pieces.
“For one, they are useful at intimidation,” he offers, “And – ”
“But what if someone wanted to hug you?” Tuffnut asks, “You could stab them!”
“That is hardly my concern.”
“Mean,” the boy says, “But I’d love to do that to Ruff, actually.” He grins evilly. “But anyway, who puts spikes on their belt of all places? Weird style. Cool but really weiiiird.”
“What are you doing up in that tree?” Viggo asks, instead of all the other replies he could give to that question.
“I kissed a frog!” Tuffnut offers brightly.
“…Goodbye. I should be going…”
***
An axe flying over his head in some kind of greeting doesn’t really surprise him – although, he was expecting it to be intentional, not a complete accident.
Astrid is throwing weapons at the nearby trees with single-minded focus in a way that suggests she hardly even notices his presence.
“Finally someone focused on preparation,” he observes.
Astrid plucks another axe off herself – now that he’s come closer, he can actually see a collection that’s something like five knives, a spear, a sword, and a few mores axes jutting out of the tree in front of her. “Kill…”
Very well, he should probably leave before he’s the next target.
Stormfly shrugs at him in a gesture that seems to say don’t ask me, she’s like this a lot.
“Understandable. Have a great day.”
***
For some reason, the rider he’s expecting to find alone in the clubhouse one night by a Maces and Talons board was Hiccup, not Ruffnut.
Finally one of them with an understandable interest?
“Ah, Maces and Talons. May I join?” Viggo asks.
“Can’t,” Ruffnut replies, seriously, “I ate the pieces.”
“Excuse – you what?!”
“I ate the pieces,” she repeats flippantly, shrugging.
…
“Please don’t tell Hiccup,” she adds, giving him a wide watery-eyed pleading look, that still manages to look entirely fake.
Seriously?
“How do you eat well over a dozen large pieces of wood?”
“Why not?” Ruffnut asks, all cheerful again, “They were pretty crunchy. Got a few splinters left in my tongue still. Can’t decide if I should pull them out.”
“…I would not recommend leaving them in. Although, that choice would be entirely up to you.” He may be mildly concerned at the moment.
Though, she doesn’t look bothered at all so maybe said concern is wasted.
“Hmm, maybe,” she shrugs.
“How precisely do you think Hiccup won’t notice that they’re gone?” Viggo asks slowly.
“Hey,” she answers, waving vaguely, “He’s not even one tenth as crazy about that game as you. He probably won’t notice for at least a week and then I’ll just frame Tuff and Snotlout for taking it to their secret clubhouse again. Or you’ll spawn a full new game set out of nowhere just to force Hiccy to play – and seriously mister, you should try out a new life’s addiction, I mean forcing people to play games with you is very parasitic, I thought adults were supposed to be good examples – But anyway! At least this way, Hiccup will never know what happened at all.”
…she is not entirely wrong with that assumption.
How are these the kids who defeated him? He cannot decide if that is more impressive or embarrassing. But at present, he is rather of the belief that all he will be doing in the indefinite future is focusing on keeping them alive, not defeating Johann and Krogan.