This is where I belong ||httyd fanfic||

65. Vengence or Trust

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Once again, Hiccup found himself in a dark place, caged with his past in front of him and his future locked behind a barred door.

Yet he could not bring himself to stare into the face of Snotlout, likely fueling the smug smirk Hiccup instinctually knew was there. He could only stare at the shadows of his feet quivering in the torchlight, clenching his fists, and not giving bullies the satisfaction of a weakling's tears. It was his fault, just like always. Hiccup the Useless was always to blame. The reason it was too cold, the reason kids cried and went hungry, the reason the sun did not shine bright enough. Loki's little prank on a tribe looking for a bright future.

He brushed his face with strength to peel skin. They made it so easy to deny who he was.

Hiccup flinched at Snotlout's yelp and the slam on the ground. Looking up, he saw his chief tormenter on the ground and the chief of Berk, staring him in the face. Once again, he stared at his son as if ready to console a crying child.

"Son, let us make up for this. Let us help you." Stoick gripped the bars as if trying to bend them apart, staring at him all the while. "I've broken what little trust you had left in me, and I see that. Let me, let us, try to fix this."

The dragon chief blinked. "How stupid do you think I am?... Actually, you know what? Don't answer that."

"I am not lying to you son. I know you can't understand that, but- "

"But nothing!" Hiccup lashed out. "How many times are you going to run this 'broken father' routine? It is getting seriously old!"

"Call it a routine all you want. It's the truth." Stoick's grip lessened on the bars. "A father can wrong their child too easily in this world, but he can make it right as well. That is all I am asking of you, a chance to make it right..."

Stoick the Vast was stubborn, there was nary a soul in the Barbaric Archipelago who denied that. But the younger screw-up that he was would look to him and know he didn't tell lies. Hiccup scoffed, but still weakened his glare. His hand raised to his father's aged grip like a forlorn child. Maybe he was just a glutton for punishment.

The door slammed open behind him. Out of the light of day came his wife, mother, and father-in-law as if to pull him back from this dark temptation. Each one glared at Stoick and the Hooligans with blazes of anger to relight his own.

"Stoick, after all our years of friendship, you do something like this." Harold yelled. "This is betrayal!"

"You're one to talk, after all of this!" Stoick yelled back in his familiar style.

"All of this!? In all the time you've set foot on my island, you've done nothing but threaten my family and my people! You and your sorry bunch of backstabbing, underhanded cowardly Hooligans!"

And at once, the Stoick of old came flaring back to modern day. He shook the bars and reached through to either strike or strangle Harold. The man surely saw nothing but red and his arms veined with that fabled strength of popping off a dragon's head as an infant. Hiccup blinked, seeing more of an animal than the dragons he despised.

He felt someone's hands cupping his face only to see Syn. "Hiccup you can't listen to them! Think of everything they tried to do to us, to our family, to our people! These people don't have a shred of love and empathy in them!"