HTTYD: Daughter Of The Armada

Chapter 1

Only a few days had passed since that fateful raid that would remain fresh in the minds of those who lived on Berk, Stoick was left worse off than any one else, with Valka gone, he was left to now run the island alone, rejecting most of the help he was offered, as well as care for his daughter, who he knew was only regarded as anything other than a liability due to his position and out of respect for Valka, he knew that the difficulties when she was born as well as how she would now be raised without a mother would undeniably leave her in a position below others her age as she grows up, she looked to be constantly on the verge of death still yet she still appeared to be in slightly better health than she was the night she was robbed of her mother.

Stoick looked out to the calm waves of the ocean lit by the moonlight, lost deep in thought about what he was doing, holding Hicca tightly in his arms as the sleeping baby's head was showered with the tears that ran freely down Stoick's face, in the short time since Valka was taken he had surrounded himself with his work alone and tried to avoid all things that reminded him of his wife, her being taken becoming the only thing that he was still sensitive to the point that he would wake up whenever he fell asleep, hearing her scream out for help every single time, and, unfortunately for Hicca, Stoick often found that simply being around his daughter was enough to send memories of him caring for her with his wife who was now presumed to be dead,

"Come on Stoick, don't think about her, you know she's dead," He mumbled to himself as his glance returned from his thoughts and turned to a small boat that was moored by where he was stood, the sails stripped of any insignia that would mark it to have come from Berk, "This is for the best, for her and you, she might actually get the life she deserves instead of being a runt to everyone but her dead mother and absent dad, maybe she'll find someone who'll be there for her, either that or she gets spared all of this and gets to join Valka in Valhalla, either option's better for her than staying here to become nothing." He sighed as he climbed aboard the small boat and lay Hicca down in a cosy nest of blankets and kissed his sleeping daughter on the forehead, making her smile in her sleep and start to move slightly, only to settle back down a few seconds later, as Stoick pulled out a little note and read it one last time before slipping it next to the peaceful baby and pulling a cover slightly over her to act as a cover against the weather. Stoick stepped off of the boat again, tears now freely flowing down his face, "I'm sorry Hicca, I wish there was another way," Stoick, the chief renowned for his fearlessness and for nothing having got through to him until recently, whimpered as he let the boat out, sending it sailing away in the path of the moonlight.

It wasn't until the next day that people started noticing something was wrong from the absence of Hicca occasionally crying out in the night or from the rare times that he would bring Hicca to work with him, and when they did find out there was a general sense of disbelief that he would do such a thing to his own daughter,

"What would Valka say?" echoed through his head, the question he had been asked so many times by so many people, some of which he didn't doubt saw Hiccup as a runt but chose to hide it out of respect,

"I'm sorry Valka," he murmured under his breath as his mind started asking himself why he cast his own daughter off like she was nothing.

As the sun rose over the ocean water, Hicca lay crying in the boat, alone and afraid, alerting her surroundings of her presence,

"Drago, Drago the men found something, it's a small boat without any insignia but the men are saying they can hear what sounds like a baby crying coming from it," a man with a tattoo on his chin panted as he ran into a room belonging to the man named Drago,

"Eret, did you just say there's a baby crying on a boat that looks like it's come out of nowhere? I need to see this," Drago responded quickly in disbelief as he followed that man with the tattoo on his chin, named Eret, along to the coastline of the island that his armada had landed on to make camp for a little while. When they approached the boat, Drago was suddenly in shock, he knew what he had been told but he hadn't expected to find anything, after a brief moment, Drago snapped out of his trance and started slowly approaching the boat and pulled it further along the sand until it was definitely beached before hopping aboard and carefully pacing towards the crying baby. As she stared to kick, she knocked a note that had been left with her which Drago quickly picks up,

"My name's Hicca Haddock, I'm from Berk but my mother died and my dad, the chief, can't take care of me because I'm a runt. Will you please look after me?" Drago read the note aloud so Eret, and the few other people gathered around could hear why what the note said, "I'll take her in as my daughter, Hicca Bludvist," he declared, looking down at the baby girl who had since stopped crying and looked up to him with curiosity behind her eyes and he returned the gaze with a small smile.