Chapter Text
It wasn’t until the age of 18 that Dagur felt his soulmate’s pain. He’d been wondering when he would feel it, honestly, and so was almost relieved when he fell to the floor screaming for no visibly apparent reason.
He’d waited and waited at the age of 15 to feel it: that first sense of pain that wasn’t his. Days, weeks, months, then a whole year had passed, and there had been no pain that didn’t belong solely to him. He wondered if anyone else out there was feeling his, and the connection was broken somehow, so he wasn’t feeling theirs.
Dagur had tested that theory once. He’d literally gathered every other 15 year old on Berserker Island, and had caused a panic when he’d drawn a knife. Though, the panic hadn’t lasted when they’d realized he wasn’t going to use it on any of them.
He’d cut his arm and watched. Some had winced in sympathy, but not actual pain, as blood trickled down his arm and onto the floor. Not a single one of them was feeling his pain.
So that either meant that his soulmate wasn’t actually a fellow Berserker, or that it was someone a few years younger than him.
He had to try a different tactic. Teens on Berserker Island now grew frightened whenever their 15th birthday approached, as they would receive a special visit from Dagur. Well, less like a visit, more like a beating. His father would always try to stop him, but you very well couldn’t keep your son locked away every time someone’s birthday came around. (Besides, Oswald had tried that once, and Dagur had merely found his way out through the window. His broken ankle from jumping from the second story hadn’t stopped him either.)
At the age of 17, Dagur had given up. His soulmate wasn’t here. He didn’t have one. He had been so assured he didn’t have one that when he felt the pain that wasn’t his, he was shocked. He was glad too, but shocked nonetheless.
Part of that shock came from just how bad the pain was. One minute Dagur had been walking towards his front door, meaning to go to the training arena to throw some knives, and the next he was on the floor screaming . It felt like his left leg below the knee was being engulfed in flame.
No one was there to help him, and they couldn’t have helped much even if they wanted to. Oswald was preparing for a voyage across the seas, and Dagur had no living siblings. He’d been alone in the house.
Dagur tried stifling his screams, tried sitting up, but he found himself instead curling into a fetal position and sobbing. He gripped at his left leg that was being invisibly mangled by fire.
What stopped him screaming was the thought that he’d found his soulmate. Well, in a way. He didn’t know who it was still, but gods, he actually had one.
“Th-thank you, Freya!” Dagur shouted out. They were the only words he could muster before he was sucked into a seemingly endless black.
Dagur came to in his bed with a cool, wet cloth on his forehead. The pain in his leg had not ceased—merely changed. Instead of fire, there was a horrible, sawing pain just below the knee, a pain that went straight through bone.
“Dad?” His voice was hoarse from screaming.
“I’m here, son.” Oswald took his hand, and Dagur was too out of it to throw it off. Besides, Oswald was a rather big man, and Dagur was too weak to do it even if he wanted. His hair and beard were black, his eyes the same striking green as Dagur’s. Though, their noses were very different. Dagur had gotten the red hair and hooked nose from his mother, who had died birthing his now-gone sister.
Opening his eyes showed that he was in his bedroom. Someone had carried him there after finding him unconscious.
“I thought… you were leaving.” Dagur was trying to make sense of everything, but it was hard to think with the agony in his left leg. It was like it was jabbing into his brain, splintering his thoughts into nothing.
“Well, I came to say goodbye and found you on the floor,” Oswald explained. “I couldn’t very well leave with my son falling ill.”
“I’m not sick, dad.” Dagur’s words were choked. He sat up, pulled the cloth off his forehead. Part of the cloth was hot, as if his skin was burning up. It very well could be. “I have a soulmate.”
Oswald looked perplexed. Then he sighed, shook his head. It made Dagur begin to feel a simmering rage, one that he always felt when the topic of soulmates was brought up. Was he now not believing him?
“Dad, I-I’m serious.”
“Where are you feeling your pain?”
“Left leg,” Dagur got out.
Oswald was quick to throw off the blankets and take a look at Dagur’s left leg. He was pulling off his boot, rolling up his pants, examining it. Dagur grit his teeth, but whimpered anyway. The pain wasn’t leaving. He wondered if it ever would, given how bad it was. What was happening to his soulmate?!
“Not a mark on you,” he said.
“I know that!” Dagur shouted. “I told you! It’s my soulmate!”
Oswald put Dagur’s clothes back into place and nodded. He seemed to believe him, now that his quick examination had shown nothing out of the ordinary.
Dagur suddenly clutched at his leg and screamed. That sawing pain had become worse, so much worse. Red burst behind his closed eyelids, his voice reaching a pitch he was rather embarrassed of. He felt his father’s hand on his shoulder, and was too consumed by pain to shake it off. He didn’t need his father’s affection. He didn’t want it.
Dagur collapsed onto his bed, rolling, writhing, digging his nails into his leg as if that would somehow help the anguish to stop. He heard Oswald calling his name, but it didn’t matter. His soulmate was suffering beyond comprehension, and he still had no idea who it was.
Dagur wavered in and out of consciousness as the pain just continued. He’d never felt anything like this before, and his body and mind were not built to comprehend something so terrible.
He was pummeled back into darkness.
Dagur woke with a flask to his lips. He tried to struggle, but was too weak to do so, and so drank whatever he was being given. He looked through half-lidded eyes to see the sage there over him, as well as his father.
Well, that explains why this concoction tastes so bad.
The sage was an older man named Eirik. He and Oswald stood over Dagur, looking on expectantly.
“What?” Dagur croaked out. “Leave me be!”
“This potion will help ease the pain,” Eirik explained, pulling away to give Dagur some space.
“B-but it’s not my pain!”
Eirik nodded wisely. “I know, but there are ways to ease the pain from your soulmate.”
Eirik was right. Dagur could already feel it working. The pain in his leg was subsiding. He sat up, rubbed at his face.
“So… how do I find my soulmate?” Dagur asked. “What if… what if they’re dying?”
Eirik and Oswald looked between each other. Oswald knew the pain of a dying soulmate all too well. It felt, quite literally, like getting one’s heart ripped out.
“Dagur…” Oswald put his hand on his shoulder, and this time, he didn’t want to shake it off. Concern was wearing on him, even as the pain lessened.
“The potion cannot stop the pain of a soulmate’s death,” Eirik said like he was telling Dagur of his doom. He might as well have been.
“Oh,” Dagur said.
And that was that. Eirik gave a wistful smile, and then was leaving, closing the door behind him.
“Are you… still going on your voyage?” Dagur asked Oswald as his hand slid off his shoulder. He suddenly felt scared. Very scared. He hated it. He was 18! A man for 2 years now! He shouldn’t be scared of anything!
“I must, Dagur,” Oswald said, dipping his head. “I’m sorry.”
Dagur clenched his jaw, his lip trembling. Gods, there was an ache in his throat like one got before crying.
“Just go,” Dagur said, blinking back tears.
“Dagur?”
“I said go!” Dagur was angry now, angry that Oswald would possibly leave him while he was going through this. How could he? How could he?! He didn’t care about him. Maybe he never had.
“If you’re leaving me like this, you might as well die out there!”
Oswald and Dagur just stared at each other, Oswald gaping.
Dagur opened his mouth to say something, maybe to apologize. He realized that had escalated quickly, but it was him they were dealing with.
“Silence your tongue,” Oswald growled, suddenly taking on the mantle of a chief rather than that of a concerned father. “You will be leader while I am gone, and you must control your temper.”
“Dad—!”
“Silence!”
Dagur clamped his mouth shut with an audible click.
“I am leaving, and you will have a proper apology for me when I return.”
With those words, Oswald left the room, the door slamming shut behind him. Dagur almost expected to hear it lock so that he’d be trapped inside.
It didn’t lock. Dagur was free to do as he wished.
And yet, he didn’t move.
Dagur stood at the prow of the ship. Well, leaned, more like it. His soulmate’s pain was acting up today, creating an aching in his left leg in a spot just below his knee. That pain had never left like he’d thought it would. Instead, months later, it was still here. Still here, just… different.
Dagur had to find out who his soulmate was. Maybe this treaty renewal with Berk would help him. He’d scoured Berserker Island high and far, and had not found a single person with the kind of injury that would be indicative of this pain.
So maybe his soulmate was farther away, somewhere like Berk.
Dagur didn’t want to go to Berk really, but he’d taken on the full duties of chief now that his father had disappeared on his voyage, never returning home from the tumultuous, dragon-ridden seas.
Sometimes, Dagur was glad that he’d never returned.
Other times, he felt guilt so strong he wondered if his soulmate could feel that pain. His last words to him…
Dagur shook himself from his thoughts and looked on ahead. Berk was looming closer. He straightened, not wanting to seem weak in front of his inferiors.
And there were a lot of them around. Dagur had decided to take the entire armada as a show of strength if Berk decided to break the treaty or not wish to renew it. Was it an unnecessary show of force? Absolutely. Did it make Dagur feel better about the situation? Definitely.
“Captain Vorg, blow the horn,” Dagur ordered. The lookouts had seen them coming from miles away, as it was a clear day, but the horn was customary to announce their presence.
Captain Vorg nodded, drew the horn from his belt, and blew out a long, loud, clear note.
Berk’s own horns answered, much louder. It made Dagur flinch a little, but he clenched his jaw tight to not show any sign of fear.
Because there was fear going into this. He had to show himself as someone strong and worthy, show himself as someone deserving of respect. If he messed that all up in front of Stoick the Vast…
But he wouldn’t. He would make sure of it.
Dagur wondered if Hiccup would still be the same scrawny boy he’d liked to terrorize. He hadn’t been to Berk in a long while, and maybe he’d grown in that time.
Or maybe he’d just stayed the same, defenseless, scrawny boy who was too easy of a target to throw a knife at. Or try to drown in the river. Or to—
His thoughts were interrupted as the boat jolted into the docks. The pain in his leg was getting worse, as if something was happening to his soulmate, or as if his soulmate was using the injured leg. They really were having a terrible day with it. Hopefully Dagur would be able to grit his teeth and get through this.
Coming down from the gangplank after much of his titles were announced, Dagur saw Hiccup standing next to Stoick. He was still about the same height he remembered him being, looking small as ever beside the nearly 7 foot tall man. Dagur felt self-conscious about his own height around Stoick as well.
He gave Hiccup a once-over, and tried his absolute best not to gape. The boy was missing a good portion of his left leg. How had that happened?
Dagur spoke to Stoick, trying to ignore Hiccup as much as he could, but there was something nagging at his mind that wouldn’t let him ignore him.
He found the time to really take in Hiccup’s prosthetic leg and the injured limb itself while they were walking to the Mead Hall. With every step the pain in his leg pounded .
And then it all clicked into place.
Dagur was staring right at his soulmate: Hiccup Horrendous Haddock III.