Chapter Text
This is Berk.
Twelve days North of Hopeless, a few degrees South of Freezing to Death, and planted firmly on the Meridian of Misery. A Viking village of stone and timber, perched on a cliffside where the sea crashes against the rocks below.
It has stood for seven generations under the Haddock name.
Chief Stoick The Vast, is the mythic and mighty Chieftain of Berk—A great, shaggy mountain of a man whose conquests have become the stuff of Viking legend.
He was a respected and fair Chieftain to the people of Berk—his motto: The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few.
But that was before, because now, for the first time, a Hofferson will rule as Chief of Berk.
Anstred Hofferson, one of Berk’s smartest and toughest Vikings, had been named heir after the Chief’s daughter vanished the night before her Dragon Training graduation.
— — —
The night sky was alive with stars, each blinking down on the quiet of the Hooligan Village, the winds shifted, blowing the leaves and rattling the windows of the huts.
Perched on one of the hills of the island, stood the Haddock house, where the Chief and his daughter lived. The hearth inside was burning brightly as Stoick moved the embers around.
The stairs creaked behind him, causing him to turn, his face lighting up as he saw his daughter standing on the third step, her face pulled tight as she fidgeted with her hands.
“Hicca! There you are!”
“Hi…Dad? Uh…I have to talk to you…” Hicca moved down the stairs, her shoulders hunching in as she looked at her father. Stoick’s brows furrow as he sets the poker down, nodding to his daughter.
Hicca swallows, her eyes flickering like the hearth towards the front and back doors before they fall back on Stoick, her hands wringing together. “I-I’ve decided I don’t want t-to fight dragons!”
Stoick blinks, his brows furrowed as he took in his daughter, confusion bubbling in his chest.
“What?.”
Hicca swallows, stepping back slightly as her eyes drop to the floor, unable to look Stoick in the eyes. “I don’t want to fight dragons, dad…I- I don’t want to do the test…” Hicca glanced up at Stoick, holding her breath, pleading he listens to her for once.
The air between the two grew tense, the only sound being the flicks of the fire before a loud, booming laugh shook the walls. Hicca flinched back, her eyes fluttering with tears as Stoick full bellied laughed at her.
“You don’t want to fight dragons—Haha, that was a good one lassy. You’re just nervous Hicca, that’s all.” Stoick turned, moving to reach for the fire poker, not hearing the sound of Hicca’s sharp breath.
“NO!”
Hicca’s voice echoed through the house, shocking not only herself but Stoick as well. She’d never raised her voice like that, ever, especially not at him, not at her father.
Stoick turned, his eyes narrowed as they locked on Hicca, the girl gulping as she took a step back, her hands shaking as her father glares at her, she can see the vein on his head starting to throb.
“Excuse—” “I don’t want to fight dragons dad. Rephrase: I can’t kill dragons.” Stoick stared at his daughter, his eyes hard as he heard the words she’s speaking, his anger bubbling in his stomach as he spoke.
“But you will kill dragons. We made a deal, Hicca. You carry that axe, you carry all of us—” “Dad please! I can’t kill a dragon, they-they’re not monsters, they're kind amazing creatures—”
“AMAZING CRE— They’ve killed hundreds of us!” “And we’ve killed thousands of them! They defend themselves that's all— “ Stoick slammed his fist down on the table, silencing Hicca with a yelp.
“Defend themselves? DEFEND THEMSELVES!? THEY TOOK YOUR MOTHER! HOW IS THAT DEFENDING THEMSELVES?!”
Hicca stared at her father, her eyes wide with shock and sadness as the man turned, his hands clenching and unclenching as he paced.
“No. enough of this nonsense. We made a deal, and you will keep your end of it Hicca. Tomorrow you will be at that arena and you will kill that dragon or Odin help me.”
Stoick shook his head, growling under his breath. Hicca shook her head, panic rising in her chest as Stoick turned. “No! No. Dad, no! Dad please! Please for once in your life, would you please just listen to me! I can’t kill a dragon! I WON'T!.”
Stoick stared at his daughter, his eyes stinging as he took her in, seeing every ounce of Valka pleading back at him. Stoick’s shoulders sagged in realization, shaking his head as he headed for the door.
“I should have known. I should have seen the signs.”
Hicca let out a sob. “Dad! Please—”
“You’ve thrown your lot in with them. You’re not a viking. You’re not my daughter.”
Hicca froze, watching as the door slammed shut behind Stoick, ending the conversation. Hicca blinked furiously, trying to hold back the tears that were pushing against her eyelids before one slid down her cheek and she bolted out the back door of the Haddock house and headed for the woods.
— — —
Anstred remembers the next morning. So does the rest of Berk.
It had been a moment in history that Berk wouldn’t be able to forget.
They had been ecstatic for Hicca’s test. None of them had ever imagined that the Village runt would be the one to kill the Monstrous Nightmare.
They’d seen enough of her failed plans, disaster inventions, and trouble she caused when Berk couldn’t afford more trouble.
She wasn’t a Viking, not like her father, or Anstred. She had always been too skinny, too weak, too…smart for her own good.
They had been proud of her.
Finally!
After all those years of being the worst Viking Berk had ever seen, Hicca Horrendous Haddock III was on her way to becoming a True Viking Warrior.
Until Gobber went to set up the arena— and found every stable door hanging open.
Not a single dragon left.
Not even the damned Terrible Terror.
Stoick had immediately moved to the Haddock house, his face hard with a glare as Gobber hurried behind him, muttering to him as he tried to get through the other man's anger.
Anstred remembers watching from his hut as Stoick stormed inside the house, yelling out Hicca’s name. When the Chief had stepped outside the house, holding Hicca’s helmet and a haunted look on his face, Anstred felt his heart seize.
The entirety of the Village had searched for days, calling her name down by the shores and through the thick of the woods, to the depths of the caves on Berk.
They didn’t find her.
No sign.
No Body.
Nothing.
The village runt had finally gotten a chance to prove herself—
And now she’s gone.
———
Due to her…absence,
Anstred became Berk’s Heir for the future generations.
Time has a way of eroding hope, wearing it down like the cliffs against the endless assault of the sea.
The first year after Hicca’s…disappearance, few spoke her name— not many had spoken it before, mostly out of anger and annoyance. Now it was out of pity, shame and sorrow.
Whispers of maybe she’ll return clung to Berk like the mist rolling in from the ocean, but as the months stretched into a year and beyond, those whispers faded.
People no longer watched the horizon. No longer searched the sky for a miraculous return.
They began to accept what no one dared say aloud: Hicca Horrendous Haddock III was Dead.
Some said she released the dragons from the stables and was taken with them— Just like her mother had been, plucked from the earth by beasts, never to be seen again.
Others believed she had simply run, fled from a life she never fit into, only to be consumed by a world she was too weak to survive in.
Regardless of the story, the ending was the same.
For two years, Berk had waited. For two years, Stoick had waited.
And it was killing him.
The weight of loss had hallowed him, grayed him, aged him beyond his years. His once-mighting frame moved slower, the fire in his eyes dimming. Losing Valka had been a wound; losing Hicca was something worse. The grief had settled in his bones, making him older than he truly was.
And Berk, ever strong, ever enduring, saw it.
It was Gothi who spoke first—not in words, but in action. The ancient healer, the quiet observer, cast her runes and let them fall in the dust before Stoick, each one speaking the truth no one wanted to say aloud.
Berk needs an Heir.
The silence in the Great Hall that day was suffocating.
For the first time in seven generations, there was no Haddock Heir or Heiress.
No clear successor to the Chiefdom of Berk.
And while Spitlout was quick to force Snotlout forward, no one listened. No one even considered it. Not because Snotlout lacked strength—he had plenty of that— but because even after everything, the village still remembers who Hicca had been to Stoick.
Even if she had been the runt, even if she had been weak, even if she had never fit the mold of a viking— She had been his daughter.
His joy. His light.
No one wanted to be the one to take her place. No one wanted to fill the space she had left behind.
Except, in the end, someone had to.
———
Stoick had made his decision alone. It was not put to the village, not debated in open halls. It was not a vote.
It was a conversation.
A quiet, heavy conversation between an old warrior and a young one, between a father who had lost a child and a warrior who had spent his entire life preparing for a duty that was never supposed to be his alone.
Anstred had always known this would happen.
Maybe not like this—maybe not so soon. But deep in his bones, he had known, had been told, had grudgingly accepted it at eight years old.
Tradition was inevitable.
It would have bound him and Hicca together in the end, pushing them toward the future their ancestors had always intended. Together, they would have led Berk, the Haddock and Hofferson lines merging in a way they hadn’t before.
But now, there was no Haddock to share the burden. Only him.
So when Stoick came to him, voice heavy with something beyond exhaustion, beyond sorrow, and told him he was Berk’s best chance, Anstred didn’t argue.
He agreed.
But before the decision was final, before Stoick could carve his name into the history of Berk, Anstred made one thing clear:
“If Hicca ever returns, she will be the rightful heir of Berk. And if—and only if—she wants me by her side, I will stand beside her. But until then, I will lead Berk in every way I can, in every way she could have needed me to.”
Stoick said nothing for a long time.
Then, with a slow, weary nod, he placed a hand on Anstred’s shoulder.
And just like that, the weight of Berk shifted onto his back.
The future was his now.
For Better or worse.
— — —
Anstred being named Heir wasn’t the only thing to change around Berk.
It wasn’t just the empty space where the Heiress should have been. It was the people, the ones closest to Hicca in age, the ones who had once shared the training arena with her.
And even one in blood.
Besides Anstred and Stoick, Snotlout had changed.
Once, Snotlout had lived in the shadow of expectation, always reaching, always pushing, always trying to prove himself— to his father, to Stoick, to Berk, and always there had been one insurmountable obstacle in his way.
Hicca.
The runt. The disappointment. The last person who should have been able to cause this amount of trouble.
And yet... She had.
Not because she’d tried to. But because she existed.
For as long as Snotlout could remember, Spitelout had measured him against her—against Stoick’s daughter... The Chief’s heiress. No matter how many targets he split, how many dragons he chased off, how many bruises he took in training—he was never her. Never the Heir.
“You’re not just my son,” Spitelout used to say, “You’re a Jorgenson. A born warrior. A legacy. And that makes you better than her.”
And Snotlout, young and aching for approval, believed him.
Or tried to.
But the more Spitelout pushed, the further Hicca drifted—One awkward word at a time. One snide comment. One bruising match. Until she stopped looking at him with that lopsided grin she used to wear when they were small.
And when she disappeared…he never got the chance to take any of it back.
For years, Snotlout had burned with resentment over it, with anger, jealousy, frustration—all things that had kept him loud, arrogant, desperate to prove himself better.
But when she disappeared, that resentment lost its target.
She was gone.
And suddenly, there was nothing left to prove.
He hadn’t meant to push her away. He’d just never known how to stand beside her without being told to stand above her.
At first, it wasn’t noticeable. Snotlout was still Snotlout, still cracking jokes, still posturing, still boasting about things he’d done and things he hadn’t.
But over time, something was different.
The loudness started to feel hollow.
The boasts came with less conviction.
There were moments when he wasn’t posturing at all. Moments where he was quiet.
Reflective. Almost lost.
Some said it was guilt—that, deep down, Snotlout had never really hated her, never truly wanted her gone. That maybe, just maybe, he wished she’d come back so he could have something to fight against again.
Others said it was Spitlout’s disappointment, that with Hicca gone, Snotlout should have been the obvious heir. But Stoick had passed him over without hesitation, given the title to Anstred without a second thought.
Maybe it wasn’t Hicca that had been holding Snotlout back.
Maybe it has been himself all along.
Whatever the reason, the shift in him was undeniable.
Snotlout hadn’t softened, hadn’t grown kinder or more thoughtful in the way Hicca had once been. But the fire that once fueled him had dimmed—like a forge left to cool.
No one knew if he would find a way to reignite it.
And no one knew what would happen if he did.
———
The greatest change in Berk came with the end of the raids.
The dragons had always been a part of life on Berk—an unrelenting force of destruction that shaped the way they lived, the way they fought, the way they survived.
They were bad when Hicca was there. Worse than even, some said—And for months after her disappearance, they remained.
But then, without warning, they stopped—No more fire lighting up the night sky. No more livestock stolen away in the dead of night. No more homes burned to the ground.
It was as if the dragons had simply vanished.
And Berk, for all its strength and stubbornness, waited.
Waited for the other axe to drop.
Waited for the storm that never came.
But the dragons never returned.
For the first time in Seven Generations, Berk lived in peace—Without the constant threat of raids, they could breathe. They could build. They could grow.
More traders came to their shores, once wary of a village cursed by fire and war. More treaties were forged, their alliances with other clans strengthening without the burden of dragon-related losses.
More mouths were fed, more children born, more warriors trained not for survival, but for strength.
And Berk, as it always had, endured.
In the six years since Hicca’s disappearance, it had flourished. Their numbers grew. Their defenses solidified. Their people thrived.
But in the quiet, in the spaces where fire once rained and battled cries once echoed, there were some who still wondered—
Why?
Why had the dragons vanished?
Why had they left when they had never stopped before?
What had changed?
And though no one dared say it aloud, the question lingered in the back of their minds.
Was it truly coincidence…or was it her?
Had Hicca’s disappearance not only saved Berk from the burden of an unworthy heir—
…but also from the dragons themselves?