Chapter Text
Her face is lined heavily, malleable like something aged in the sun. Dark eyes peer from between crows feet, and her long hair is as grey as the clouds above them. She has the sort of agelessness where you know she must be very, very old, but whether that's 80 or 100 is anyone's guess. Toothless wrinkles his nose at her.
"Looks like rain," she tells them, peering up at the sky thoughtfully. The old woman waits, returning her gaze to the three of them, waiting patiently. Hiccup's hand hasn't moved from its sword holster, and he carefully side steps closer to Jack.
"Feel anything?" Hiccup murmurs, not taking his eyes off of the woman as he speaks to Jack. Regardless of how non threatening she looks, their surroundings are too suspicious to write her off, and rarely is anyone exactly how they appear. Jack purses his lips.
"The caster, yes, but he's too overwhelming. I can't distinguish her from it."
Hiccup nods. He raises a hand to direct Toothless closer.
"Keep watch outside, alright? You know the signal for backup."
Toothless sniffs, nodding his great head. Hiccup looks back to the woman in the doorway, looking like she has all the time in the world in her kindly smile. Her red skirts swish as she moves inside, and Hiccup and Jack follow her into the cottage, ash trailing in their footprints.
"You look for something," she says, sweeping what they brought in back out behind them with a broom of a height with her. She seems to have an endless collection of brooms– they line the walls in rows like a collection of art, bundles of straw and twig in different combinations. Oversized paint brushes, Hiccup thinks.
"How do you suppose that?" he asks her, turning to keep the door in view and his back to a wall. Jack watches the hanging brooms like they have voices.
"No one comes out here unless they look for something," she laughs, her teeth crooked through thin lips. "Or maybe you look for someone?"
"He was here, right?" Jack asks, voice rising like the fire dipping in and out of height in the hearth. "You know who I mean."
"Aye, I do," the woman confirms, resting her broom against the stone fireplace. "Figured someone would come to me about him sooner or later. Unpleasant one, that man."
"What did he want with you?" Hiccup asks as she stokes the fire. Jack's hands wrap nervously around his staff.
"Ah, so many years ago, now," she clucks, tapping the stoker against the edge of the fireplace. Ashes scatter to the floor, and she takes this as an opportunity to sweep more. "He called himself Pitch. Wanted to know how to harness death."
"Harness death?" Jack asks, frowning. "How?"
"There's power to be gained from taking a life, of course," the old woman says thoughtfully. "Take enough of them and you can do a lot of things. Things you wouldn't be able to, before." She squints into the fireplace. "Turns you into something quite awful, of course."
How common is this knowledge? Hiccup wonders. Why come to her?
The old woman hums, broom scraping against wood planks. "You're from Berk, are you not, boy?" she asks Hiccup. His brow furrows. "How is everyone back home? Safe and healthy?"
Hiccup's stomach drops, ice cold.
"How many years ago did you say he came to you?"
She smiles, gnarled fingers wrapped around her broom.
"Will be almost 9 years now, I suppose. But the spell took some time to perfect."
Jack looks back and forth from Hiccup to the woman before his eyes widen. Moving to stand between the two of them, he starts, "You're a pesta. You're a plague–"
Jack cuts off with a choke as the woman raises her hand towards him lazily, his hand clasping around his throat as he gasps, and Hiccup can't move, a cold fear starting in his chest and moving through him like an animal stalking prey, like–
"No more of that voice out of you, boy," she says to Jack, looking past him. "I have no business with you, and won't have your magic here. Him, however," she says, gesturing to Hiccup with a bony finger, "you slipped through my tines once, and that's one more time than I'll allow."
Her finger pointed at him feels like a pin keeping him against the wall, but his legs are too weak to keep him standing, falling out from under him like cracking ice. This familiar feeling, the one he thought he'd die with, the hand around his ankle trying to drag him down under.
There's a whine outside the door, the sound of scratching nails. Hiccup tries to call out Toothless' name, but the word can't be found.
"Your dragon will be no help, here," the pesta says. "Warding is too strong for even that one to break."
Hiccup can feel his breath too short and too fast as shadows move along the wall like faces, looking so human but stretching too far to be something sane. Jack is in front of him, but he looks a thousand miles away, the black feathers of his cloak seeming to shift and writhe over him like hands. He shuts his eyes, but the darkness there looks like another gaping maw. His whole body feels separate from him, like he's some tiny speck lost inside of it and he can't reach for himself, he can't–
Through the depths, he can hear the old woman talk to Jack before him.
"I can feel that contract on you, child," she says, leaning down over Jack as he struggles to breathe. "Blood magic. That's why you're here, isn't it?"
Even without a voice, ice manages to seep from Jack across the floor, melting as it nears the fireplace. The sound of the fire is like a great roar, and Hiccup can feel it burning all around him, unsealing the scars that healed over years ago, his leg mangled beyond recognition in the searing heat. He doesn't remember feeling this scared then, but he was, wasn't he? He was terrified.
Hiccup can barely move his limbs, but struggles, struggles– feels for his sword in its holster at his leg, his hand weakly grabbing for it as the woman talks to Jack. He nudges it gracelessly forward towards Jack, quiet, quiet–
"You know contracts like those break when someone dies," she tells Jack kindly, taking no notice of Hiccup's weak movements out of her view. "And this one ties you to him. Don't struggle, and you'll be free of this. Let me have him, and I'll let you go."
She loosens the hand clenched into a fist over Jack, and he seems to gain some small control over his voice again, raspy as it is. He pushes himself up cautiously to his feet, one hand tight to his chest and the other in his cloak as he stands in front of her, firelight crawling over the both of them.
"Or maybe," she says further, "you're like that man? Pitch. You have the same feeling, don't you? I can help you. Help you like I helped him. And of course," she continues, "you'll help me."
Jack breathes thickly.
"You don't have me marked," Jack coughs, "so you'll let me go?"
"Your death isn't one of mine," she agrees. "And you'll be free of your burden."
Jack laughs, breathlessly. Hiccup can barely see him, the white of his features makes him look like something ghastly– he looks like a nightmare.
"Great," Jack says through clenched teeth, stepping towards her quickly and moving his hand from under his cloak, Hiccup's sword unlatching and running her through with a rush. "Guess your death is one of mine."
The pesta crumbles to ash on the sword like the life she's infected around her home, blackened dust to be swept away on the floor. Her brooms along the wall seem to lose some feeling of life, the walls sagging with their weight.
Hiccup breathes again with a heavy gasp, as if the tank of water he's been drowning in has released, spilling around him. He leans to one side, coughing hard as Jack turns around, moves over to steady him.
"You really gambled a lot on me getting that thing the right way this time," Jack laughs mirthlessly, one hand resting on Hiccup's shoulder, the other the side of his face. His hand is cold, but then, so is Hiccup. He snorts.
"Gambled in a lot of ways," he says.
Jack throws one of Hiccup's arms over his shoulder as they leave the cottage behind, Toothless already outside of the door, whining as he sniffs at Hiccup. He wonders what kind of smell a plague leaves. The outside of the cottage is covered in the singes of plasma blasts, blocked by magic.
"Hey bud," Hiccup coughs. "We're fine. Almost died, but we're fine."
Water falls on them heavily, the ash muddying into blackened mulch beneath their feet. Where the pesta fell to Jack's hands, ash streaks across his fingers in the rain.
"You are though, right?" Jack asks. "Fine. We're fine."
Hiccup looks up at the petrified trees around them. They don't look as tall, now.
"Yeah," Hiccup agrees through the ice melting in his chest. Jack's hand is tight around his shoulder, his other is gripping his staff. "We're fine."
Maybe, with the witch dead, something will grow here again.
–
Hiccup watches Jack across the other side of the fire. Camp has been made for the night in a cave on an island just south, with the weight of the rain making any further progress unlikely. There's an unpleasant set to his mouth, to his eyes, fire turning blue to grey.
Hiccup doesn't want to look at fire, right now.
"I wouldn't have," Jack says, cutting the silence.
"Wouldn't have what?" Hiccup asks, even though he already knows. But he wants to hear Jack say it. He watches Jack's face, still as water.
"I wouldn't have let her kill you," Jack tells him, not looking away from the fire. "Even if it meant getting out of the contract."
"Right," Hiccup agrees. There's still the curse, the caster. Pitch. Jack still needs him.
Jack glares at him, as if he knows what Hiccup is thinking.
"Don't be an idiot. You're the one who said it, right? No one is dying," Jack tells him. He still looks unsettled. "You're not… you're not my burden. We're partners. Right?"
Hiccup smiles, something weak under Jack's hard gaze. "Right. Partners."
Toothless lets out a whistling snore behind Hiccup's back, flank rising and falling. There's something settling about being close to something so alive after feeling so near death. And Jack is on the other side of the fire.
"What did she mean by 'harness death'?" he asks Jack, who tucks his cloak around himself tightly. There's something childish about the action. It makes him look smaller, yet his shadow stretches tall behind him.
"I don't really know," Jack answers before pausing. The fire gives a crack, sparks rising. "I mean, when you think about it, all life is energy. There's magic inside of everything. You kill a lot of people, that's a lot of energy. Right?"
Hiccup nods.
"Right," Jack continues. "If you could control that energy… Well. I don't know what you would do with it. Nothing good, obviously."
"And a plague is an easy way to kill a lot of people," Hiccup sighs. Jack hums.
"As easy as any killing can be."
Hiccup feels like there's more to say– but looking at Jack, maybe there isn't. The silence isn't uncomfortable, neither of them seem itching to break it. Maybe that's just weariness.
"You should sleep," he tells Jack softly.
"Could say the same to you," Jack returns, but his voice is too tired to come across as amused, though he thinks it's what Jack means. Hiccup shakes his head.
"Don't think that will happen for a while."
He doesn't really want it to, either. He doesn't want to think about what he'll see behind his eyes. Jack watches him, maybe sees the thought on his face. He turns away, and begins laying out his bed roll.
"Goodnight, Hiccup. Don't run forever."
From sleep? Or something else?
Later, when Jack's breathing seems to even, Hiccup nudges Toothless with an elbow.
"I know you aren't sleeping, you can stop now."
Toothless snorts, yawning dramatically in faux protest.
"If you think you can fool me, you're sorely mistaken," Hiccup tells him with a roll of his eyes. Toothless flicks his tail around, nudging into Hiccup's side. "Sorry I left you out there," he says, settling further into Toothless' side. "Should have known it wasn't a good idea to split up. But I also don't want to know what she could have done to you."
Toothless gives a low growl.
"We protect each other," Hiccup agrees. "Me and you." He looks at Jack on the other side of the cave. His hair seems to steal the firelight's colour, making it look warmer. With his back to the both of them, Hiccup can't see his face. "Him now, too."
And maybe Jack feels the same, saving Hiccup's life. Protecting each other.
Toothless watches Jack out of the corner of great green eyes before looking away with a sigh. Hiccup laughs quietly.
"Yeah," he sighs back mockingly. His voice is quiet. "He's Jack."
He doesn't think there's really any other way to say that.
Hiccup rests his head on Toothless, closing his eyes, and doesn't think about the feel of warmth on his face. From the fire, or anything else.
–
Jack scratches his nails over the scales on Toothless' face, who chitters at the sensation, leaning into Jack's hands with closed eyes.
"Can you teach me how to ride him?" he asks Hiccup, not looking away from Toothless' pleased face. The rain has stopped, the world wet and green around them, smelling fresh and new. Hiccup blinks.
"Uh, sure. Why…?" he trails off, watching Jack's hands. Jack looks away from Toothless to him, eyebrows raised.
"You weren't looking so hot yesterday, in case that escaped your notice. You don't think that if we need to get moving and you're falling out of the driver's seat that might be a problem?"
That's… a good point.
"Okay," Hiccup agrees, exchanging a look with Toothless, who cocks his head. Hiccup shrugs at him, and Jack watches the exchange with a smile. "Climb on, and I'll show you how to switch through gears."
Jack tucks his staff into place above the saddlebag and settles into place, dark on Toothless' back. They look like they could be made from the same material in the universe, something that swallows light. Hiccup places a hand on Jack's left knee.
"Your foot goes in here," he gestures to the mechanism his own metal foot usually hitches into. Jack's leather booted one fills the gap instead, clicking into place. "This operates the gearshift system, and…" Toothless looks back at him with eyes wide. Suspiciously wide. Hiccup smothers a grin as Jack nods seriously, adjusting his foot and looking back at Toothless' tail to see the shift in the fin.
Jack jumps when Hiccup sits behind him, an arm around his waist and his other hand patting Toothless' side.
"Wh–"
"Actually," Hiccup starts as Toothless gives himself a shake, wings spreading wide, "there really is nothing like learning by doing, right?"
"Okay," Jack laughs nervously. "Very funny guys, you–"
The jerk of motion from ground to air steals whatever Jack was going to say, and Hiccup laughs from behind his back. He can't see Jack's face, but he can feel the glare he wishes he could send to Hiccup as cold air brushes their faces.
"Relax," he says, watching Jack release tension from his jaw. "You'll pick it up easy, and I won't let anything happen to you."
"Me?" Jack scoffs. "I'm more worried about something happening to you. Because of me."
"Yeah? That confident?" Hiccup asks. "The sky can't hurt me. And Toothless won't let anything happen to either of us."
Jack mumbles something about going from sky to ground doing the hurting, but Hiccup just laughs, watching the wind muss Jack's hair.
Jack quiets, focusing on the timing of gear switching, the sound of a tailfin cutting through air and the beating of wings around them. Jack loosens gradually, his shoulders relaxing and his hands no longer tight on the saddle. He lifts an arm up to feel the air against it, and the other after, spreading his arms out like a bird, the feathers in his collar moving as if alive.
"It's different," Jack says over the sky, "being here. We were already flying before, but…"
"It is," Hiccup agrees. Maybe because of that, he never wants to land. Not just now– always.
Jack always looks like he could be blown away on the ground, but up here he almost seems steadier, even with the wind pushing against him. Hiccup can just see the curve of Jack's cheekbone from behind his back, his eyes closed in the sun.
"I always wanted to escape," Jack admits, voice soft and flat. "But I felt guilty for that. I love Emma. I love my mom. But I've never known anything except them."
Hiccup watches Jack lower his arms, but he still sits loosely on the saddle, like an afterthought.
"This is the longest I've been away from them," Jack says, lowering his head.
"Sorry the company isn't better," Hiccup jokes, feeling Jack snort.
"What are you talking about?" Jack asks innocently. "I love Toothless."
Hiccup laughs as Toothless rumbles beneath them.
Directing them to join a flock of dragons making their way south, they make use of the daylight to move towards the next burn in their map.
–
The next two burns end up being a bust.
Jack pokes at the map at their most recent campsite, having found nothing in the weeks since the pesta. The frustration is evident in the curl of Jack's mouth, the fold between his brows.
"If there's a mark, it means he was there," Jack mutters, biting at a thumbnail. Hiccup takes that hand and lowers it, sparing Jack from the last time he did, actually, make himself bleed.
"Just because he was there doesn't mean there's anything to find," Hiccup points out. "We've stopped at plenty of places for camp, and someone following our trail might think we were there for more than that."
There's also no telling how old the trail they're following is. The pesta said that Pitch found her nearly ten years ago– this could very well be a ghost trail. That seems to be what's bothering Jack.
"We don't have unlimited time," Jack groans, running a hand through his hair. "We can't be wasting time on dead ends."
He's not wrong.
"Look," Hiccup says, pointing at the map from over Jack's shoulder. "There's a cluster to the south, we can hit a couple within the same area."
Jack looks between Hiccup and the map.
"You mean the cluster below the spot you wrote 'Strong winds, dangerous for flying'?"
"That would be the one." Hiccup nods sagely. "I mean, I've done it before. Had to get it on the map somehow."
"Ah, right," Jack agrees. "You're crazy, how could I have forgotten? Silly of me."
"And yet here we are," Hiccup agrees, folding the map up with flourish, tucking it into his bracer. "You, me, and all the crazy we're carting between the two of us."
Toothless growls, sitting in the dirt behind them. Jack and Hiccup look between each other, and then back to Toothless.
"And Toothless."
They nod. Toothless' tongue lolls from his smile.
"There's a village below there, too," Hiccup tells Jack, standing and brushing dirt from himself. "Probably a good idea to check out a market while we get the chance."
Jack's eyes tighten, just barely noticeable. "Civilization. Almost forgot about it."
"It'll be fine," Hiccup tells Jack, nudging his shoulder with a hand. "You're practically a flying expert now, right?"
Jack ducks a smile.
"We'll see."
Hiccup reaches a hand down, pulling Jack up with practiced ease.
Strong winds it is.