I Hear Him Scream, Ch7 Part 4

KRA-KA-BOOOOOM!

A couple drunks in the corner of the room raised their glasses, cheered loudly, and downed an entire glass of mead each. I was amazed that they hadn’t fainted yet from their ridiculous drinking game. Then again, watching them take a giant gulp of alcohol with each thunderclap was hilarious.

RrrrrrrrrrRRRRRRRRRR!

“Aaaar!"

“How are they doing that?” Snotlout gasped in amazement from across the table.

“Like this!” Ruffnut reached over me and took the last of the two cups of mead she’d managed to sneak to our table. Before anyone could protest—we hadn’t gotten much of a chance to drink from any of the smuggled goods, after all!—she’d managed to swallow the entire thing and slam the container on the table with a proud smirk. “It’s a fine skill.”

Tuffnut snorted, leaning back and into Snotlout and throwing a goose bone at her. “A fine skill you learned just now!” He laughed when his twin’s face contorted into one of bewilderment. “Also, I’m pretty sure that won’t help with you being hurt and all,” he added more seriously with a frown “I think. I dunno, Dad drinks whenever he feels bad,” he added with a shrug.

I rolled my eyes. “It’s a flesh wound now. She was sick for, like, three hours. I doubt it’ll do anything…except make her act funny.” I added the last sentence warily, hands folded in my lap and an eyebrow raised, when Ruffnut burst out into a fit of giggles. She held a hand to her lips, shaking her head at me. Behind her, Fishlegs tried his best not to howl with laughter.

“I don’t think ‘funny’ would describe it well,” said Viking commented around a mouthful of half-chewed meat. “How about…hmm…maybe…tipsy?”

“We know she meant that,” Tuffnut informed the ‘outsider’ with annoyance.

Snotlout chuckled, having ignored the exchange. “I bet she’ll pass out by midnight.”

Tuffnut responded almost as soon as he’d finished talking, saying, “I bet she’ll pass out before we leave!”

“Naaah. I’ll be fine, guys!” Ruffnut crowed. She waved her arm at us, accidentally slapping me upside the head. I grunted in surprise and leaned away from the blond, irritation crossing my face for a moment. “I’m a woman who can hold her liquor!”

(Ruffnut ended up winning that bet, by the way.)

Her brother smirked. “I’m sure you are.”

She raised an eyebrow. “You’re just jealous.”

I snickered and grabbed onto Ruffnut when Tuffnut threw his hammer at her, causing her to scramble to catch it and nearly falling out of her seat and onto the ground. “Easy, now!” I scolded. “We don’t want you getting hurt again.”

“Nooo! Not again!” Ruffnut wailed, hand flying to cover her forehead dramatically.

“Hahahaha!” Snotlout grinned widely at me, forcing himself to laugh at my ‘joke’. I struggled not to grimace. “You always know what to do, don’t you?” He purred, leaning over the table and holding his chin on two fists.

Another blast of thunder reverberated through the building. The group in the corner shouted, Ruffnut straightened out and stole my plate of food, and I awkwardly avoided responding to Snotlout’s flirting and completely missed my chance to get my precious meat back. It didn’t help that Tuffnut and Fishlegs said nothing, watching on with amusement in their eyes.

To distract myself, I grabbed one of Ruffnut’s chunks of mystery meat that she stole from me and took a massive bite out of it (snorting when she shrieked in protest) and shrugged at another compliment given to me via Snotlout. He added a couple more, and each time, I pretended to have my mouth full (Well, actually, it was. Maybe.). I still hadn’t figured out how to fix the whole ‘I kissed you’ thing with him, and I really didn’t want to address it now.

Thank the gods that Snotlout has the shortest attention span in the world.

He got tired of receiving no response and twisted in his seat, towards Ruffnut’s brother. “By the way, good job with that Nadder today!” The burly teenager punched Tuffnut in the arm. “I mean, really, you were right there and didn’t hit it!”

I rolled my eyes at this. I was pretty sure that they’d already had this conversation. But, hey, whatever. As long as it kept Snotlout from trying to pull a move on me in public. Now that was terrifying! I’d rather be trapped in the Monstrous Nightmare’s cage with nothing but a measly dagger.

“At least I didn’t ‘get distracted by the sun’,” Tuffnut made his voice sound comically dull and stupid, making air quotes with his fingers, “and completely miss it!” He grinned and ducked under a punch, backpedaling away from Snotlout to avoid being thrown off of his seat.

Fishlegs immediately went to work with his peacemaker duties. “Hey, guys! C’mon!” He moved forward and reached across the table. As he did, Ruffnut, grabbed his arm and pulled it as far back as she could, yelling about how she wanted to see the fight. Fishlegs let out a rather girly cry and stumbled backwards, falling out of his seat and hitting his head on the table’s leg. It took a few seconds, but the bulky teenager managed to climb his way under the table and in between Snotlout and Tuffnut, who both looked at him in utter shock.

“There you go!” I praised, laughing as I talked.

Tuffnut leaned over Fishlegs, his face threatening to rip in half from his smile. He continued the argument as if nothing had happened, “What’s wrong, big guy? Can’t accept your mistakes?”

“Shut up!” Snotlout tried to punch Tuffnut, but was quickly intercepted by Fishlegs. “At least I’m good at keeping my head instead of freezing up like you did!” He sat back, crossing his arms across his chest and looking very prideful. Ruffnut and I let out a long string of “Oooooooh!’s.” We shared a glance, silently agreeing to see how far we could watch this until it got out of hand. Snotlout and Tuffnut’s fights were the most comical thing you could see on Berk.

“I think you both—“ Fishlegs attempted to calm them down, but was quickly interrupted by the male twin.

“Keep your head? Yeah, that’s what you did when you ran away from Hiccup yesterday!” Immediately after saying this, Fishlegs, Ruffnut, and I cringed. Tuffnut frowned, looking between the three of us in confusion. I checked to make sure Snotlout wasn’t looking, and when he wasn’t, sent the twin a fierce glare. It took him a few seconds, but his eyes widened and his mouth opened in a perfect ‘o’.

The second the words had left his best friend’s mouth, Snotlout’s smile and playfulness had seemed to vanish into thin air like a delicate smoke. He stared at his food directly in front of him, eyebrows slightly pulled down and a dangerous look on his face. His hands were firmly clenched together and he was sitting straight up in his chair. I’d never seen him so still in my life.

“Uh…uh…” Fishlegs stuttered, eyes darting back and forth. “Well, um…about that, guys…” He looked over at the unmoving Snotlout to his right and rapidly tapped his fingers together. “What are we gonna do, anyways? I mean…uh, I dunno…Like, are we going to do anything?”

I leaned forward and crossed my arms over the table. “What do you mean?”

We’d already established the fact that nobody would know about Hiccup and the Night Fury except for the five of us. It had taken awhile to convince Snotlout, but we’d ended up successful. A deal’s a deal; we may be Vikings, but we are honorable. And if Hiccup could somehow tame the Night Fury as he had down in the cove, then that meant that one of the biggest threats to the entire village was now gone. I was willing to sacrifice my pride—and the honor of telling the adult Vikings that I knew where both Night Furies were—if it would, overall, help everyone on Berk.

And he’d specifically gone out of his way to give my mother’s axe back to me. That meant a lot, and not only because I really missed it. He’d willingly given me my most valuable weapon, standing not even a full meter away. He obviously trusted me to hold up my end of the deal. Even when his stupid friend was yelling at him and nearly attacking me in the process—which he didn’t seem to even notice. This caused a mental eyeroll on my part.

I was still very suspicious, though; I still wasn’t sure if Hiccup was being genuine or not. He did seem very sorry. But he also made friends with the Night Fury. I really wasn’t sure of my opinion yet; I needed more time to think about it. I was leaning towards him truly trying to make amends, though.

Still, that one fact about Hiccup’s friendship with the Night Fury kept me from making a clear decision. It also served as another grounds to not tell anyone, though. Chief Stoick clearly loved Hiccup, going as far as to dedicate the next nest-hunt in his name and prepare the attack weeks beforehand—the longest delay we’d ever had, and cutting it very close to winter. If he learned that his son had gone and become best buddies with the very thing that ‘killed’ him, well…I doubt even our Chief could handle that. And then the entire tribe would be at war with itself, desperately searching for a new leader and trying to find a way to kill off both Night Furies.

The sealing factor was that Hiccup had proven that he was still himself, as Fishlegs had explained. If Hiccup somehow managed to stay that way, even after banishment, then I couldn’t find it in myself to want to kill him. If you thought of Hiccup as a human in a dragon body—which he was, for now—then you could easily see that his friendship could be a brilliant plan to keep him safe. And Hiccup was well-known for his intelligence, even though he always screwed things up.

So the chances of him trying to convince the Night Fury to reverse the spell was very high, obviously. I was going to give it more time, to see if he really could accomplish that.

I was still going to keep a close eye on him, though. If he lost himself enough or turned on the Vikings, then I wouldn’t feel any guilt in killing him.

Fishlegs frowned and continued tapping his fingers. “Well, he agreed not to steal, and he said that the only reason he stole in the first place was because he would have starved if he didn’t. Are we going to bring back food or something?”

I could easily feel the surprise on my face. I hadn’t thought of that.

Ruffnut shrugged, resting her chin in her palm. “I guess so. That gives us an excuse to go back and check on Hiccup, anyways, and see if he really can hold his word.” I nodded in agreement at this. Couldn’t have said it better myself!

“Maybe he can help us get better at dragon training!” Tuffnut piped up excitedly. And loudly. We all shushed him loudly, causing him to shrink back and pout. Luckily for us, the only other people in the building were the drunks in the corner.

“Somehow I doubt that,” I said sarcastically, remembering how the Night Fury had nearly attacked Fishlegs when all he’d done was touch Hiccup. It really was strange how attached that thing seemed to be towards the Chief’s son.

Fishlegs calmed down and suddenly perked up. He grinned and excitedly told us, “Maybe we can see if Hiccup can find where the nest is? I mean, that would make the nest-hunt so much easier!”

“But we’re not going. And how could we tell Chief Stoick without telling him we know about Hiccup?” I pointed out. The building began to vibrate around us from the intensity of the storm.

Fishlegs slumped over. “Oh. Right.”

Ruffnut pushed her emptied plate away from her and on top of Tuffnut’s (who scowled and pushed both of them back towards her.). “I wonder if there is anything we could do to help five of us? There must be something, right?”

I shrugged unhelpfully. “Like what? All I can think of is training, and I’d rather not get blasted by that Night Fury.”

“I’d love to document more about that species, though,” Fishlegs groaned. “If only the others knew! Then we could learn so much! I’m no professional, but I’m positive that we could figure out so many things from those two. We’ve never really seen how dragons normally act around others.” He waved his hands and made odd gestures while saying this. Everyone gave him a blank stare.

BOOOOOOM!

I flinched at the loud noise, looking up at the ceiling. It was starting to leak heavily. Outside, the storm began to pick up at a very fast pace, promising to keep at it until late morning.

Ruffnut patted me in the shoulder. “Uh, do you think that we should all be heading home before we get stuck in here?” She rolled her eyes and smirked. “I don’t want to spend the entire night with those idiots.” At this, she gestured with her head towards the drunks, who were currently having…not a food fight…not a verbal fight…not even a real fight…but a chair fight.

All of us made noises of universal agreement. We so did not want to get involved in that.

I stood up, wiping some crumbs and dirt off of my armored skirt, and addressed the rest of the gang. “I think, for now, that we should bring back food sometime. Like Ruffnut said, it’ll help us watch Hiccup without making it obvious that we are. But we’ll have to wait, since it’d look suspicious if another basket went missing. Other than that, I think that we’ve got it all figured out,” I concluded. “I mean, we made the deal and told Hiccup that we’re coming back. Everything should be fine if Hiccup keeps up his end, right?”

“Right!” Fishlegs confirmed. “And he will,” he added confidently. As he said this, he and everyone else began to stand up, piling their plates in the middle of the table and walking towards me.

Tuffnut laughed. “Wow, I can’t believe I’m saying this, but I’m glad that we went down there and almost got killed!” He moved around me and besides his sister, a cautious look momentarily crossing his features.

‘Do you got her?’ I mouthed at him, to which he nodded. Ruffnut may think that she was fine, but she was technically supposed to be spending most of her time resting. Just because a little food and a lot of mead in her belly made her feel better, didn’t mean that she was fully healed. Thank Odin Tuffnut knew this.

The girl in question chuckled as well. “I’m saying! I’m not the hopeful type, but we may actually find a way to work things out.” She beamed at me, which I hesitantly returned. I wasn’t about to go all in, after all. I needed more proof.

We reached the door and pushed it open, carefully looking out into the storm. The rain was barreling down and lightning was flashing frequently. The wind nearly knocked me back and I had to readjust my stance to keep from toppling over.

“Well, it’s now or never,” Fishlegs decided. He turned to us, grinned, and waved. “See yah!” And then he took off into the black storm, quickly becoming invisible behind the rain.

“Bye!” We all called out.

Ruffnut nudged me. “We’re gonna go, too. See you tomorrow!”

“I’ll go with you,” I rushed. My house was very close to hers, and I was worried that Tuffnut couldn’t get my best friend home before she got sick. Behind her, he gave me a thankful look, confirming my doubts.

With a wave at Snotlout, the three of us ran out into the storm. The rain was cold and the wind irregular. At times, it would rush at you and take your breath away. I’m not quite sure how, but Ruffnut somehow managed to keep up a moderately good pace. Eventually, though, she became too exhausted, and Tuffnut was forced to carry her the rest of the way home.

I stopped by their house, greeted their parents, and chatted with them for a couple minutes. Then Smallelf shooed me off, saying how my parents must have been worried sick.

The sprint home was short and uneventful; my house was less than a quarter mile from the twins’. In minutes I was inside, saying hello to my parents and then bidding them goodnight. The house was silent and warm, the only sounds being my father’s snoring and the rain and thunder.

It wasn’t until I’d nearly fallen asleep did I realize that Snotlout hadn’t said a word since Hiccup had been mentioned.