Your fic (the fire watching one) has had me really feel for the psychological horror film hiccup is living in rn. Huge secret. Dad WILL disown him. So many "dangerous" and dangerous people know. His only human friend may or may not only be being kind to Find Him Out and Get Him Disowned by said father. Every single plot in RoB but he has no consistent allies except Toothless. He is still getting bullied by most of his peers.
His family think he was so stupid he lost his leg. He loves them so much but the only way he can (successfully) show it is by doing the thing that'll GET HIM DISOWNED!! All this and the ptsd that hasn't been full-fledged on camera... yet. I cannot imagine Hiccup's daily cortisol levels. AND he barely sleeps. Stoick can never (for his sake, the readers would love a Stoick downtime processing chapter) be given an entire chapter of "downtime" because he will literally lose it from the spiral of "oh wait he couldn't tell us this because of The Disownment Thing". And I affirmed his worst fear! Holy shit!
Hiccup: [quite literally so far beyond the "conditioned to accept horror" event horizon] it iz what it iz but nobody let me Think about it
so many times already i've paused and asked myself: "does it make sense for Hiccup to still be keeping the secret? is this asking readers to suspend disbelief too far?"
but some of Hiccup's strongest traits are stubbornness and loyalty--and now his loyalties are divided between Berk and Toothless (and all other dragons)
logic says he SHOULD have to choose. the Issue™ should be forced
Hiccup forfeited. he freed the dragons in the ring no problemo. the Red Death is dead and there WONT be any more raids, and thus no intervention required. everyone (👀) swallowed the story about his leg. heather won't rat on him. viggo hasn't ratted on him. johann hasn't ratted on him. alvin hasn't ratted on him. dagur hasn't ratted on him.
so even though Hiccup knows deep down that this isn't sustainable, that logic says he's going to have to address all the Things™ that are piling up around him...does he really have to?
can't he have his cake and eat it too?
there's always enough going on to distract him, and really, teccccchnicallly, he doesn't NEED to address the Things™ unless he can't keep pulling it off, scraping by by the skin of his teeth, always falling back into place JUST in time, but he IS in time!!
and the worst part for stoick and berk and even Hiccup himself is that it IS working.
hiccup IS smart enough and capable enough to pull it off. his enemies DO have a reason not to spread the secret (if your 16-year-old enemy is already isolating himself, do you go trying to spread the news to his extremely-renowned warrior army-having dad?)
and in Hiccup's mind, he's in far too deep. the HOLE is too deep. how can he bring any of this to Stoick when it's all so messy and dangerous and he's made so many enemies and and and---shouldn't he just try to clean up all the messes first? calm things down before he draws Stoick's attention to them?
but, in his mother's words: "if only it were possible"
and...does Hiccup really mind not having to face his father?
and if he's not ready to face his only family, he's sure as hell not spilling his guts to Astrid, patron of Berkian values and the first human friend he'd had in who knows how long, whom he already feels burned by after letting himself think the girl of his fantasies was actually interested in him (👀)
no, much better to stick with what works. just him and Toothless against the world
