Could do you expand more on Stoick’s Second chance at saving everyone from Drago like after the Dragon Raid in the first movie for starters assigning Hiccup a task to see if it is possible to tame dragons and choosing not to leave Berk when dragon training comes around. He would of course want to avoid saying he is a time traveler because everyone would think he has gone insane and are already confused as it is with Stoick becoming a completely different person overnight.
So, Stoick’s been given quite the thinking assignment for this, because even as he’s putting Hiccup on the ground he’s wondering when and where he should interfere.
Save their winter supplies and personally see to Hiccup being locked away for this raid? Spare Toothless his tailfin and keep Hiccup from the Forge in particular? But then, how would Hiccup bond with Toothless? How would they get a hostile Night Fury to give a human child a chance?
He’s certainly not going after the nest before the ice sets in this time around. Not when he knows what’s waiting for them…
Dear Thor, he knows what’s in the nest! They can train properly. He can fly against the beast himself and not his son—He can save Hiccup’s leg! He knows the boy will grow tall and strong without it, but all the same…
Stoick doesn’t know how he’s going to make his plays, but he does know he needs to make the first moves, take the first steps in making amends with dragons if they want a peaceful outcome… but delicate steps, they must be.
Side note: this can easily end up like a Groundhog’s day situation where over the course of a few months, Stoick keeps fucking up and dying and having to repeat things, and that earlier version was the “final right one”.
A situation where he stops Hiccup from shooting Toothless down, becomes encouraging of him all the same (especially for his forge skills) and Hiccup starts to adapt and grow into a capable Viking in his own right, but one that still kills dragons, much to Stoick’s helplessness (even going so far as to usurp his suddenly dragon-friendly father?x x)
He allows Hiccup to “Run off to the forge” but this time follows Hiccup and “witnesses” the takedown of the Night Fury. He stops the Nightmare before it can chase Hiccup through the village, quietly says he “believes Hiccup” and says they’ll look for the dragon once the village is in order. Later, when they find Toothless tied up, Stoick encourages Hiccup to release the dragon, but the sight of a grown Viking towering over him causes Toothless to immediately kill them both as soon as he’s freed.
But we’ll stick to one story.
Stoick decides to keep Hiccup from shooting Toothless down that night. He chooses to help out Gobber and Hiccup in the forge and make sure Hiccup doesn’t go running half-cocked with a contraption.
The raid ends, they have enough supplies, and Stoick shoots down any ideas of a final Nest Hunt. They’ll wait out the winter, he says. They’re stocked for it.
From there, Stoick spends his evenings sneaking into the Kill Ring and working with the dragons. He wants to start big, with Hookfang, but reminds himself of how much they damage these poor beasts. He wins over Meatlug first.
Night is the only time his early-to-rise vikings aren’t constantly seeking him. He’s under the guise of taking more ‘night watches’. “Don’t want another raid as we finish up the harvest!”
He also spends time talking to his son. Soaking up their time together. Listening to him. Drinking in a face he should have paid more attention to. Asking about his day, his projects, with genuine care…
And Hiccup is suspicious. His father is looking at him with eyes shining… not just from pride of all things but… remorse? Unbridled love? Longing? He’s not sure. The attention is everything he wanted but it feels so… unwarranted he’s suspicious. And his father’s behavior… out at night? Hiccup is the only night owl in the family. He used to enjoy the privacy of the dark. Now it’s being intruded upon by his father of all people. His gentle, attentive father who is now encouraging his ideas. Hell, even suggested he ‘tweak’ to Mutilator to ensnare rather than kill!
His father who cancelled dragon training. Astrid is furious, of course. She’s been particularly short with Hiccup, and he suspects its because she’s under the impression it was cancelled for him. As though, being in their age group, rather than deny Hiccup joining them, the Chief has taken it away all together. The way Snotlout loudly goes on about it in the Mead Hall, Hiccup can only assume that’s the circulating rumor amongst his peer, and no amount of denying it will get him anything but a shove in the mud.
So Hiccup takes matters into his own hands. He follows his father one night, quietly…to the Kill Ring, of all places. He watches as his father unlocks the Nadder’s cage and waits, in the moonlit arena, unarmed, for the beast to emerge from the dark. Hiccup has to swallow a scream ‘What are you doing?!’ when a spiked head charges forth.
For a split, horrifying breath Hiccup knows he’s going to witness a sudden and grisly death by one or the other.
Instead the Nadder drives right into Stoick’s open arms and start bucking into the hearty scratches. It’s purrs can be heard from where Hiccup holds the wall.
“Come on out, Hiccup,” Stoick calls over his shoulder. Shaking, Hiccup does.
The Nadder is introduced as Stormfly. And she was partial to chicken, an excellent tracker, and liked to have a particular spot on her jaw scratched.
From there, Hiccup’s introduced to every other dragon as well. Hiccup is surrounded by dragons, unarmed, and his father is petting them like dogs.
“Come tomorrow, everything will change,” he tells Hiccup, with a hearty clap on the shoulder. And tomorrow, everything did.
At dawn, Stoick flies on the back of a Monstrous Nightmare he’s calling Hookfang and lands on the highest steps of the Mead Hall. The village is in an absolute state of shock. Weapons are equipped, but held loosely, uncertain. Mouths are open but silent, save for a few expletives. Tuffnut has stars in his eyes and Astrid Hofferson hadn’t looked so gobsmacked since she was told Dragon Training was cancelled. Hiccup has a hand over his face, perhaps the least shocked of everyone. He feels Gobber watching him more than his father.
The wind picks up and suddenly Berk is looking at a painting more likely seen in a book of legends.
The Gods had given him a vision, is what Stoick tells his village. A vision of victory against a devilish beast, but only if humans and dragons united ways. Stoick was shown how to do that.
That’s the story he goes with, anyway, and Hiccup is certain he and Gothi are the only two people on that island who think it absolute poppycock. Gothi because she probably receives real visions, and Hiccup because, after a full night straight of talking with his father (about what the hel he was doing the past nights), he couldn’t get the feeling that his father was holding something vital back. Not a vision from the gods, but perhaps something else.
But with his grand stature, heroic red hair, and legendary feats under his weighty belt, near everyone else can only shrug and say “Why not?”. If there were any viking of their age for the gods to deign worthy of a vision, it would be Stoick the Vast.
A new regime comes into play. Vikings are taught ‘sweet spots’ and ‘grasses’. They take turns flying on the backs of the dragons they’ve captured in raids past. Weapons are altered for the part. Saddles are made.
The only time Hiccup nearly believes that the gods had indeed spoken to his father is when the man stops him, repeatedly, from bonding too well with any particular dragon, despite his natural talent for flying (even Astrid Hofferson had to begrudgingly admit as much). His reason?
“You’re meant for another.”
Winter passes. Vikings and Dragons train together. Raids come and go, but each time they seduce more dragons to co-exist and protect them. Whenever attacking the nest is brought up, Stoick would say, “Not yet.”
It happens over dinner in an early thaw. A gronkle named Newtsbreath happily crunches on a yak’s femur. Hiccup sketches out a design for a Timberjack’s saddle. Astrid Hofferson’s bonded to one and Hiccup thinks it’ll get him back in her good graces (she’s annoyed, now, that he beat her in a friendly age-group race. It’s like she’s trying to find excuses, he swears…)
“There was one other person who knew, without a doubt, that dragons were reasonable creatures, deserving of our kindness, and not our blades.”
Stoick waits and Hiccup, putting his charcoal down, gives into the silent prompt.
“You’re mother.” Stoick grins as Hiccup chokes on his drink. “… And we’re going to get her.”
Defeating the beast, finding the nest… all that battle will be done much more easily with another expert dragon rider at their sides. And he’d been without his wife for quite long enough.
