#dude must have felt some very real VINDICATION by the end of the series

[poibynt]

Thuggory, thinking

This is a short 1.5K Thuggory POV I wrote set between books 9 and 10, hopefully to be part of a larger fic focusing on this time period. So I'm chucking it here since it works as a standalone and not on Ao3. (this is barely spellchecked if you saw something wonky no you didn't)

CW: all the usual late series stuff, though is maybe focused on the Daily Horrors of it all a bit more than the series does.

Thuggory, son of Mogadon and only heir to the Meathead tribe, collapsed onto a chair in his room. He would not have allowed himself to so visibly display his own exhaustion if he weren’t alone, and if the world was not so newly and deeply trying. He’d been out on his feet the whole day, as he had done the entire week, and then the week before and the week before that the past three months. His role as son of the chief had taken a sharp and dramatic change in direction, and he had to admit to himself that it was taxing like it had never been before. 

Thuggory had always been easy going, with nothing much to think about or worry over. Why would he need to? He had floated through life, easily filling every role and expectation. He was strong, charismatic, attentive, respectful of his father and elders, but also able to admit his own failings and others strengths. He knew he was going to be a fine chief one day and he enjoyed dutifully caring for his tribe and helping his father in the meantime. Life had been simple and uncomplicated, full of laughing companions and scored goals and his father’s proud hand on his shoulder. Thuggory had never needed to think about anything. Oh he thought he had, in the Before, he thought he thought about plenty. He’d thought about fishing, and how others fought when he watched them, and what to eat for dinner. He had never had to think. The Thuggory of the After, though, thought. 

He scrubbed at his forearm absentmindedly, feeling the bandages under his fingers. Thuggory of Before had spent most of his time doing things he had thought to be important, but now felt hollow. He now spent most of his days fighting dragons, shoring up defenses, going over strategy with his father, and helping count and identify the dead. Many of the old smiling faces he grew up with or around he’d now seen glassy eyed and horrifically burned or slashed. Gone was almost everything Thuggory thought was a constant in life, the world turned distorted and twisted. 

He started removing his various weapons, piling them on the tiny desk in his room. They’d lost a quarter of the main island by now, but the largest village stood strong. The chieftain's hut was untouched, his childhood bedroom the same it always was. Except that he was older, more soot streaked and worn, and the weapons he carefully checked and tended to had tasted blood. It was…a disconcerting reminder of the simplicity of his old life. The newfound falseness of it. 

Because a world that had seemed so very very simple and uncomplicated had been engulfed by fire and chaos and uncertainty. He put on a good face about it all and rose to the task yet again, as he always had. He succeeded, as he always had. But Thuggory, during his few hours of rest he allowed himself, thought. 

He thought about the people he missed, the dragons he missed. Which got sticky very quickly. Because Thuggory missed dragons. They all missed dragons, he knew. They all felt the loss and horror at the state of the world and the necessity to do what must be done, but something else weighed him down. Guilt. Thuggory had loved Killer, his hunting dragon. He had thought he’d been fair and just in his treatment of Killer, had occasionally snuck him good bits of food off of the table when no one else was looking, given him bits of whatever kill they brought down together. And yet, on that fateful day it all went wrong, Killer had turned on him. They’d fought, and it had been a hard battle. For multiple reasons. 

Thuggory tested the sharpness of his battle axe, then grunted and reached for a whetstone. He thought he’d been fair, attentive, and respected. And yet, years together were thrown aside in a heartbeat. Everyone’s dragons had abandoned them in the end. Those who had beat their dragons into submission and those who gave them good muscles from the table both ended up betrayed and alone. Every single one of them, except for one boy. 

Thuggory had seen Hiccup, on the back of his riding dragon, suspended in a halo of light that dreadful day. Had seen that riding dragon fleeing across the sky, helping his rider as the entire dragon army followed. As far as Thuggory knew, Hiccup was the only person who’s dragon hadn’t rebelled against him. 

The Thuggory of Before didn’t think all that much, but he was still attentive. The Hooligans were their neighbors, and Hiccup was their heir. They were both going to be chiefs one day. With such an impressive first meeting, Thuggory had kept a proverbial ear to the proverbial ground. The trickles of rumour and tall tales had kept him fascinated. His friends had all dismissed Hiccup as some weird skinny nobody, and while Thuggory admitted he was weirdly scrawny and tentative for a Viking, it seemed like twice a year he pulled off something incredible! Things Thuggory could have only done if the sea boiled and the sky turned purple. Again and again Hiccup cheated death, discovered something impossible, fought and survived the scariest creatures and monsters the Barbaric Archipelago had to offer. Any gossip drummed up from these heroic stunts seemed to pass quickly, but Thuggory remembered. 

He’d been swayed a bit from his stance that Hiccup Horrendous Haddock the III was deeply and immeasurably cool when it was revealed that Hiccup had freed the dragon Furious, leader of the rebellion and the possible doom and destruction of the human race condensed into a single flying furnace. But Hiccups winning of the sword fighting competition, the speech he gave on his intention to end slavery and free the dragons, the subsequent revelation that Hiccup had the slave mark, the break out of one of the bloodiest battles in recent Viking history and the fact that Hiccup single handedly saved every Viking’s life that day had only complicated things further. 

Thuggory thought, as he cleaned the blood and guts from his weapons, honed their violent and deadly edges, preparing them for the next day of war. He asked something he rarely had ever asked in the Before times. Why? Why were they fighting this war? Why were dragons and humans dying in incredible numbers? Thuggory had been told all his life that dragons were immoral, cowardly creatures that needed firm hands. They were needed, so the Vikings used them. The Meatheads did not believe in cruelty, did not use chains or whips or cages. It was simply the way of things. Dragons could be immoral and cowardly, just like humans. But Killer was also steadfast, and loyal, and liked to perch on Thuggory’s shoulder and rest his head on the top of Thuggory’s helmet. Almost everyone had cared for their domestic dragons, had tended to them. Then why did they all rebel? 

Surely Killer knew Thuggory wasn’t planning on following the King's orders. Surely Killer knew that though Thuggory was aggressive and violent and a true Viking, that he wasn’t unfair or unhonourable. Surely Killer knew that Thuggory had felt something stirring in his heart hearing Hiccup’s speech, like something settling in correctly. Something that twinged every time Thuggory, a freshly minted warrior of the Wilderwest, raised his sword or his axe or his north bow or the new terrible weapons of war to fell a dragon. 

He wished, suddenly, that he could talk to Hiccup. Thuggory had dejectedly thought him dead for a month until reports and rumors started breaking of a rogue vigilante destroying dragon traps. Even the stupider Meatheads had a couple good guesses on the traitor's identity. Wishing for something like this felt wrong, for indeed it was against what Mogodon stood for these days. His father had fallen neatly behind the new king, and Thuggory wished things were simple enough that he could go along with his father just as neatly. But they weren’t. Instead, horrible thoughts tangled in his head, leading to no clear answer. The witch and the king, in whatever sparse correspondence reached the Meathead isles these days without carrier dragons, always spoke of the perfect world of the Before. But Thuggory, treasonously and dangerously, couldn’t help but wonder how was it perfect if it led to this? 

He pinched the bridge of his nose, setting aside the last dagger. He would try to clear his mind, and then join his father to discuss their options tomorrow. The dragons were concentrating on the Isle of Berk—Thuggory almost hoped a dragon would eat Chief Snotlout already—for some reason which meant the Meathead Islands were facing down the dragon fire as well. Their villages and fortifications were built to withstand human attack, not sustained dragon rebellion and they were struggling. It was time to start discussing options in the morning. But that was the morning, he had a couple more hours before he banished all his doubts away and became the good loyal son he had always been, and now wasn’t so sure he was anymore. He heaved himself off of his chair, fingers skimming over a burnt corner of the wood, one of the only mementos Killer had left him, paired with the scar across his ribs.