AN: I wrote 'Heimr' to appease my broken heart, but it obviously wasn't enough and since this story's been itching at my mind I figured why not. Maybe someone will find some enjoyment in my shameless wish-fulfillment. Keep in mind that this is based off the films, not the books, and I'm taking some liberties with norse mythology (there are notes on norse names/people/concepts at the bottom, for clarification). Spoilers for How To Train Your Dragon 2.

Disclaimer: the How To Train Your Dragon franchise is property of Dreamworks, and the book series is property of Cressida Cowell; I own absolutely nothing.

Seidr and Gold

by Miss Mungoe

part 1.

My darling dear, for you I've wept my red-gold tears

Her feet were birds in flight, and he'd recognize her step anywhere, soft as silk though her presence wasn't one to be ignored. A Lady of many names, but it is Freyja at his door this morn, and he knew from the determined set to her shoulders that she was not there to make a social call.

"Allfather."

The curt greeting didn't surprise him, nor did the gleam in her eyes promising an age-long headache, and he wondered if Loki hadn't put her up to this, whatever it was that required an audience in his own hall.

"Valfreyja," he returned, a wary distance in his words but his curiosity was piqued, for the years have been long and dull to his old heart and against his better judgement he found he was ready to humour her, for the sake of his boredom long and slow as the predicted Fimbulwinter. "What brings you to my hall?"

She inclined her head, and bowed low at the knee, the gesture polite where her greeting had not been. When she rose she did so to her full height, and she was a lady indeed beneath his gilded ceilings, rising tall and fair amidst carven wooden pillars. And he wondered what words would find their way past the smiling curve of her full mouth next.

"I come for Stoick the Vast."

Odin leaned back in his seat at the remark, intrigued quite despite himself. An odd request to be sure, but perhaps not quite so unexpected. But he said nothing, for he had no debts to the lady of Sessrúmnir, and if she had her mind set on a bargain it was up to her to present her offer first.

And knowing this, she did so without undue pause. "For his release, I will give you a hundred warriors for your Einherjar. He is a valued warrior, and worth as much, I should think."

Odin raised a brow over one unseeing eye, unimpressed by the simple bid, though intrigued by her reasons for offering it. "Indeed, and such was the nature of the last deal you made me, if you remember. The chieftain Stoick the Vast, to my Valhalla, in exchange for his ensured survival at the gathering of the clan chiefs two decades past. I granted your request then, and yet you have returned, but to what end, Valfreyja of Sessrúmnir?"

She pursed her lips. "I remember. But there are...some things I had not predicted. Your lady wife does not share her prophecies lightly, as you well know."

Odin snorted. "Do not speak to me of my wife's stubbornness." The corner of his mouth curved upwards in a cold smile. "I am more than aware."

She did not give the impression of having heard, much less made note of his thinly veiled gibe. "And what of her interests, Odin Allfather?" Her mouth curled, clever in the light of the never-ending morning of his great hall. "And as to my reasons, well, good romances are so hard to come by these days."

He pressed his fingers against his temple, an old sigh lingering at the back of his throat. He should have known it was something of such a trivial nature. "Your investment with the lives of these humanfolk is bordering on the ridiculous." He glared. "And do not presume I am unaware of your meddling in the affairs of the Haddocks."

Freyja studied the carvings in the ceiling. "I confess I don't know what you mean, Allfather."

He raised a brow. "There is no cure amongst men for a barren womb, Valfreyja. That child is your doing."

At his words, her lips pressed together in a determined line. "She invoked my name in prayer for months. What would you have had me do?" She raised her chin, the soft lines of the lady of love and prosperity bleeding away to the hardened edges of the Vanr who walked the battlefields of men on bare feet to collect her due. "And the boy has grown strong – a fitting warrior for your hall, now, though you were once loath to believe it."

Odin snorted. "No child born so early and so weak has ever lived to see its first winter, much less twenty. Hel would have had him that first week, had you not interfered – again."

She raised a brow. "And look at him now, Odin Allfather. Hel does not have him, and he is a warrior in name and deed." She paused then, eyes light with her plans and her mischief. "And I'll give him to you, should he fall in battle, if you grant this request. A hundred men, and Hiccup Horrendous Haddock III when his time comes, for the life of Stoick the Vast. Do you accept?"

He watched her intently, flaxen hair spilling pale like golden light around her shoulders and her bare feet damp from the bloodied field of Fólkvangr.

"And if he lives again to die a natural death?"

She smiled – that cat's curling grin that promised a millennia of problems and headaches. "Then it is Hel you must barter with, not I. You will have a hundred such men in his place." The smile widened, curving sly and wily like the wyrm around Yggdrasil's roots. "Or I will take them all to my field, if you'd rather. That goes for the boy, as well. Like you said, he is of my hand, and so it is to Sessrúmnir he should come."

Odin glared, but she persisted, fierce and unashamed in her affection for the humanfolk and their silly affairs. He had no patience for such things, but Valfreyja had long since laid her claim to the Haddock family and would not soon relent. He was in his right to refuse her request, but her wrath was notorious and not one he wished to invoke on a good day.

"Odin Allfather, do you accept my request?" she repeated, and he could see the victory on her face, and in eyes that had long cried tears for her own husband. It was not strange, he thought, that she'd take it upon herself to return another's.

His sigh carried the weight of the nine realms, and when he spoke his words were a hammer-on-anvil in the gilded hall. And Odin Allfather blamed her persuasion on the simple fact that boredom was a fate worse than death. That, and she'd given him a rather compelling offer. If he had his way, he'd have them all before Ragnarök tore their worlds apart.

"I accept."

To say that his first month as chief had been difficult would be something of a gross understatement, Hiccup decided.

Dragging a hand through his hair, thick and sticky with forgesmoke and ash, he wondered how his old man had ever gotten any sleep. With villagers at his elbow wherever he turned and a list of requests that seemed to only get longer the more tasks he completed, he'd barely had time to take a break from his duties to use the privy, much less take a nap.

Gobber had gone to bed a good while earlier, muttering complaints about his age and the pains of phantom limbs. Grump was snoring by the firepit, and Hiccup patted his nose on his way towards the door, dragging his metal-wrought leg which felt twice as heavy in his exhaustion after running between the forge and his other duties with little to no chance at rest between. Astrid had taken Toothless for a ride earlier, but he'd been so busy dealing with the villagers he hadn't seen either of them since they'd set out.

Rubbing the sleep from his eyes, he staggered outside, determined to reach his bed, or at the very least the hearth, before he passed out. Astrid would have his hide if she caught him sleeping in the forge again. His mother, too, would no doubt have something to say, as he'd found the women in his life were given to speaking their minds.

There was a shuffle to his right, and he halted in his tracks to find Skullcrusher awake, looking about and sniffing along the ground, oddly restless for the early hour. It wasn't time to hunt for a good few hours, yet, and the dragon was much too old to fuss like a hatchling.

Catching sight of Hiccup, the hulking drake rumbled and snorted as it trotted forward, before shoving its nose into his chest with enough force to tip him over. "Whoa, old boy, what's wrong?" Keeping his balance by grasping the dragon's horns, Hiccup frowned at the wild look in its eyes. "What's got you so riled up, huh?"

It shoved its nose against his side again, snorting frantically, and Hiccup grimaced. "Yeah, yeah, I smell, I get it – what, are you trying to push me in the well or something?" He rubbed behind one of its ears. "I know you've got a keen nose, buddy, but that's just rude." He patted the dragon's nose, and wondered if maybe he should take a dip in the well on the way back, or there'd no doubt be words in the morning about his lack of care for his own appearance and hygiene. And if he had to listen to another of Gobber's speeches of how his father had always managed to keep the village running and his beard well-groomed and braided–

"You'd have ta grow an actual beard first, son, before ya make light of the art of groomin'."

Hiccup blinked at the voice, then snorted – his exhausted mind was playing tricks on him. "Oh man, it's like I can hear him," he addressed the dragon. He cleared his throat, a familiar impression at the tip of his tongue, but it halted, kept back by the grief that still lingered. He sighed, and stroked the curved nose. The beast had calmed somewhat, but there was a strange, wild look in its eyes he couldn't decipher. He tried to offer a smile, and lowered his voice, grasping the dragon by it's horns, and shoved the grief back with near physical force as he roared in his best attempt at his old man's gruff voice, "Skullcrusher ya mangy beast – you been at my grog again, eh? Freyja's flamin' tits, how many times 'av a told ya ta keep out of th' house?!"

The dragon tossed its head, snorting great puffs of warm air, and Hiccup placed both palms on its muzzle to calm it. "Hey, hey – easy, old boy, what's gotten into you?" He tried meeting its gaze. "C'mon, I know it's not that good of an impression, but you don't have to react like that!"

There was a snort behind him, then, startling him out of his wits. "You be glad he ain't skewered you for that insult, boy – only viking in this village who flaps his arms like that when he talks is you."

Hiccup stilled completely at the remark, but before he'd had a chance to reel his mind back from wherever it had plunged, Skullcrusher roared–

–and a moment later he was on the ground as the great dragon barrelled past, his breath knocked clean from his lungs and his peg leg bent at an awkward angle as he fumbled in the dirt.

And then there was laughter – the belly-deep kind he'd know anywhere and that he'd never been able to get just right, and when he inclined his head to look up, he wondered a moment if he hadn't fallen asleep in the forge, after all. Because the hulking shape eagerly scratching beneath the dragon's chin couldn't be anything but a figment of his own, over-active imagination. It just couldn't be.

But the dirt beneath his back was real enough, and the smell of the sea in his nose and the cold night breeze. And the looming shape – the red beard still the same he remembered, catching the light of the sun peeking above the treetops in the distance–

"What's this?" The wide, familiar grin tugged at whiskered cheeks. "I'm gone a month and come back to find the new chief rolling around in th' dirt?"

Hiccup scrambled to his feet, arms and legs all a-tangled, and he nearly tripped again but caught himself in time to save himself the embarrassment of landing on his face. His exhaustion felt like it had been knocked out of his system, his tongue felt thick and awkward in his mouth, and when he finally managed to force a word past his lips it was a disbelieving rasp, barely distinguishable over Skullcrusher's rumbling purrs.

"Dad?!"

AN: Freyja is a shameless shipper and would go to great lengths to see her favourite humans be happy, I will fight you on this. So, what do you think?

Odin: Allfather and ruler of Asgard.

Freyja: goddess of love, fertility, gold, sexuality, war and death. She also goes by other names, like Valfreyja and Gefn. Freyja and Frigg are by many scholars considered to be the same person, hence the ambiguous nature of her and Odin's conversation.

Hel: goddess of Helheimr, who receives a portion of the dead that do not die in battle.

Vanr: singular form of Vanir, a group of gods associated with fertility, wisdom, nature, magic and the ability to see the future.

Valhalla, Fólkvangr: afterlives, ruled by Odin and Freyja, respectively.

Sessrúmnir: Freyja's hall in Fólkvangr.

Einherjar: the masses gathered in Valhalla, preparing for Ragnarök.

Seidr: or seiðr; old norse shamanism concerned with changing destiny by altering its course through the weaving of a web.

Yggdrasil: the tree of life, around the roots of which the wyrm Níðhöggr lies.

Ragnarök: the end of the world.

Fimbulwinter: a mighty winter, and immediate prelude to Ragnarök.