This is basically a "why Dagur could be so obsessed with Hiccup" fic. Dagur was bad to pretty much anyone he met according to what we've heard in RoB, but Hiccup was always, like usual, Dagur's main target.

Deranged

Innocent. Every child is born innocent. That is what they all say, what everyone believes.

Children aren't capable of bad things. They don't know what is wrong and what is right, it is the job of parents and mentors to teach them the difference. Bad deeds or unruly behaviour are then almost always blamed on those who raise them, especially the mother, and only sometimes on the life one has lead thus far.

Not many realize that, sometimes, but not too often, a babe is simply born different. A fact not a lot of people are willing to face. Even when the blatantly obvious is staring them right in the eye.

Sometimes a child isn't born as innocent as they once thought.

And when the day comes that they snap, it is all too often over for them.

Such was the case with the young Dagur the Deranged.

Born in the remarkably peaceful Berserker tribe, the boy was the son of Chief Oswald the Agreeable and his wife, Helga the Fair. Both were caring and nurturing parents, who only had eyes for what was best for him.

He was their heir, their son, the apple of their eye. He had his mother's bright red hair and his father's lively green eyes, a healthy babe born with promise in his future. He was their pride, their joy.

Dagur wasn't spoiled rotten, but not much was he denied either. He lived the life any heir should. With every opportunity in life laid out before him, all the food and pleasure a child could want, hearing about the grand history of their blood soaked past from tutors and soldiers.

He was an only child, born into a life of wealth with all he could ever want and two parents who loved him more than life itself.

The day came all too soon when his little sister came. A small baby they named Heather.

She took after their father the most with her raven black hair and bright green eyes. Besides their mother's nose, she was the spitting image of their father.

Oswald and Helga were delighted to have a daughter and could imagine how close their two children would become. If something were to happen to them, Dagur and Heather would at least have eachother. Through thick and thing, family was important to any Berserker, both by blood and by heart.

As a baby and later as a toddler, their little girl naturally demanded a little bit more attention than her four year older brother, particularly from their mother. Dagur didn't mind. Dagur wasn't a jealous child. He wasn't all that troubled either. In fact, he seemed to relish in his role as big brother to little sister Heather.

So he can't quite explain why he did it. Why he looked at the cradle with the sleeping girl inside and decided to send it afloat across the sea.

What egged him on? What gave him the urge to do it? There was honestly no rhyme or reason. No one told him to do it, no one threatened him, or forced him to do anything he didn't want to do.

He just did it. With one push it was done. Heather was gone and she never even cried.

She would wake up sometime later and come to realize that she was completely alone in the middle of the ocean, her parents and her home gone.

Dagur watched his only little sister drift away knowing just this, taken by the waves of the ocean, and one single thought ran through his mind the further away she got.

What kind of a big brother was he?

Life had never quite been the same for the Berserker chief and his family after little Heather's sudden and unexplained disappearance.

Poor Helga the Fair's heart was broken beyond repair ever since that dreadful day when she lost her youngest child and some even claim that was the reason she eventually passed away. From a broken heart torn apart by loss.

Chief Oswald grew overprotective of Dagur from then on and never again faced a single new day with a genuine smile. After the loss of his daughter and wife all in the span of just one year, something broke inside the man, much like with the love of his life, though he remained a good leader to his people and the best father he could be to his one remaining child.

Something had snapped within young Dagur that day too. Through his inexcusable actions, the young child's mind and heart were in pieces and there was no one who could help him put them back together again.

There was nothing to be done. Nothing that could be said.

Confessions that he was the one who send Heather away went completely ignored too. Nothing he said could make his father believe he was the cause for all their misery, the reason why his mother and sister were no longer with them.

It only served to keep the guilt eating away at him.

Dagur was the reason his sister was dead. He had send the defenseless little thing afloat in her tiny cradle with his own two hands. It was because of his actions that his mother never stopped crying herself to sleep every night or locked herself away in their home to never again face the light of day now that her heart was a shattered mess. What made his father come home to an empty and cold house was all his fault.

He was just a young boy of only six or seven years old and already carried such a large burden of guilt for actions he couldn't come to understand by himself.

Just like the rest of his family, Dagur was never the same.

There was a burning hole where his painfully throbbing heart used to be and where his still developing mind was now crumbling to.

He was a bad child. He knew so for certain.

Four years later, the incident was all but forgotten. The pain he had caused had not numbed even a little bit.

His heart ached and his mind had grown rampant mulling over that day time and again with his every waking moment. How it was his fault that his family would never again be complete is something that will haunt him for the rest of his life.

The boy was rotting from the inside. He felt like he was.

But one visit to Berk, the first one he had ever gone on, might put together that which was ripped apart.

That was when the ten year old Berserker heir was introduced to the six year old heir of the Haddock family.

Dagur looked at the young boy his father had introduced as Hiccup, who was still stubbornly seeking safety behind his giant of a father, with a look of wild curiosity and wondered if Heather would be this small now. They did look like they were of the same age.

They had been formally introduced to one another by their fathers, as was customary for heirs for the first and every time they met. Their fathers were good friends and loyal allies. They hoped their sons would mean the same for eachother. It would be good for both The Hairy Hooligans and the Berserkers.

"Come on, Hiccup, don't be stubborn. Chief Oswald and I have important matters to discuss and treaties to signs. Go play with Dagur." Chief Stoick, a man larger than life, shoved the boy forward with utter ease. It was much to this Hiccup's dismay and no amount of strength put into those tiny heels digging in the dirt could stop the little boy from facing Dagur directly.

His lips were pursed in a nervous pout and he stared at the older youth with the look a cornered animal would wear. One Dagur quite enjoyed. There was such fright to be seen on his chubby and freckled face.

But above all, beneath that voluminous mess of browns, a pair of very green eyes were looking back at him and the older child wondered silently if his sister's eyes had been this green too.

They were very similar. So much so, in fact, that something once again changed within the Berserker heir.

For once in his life since Heather's mysterious disappearance, Dagur felt the hole in his heart fill up.

Four years of relentless agony and unanswered questions, one young boy made it all go away. And all he needed to have were those familiar lively green eyes.

"Come with me, Hiccup! I have to show you something!" Grabbing Hiccup's much smaller hand and dragging him away from the two conversing chiefs despites his protests and calls for his father, Dagur felt like a big brother all over again.

He would not let this one go.