A/N: Hello! The 'Hiccup-runs-away' premise has been done to death, I know, but I had this idea and I think it's a little different from the usual. The title, Devil comes from HTTYD1, where Stoick calls Toothless 'devil' right before they set sail for Helheim's gate. Definitely a PG kind of insult, but it got me thinking: What if Hiccup became the 'devil', too? And here, we are. I hope you enjoy!

Note: This chapter is a rewrite. Information-wise, nothing has changed, I just wanted to clean it up. If you have read before and noticed this, no, you are not crazy!

When the night comes, Berk transforms. As the sun sets people start retreating indoors, and by the time the darkness settles all windows and doors are locked up tight. It wouldn't help much (it never did) but it allowed the average villager feel just a little bit safer, a little bit more in control when there was really no such thing.

Contrary to the bustling daytime, nights on Berk are completely silent. Motionless, stifled apart from a number of flickering torches that lit main roads and the paths to the outhouses—although anyone smart enough held it for the night. No one wanted to be caught in the middle of a dragon attack with their trousers around their ankles.

And like any smart villager at this time, Astrid is in her room, fully awake even after her parents have forced out the lanterns. It's been three days since the last dragon attack, which meant tonight—they were coming. There was no such thing as peace for this many days in a row, not in a long while. When the dragons came, she had to be ready to fight, not half awake and dim with the ignorance of thinking she could have gotten a full night's sleep.

Her parents were deluding themselves. The citizens of Berk had never been more stressed, but for the first time in ages their food supply wasn't. The dragons came to destroy, not steal. Years ago that wouldn't have seemed like a bad alternative during a scarce winter… but now, Astrid is grateful her house has remained standing as long as it has.

The idea that this might be her last night in this bed wasn't a foreign thought. The darkness that once felt comforting is smothering. Nights like these lead her mind into interesting places. When did it all change?

Before.

She thought about so much, too much. Before, when dragon raids were less frequent, less brutal. Before, when life wasn't all about fighting and killing and surviving. Before, when living became all about this waiting. When she had times in between the madness to be happy.

Not that anybody on Berk was unhappy—but Astrid, sometimes she wasn't sure what to consider her existence. She'd spent her entire life learning and improving and besting everyone and everything that dared stand in her way. And now here she was, five years later, a professional at her sport and without a purpose. Now that her thoughts weren't clouded by ambition, she had to wonder… what was she doing, exactly? Was there anything left to strive for in her life?

Before was a different time altogether. Things were so different. Before Astrid and Hiccup discovered the Red Death on the back of his dragon, before Toothless was captured in the arena… Before Hiccup supposedly disappeared off the face of the earth.

Maybe, maybe that was where it all changed. After Hiccup disappeared, things in the village became different. There were less accidents, less incidences. Defending from dragon attacks definitely went along a lot more smoothly. The chief even seemed less irritable, even at his son's mention.

Things became more normal… and that's the way it went, for years and years. The villagers moved on; most Vikings didn't have the capacity for memories more than a few years old. But Astrid didn't forget things, especially things like these, that easily. Maybe the other villagers had never had the opportunity to touch the clouds, but… Astrid could never forget something like that.

Before.

Especially on nights like these, she couldn't help but think and wonder if things could have gone a different way if the plan Hiccup had mentioned before entering the arena had worked out. Would she be here, staring into the darkness, wasting her time like she was now? Was this life that she had dreamed of for her entire childhood… the only one that could have ever existed for her?

Before… it was a lifetime ago.

The silence breaks, and the village is filled with the sounds of early-warning horns. The dragons have been spotted, and are on their way. It's about time, too. Sometimes, some thoughts… are better off left in the dark.

Already dressed, Astrid all but leaps from her bed and grabs her axe, rushing down the stairs as she's done a thousand times over during the last few years. The door is swinging wide open—kid themselves all they may, her parents are just as prepared and even steps ahead of her.

Outside her home, the world is chaos. There's very little that can be made out at first, but the skyline of Berk is already illuminated with fire as dragons begin to swoop down and set buildings ablaze. Her eyes take another second to adjust, and she can see them all: thirty, maybe forty, a mix of gronckles, nadders and monstrous nightmares. Vikings are yelling, blades are clashing against horns as the cloud of dragons begins to descend.

Astrid nearly topples over the many necks of a fallen snaptrapper as she runs for higher ground, to where the massive torches are planted and raised above the village to flood it with light. From just above that, giant catapults positioned at the hilltops gear up, loaded with rocks and other projectiles. A catapult goes off at that moment, launching a flaming ball overhead like a shooting star.

(I wish my house will still be there when I get back).

"Incoming!"

Without thinking twice Astrid ducks down, narrowly avoiding a gronckle blast. It sails past her and into the ground. Springing back to her feet, she raises her weapon as the dragon from which the shot came lands heavily before her, baring its teeth as another fiery blast prepares to launch from its mouth.

Just as Astrid raises her axe to fight off the gronckle, not-so-little-anymore Gustav Larson dives in between them. He strikes the gronckle's snout with his sword, slashing a fair gash down the side of its face. Gustav laughs obnoxiously, raising his sword for another blow.

But the cut on the gronckle is superficial, and only annoys the beast. It rears forward, opening its jaw to all but swallow the teenager whole. Gustav jumps back, slips, and falls heavily onto his behind. It was a move nothing short of graceless, but at the moment it prevents him from being bitten in half.

The gronckle leaps forward again. Gustav can't crawl back fast enough.

Groaning, Astrid jumps between them and points the butt of her axe at the gronckle's eye. The dragon hits hard, moaning as it feels the impact and swatting at its swelling eye unsuccessfully.

While the dragon is distracted, Astrid looks over at Gustav. "Get out of here!" She yells at him, keeping her other eye trained on the gronckle.

"I want to help!" He argues, getting back on his feet but with less gusto than he had before.

"If you want to help, go help with the fires!" Astrid has very little patience for any of the amateur dragon fighters, Gustav particularly. "Fighting is only for the people with dragon training!"

Gustav nods, although she's not certain he's at all taken her words to heart as he heads off to (hopefully) help the other trainees with the fires. That kid had a mix of stubborn and arrogant that was probably going to cause her a lot more grief one day.

Astrid notices the gronckle trying to make an escape, and she spins back around to face it. It's slower now, unsure of its movements with only one good eye to direct it, and Astrid knows now is the ideal time to attack the soft tissue between the eyes and kill it.

Although the streets are full of firelight and adrenaline has all but taken over, Astrid can't help but remember her time spent in the dark moments ago. She has to wonder, watching the gronckle struggle to direct itself, if this really was the only life there could have ever been. Everything Hiccup said to her about dragons—could it ever have come to fruition? Flying on Toothless, what she saw in dragon training—was that reality even possible? Could the fighting and killing and destruction have ever stopped?

But her hands automatically move—her body only understands one reality—and she raises her axe, fully intending on ending that gronckle here and now. This is the life she lives, it's the one she was born into and the one she would die protecting.

It's the only life.

But then, a familiar call stops her cold:

"NIGHTFURY!"

"Get down!"

There's less than a second to react as she hears the familiar swoosh of a nightfury and the scream of its plasma blast. That portion of a second is spent falling to the ground and covering her head as a building not far to Astrid's left explodes into a typhoon of wood shards, debris flying in all directions.

Astrid's weapon falls, forgotten, as she feels the impact of a few pieces—nothing more than splinters—stick into her arm. She hears the flutter of the grockle's wings as it takes off, followed by an enormous thud that she both hears and feels. In the illumination of the now burning building, Astrid raises her head just in time to see the outline of black tail slip into the darkness.

That tail… were her eyes tricking her, or did it look like half of that tail was brown, not black? Just like…

No. Could it be?

Ignoring the protest of her arm, Astrid pushes herself back to her feet. There was no way, but that dragon's tail, she couldn't mistake it. There was none like it in the world.

But she hadn't seen or heard of a nightfury since is disappeared along with Hiccup five years ago.

Stoick is yelling orders to the masses, directing everyone to fall behind the catapults, but Astrid pays his directions no mind. Instead, she runs after the nightfury, blindly, fully aware that what she saw may be for the last time.

"Toothless!" She calls out, saying the name she had thought about a million times but hadn't dared to say to any person. "Toothless!"

The further she goes from the village, the darker it seems to get. The stars provide very little light, especially at this time of night, but Astrid continues to wander in the darkness. Looking one way, she swears she sees a pair of bright green eyes watching her from not far away. She blinks and they're gone, but she continues to follow in their direction.

Toothless… where is Hiccup? What happened to you, what happened to him? You must remember me, why won't you show yourself?

Astrid skids to a halt as the realizes she's approaching a cliff drop. She looks around frantically, barely out of breath but tired with frustration. That dragon… there was no way it could fly on its own. If it was Toothless, that meant he had to have help getting to the island. He had a rider. So then where was….?

Astrid turns to face the ocean, sighing with irritation. Where could that dragon have gone? It was on foot, it couldn't have…

Feeling eyes on her back, Astrid stops. After years of dragon hunting, she can easily make out the signs. Shallow breathing, claws faintly scrabbling in the dirt. His bright night eyes are watching her, waiting for her, she can tell. And there's something else with him, something breathing differently, something a little more human but feral all the same.

Astrid turns, ever so slowly, and nearly cries out in surprise. The nightfury… Toothless… and a rider on his back. The rider wears a helmet that includes a mask, so she can't make out his face, but who else could it be? There was no other soul in Midgard that dared ride dragons.

But then… why is Hiccup participating in this attack, instead of stopping it? And where has he been all these years?

Astrid is still as frozen as she was a moment ago. When it came to killing dragons, you just ran at it and attacked. But a dragon with a rider… how does one deal with this kind of situation?

The figure on Toothless also remains still as, not a hundred metres away, the carnage continues in the village. Astrid watches the masked face, but senses nothing from it. The dragon itself seems oblivious to the tension, watching her with slight disinterest before his eyes roamed elsewhere.

Astrid slowly lowers her arms. She doesn't have her weapon anymore. With more care that she'd probably used in her entire life, she takes a brazen step towards the pair before her. When neither rider nor dragon react, Astrid allows herself to utter Berk's five-year-old taboo name: "Hiccup?"

The silence radiating from him is deafening to her. He remains still, says nothing. She allows herself to try again: "Hiccup, is that you?" Even though she knows it can be no one else, she can't help but sense the uncertainty in her voice.

After another brief moment the rider finally moves, raising a hand to point two fingers at Astrid.

"Toothless," He finally says in the voice that could only belong to the chief's son, "plasma blast!"