Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

The first time Hiccup woke up, it was with a start. He jolted, heart nearly beating out of his chest as a dream he couldn’t remember evaporated back into the ether. Pain seared through his head and with a groan Hiccup fell back down onto the pillow beneath him. It felt as if his skull would split in two. Perhaps that would be better, in fact, as it would probably end his suffering.

Something shifted next to him, and Hiccup turned his head in the direction of it. There was a lit candle next to his bed, and the light was painful and searing. He shut his eyes, raising the blanket to cover his head.

“Toothless?” Hiccup croaked out. “Mom?”

“You’re okay. Get some rest.” Something heavy and warm settled over Hiccup’s shoulder, felt even through the blanket, accompanied by the familiar deep and gruff voice of his dad. Hiccup relaxed, flailing a hand out of his tightly-bundled form and grabbing his dad’s hand.

“Dad,” he breathed, only able to focus on that one thing. “Dad.”

oOo

The second time Hiccup woke up, his head still hurt, but not nearly as much.

He pulled the blanket off of his head and looked around the room. There was the faintest of light streaming in from the closed windows. The room looked familiar, but he couldn’t exactly place it. The candle that he seen lit before was now out, burnt low but seemingly snuffed before burning out on its own. Hiccup frowned a bit upon not seeing Toothless around, nor a proper bed for a dragon. Most houses in Berk had them by now. Perhaps it was in another room? Or the resident's dragon was too large to fit inside, and instead lived in the yard or on the roof.

As Hiccup shifted around, he found that his armor had been taken off, as well as all of his weapons. He was still wearing his pants at least, and his prosthetic was still attached, but there were bandages carefully wrapped around the right side of his chest and a dull pain that accompanied them. All of the rest of his things, including armor and weapons, he found in a pile near the foot of the bed.

Hiccup rubbed his head as he tried to remember what had happened; he blamed the strange gap in memory on the pain, possibly from a concussion. He could vaguely remember waking up for a short period of time. There had been somebody here, somebody with a deep voice… his first instinct was to say it was his dad, but Stoick had died half a year ago. Maybe Gobber? Or maybe he wasn’t on Berk at all and it was somebody he hadn’t known. He attempted to think back even further, to what he’d hurt his head doing. He could remember flying with the Toothless, approaching some unfamiliar rock formations as a storm ravaged around them. There had been a bright light… and it all faded from there.

“Toothless?” Hiccup whispered, as if the dragon would just suddenly appear out of the shadows. The room remained empty save for himself.

Setting the problem aside for now, Hiccup continued to inspect the room he was in. The bed was huge, clearly made for a man much bigger than himself. On the bedside table was a plate of bread and soup accompanied by cup of water. Hiccup immediately dug into the food, not having realized just how hungry he was until there was food in front of him. He looked around at the rest of the room and felt his heat plummet as he saw, mounted above the bed, a dragon skull.

Hiccup set the food aside so he could stand on the bed and get a better look at the huge skull. It definitely used to be a monstrous nightmare, the horns very distinct, and there were scratches in the skull that told a sickening story of what it had taken to down the beast. He looked around, now at his higher position, and his eyes lingered on another skull sitting on the other side of the bed - deadly nadder - and a map set up on one wall.

He recognized the islands on the map, easily able to pick out Berk on it. There were x’s in red, furiously scratched on, going out into the unknown mists of the map that Hiccup recognized as being where the dragon nest of the Red Death had been. There were also black x’s, set more around the islands. The edges of the map - in fact, the edges of most things in the room - were charred around the edges.

Hiccup sent out a silent prayer to the gods that wherever Toothless was, he was safe from these vikings who were apparently still at war with dragons.

The door to the room opened, and Hiccup froze where he was, relaxing when he saw Gobber come through with some more food. It also confused him, and he looked around the room again. This wasn’t Gobber’s house - that, he was sure of - so where was he? Why didn’t Gobber just bring him to his own room?

“Oh good, you're awake.” Gobber set down the food on the table in front of the map, smiling at Hiccup. “We were afraid you’d taken one hit too many to the head.”

“Yeah, well, I’ve been told I’ve got a thick skull,” Hiccup shrugged, confused but comforted by Gobber's pressence nonetheless.

“Well, now that you’re coherent, I’ll go get the chief. A good thing too, he’s setting sail soon.”

Hiccup faltered, brow furrowing as what Gobber said sank in, but by the time he’d put together words to ask what he meant, the man was already back out the door. Hiccup moved to follow him, but then thought better of it. He didn’t know what was going on here or what he would see out there. Better to stay in here, where at least this 'chief' was coming and he may get some answers.

Gobber had brought a candle with the food, and Hiccup carefully picked it up to get an even better view of the room. There were no other dragon skulls, but there was a rather large collection of axes and swords hung up on one of the walls. When Hiccup inspected them he found them all still sharp and touching one of the blades left a small knick on his finger. He winced, imagining them being used against dragons.

He couldn’t shake the familiarity of the room, and the more time Hiccup spent in it the more uncomfortable he became. He abandoned trying to figure out the room, and to get his mind off the anxiety of waiting, he inspected his wound on his shoulder, peeling back the bandages. Hiccup knew, of course, that it was the last thing he should be doing, but he was curious. What he found beneath, he was familiar with: puncture wounds that he easily matched up with Toothless’ teeth. They were well on their way to healing, and while Hiccup couldn’t exactly remember how he got them, he trusted that Toothless had a good reason for it. After bandaging the wound, Hiccup put his clothes and armor back on. He felt better just wearing it and breathed a sigh of relief as he found everything was, indeed, accounted for.

The door creaked open again, and Hiccup turned around.

Anything he was going to say caught in his throat at who he saw.

Stoick the Vast, his father, the man who had taken an attack from Toothless to save Hiccup, who Hiccup had sent off to Valhalla himself, was standing there, staring at Hiccup with nearly the same expression the man had worn upon seeing Valka for the first time in twenty years. He was absolutely speechless, approaching Hiccup slowly, carefully, one hand extended outwards. Hiccup felt tears welling up at the sight of his father, alive and breathing despite knowing that there was no way he could be here, absolutely no possible way.

Hiccup couldn’t stop himself from closing the distance between them and clinging onto the man who looked like his father, even still had the musty but warm smell he did, slightly salty, a bit ashy. The man wrapped his arms around Hiccup in return, and they just stood there for a moment, Hiccup drinking in the man that looked so so much like Stoick, that he desperately wanted to be. After a few heartbeats like that, Hiccup checked himself and pulled back, wiping away the tears and attempting to regain some semblance of composure, trying to be on guard because he was more confused than ever.

“Are you okay? You weren’t in a great shape when we found you.” Stoick’s eyes were critically inspecting Hiccup, and the expression of such vulnerability Hiccup had seen just moments ago was already fading, only a bit of it remaining.

Hiccup opened his mouth, trying to figure out how to respond to that. He closed his mouth again, searching for the words, and then finally spoke.

“I… yeah, yeah I think I’m okay.” Hiccup was aware he probably didn’t look very okay, shaking and on the verge of breaking down and hugging the man again. “Is… did I die? Is this Valhalla?” Stoick chuckled.

“No, it’s not Valhalla. We’ve been waiting a few days for you to wake up. So, boy, I am Stoick the Vast, Chief of Berk. What’s your name?”

And the world came to a stop.

Hiccup stared at his dad more, but this time in shock, brain working away. His dad… didn’t recognize him? Was alive to begin with? He’d been ready to just accept it, that he was dead or that his dad was magically back, but his dad not knowing who he was? It was crushing.

“Hey, uh, dad? Gobber said you’d be- oh. He’s awake.”

To make everything even more confusing, Hiccup himself walked in front of the doorway.

He was… so short. His freckles were way more pronounced than they were on himself, and Hiccup’s eyes were drawn to the leg, still flesh and blood, on the smaller boy. Hiccup was significantly older than this teenager in front of him. And when he saw this kid, the gears in Hiccup’s head started moving again, fast, as he processes what’s in front of him.

His dad alive.

Himself with his leg.

The room he was in he now recognized. His dad’s room in the last house they had before renovating it to suit dragons.

The conclusion he came to was insane, but there was no time to stop and debate it.

“Horrendous.” Hiccup - now Horrendous, apparently - said, prompting the younger Hiccup and Stoick to return their attention to him. Hiccup’s brow furrowed, but Stoick just smiled.

“Horrendous,” Stoick repeated, clapping Hiccup on the shoulder. “My son’s middle name is Horrendous.”

Yeah, Hiccup thought, Trust me, I know. When he was younger (even younger than his mini replica before him), he had tried to convince the entire village to call him Horrendous instead of Hiccup. It didn’t work, probably since he was, well, Hiccup, and his attempts only made Snotlout call him Hiccup with even more vigor, treating the word like a taunt.

“Thank you for bandaging me.” Horrendous put his hand over where the bite was. Okay. In the past. He could probably deal with this. He felt his face flush a bit with heat at he suddenly realized what had happened moments before. “Uh, D- Chief Stoick, I’m, uh, you look a lot like my dad, he was killed not too long ago-”

“It’s okay.” Stoick held up a hand to stop Horrendous’ stuttering episode. “I was no help either. You look a lot like somebody I once knew, too. Now, why don’t you follow me to the docks. I’m departing on a voyage to find Helheim’s Gate. I wish you’d woken up sooner, so that we could have talked more.” Stoick led the way outside, and immediately Horrendous noticed just how empty the village seemed without dragons everywhere. It was almost eerie, like a bad dream, but the pain in his shoulder told him this was no dream. This, as impossible as it seemed, was real.

“Where did you find me?” Horrendous asked. Maybe it could lend some clue to how he ended up here.

“A few days ago, you washed up on shore. Hiccup was actually the one that spotted you.” Stoick nodded over to his son, and Horrendous was hit by how ironic that was. “You looked half-drowned, and your wounds suggested you were attacked by dragons. You were the only one we found, though, so if you had a crew, they probably didn’t make it.”

“Why were you sailing so close to Berk?” Hiccup asked, seeming to have forgotten what he had planned to tell his dad in favor of find out more about Horrendous.

Horrendous did his best not to wince as an idea came to him. It could work, and help him stay close to his family while he figured this out, but… if felt like a low blow. But what choice did he have?

“I was, uh, looking for a cousin of mine,” he said, disliking how the lie sat bitter in his mouth. “Her name is Valka.”

Stoick came to a stop.

“She was my wife. I’m afraid she was killed in a dragon raid.” The grief was still so fresh in Stoick’s voice. “I’m sorry you came all this way for nothing.”

“Oh,” Horrendous said, stomach churning. Not only was he not Valka’s cousin, he knew that she was alive and out there, with Cloudjumper and the Alpha.

“But if you’re part of her family, you can stay as long as you need to.” Stoick smiled at Horrendous, looking over his features again. Horrendous looked so much like his mom that it wasn’t a hard lie to get Stoick to believe.

They walked in silence for a moment as the memory of Valka passed over them. When they reached the boats, Hiccup stepped forward, clenched fists shaking a bit, and Horrendous knew what the other was going to say.

“Dad, listen, I can’t- The whole Dragon Training thing-”

“You’ll finally be a real viking,” Stoick proclaimed proudly. Horrendous and Hiccup both winced at that.

“No, you’re not listening. I- dad, I really think I should just stay Gobber’s apprentice. I mean, somebody has to keep repairing weapo-”

“I was a blacksmith’s apprentice,” Horrendous cut in. He knew how this conversation was going to end, but maybe he could something out of it. “If your son is worried about the forge so much, I could help out your blacksmith so Hiccup can focus on his Dragon Training. If I’m staying, I need to do something to earn my keep anyway.”

Stoick grinned and gestured to Horrendous.

“See, Hiccup? The forge will be fine.”

Hiccup made a sound like he was going to protest again, but Horrendous put his hand on the younger boy’s shoulder before he could get anything out.

“Hiccup, why doesn’t you show me where your forge is so I can get acquainted with it?”

Hiccup looked back to his dad, but Stoick was already on board the ship, helping with the final preparations. Hiccup sighed with his whole body and, with a groan, said,

“Yeah, follow me.”

The forge was smaller than the one from Horrendous’s time, but that was to be expected. Gobber didn’t need the room for all of the riding equipment he wasn't making and/or fixing, and he also didn’t have several dragons running around. Hiccup half-heartedly showed him where the furnace and tools were and Horrendous half-heartedly listened.

Okay. He’d secured a job, a fake name, and a fake reason to be here. Now he just needed to find out how to get home. Hopefully without messing things up too badly. Horrendous hadn’t thought much about time travel before, but sometimes Fishlegs would talk about paradoxes and stuff from books he’d read. None of it ever sounded any good, but Horrendous would just have to pray that he would make it back to his time safely.

Chapter Text

“Ah, Hiccup, there you are. Can’t have you miss your first day of Dragon Training.” Gobber limped into the the forge. “And I see you’ve made a new friend. Gobber the Belch, nice to meet you.”

“Horrendous the, uh… Crafter.” Horrendous shook Gobber’s hand. “I’ll be helping you out around here so that Hiccup can focus on his training.”

“Good to see ya up and moving, you were out for four days!” Four days. Great. He was already four days into this whole fiasco and he hadn’t even done anything yet. That was four days where Toothless was on his own.

Horrendous swallowed down a lump in his throat at the thought of his friend. What if Toothless had drowned out at sea, or had injured himself and wasn’t able to hunt and was starving to death? He felt his heartbeat pick up, breaths getting shorter, chest feeling like there were ropes around it, constricting, tightening.

“Are you okay?” Hiccup asked, and Horrendous stumbled backward a bit at seeing the younger kid, back hitting a table of tools in for sharpening, a few knives falling off the table and clattering to the ground. Gods, what was he doing?! What was all of this?! He was in the past! His heartbeat was filling his ears, and some part of him was aware he was having a panic attack.

Did anybody know he was gone yet? What would happen to his village? Would his mom have to take over? Snotlout? How long would they spend searching? What if Toothless wasn’t even here, but trying find him back in the future?

“C’mon, breath with me boy.”

Horrendous blinked, trying to focus on the voice. Gobber.

Just past the roar in his ears, Horrendous could hear an exaggerated inhale and exhale. Something younger in him caught onto to it quickly as the two simple actions cycled through. In. Out. His chest shook from the effort of not speeding up his breathing again.

What if Stoick finds out he can ride dragons, and banishes him from Berk?

Horrendous’s breathing picked up again and then there was a hand tight on one shoulder and metal on his other. He pushed through the panic, finding the slow breathing rhythm in front of him again, and did his best to mimic it.

When he was no longer hyperventilating, he realized that at some point during his panic attack he had fallen to the floor and curled up into himself. Gobber was kneeling down in front of him, hand and hook on his shoulders. He wasn’t doing the deep breaths anymore, but his eyebrows were raised. Horrendous shook his head, clearing the last of it, and climbed back to his feet.

“Are you okay?” Hiccup repeated, standing off to the side, and Horrendous didn’t freak out this time. Hiccup himself actually seemed freaked out. Horrendous rubbed a hand down his face, letting out a long and slow breath.

“Yeah. Sorry about that. I, uh, I haven’t done that since I was a kid.” Horrendous scratched the back of his head, avoiding eye contact with the other two.

“Nothing to be embarrassed about!” Gobber gave Horrendous a pat on the back strong enough to make him stumble forward a step. “Hiccup here used to panic when he was little too! Had to learn how to calm him down. Now then, let’s get you to Dragon Training, Hiccup.”

Horrendous waited until they were gone before sitting down on the floor again, closing his eyes as he waited for the tremors that still ran through him to stop. He’d forgotten just how terrible those attacks felt. Despite everything he had been through the past few years, they hadn’t resurfaced until today. Then again, this was a whole other brand of stressful than he was used to.

Once he was calm again and could trust his legs to hold him upright, Horrendous stood back up. He contemplated for a moment whether or not he should go and check out the Dragon Training. It would be interesting - maybe even fun - to watch the young him and his riders, his (eventually) best friends, running around like chickens with their head chopped off as the terrible terror chased them around, but he didn’t want to get there, see them, and have another internal crisis.

So instead he headed in the other direction, towards the woods. If he was going to find Toothless, he had to start somewhere.

The woods, like the village, were quiet in a way that Horrendous wasn’t used to. But they were also comforting and familiar, not nearly as different as the village was. Even if he didn’t find Toothless out here, he’d probably made a good choice. Here, away from everything else, he could clear his head a bit more.

“Toothless!” Horrendous cupped his hands to his mouth and called out. The dragon had impeccable hearing, and if he was on the island he should hear his name and come. Unless Toothless was hurt. Horrendous quickly pushed the thought out of his head before it could run away with him again. Toothless had survived before him and would be fine on his own for a few days, absolutely nothing to worry about. “C’mon out buddy!”

But the night fury didn’t burst forth from the foliage, sprinting and relieved to see Horrendous again. After an hour or so of walking and calling, Horrendous found a cliff and sat down on the edge with a sigh. He couldn’t say he was terribly surprised that he wasn’t finding Toothless. If the dragon was on the island he surely would’ve gone to the village first and foremost. For a moment the idea that that was exactly what the dragon had done crossed Horrendous’s mind but he brushed it off. No, surely if that had happened there would still be celebration of the kill of a night fury, or his corpse hung up somewhere, or something. After all, these people hadn’t even seen a night fury before, killing one would’ve been a big deal.

A big deal we both gave up, Horrendous thought with a small smile, thinking of the young and awkward Hiccup. Somewhere out in these woods was the night fury that the kid had shot down, but Horrendous had no desire to find him, content to sit back and let Hiccup meet his best friend in his own time.

As he stared out at the sea, Horrendous thought about his dad out there. He’d just gotten him back, only for the man to leave. Horrendous wasn’t sure whether or not he hoped he was still stuck here in the month it would take for his dad to return. There were so many more things he hadn’t gotten to say to Stoick before he died. Then again, it wasn’t really his dad, and the chief didn’t even know Horrendous was his son.

He supposed, though, that if he had to be stuck in the past anywhere, he wasn’t too upset about it being Berk. Dragons or not, past or future, this island and its people were his home.

“Don’t worry, Toothless. If you’re out there, I’ll find you,” Horrendous whispered, letting the wind carry his words away.

His search wouldn’t get very far very fast, however, without something to ride on.

oOo

Cloudjumper landed behind Valka, crooning to her, and the dragon rider got set down her half-eaten fish, going over to the dragon and placing her hand on his snout.

“What is it?” she asked, and the stormcutter lowered himself closer to the ground, a clear message to get on his back. After grabbing her armor and maskand quickly strapping them on, she swung up behind his frills. She felt the muscles underneath his scales tense as the dragon approached the edge of their perch and then jumped out, wings unfolding and catching the air before flapping, rising higher into the air. The scuttleclaw hatchlings, teeth just coming in, chirped at them as they left and Valka mimicked the sound back as best she could.

She couldn’t keep the grin off of her face as she watched her home pass by, the large and impressive spikes of ice as familiar to her as the huts of Berk once were. Dragons looked up at them as they passed by, a few taking flight and flying with them for a moment, others calling out greetings.

Flying just outside of the Sanctuary was a deadly nadder, who squawked at Cloudjumper and then lead the way. Valka had to admit she was curious where they were taking her. Usually she was the one that orchestrated raids against Drago’s ships - ever increasing in quantity and frequency - and usually they allowed her to scout them out, then pick the dragons she believed to be best suited for the job.

They stopped at one point by a scauldron, a pile of dead fish by him. The dragons chattered for a moment before both the deadly nadder and Cloudjumper filled their mouths with fish but didn’t eat them, and took off again. The cold air whipped past them, and Valka peered down at the cold snowy tundra below. The deadly nadder flew low to the ground, clearly tracking something, and Valka could just barely make out prints in the snow.

Gray mountains rose up and the dragons slowed down, landing outside of a dark cave that time and weather had bore into the stone. The opening was too small for Cloudjumper, and the dragon opened his mouth and let the fish fall to the ground outside of it. Valka swung down from him, following the deadly nadder into the cave.

They were greeted by a warning growl from a dragon too far back in the cave to be seen. The deadly nadder dropped his fish, pushing a few of them with his nose towards the dragon. Valka twirled her staff around, the rattling hopefully calming the dragon down. She could make out green eyes, wary slits trained on the deadly nadder as the mysterious dragon steadily edged closer to them.

“It’s alright,” she whispered, staying a respectful distance away.

The dragon’s eyes flickered over to her and he straightened out of his low and defensive crouch. He darted forward, grabbing a bite of the fish and then tackling her. From outside, Cloudjumper growled but cut off when it was obvious she wasn’t in trouble, the dragon sniffing her thoroughly and giving her a very slobbery lick, then hopping off.

Now that he was in the light, she had a good view of him and couldn’t stop the gasp that escaped her lips. She could count the night furies she had seen on one hand, and here was one before her. The ones she’d met had all been very wary of strangers, cautious, never taking their eyes off her, never letting her even get close. This one’s pupils were wide and friendly, tongue lolling out of his mouth. When the deadly nadder started eating the fish, the night fury turned his back to her in favor of eating more of the fish.

She slowly approached him, just in case the dragon suddenly decided he was no longer okay with her presence, and stared at the rigging on him with wide eyes. She had seen dragons with armor forcefully strapped onto them before, but this was something new. There was a study leather saddle on his back, straps going over his throat, stomach, and forelegs to keep it in place. Her eyes followed a particular rope connected to one of the stirrups that trailed along his back, all the way down to his tail fins.

“Oh dear, what did they do to you?” She brushed her hand against a ruined red piece of fabric where the fin should’ve been.

Chapter Text

During the first four days after Horrendous had washed up on Berk, while he slept fitfully, Hiccup hadn’t known what to make of the man. Now that the man was awake, he still was unsure about him.

Hiccup had been the one to spot him. There were no other men, not even ship debris, on the shore, just a man that Hiccup had, at first, thought to be dead. When he’d realized that wasn’t the case, he ran back up to the village to get his dad and Gobber, knowing they would know what to do with the man. Stoick had stared at him like he was seeing a ghost, and Gobber had explained to Hiccup a little later that the man had an almost uncanny resemblance to to his mom. Hiccup supposed that was probably why, instead of saddling another household with watching the man, or even just putting him in the Meade Hall, Stoick had given him his own bed.

Hiccup had gone in there a few times, staring at the man and trying to figure out what his mom looked like with this random guy being the only clue. He didn’t look much like a viking, skinny and lacking the usual metal and fur armor, but rather in what looked like leather, or, oddly enough, dragon hide. Maybe he was some kind of famous dragon killer, Hiccup had mused, that had come to help with their war for some reason.

Hiccup definitely hadn’t liked the man when he’d used Hiccup’s excuse to get out of Dragon Training as a way to get a job.

He’d also definitely felt sorry for the man when he had a panic attack in the forge.

When Dragon Training was over - Hiccup almost dying from a blast from the gronkle, definitely not loving the experience so far - he swung by the forge to see what Horrendous was doing now, but he was nowhere to be seen. Some parts of his armor were sitting around, the parts that looked most like dragon scales, and Hiccup resisted the urge to run his hand across it. No, he shouldn’t be touching someone’s else’s belongings. Instead, he pushed it aside and grabbed his notebook, heading out into the woods.

He followed his self-made map back to where he’d found the night fury (a bit harder to read after he’d scribbled across it in frustration) and examined the remains of his bola.

“If all dragons go for the kill… why didn’t you?” Hiccup whispered.

He followed the trail of ruined foliage through the forest. It was unlikely the night fury was still here, but… well, it was a night fury, never before seen until now. He just had to try and get one last look at it.

The path led him to a cove, high cliffs surrounding a small pool of water. It was picturesque, and Hiccup had just started to step out into the cover proper when the night fury launched himself up at the cliff side, claws scraping the rock, before falling back down and gliding to a landing, howling in frustration. Hiccup scooted a little closer and pulled out his notebook, sketching the beast out quickly as he watched the dragon continue to charge up the walls, wings beating and lifting him off the ground for a moment before he fell back down.

Hiccup's charcoal slipped from his hands, clattering to the ground of the cove and Hiccup held his breath as the dragon turned around and looked up at him. He scrambled back through the hole he’d come through, praying the dragon didn’t give chase.

The sun was starting to go down, the faint image of it just barely able to seen from behind the clouds, and Hiccup sighed. Right. Dinner. He wasn’t looking forward to having to face the other teens after the display in training today. Still, though, he was hungry, and so he trudged his way back to the village while the sky grew darker and rain began to fall. And it was on his way that he saw Horrendous.

The man looked deep in thought, chin resting on his fist as he made his way towards the village. His limp was far more pronounced than it had been earlier, and Hiccup had almost forgotten the man had a prosthetic foot. He didn’t seem to notice Hiccup until the boy was almost right on top of him, and his noticeably flinched when he looked at him.

“Oh, uh, hey Hiccup. What, uh, what were you doing out here? I thought you had Dragon Training?” Horrendous’s eyes seemed to continually dart to and away from Hiccup and it made him uneasy. A lot about the guy actually made him uneasy.

“It ended a bit ago, so I went for a walk. Just a walk, to, uh, see if I could find a dragon. Y’know, kill one early.” Hiccup hoped he sounded like he meant it. Horrendous let out a huff of air through his nose, like a small laugh.

“Did you find one?” He asked, a smile tugging on the edge of his mouth.

“No!” Hiccup replied a little too quickly, and this time Horrendous chuckled.

“Okay. Let’s get to dinner.”

oOo

“Horrendous, you can sit here!”

Horrendous sighed with relief as Gobber called him over to the table he was sitting at. Horrendous wouldn’t know where else to sit, Gobber and Hiccup being the only ones he had technically met. The other vikings - all familiar faces he had been raised amongst - gave him curious and cautious looks as he passed by and he did his best not to let it bother him.

“Gobber, I meant to tell you earlier, but Stoick agreed to let me help out with the forge,” Horrendous told the viking as he sat down, shaking his head a bit to flick some of the rain water off of it.

“Ah, a blacksmith, eh? Well, there’s always work to be done!” Gobber accented his statement by lifting his hook-now-tankard hand into the air, spilling some meade on the table, and taking a big swig from it. Horrendous took a small sip of his own just as the younger versions of his friends flocked to the table like a pack of terrible terrors perching on Gothi.

“Hey, it’s the dead guy!” Tuffnut cried and pointed at him.

“Careful, you saw that bite! I bet he’s a lycanwing,” Ruffnut elbowed her twin.

“Well aren’t you guys just delightful,” Horrendous said, voice dripping with sarcasm but smiling at them. “I’m Horrendous.”

“I don’t know, I’d say you’re pretty gorgeous,” Ruffnut waggled her eyebrows at him. Horrendous nearly choked on his meade. Coughing, he set his mug down again.

“Ew, gross, he’s like twice your age,” Snotlout wrinkled his nose.

“I’m only 21,” Horrendous corrected once his throat was clear again.

“How’d you lose your leg?” Tuffnut asked, pushing his sister aside. “Was it gory?”

“Where are you form?” Astrid asked, arms folded and eyes regarding him warily.

“What happened to your boat?” Even Hiccup seemed curious. Horrendous held up his hands in surrender.

“Whoa, slow down, I’m just one guy. I lost my leg to a dragon, no he didn’t bite it off completely, but the damage was irreparable so it was just chopped off. I think it was probably gory? I was unconscious at the time. I’m, uh… from all over! My parents were, uh, traveling merchants. But they’re dead now. Yeah. My boat, right. A… night fury! Yes, a night fury attacked it.”

Horrendous prayed he sounded more confident than he felt saying the lie. During his walk earlier he had cobbled together a story, but he was rough on the details. That seemed to satisfy the teens for now, though Ruffnut was still looking at him weirdly and winking every time she thought he was looking. Both Astrid and Hiccup didn’t look completely convinced with his story, and he made a mental note to try and polish it up. If he knew these two (and gods knew he did) then they weren’t going to just let this drop.

“Alright, enough of that. Now, let’s talk about your training today. Where did you Hiccup go wrong?” Gobber wrangled the conversation.

“Uh, he showed up?” Snotlout snorted.

“He wasn’t where he was supposed to be,” Astrid said, giving a glare at the boy, and Horrendous shot the kid a sympathetic look. Sure he knew things would get better, but this days had been rough.

“Good Astrid!” Gobber praised. “You need to be living and breathing this stuff! And no better way than the book of dragons.” Gobber slid the book down the table to where all of the kids were sitting, and Horrendous almost laughed at how thin it looked. "It has everything you need to know about the dragons you’ll be learning to kill, some of which you won’t even be training up against.”

“You want us to read?! While we’re still alive?!” Ruffnut pulled away from the table like the book was poisonous.

“Do we look like we’re all Fishlegs?!” Tuffnut stuck out his tongue

“The best way to learn is to just kill the dragons!” Snotlout declared.

“Oh man, this is one of my favorites!” Fishlegs was practically vibrating in place. “I’ve read it, like, fifteen times.”

“Study up kids.” Gobber stood up as a crack of thunder shook the Hall. “No need to worry about raids tonight. No dragon can burn down a village in the middle of a storm. Horrendous, why don’t you just stay at Stoick’s house for now? We’ll worry about something more permanent later.”

The thought of not living in his house bothered Horrendous, but he nodded anyway like he was hopeful to move out soon and said a quick ‘thank you’ as Gobber left, back out into the rain. Horrendous sighed as he was reminded of the stormy weather. He’d known it was coming, the stump of his leg aching, but it had only been about when Hiccup had caught him leaving the forest that he’d put together that it meant there’d be no dragons around. He didn’t want to steal one from the Dragon Training. He was the new and unknown probably shady guy in town, people would probably suspect him first of anything suspicious happening. And anyway, he’d feel like he was stealing from his friends, even if the dragons weren’t paired up with their riders yet.

Next to him, Hiccup gave his own sigh as Astrid walked off, leaving just the two Haddocks and the book.

“Hey, Hiccup.” The kid jumped, almost falling off of his seat, clearly having forgotten that Horrendous was there.

“Uh, yeah, Horrendous?”

“I traveled around a lot, like I said. I probably know more about dragons than that book of yours there does. If you have any questions, feel free to ask me,” Horrendous offered. Hiccup nodded, thoughts clearly somewhere else, and together the two of them got up and headed out into the storm, the tome held close to Hiccup to protect it from the rain.

It was coming down in a torrent, and Horrendous hissed under his breath as he sprinted through it with his younger self, his limp growing more and more pronounced. When they made it to their house, it was all he could do not to collapse where he was. He shook his head again, droplets of water flying through the air, and almost started to head to his bedroom before he caught himself.

Right. Not his room.

He said a quick goodnight to Hiccup and limped into his dad’s room, closing the door behind him. He flopped onto the bed, removing his prosthetic quickly and starting to massage the stump in an effort to get it to feel better. Gods above, it didn’t usually hurt this bad. Sure, whenever it rained or snowed of hailed - all very often occurrences in Berk - it didn’t feel nice, but apparently the stress was getting to it too.

Horrendous lay like that for a while, eyes closed, listening to the thundering, room lit every so often by a flash of lightning, the rain drumming against the roof of his house. Hiccup was no doubt in his own room, leafing through the pages of the book of dragons, eventually reaching the blank night fury page and being bewildered at how little was known about the the ‘unholy union of lightning and death’.

He opened his eyes again and sat up, looking over to the wall map. There was a piece of charcoal for writing by it, as well as parchment, and Horrendous hopped over to them, grabbing them and setting to work sketching. Hiccup would be working hard in the workshop soon. That left a small window of time for Horrendous to get his stuff done. He needed a saddle that could work with whatever species of dragon he happened to tame (hopefully) tomorrow.

He was Chief Hiccup Horrendous Haddock III.

He was going to find his dragon and find a way back home.

Chapter Text

Horrendous woke up early the next day, stretching and massaging his stump a bit more. There was a still a bit of a lasting ache, but the rain had stopped at some point during the night. He looked over the designs he’d drawn up the night before, nodding in satisfaction. It would be able to fit most dragons, with a few minor adjustments needed if it was one of the species you had to ride on their neck. If worst came to worst, though, he’d just bareback with maybe a piece of rope to help hold on until he found a chance to make a more suitable saddle.

He spent most of the morning putting the saddle together in between sharpening axes and swords. It wasn’t terribly impressive, but he had to work with what was on hand and he didn’t want to use up too many materials; Hiccup still needed to make his own saddle and Toothless’ tailfin. Horrendous stashed the saddle back at the Haddock house for now, underneath his dad’s bed where Hiccup hopefully wouldn’t find it. He brushed off watching the Dragon Training again and picked up fish from the Great Hall before going back out into the woods.

He found a high ledge, a place he used to regularly rest with Toothless, that was far enough from the village that nobody would see or hear him. Dragons were sure to be wary, what with the vikings killing them every time they came near the island, but hopefully at least one would be brave or stupid enough to make an appearance during the day.

Horrendous dumped the fish out in a pile and sat down next to it, staring out at the sea. The world was still damp from the storm last night and broken branches sat in odd scattered piles. He pulled out a pile of parchment he’d brought from Stoick’s room and the charcoal stick, folding his legs up and using them as a table as he sketched out as much of Toothless’ saddle and rigging from memory as he could. He’d made it so many times and had messed around with it often enough that he had it pretty well memorized, but it’d been a while since he’d had to work completely from scratch.

The dragon scales of his armor had done a decent job keeping him safe from… whatever it was that brought him here, but in doing its job it had come out worse for the wear, especially where Toothless had bit his shoulder. Not beyond saving, but Horrendous have to move around the scales he had left as optimally as he could. Toothless must have been caught up in the same thing, and Horrendous didn’t doubt that the night fury's saddle and tail riggings would be in bad shape, if not broken completely.

Horrendous was so engrossed in his work that he didn’t notice his new companions until one of them lept at his hand, chasing the movement of the charcoal across the page. Horrendous pulled back from his drawing as the terrible terror batted at his charcoal. He looked over at the fish pile and saw six others eating it happily, occasionally fighting over the same fish before remembering that there were plenty more right next to them. Three of them were yellow, two reds, a teal, and the one in his lap was green.

Well.

Not the dragons he had been hoping for.

“Hey there.” Horrendous scratched the head of the dragon on his lap. He looked out to see if there was anything bigger coming, but the seven small dragons were the only ones in sight. He sighed and shook his head. Of course the terrible terrors would be the only ones to willingly approach. He could wait longer for something else, or try setting up traps or something, but he didn’t want to waste more time. “I’m not going to find anything here, am I?”

The terrible terror yipped and curled up on his lap. The other six saw this and started claiming different parts of him to perch on.

“Okay, we’re gonna need a new plan.”

oOo

Hiccup knocked on his dad’s door. There was a moment of silence, then something that sounded almost like squealing that was cut off abruptly. He could hear Horrendous fumbling around and then the door opened a crack.

“Hiccup?” Horrendous mumbled, still looking half asleep.

“Do you, uh, do you know anything about night furies?”

Horrendous gave a huge sigh and opened the door wider. Hiccup moved to head in, but Horrendous instead moved out and closed the door behind him, walking over to the fire. His shirt was off, wearing only his pants, and Hiccup’s eyes ran over the man’s torso. He was marred with scars. Burn scars that puckered the skin, huge sets of diagonal lines like he’d been mauled by a dragon, a particular bite scar over his stomach that made Hiccup put his hand over his own in sympathy. Horrendous had taken the bandage off of his shoulder, giving a clear view of the healing mark there. Hiccup found himself mentally checking it up against the night fury’s - Toothless? It was as good a name as any - teeth. It matched, as best as Hiccup could tell. So he really had been attacked by a night fury.

“Yeah. I do.”

Hiccup, despite his his own tiredness, perked up at that.

“Really? Gobber said nobody’s seen one and lived to tell the tale - then again, you clearly survived your ship being wrecked. But maybe it was night or something and it attacked you from behi-”

“I saw it very clearly. That wasn’t my first time seeing a night fury.” Horrendous sat down in front of the fire, grabbing the metal rod next to the it and stoking the coals. “It was a night fury that bit my leg and made me lose my foot.”

“Oh.” Hiccup shuffled awkwardly. “Sorry to bring it up.”

“You didn’t know, it’s fine. But you’ve got to know, what you’re doing can have serious lasting consequences.” Hiccup froze. He’d only just interacted with Toothless today, only finished up on his tail late tonight. “Your Dragon Training,” Horrendous clarified and Hiccup sagged in relief. Of course. He’d been careful. There was no way this guy knew he hadn’t killed Toothless - he probably didn’t even know about Hiccup’s claim to have shot one down!

“So… do you only know what they look like?” Hiccup asked, sitting down to the right of Horrendous. The man’s eyes remained on the coals that he continued to poke and prod.

“No, I know a bit more about them. Their teeth are retractable, and they’re capable of walking on their two hind legs if they try. Their claws are surprisingly flexible to grip things better.” Horrendous flexed his own fingers, and Hiccup wondered what he was thinking about. “I can draw you a picture of one, if you wanted. I don’t think I’ll ever forget what one looks like.”

“That’s okay.” The claws thing was new, but the rest of it he’d already known and he’d drawn a picture himself. Apparently not even Horrendous would be able to help him out. He looked at the man, trying to place the things they had in common that may point towards his mom. “Hey, Horrendous, why were you looking for my mom?”

“... since my parents, uh, died, I’ve been pretty lonely. I’ve known people who can call the sea home, but, without my family there, it just isn’t. So I guess I was looking for family again?” Horrendous shrugged. “I’ve never met her. She’d be… thirty-five? I think? And I’m only twenty-one. Even if we had met before, I probably wouldn’t remember.”

“Oh,” Hiccup said again. He hadn’t known he’d wanted to ask about her until he no longer could.

Breaking the odd atmosphere between them was the sound of something falling in Stoick’s room. Horrendous shot to his feet, eyes sharp and glued on the door to Stoick’s room before covering it up with a big yawn that seemed way too fake.

“If that’s all, I should be getting back to bed. Lots of, uh, weapons to sharpen tomorrow. You should too. Dragon Training isn’t going to go easy on you.” Horrendous was back in his room, door shut, before Hiccup could say anything.

The guy had a point though. It was already really late, and he still had Dragon Training in the morning, not to mention the stress of strapping a tailfin on a dragon. Best to get as much sleep as he could manage.

oOo

The night fury was an enigma to Valka.

After the dragons had eaten their fill of the fish, Valka had managed to easily convince the night fury to leave the cave. With his tailfin damaged and unable to fly, Cloudjumper had had to pick him up with his as carefully as he could with his hind legs, like he was an overgrown sheep.

Despite how friendly he had been when they’d first met, he seemed to get more cautious of her as time went on. He kept sniffing through her stuff and walking around like he was looking for something but not finding it.

She had taken off the riggings and saddle, eyeing it all curiously. She didn’t know anybody else who actively rode dragons. Not even Drago. There was also the fact that he was missing the tailfin. On one hand it was a night fury, a rare and dangerous breed, which would make someone want to keep it, and grounding a dragon was a good way to try and keep one without worrying about the dragon leaving on its own. Yet on the other hand, he couldn’t fly and that would make his worth much lower in the eyes of men.

He got along perfectly well with Cloudjumper, and they would talk to each other often and for long periods of time. Even with how long she’d spent with dragons, she was unable to tell what exactly they were saying but oh, what stories the night fury must have to tell. It sure sounded amazing, and Cloudjumper often made surprised and imploring sounds in response to what the night fury said.

Oddly enough, while the night fury seemed very respectful to the Alpha, he’d never bowed to him. If anything, it almost seemed like the much smaller dragon thought of himself as an equal of the alpha. Even odder was the fact that the bewilderbeast didn’t seem bothered by this.

When it was feeding time, he climbed on the back of any dragon who would let him, though it was usually Cloudjumper. A couple of times he’d try to jump and glide off into the distance, but he couldn’t get very far and Cloudjumper had to go and and pick him up. He’d huff angrily and growl something up at the stormcutter.

About five days after she’d brought him in, it all seemed to come to a head.

He roared and jumped around, clearly tired of being cooped up. Most of the dragons that could no longer fly due to injury usually had similar fits, not used to being grounded and getting restless, despite how nice it was in the Sanctuary, but the night fury seemed almost insane as he ran around, jumping up the sides and raking his claws down the ice as if he was trying to climb out of there.

“Hey, hey, it’s okay.” Valka murmured, trying to get close enough to pet him. He just roared again, teeth bared and feet stomping. He even let out a shot at one point, firing at a block of ice. Valka sighed. It was safer here for the night fury, but she could see how even a place like this could start to seem like just a huge cage. When she’d first been brought here by Cloudjumper, she’d certainly felt the same anxiousness that the night fury must be feeling.

Cloudjumper, as usual, seemed to know exactly what she was thinking, landing and allowing Valka to climb on his back before picking up the night fury and flying back out of the Sanctuary. The dragon stopped his fussing once he was in Cloudjumper’s grasp and even seemed to croon out a thank you.

They landed on a sheet of ice not too far from home. The night fury looked around for a moment, and she expected him to go running off and playing in the snow or something. Instead he just sat down, head tilted to the side, and looking incredibly and sad and lost.

“I don’t know what you want from me.” Valka sighed. He allowed her to get close enough to pet him this time. “You’re safer in the Sanctuary. Nobody would even hesitate to kill you in a state like yours.”

He whined again and it broke her heart that she couldn’t help him.

Chapter Text

If Horrendous thought he’d woken up early the day before, it was nothing compared to the next morning. There were a few reasons for that. For one thing, at some point during the night it had started to rain, and Horrendous’s stump was once again in pain. There was also the matter of the small thunder of dragons that he was currently sharing the room with. Fortunately, they didn’t try to warm up a spot to sleep like Toothless did, seeming to find Horrendous a warm enough source of heat. Unfortunately, one of them woke up for one reason or another, which caused the rest of them to wake up, and it wasn’t long before they were all doing everything in their power shy of burning him to death to get him to wake up and get more fish for them.

“Morning to you too,” Horrendous huffed as one of the terrible terrors nibbled on his prosthetic. He pulled himself out of bed and put on the clothes he had bought yesterday. He’d spent most of the evening altering them to fit him and then sketching up his project for today. Then, just as Horrendous and the terrors had started nodding off, Hiccup had wanted to talk, and it all came together in him not getting much sleep.

It took a moment, but eventually Horrendous was able to convince six of the terrible terrors to stay behind, taking only the red Aorta with him and running through the early morning rain. It would probably clear up, but at least it meant that nobody was out and about. He left the small dragon in the forge, instructing her to start heating up the furnace and hoping she understood him while he ran to the Meade Hall and got some fish. There was then another trip back to the house, throwing some fish into his dad’s room, and then returning back to the forge.

Aorta was standing proudly before a bed of hot coals and he praised her, handing her a fish before spreading out his design. If dragons weren’t going to come to him, then he’d just have to go to the dragons.

Still, looking at the design before him, even he had to admit it looked both ridiculous and crazy.

“This’ll work,” he said to himself. Aorta landed on his shoulder, looking down at the parchment curiously and he turned to her. “This will work!”

Aorta got bored of watching him cutting leather and melting metal rather quickly and settled back near the forge, somehow managing to nap despite Horrendous clanging up a storm as he beat the Hel out of the metal. Gobber came in at one point, but Aorta had the sense to hide while the viking grabbed some things. Horrendous pretended to be busy sharpening weapons, praying that Gobber didn’t notice the extremely hot furnace, nor the designs lying clear as day on the table. He didn’t.

“Aorta, come here,” Horrendous called, and the dragon slithered over, inspecting the leather in his hand. He carefully positioned it over her, checking the straps a few times. She squirmed around a bit, but it didn’t seem to be uncomfortable for her to wear and Hiccup nodded to himself. He’d love to keep working on it - there were still six more to go - but he sadly put his blueprints in a stack, the least revealing of their true purpose on top, and took the harness off of Aorta, shoving it all off to the side. Eventually Hiccup or Gobber would notice if the pile of weapons didn’t start to go down in number.

It was while he was working on sharpening a sword - long and heavy, the kind Horrendous never got comfortable using - that Hiccup bustled in. Aorta had been chasing the sparks coming off the whetstone, but quickly retreated into the helmet of Horrendous’s armor, set in the forge to eventually be mended.

“Dragon Training over already?” Horrendous asked as Hiccup walked over to his corner of the workshop.

“No, it hasn’t begun yet. Just, uh, wanted to look over something,” Hiccup said, the kid doing his best to surreptitiously look at the tailfin he must’ve put together last night. It certainly explained why he’d taken so long to come home. Horrendous smiled. He could still remember checking over everything several times before he put the first tail on Toothless, nervous and excited all at once. And now here he was, six years older and still working on creating things for dragons.

Aorta poked out from the helmet, original fear of Hiccup giving way to curiosity, and Horrendous made a hissing noise that she heeded, retreating back into the helmet. Hiccup gave him a look, but apparently hadn’t seen Aorta.

“How’s the Dragon Training going anyway?” Horrendous asked to quickly try and cover himself.

Hiccup shrugged, shoving his stuff back and out of the way.

“Oh, you know. Life threatening, almost getting killed, it’s amazing.” Hiccup rolled his eyes and Horrendous chuckled. Horrendous looked over at his project. He could put it off for a little bit, couldn’t he?

“I think I’ll watch today.”

Hiccup looked up, clearly surprised.

“I- wha- why?!”

Horrendous shrugged.

“Why not? It’ll be… fun, watching you kids go up against dragons. It’ll remind me of when I was a boy, doing Dragon Training, nearly getting burnt to a crisp by a hideous zippleback,” Horrendous explained wistfully as they made their way out of the forge.

“Wait… I thought you said your parents were travelers? And that you didn’t live in one place?”

It was all Horrendous could do not to freeze right there. Right. He had said that, hadn’t he? It had seemed like a smart thing at the time, but now he wasn’t so sure.

“I… did,” Horrendous ground out, trying to go over everything he had claimed about himself since he’d gotten here. Fuck, he’d even claimed to have been a blacksmith’s apprentice! And he clearly had been too. Nobody walked into a forge and just naturally had that kind of expertise. His story was already falling apart, and he hadn’t been here for a week.

There was a bark from behind them and both Haddocks turned around.

Aorta was flying out of the forge, carrying Horrendous’s helmet with her.

“Dragon!” Horrendous yelled, though not loud enough to alert the other vikings and hoping he didn’t sound as excited as he was for the distraction. “Hiccup, you go, I’ll take care of the beast!”

“W-wait!” Hiccup put his hand on Horrendous’s shoulder, but he easily pulled out of the kid’s weak grip and ran over to the terrible terror. He plucked his dragon blade from his waistband and threw it as far as he could. Aorta perked up and chased after it, dropping the helmet. Horrendous spared a look behind him and threw Hiccup a thumbs up.

Horrendous picked up his helmet and went between throwing his helmet and throwing his dragon blade until they were far enough away from Hiccup and the town.

“Okay, c’mon, give it up.” Horrendous put out his hand and after a moment Aorta put the helmet in his hand, tongue darting out and licking his nose. “Let’s get you home before you get into any more trouble.”

The rest of the terrors were excited to see both of them again, quickly finding their perches on him and crying out when he brushed them back off. He clipped the dragon blade back to his belt but tossed the helmet on the bed. The thunder pounced on the new object and Horrenous made his escape.

The training grounds looked so much more bleak here in the past, and the metal ropes over it made Horrendous’s heart pound a little uncomfortably. It wasn’t exactly easy, being reminded that his tribe had once done the things that they now fought so vehemently against. Gobber was in the stands while the teens ran through the maze he had constructed. Meatlug was barreling around, knocking into walls as she wound around the maze. To them it probably looked like she was hunting them, but Horrendous could tell Meatlug was more just curious about what was behind every corner.

“Find her blind spot!” Gobber called down as the Hiccup ran away from the Gronkle, running into Fishlegs. Horrendous chuckled as Ruffnut and Tuffnut tried to use the same blind spot of the deadly nadder - which just put them right in Meatlug’s line of fire.

“Have you lost any kids yet?” Horrendous walked up to Gobber and leaned on the railing as the twins ran into the maze, screaming, with Meatlug in hot pursuit.

“Not with me on watch,” Gobber assured him. “What brings you out here, Horrendous? Not enough to keep you busy at the forge?”

“More than enough to keep me busy for my life,” Horrendous said, thinking of the three different projects he meant to work on on top of actually doing his job. “But I wanted to see how they were holding up against the dragons.”

“I helped dress your wounds when you first showed up, looks like you’ve had your fair share of run-ins with the beasts,” Gobber nodded to Horrendous’s shoulder. “Gotta say, I’m impressed you survived some of those.”

“Yeah, I’ve handled a lot of dragons in my time, species you’ve probably never even heard of before. Comes with being a traveler.” It was more or less true, and Gobber nodded, impressed.

“Who can tell me how many shot’s she’s used up?” Gobber shouted down to the teens.

“Three!” Fishlegs immediately responded loudly and attracted Meatlug’s attention in doing so. He then screamed and started running, the gronckle giving chase, both of them knocking into the walls, which began a domino effect on the rest of the temporary structures.

It all went to shit pretty fast after that.

The wall that was falling near Astrid and Snotlout probably wouldn’t have hit them, but Snotlout tackled Astrid in some kind of failed attempt to save her, and then got them both stuck under the wall. The twins both ran into each other while running through the maze, trying not to get hit by the collapsing walls, and were now both holding their heads in their hands. Fishlegs had rounded a corner without looking and had accidentally run into the stone side of the academy.

Thus, Hiccup was the last one standing and the one that Meatlug now had her eyes on.

Hiccup seemed frozen, looking around desperately for something to help him, and a chill went down Horrendous’s spine.

He didn’t remember this happening.

“Throw your axe Hiccup!” Gobber shouted, and Horrendous could hear the hint of fear in his voice. He looked over and he could see very clearly that Hiccup had no intention to throw the axe. Not only did the kid not have the arm strength to do so, but he’d also already made a connection with Toothless; dragons were no longer mindless creatures to him anymore.

With hardly a second though, Horrendous slipped over the metal ropes and hit the ground running. He almost called the gronckle by name but instead just grit his teeth and jumped on top of the dragon. Her mouth had been open, preparing to shoot a glob of fire at Hiccup, but it now snapped closed in her surprise. She bucked wildly beneath him and Horrendous held on tight, feeling her rough hide scratching up his arms.

He shifted his weight and sent them both barreling towards her cage. He reached his hand to the spot behind her jaw and scratched it before letting go of the dragon and jumping off. She had stopped flapping in response to the scratch but the momentum carried her into her cage. Horrendous climbed back to his feet, pushed the doors closed, and threw the lever to set the log back over the door, successfully locking Meatlug in.

“Sorry," he whispered, wincing at the band and rattle of the door in Meatlug's desperate attempts to get out.

It was then that he noticed that all eyes were on him.

“That. Was. AWESOME!” Tuffnut pumped his fists into the air. Ruffnut had her hands over her heart.

“Take notes. That’s how you take care of a dragon,” Gobber praised from the stands.

“I was totally going to do that, I was just busy making sure you were safe babe,” Snotlout said to Astrid, who just shoved him away. She had an odd expression on her face, the one that said ‘I’m impressed but I still don’t trust you’. It was a bit weird to see in on a much younger face, but also somewhat reassuring to know that even six years in the past, his Astrid was still there.

He caught Hiccup’s eyes and was shocked to see even more distrust than Astrid had. Right. They had never resolved that whole thing from earlier. Despite this, Hiccup saw everybody starting to crowd around Horrendous and clearly saw it as the perfect opportunity to get back to Toothless with the tailfin, slipping out of the crowd.

“So, Horrendous, how many dragons have you killed?”

Horrendous hadn’t noticed Ruffnut getting so close, but now she was holding his arm and looking up at him with dreamy eyes.

“Uh, I’ve got, uh, things to sharpen,” Horrendous pushed Ruffnut off of him. “Maybe we can talk during dinner?”

He didn’t wait for a reply and booked it out of there. He could feel all of them watching him as he went and he wondered just how long he’d be able to keep this whole thing up.

Chapter Text

Horrendous managed to find enough time alone after the Dragon Training incident to finish up his project. He left the terrible terrors in Stoick’s room, already having the measurements he needed from them and not wanting an incident like last time. The two people who posed the biggest distractions were otherwise occupied; Gobber was too busy seeing to some problems of the citizens to stop by, and Hiccup was busy with his first attempt at getting Toothless off the ground.

Horrendous would get to training the terrible terrors with he creation tonight, praying that it wouldn’t take too long for them to get the hang of it and that he could get off of Berk and find a better dragon for traveling long distances. For now, though, that all would have to wait; he had promised the teens he’d talk to them about his amazing ‘dragon killing’ skills during dinner.

Which was how Horrendous found himself the center of attention during dinner. Even Hiccup was there, apparently just as curious as everybody else to hear  about Horrendous’ supposed adventures.

“So, how many dragons have you killed?”

Astrid was the first to ask a question. Well, okay, that was a lie, but Horrendous didn’t count the ‘are you married’ and ‘can I feel your muscles’ from Ruffnut.

“Oh, well, I’ve lost count?” Horrendous scratched the back of his head, avoiding their eyes. “You know, being on the sea and travelling, killing dragons isn't a status thing, it’s, uh, a survival thing.” He shrugged and looked back at the kids. Most of them seemed to buy it, even Astrid gave a nod like it made sense to her. Hiccup still looked suspicious though.

“You said you took Dragon Training,” Hiccup said, looking incredibly confident in himself considering where the kid was in this time of life, “But you keep saying you’re a traveler.”

“My parents were afraid of having me on the sea when I was young. They left me in a village, and I became the apprentice of the blacksmith as well as taking dragon training during my time there,” Horrendous answered easily, proud of himself for having thought about how to combat this question when it inevitably came up again. Hiccup didn’t look convinced, but also didn't try and call him out again, which Horrendous considered a win.

“How did you do that with the gronckle, where you just made it totally stop flying?” Tuffnut asked, bobbing excitedly in his seat. “Did you snap its wings while we weren’t looking?”

“No. That was, um…” Horrendous’s eyes darted over to Hiccup. He probably hadn’t learned about this yet, but Horrendous could think of no clear and easy lie to tell. “It’s like a pressure point that, kind of paralyzes the dragon momentarily. You have to get really close to them to use it, so I wouldn't recommend it, but it can be useful in a pinch. ”

“Why didn’t you just kill the dragon if you’re such a skilled guy?” Snotlout sniffed, clearly trying to look like he didn’t also find Horrendous to be really cool.

“Do you guys want to go through the trouble of catching another gronckle?” Horrendous raised his eyebrows. “I was just trying to make sure Hiccup didn’t get killed.”

“Pfft, like anybody would’ve cared,” Snotlout snorted and Horrendous clenched his hands into fists. Hiccup didn’t look terribly bothered by the statement, all too used to such things being said about him. But for Horrendous, it been a while since his cousin had said those kinds of things to him and they kindled a bit of anger he had hardly known he’d still fostered over the years.

“He’s my nephew, so I would’ve cared,” Horrendous bit back perhaps a bit too sharply and enjoyed the looks of surprise that crossed all of their faces. Tuffnut even did a real spit take.

“Wait, you’re saying this,” Ruffnut pointed at Horrendous, “Is related to that?!”

“You do look kind of like Stoick, like your eyes and your nose,” Fishlegs observed.

“I’m actually Hiccup’s mom’s cousin absolutely no relation to Stoick whatsoever,” Horrendous quickly corrected.

“I thought you looked like Valka.”

Horrendous jumped, not having heard Gobber walk up.

“Yep, that’s why I look like her, same grandparents,” Horrendous nodded, so glad that this seemed to be working.

“Horrendous, if you’ve killed a lot of dragons, have you seen a boneknapper before?” Fishlegs looked excited to have finally found a point in the conversation to ask his questions, and Horrendous was more than happy to talk about one of his favorite topics.

“Yeah, I have actually. They look like they’re made out of dragon bones. Gave me a Hel of a time trying to kill it,” Horrendous said and winced at the high pitched squeal of delight this got from Fishlegs.

“What about a night fury?”

“Nobody’s seen a night fury before,” Gobber automatically said, taking a gulp of meade from his tankard.

“I have. I saw the one that bit my shoulder, and it was a night fury that took my leg.” Horrendous nodded down to his leg. Gobber gave an impressed nod.

“He must’ve gotten a taste for ya and spread the news around. I have the same problem with monstrous nightmares.” Gobber tapped his tankard hand.

“What did it look like? How big are they actually? Did you find out how many shots it can fire at a time? What about how tough its scales are?” Fishlegs cut back into the conversation.

“Uh, they’re about… nadder size I guess? But more monstrous nightmare in shape, completely black with an extra set of limbs for their wings like a gronckle or zippleback,” Horrendous attempted to describe.

“Oh, they sound so cool!” Fishlegs looked like he was about to explode from glee. “What other dragons have you seen? What were they like? How did you kill them?”

Horrendous sighed, but it was equal parts exasperated and fond.

Eventually, he managed to slip away from the Meade Hall. Most of the teens had steadily left as it became more and more obvious that the conversation wasn’t going to change from talking about dragon statistics and features. He had to slowly edge away from Fishlegs and was only able to get away when he agreed to draw up pictures of some of the dragon he’d seen during his travels.

Hiccup was busy in the forge, working on designing and creating the saddle and rigging  to go with the tailfin, and the Haddock house was set out at the edge of the village. Even with both of those things working in his favor, Horrendous was sure that slipping the terrors out of the house and into the woods put a few gray hairs on his head. They were all very clearly sick of being stuck in the house all day, and though they hadn’t burnt it down they had been fighting for who claimed possession of the helmet when Horrendous had returned.

They were all so excited to be back out in the woods. Almost as excited as they were over the fish he brought them. Aorta seemed to have claimed the role of head of the thunder, though one of the yellow terrible terrors, Spine, seemed to keep trying to fight her for that title.

Horrendous fit them all with the harnesses and only Blossom and Stormy were bothered by them. Horrendous did his best to reassure them that the leather wasn’t some random creature grabbing onto them and please Blossom no, stop trying to tear through the leather, stop it. He let them fly around in them for a while before strapping them to the seat-saddle thing. Terrible terrors naturally flew in a group, but they tugged away from each other at first and were obviously a bit confused about the extra weight they had to carry, especially when Horrendous sat down on it. Despite that, just as he had hoped, they were indeed strong enough to carry the weight.

Getting them to follow directions was another thing.

Most of the time, steering dragons was intuitive, both for the dragon and the rider. You lean or pull one way or the other and that was the way the dragon went. There wasn’t the same kind of bond when you weren’t even touching the dragon. So instead, the terrible terrors went whatever direction Aorta went.

Horrendous climbed off the saddle and began the tedious task of unstrapping each terrible terror from their harness. That was fine. He’d trained plenty of terrors before.

oOo

The cold night air was a relief after the heat of working in the forge, and Hiccup wiped his brow as he left. If he stopped by in the morning, he might be able to finish up the saddle. It was exciting, thinking about what could happen tomorrow. He’d gotten the smallest taste of flying with Toothless today, when the dragon unexpectedly took off while Hiccup put on the the tailfin. While he was most definitely doing this with the main goal being to get the dragon he’d injured back into the air, he couldn’t deny that he was excited at the prospect of being up there with him.

And scared.

But when wasn’t he scared?

The house was quiet as he entered, and Hiccup looked at the door to his dad’s room. He bit his lip, wondering if he should directly confront the strange man inside. He just couldn’t shake the feeling that there was something off about the man, even after Horrendous had saved him from the gronckle.

His heart sank into his stomach, and Hiccup squirmed as he felt sick. Even his first cousin once removed was a dragon killer. Probably his mom had been too. Every viking didn’t hesitate when they came up against the monsters. All of them except for him.

“Hey, Horrendous?” Hiccup gently pushed the door open. The traveler was nowhere to be seen.

There was a knock on the front door and Hiccup whipped around. He approached the door slowly. The energy of the night was weird and he was hoping to Hel it wasn’t about to get worse.

“Astrid?” Hiccup stepped back in surprise. Astrid brushed right past him and into the house.

“Is Horrendous here?” Oh, that made a lot more sense.

“No, I don’t know where he is,” Horrendous sighed.

“Okay good.” Astrid folded her arms. “We need to talk.”

“W-we?” Hiccup pointed to himself. Astrid huffed and rolled her eyes.

“Yes. You.” Astrid leaned up against the wall. “You’re the only other one who’s noticed that there’s something wrong with Horrendous. He even seems to have Gobber fooled.”

“Wait, you mean, you-?”

“Yeah, Hiccup, you’re not the only one who seems to know that he’s clearly putting together his stories on the spot. His skills may be real, but he’s also lying about his past. I don’t trust him as far as I can throw him. He’s got Snotlout and Tuffnut impressed, Fishlegs excited about dragons, and Ruffnut seems to fancy herself the future Mrs… he’s never mentioned a last name. Well, there’s another thing added to the list of sketchy things about him,” Astrid rattled off. “But you, against all odds, have caught on to him. Which makes you an ally.”

“A-an ally?” Hiccup stuttered out. Was this even real.

“You both sleep and work in the same places. As much as I hate to admit it, but you’re our best bet at figuring out what this viking wants out of us.” Astrid pushed off of the wall and walked over to him. Her eyes, shards of ice from the middle of winter, strong and sharp, bore into him. She stuck her hand out. “Do we have an alliance here? Are we going to protect our village?”

“Uh, y-yeah, yes, absolutely, of course.” Hiccup floundered about for words as he shook her hand.

It was strong and roughly calloused, and Hiccup hoped the dim light of the fire made it hard to see him. He could feel the heat rushing to his face as he realized that he was shaking hands - holding hands, sort of - with Astrid Hofferson.

Without another word, she left.

Yep. A weird night.

Chapter Text

It took a couple of days to get the terrible terrors trained, but it was nice how familiar the process was. Training dragons was the same, whether it was the past or the future. When Horrendous was in the woods, teaching the dragons commands and watching as they steadily learned them, he could forget for just a few moments that this wasn’t technically his home.

The previous night, Horrendous had told Gobber over dinner that he had plans on exploring more of Berk and probably wouldn’t be around much during the day. Gobber seemed fine with it, just warning him to take an axe with him into the woods and kill any dragon he may see.

The next morning, Horrendous put his (still damaged) armor on and a long and flowing cloak he’d sewn from some fabric he’d bought, wrangling the terrible terrors underneath it. He’d tried to convince them to stay in the woods the night he’d first started training them, but they’d followed him back to the Haddock house and had almost gotten seen by Astrid - who had apparently stopped by?

Horrendous had brushed it off, having more things to worry about. It was probably just one of the small changes that had happened from his being here, like the thing with the gronckle.

The morning grass was dewy as Horrendous walked across it. When he got through the treeline, he lifted up his cloak and let the terrors out. They squeaked and barked in excitement. Aorta perched on his head while Spine and Pine claimed his shoulders. Umber, Blossom, Crackle, and Stormy flew around him as if trapped in his orbit. He let them stay like that for a while as he walked through the woods, carrying the terror rigging.

He passed by the cove where Toothless was, and Horrendous glanced own. Toothless was still curled up on a scorched patch, sleeping. It wasn’t his best friend down there though. Horrendous felt like there was an open wound in his chest as he thought about the night fury. It was different than with the others. He knew that all of his friends were probably worried about him (if time moved while he was in the past, which he supposed he didn't know it did) but at least he knew where they were. They’d be on Berk, or maybe looking for them.

Horrendous still had no idea where Toothless was. But at least he was making a step towards finding his dragon.

The terror rigging looked a bit crazy. It was like a saddle with strings coming off of the back and the front that were hooked to terrible terrors - three in back, four in front. He would’ve liked to make it a bit more stable, but as it was he only dared take some rations and some rope with him, not wanting to weigh down the terrors too much, and anything safer would be more elaborate and thus even heavier.

“Let’s go!” Horrendous pointed forward and the with a bark from Aorta, the thunder flew off to the sea.

oOo

“Well. This could’ve gone better.”

Pine gave an agreeing squawk.

They had been flying for hours. They were going in vaguely the direction of the Dragon’s Edge, even though there was no way they’d be able to make the journey in just a single day, and Horrendous didn’t want to get too far from Berk. He had an excuse for being gone today, but being gone for two days in a row would surely start making people wonder where he was. Him and his terrors had been making decent time, but he’d been having trouble finding dragons. There had been a few spotty islands they’d stopped by, but there hadn’t been anything there. It was a bit frustrating, but Horrendous just kept going forward. You had to be patient with dragons.

Then they got shot out of the sky by a net.

The landing had been a bit harsh, and Horrendous knew he was going to feel it in the morning. In fact, he was feeling it in his left arm right now. They’d flown over a few ships during the day, and while there had been some shouting and pointing, nothing had happened until now. His own dismissal of it had brought this upon himself. Dragon trappers.

“I can work with this,” Horrendous murmured. The men on deck were edging towards him, obviously confused about exactly what they were looking at. He snapped his fingers, catching the attention of his dragons and stopping their squawking and panicking. They scuttled over to him as best they could with the net and he started fiddling with the latches connecting them to the saddle as fast as he could. Next time, he should think about making the latches able to disengage in an emergency, the blueprints already being drawn up in his mind, despite the situation.

“What... Is that… a person?” one of the trappers said.

“Dear Odin, are those terrible terrors? What are we supposed to do with those?” another complained. They were leaning over him by now, clearly unsure what to make of him. Horrendous looked around, doing his best to get a grip on his surroundings.

He grabbed his dragon blade from where it was snapped onto his leg and clicked the bottom, letting the hideous zippleback gas pour out. He was trapped close to the ground, close to the gas, and Horrendous now regretted leaving his helmet back on Berk. He buried his face as best he could in his arm, sucking in air sharply through his teeth at the pain of moving his arm, and drew out the flaming blade of the weapon, lighting the gas on fire. It scorched his cloak and surprising the men, causing them to jump back while Horrendous used the blade to cut through the ropes.

Either the terrible terrors read the room or were just going to their natural state of causing mayhem, because as soon as they had the chance, they started attacking the trappers. Horrendous didn’t look back as he ran to the open hatch to below the deck, not bothering with the ladder and simply jumping down, wincing a bit from the fall.

There was only one dragon below. He was tied up well, front and back legs bound, rope tight around his mouth, and Horrendous slowly approached the hobblegrunt. The dragon’s frill spread and it eyed him cautiously, obviously unsure what to make of him as the dragon's coloring mixed between purple and red in waves. Horrendous did his best to ignore the sound of mayhem above and put his hand out to the dragon.

“Hey there bud. Don’t worry, I’m not here to hurt you. I’ll help you. Do you think you can do the same for me?” There was more stomping above, and then a high pitched squeal that obviously came from one of the terrible terrors. Horrendous grit his teeth. They didn’t have time for this. “By Thor I hope you trust me!”

Horrendous cut through the ropes on the hobblegrunt’s legs. The dragon ripped off the one around his mouth on his own and then, opening his jaw to let out a stream of fire, burnt a wide hole to the upper deck. Horrendous climbed onto the dragon's back just as the hobblegrunt jumped to the deck, growling deep in his throat, color resolving into a ferocious red.

“Umber, Blossom, Pine, Crackle! Fetch!” Horrendous shouted, pointing to the saddle, sitting under the metal ropes. The terrible terrors let go of their prey - three screaming trappers they’d been biting - and followed the dragon trainer’s directions, grabbing it and flying into the air. Aorta and Stormy were both blasting the man who looked like the captain of the crew as he tried to swat them away while not getting burned and keeping a tight hold on Spine.

The hobblegrunt saw this too and stomped over, head drawing back as he readied another blast.

“Don’t!” Horrendous slid off the dragon’s back and pointed his dragon blade at the captain, words meant for both the man and the hobblegrunt. For a moment it seemed like the dragon wasn’t going to listen to him, but at the last moment the hobblegrunt redirected his blast to just above the man. The trapper was looking from the hobblegrunt, to Horrendous, to the two terrors that had left him to land back on their normal perches on Horrendous. The man's eyes were wide with fear. “Drop the dragon.”

The captain did just that, hands up in a surrender position, and Spine fell like a rock - a rock that the hobblegrunt caught in his mouth, delicately holding him there, and then took off.

Horrendous thought for a moment that perhaps he would have to fly back to Berk with one less dragon instead of one more.

Then the hobblegrunt flew in a circle and grabbed Horrendous with the dragon’s back two legs. Horrendous grunted at the tight grip on his injured arm and held on tight to his dragon blade. It would be a pain trying to make a new one.

They stopped on the nearest island, which was little more than a pillar of stone rising out of the sea with a handful of trees on top of it. The hobblegrunt dropped him, and Horrendous tumbled across the sparse grass. He held his arm. Yeah, it was definitely broken. He started to get up, but found the violet mouth of the hobblegrunt in his face.

The dragon sniffed him, hot air blowing Horrendous’ hair out of his face. Horrendous scrunched up his nose in response. Spine was still in the hobblegrunt’s mouth, and the terrible terror chirped a greeting. The rest of the terrors landed around Horrendous. The dragon trainer lifted his good arm, hand outstretched to the hobblegrunt, and sighed in relief when the snout butted up against his palm and yellow spread out across the dragon’s scales. He ran his hand along the face of the dragon, scratching it a bit, and stood back up.

“Hey there. Nice to meet you too.” Horrendous smiled despite the pain. “Why don’t we head home, huh?”

It took a minute to convince the dragon to let Horrendous tie the ropes he’d brought onto him, but the hobblegrunt - which he decided to name Serrated - eventually relented, seeming to understand that Horrendous meant no harm. The saddle would have to wait until Serrated trusted Horrendous more. He hooked six of the terrible terrors back up to the terror rigging and took Spine out of Serrated mouths. One of the terror’s wings had gotten injured in the scuffle above deck, but it wasn’t anything that wouldn’t heal.

The hobblegrunt took to the air again, followed by terrors and saddle, and this time Horrendous was able to bask in the feeling of being in the air, of being free on the back of a dragon, once again.

oOo

“And you haven’t seen him all day?”

“No, uh, I even, uh, checked a bit of the woods! Y’know, after Dragon Training? I, uh, didn’t seem him though,” Hiccup stuttered, glancing at her nervously as they walked along the shore, and Astrid rolled her eyes.

The chief’s son had been keeping up with his promise to keep her up-to-date with what was going on with Horrendous the past three days. The man seemed to spend most of his time in the forge and in the woods. His backstory of being a blacksmith’s apprentice may checked out, with how well he seemed acquainted with the things in the forge.

It did nothing to explain why he kept going out into the woods after dinner, though. Hiccup claimed that he had a hard time following the man in the dark, and Astrid had attempted to do so too but never seemed to be able to catch the moment when he slipped out of the Haddock house.

“Well that’s just great. I’ll bet he’s been consorting with another tribe, maybe telling them our secrets,” Astrid huffed.

“Maybe,” Hiccup said. Astrid eyed him. She wasn’t thrilled about having to work with him, but if she wanted to figure out what Horrendous was up to, the less people she confided in the better, and Hiccup already knew. Horrendous could notice if any of the others started suddenly acting weird. But for the past couple of days, it seemed like Hiccup was hiding something as well.

People like him don’t just suddenly get good.

At least this alliance-agreement they had also allowed her to keep a closer eye on him, though she still hadn’t been able to figure what he was doing.

Something moved ahead of them, and Astrid was immediately on alert, drawing her axe and motioning for Hiccup to stay behind her.

The thing crawled its way out of the water, chest shaking as it coughed.

“Who are you?” Astrid demanded.

The thing - a man, definitely a man - turned his head to them. He raised an arm like he intended to say something, but the arm went down, suddenly boneless. They both approached and Hiccup poked the man’s arm. He didn’t move. His face was grim and resigned as he said,

“I’ll go get Gobber.”

Chapter Text

“Okay. Stay here,” Horrendous told Serrated, scratching the hobblegrunt’s face. The dragon shifted between yellow and purple, looking around the cave curiously. Horrendous turned his attention to the terrible terrors. He’d convinced the dragons to get off of him and they’d started to situate themselves on Serrated instead, with Aorta sitting on the dragon’s head, Pine on his back, and the rest playing around in the little pools of water in the cave. “Same for all of you. I’ll be back later.”

He left the terror saddle in the cave, as well as their harnesses (which he took off of them) and the scorched up cloak. He did take Spine with him though, worried about the dragon’s health and wanting to keep extra watch and make sure that the dragon’s wing healed right. While he was excited to have a dragon that could go longer distances and he was elated he had been able to save him from trappers, he was very aware that he may have to put off plans of going anywhere for a bit because of his own broken bone from the experience.

The sun had set by the time the thunder had arrived back in Berk, thankfully, and Horrendous  and Spine carefully maneuvered the woods in the direction of the village, gingerly holding his arm. Any adrenaline that may have dampened the pain had faded during the flight back to Berk, but the initial pain had also lessened over the time. He’d wrapped it up in a scrap of fabric from the cloak dunked into water to cool his hot arm and hopefully help with the swelling. Once that went down, he’d then have to set the arm.

Hopefully he wouldn’t have to do much fighting from here on out. He just needed to find Toothless and find a way home, hopefully without ruining too much of the past as he went.

He stopped when he saw Gobber leaving the Haddock house.

Horrendous set down Spine, giving him the commands ‘sit’ and ‘stay’ and praying that the terrible terror would listen before running over to catch the blacksmith.

“Gobber! Is Hiccup okay?” Horrendous asked as he approached, trying to think of any reason Gobber would’ve been at the Haddock house.

“Ah, Horrendous, it was getting so late I thought you might’ve not been back today!” Gobber greeted, limping over to him.

“Did I miss something? Did Hiccup get hurt?” Horrendous searched the man’s face for any hint of tragedy to have struck his younger self.

“No no, Hiccup’s fine. You should’ve seen him today! The way he handled the deadly nadder was simply amazing! But you wouldn’t believe what he and Astrid found tonight.” Gobber started heading back to the house, and Horrendous followed behind. With Gobber’s back to him, Horrendous also turned around and gestured for Spine to get to the roof of the house.

“What was it?” Hiccup finding something with Astrid? Definitely not something that had happened to him in the past.

“They found another man! Washed up on the shore, half-drowned. They said he was awake when they first found him, but he’s unconscious now. And since you weren’t using your bed, we gave it to him. It seemed like a good idea at the time,” Gobber explained.

Another man? What if it was somebody he knew? What if it wasn’t? Horrendous was sure which one he was hoping for.

He followed Gobber into the house. In front of the fire hung clothes - very familiar clothes - as they slowly dripped water onto the floor. The door to Stoick’s room was still open and Horrendous was glad that the terrors weren’t here. Hiccup, Astrid, and Gothi were in the room, the two teens standing off to the side while Gothi looked the man over to make sure he was okay.

“Is he okay?” Horrendous asked. Gothi didn’t respond right away as she lifted the man’s arm, taking in his scars. His shirt was off and it looked like he was wearing a pair of Stoick’s pants while his own were in the main room with the rest of his clothes. If there was any doubt about who this man was before, the tattoo on his chin and the intricate scar on his chest banished it.

Gothi finally nodded at Horrendous and then hobbled outside. Gobber went after her and then came back a couple minutes later alone. In that time Horrendous got closer to man. He looked a bit bruised up, but then again so was Horrendous, and he wasn’t sporting a bite mark like Horrendous when he’d first washed up here. Astrid and Hiccup just watched him in a way that reminded Horrendous of untamed dragons, where they don’t dare take their eyes off of you.

“Gothi says he’ll be fine. Should be up and about in a day or two,” Gobber reported. “Well, I’ll be going now - unless Stoick decides to show back up and then we have three people sharing a room.”

Gobber left, and the atmosphere in the house only got more tense.

Astrid was regarding him like he was about to attack. Hiccup didn’t seem to know which man to look at.

“Do you know him?” Astrid, as per usual, broke the silence. No matter the Astrid, she always hated beating around the bush. Horrendous did his best not to think of his Astrid, though. Not while this one was giving him such a hard and cold look.

“Yes, I do. We’ve met a few times on our travels. He’s a dragon trapper. Eret, son of Eret, from a long line of Erets,” Horrendous rattled off.

“Great.” Astrid said with a voice that implied it was all anything but. She gave Hiccup a meaningful look that sent Horrendous reeling. That had clearly been the Hofferson look of ‘watch the bad guy in case he tries to do something’. And she was giving it about him and Eret, to Hiccup. “I’ll see you tomorrow at training, Hiccup.”

Astrid left just the three of them there.

Hiccup looked like he was about to say something, but Horrendous held up a hand.

“I… sorry, Hiccup, we- I mean, I, I’ve had a long day and I’m really tired.”

Hiccup still looked like he wanted to say something else but ended up just leaving.

Horrendous sat down on the bed. He could feel his heart too clearly in his chest.

“By the Gods, Eret, what have we gotten ourselves into?”

oOo

The swelling of Horrendous’ arm was significantly better the next day, and he stopped by Gothi’s to get it set and correctly bandaged. His bruises were sore, but that was the price he’d paid for saving dragons. Spine wasn’t too thrilled about having to spend the night outside, but Horrendous didn’t want to risk Hiccup coming in to check on or keep an eye on Eret or whatever and seeing the small dragon.

He did take Spine to the forge with him, though, and after getting his own arm bandaged went ahead and bandaged the terrible terror’s wing. He was obviously pretty upset about not being able to fly, but hopefully it would help keep him out of trouble. The projects of creating a new saddle and rigging for Toothless and fixing up his armor (a bit more damaged after being so roughly picked up by Serrated) were put off in favor of letting his arm rest a bit for the day, and just sharpening weapons. Spine seemed in the mood to rest up too, spending most of the time sleeping in Horrendous’ helmet. Horrendous did, however, find a bit of time to make a makeshift backpack to covertly carry Spine around in.

He stopped by the Dragon Training for a bit. A couple other vikings from town were there too, though there wasn’t much to watch. The teens were up against the hideous zippleback again and the arena was steeped in the explosive gas. There was also a maze again, but it was hard to make out. Mostly, it was just entertaining for them to hear the screaming and recount to each other their own experiences in training.

Horrendous slipped into the woods and check on the dragons afterwards, as well as bringing the saddle for the hobblegrunt. It fit well, and though the dragon had a long neck, riding on his back would work out fine. Serrated endured it well enough, though Horrendous did not miss the occasionally brief flashes of red scales. The terrible terrors were excited to see Spine again. The hobblegrunt seemed to have taken in the smaller dragons, and though he grumbled about them a bit, any snapping he did was purely playful and never with any intended harm.

Aorta was reluctant to let Horrendous leave again, claws digging in a bit from her perch on his head, but Horrendous pulled her off and convinced Serrated to keep an eye on her, making sure she didn’t try and follow him to the village.

The teens were all over him during dinner again, loud and excited. It was hard to focus though, with Astrid still fixing him with a look that put him on edge. They all seemed curious about how he’d broken his arm, and Horrendous had said he’d been chasing a dragon through the woods and then fell down a ledge.

It was… kind of true. In a way.

“Oh, Horrendous, Horrendous, you’d love this book I was reading!” Fishlegs said, despite the groans it elicited from the rest of them. “It has dragons, and-and such a cool plot! And a twist ending you would never believe.”

“Go ahead and tell me,” Horrendous gave the young viking an encouraging smile. Considering the pecking order of the kids, if Hiccup was not around it was Fishlegs who was the picked on one, and the kid needed all the support and appreciation he could get.

“You know you don’t have to sit through this, right?” Tuffnut whispered loudly to Horrendous. “We all just blow him off usually.”

“No, it’s fine. Go ahead Fishlegs, tell me about this book.”

“Okay, so,” Fishlegs started and the twins and Snotlout immediately left. Astrid rolled her eyes, and Hiccup didn’t look thrilled to be there but stayed for whatever reason. “There’s this viking named Occisor the Blood Thirsty and he’s the chieftain of a village, a really big village, but it gets completely wiped out by a dragon. Just totally decimated, burned down, nothing left. So Occisor almost kills himself over the grief of losing his tribe, but then decides to ask the Gods for help.”

“Does he have to, like, complete a bunch of tasks to resurrect his tribe?” Horrendous asked, actually a bit interested.

“No, because he doesn’t ask for that! I thought he’d want that too, but instead he asks the gods if he can go back in time and get the chance to kill the dragon before it destroyed his village. And they let him! They create this huge stone circle and he goes through it and they put this tattoo on his wrist and if it turns completely red he dies, but if he goes back through the circle he goes back to the present. So the story is just Occisor chasing after this dragon and watching the tattoo get more red and getting worried he won’t save his people, and then at one point he sees his wife but she’s not his wife and he’s nearly gone mad over hunting this dragon so she doesn’t recognize him and- oh, sorry. I shouldn’t spoil it.”

Horrendous shook his head, sharply, trying to keep his breathing even and not letting on how desperately he wanted to know what happened to this other time traveler, even in a story.

“No, keep going.”

“I really sh-”

“Please,” Horrendous nearly begged. Hiccup and Astrid were giving him strange looks, but he didn’t care. “Fishlegs, please.”

“Well, Occisor manages to kill the dragon, and he almost doesn’t make it back to the stone in time. But he gets through, and he’s so excited, but he gets back to his village and it’s still destroyed! I thought that maybe he’d killed the wrong dragon, and he’s so upset that he kills himself. In death, he asks asks Odon what happened, if something else had destroyed it, and he’s told that by going back in time, he created a split in time, but that going back through the circle returned him to his original present.”

An alternate timeline.

A split in time.

Horrendous hadn’t even considered such a thing. His actions not mattering, not changing his future.

“It, uh, it sounds interesting,” Horrendous thanked Fishlegs and got up, thoughts running through his head like a hurricane.

Chapter Text

The boat shook as something big rammed into it. Eret woke up to wood splintering around him. He reflexively closed his eyes and lifted his hands to protect his face.

“GET THE ROPES!”

“WHAT THE HEL IS IT?!”

“MOVE OUT OF THE WAY!”

Somebody was pulling at him and Eret let himself be dragged away as something in the room roared. The faint moonlight poured in through the hole in the deck of the ship, the hole that the dragon had broken in through like it was made of parchment.

Eret was a dragon trapper, in a long line of dragon trappers, but that didn’t mean he didn’t think of the beasts as amazing creatures, strong and powerful. And this one was no excpetion.

It was green and red, scales reflecting the moonlight. It was bulky, clearly made to take a beating and even more so to give one, with large plates of scales resembling armor. It roared again, showing off its sharp teeth, and approached Eret and the crewman who had pulled him away from the beast.

The dragon growled, opening its mouth, filling it with gas and then firing a shot at the crewman. Eret ran to one side while the crewman ran to the other. The dragon stalked up to Eret, who backed up as much as he could against the wooden wall of the boat. It inhaled a great deep breath through its nose. One. Twice. Three times. Why weren’t any of the men men attacking it? Too scared? Too tired? What if it’d already killed them all?

The dragon gave another roar, the scent of dead fish strong on its breath, and then let out a huff of air through its nose as if upset.

And then, just as quickly as the monster had come, it turned around and left.

“... Odin, what was that?!”

oOo

“What if this is a case where what I do doesn’t matter? It’ll just… split, like Fishlegs’ books? I mean, then I could just do whatever. But what if it isn’t? What if I mess with something, and then when I get back home Astrid died, or we never killed the Red Death? What if Drago won?”

Horrendous paced back and forth on the ledge, tugging on his hair and trying to figure out what to make of this new concept.

Serrated barked, not being of any help.

The terrible terrors ran around in the tall grass nearby, stalking each other. Every so often a yelp could be heard as one caught the other.

Horrendous had barely been able to sleep the night before, trying to decide what to make of his situation. Eret hadn’t woken up yet, but occasionally he’d mumble something, which Horrendous took to be a good sign. In the morning he’d gone to the forge and half-heartedly sharpened a blade or two before walking away to the dragons.

They weren’t the ones he usually leaned on, those who usually were there to comfort him, but in a way that was nice in and of itself. Considering that his Riders were 14/15 year olds and didn’t know who he really was, his dad also didn’t know who he was and was currently out at sea, his mom was probably still living at the Sanctuary, and his best friend was a dangerous and somewhat unfamiliar dragon who would probably sooner burn him to a crisp than listen to him.

Also Eret, but he still wasn’t awake. And another of him still catching dragons somewhere, probably.

“I just… I don’t know what I should do. I guess I’ll keep this up until I can decide,” Horrendous sighed and then climbed onto Serrated’s back. “Maybe a quick flight will help me clear my mind.”

oOo

Eret woke up in a room he didn’t recognize.

His head hurt and he was sore, muscles complaining as he sat up, but he did so anyway. He was immediately on edge, looking around him for any threat. There was none that were immediate, but he refused to relax just yet.

He quickly reviewed what was the last thing he could remember.

After meeting with the Riders discussing issues facing Berk, Hiccup had gone out for a ride by himself to clear his mind. They had let him go, he had really looked like he needed it, but then a storm had rolled in and he hadn’t returned. The storm had hung around, leaving dragons mostly stuck on the ground, everything cold and wet and dreary, and the whole village - particularly Valka and Astrid - had been going out of their mind with worry. Astrid had even flown out a time or two, but had come back without Hiccup each time.

Eret had convinced the her to stay back, insisting that now of all times the village needed her, and had flown out with Skullcrusher.

The storm had seemed to get worse the further from Berk he’d gotten. Skullcrusher had lost control and then… water, yes, water. He’d called for his dragon, but he had gotten no response. He’d seen land and had desperately swam towards it.

And how here he was.

Eret was very aware that he was wearing barely any clothes. The pants he was wearing weren’t even his.

One of the walls was filled with weapons, and Eret immediately took one. It was clearly well cared for and he felt much safer with the axe in his hand. He looked around the rest of the room. There was a monstrous nightmare skull above the bed as well as a deadly nadder to right of it. The wall opposite of the the weapons was home to a large map, x’s in red and black scattered across it. Eret looked at it, trying to figure out where on it he may be right now. Berk was an island pretty far from everything else. It would take awhile to get there from anywhere by boat.

He slowly made his way out of the room, edging the door open and looking around. There was nobody in the main room, thankfully, and he crept out cautiously. Sure this person or people had taken him in and given him a bed, but what if they recognized him as someone who was now a part of the dragon riders? If the skulls were any indication, they didn’t have a favorable view of dragons.

Eret was relieved to find all of his clothes hanging by the fire and set down the axe to quickly get dressed. He ran his hand along the golden scales of his vest, closing his eyes and thinking about Skullcrusher. He had to believe that his dragon was still out there somewhere, probably tracking him down right now. Well, then it’d be his mission to be ready for when the dragon arrived, to defend him and then leave, finding their way back to Berk.

The look on Astrid and Valka’s face when he returned without Hiccup wouldn’t be nice but… well, perhaps Hiccup just had the tact to stay somewhere safe during the storm. Yes, he couldn’t give in to doubt now.

With his own weapons back in his possession, Eret put the axe back on the wall and braced himself for whatever would greet him on the other side of the door.

It was afternoon, bright and as cloudless as it got this far north. He took in the village around him. It looked rather small, a few vikings bustling around. One of them looked at him, smiled and waved good naturedly, and he waved back. Okay, they didn’t seem so bad so far. He reminded himself that it wasn’t too long ago he was the best dragon tracker there was. If he was among dragon killers, he could get by.

There was something… very familiar, however, about the landscape that bothered him. In looked a lot… like Berk. Which was crazy. There weren’t any dragons, or half of the buildings that held them, and the giant carving of Stoick was nowhere to be seen. One couldn’t cover up something like that.

And yet… and yet. It was so similar. Maybe he was dreaming? But no, he felt too sore to be asleep.

He kept a hand on his knife while he walked through the town, eying the oddly familiar people he passed. They all gave him odd looks in return, but he made sure to walk with purpose and nobody tried to talk to him. He gave another look around, grimacing at how wrong this place looked. He could see the Meade Hall, at the top of the town where it had always been, and looking out at the sea he could see the stone carvings of vikings. This certainly seemed to be Berk.

Eret hadn’t even realized where he was going until he found himself standing outside of the forge. While small, it was in the same place as the Berk that Eret knew. Hiccup could usually be found in here, so he tended to go here after missions or when he needed to report things. It was where he always regrouped - and apparently the habit persisted even in this not-quite Berk. Like everything else here, it was painfully obvious that it wasn’t made for dragons - which was just so wrong! How could this be Berk if there were no dragons?

Eret edged his way inside. There was somebody in there, young and very short - especially compared to the other vikings he had seen. The boy was looking at something on the table that Eret recognized with a start. Hiccup’s armor, the one made out of Toothless’s scales, was sitting on the table. It had clearly seen better days, but it was here, which meant that surely, surely, Hiccup was here somewhere too.

The kid in front of the armor was holding a scale in his hand, looking from it to the armor and back again.

“Excuse me?” Eret said, making his presence known and stepping farther into the forge. The kid jumped and spun around, putting the scale behind him and having the most guilty and nervous look on his face that Eret had ever seen.

“O-oh! Hi!” the kid said, and now it was Eret’s turn to be surprised, recoiling away at the voice that didn’t match the face. He rubbed his head, a headache he’d had since he’d stepped outside getting worse. “You’re awake. Well, obviously you’re awake, I mean you’re here, unless you’re sleepwalking right now-”

“I’m not sleeping walking,” Eret cut him off. “That armor there belongs to a good friend of mine. Do you know where he is?”

“So you do know Horrendous,” the kid mumbled more to himself than to Eret. “So your name is Eret then, right?”

“Yes,” Eret responded hesitantly. Horrendous. He knew that Hiccup’s full name was Hiccup Horrendous Haddock III, but it was weird for him to be going by his middle name. And the kid’s voice… Some things were coming together, as illogically as it seemed, in Eret’s mind, and none of it was looking good. “Where is… Horrendous?”

“Usually he’s here or in the woods. I don’t know what he could be doing out there though, or when he’ll be back.” The kid looked a bit frustrated at the information, and Eret noted that. “But you must be hungry, right? You were out for a day.” A solid day. That was more time than Eret would’ve liked, but better than several more.

“Yes, I am. Do you know where I can get some food?” Eret asked even though he knew exactly where he could get some food.

“Yeah, c’mon, I’ll show you to the Meade Hall.” The kid kept the scale in the palm on his hand, where he clearly thought it was out of sight, and went back out of the forge.

“What did you say your name was?” Eret looked the kid over, the scrawny thing he was, with that voice, thinking about what all the other Riders said Hiccup used to be like when they were younger, and dreaded the answer he knew was coming that would confirm just how far from Berk - the Berk he knew and called home - he was.

“Oh, right. I’m Hiccup.”

Chapter Text

Hiccup rolled his eyes as he watched Eret desperately try and pry Ruffnut off of his bicep. Ever since Hiccup had introduced himself, the man had had an odd look on his face. It was somewhere between careful composure, confusion, and an animal backed up into a corner. Every word and smile was like bared teeth that sent shivers down Hiccup’s spine as warning bells went off in his head.

Unlike Horrendous, Eret more easily talked about his past, weaving stories of capturing dragons, shooting them out of the sky and wrestling them into submission, of the ones he’d managed to kill and pointing at scars he’d earned. Once again, Hiccup's fellow young vikings were absolutely amazed by each detail, with Tuffnut asking questions about the man’s technique and Fishlegs begging for more details on what the dragons looked like and how tough their hide was.

Sitting on the other side of the table, Hiccup caught Astrid also rolling her eyes, giving a huffing of frustration. They met eyes, and Hiccup nodded with his head towards the door, trying to convey with facial expression that he wanted to talk to her.

“Oof, I’m beat. Well, I’ll see you guys tomorrow to practice strangling dragons,” Hiccup said as he stood up. Fishlegs, Ruffnut, and Tuffnut actually smiled at him as he left, such a weird thing that made an emotion Hiccup wasn’t entirely able to define bubble up in his stomach. Eret looked at him with those calculating eyes, almost like he could see right through every word Hiccup said. He did his best not to run straight out of the Great Hall.

A couple minutes later Astrid followed him.

“Did you find something else?” she asked, voice not entirely cold and surprising Hiccup. It took him a moment to remember what he wanted to say.

“I think I found some proof that Horrendous is lying about stuff,” Hiccup said, and Astrid’s face morphed into curiosity. The first time she’d ever directed an emotion that didn’t have frustration and a bit of hate at Hiccup.

“Really? Well, what is it?” she prompted, then held up a hand before he could get started, staring at something over his shoulder. He turned around and followed her gaze.

Horrendous was walking towards the Great Hall. A pack was slung over his back and his hair was a terrible whirlwind of tangles. He looked happier than any other time Hiccup had seen him, eyes lit up and grinning widely. His arm was still in it’s cast, but he didn’t seem to have any more injuries since the last time Horrendous had seen him.

“Hey," he said as he passed them, waving and entering the Meade Hall.

They waited until the door was shut again. Hiccup let out a breath, schooling his expression. He had gone over how this conversation would go a million times in his head. It was possible Astrid wouldn’t believe him. He lifted his hand and showed the black scale to Astrid. She took it out of his hand, flipping it back and forth.

“What is this?” She asked. Hiccup tried to swallow down the lump in his throat.

“A-night-fury-scale-wait-please-hear-me-out!” Hiccup said in one breath. He watched as her face shifted into the familiar scrunched-down brows and annoyance. But she didn’t say anything. Hiccup clenched his hands into fists, trying to ground himself. “I think my bola launcher did hit down a night fury. I found it in the woods, ripped up and with these black scales.”

“Let’s say I believe you,” Astrid folded her arms, ice-blue eyes staring at him, “What does this have to do with Horrendous.”

“C’mon, I’ll show you.” Hiccup started to reach out to grab her wrist but thought better of it, jerking his hand back before he could make contact. He speed-walked down to the forge, looking back a few times to make sure she was following. Her brow was still scrunched down, but apparently he had enough of her curiosity.

He entered the forge and gestured to Horrendous’s armor, right where he’d left it on the table. She quirked an eyebrow at him and walked over to it, running a hand along the scales. Hiccup could see the moment it clicked, as she compared the scale and the armor.

“It’s the same scales,” Astrid said, as if saying it would make it more solid of a fact. Hiccup nodded.

“And if they’re night fury scales, then he’d have to have killed one to get armor like this,” Hiccup said, trying to ignore how his heart sped up at the thought of the man he was living with killing Toothless to make a new set of armor.

“He said he saw the ones that attacked him, but he never mentioned killing them,” Astrid said, following his train of logic. “Killing one is something one would mention. So why didn’t he?”

“Exactly. So let’s show this to-”

“No,” Astrid cut him off, shaking her head, still looking at the scale and the armor. “This isn’t more than just a hunch. We’ll need something more concrete if we want to get him.”

“Are you sure?” Hiccup asked. Astrid looked back up at him, determination clear in her expression and - miraculously - a small smile directed towards him on her lips.

“Yeah. But now, Hiccup, we know we’re not just being paranoid. There’s definitely something to this.” Hiccup found himself mimicking her smile, scratching the back of his head, not used to so much attention from her.

“Yeah," he agreed. Astrid looked back at the scale, and then at Hiccup.

“... hey, I’m sorry I didn’t believe you.”

“No, nah, don’t be," he quickly said. “I claimed I did once, like, every month. And anyway, it got away, there’s definitely not a night fury on the island.” He winced, praying she’d take that last line as just another crazy thing Hiccup said.

“Still. Thanks.”

Hiccup thought back to that brief glimpse of true flight he’d had with Toothless. Right now, he felt like he was in that brilliant moment again.

oOo

Going for a flight was exactly what Horrendous had needed.

He was still relishing that feeling of freedom as he walked back to the Meade Hall, Spine back in his pack. Hiccup and Astrid were standing outside of it, and he imagined she was grilling the young Haddock about what he was up to.

“Hey," he waved as he passed them. Neither gave any reply, but he hadn’t really expected them to. He didn’t let it bother him or wreck his good mood.

No, seeing Eret awake was good enough at doing that.

“Eret,” Horrendous almost shouted but caught himself last minute, so it kind of sounded like he was being strangled. The older man still heard it and turned to him, immediately standing up and pushing Ruffnut off of him. Horrendous had wanted to be there when Eret woke up, to fill the man in on what he’d figured out was going on here instead of being left to figure it out - or ruin Horrendous’s fake backstory.

“H-” Eret said, the sound petering off in his throat as he made a clear effort to change what it was going to be, “-orrendous.”

“I wasn’t expecting-” was all Horrendous managed to get out before Eret had cleared the distance between them and wrapped him in a tight and firm hug. He could feel as Eret’s shoulders dropped down, like a weight had been physically removed from them.

“You’re alive,” Eret breathed and then stepped back. He looked over his shoulder at the teens. “C’mon, let’s go back to y- uh, Hiccup’s house. I think we have a lot to catch up on.”

They left the Meade Hall quickly, Eret mostly pulling Horrendous along the way. The second they got out, Eret looked around. The only people nearby were the quickly retreating forms of Astrid and Hiccup towards the forge. That seemed… odd, but Horrendous had other things to focus on.

“You’re here,” Horrendous said, trying out the concept. “You’re actually here. I’m… I’m not alone.” His eyes burned as that sunk in.

“You’re alive!” Eret repeated. “I mean, I’ve seen you in better shape, but, well, I was worried the worst had befallen you in the storm," he admitted as they walked in the general direction of the Haddock house.

“So time is still moving back at home,” Horrendous mused aloud. Eret nodded.

“It’s been storming since you left. What happened? Where are we?”

“I wish I could tell you,” Horrendous sighed. “I remember the storm, but I must’ve fallen off of Toothless. He tried to grab me, but… I haven’t seen him since I got here.” He put his hand over where the bite still wasn’t completely healed up. “We seem to be in the past - 'I’ have found Toothless but I’m still in dragon training - and that’s about all I’ve figured out.”

“Well, I guess I should count myself lucky my trip here didn’t make me break a limb,” Eret nodded to Horrendous’s arm.

“Oh, this was something else entirely. Got caught by some dragon trappers while looking for a dragon to help me search for Toothless.”

Eret chuckled, shaking his head.

“Of course you would. What have you been up to?”

“Training some terrible terrors, lying every other word out of my mouth, a bunch of fun stuff. Mostly I'm just trying not to mess things up,” Horrendous said as they got to the house, going inside.

“So… that’s the plan? Try not to mess with the past?” Eret asked. Horrendous shrugged.

“I don’t know what else to do. I don’t want to change how things turned out - I’m happy with the future I have. It made me who I am. I’ve already messed with some things without meaning to, so I guess I’m just trying to mitigate the damage?” Horrendous admitted.

“Well, I can think of one thing we may need to worry about,” Eret said. They both went into Stoick’s room, closing the door behind them. Horrendous took off his pack and opened it up, letting Spine inspect the new person, climbing up Eret’s leg and to his shoulder. Eret scratched the dragon’s cheek.

“Besides ruining my life?”

“Toothless is probably fine. I’ll bet he just can’t get to Berk with a broken tailfin. But Skullcrusher can fly perfectly well on his own,” Eret said and it clicked in Horrendous’s head.

“Skullcrusher’s a tracker dragon. He’s going to be coming here-”

“-to a village full of dragon-slaying vikings,” Eret finished, nodding. “Somebody’s going to get hurt.”

Chapter Text

Horrendous sat back, admiring his work.

It was late at night. The day had been much less eventful than the last. He’d spent most of it catching Eret up on what he’d been doing since he’d gotten here, as well as his back story - at least what he had of it so far. They’d gone and visited the dragons, the terrible terrors and Serrated acquainting themselves with Eret. A lot of the small dragons liked how his much broader shoulders made for much more comfortable perches, though Aorta, Spine, and Pine still preferred Horrendous to the point of hissing at the others if they tried to climb up.

They’d also stopped by the dragon training, watching as the younger versions of Horrendous and his best friends scrambled around, trying to avoid the hideous zippleback. There were a few more vikings watching this time, and he caught some confused and amazed whispering as they watched Hiccup not get eaten.

Skullcrusher hadn’t shown up today, but Eret was taking to wandering around the town at night, keeping an eye out. In the meantime, Horrendous had finally gotten some things done.

The saddle should be the right size, as well as the length of the wire down to the carefully crafted tailfin. He’d made it so many times that he could tell just by looking. It of course didn’t hurt that he’d stolen the blueprints that younger Hiccup had made up. Horrendous’ Toothless had grown, and many design-changes and add-ons had been made over the past few years, but beggars couldn’t be choosers and now was really not the time to be messing around with new theories on how to make the tail move even quicker or made the entire get up more aerodynamic or really if he just tweaked this one thing right here no Horrencous stop messing with the designs stop it!

It was… oddly comforting, seeing the saddle finished and ready for the night fury to wear. In the dark, Horrendous could almost imagine that the shadows under the saddle was actually Toothless, standing patiently while Horrendous secured the various straps of the saddle and they got ready to go out flying.

“Hey, Hiccup, can I talk to you?”

Horrendous jumped and spun around. Eret was leading on the doorway, arms folded and expression somewhat grim.

“What is it?” Horrendous left the saddle where it was and walked over to the table closer to the doorway, where he armor was laid out. He didn’t dare sneak out to get more scales from Toothless, so he’d been working shed hobblegrunt scales into the missing areas. Eret entered the forge, pulling up a chair next to Horrendous, setting a hand on the armor to help steady it while Horrendous worked with his one good arm, something he was actually starting to get quite good at.

“I’ve been thinking about what you've said about how our actions might not impact the future.” It had been on Horrendous’s mind too, ever since Fishlegs had mentioned it. “I think we should try and change their future for the better.”

“You say that like our future is terrible,” Horrendous sighed. “I already told you that I think we should just try and keep things as normal as possible. I mean, younger me already almost died because we’re here. And what if we change things and then, I don’t know, Snotlout is married to Astrid when we get back.”

Eret put his other hand over Horrendous’s, stopping his work and forcing Horrendous to look up.

“Hiccup. What if we can’t get back? What if we’re stuck here for good? Dear Odin I hope not, but we have to face that possibility.”

The possibility had occurred to Horrendous - of course it had occurred to him, had plagued his thoughts as he tried to sleep. Never seeing Astrid again, getting to hold her in his arms, never getting to marry her. His village, left without a chief, without one - or now two - of its protectors.

“But-” he started weakly.

“Hiccup, you could save your dad.”

Any and every rebuttal left died in Horrendous’ throat. He… he could save Stoick. Maybe it wasn’t his Stoick, not his dad, but Hiccup wouldn’t be without his father… could he stop this Hiccup from losing his leg, too? Horrendous regretted none of his choices of the past, and his prosthetic leg made riding Toothless all the easier at times, but there were those nights where the terrible weather of Berk took its toll on the lost limb. Walking through mud was so hard to keep balanced in. It had taken him months to get strong enough, used to it, to run again.

And the Hiccup out there… he was the same age Horrendous had been, but that was still so young to have so much thrust on his shoulders.

“You’re right,” Hiccup sighed.

He held up his armor. There were still some spots missing scales, but it would do. He had Toothless’ saddle and fin and all the rigging that went with it.

Surely, he’d been waiting too long as it was.

oOo

Horrendous left that night.

There was a bit of panic as they ran around the village as quietly as they could. Once Horrendous decided what he wanted to do, nothing was strong enough to stop him. Still, Eret wondered if he should’ve brought this up after Horrendous’ arm healed up. No point in regretting things now, though. All he could do was hold down the fort here in Berk. They snuck some fish from the Meade Hall, as well as various other bits of food, but there wasn’t much they could steal away for Horrendous on such short notice. Hiccup or Stoick (when he returned) would notice things missing, leaving Horrendous with only his own clothes and armor.

“I could look for Toothless,” Eret offered, almost begged. While he had been the one to more or less suggestion Horrendous leave, he couldn’t shake the last time Horrendous had flown off, away from Berk, without anybody with him.

“Toothless is my best friend. I need to do this myself,” Horrendous insisted.

Eret saw him off, waving goodbye as Serrated stretched his wings out and then took off into the air, his scales a pleasant yellow color. The thunder of terrible terrors followed them, Aorta at the head, but Spine stayed back with Eret. The injured dragon would still have a bit longer before his wing healed up. Spine sat on Eret’s shoulder, staring after the other dragons and making a few squeaking cries out to them.

“It’s okay, they’ll be back.” Eret rubbed his thumb against the back of the dragon’s neck and it purred, head nuzzling Eret’s chin.

He didn’t sleep the rest of the night, instead climbing up on a tall tree a bit of a ways from Berk, looking out for Skullcrusher. It was okay. Horrendous would come back.

The sun began to rise, the sky lacking in its usually overwhelming cloud cover, and Skullcrusher was still nowhere to be seen. Eret climbed back down, landing lightly on his feet. He sighed and grit his teeth, knowing what he had to do but that not making it any easier. He pulled out a knife and made some slashes on his arms. Not too deep, he didn’t want to damage something important, but it had to look realistic too. His hissed through his teeth as he did so.

He scooped Spine up and into the carrier that Horrendous had left behind and ran back to the village, spots of blood being flung off of his arms and to the forest ground below as he went.

He made a display of stumbling once he actually reached the village, falling to his knees and getting back up and falling again. A few people crowded around him, asking what was wrong, what had happened. He stuttered, he gasped for air, he even managed to make himself cry a bit.

“What’s going on here? What happened?” Gobber asked, bending down to Eret’s level. He offered an arm to help him up and Eret took it, finally responding to someone.

“A dragon. It took Horrendous,” Eret said, the words disjointed and broken up as he tried to breath. “Dammit, it took Horrendous!”

There were horrified and sad gasps that surprised Eret. They shouldn’t have, really. Horrendous had a way of worming himself into many people’s good favors. And into some bad favors too, but that was just Horrendous for you.

“C’mon, let’s get you some food.”

Gobber led him away, up to the Meade Hall. Eret spotted Hiccup and Astrid standing next to each other out of the corner of his eyes and he focused on them. Hiccup looked shocked, but Astrid’s eyes were cold and sharp and he knew with a surety in his gut - he always trusted his gut - that she wasn’t even remotely fooled by his display. With the closeness she displayed to Hiccup, running off with him so often, she was sure to share this with the young viking.

Okay.

One against two.

He’d worked with worse odds.

Chapter Text

The fog laid heavy on the sea, making progress slow and hard. Stoick held his ax in hand as he stared out, praying to the gods that perhaps today they’d find the dragon’s nest. He thought back to Berk, where his son was being trained to fight dragons. His son, who could not fight dragons, who could not lift an ax above his head if he tried. He hoped Hiccup would learn something, but there was no guarantee he’d be a true viking by the end.

But if Stoick could find the nest, could destroy it, then Hiccup would be safe. 

His son wouldn’t meet the same fate as his mother. 

And yes, Stoick was a good chief, he was doing this for his people, who were starving, who kept having to rebuild their houses, and couldn’t afford to get too attached to anything they owned. But Hiccup was his son, his boy, and if it was him that Stoick thought of most during each outing, each desperate search, then that was nobody’s business but his. 

Technically, they weren’t making any progress at the moment, fog or no. It was hard enough to navigate the pillars of rock during the day and down-right suicidal at night. It was night now, and Stoick stood guard. They’d already lost one boat to dragons. Luckily they hadn’t lost any actual people, all being pulled from the wreckage and onto other boats, some even managing to save some of the supplies. So far, there are been worst voyages than this one. 

It was a quiet night as Stoick stood watch. Most of the others were sleeping. They’d need the rest. Stoick needed rest himself, but he was the chief. He could go without it for days if he had to. 

There was something moving in the mist. 

Stoick shifted his grip on his ax. 

It was small, and Stoick huffed as he realized it was a terrible terror. A lone one at that. They usually traveled in larger thunders, but one being cast out or hunting momentarily on its own wasn’t a rare sight. Well, it’d be the last time this one tried that. 

The dragon landed on the front of the ship. Stoick knew what was supposed to come next. The dragon would scamper forward, fast and quick, trying to steal their rations or deliver a poisonous bite. Stoick was faster and quicker and immune to terrible terror poison by this point. However, the dragon did not do any of that. It just sat there, staring at Stoick, and that was when Stoick noticed that the dragon was holding something in its mouth. The terrible terror cocked its head to the side, dropped the thing - a piece of parchment - onto the floor of the boat, and the took off again, flying back the way it’d come.

A chill ran up Stoick’s spine that had nothing to do with the weather.

Slowly, he approached the parchment. 

There was writing on it.

Return to your village, before something irreparable happens to it.

The parchment crumpled in Stoick’s hands. His heart beat louder. 

A threat delivered by a trained dragon? 

Stoick hadn’t thought about Drago Bludfist in a long time, but what had happened that night had stayed with him and now it loomed over his shoulders. 

He had to get back to Berk. 

oOo

“So we can agree that Eret is lying, right?” 

Astrid and Hiccup stood in the forge, Astrid leaning against one of the walls with her arms folded. Hiccup shuffled awkwardly, deliberately not looking at where his designs were sitting. Most of the villagers were in the Meade Hall, listening to whatever story Eret was weaving about how Horrendous had been carted off, probably killed by a dragon. 

“Definitely,” Hiccup nodded. Those cuts on Eret’s arms looked bad, and certainly they were bleeding a lot, but there was something off about them. They looked far too deliberate, and for all those scratches to just be on the man’s arms sent up more than one red flag. “The real question is why.”

“If I had to give a guess, I’d say it’s so that Horrendous can disappear without anybody asking questions. Think about: someone getting carried away by dragons isn’t all that unlikely of a story; clearly everybody else believes it. So Horrendous can return back to Eret and his tribe and report what he’s learned about us, our weakness and such, and then return to attack while our defenses are low.” Astrid smacked her palm with her fist. “We can’t let that happen.”

“But we don’t have any proof that he actually left alive - we don’t even have his armor anymore!” Hiccup gestured to the very-much empty spot on the counter where Horrendous’ armor had been taking up space for a while. If they wanted they could present its absence as proof, but somebody actually wearing their armor was a pretty weak point. 

“Then we’ll just have to find some. I’ll go check the docks and see if any of our remaining boats are missing, right down to the smallest dinghy. While Eret’s occupied at the Meade Hall, you should check your dad’s room and see if he or Horrendous left anything in there that we can use,” Astrid directed and Hiccup nodded. And then Astrid smiled at him, a smile that almost made Hiccup melt under its surprising warmth. “You know, I can’t believe I’m saying this, but you’re not as terrible a viking as you seem, Hiccup.”

The feeling soured at that last sentence, Astrid rushing out to go check the docks. He was no viking, he would never be a real viking. Feeling a bit heavier with a rock made of guilt in his stomach, Hiccup went over to his house. Now was not the time to think about his own betrayal of his people. He wasn’t a threat to them, he was just a twig of a boy who thought dragons were neat and harmless and was starting to think that maybe there was a different way to end this war. Eret and Horrendous, on the other hand, were up to something that had every possibility to make things worse for Hiccup’s tribe.

Hiccup had thought about checking out his dad’s room since the two foreigners had come, but between the dragon training, the secret meetings with Astrid, and the secret dragon-riding training with Toothless, Hiccup had been pretty busy the past while. He had taken a second to look around when Eret had first been taken in, but with everybody else who had been in the room and how he and Astrid were trying to keep their investigation quiet he hadn’t been able to look too thoroughly. But now with Horrendous gone and Eret busy, and it just early enough that dragon training hadn’t started yet for the day (and if Gobber was still busy with Eret, it’d be put off even longer) it was really the perfect time to poke around.

His dad’s room looked, for the most part, the same as it ever was. There were the two dragon skulls, the huge map on the wall with the x’s that marked where he hadn’t been able to find the dragon nest and the other x’s that Hiccup didn’t know the purpose of. None of the weapons had been taken from the wall, or looked like they’d been used since Stoick had left. 

Hiccup made the bed as he looked around. The room didn’t look very much lived in. Stoick spent much of his time around the village doing chiefly things that needed to be done, and it’s two current occupants seemed to spend as much time in the room as Stoick had. But that didn’t mean they wouldn’t leave some kind of hint of what they were up to lying around. 

He found what he was looking for under the bed, and once he did he wished he hadn’t. 

There was a stack of parchments, and Hiccup place them on the bed, climbing on and leafing through them, his heart sinking as he realized what he was looking at. They were blueprints, clearly, but they weren’t for death machines or houses or ships or traps. The designs were for a saddle. There were sketches of various dragons to go along with the designs. Sometimes it depicted something that looked startling like a night fury (Horrendous had said he had seen one before, it shouldn’t be surprising, Hiccup had already known Horrendous had been lying about how brief the encounter had been) while others had terrible terrors drawn in the free space, some kind of weird contraction strapped to them, and one picture had a dragon that Hiccup had never seen before with a frill. 

“A dragon didn’t take Horrendous,” Hiccup whispered, standing up, clutching the parchment in his shaking hands, “Horrendous flew away on a dragon!”

oOo

Horrendous and his thunder had been flying for hours now, and the great feeling of freedom had worn off enough that Horrendous remembered why he usually went flying with somebody else along, especially if he was going such distances as he was today. His thunder was down a number as Crackle gave the letter Horrendous had written to Stoick. It was all a part of the new ‘Stoick Doesn’t Die’ plan that he and Eret and made up last night.

It was important for the plan that Stoick was at Berk when Horrendous showed back up with a Bewilderbeast in tow. 

Horrendous’ terrible terrors were supposed to be keeping an eye out for Toothless. Horrendous wasn't entirely sure that’d work, considering the terrors hadn’t ever met Toothless, but every bit of help he could get finding his best friend while he tried to carry out his plan, he’d make use of. 

“Alright, we shouldn’t be far from Sanctuary now,” Horrendous mused, looked at his quickly-sketched map. It wasn’t the most accurate, but it was better than nothing. It had been a pretty uneventful trip so far. There’d been a few boats that passed by underneath them, a few outcroppings of land that they’d taken brief breaks on, and quite a few birds that the terrible terrors had chased after and then delivered to Horrendous like they were the very best of jewels. Things were going good, all things considered.

So of course, that’s when they got shot down. 

“Shit!” Horrendous hissed as he and Serrated fell towards the ocean - no, towards another boat. This was what he got for letting his guard down - and for a second time at that! Serrated made a sound like he very much agreed with that feeling. The dragon was able to flip around so that he was the one that hit the wood instead of Horrendous being squished underneath him. Horrendous scratched the dragon’s neck in thanks. 

The terrible terrors had managed not to get caught, and Horrendous counting his blessings where he could find them.

“Stay close!” He shouted. There were answering squawks from the terrors, but he couldn’t see them as the trappers converged on him and Serrated.

“A rider?” one of them said.

“Toss him under with the rest of them," somebody else grunted uncaringly. “Must’ve gone crazy to do something like this.”

Horrendous’ broken arm didn’t feel too good, but at least it didn’t feel like worse damage had been done to it. With his other arm he tried to reach for his dragon blade, but somebody noticed the movement and stepped on his hand. Horrendous grunted, not giving the trappers the satisfaction of hearing him scream. 

“Wait, what’s that?” rhe first trapper said.

“A rider, you pointed that out yourself," a third trapper’s voice joined the conversation.

“No, no, the sea, is it… what’s going on?”

The boat started to rock. 

There was a crescendoing roar above him. 

The thunder of terrible terrors seemed to take this as a cue to attack. The boot on Horrendous’ hand lifted and the dragon rider went right to work unwinding the rope from around him and Serrated. The dragon’s scales were red with anger, not doubt made worse by the fact that this was the second time this had happened to him. 

“Give them a piece of Hel, bud,” Horrendous grinned at Serrated.

Then the whole boat tipped, torn apart, and Horrendous fell into the ocean.

Chapter Text

“There’s something I need to tell you.”

Night has fallen on Berk, casting everything into darkness. The fires are lit outside of the houses and along the columns, allowing enough light to see by, but soon someone would eventually go through and put out even most of those, leaving only the columns with low-burning coals to keep vikings warm as they watched the sky for dragons. 

Hiccup stood outside, at the edge of the woods, Astrid across from him. He had a bag slung on his back, because if things went south here he was probably not going to be able to return to the village. He wrote a quick little note to his dad, left on his pillow, that just basically said 'something something I’m going to try and kill a dragon tonight something something something'. After all, how hard would that be to believe? Reckless mess-up Hiccup went out and got himself killed. 

“Did you figure out how Horrendous got off the island?” Astrid asked. The hate and border-line disgust that used to be common on her face had faded so much since they’d been investigating the weird, and it made butterflies swarm uncomfortably in Hiccup’s stomach as he knew that it would only be a matter of time before this weird trust and understanding that had developed between them was broken. But Hiccup felt like he owed it to her to be honest.

“No, not that. It’s something else. Uh, just, follow me. It’s easier if I show you.” 

Astrid raised an eyebrow, clearly knowing that there was something up, but followed after him anyway. She did grab her ax to hold in her hand, ready in case they got attacked. Hiccup winced when he saw it and tried not to imagine it embedded into his new best friend. 

The woods of Berk at night were silent, and even Hiccup had picked up the instincts to be alert, to listen for even the slightest of sounds. When the sun set, the world belonged to the dragons, and you had to be on guard for one out on the hunt. Even if Hiccup had picked up some skills for how to deal with dragons - befriend them, even - they all hinged on his ability to get close enough to touch the dragons without being killed. And he had to admit that, while he didn’t want any harm to come to any dragon, he did feel safer knowing that Astrid was right behind him. 

They made their way down to cove where Toothless was trapped. Hiccup had felt bad about it at first, but Toothless had never fought him about going back down, and Hiccup had thought about ‘keeping’ Toothless out in the woods, but the hole was probably the safest place for him. Well, so long as no viking stumbled across him, but they didn’t go out into the woods very often.

“Hiccup,” Astrid said, a warning in her voice, “Where are we?” 

“First, I need you to put down the ax,” Hiccup said. Astrid scoffed.

“Yeah, like I’m going to do that.” 

“Please, Astrid,” Hiccup begged. Astrid looked at Hiccup, expression unreadable, and then slowly set it on the ground. “I just… come on. And give us a second to explain. I promise, this does have something to do with what I think Horrendous and Eret are doing.”

Astrid followed Hiccup slower this time, more suspiciously, as they went down. Toothless blended almost seamlessly with the shadows. He would’ve blended better with the night sky, like he was designed to. Hiccup can tell the exact second, though, that Astrid realized that the black lump wasn’t just a dark boulder. Especially when the dark boulder shifted and moved, the eyes opening to a bright and startling green.

“Hiccup, get down!” Astrid shouted, moving before she had even put the pieces together. She reached to grab Hiccup’s shoulder, but Hiccup was just out of arm’s reach and he stepped closer to Toothless. By now, Toothless was standing on all fours, and darting over to Hiccup so that he was curled almost completely around him and shut him off from Astrid.

“Astrid, please, just, hear us out,” Hiccup pleaded.

His pleading didn’t work this time, as Astrid turned around and started to run back towards the opening - and back towards her ax. Hiccup jumped forward, tackling her to the ground, and then got kicked in the stomach by one of her boots. She got back to her feet, but Toothless seemed to have caught on and pinned her to the ground.

“Get OFF!” Astrid shouted, wriggling around under Toothless’ paws. Toothless looked up at Hiccup, tongue lolling out of his mouth as if asking Hiccup if he’d done a good job. 

“Yeah, uh, good work?” Hiccup said as he got back to his feet, still struggling to get air in his lungs.

“Hiccup, what the Hel?!” Astrid was glaring at him and Hiccup had to stop himself from shrinking away at that. 

“Please, Astrid, we just need to explain.” Hiccup leaned up against Toothless for support. 

“Explain what?!” Astrid growled, and Toothless looked down at her and growled back.

“Hey, no fighting, both of you!” Hiccup snapped. Toothless warbled sadly but indeed stopped growling. Astrid did as well, but more so because she was surprised by a dragon listening to a ‘viking’ than because she was listening to Hiccup. “Astrid, I’ve figured out how to train dragons.”

“That’s impossible,” Astrid said automatically. 

“I can even ride him,” Hiccup went on anyway. He gestured towards the riding gear, which he had left on Toothless today just for this. Astrid opened her mouth, but apparently she couldn’t argue about that. “But Astrid, this is what’s important: I think Horrendous and Eret are dragon riders too.”

“What?!” Astrid said, starting to wriggle around underneath Toothless. Toothless looked back at Hiccup and, at his nod, finally got off of Astrid. 

“Please, Astrid,” Hiccup repeated as Astrid jumped to her feet, eyes darting from Toothless to Hiccup. 

“... prove it," she said, and Hiccup let out a sigh of relief that she hadn’t run back to her ax. 

“Horrendous drew up plans for rider gear back at the forge, it’s still-”

“No, prove that you can ride it. That you trained it,” Astrid cut Hiccup off and folded her arms, practically bouncing on the balls of her feet, ready to spring into action if she needed to. If there was anybody who could live up to Hiccup’s dad’s legacy of popping a dragon’s head off its body with their bare hands, it would definitely be Astrid. 

Hiccup looked back at Toothless, who made another warbling sound. Hiccup looked back at Astrid and swallowed down a lump in his throat in an effort to keep a bit of courage. 

“You have to ride him with me.” 

oOo

It was cold when Horrendous woke up. Very cold.

Dragon scales were very good at keeping one from catching fire, and were fairly good at insulating. It took a while to get too hot, it took a while to get too cold, but it definitely wasn’t impossible one way or the other, but in all of Horrendous’ experiments with dragon scale clothes, he had found you always got colder quicker than you got hotter. 

That was all to say that, if Horrendous was cold, it meant he had to have been knocked out in a cold place for quite some time. 

With slow movements, Horrendous sat up. He was still wet, soaked from his dip into the ocean. That, he was sure of, he could remember that. He had felt something wrap around him, scaly and clawed, most definitely a dragon but something made Horrendous hesitant to say that it had been Serrated. The claws had felt much much bigger than that of a hobblegrunt. Maybe a dragon that had been inside the boat? Horrendous wracked his brain. 

He was surrounded by ice.

Horrendous stood up suddenly when he noticed that. The ground beneath him was rock, but the walls and ceiling were ice. Very familiar ice, in fact.

Back at home, in the Berk of Horrendous time, it was so full of dragons that it was only after he realized where he was that he realized that he was also surrounded by dragons. They were all regarding him from a distance with curiosity and wariness. His hand went to his belt, but his dragon blade wasn’t there. 

“Alright, doing this the slow way then,” Horrendous whispered to himself, taking a step towards the closest dragon. It flinched away from him, lips moving away from its sharp teeth to snarl a warning, and Horrendous froze in place, remaining calm and keeping his movements telegraphed. After a second, the dragon’s head tilted curiously and the growl stopped. Horrendous slowly moved closer again, and this time the dragon’s head nudged a bit towards Horrendous. 

Before he could make contact, however, his mom showed up.

She climbed through and around and over the dragons with ease, a kind of skill and ease that she had taught Horrendous. With a wave of her staff, the dragons all went silent, eyes on her as she approached Horrendous. She moved with her torso low, one hand always close to touching the ground. She always moved like that when she was in a huge thunder of dragons. 

“Did you get my dragons too?” Horrendous asked. When she didn’t say anything, Horrendous elaborated, “One’s a hobblegrunt, he changes color, and I had a thunder of terrible terrors.”

“You claim to own dragons?” Valka accused. Her words were low, almost threatening, and almost without meaning to Horrendous dropped his center of gravity, preparing himself for a fight. He desperately didn’t want that to happen, not with a mom who didn’t know who he was (who he couldn’t let know who he was, he suddenly realized).

“No, not at all. But I’d say ‘my friends’ as well, if I were asking if you’d seen them,” Horrendous defended himself. 

“Where are you friends?” The word friends sounded rude when she said it, and Horrendous had to stop himself from getting upset over it. Valka didn’t know what his friends were like. She was probably imagining dragons hunters, not the people back at Berk he’d trust with his life without a second thought.

“Well, Serrated and the thunder is a good place to start, so wherever they are,” Horrendous replied. 

Before either he or Valka could say anything else, there was a howl that echoed through the ice. Valka’s head snapped in the direction it had come from, and Horrendous’ heart skipped a beat. There was no way he was going to be this lucky, right? But he knew that call anywhere, he could identify it over any other sound. 

There was another yowl and through the dim lights of Sanctuary it was hard to make out the details of the night fury as he rounded the corner into the cavern that Horrendous was in. Valka shouted something and twirled her staff but Toothless paid it no mind, darting over the other dragons and leaping into the center of the circle the dragons had formed around Valka and Horrendous. He bowled Horrendous over, and Valka shouted again, but it did absolutely nothing to stop Toothless from covering Horrendous in slobber as he licked his face.

Horrendous couldn’t find it in himself to even fake being upset. He just reached up and grabbed onto Toothless’ neck, holding his best friend who he had been so worried he’d lost. Toothless chirped and rolled onto his side so that Horrendous was no longer pinned down. Horrendous scratched the side of Toothless’ face and Toothless pressed his head into Horrendous’ hand so much that Horrendous fell back onto the ground again. Toothless then pinned Horrendous to the ground again, this time by just lying down on top of him and rumbling deep in his throat contentedly.

“Glad to see you too, bud,” Horrendous sighed, the sound coming out strained as he was having a hard time getting air into his lungs with the dragon sitting on him, but still he didn’t care. Toothless was here, Toothless was alive, Toothless was okay, and for the moment that was all that mattered.

Chapter Text

Hiccup got up early the next morning, nervous energy charging through him. Thank Odin that they had the day off from dragon training; he needed the time to get some last-minute flying practice in. Breakfast was snatched from the Meade Hall, as well as some fish, before he ran out into the woods.

If he was being honest, a part of him was surprised to find Toothless still there. He'd tossed and turned all night, imagining Astrid sneaking out after they'd returned and killing the night fury anyway. Toothless gobbled up the fish and Hiccup pet the dragon's rough hide, grounding himself in the feel of the scales under his hands.

"Big day, today," Hiccup told him. Toothless warbled back. He then went about getting the gear on the dragon, checking and double checking that the straps were tight enough, that nothing was going to fall off suddenly, that the tail still opened and tilted like it was supposed to. They'd flown a couple times without the aid of Hiccup's chart, and it came easily and naturally, but now Hiccup found he wished he still had it, if just so he'd have the knowledge right there.

They flew low and quiet, mostly gliding just above the sea and weaving around the rocks that jutted out. Simple, easy.

I could fly away from Berk.

Hiccup blinked in surprise at the thought, unsure where it'd come from. The thought felt weirder than it had last night, now that he was well-awake. It was true, though. He could grab some basic provisions, some clothes, and just hop on Toothless and leave. It'd never been an option before; he didn't know how to man a boat, much less on his own, and one of the fleet would be noticed if it went missing. But nobody aside from Astrid knew of Toothless. And would he be missed? He was just Hiccup, after all.

But no, even if it seemed tempting for he and Toothless to just continue out into the unknown, to the edge of the world, he found that he still cared about Berk, and he cared about the dragons who'd still be killed, and he didn't know what he was going to do about that other than that he needed to do something, and then there was the whole mystery going on with Eret and Horrendous…

He guided Toothless back to Berk, back to home, and they settled back the cove to wait for Astrid.

She came with little fanfare, quiet and light on her feet. She still had an axe and was dressed in some thicker leather than she'd had on last night. Toothless dropped low and growled threateningly. Hiccup set a hand to the dragon's snout and motioned for Astrid to stop.

"Put down the axe, or he won't let you get close."

"Smart dragon," she said and her voice had a venom in it that Hiccup hadn't realized had vanished until it had now returned. She slowly set it to the ground, hesitating just before she completely let it go. Hiccup let out a sigh of relief. He didn't doubt that she was till plenty dangerous without a weapon - Hel, he'd seen that for himself - but it was nice, and good to know that for how much he'd ruined their growing trust, some last embers must've still held on.

"Alright, well, if you'll just come over here…" Hiccup motioned for her to come forward, and she did, slow and cautious, eyes never leaving Toothless. Toothless showed her the same amount of caution, ducking out from under Hiccup's hand to place himself wrapped around Hiccup, head off to one side of him and tail snaked around his legs.

"Now what?" Astrid demanded.

"We, uh, we ride him," Hiccup said, shifting his feet awkwardly. Toothless growled again. "Hey, bud, please." Toothless huffed but unwound himself from Hiccup, standing straight and tail slapping the dirt ground.

Hiccup climbed on, getting his foot into the stirrups, and then followed the weirdness of Astrid getting on behind him. The saddle barely accommodated for two people, and as far as Hiccup knew, Astrid had never ridden anything. There were tales of distant Vikings who had deer-like animals - horses, Hiccup believed they were called - that they rode, but Berk had none itself.

Just as Astrid started to get settled, Toothless took off.

"Whoa, hey, bud!" Hiccup shouted as the dragon took a running start and then snapped his wings open, quick and jarring as he lept into the air and with a great down-beat they were rocketing upwards. Behind him, Astrid screamed, grabbing him around the stomach for dear life.

"Toothless, what are you doing?!" Hiccup did his best to match Toothless' movements, and if it was a little less life-or-death he might have been proud of himself for doing so successfully. As it was, it took all his mental capacity to keep up and try to calm the dragon down. "Toothless, we need her to like us, remember?"

Toothless yowled and dropped suddenly, wings tucking in as he spun his entire body - as well as his passengers - in a downward dive. Hiccup leaned forward, brushing the side of the night fury's head.

"Please, bud, we can do this," he begged.

He felt more than heard the dragon's answering rumble.

Toothless snapped his wings open once more, a bit slower this time, and leveled them out.

Hiccup sighed in relief. Astrid's hold on his stomach loosened every-so-slightly.

"I'm sorry, he's, uh, he's not usually so moody."

Toothless snorted and shook his head. Astrid didn't say anything at first, and when Hiccup looked back at he saw she was staring off into the distance. He followed her gaze. She didn't seem to be looking at anything in particular, just the view of the sea, some rocks jutting out of the water in an area Hiccup had been enjoying flying through recently. It wasn't anything he hadn't seen before. And yet, he thought he knew what she was looking at. Even now, it still took his breath away.

"Wow," he heard her whisper. Hiccup found himself grinning. It'd been nice, thinking of himself as the only 'viking' who'd ever seen these sights, and yet, it felt so much better being able to share it with someone.

"... so, do you believe me?" He asked.

"Yeah, yeah I do."

And now… now that they were on the same page, they needed to deal with Eret and Horrendous.

"So-" Hiccup started, but stopped when he felt Toothless tense underneath them, "Toothless?"

At once, Toothless tilted to the side. Hiccup automatically matched his movement even as both he and Astrid let out twin cries of surprise. The reasoning was clear in a moments as a large dragon flew out from the maze of rocks beneath them, hurtling to nearly the exact spot they'd been a moment before.

It was then that Hiccup realized Astrid's scream was still ongoing, as well as getting further away.

"Astird!" Hiccup shouted, looking down at her falling form.

The new dragon was already moving, diving and biting down on her leg. Hiccup and Toothless followed right after, chasing the dragon as he flew off with Astrid still in its mouth. There was a hum coming from Toothless, an acidic smell, that Hiccup recognized as Toothless preparing to let out a shot of fire.

"No, you can't hit him, Astrid might get hurt!" Hiccup insisted. Toothless closed his mouth and growled, pushing forward faster. They were coming up on a familiar land mass, a familiar cliff, where the new dragon came to a stop and dropped Astrid. Toothless and Hiccup had been right on their tail, and Hiccup jumped up and off of Toothless to attend to Astrid while Toothless barreled right into the other dragon, growling and roaring.

"Astrid, are you okay?" Hiccup looked her over for injury. She was holding her hip, but looked confused, a confusion that was quickly infecting Hiccup as well. They were… on Berk. Usually the dragons carried their prey far away from here. And… it'd just sort of dropped her, hadn't it?

"I… I think I am," she admitted, uncertain. While her boot clearly had marks where the dragon had bit it, her leg was still there, very clearly not bitten right off like in that tale Gobber told over and over again. They looked over at Toothless and the dragon. Toothless was still growling, staying between the dragon and the humans, but the other dragon didn't seem all that concerned about the action. In fact, it almost looked confused.

The dragon was like none other that Hiccup had seen before. It was big and burly, sort of like a gronkle, but with a much smaller head and eyes, as well as a long tail that ended in a club-like lump. Like a gronkle, it had six limbs, but the wings were far larger. Its looked almost beetle-like in appearance, with its scales forming dense plate-like armor around its neck. Its coloring was iridescent reds and greens that gleamed as it tilted its head around and then let out a low rumble.

Toothless hissed, but there was something calmer about the sound now. The other dragon rumbled again, and this time Toothless responded with a warble. There was a short huff let out from the beetle-dragon's snout and then it lifted its head and sniffed the air before unfurling its wings and taking flight again.

"... what just happened?" Astrid asked. Hiccup was, quite frankly, speechless, mouth opening and closing but no sound coming out as he watched the dragon fly away. It was staying relatively close to the island. In fact, it almost looked like… "Wait, is it heading for the village?!"

"Of course it is!" Hiccup shouted and then pressed his head into his hands. He had no idea what was going on, but he did know that nothing good was going to come from a dragon going to the village, especially in the daytime.

"Well, we need to get back there!" Astrid stood up and then winced at the pressure on her injured leg. Hiccup was at her side in a moment, but she waved him off. "I'm fine, it's just bruised."

"Let's get back to Toothless' cove first, then we'll decide where to go from there," Hiccup suggested and Astrid nodded. They both climbed back onto the dragon's back, and while Astrid got on without complaint, Hiccup didn't miss how tight she was holding onto him this time. It made guilt swirl in his stomach. Maybe they'd be able to get out for another proper flight sometime, without Toothless purposefully trying to sabotage, or another random dragon messing it up. He didn't want it to stay ruined for her.

The flight back was, luckily, completely uneventful with a side of boring, and they landed right by the little pond.

"You don't want to tell the village about Eret and Horrendous, do you?" Astrid said. It was the first words said by either of them since they'd started back.

"I'm not going to risk Toothless," Hiccup stated decisively. He took a few deep breaths and then straightened his back, looking at Astrid and daring her to contradict him. She held his gaze for a while and then looked away, shrugging.

"I figured. We've been working on this just the two of us this long anyway, might as well keep it like that."

Toothless straightened suddenly, and when Hiccup followed the night fury's gaze, he saw the strange dragon was back. It stood at the edge of the hole for a moment before hopping down. It strode right over to Hiccup, and although Toothless growled a warning, the dragon didn't stop the other from sniffing Hiccup. It let out a sad-sounding warble and then trotted off to one end of the clearing, lying down and closing its eyes.

"W-well then, uh, nice to meet you…?" Hiccup coughed.

"Hiccup, look." Astrid pointed to the dragon, and Hiccup didn't know how he'd missed it before.

The dragon had a saddle on its back.

A dragon, surprisingly kind to humans, with a saddle, that had flown to the village.

Hiccup had a bad feeling about this.

"We really need to get back to Berk."

oOo

Eret's morning had been going pretty well. In fact, it'd been great! He'd gotten a full night's sleep, woken up later than usual, and was ready to get out and start his day. He was supposed to show Gobber some ways he used to deal with dragons, methods for bringing them down. Oh, he was going to leave out the more lethal methods, of course, but it was also sort of nice to get the chance to talk about the job he'd spent so much of his life doing again. After all, he'd once been very very good at his job. It was the knowledge that Horrendous and the others had let him impart on them, and was useful, sure, but those conversations were always tinted with this weird feeling of guilt and fear that he'd say something that would make them decide he wasn't worth the trouble to keep around.

So, the last thing he expected was to step out of the Haddock house to shouting and a dragon roaring.

Even worse, he didn't expect to recognize the dragon, though he should have.

Eret's heart plummeted into his stomach upon seeing Skullcrusher flying around, dodging attacks, and calling out.

There were many things Eret could've done in that moment, things that might've kept his cover while still getting Skullcrusher out of the situation safely, but all of them had flown out of his head in a sudden and desperate need to get to his dragon and get him safe.

"Skullcrusher!" Eret shouted, running at full speed. The dragon's head snapped towards him and he roared a greeting. The distraction was enough for someone to finally get a good aim in, a bola wrapping around one of the rumblehorn's wings. He let out a howl as he spiraled to the ground, hitting the ground harshly. Eret didn't stop running, pushing and shoving through the crowd of vikings and already pulling out his knife, sawing at the rope of the bola.

Skullcrusher was astoundingly calm considering the situation, letting out a low rumble as he stared at Eret.

"The Hel are you doing?!" somebody shouted and tried to pull Eret off, but he turned and slashed at them with his knife, the tang of blood now in the air, before returning to his task. He was nearly through it.

"You gotta get out of here, okay? Get somewhere safe, try and find the Chief and Toothless, alright?" Eret said, almost too fast to be understandable. The rumblehorn hummed, and when the last strand of rope was finally cut through, the dragon's wing snapped open again, hitting the nearby vikings out of the way, and the dragon was flying off again.

The vikings were upon Eret in a moment, grabbing him, tearing the knife out of his hand and wrestling him to the ground. Eret didn't even try to fight back. He recounted stickier situations he'd had to get out of. He could do this. This was going to be fine.

"What was that for?! We had him!" Eret recognized Spitelout. At least the older people in the village looked more or less the same. The entire Hairy Hooligans were bad enough to deal with in the 'present'; Eret had only ever heard stories about how insufferable they'd been in the past. He was not looking forward to this conversation.

"He's mine," Eret huffed. He'd been pushed into the ground so fast and hard the air had been forced out of his lungs and he was still trying to get it back.

"We would've let you kill it," Spitelout said. Eret shook his head, glaring.

"I wouldn't kill him. Skullcrusher is my dragon. Nobody kills him." His proclamation was met with confused and surprised whispers throughout the crowd. Gobber came up next to Spitelout and the two exchanged some whispered words.

"He's clearly insane," he heard from Gobber.

"We should kill him," he heard from Spitelout.

"You're not chief."

"He's dangerous to keep around, especially if there's another attack soon."

"We'll keep a close eye on him."

"I'm not going to."

"Fine." Their little two man huddle broke up and Gobber cleared his throat, raising his voice so everybody could hear. "We're going to lock this maniac up until Stoick returns. I'll keep watch of him personally and make sure he doesn't cause any trouble."

There was more murmuring, mostly of agreement, although Eret did catch some people who seemed to think the only cure for a head sickness was to toss him back out to the waves. In all honesty, that didn't sound like half a bad idea. If he could swim far enough out, Skullcrusher could pick him up.

As it was, he was just going to have to wait for Horrendous to return.

Chapter Text

“Okay, role call!” 

Horrendous put one hand on his hip and gestured to the terrible terrors. 

After his reunion with Toothless, Valka had led him and his dragon to where she’d been keeping the rest of his thunder. A part of him grew angry at seeing how they had been cornered and watched by other dragons, as if his dragons were dangerous, but he also could not fault Valka for being careful; dragons who saw Drago as the alpha, for instance, may not be so quick to join the Bewilderbeast’s thunder and might even try to do some damage. At least he was now reunited with nearly all of his thunder, Spine who’d been left behind in Berk the only one missing. 

The terrible terrors - who had all decided that Serrated was the best perch when Horrendous wasn’t around - squeaked and squawked at seeing Horrendous. 

“Come on, come on, role call!” Horrendous said again, stepping away from the thunder as they tried to jump on him. The thunder finally quieted. Serrated started with a low croon, followed by Aorta, Blossom, and Crackle. It fell apart after that, as Pine started to call but Stormy squeaked right over him. Pine jumped at Stormy angrily and the two fell off of serrated to wrestle on the cold icy floor. Umber let out a few sharp barks, as if trying to make themself heard. All form of decorum dropped and Serrated sprang over to Hiccup, nuzzling him and rumbling in his throat. The rest of the thunder quickly joined in, jumping all over Hiccup and chittering away. 

“Okay, we’ll work on it,” Horrendous sighed, going for exasperated but ending up fond.

Toothless hissed at Serrated, batting at the other dragon. Toothless had been glued to Horrendous’ side since their reunion. Serrated responded in kind, growling and scales shimmering red.  

“Hey, bud, it’s okay! Serrated, this is Toothless. He’s my best bud. See, my armor? It matches his.” Horrendous stretched out his arm. Serrated sniffed it and looked at Toothless. Toothless, snarled again. “And Toothless, this is Serrated. He’s been helping me out while you’ve been gone. And you’re both going to get along, aren’t you?” 

Toothless and Serrated stared at each other for a while until Serrated finally let out a huff, shaking his head and backing up. Some of the terrible terrors returned to Serrated, while one or two jumped onto Toothless curiously. Toothless grumbled and shook himself a bit, but endured it nonetheless. 

“I have never seen another human treat dragons so well,” Valka praised, a hand up to her mouth as she held back chuckles of amusement. 

“Like I said, they’re my friends. And Toothless, he’s my family.” Horrendous scratched the top of Toothless head mindlessly. It was like he’d had a lost limb return to him. Or, well, not really, because having Toothless back was so much more than Horrendous getting his leg back. 

“What strange fate, to bring the nightfury and yourself both here,” Valka mused, as she turned and began to lead the way out of the little cavern the thunder had been kept in. Horrendous and his thunder followed after her. 

“Well…” Horrendous scratched the back of his neck, “It’s a relief that you found Toothless, but my ending up here wasn’t entirely an accident.” Valka noticeably tensed, so Horrendous was quick to add, “But I haven’t told anyone else about this.” That was, of course, a lie in several ways you could spin it, but he hadn’t told anyone on current-Berk (and Eret didn’t count). 

“... you are a very strange one,” Valka said, but still continued to lead the way to the Inner Sanctuary. Horrendous kept up fine with her, with Toothless getting himself underfoot whenever Horrendous needed help, anticipating Horrendous perfectly. Their time apart hadn’t been nearly enough to unsync the two of them, and it made Horrendous smile. No matter what happened, now that he had Toothless by his side, he’d be able to get through it. 

They arrived at the corner of Inner Sanctuary where Valka lived, amenities for a human set about. Cloudjumper flew over to the ledge, cooing to Valka, and Valka patted his head. 

“I apologize if I have been a terrible host so far; it isn’t often, or ever, that we get human visitors, and I avoid going into villages as much as I can,” Valka examples, going over to the melting water that flowed in a constant stream and collecting some into a cup, which he handed to Horrendous. Horrendous drank from it greedily, unaware he’d been so thirsty until the water was blessedly at his lips. “I am Valka, and this is Sanctuary, where dragons may be safe from vikings and hunters. This here is Cloudjumper. He is as much ‘mine’ as it seems Toothless is ‘yours’.” 

Valka walked over to the firepit, already lit, and as Hiccup watched a terrible terror flew to the ledge, carrying a stick, and dropped it into the pit before flying off. She sat down on the stump before the fire, and Horrendous sat down on the ground, which had a rug laid out so he at least wasn’t sitting on the bare freezing rock ground.  

“I’m Horrendous the Crafter. It seems you’ve already known Toothless. There’s also Serrated, the hobblegrunt, and then the thunder of terrible terrors: Aorta, Pine, Crackle, Blossom and Umber.” Horrendous gestured to each in turn. Each squeaked at their name, and Valka smiled fondly. 

“You seem to have amassed quite a thunder for yourself,” she noted. 

“Yes. Like I said, I was somewhat aware of this place before, and now I come with a big request: I would like you and the Bewilderbeast to help me stop the dragon raids on Berk.” 

Volka stared at Horrendous, as if she couldn’t believe she couldn’t believe what she’d just heard. Horrendous sat patiently, waiting for it to sink in. 

She stood suddenly, walking to the ledge. Horrendous did not follow her this time, sitting where he was and taking a sip of the freezing water he’d been given and warming himself by the fire. 

“Who are you?” she asked, and Horrendous understood what she was asking for. 

“I am a cousin of the Chief of Berk, Stoick the Vast.” As if he needed to tell her his name. She was still turned away from him, but he could hear her give a humorless chuckle as she said, 

“Yes, now that you say that, I can see the resemblance. Then do you know who I am?”

“Before I arrived here? No.” When Horrendous had first found himself in Sanctuary, that had been the truth. Could one borrow a truth from a past experience? He’d just have to hope he sounded honest. “Now that I have met you? Yes. I am aware of what you are to my, my cousin. But that doesn’t change the reason I’m here, and what help you could give me.” 

What Horrendous wasn’t saying, of course, was that this was not just about the Red Death. This was not just about saving Berk. If he wanted just to do that, he would saddle up Toothless, thank Valka for her hospitality, and then depart to take it on himself, perhaps picking up Eret along the way. This was about saving her family, faster than before, with more time for the family to be united. What could have changed, if Valka had returned sooner? Maybe things would be worse, but Horrendous supposed they were about to find out. He knew that he would have rather had his mom back sooner, if he had been given the choice. Especially right now in his life, when he was first discovering a connection with dragons and it felt like it was him against all of Berk. 

“You have… a kind heart, then. That is to be respected, especially coming from that island of Vikings,” Valka said, still not looking at Horrendous. Horrendous had to bite his tongue to stop himself from defending Berk; they could be terrible, yes, but those vikings were his family, his home. “How do you think the Alpha and I can help you to stop the dragon raids?” 

Despite everything, she had yet to say no. At least Horrendous had that going for him. 

“The dragon’s nest, or more specifically, the nest of another Alpha.” When they had first gone up against the Red Death, they had called her a Queen, like a queen bee in a hive. Now, though, Horrendous knew what she really was; the Alpha of the dragons in the area. And she had been for decades, maybe even centuries. “I know where it is. If the Alpha was taken out, then the dragons would no longer pillage Berk trying to feed her. The conflict would be over.” 

“I’m afraid it’s not nearly that simple.” Valka sighed, but she returned to the fire, sitting back down and looking grim. “To free the dragons from an abusive Alpha is not bad, I hope you understand that is not what I am saying. But to claim this would solve matters… that is not such a simple thing. Without the Alpha to command them, the dragons would fight each other for dominance of the now Alphaless nest. Those dragons who are not interested in that would flee and spread out, finding a new nest, and in doing so, they will surely go to Berk seeing refuge. And instead, they would find vikings. The vikings would also become suspicious of the end of the dragon raids; you know about dragon hunters. Berk, I fear, would possibly become that.” 

“I understand your fear,” Horrendous said, but shook his head, “But I think you’re only thinking of the worst-case scenario. Thinking about the best; everybody on Berk would be safe, and the dragons would be freed. Surely that would be worth it.” 

“...” 

Valka stared into the fire. Horrendous stayed quiet, letting her think. When she didn’t say anything for a while, he said,

“Please, Valka. Think about the family you still have left on Berk. Think about your son, Hiccup.” 

“Oh, my precious little Hiccup,” she whispered, and when she looked at Horrendous her eyes were dewy with tears, “You have been to Berk recently. Is he… is he still alive, then?”

“He is,” Horrendous assured her. 

“That’s… oh, I… He was such a small thing, when I left. So small amongst the vikings. I have worried, you know, that he would have been…” 

Horrendous nodded understandingly. He knew that infants and children died too often in the clan, made worse by the dragons raids and the dreary weather. 

“I left my clan to be amongst the dragons. I only visited Berk recently to see how they were fairing, and while they are still alive, seeing the youths… I want to protect them from the danger ahead, and from growing up to be their parents. Won’t you help me?” Horrendous begged. 

“... alright. I will talk to the Alpha, and if he agrees, then we will help you to kill the Alpha. But I have a condition: the vikings of Berk must swear to ever kill dragons again.” 

Horrendous winced. It was an alright enough demand, but to think that the vikings would actually go for it, especially where they currently were in their relationship with dragons…

“Valka, I believe there is good in the vikings, but you need to give them time-” Horrendous started, but she was already shaking her head. 

“That is my demand. If they decline, then I will leave the nest… for now. Not forever, I promise you I will destroy it, but they will feel the consequences of their actions first. They will endure dragons raids knowing that they would’ve stopped it. Vikings only understand violence, and that may be what it takes for them to understand,” Valka said, and Horrendous wasn’t so sure she was right. However, she seemed to believe she was, and he realized that at this time, he could not sway her. 

“... okay,” Horrendous nodded. 

“I will go speak with the Alpha,” Valka said as she rose again, though Horrendous got the distinct impression that she was more to get away from him. 

She climbed onto Cloudjumper and flew to a different part Sanctuary. As soon as she was out of sight, Horrendous groaned and fell backwards, right onto Horrendous. His thunder of dragons crowded around him, making various hums and purrs of concern. Valka didn’t know, of course, the kind time crunch they were on; Horrendous had already sent the message to Stoick to return early. They had to get to Berk while he was there, and before he learned about Hiccup’s real dragon training. Horrendous had thrown the comfortable and predictable timeline to the wind, and now that the future was uncertain, he found himself filled with anxiety. 

“This better work!”

oOo

“So Eret is a dragon rider.” 

“Yes.” 

“And Horrendous was a dragon rider.” 

“Yes.” 

“And the dragon that is right now with the night fury-” 

“Toothless.” 

“Toothless is probably one that belongs to Eret.” 

“Yes.” 

“And if that dragon does belong to Eret, it could be only the first of the coming attacks from Eret and Horrendous’ clan.” 

“I guess?” 

Hiccup sat on the couch in his house as Astrid paced back and forth in front of the fire. 

“So then, what? We’re just going to sit around and wait to be attacked? The village might believe us now about Eret and Horrendous being dragon riders, unless they think it’s just Eret and Eret is crazy, which, from what I heard during dinner in the Meade Hall, is the general consensus, but would that help? It might prepare us somewhat, but we’ve never had to fight dragon riders before.” Astrid made a frustrated noise, twirling her ax in her hand to give herself something to do. 

“I… have an idea of something we could do.” Hiccup at first had not wanted to voice his idea; it sounded crazy in his own head, much less spoke out loud. However, seeing as they weren’t coming up with anything, what choice did he have? 

Sometimes, it felt like the world did have a plan, and things fell into a place like they did for a reason. Right now, that was how Hiccup felt. He had spent his whole life, trying to figure out what his purpose, a twig amongst vikings, was. Only fear stopped him now from claiming that purpose. Fear he shoved aside, as best as he could. 

“Well? What is it?” Astrid gestured for him to keep talking. 

“Well, maybe the best way to combat dragon riders would be… with dragon riders.” 

“You’re going to go up against the coming fleet on your own?” Astrid raised her eyebrows. Hiccup shook his head. He stood up, and she was trembling a bit, but he stole himself. The idea in his head… oh, it was kind of exciting, wasn’t it? 

“No, not alone. If there were more of us who were dragon riders,” 

“Then we could stand a chance.” Astrid nodded slowly, but her brows were scrunched up in thought. “I could try, I guess, but there’s no way anyone else in the village would join you.” 

“Maybe not the adults, and maybe not if it were just me. But if I have you, maybe, we can convince the others in dragon training…” Hiccup let the sentence fall away. He waited with bated breath for Astrid’s answer. Really, this relied on Astrid being on Hiccup’s side. 

“... it won’t be easy. We can’t just tell them. We have to show them that it’s possible, present them all the evidence we’ve found...” she trailed off in thought. 

But that wasn’t a no.

Hiccup grinned.