Archive of Our Own ^beta

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.