"Snotlout that is a terrible plan," Hiccup said, giving his cousin a look.
"I have no idea what you're talking about. It's a great plan," Snotlout said, linking his hands behind his head and leaning back against Hookfang's side. The Monstrous Nightmare had calmed enough to let Snotlout out of the safety of his wings, and he was now sitting tucked in the joint between neck and wing with the dragon's head in his lap and a talon wrapped around his ankle. If the two were being a bit more cuddly than usual, no one chose to comment on it.
"No one in their right mind would go along with it," Hiccup argued.
"It's Gobber," Snotlout returned, which Hiccup had to admit was an excellent point.
"Even Gobber has his limits," he argued anyway.
"From the center of the earth blasted forth the hammerhead yak riding the hammerhead whale," Snotlout quoted in his best Gobber impression. Hookfang chortled, and Hiccup sighed because that was another excellent argument.
"For all of Gobber's Gobberness, he's still one of the best dragon killers alive. If we just walk up to him and tell him we've decided to start riding them instead he'll lock us out of dragon training for our own good," Hiccup refuted.
"So don't tell him, show him. Wait until he siccs Meatlug on us like the absolute maniac he is, and then train her," Snotlout said. "Wasn't that your original plan with Hookfang anyways?"
"Wait," Tuffnut said from atop the Zippleback. "Didn't that plan fail horribly and end with the Red Death destroying Berk's entire fleet?"
"Yes Tuffnut, it did, which is exactly why I don't want to try it again!"
"Gobber's not Stoick though," Fishlegs piped up. He winced when he realized what he said. "Not that Stoick's not a good chief or anything, it's just that he can be a little… um,"
"Yes, I know Fishlegs," Hiccup cut in. "But what's to say Gobber will react any differently from my Dad?"
"Um, because we totally outnumber him six to one," Ruff opinioned.
"Eleven to one if you count the dragons," Tuff added.
"We'd be trying to convince him to get along with the dragons, not trying to blow him to Valhalla," Hiccup argued.
"They have a point," Astrid said slowly from her perch on one of the arena chains. Hiccup shot her an incredulous glance. "Think about it. If Stoick hadn't interrupted, you would have been able to train Hookfang just fine, and he wouldn't have gone on a rampage. Then, after Toothless rescued you, you could have gotten the situation back under control if the arena hadn't filled up with angry Vikings out for dragon blood."
"Even if Gobber does start to react like Stoick did, you'll still be able to show him dragons aren't mindless killers. Meatlug's already trained, and she's hardly going to go on a destructive rampage if Gobber yells at her," Fishlegs expanded on Astrid's point. "Even if he decides to come after you with an axe, Snotlout and I can hold him back. He won't be expecting it, not from the two of us, and he won't hurt us either."
"At the very least, we can turn it into a jailbreak," Ruffnut said. "If everything does go belly up despite our foreknowledge,"
"Which our foreknowledge tells us it eventually will," Tuffnut added.
"We'll have our dragons in the woods where we can get to them easily. With our luck Krogan will ride in on an army of Screaming Deaths while the dragons are locked up and unable to help us."
"Is this really the best plan we can come up with, with all our experience and knowledge of the future?" Hiccup asked somewhat desperately.
"Yep!" Astrid chirped with a smirk.
"Uh-huh," Ruffnut confirmed.
"You know it," Tuffnut agreed with a finger snap.
"It's a great plan!" Snotlout defended.
"Most of the time we were just winging it anyway," Fishlegs said sheepishly.
"Nobody has any other ideas?" Hiccup asked pleadingly. "Any at all? The floor is wide open."
"Meeting's breaking up," Astrid called down from the top of the net. She flipped off her perch and landed in a crouch. "Lights just started heading out from the great hall. We need to go."
"So I guess that is our plan," Hiccup muttered in resignation as his friends turned all their attention to their dragons. "Woop de doo."
"Barf, Belch, stay there," Tuffnut ordered, holding his hands out in front of him as the Zippleback peered out of their pen.
"And don't blow anything up without us," Ruffnut continued before they shut the heavy wooden doors.
Astrid gave Stormfly one last scratch behind her frill. "I'll see you tomorrow girl," she said with a smile, gently closing the door as Stormfly settled down for the night.
"Don't worry Princess, Daddy will be back tomorrow. You be good for Hiccup when he trains you again, okay girl? I'll bring you a granite snack," Fishlegs cooed at his dragon. Meatlug rumbled softly in agreement and nuzzled him one more time before lumbering calmly back into her cage.
Snotlout was having significantly more trouble. "You need to stay here Hookfang," the Jorgenson explained. Hookfang growled in disagreement and tightened the grip his talons had around his rider's waist. "This is Berk before we started training dragons Fangster. If they see you, they'll kill you." This argument did not satisfy the Monstrous Nightmare, and he roared angrily and slapped his tail against the ground.
"Hookfang," Hiccup started, walking up to the pair. Hookfang snarled at him and pressed closer to Snotlout possessively. "Hey Hookfang, it's me, you know I'm not going to hurt him." The firedrake deflated and allowed Hiccup to lay a hand on his snout. He put his other hand protectively on his cousin's shoulder. "You know we won't let anything happen to him." The Nightmare stared into his eyes judgingly for a moment before slumping with dejected acceptance.
"Don't worry Hooky, I'll be fine," Snotlout said, scratching the base of the dragon's horns. "I'll see you tomorrow."
Hookfang nuzzled him one last time before slowly walking back into his cage. His eyes remained locked on his rider until the doors shut. "Come on," Hiccup said quietly, gently tugging his cousin away from the Nightmare's pen. Snotlout shot the closed doors a long look before hauling himself up and out of the arena.
Astrid reached down a hand to help pull Hiccup out of the stone pit. He smiled at her gratefully once he found his balance on the platform. It was a quick climb back up the cliffs and into the forest, although not as quick as it would have normally been. Hiccup shared a miserable look with Fishlegs. While the husky Viking was still much stronger than Hiccup at fifteen, he had never been interested in physical improvement until his life had started depending on it.
"Hey bud," Hiccup greeted when he reached the top. Toothless gave a happy warble and nuzzled his rider affectionately. Hiccup threw his arms around the scaly neck in a quick hug. "Listen Toothless, I need you to go wait in the cove." Toothless snorted in disagreement. "I know you don't like it, but we need to stay undercover, at least for tonight. That means no dragons in the village." The Night Fury roared unhappily but nodded in agreement. "Thanks bud, I'll see you tomorrow alright?" Toothless licked his face before sulking off deeper into the woods.
The teens circled the village to a less suspicious place to enter. They slipped towards their houses, unnoticed in the hustle and bustle of exhausted Vikings preparing for a morning voyage.
"Here's our house," Tuffnut whispered.
"See you guys at dragon training tomorrow," Ruffnut finished, giving Snotlout a relatively gentle punch in the shoulder while her brother yanked him into a quick hug. Then they both slipped away to sneak home.
"Are you sure you'll be alright?" Hiccup asked as the Jorgenson house came into sight. Astrid and Fishlegs also looked worried, and all three of them were walking just a little too close. Snotlout gave them an exasperated look.
"I am going to my house to sleep," he said slowly and sarcastically. "I think I'll be fine."
"If you're sure," Astrid said. Fishlegs picked him up in a rib cracking hug before they let him go to climb up the side of the house. They all watched until he disappeared through his upstairs window.
"I'd better go," Fishlegs said. "My mom will be worried if I'm not home when she gets back."
"See you Fishlegs," Hiccup called as his friend disappeared around the corner. He took Astrid's hand as they slipped through the shadows. They stopped behind her house.
"Hiccup," she said quietly, worry filling her voice. "Your dad..." She trailed off.
"Yeah," he replied, voice heavy with emotion. It had been four years since he had seen his father. In that time, he had mourned, had shouted his grief to the sky and cried quietly by the night's fire. He had felt his loss as he shouldered the burden of chief and grieved his absence as his father even more. But he had also learned acceptance, and the wounds of loss had faded to scars and painful thoughts to bittersweet memories. Now, having seen Stoick alive once again, it felt as if those scars had been torn open. He wanted nothing more than to run into his father's arms as though he were truly the young teen he appeared to be.
Unfortunately, unlike Toothless this Stoick would not be the same man he remembered. This was not the father who encouraged his son's ideas as he sought to change the world, nor was he the chief who defended his tribe and their dragons until the very end. He now knew that his father had always loved him, even back when he had been a rather destructive disappointment. However, that did not change the fact that he had been a disappointment and a disgrace to all things Viking, and it had nearly taken his death for his father to stop seeing him as such.
"I'll be fine," he said softly. "It'll be hard seeing him again, especially now, but I'll manage. He's just going to put me in dragon training and go off on his search. There won't be any confrontations until he gets back. Right now…" he sighed, "it'll just be good to see him alive, even if he doesn't know me."
Astrid nodded and pulled him into a tight hug. "I love you," she said like a promise.
"I love you too," he replied, voice rough. He pulled back enough to press his lips to hers. For a long minute they stood there, locked in a gentle kiss, saying everything the other needed to know without a word. He pulled back and stared into her eyes.
She smiled at him. "I'll see you in the morning," she said, taking a half step back.
"Mi'lady," he responded, grabbing her hand and pressing a kiss to her knuckles before stepping away. She gracefully climbed the side of her house and rolled through her bedroom window. Hiccup took a deep breath and marched home to face his father.
This time he didn't try to sneak his way into his bedroom. He walked up to his the fire and his father with all the confidence he could muster. "Dad," he said quietly.
"Son," Stoick responded, rising to his feet. "I've got something to tell you." Hearing his voice again after all these years hurt, but in a good way. Hiccup studied his father as he towered over him expectantly. He was so familiar it ached, from his eyes, same color as Hiccup's own, to his stance, proud and chiefly. He blinked in surprise when he noticed that there wasn't yet any white in his beard.
Stoick shifted slightly, put off by his son's silence. Usually the ever curious and hyper Hiccup would have been babbling questions about just what he had to tell him. "You get your wish," the larger Viking finally continued. "Dragon training. You start in the morning." Hiccup nodded solemnly. "You'll need this," Stoick added, handing Hiccup his axe.
"Dad," Hiccup said quietly, studying the weapon in his hands. There was a permanent bloodstain on the blade of the axe head. "I'm never going to be a dragon killer."
"Sure you will," Stoick refuted.
"I really doubt it," Hiccup argued.
"Once you kill your first dragon it'll all make sense, you'll see. Then you'll really be one of us," Stoick responded earnestly.
Hiccup smiled in bitter amusement. "Well, maybe I'll kill one," he offered, thoughts drifting to the Red Death. "But I'll never be the dragon slayer you want me to be."
"Just wait until you make your first kill. We can talk again then," Stoick said knowingly, expecting the first taste of dragon blood to turn his son into a proper Viking, as it had been for generations.
"I'll hold you to that," Hiccup answered, still wearing his bitter half smile. Thoughts of his father after the Red Death were warring with the memories of his short disownment when Toothless was revealed. It was all he could do not to cry.
Stoick nodded decisively. He was glad his son was going to at least try to act more like a proper Viking. He was a bit weirded out by his radical shift in attitude, but refused to show it, and forcefully brushed it off as the impact of the night's importance.
"Train hard," he advised. "I'll be back. Probably." With that oh so very reassuring sediment, Stoick marched out the door to begin preparing for his dragon hunt.
"And I'll be here. Maybe," Hiccup said, in an echo of a past life. He let out a shaky breath and wiped the tears out of his eyes before making his slow way up the stairs to his room. He grabbed one of the many notebooks scattered around his childhood room and flipped to a blank page. He nearly finished a complete tailfin schematic before his emotions had settled enough to try to go to sleep. He made one last note in the margins to collect some of Toothless' shed scales before closing the notebook and blowing out the candle.
oOoOoOo
Hiccup woke up in a panic, a sob caught in his throat. He thrashed around, desperately reaching out for something that wasn't there. His hand hit the candle and he scrambled to light it. He stared down at his shaking hands in the flickering light of the small flame. No blood.
His breathing slowed down as he stared down at his hands. Long thin fingers. Freckles. Boney wrists. Not a speck of Snotlout's blood in sight.
He flopped back down as it all came back to him. They had time traveled. Snotlout was alive, and everyone was safe in their own houses.
But what if they weren't? What if the time travel was the dream? He cast his eyes around the room. It was definitely his childhood bedroom. Most of those messy drawings of dragon killing machines had long been destroyed. That shirt hadn't fit in years. Toothless' bed was missing. He looked down at his fifteen-year-old self. He was definitely fifteen. He was short and scrawny, missing several scars and his wedding band, and most noticeably in possession of two feet.
The heavy feeling of fear and horror refused to go away. Hiccup shot a mournful look at the empty other half of the bed. He dearly wished his wife were here. Astrid would tell him he was being ridiculous.
He lay there for another minute before sighing in resignation and reaching for his shoes. He quickly got dressed and scrambled down the stairs, thankful that the village was all but deserted as the majority of the Vikings gathered at the docks.
He still moved as stealthily as possible as he approached his cousin's house. Snotlout would tease him so much if he woke him up. He was just going to peek in, assure himself he wasn't dead, and then go back to bed. He owed it to Hookfang after all, didn't he promise the dragon his rider would be alright?
Wholeheartedly ignoring the fact that he was just making excuses for his own paranoia, Hiccup grabbed the window ledge and hauled himself up high enough to peek into his cousin's bedroom. He barely managed to catch himself from falling right back down and off the roof when he saw that the room was empty.
He scrambled down with as much coordination as he could muster through his panic. He was about to go wake up the rest of the riders when he noticed light coming from Fishlegs' window next door. He climbed awkwardly up yet another roof and felt his panic fade to relief.
"H'cup," Fishlegs slurred sleepily at him. Both he and Snotlout were sitting on the floor leaning back against Fishlegs' bed. Snotlout looked up from his mug of tea as Hiccup thumped painfully onto the floor.
"You okay?" Hiccup asked his cousin as he made his way over. He clasped the shoulder not being used as a pillow and sat down next to him.
"I'm fine," Snotlout said, tightening his grip on his mug. Hiccup gave him a look. "It's stupid," he tried to insist. "It's just, with the dying," he trailed off.
"Not dying 'gain," the mostly asleep Ingerman muttered. He patted Snotlout's knee uncoordinatedly. "Not gunna let you."
"He's right," Hiccup said. His voice was filled with absolute surety, backed up by the stubborn, unbending strength of a Viking chief. "It doesn't matter what happens, I don't care how much we have to change the timeline, we are not going to let that happen again."
"I know you won't," he said quietly. "Not if you can stop it anyways. It's just," he sighed. He reached over Fishlegs to put the mug on the bedside table, then looked down as he twisted his hands in his lap anxiously. "When I died, everything went dark, and I was trying," he let out a little gasp as he tried not to cry. "I was trying to hold on to you guys, but I could feel myself slipping away. And when I woke up, it was dark, and I was alone, and…"
Hiccup threw his arms around him and squeezed as hard as he could. Fishlegs did the same on his other side, and Snotlout let out a squeak as his ribs were crushed. "We're here. We're right here," Hiccup whispered, on the verge of tears himself.
Fishlegs nodded fervently. "Always," he added.
"Yeah," Snotlout said tightly. He took a couple of deep breaths and his tense muscles relaxed. "Yeah," he said again sounding more like his old self. He tried to wiggle back to where he had been sitting against the bed, then squirmed more insistently when he found he couldn't move. "Uh, guys?"
They both blushed and let him go. Fishlegs ran a hand awkwardly through his hair, and Hiccup cleared his throat. All three of them did their best to pretend their manliness was still completely intact.
"Okay, that's enough feelings for one day," Snotlout stated with a clap of his hands. Fishlegs, sensing that the important parts of the conversation were over, put his head back on Snotlout's shoulder and went back to sleep. "So," he continued, shooting Hiccup a mischievous look. "You and Astrid. Now that you're both fifteen again, how is it going to work? What with the you know…" he waggled his eyebrows suggestively while making lewd hand gestures.
"Snotlout!" Hiccup hissed in horrified mortification while elbowing his cousin in the side. Snotlout sniggered smugly as he shifted into a more comfortable position to go to sleep. Hiccup huffed and looked out the window as Snotlout's snickers faded and he joined Fishlegs in slumber.
He watched the stars for a while as his friends slept. The candle had burned low and he was about to fall asleep as well when the stars were blocked by a familiar form. "Astrid," he whispered with a soft smile as she slipped gracefully through the window. His smile fell when he saw her red rimmed eyes.
"Hiccup," she whispered back, coming over to sit next to him. She wrapped her arms around him in a tight hug and he hugged her back just as tightly for a minute before she pulled away.
"Astrid what's wrong?" he asked as she leaned over to gently grab Snotlout's wrist. She let out a shaky sigh when her fingers found his pulse and she confirmed that he was not a corpse. She carefully put his hand back on his lap before turning back to Hiccup, and he was shocked to see tears running down her face.
"It's my fault," she sobbed. "It's my fault he got killed."
"What, no," Hiccup muttered, holding her tightly while she cried into his chest. "no, no, no, it wasn't your fault. How could it have been your fault?"
"I left his wing," she explained, voice thick with her tears. "I left his wing and he and Hookfang were all alone in the middle of all of them."
"Astrid, you were shot," he whispered gently, rubbing her back.
"Not bad enough that I couldn't have covered their retreat," she argued. "I should have stayed."
"And if you had maybe everyone would have gotten out of there alive, or maybe you would have died instead, or maybe neither of you would have made it. We can't know Astrid. It was a battle. It was dangerous, and chaotic, and we were ridiculously outnumbered. We can't know," he whispered, looking into her eyes, begging her to listen.
She nodded, but her gaze slipped back over to their sleeping friend. "Still.." she whispered, uncertainty in her voice.
"Then talk to him," Hiccup said softly. "I doubt he'll blame you. Just wait until tomorrow's craziness is over and talk to him."
"Yeah, I'll do that," she said softly. Her sobs had faded into the occasional hiccup, and she wiped the tears off her cheeks.
"And Astrid," Hiccup whispered, putting his hand on her cheek. "I love you."
"I love you too," she whispered back, and she kissed him. It was chaste and gentle, more about reassurance than passion. When they pulled apart she seemed more centered than before, and she smiled at him as she shifted to lay with her head in his lap. She put an arm around his waist and he rested a hand on her head and ran his fingers through her hair. She hummed in contentment as she buried her face in his stomach and drifted off to sleep.
Hiccup felt himself relax. He yawned, and felt his eyelids grow heavy as he listened to the gentle breathing of his wife and his friends. Just as he was about to fall asleep he heard noise outside the window.
He looked up to see Ruff and Tuff somehow manage to tumble through the window while wrestling without making any noise or spilling the bowl Ruffnut was carrying. "Hey," Hiccup greeted with a yawn. "Did you guys have nightmares too?"
"No, definitely not," Tuffnut said overly defensively.
"We're just here to prank Snotlout," Ruffnut continued, holding up the bowl which he could now see contained fireplace ash. "He thought he could hide from us in here, but no one can escape the dedicates of Loki that easily."
"We decided that he must be missing his ridiculous mustache, so we're going to draw him another one," Tuffnut explained grandly. Hiccup thought that that seemed like a very mild prank for the twins.
They both kneeled down in front of Snotlout and set to work. Hiccup thought that there was significantly more touching involved than was strictly necessary to draw a mustache.
"Well, if everybody else is sleeping here I guess we should too, purely for emotional support of course," Tuff said.
"Plus, it's so much effort to walk all the way back to our house," Ruff whined.
"Very true my sister Nut," Tuff agreed.
Hiccup smiled to himself as the twins settled down and he finally drifted off into a dreamless sleep.