Well...I think this is one of the last chapters in this story. I'll need to recheck my notes, but I only have one more idea that I really want to write.

Of course, that doesn't mean it'll be completely over. Knowing me, I'll probably keep on adding onto it, lol.

Anywho,

Summary: Heather has to break the news to Hiccup that Dagur is her brother.

Timeline: RTTE

Rating: T for mentions of PTSD.

Viva La On with the story!

"Hiccup?"

"Hmm?" The hybrid responded, giving the go-ahead that he was listening without looking up from his book.

Heather was on the other side of the table, fidgeting despairingly with her collapsed axe, and the words she wanted to ask wouldn't come to her tongue. She'd been...off since she arrived at the Edge, and Hiccup hadn't wanted to pry because, well, she was a bit of a loner. In the nicest way possible, of course. The hybrid was an introvert himself. Even as her friend, he knew that sometimes it was better to let her handle things on her own.

This must not have been one of those times.

Her silence was long, and at one point Hiccup glanced up from his book quizzically, looking at the nomad in earnest.

Her head hung low, facing the table as her bangs fell in front of her eyes, blocking them from his line of vision. Her weapon twisted restlessly in her hands. Hiccup could suddenly smell the disgust and...grief...she was giving off.

The hybrid closed his book hastily, forgetting to bookmark his place because of his sudden concern for his friend, and stood from his chair. The hybrid walked over to Heather's side of the table, tail swishing to balance him out as he did so.

"What's wrong?" He asked, pulling out a separate stool that was next to hers and sitting back down. A gentle hand fell on Heather's armored shoulder, he was careful of the sharp edges from Windshear's scales.

Heather, again, didn't answer. That's not to say she didn't want to, as she definitely did - she set her axe down on the table skittishly and instead clasped her hands together so tightly that they turned white, thrumming them on the table. It took her a moment of repeatedly opening and closing her mouth before she managed to croak out another sentence.

"...What do you remember?"

Hiccup raised an eyebrow, still confused, and set an elbow on the table for support so he could lean forward to try and meet Heather's gaze.

Her eyes were watery, he realized with a jolt in his stomach. It wasn't a surprise, as Heather's voice was horribly strained, but it still caught him off guard. It occurred to him in that moment that he'd never seen her cry before. She was staring, unseeing, at the wooden table as she braced herself for his response.

"What do I remember about what?" Hiccup asked, voice suddenly low as his facial features softened. His ear plates fell to his head in a somber manner, settling into his locks slowly. They were the only ones in the clubhouse, so the volume change wasn't for privacy's sake. The night fury hybrid was a compassionate soul, and a gentle voice was one of his strengths in that department.

Heather licked her lips anxiously and the tears bubbled up again at his voice. Her lip quivered for a fraction of a second and it barely even registered for Hiccup. She clenched her jaw to make it stop and the hand that the hybrid had originally settled on her shoulder fell to her fisted ones, pressing down ever-so-slightly to get them to stop thrumming against the table.

The sudden pressure on her hands made Heather look from the table to their hands, haunted eyes fixated on Hiccup's calloused grasp. They wavered there for a few seconds before they hesitantly trailed up his arm, as though she thought she shouldn't be doing it.

Her eyes landed on his shoulder, with his wings resting slightly behind. And Hiccup suddenly understood.

He did a quick glance over his shoulder at the appendages in a self-confirmation that that was what she was asking about, before spreading them out gently: a gesture to provide a bit more privacy to the both of them by covering the distance between them. It was a silent promise to Heather, letting her know that he trusted her and that he wasn't in pain.

He knew they'd have a more in-depth conversation about it eventually: their reunion was hasty and Heather's only words when she realized that his wings were real were a few comically placed curse words before they had to jump into battle.

Hiccup just didn't know why she was suddenly so...guilty about it. Because, yes, that was guilt she was undeniably feeling.

"When I first came home, I remembered a lot," he began, eyes darting to his wings out of instinct - the black of his scales were a harsh change from the browns of the clubhouse floor, and his peripheral was still registering it as an anomaly. Heather tensed under his touch as part of his wing grazed her back, breath hitching in a barely-audible way.

Hiccup rubbed his thumb over hers in a comforting manner and took careful care to move his wing slightly outwards from her back, distancing it from her. "Or at least, that's what I was told. I don't remember any of it, anymore." the hybrid paused taking special care to emphasize that. He looked out at the clubhouse door, where the ocean peaked from just below the catwalk.

"I actually don't remember much of that year." He admitted, and pretended not to notice the way Heather's head swiveled to look at him, "If I do, it's triggered by my senses." He waved his spare hand vaguely at his nose as he spoke.

The girl's green gaze stared at his profile with a defeated expression, brows knitted together as the corners of her mouth twisted downward. "Does it scare you?"

Hiccup's head swiveled to finally find her gaze, and she broke the eye contact within a few seconds, unclasping a hand to scrub at her eyes.

"Heather, what's this about?" The hybrid asked, the concern in his chest deepening.

"Can you just answer the question?"

It was a timid demand. It didn't have the usual bite the ravenette usually had behind her voice. There was a long silence as Hiccup tried to come up with the words he wanted to say.

"Sometimes." He answered truthfully, and slightly regretted it. Perhaps it would have been better to lie to Heather, and say that what happened on Outcast Island didn't scare him anymore. But his friend was a lie-detector with a braid. And even if she wasn't… it was true, he did get scared, but probably not for the reasons Heather was thinking. These new fears Hiccup hadn't thought about until the gang had moved to the Edge, and by then he'd been going on three years with wings.

"It's not about being half-dragon," He elaborated, hand gesturing away from him, palm open, to make up for the lack of eye contact, "it's more about what my future will look like with it. You know, normal young adult stuff." He hoped his shrug was convincing.

It really wasn't. Young adult stuff? Yes. Normal? The furthest from it. Worries like that were nearly a daily occurrence now. The nightmares and memories of the potion's immediate effects had faded in the hybrid's mind, turning them into once-in-a-blue-moon nightmares triggered by some sensory element or another, and those did scare Hiccup, but with the past-induced fears minimized, it left room for fear of his future.

The realization that "when he becomes chief" was more accurate than "if he becomes chief" was first, followed by an onslaught of other related issues. Thoughts about, when that torch was inevitably passed, how Berk would operate. About how many allies would fluctuate. If he would be a good chief.

One of his biggest fears was about whether or not he could have kids - and if he could, he worried about whether he would have them and risk giving them part of the legacy of what he'd become. Those came nightly and hardly left a nonplussed feeling in his stomach. He knew, deep down, that he was still very young to be thinking about that kind of thing, but the freedom on the Edge had made those questions much more relevant.

Hiccup didn't iterate any of this to Heather, obviously. The hybrid had yet to even tell Toothless about any of those fears, and he knew that the night fury would be the first person he told - if he told any at all.

There was a long silence as Heather processed his words, twisting them and reading between the lines from every angle possible. She was great at that. It was what kept her alive, and what made her a great double-agent.

Eventually she swallowed, and her jaw clenched so tightly that Hiccup could see the muscles bunch.

"Hiccup -" Heather's throat closed with an audible clip, and her hand flew to her mouth as she squeezed her eyes shut. The hybrid remained silent, patient as always. His eyes darted to the table to give her a slight moment of privacy to compose herself.

When the ravenette's hand left her mouth, her breath shook, and she took a deep breath.

The ravenette finally spoke, sounding as though she'd swallowed bile. The words she spoke next probably tasted as such.

"Dagur's my brother."

And Hiccup's world came screeching to a halt.

He froze, because, well, what else could he do, and he was grateful for that reaction for the first time in his life.

Heather hadn't turned her head away from him: that was the thing with her, she needed to gage reactions. It was somewhat of a coping mechanism for her.

The hybrid's heart had begun hammering in his chest at the mere mention of Dagur's name, and suddenly his nose could detect the faintest scent of copper. He knew it was in his head, of course, but that didn't make it any less real. Hiccup blinked forcefully once, twice, before he leaned forward onto the table again. This time he placed both elbows onto the wood, clasping his hands together in the same way Heather's were.

There was a moment when the hybrid wondered about the integrity of the information he was given - a desperate second he tried to take to push his loved one away from his abuser - but like a curse, evidence from Heather's past flashed in his mind.

Most notably was the seal on her horn flask, which he'd been meaning to borrow. Hiccup had only gotten a glimpse at it, but it was most definitely his dad's seal. The hybrid had grown up with Stoick plastering it on everything related to political issues, and the chief had even let him mark a few of the pages himself. A few notebooks from his early childhood had a surplus of pages with nothing but that stamp marked on them.

Part of Hiccup had flashed to the fanatical idea that Heather could be some long-lost sister of his - she was adopted, after all - but there were only a few months between their birthdays, even for someone born early, like him. Four months was too short a time.

Besides, they already had one pair of twins in the group, and the berkian heir's life already had enough major plot twists as it was.

But, nordic chiefs gifted their allies presents upon the birth of new heirs - Hiccup had suspected as such about Heather's birthright, as the horn was the only thing that connected her to her previously-unnamed birthplace.

...But a Berserker? Dagur's sister?

The hybrid wanted to retract his wings - a PTSD-induced wave of fear that made him want them to shrink into his back where they were protected - but he forced himself to keep them spread. His friend needed him regardless of her kinship, and he needed to remind her that she was exactly that to him: someone he trusted.

He needed to do it for himself, too, he realized with a painful jab in his stomach.

"Okay," He said softly, voice cutting out into a whisper halfway through the word because of the lack of force behind it, "So?"

"So?" Heather parroted in a disbelieving manner, grief-fed anger bleeding into her posture, "So, my own flesh and blood is a monster who killed my birth father and - and maimed you!" She cried, hands slamming angrily onto the table at the last word. The force sent Hiccup's book toppling to the floor from where he'd left it on the other side.

The hybrid jumped slightly at the outburst, shoulders hunching just enough to raise his elbows from the table. "Heather, I love my wings," he stated almost immediately, and it was truthful. "I love everything about my dragon half. It gave me a closer relationship with Toothless and a freedom in the sky that I never would have experienced otherwise."

Heather didn't say anything, suddenly finding her wrist guards very interesting. The sharp edges had left some gashes in the table from where she'd slammed her fists down, Hiccup noticed.

"I won't deny that getting them sucked. Gods, did it suck." The hybrid couldn't help repeating that with a punctual shake of the head, mostly speaking to himself, "but it's people like you and Astrid and Toothless who helped make it hurt less - that helped me turn it into a crutch to lean on instead of something that needed crutches."

A tear fell from Heather's eye and to the table, splattering between her arms. Hiccup's heart ached for her and he spread his wing out in full, circling it around her outer shoulder.

"I can't imagine what you're going through, but just because Dagur's your...brother," He faltered at that, head wavering as he processed the way the words felt on his tongue, "doesn't make you guilty of what he did to me. You are not your heritage."

He would have said 'family', but Hiccup's definition of that had changed in the past few years. Family was something you built, not something you were born into. That probably sounded ironic coming from the viking equivalent to royalty, but he believed it full-heartedly.

That was what broke the dam: Heather shuddered, sitting up while her shoulders hunched. Her hands flew to her cheeks and she dragged them together until they formed a tent around her nose, putting pressure on her tear ducts as she tried to stifle her cries.

Hiccup, while a master of comforting words when there were no tears, was not as such when there were. He swallowed and averted his gaze, giving Heather a greater sense of privacy - he knew all too-well the embarrassment of having a breakdown in front of friends. The tip of his wing curled, encircling the girl comfortingly, and she let the movement coax her to his shoulder.

She stayed like that for quite a few minutes, shoulders shaking in silent sobs as her head rested on Hiccup's right shoulder. Said hybrid's own head fell on top of her own, giving silent solidarity as she cried.

Eventually, she spoke. "I've spent years looking for answers to my past, and now that I have them I wish I never knew." She sniffled harshly, a typical display that she was forcing herself to stop crying (but to very little avail).

Hiccup didn't know what to say at that, so he just hummed: a sympathetic sound that mixed with a reptilian rumble in his chest, and he let Heather cry into his shoulder.

You know, I really enjoyed writing this one.

I'll see y'all next time!

"Hey I just wanted to let you know that the light in the back is blinking a lot. I just wanted to make sure in case anyone is prone to seizures. Tough Tiddies. Damn. *Demon screeches*". ~

~Local Dragon Haunt