A/N: review time :D Y'all excited for this chapter? I like to call it 'horrendous gets a friend :)'
JustADerangedFanGirl: That'd be rad! Unfortunately, the reunion between a dragon and his boy is still a bit farther away. And thank you so much! I kinda hope to be an author eventually.
NightshadeLG: YOU FELL FOR IT HOOK LINE AND SINKER. Hopefully i can managed to keep you on the line :D
: I hope you're surprised :) I will say, the last chapter was a bit of a hint ;
"Okay. Stay here." Horrendous told Serrated, scratching the hobblegrunt's face. He 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, 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 elated he was 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 bones.
The sun had set by the time they arrived, thankfully, and Horrendous carefully maneuvered the woods in the direction of the village, gingerly holding his arm. Any adrenaline that may've dampened the pain had faded during the fly 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 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 a reason Gobber would've been at the Haddock house.
"Ah, Horrendous, it was getting so late I thought 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?" Finding something with Astrid? Definitely not something that had happened to him.
"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 of the room only got weirder.
Astrid was regarding him like he was about to attack. Hiccup didn't seem to know which man to look like.
"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.
"That, uh, yes. 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 incase he tries to do something'. And she was giving it about him and Eret. "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 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's arm was significantly better the next day, and he stopped by Gothi's to get it set and correctly bandaged. His bruises were way more sore, though, 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 and just sharpening weapons.
Spine seemed in the mood to rest up too, spending most of the time sleeping in Horrendous's 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 viking 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 see. Mostly, it was just entertaining to hear the screaming.
He also managed to slip into the woods and check on the dragons, 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. 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 a smile.
"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 weird 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 timeline."
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.
A/N: Because Hiccup probably doesn't have modern exposure to media, I really wanted the idea of alternate timelines and such to not even grace his mind until Fishlegs, the loveable nerd he is, mentions it.
Whether Hiccup chooses whether or not he wants to risk his action not impacting his world is yet to be seen.
Originally the person to show up on the shore was going to be future Fishlegs, but I like Eret more. I have fun plans with him :)