Chapter Text
Hiccup stands over the downed dragon — the Night Fury, the dragon no one could even spot and he’s shot it, all he needs to do is finish it off — knife raised in his white-knuckled grip and eyes squeezed shut. He chances a look back down, meets its eyes and it- it…
It’s terrified. There’s fear in those eyes, even as it goes limp like it’s accepting this fate. He doesn’t realize he’s frozen until it closes them, freeing him from whatever spell he was under, and… he doesn’t bring the knife down into its heart. He doesn’t really think before he kneels and starts cutting the ropes, though he thinks a lot as he does it, mostly along the lines of “What the hell am I doing?”
When most of the ropes are cut and the Night Fury’s legs and wings are free, it leaps up, pinning him to the rocks, and his heart races so quick he might die just from the fright. Is this how it felt? Helpless and scared and unable to fight back? Hiccup is going to die here. He lets his eyes fall closed, some hysterical, ironic amusement bubbling up — look at you, you’ve reversed the roles.
The dragon roars, so close he can feel hot breath on his face, and then it’s gone. He opens his eyes to see it leap into the air, wings spreading, and then lose its balance a moment later, crashing into a rock but not falling back to earth quite yet. It disappears, leaving him in the middle of the woods with a rabbit-quick pulse, ringing ears, and a dizzy feeling like the world just fell out from under him. Or maybe that was just the first step to passing out, because when he next opens his eyes, the sun is beginning to set.
And then it gets worse, somehow. When he tries to tell his dad he can’t fight dragons, that he can’t kill them, he’s given what he no longer wants: dragon training, a heavy axe, and the even-heavier weight of his father’s expectations.
———
Hiccup likes Gobber well enough; the man is a friend of his dad’s, and often helped to care for him since his mother’s death. As the blacksmith and Hiccup’s mentor at the forge, he’s patient with the boy’s short attention span, his trouble remembering more than one or two orders at a time, his physical weakness that limits what tasks he can help with and how quickly.
However, as the one in charge of dragon training, Hiccup likes him significantly less. “Learning on the job” is awful, made worse by the fact that everything sounds muffled since the Night Fury roared at him. At least he wasn’t the only one struggling; even if he did have more trouble than the other teens, it was clear that Gobber’s teaching method was unpopular.
His mind keeps going back to furnace-heat building in the back of a huge toothed maw, and even though he’s said them before, Gobber’s words are sticking in his mind as he makes his way out to the forest where he found — where he freed — the dragon the day before. “A dragon always goes for the kill.” Hiccup is a living contradiction to this, so he pauses at the clearing where the remains of the bola still sit and sets out in the direction he’d seen the Night Fury flee. Claw marks in the earth and trees and the occasional shiny black scale lead him deeper into the woods until he finds a cove surrounded by steep cliffs, several of which are scored with huge claws. He doesn’t spot the dragon itself until it surges up the cliff directly beside the alcove he’s in, trying desperately to claw its way up the rock. When that fails, it circles back around, wings spread to take it back to the ground, but it shakes as it does so.
He starts sketching while it makes a few more attempts at climbing out — it starts with flying, but it always destabilizes when it tries to turn, he notes — but it’s not until it lands, blasting empty ground (in frustration?), that he notices its tail. The left fin is completely gone, probably throwing off its balance. Hiccup thinks about the dark-stained dirt by the destroyed bola, and starts to feel a bit like he might be sick. I did that, he realizes, and backs away slightly, knocking a rock over the edge in the process.
The Night Fury’s head immediately snaps toward the sound, then toward the source of the rock, and he knows the moment it spots him because even from this distance, Hiccup can feel the weight of those eyes. But it doesn’t roar or spit one of those deadly flames at him, or even growl. It just stares, and Hiccup stares back. After a moment, it occurs to him how stupid this is, and he backs away, leaving the cove behind. On his way home, he pays closer attention to any trace of the dragon; he can’t do anything about the claw marks, deep scores in rock and bark, but he can at least keep anyone from learning that it’s the Night Fury, or that it’s wounded.
He picks up scales like pitch, blacker than anything he’s seen, and no matter how he tilts them they don’t reflect any light. A few of them are scratched, and Hiccup notes that the scratched parts do reflect. Now that he’s looking, he can spot dark spots where blood has dried on the ground, and kicks loose dirt over the spots whenever he sees one. The first patch he finds is the worst — a handful of small scales scattered around a large splash of blood, a scorch mark beside it, and a patch of fresh-dug ground that he’s pretty sure has the torn remains of the missing fin. (He is sick, then.) After that, it’s mostly smaller spots, and when he reaches the bola, he digs up the ground as much as he can and buries that, too. (He finds black-scaled skin wrapped around one of the weight-stones, and gets sick all over again.) He doesn’t bury the scales he’s collected.
Once he’s pretty sure he’s got everything, he heads back to Berk. He tucks the scales into a little pouch and hides it in his room, then heads to the Mead Hall for dinner. It starts raining practically the minute he steps out of his house, to his annoyance, and by the time he reaches the hall, he’s soaked through. He doesn’t pay much attention to Gobber talking with the other teens while he gets some food and sits down to eat.
“And what did Hiccup do wrong?” Gobber asks, his name drawing his attention immediately. He doesn’t pay much attention to their responses; he already knows they don’t like him. Astrid’s answer must be right, because the man praises her. “You need to live and breathe this stuff. This is the Dragon Manual,” he says, dropping the book onto the table with a soft thump, and Hiccup perks up immediately. “Everything we know about every dragon we know of.” Thunder rumbles outside, the sound of a storm threatening to last much longer. “No attacks tonight. Study up,” Gobber orders, then leaves. The twins immediately make a fuss about having to read, others joining in on the argument, but Hiccup isn’t listening. This is his best chance to learn about Night Furies.
He comes back to read in the middle of the night, when he’s least likely to be seen and harrassed by the others. It’s pretty much exactly how he expects it to be: filled with drawings and descriptions of horrifying creatures, what they do to their victims, and their approximate strengths and weaknesses. Most of them are labelled “kill on sight”, though some smaller ones like the terrible terror have instructions on how to chase them off instead. The page labelled Night Fury is almost completely blank, not even an illustration, and what it does say is chilling:
The unholy offspring of lightning and death itself.
Never engage this dragon. Your only chance: hide and pray it does not find you.
———
“Hey, I noticed the book has nothing on Night Furies,” Hiccup brings up the next day at training. “Is there anything that’s not in there? Like, is it outdated?”
“Nope!” Gobber tells him. “Nobody’s ever met one and lived to tell the tale. Now get your head in the game; in case you’ve forgotten, there’s a Deadly Nadder in this maze with you.”
He doesn’t ask again, but it distracts him. He’s too busy thinking of scales that devour all light, of bright eyes and broad wings and a missing tail fin, and it combines with his already-poor athletic ability to make him a hazard to himself and others. If looks could kill, the one Astrid sends him while Gobber chases the Nadder back into its cage would do Hiccup in quicker than any of the dragons behind the arena’s gates.
After a quick lunch, he grabs a shield and a raw fish and sneaks out of the village, heading for the cove. It’s a bit slower, since he cleaned up most of the evidence yesterday, but he barely even gets lost. It actually ends up benefitting him; instead of finding yesterday’s overlook and having to search for a way down, he finds a crack in the rocks just barely large enough for him to fit through. He doesn’t think about the shield on his back until he gets caught; he manages to wiggle out of the straps without hurting himself, but the shield is firmly wedged, and won’t come out either way he tries to push or pull it. He huffs and just leaves it there for the time being, moving with a bit more caution as he brings the fish further into the cove.
The dragon spots him first, perched up on a rock, and Hiccup worries it’ll pounce on him, but it carefully hops down before moving towards him. The way it moves is strange, keeping its chest low to the ground and its back arched, wings flared out. It looks bigger like this — maybe that’s the point. When he offers the fish, it blinks at him, pupils widening, and creeps a bit closer before drawing back and bristling with a growl, eyes immediately back to slits.
Oh. The knife, right. It growls again when he reaches for it, and he pulls the hand back, but slowly reaches for it again, drawing it with the least combat-ready hold he can think of, before dropping it. The dragon watches, but keeps its eyes trained on the blade, still ready to strike at any time. He scoops up the blade with one foot, considers his options for a moment, and tosses it into the pond. Best not to make the giant fire-breathing reptile feel threatened, especially if it’s already stressed from being stuck here.
As soon as the knife falls with a splash, the Night Fury relaxes, sitting up to watch him, and he offers the fish again. It creeps closer, initially still trying to make itself look bigger but giving that up in favor of stretching for the fish, trying to reach it without taking any more steps towards him. When it opens its mouth, he sees indents where teeth should be, but no actual teeth. “Huh. Could have sworn you had-“ Teeth appear immediately, letting it snap the fish up and dart back, tearing it in half before swallowing it. Then it comes towards him again, sniffing at his vest and making a curious warbling sound. He backs up as it approaches. “No no, hang on, I- I don’t have any more.” It pauses at that, giving him one last sniff before leaning back. Then, it makes a weird noise, throat moving, and before he can figure out what its doing, it spits up half the fish onto his lap before rearing up and sitting back on its haunches, watching expectantly.
It takes a few moments for him to realize that it wants him to eat it, and a few more to steel himself enough to take a bite of the raw fish, finding an angle that doesnt involve biting scales. When he finally swallows, the dragon purrs. Hiccup tries reaching out, but it immediately narrows its eyes and bares its teeth, then turns away, taking off for a quick, unsteady flight across the pond. It breathes fire to scorch the ground, circling as he walks around the water to approach again, and doesn’t seem to notice him as it curls up. Something else draws its attention, though, and when it turns to look, it spots him, too. Hiccup offers a nervous little wave, sitting cross-legged a bit away from it, and it just huffs, curling up a bit differently and covering its face with its remaining tail fin.
Like this, Hiccup can look at the tail up-close; the spot where the missing fin should be is almost uniformly-smooth, a dark blueish-grey instead of black and scaled, and oddly shiny; it reminds him of other scars he’s seen. The scales around the scar are scratched, some displaced, the area looking almost chewed-on. That… makes sense, actually. Reaching for it is a bad idea, but the dragon notices before he can even touch it anyway, flicking its tail out of his reach before getting up and climbing a tree to hang from. He doesn’t feel like going home quite yet, so he gets out his sketchbook and starts drawing the hanging dragon, scribbling down messy notes of everything he’s learned so far:
Its scales are dull, blacker than pitch or coals, and reflect no light at all, which helps them to blend into the darkness even when the sky is lit up with fire.
Retractable teeth — purpose currently unknown.
One pair of major wings, one minor pair at base of tail, fins at end of tail for stability — no claws on wing joints
The dragon wakes up after he’s finished and moved to drawing in the dirt with a stick. It watches him draw for a moment, close enough that he can feel hot breath on his shoulders, and he forces himself not to look at it, even when it wanders away. He does turn when he hears a crack, though, and spots the Night Fury returning to him with a small tree held in its mouth. Then it starts to drag the end of the tree through the dirt, moving all around him — imitating him? From his position at the center (and his lesser height, especially when the dragon stands up on its hind legs to examine its work), he can’t see what it’s been drawing — although, considering it glances back at him several times as it works, he can guess.
When it’s finished, it sits back with a happy-sounding warble, and he tries to follow it, hoping he’ll be able to see whatever it is from the dragon’s position. It growls at him before he takes three steps, but immediately mellows when he takes a step back, and glancing down reveals he stepped on a line. This time, he watches its reaction carefully as he intentionally puts his foot in the same place, and sure enough, the dragon growls if he steps on the lines, relaxes when he lifts his foot back up, and even purrs a bit when he carefully steps past the line.
He focuses on navigating the drawing, aiming for the dragon’s approximate location, but it’s tricky when sometimes the lines are too concentrated for a quick step. His busy mind quiets as he pays attention to his footing and his balance, and it takes him by surprise when he reaches the edge, nearly bumping into the Night Fury. It’s barely a few steps from him, close enough that he could reach out and touch it, and it doesn’t even occur to him that he should be afraid. It growls when he starts to reach out, so he pauses. “That’s a lot of trust, huh… guess I should offer some too,” he mumbles. Then he closes his eyes, turns his head away, holds out his open palm, and waits.
The feeling of warm scales under his palm is almost drowned out by the image that sparks in his mind — completely abstract, splashes of soft greys and blues and laced with little swirls of green like new spring leaves — and then vanishes entirely as the dragon pulls away. He turns back to face it, and they stare at each other for a moment before its pupils narrow again and it walks away. The sun has set enough that the cove is getting dark, so he leaves to make his way back through the forest towards home, but there’s a slight buzzing in his chest the whole way. Maybe it’s just nerves.
Gobber calls him up into one of the watchtowers to sit with him and his classmates; Hiccup sits and roasts a fish while the man tells the story of how he lost his arm and leg. Snoutlout swears he’ll avenge him by tearing the legs off of every dragon he fights, and Hiccup is glad he’s not eating yet.
“It’s the wings and the tails you really want,” Gobber corrects, tearing one off the whole bird he’s been roasting for emphasis, and Hiccup barely keeps himself from flinching. “If it can’t fly, it can’t get away. A downed dragon is a dead dragon.”
A missing fin, unbalanced flying and desperate snarling as it scrabbles at the rocky cliffs trapping it in-
“Hiccup looks like he’s gonna throw up,” someone points out, but he‘s too far away to tell who.
“No, I’m- I’m fine, really, just… just not feeling well, is all. A bit of rest and I should be fine. I’ll see you guys tomorrow at training,” he mumbles, taking his uneaten fish and climbing back down, but instead of going home, he heads for the forge, climbing up to the little loft Gobber let him turn into a workspace. He doesn’t have the fin’s exact measurements, but he got a very close look at it, and he’s usually pretty good at recreating things from memory; the sketch takes up multiple pages, and he scrutinizes it for a few minutes before deeming it close enough and beginning the actual invention plans.
Hiccup has no way to estimate the weight, so he sets out to make the fin as light as possible without compromising durability, which should help keep it from throwing off the dragon’s flight too much. He makes the fin from durable leather and shapes the metal components from an old sword that had to be melted down anyway.
It takes most of the night; luckily, it isn’t the first time he’s stayed far too late working on something, and Gobber helped him bring a spare mattress up so he wouldn’t have to cross the village during a storm. He has just enough presence of mind to tuck the completed fin under the mattress before passing out.
———
He wakes up just before dawn and tucks the mechanical fin under his arm as he sneaks out to the storehouse and grabs a basket of freshly-caught fish. He thanks whatever gods are looking out for him that nobody sees him grab the basket or leave town, but checks several times to be sure he’s not being followed before making his way to the crack in the cliffs. Once he finally knocks the shield free, the basket barely fits, though only after a bit of careful wiggling — not something he’ll be able to do in a rush, he’s sure.
“Oh, Toothless!” he calls cheerfully. “I’ve brought breakfast!” The Night Fury — Toothless, as he’s affectionately been thinking of him while he worked — sits up from where he’s curled up on the ground and watches Hiccup approach with the wide pupils he’s begun to interpret as ‘relaxed’. When he dumps out the fish and steps back, the dragon walks right up and starts sniffing at the pile, only to suddenly rear back, pupils slitted as he hisses. “What’s wrong?” Hiccup asks, following his line of sight and spotting a glimpse of black and yellow. He digs into the fish, pulling the eel out and holding it up, and Toothless snarls again, so he tosses it aside. “It’s alright,” he soothes. “I don’t really like eel much, either.”
Toothless pokes through the rest of the pile more carefully, and Hiccup waits until the dragon has concluded there are no more eels and begun to eat before moving around to his back. “Just enjoy your fish,” he mumbles. “I’ll be back here, minding my own business.”
It takes three tries to even touch the tail, and the dragon immediately flicks it to the side again. After several more attempts to grab it, Hiccup climbs on top of it to hold it still — surprisingly, this doesn’t annoy Toothless enough to even look at him, but the colors are back, muted blues in the back of his mind bubbling up in what feels like amusement. Does the Night Fury think he’s playing? — and opens the mechanical fin, dragging it up against the tail and wrapping the first strap around it just past the remaining fin. The amusement changes to something more like curiosity as he pulls the first strap tight and buckles it into place, then leans forward to secure the next one, this time further down the tail just before the fin. He’s just starting to fasten the second buckle when surprise realization flares in the back of his mind, a sharp spear of the brightest blue he’s ever seen that throws off his focus, and he barely has time to finish before Toothless launches himself into the air.
Hiccup wraps his arms and legs around the tail on instinct, and watches the leather fin flutter uselessly in the wind instead of helping. Glancing behind him notifies him that the dragon is falling towards one of the cliffs, and he panics, reaching out and yanking the false fin into a position that matches the real one just in time for Toothless to fly directly up the vertical rock face. The dragon immediately makes a sharp turn back to circle the clearing, though, and while Hiccup manages to assist with the turn, it throws him off-balance, and he slips off, falling into the water below them. He swims up, breaking the surface to see Toothless get his legs underneath him just in time for a rough landing.
As soon as he hauls himself out of the water and onto his feet, he’s knocked over onto the dirt, blue-green-silver excitement popping like sparks in his mind when the dragon collides with him, and he can’t help the laughter that spills out of him. It works! He’ll need to find a better way to control it, of course, and his mind is already racing with new possible ideas on how to do that, but the leather-and-metal fin catches the wind like it’s meant to, it’s the right size, and he’s caught up in delight that he’s pretty sure isn’t all his.
“You can fly again,” he cheers, and Toothless trills, shifting so he can grab the back of Hiccup’s vest and pull him upright before shoving his face against the boy. “Yeah, I’m excited too, but I’ve got to get back before people realize I’m missing. I’ll be back this afternoon and we can try again!”
On his way out of the clearing, he spots the eel he’d thrown aside and pauses. Do all dragons react like that to eels?
———
Hiccup scans the smoke for any sign of the dragon, holding his water bucket against his chest. Fishlegs is muttering facts about Zipplebacks behind him and he hisses at the other boy to shut up. Gobber said this was meant to be an exercise in teamwork, but Hiccup disagrees. Unless it’s an exercise in not strangling your partner — he’s probably not actually strong enough to do that, but if Fishlegs keeps listing all the ways this dragon can horribly kill them, he may have to find a way. He doesn’t even actually know the useful information of how to tell which head they need to splash.
He can hear the others arguing, and then it switches to panicked shouting as, presumably, the dragon finds them. Tuffnut runs past them, shouting about how hurt he is, but considering he’s running and yelling, he can’t be that hurt.
“Chances of survival are dwindling into single digits now,” Fishlegs mumbles, and Hiccup elbows him. When a head appears out of the smoke, darting towards them, the larger boy stumbles back, trying to dodge, then remembers he has a bucket and splashes it… only for it to open its mouth and let gas spill out. “Oh. Wrong head.” When the dragon breathes a jet of it into his face, he shrieks.
“Fishlegs!” Gobber shouts, and Hiccup can hear the man grabbing an extra weapon, probably to come get them; he won’t let them be in lethal danger. Before he can make it to them, though, the second head emerges from the smoke, making an odd little scrape-click sound as it snaps its jaws and tosses off sparks — the two heads’ teeth are different, Hiccup notes, the igniting head having larger teeth in the front that grind against the scales as it snaps. Like flint and steel. Toothless doesn’t do that, though; does that mean he could spit flame even when wet? He probably should be more afraid, but he’s mostly curious.
He refocuses and tries to splash it, realizing too late that he misjudged the distance and his own strength, and the water falls to the ground. Instead of lighting the gas, the Zippleback flares its wings and roars, leaning in close- and then it recoils, and Hiccup has to stop himself from grinning. Guess it’s a dragon thing in general.
He’d rather not share his trick, though — or more accurately, have to explain how he learned it — so he tries to put on a bit of a show. “Back! Back! Now, uh, don’t you make me tell you again! That’s right, into your cage! Now think about what you’ve done.” When he’s sure the others won’t see, he pulls his vest aside a bit to show the dragon the eel he’s hidden there, and it hisses but backs the rest of the way into its enclosure, letting the doors slam shut without any resistance. He fixes his vest, pulls the door latches back into place, and turns back to see the entire group staring at him, completely dumbfounded. “So, uh. Are we done? Because I’ve got some stuff I need to, um. Well, see you tomorrow!” Hiccup does not flee from the arena, but it’s a close thing. A quick stop to toss the eel somewhere it won’t be found, and then he’s off to the forge loft to start planning a better way to fly with Toothless.
———
The next several days are full of trial and error as he designs, constructs and tests out a saddle, then a belt and anchor-loop to secure himself to said saddle when he immediately falls into the pond again. Every day, the color-feelings get brighter and more frequent, and when he shows up, Toothless starts greeting him with a light headbutt and a mental shower of sparks colored red like his hair and greenish like his eyes. When he brings food, he makes sure to set aside a bit for himself, roasting it and holding it up as proof that he’s eating when the dragon fusses over him. He fills page after page with sketches of the Night Fury, attempts at drawing the colors he’s shown, notes on dragon behaviors, and other things he’s learned, both from Toothless and from the other dragons during training.
It turns out that interacting with dragons is a bit of a balancing act; if he drops his weapon, they’ll pause and sniff at him for a moment, but if he cowers or runs, acts too much like prey, they’ll go back to attacking. Hiccup learns to stand his ground, to strike that balance between “not a threat” and “not a pushover” — he wishes humans were that simple, but it always feels like there’s some extra element that he can’t quite grasp — and it gives him a chance to test out whatever he’s discovered with Toothless.
He finds a field of sweet-smelling grass that Toothless loves to roll around in, and learns that other dragons love it just as much, so he notes down the location as he spotted it from the sky, relative to the place he’s starting to consider Their Cove. He learns that dragons love firm scratches, as forceful as he can manage with his dull nails, but there are little weak spots under their jaw and along their throat that need a more delicate touch; pressing in just slightly with the pads of his fingers makes even a Nadder go limp and purr a bit. Toothless fetches his knife from the bottom of the pond — it’s not in great shape, but once it’s repaired, the Night Fury is content to let him hold onto it, even in Their Cove. That’s how he learns that despite being large, clever predators, most dragons can be easily fooled into (or maybe just enjoy) chasing a spot of light reflected off the blade.
There are side effects to his research, though, the most annoying being that every time a dragon goes docile at his hand, the other teens marvel at it, following him out of the arena and trying to ask how he did it. More and more people come to watch dragon training, try to talk to him in the evening, and he gets better at disappearing without being noticed, just as eager to get a break from all the new attention as to see Toothless. Not everyone adores him, of course; Astrid in particular is unimpressed by his tricks, and Hiccup thinks maybe she resents him. He had a crush on her once, or at least what he thinks might have been one, but as his confidence grows and he starts to realize that he doesn’t really want to be a viking like his father, that feeling fades, leaving him to wonder whether he ever really liked her at all, or just that she was everything he wasn’t.
She’s starting to be kind of a thorn in his side, actually; she’s been coming out to practice her axe-throwing in the woods, with no real pattern to when, and her clearing of choice is right on the best route to Their Cove. Usually, Hiccup is paying enough attention to notice her and adjust course before she spots him. This afternoon, however, he’s just finished a new control mechanism for the fin, and he’s distracted; they spot each other at the same time, and he darts into the thick undergrowth, moving as quickly and quietly as he can until he’s pretty sure he’s lost her.
Toothless greets him with happy warbling, a mental lightshow, and walking as close to Hiccup as possible so he can rub the entire length of his body against the boy, and Hiccup laughs. “No fish this time, sorry,” he says, “I know you’re almost out of the last basket, but they’re already suspicious that someone’s been robbing the storehouse. But hey, I got something new for flying!”
He fetches the saddle harness from the crack where he stores it — the first time he left it on overnight, he came back to the dragon trying to tear it off — and as he goes through the process of dressing Toothless in his harness and attaching the prosthetic fin and its new pulley system, he focuses on the colors he gets from the dragon. Then, he lays his palm flat against the scales, visualizing soft rippling blues like the pond and trying to sort of push them towards his friend. Toothless jumps up immediately, responding with pale blues and greens and baring his gums with the teeth hidden in that weird way that Hiccup has learned to interpret as a smile. “You heard that, then?” He asks, smiling back with closed lips and climbing onto the dragon. “Alright, let’s try this out.”
He assembles a cheat sheet of each combination of pedal positions and the fin position it corresponds to, and starts to learn how to match what Toothless is doing, mostly by looking back at the tail. They practice for a while, tethered to a post on a clifftop where they can catch wind without actually going far from the ground, and that works great until sometime around sundown, when an especially strong gust of wind snaps the tether and sends them crashing back into the trees. Toothless lands on his back, Hiccup beside him on the ground; upon the pair trying to stand up, they discover that the hook he secures himself to has bent down towards the saddle, effectively trapping him attached to the dragon. The tether is too short to let him reach all the buckles he needs in order to remove the saddle, which means he’s going to have to sneak the entire dragon back to the blacksmith with him.
And then, because clearly his luck is not bad enough, Astrid finds him at the smithy, and calls his name. “Stay,” he hisses at Toothless, pairing it with his best visualisation of the dragon sitting and not going anywhere, turns the belt so the tether is behind him, and carefully steps around the side of the wall. “Hey, Astrid. Um. I was just getting a bit of work done, what brings you by this late?”
“I don’t normally care about other people and what they do, but you’ve been acting weird.” Hiccup makes his best attempt at looking innocent, and she scowls. “Weird-er. I know you’re hiding something. I just haven’t figured out what, yet.”
“That’s nice and all, but I really do have to finish this thing I’m-“ he cuts off with a yelp as Toothless yanks, dragging him back inside, grabbing the back of his vest, and throwing him onto the saddle. He barely has time to grab a tool that might help before the dragon is sprinting off into the night, taking off as soon as Hiccup gets his feet in place. Somehow, nobody sees them — or at least, nobody shouts about a dragon — and Hiccup is reminded of the fact that Night Fury scales don’t reflect any light. In darkness like this, he’s nearly invisible, even near fires.
Once they’re back to Their Cove, he finishes prying the hook back into its approximate original shape, undresses the dragon as quickly as he can, and tucks all the gear back into its crevice. He sneaks home, taking a bit more care in case Astrid is still looking around, and starts sketching ideas for a better attaching mechanism.
———
There’s no training the next day, because the scouting party returns just after dawn. That means Hiccup’s dad is back, and honestly, he’d rather not be there. He can’t avoid the man forever, but he can avoid him for the day at least, so he slips out of the village and takes the long way back to Their Cove.
Toothless greets him as normal, with affectionate nuzzling and red-green sparks, and Hiccup gives him scratches under his wing-bases, concentrating on black streaked with green until the dragon trills and nearly knocks him over in his enthusiasm. “I’ve got a great idea for what we should try next,” Hiccup says. If the scouting party is back, that means he and Toothless can try something new and interesting: flying close to the water. “What do you think about catching your own breakfast today?”
They start on a high cliff, because the easiest position to remember (and least likely to get them killed if he messes up) is for flying steady. “Let’s take this nice and slow, alright, bud?” Toothless responds with a bloom of sky-blue and soft light gray. “Position… three- no, four.” The pedals click as he shifts them, and they tilt to bank left; he hasn’t had time to make a better tether yet, so he takes a moment to make sure he won’t fall before leaning into the turn, glancing down at the paper attached to the saddle in front of him. “Alright, it’s go time.” Another click switches them to the right position for a dive, and his breath catches in his chest as they fall, evening out gracefully just above the waves. Toothless chirps, and Hiccup see silver streaks in deep blue as the dragon opens his mouth, skimming the water and scooping up fish near the surface.
Their flight is a bit shaky, but it always is, and they glide neatly between two large pillars of rock, angling slightly upward now that Toothless has caught some food. Hiccup’s reaction time needs work, though, and the dragon hits two rock spires in a row when he fails to match the false fin to what his partner is doing. “That was on me, sorry,” he calls, and gets a light slap from one of Toothless’s ear flaps. “I deserve that. Now, position four- um, three.”
Click. Toothless tilts sharply, climbing into the air, and Hiccup grins. “This is incredible! The rush, the wind in my- cheat sheet! Wait!” he shouts, twisting around to grab it. The dragon slows himself, but Hiccup’s momentum stays, and just as he closes his fist around the paper, the saddle disappears from underneath him as the tether slips free. “Oh, no. No!”
Separated, neither of them can save themselves, and Toothless flails wildly, trying to stabilize himself. “Hang on, you’ve gotta- kind of angle yourself! Try to get back to me-“ A tail hits him in the gut, and he comes uncomfortably close to hitting a spire. After a bit longer, the dragon finds an upright position where he’s not spinning anymore, and Hiccup manages to get a grip on the harness, throw himself back over the saddle, and switch the fin position, stabilizing their fall just in time to not hit the treetops. They’re not clear yet, though; they’re heading right for a large cluster of rock spires, and the wind is keeping him from looking at the cheat sheet. Which position is this, we have to work together or we’re both going to die, he’s counting on me-
Something falls into place in his mind; Hiccup shoves the useless paper into his jerkin, switching the pedals on instinct, and they move, twisting just in time to dodge the first rock. Click. They swerve around another spire. Click-click. They spin, rolling in the air as they navigate more rocks. Click, click, click. His mind is empty and full at once, a single-minded focus on their shared goal shoving everything else aside, and there are so many colors; his thoughts are singing with blue and green and silver and little streaks of red-like-his-hair, and the world around him seems so much more vibrant, brighter and louder. They are together, they are one, here in the sky all is right with the world and Hiccup was meant to be here, he’s sure of it.
When they make it out of the rocks, they cheer and roar in unison, singing triumph freedom belonging, autumn-golds and firey reds lacing their way into the whirling colors like they were always supposed to be there. They forget that Half-of-Them is not fireproof-scaled until Toothless spits a bolt of blue-purple flame and flies right through it. The wave of heat is welcoming and then too-much, and Hiccup flattens himself against the dragon’s back to dodge the worst of it.
Hot wait careful, he hums, not even really thinking about it as he laces ideas into overwhelming reds, and Toothless thrums beneath him, answering with soothing blues and yes apology careful-yes. They angle down, skimming the water again so Toothless can grab more fish in his front limbs before landing on a tiny rocky island.
When they touch down, Hiccup quickly unhooks himself from the saddle and drops off the side, landing neatly in a crouch. As soon as he takes more than a step away from Toothless, though, the exhilerating feeling he had in the air dissipates, and his legs give out. The dragon darts forward to support him, clicking and pushing storm-greys and worry hurt? at him as soon as skin meets scales.
“I’m alright,” Hiccup answers, answering with a handful of golds resembling an evening sky. It takes more effort than he expects, though maybe that’s any effort at all; when they were flying, color and thoughts flowed from dragon to rider and back without any interruption or conscious thought. Now, as Toothless lowers him to the ground and curls up behind him to support him, he feels as clumsy as the first day he tried. No, wait — that was yesterday, the first time he pressed a hand flat against the scales and tried to speak the way the dragon does to him. It’s only been a week, he realizes, since the first time he touched the Night Fury, and saw blue-green-grey behind his eyes.
Toothless distracts him from his musing by scooting over one of the fish from his pile over to the boy, and Hiccup realizes that there’s no way to light a fire or roast food on this little rock. Before he can say he’s not hungry, his stomach rumbles, and the dragon rumbles in response, ocean-green smugness accompanying the slight shaking of his torso under Hiccup’s back. He takes a moment to consider how best to approach this, having no desire to eat another raw fish, but Toothless notices his hesitation and does something the boy doesn’t expect: he blows a small plume of red flame, cooler than his usual blasts, and scorches the fish. When Hiccup picks off the blackened skin, he finds the meat underneath to be almost perfect.
“Thanks, bud,” he says, taking a bite of cooked fish. It’s not seasoned, but it’s surprisingly good. The pair sit and watch the sunset for a few minutes, Hiccup admiring the way the light reflects off of Toothless’s scales — as the dragon licks himself, the scales go back to being an empty void, and he concludes that the fire blast they flew through must have burned off the coating — before a small pack of Terrible Terrors lands nearby. Toothless immediately growls at the other dragons, pulling his remaining fish underneath him. Hiccup isn’t as quick to grab the second roasted fish that Toothless apparently left beside him in addition to his current one, and watches a yellow-green Terror snap it up, dragging it away from him to eat. It squeaks and growls at any others who try to approach it, and when one refuses to back down, the first takes a long breath before breathing a jet of flame at it.
At one point, a particularly brave one creeps up to Toothless’s pile, and might have even gotten away with a fish if it had been a bit less obvious in the way it dragged it off — and if Hiccup’s stifled amusement hadn’t alerted the larger dragon. He grabs the fish before the Terror can escape with it, pulling until a bit of the tail tears off, causing the little dragon to fall back. The Night Fury devours the fish in a moment, radiating gloating smugness, and makes a sound Hiccup hasn’t heard yet: an odd, shaky warble that he realizes after a moment is laughter, or at least an imitation of it. The little dragon growls, scraping its feet and taking a deep breath like the other Terror did. Before it can breathe any fire, though, Toothless spits an ember directly into its open mouth. The resulting explosion, though small, knocks the Terror over, and it staggers away in a daze, smoking from the nostrils.
“Not so fireproof on the inside,” Hiccup chuckles, and tears off a bit of his remaining fish, which he tosses to the small dragon. It snaps it up immediately, then creeps over to where he’s sitting and curls up against his leg, purring softly. “We really do know almost nothing about you, do we?” He takes out his sketchbook from where it was tucked safely into his jerkin — grabs the cheat sheet for Toothless’s fin out while he’s at it, flattening that and tucking it into the book — and starts sketching the Terror, adding notes alongside the drawing:
Travel in groups, but compete among themselves
Inside of mouth vulnerable to fire (all dragons?)
“We should probably get back,” he says when the sun has nearly fallen below the horizon in its entirety. Toothless warbles an agreement, waiting for Hiccup to climb onto his back before standing, stretching, and taking off. The flight is shorter when they’re not dodging obstacles, and nearly silent. He can’t figure out how to send the ideas anymore, and the colors and emotions are a bit more muted than before, but he doesn’t need to think or look before switching tail positions, sending colors back and forth goes back to being second nature, and he can at least hear the ideas again.
Climbing down from the dragon’s back gives him the same alone-empty feeling as before, but it’s milder, and he gives Toothless some scratches before making his way back to Berk. He heads to the forge instead of home, playing with ideas for a better tether, something that wouldn’t as easily get caught or come loose. Nothing really works out, though; he’s tired, and not actually in an inventing mood. He’s just avoiding his father.
———
He’s laying on his desk, rolling a pencil, when the man finds him. “Oh! Dad, um- Gobber’s not here,” he rambles, slamming his sketchbook shut and shoving a few of his loose-paper drawings of Toothless underneath it.
“I know,” Stoick says, struggling a bit to get into the small space. “I came lookin’ for you. You’ve been keepin’ secrets.”
He flinches at the words, so similar to what Astrid had said. ‘I know you’re hiding something. I just haven’t figured out what, yet.’ He shakes that off though, trying to keep his voice steady as he plays dumb. “I- I have?”
“Just how long did you think you could hide it from me?”
Hiccup checks for escape routes. When there are none, he goes for a method he’s not especially skilled at: lying. “I… don’t know what you’re talking-“
“Nothing happens on this island without me hearing about it,” the man cuts him off, voice still low and serious. Hiccup doesn’t think he’s ever heard another tone from his father, except maybe at feasts. “So, let’s talk about that dragon.”
His blood goes cold. “Oh gods,” he breathes. “Dad I am so sorry, I- I was going to tell you, I just- didn’t know how to-“ The man laughs, and he trails off, confused. Is he supposed to laugh, too? “You’re not… mad?”
“Mad?” Stoick shouts, and then smiles, at Hiccup, for the first time he can recall. “I was hoping for this!” Okay, they are definitely not talking about the same thing here. “And believe me, it only gets better! Just wait ‘til you spill a Nadder’s guts for the first time! And mount your first Gronckle head on a spear? What a feeling!” He aims what is probably supposed to be a friendly punch, but knocks Hiccup into the back wall of the loft anyway. “You really had me going, you know. All those years as the worst viking Berk has ever seen-“
“Ouch,” he mutters, but the man doesn’t even pause.
“Odin, it was rough. I almost gave up on you. And all the while, you were holding out on me!” He breathes out, still clearly a bit giddy, and sits down on the tiny stool at Hiccup’s desk. “With you doing so well in the ring… we finally have something to talk about.”
Hiccup just sort of stands there awkwardly, unsure what to say. His dad is clearly excited about the prospect of bonding, but Hiccup doesn’t actually have anything he thinks the man would want to hear. He hasn’t defeated any dragons; he’s just calmed them down with various tricks that he learned from another dragon.
After a long stretch of silence, Stoick fidgets a bit. “Oh, um. I brought you something. To keep you safe. In the ring.” He reaches behind him and withdraws a horned helmet, offering it to Hiccup. “Your mother would have wanted you to have it — it’s half of her breastplate. Matching set,” he says, gesturing to his own. “Keeps her close. Wear it proudly; you deserve it. You’ve held up your end of the deal.”
There’s guilt in his chest already, slowly overtaking the fear, but it worsens when he hears that. He’s not sure what to do other than pretend to be tired — though as soon as he yawns, it hits him how tired he actually is. He and his dad both stumble through goodnights and thank yous, and Stoick awkwardly, clumsily, makes his way out of the loft. Hiccup waits a little longer before returning home.
He dreams of flying, of red-green-blue-gold freedom belonging — the sea stretches out below them and the clouds part around them and the Two-who-are-One roar into the open sky. The world is Theirs, and so long as They are together, nothing will stop Them.
Hiccup wakes before dawn, wraps some bread and cheese in canvas, and slips out of the village with an empty fish basket, barely awake but drawn towards Their Cove, and the dragon his dreams are saying is Half-of-Him.