It's been an age since Toothless left.
Not—not really, not actually, that's not true, but it feels like it is, because everything is different now, everything is different—colder, darker, scarier—it's all different now, without Toothless by his side. Everything has changed.
He loves change. He is supposed to love change. Change is good, for everyone, for everything, because the world is supposed to keep moving, keep turning, keep spinning, and things are supposed to keep going and change is supposed to happen, and it's good and it's natural, but this—
He isn't ready. He isn't ready—to face this world alone, to say goodbye to the skies, and the one who brought them to him in the first place, he isn't ready to let go, he isn't ready he isn't ready he isn't ready and now everything is different and everything has changed and it doesn't feel good, it doesn't feel natural, and he doesn't want it, he wants to go back, go back to sunshine on his skin and scales under his fingers and clouds around him and cold and islands and maps, and seas he's never seen, and the wonder and thrill of discovery freedom friendship that burned through him like fire, like Toothless' fire, blue-white and blazing hot—he wants to go back to that golden autumn in the cove when he was young, and clumsy, and couldn't lift an axe, and no one knew about Toothless at all and no one thought anything of him and no one looked to him for answers and he didn't know there would be a day when he'd have to live without him.
He takes a small party back to Berk—Old Berk, everyone calls it now, and there's a terrible pang in his heart at the sound of it—change is good, and change is natural, because the world is supposed to keep moving, keep turning, keep spinning, and things are supposed to keep going and change is good, but he looks around at the battered wreckage of their boats and harbors, the burnt and scorched remains and ruins of their proud village, and he thinks this is not good, and this is not natural, and this is not the way he wanted the world to keep moving.
He goes to the cove.
He doesn't tell anyone that's where he's going, but he thinks maybe Astrid suspects, because there's something in her eyes when she looks at him, but she doesn't press, doesn't pull or push him, doesn't ask him for anything more than he's willing to give, and oh, thank the gods, she understands.
So Hiccup goes to the cove.
And it's harder now, than it used to be, and he thinks maybe the entrance has gotten smaller because he can't fit as neatly as he used to—his shoulders get in the way and his leg skids and blunders on the smooth rocks and he has to slip through sideways just to get in at all, and he has to bend almost double so he doesn't hit his head on any branches or boulders, and then he realizes the entrance has not gotten smaller at all, and he should be happy about that, shouldn't he, because here is something that hasn't changed at all.
The big green lake in the center still swims and teems with bright, silvery fish, and there's a little family of red-breasted robins nesting in the higher trees, and over here is where Toothless drew in the dirt with that big tree branch, all the wobbly, squiggly lines, uneven and senseless, and the rainstorm three days later washed it all away, but Hiccup remembered for ages after the breathless thrill, the unbelievable exhilaration of his boots hitting the ground, thump thump thump in the dirt, every step so careful, so he didn't step on the lines of Toothless' drawing again, and then, here, just here, right on the edge of the lake, this was where Toothless first let him touch him, first lowered his great, elegant black head and pressed his nose to Hiccup's shaking palm, and Hiccup still remembers the way he stumbled home in the dark, heart crashing in his chest so fast, he couldn't think how it didn't burst clean through his ribcage, and then here is where Toothless pushed him in the lake once, and here is where they got caught in that miserable storm and Toothless held his leathery wings over Hiccup's head and let him snuggle down into the smooth, warm scales so he didn't get wet and—and—
—and everything is exactly as he remembers it and nothing has changed at all except it has, it really, really has, because Toothless is gone and he's never coming back and Hiccup's never going to see him again and he's never going to feel the dry, cool scales under his hand, he's never going to look up into big green eyes or throw his arms around a thick, muscled neck and he's never, ever going to see more of Toothless' strange, insensible drawings in the dirt that he can't make heads or tails of, and Toothless is never going to push him in the lake one day and shield him from the rain the next because Toothless is gone, and Toothless is never coming back, and nothing has changed at all and everything is exactly as he remembers it, but it doesn't matter, because this place, this cove, it isn't anything without Toothless, it isn't anything at all, and nothing is different and nothing has changed but it doesn't matter, and he doesn't doesn't doesn't love change, he doesn't love change at all if Toothless isn't there to face every change with him.
Everything here is exactly the same.
But it's not.
It's not the same at all.
Notes: just wanted to write something for The Hidden World that kinda focused on the separation a bit more (I'm still so ceaselessly salty about that disgusting, overly-saccharine ending, but I suppose I really shouldn't have expected them to go TOO deep without backing away from the actual real-world repercussions at SOME point.) And I just saw the first film again, and forgot how much I freaking love the cove as a location, and I wanted to bring it back. I figured Hiccup would revisit Berk, and the cove, at least once after Toothless and the dragons left, and the pain would finally sort of hit him, and Toothless' absence would really start to sink in here.