Rain patterned against the sidewalk as Hiccup walked down the street. Along the sidewalk were square patches of dirt where trees had grown large and taller than some of the buildings and stores throughout the street. As such, the scent of petrichor permeated the air since it was he first rain of summer; he loved that smell.

After spending time at the library for an assignment, He decided to walk back home instead of taking the bus. The late afternoon light covered by the clouds made the town look darker since the lampposts hadn't turned on yet.

Hiccup wondered if the lights were set on a timer to turn on and off at a given point of the day, and if so how it managed when the seasons changed and the days got longer or shorter. Would they still turn on a six at night even if there was sun left? Or would they turn off at five even if the sun had yet to rise?

These thoughts pondered him as he continued down the street, taking the time to peer through the windows as he walked across the street from the Lucky Cat Cafe. Tadashi was cleaning the window from inside. Upon seeing his classmate and younger friend, Tadashi waved. Hiccup waved back. Hiro was probably up in his room, working on another bot for the robotics club, which the three of them were a part of.

He passed a bakery and a small bookstore, which sold classical and modern novels. Elsa liked to go there a lot, she was an avid bookworm. Anna was a regular at the bakery, ordering plenty of chocolate for her and her sister.

A dirt trail lead to the woods next to the town. Merida went there plenty a week for archery practice, and Rapunzel sometimes rode her family horse there.

He walked past the path and shuddered. It gotten really cold, which was odd for midsummer. He walked past an alley between two building when a noise made him stop.

Taking a few steps back, Hiccup looked down the alley. There was a single light on over a door that led to one of the buildings, the side exit for a bar that none of them were old enough to go into, and it dimly illuminated the path. Trying to tune out the pouring of the rain, he listened again.

Sure enough, there it was. It was soft and weak, but it definitely sounded like a mewling cat. Maybe more than one.

A cat out in the cold and rain like this would surely die. He hunched his jacket over his shoulders to steady himself and entered the alley. He crouched next to some trash bins that smelled strongly of alcohol and food as he took his phone out. Brightening the illumination all the way up, he shines it around the area until he found a small box.

The box contained six kittens and a larger cat. The bigger one was probably the mother, and the smaller her litter. They were all shivering, the kittens mewling weakly as their mother licked them clean from the dripping rain.

The cat caught his eyes and growled menacingly, as if threatening Hiccup to not touch her children.

"I'm not gonna hurt you," Hiccup promised. Still keeping his phone on, he gently reached for the saggy box to try and pull it out into the open.

The mother cat reacted before he could, lashing out and scratching his finger. He recoiled and hissed just as the mother did.

It stung, but it wasn't enough to warrant bleeding.

The mother rested its head against its hungry litter.

"I want to help you. Please." He waited a moment before trying again. This time, the cat didn't scratch him. She didn't even move. "Are you okay?"

Fear bubbled in his chest. He didn't care if he bled for real, he reached out and gently jostled the mother cat, hoping she would react.

"H-hey! Please wake up."

She didn't move.

With no parent to attack at him, Hiccup returned his phone to his pocket and picked the box up, being careful to not shake it too much or hurt the kittens any more than they already were.

His face was wet, and he didn't know if it was because of the rain or if he was crying.

He jogged back up the street, past the trail and bakery and cafe. He ran into the empty lot of a small vet clinic, bursting through the doors by kicking it open.

"Please, help! I don't think they'll last much longer," he cried. He set the box on the desk as the woman behind it looked into it.

"Oh, my goodness!" She didn't stop to ask any questions. She took the soggy cardboard box and took it to the door in the office she was in. It probably led to the vet themselves.

Hiccup looked around. He had never been in here before. There was a pinup board with papers. Some of them were lost or missing pet posters, with bits of paper with phone numbers to tear off should the animal be found. There was a pet of the month; it looked like this place was also an adoption center. There was a list of dates and times where children could play with the animals, which would also be an opportunity to adopt them.

He sat down in on of the available chairs and thought. He didn't know what to do next. Would they ask him any questions? Would they want to know where he got them, or if they were his? He doubted the mother cat survived. Her whole body seemed limp throughout the entire trip here.

After a while, his phone rang. He took it out and saw that it was his father. "Hello?"

"Hiccup! Where are you! You said you'd be back by seven! What's happened?"

He looked at the time on his phone and saw that he'd been sitting here for over half an hour.

"–was worried sick!" Stoick was saying. "I called your friend Jack, but he said he hadn't seen you since school today!"

"Dad, I'm sorry." He was surprised to hear that his voice was cracking, and even more nasally than usual.

Stoick seemed to have caught on to that. "Son? Are you okay? What's happened?"

Hiccup told him the truth. He explained that he was still waiting to see what the vet had to say about the kittens, and what would happen to the mother. He needed to know what was going to happen.

Stoick was silent before he spoke. "All right, son," he said. "I'll be over and wait for you. Down the street from the cafe your friend works at, yes?"

"Yes."

"Okay. I'll be over soon. And son?"

Already prepared to hang up, Hiccup brought the phone back to his ear. "Yeah, Dad?"

"I'm proud that you did the best you could. Your mother would be as well. She had a fondness for cats."

Hiccup remembered the stories. How she spent her whole life with cats. When she was a child, a teenager, when she moved out, when she married Stoick and was pregnant with him.

They weren't all the same cat, of course, but she'd have the same one since college. It stayed with them up until he was born. He was born way too early and at the cost of his life, his mother died. The cat seemed to have been grieving and it died a few weeks later.

Hiccup used to ask for a cat when he was younger, but Stoick always the same things. The house was too large. They couldn't afford to care for one. He wasn't ready for the responsibility. He was maybe allergic.

As he grew up, Hiccup learned that those excuses had always been just that. Stoick didn't want to be reminded of the loss with a cat, an animal that Valka adored her whole life. And Hiccup didn't want to hurt his father, so a few years ago, he stopped asking.

He finally hung up. A few minutes after the call, the door on the visitor's side opened and a man wearing a white doctor's coat stepped out. "Did you bring the litter?"

"Y-yeah. They were in an alley. I heard them crying out when I walked by." He saw that the vet look hesitant to continue on. "What happened?"

"Let me ask you a few questions first."

They both sat down in the seats and the man began to write on a paper as he asked Hiccup some questions. How many were in the box when he found them. What street was the alley at. Was the mother alive when he found them. Were any of the kittens not moving. Did any of them look healthier than the others, or weaker.

He answered each one patiently, waiting until the end of it until he asked again. "What happened to the kittens?"

The vet sighed. "Only one of them's alive. It's being fed now, but I doubt it'll survive any more than a few more days."

Only one. And even then, it may not survive.

"Can I see it?"

The vet led him to the back room, a table covered in a soft cloth was set up. The woman from before was carefully feeding the last kitten from a bottle. Its contents dribbled messily down its jaw, but the kitten didn't seem to care. It was too hungry to care about mannerisms. Too young, as well.

The wet box had been discarded on the floor. Another sealed box, one that looked to be specifically made to transport newly adopted pets, sat ominously next to a sink.

"This one seemed to be the youngest of them, a male. It's a miracle that it able to survive to this point since we discovered that it only has one tooth. It's have a hard time eating even soft foods."

If it ate at all, Hiccup thought ruefully. "What's gonna happen to it?"

"We can keep it with our other felines, but it's sick. It might infect our other pets here, and it definitely won't do well once it realizes it has no family left. We can treat its illness with some powdered medicine into its milk, but unless this fella gets a new home in the next few days, it's not gonna make it."

Hiccup came to a resolve. It hit him like a train wreck, but as soon as it did, it wouldn't leave his head. "I'll take it home."

The vet looked at him. "Are you sure?"

"Yes. P-please. If that's okay." Legally speaking, he wasn't sure if it was okay to even take the kitten away from the only person within a walking distance who could take care of it, but he wanted to. He needed to. He wasn't sure if he could live with himself if he hadn't offered, only to regret it when it died because no one would care to take in a sick animal.

The vet smiled. "He's going to be just fine."

Hiccup was left to feed for the kitten as the woman went back to her own office to get the necessary paperwork. To legally allow Hiccup take the kitten home. He imputed what was necessary in the computer first, offering his legal name and address and phone number. Then he was given a paper to sign, including the animal's name.

As he got to that part, the kitten yawned, showing off its one tooth. This was how Hiccup got a clear look of it for the first time, without the threat of death hanging over the air.

It was all black, shiny from the wetness in the fur. They had dried the kittens off, but this one still seemed to be damp. It's yawn went on for a short while, making Hiccup chuckle.

"You really are a toothless one, aren't ya?" Struck with inspiration, he wrote down what was needed.

The vet took the paper and grinned. "Imaginative," he commented. He offered Hiccup a box to take Toothless home in, with air holes so the poor thing wouldn't suffocate. He also applied the necessary medicine and early infantile kitten food that Toothless would need. He couldn't be more than fifteen days old.

Ordinarily, the vet said, new adoptees would have to pay a fee for the adoption itself and any food that would be handled. But since Toothless wasn't necessarily under the ownership of the adoption center, he let it slide. He winked at Hiccup at this.

Promising to return every few days for a check up, Hiccup carefully held the box in both hands despite the handle. He peeked through one of the air holes, but it was too dark too see him.

It was past eight.

The only car parked with its headlights on belong to his dad. He got into the passenger seat of the car and softly closed the door, nestling the box on his lap.

"How'd it go?" Stoick asked, already beginning the drive home. They went down the street past the cafe, which already had its lights out. The apartment above it seemed to have plenty of life.

"Only one survived." Hiccup delicately rubbed the side of the box with his hand. They past the closed bakery and bookstore, where the owners would band together for a fundraiser the next day.

Stoick stopped at a red light. "I'm proud of you, son." He leaned over and brushed his hair out of the way to kiss him on his temple. The side path was muddy and rampaged.

Hiccup smiled. He looked out the window at the alley as he drove by. They went by another red light and stopped with a few more cars in front of them, prompting Hiccup to stare a little longer.

A dark figure stood there. He was looking for something in between the trash bins. When he couldn't find it, he angrily kicked one of the bins over, revealing a large knife on the ground in front of him.

Hiccup blanched. He's looking for the kittens. He protectively wrapped his arms around the box.

The figure turned and stared at him. He sees me.

The car started up again and they drove on, Stoick oblivious to Hiccup's sense of dread. Looking through the rear view mirror, Hiccup saw the large, foreboding man standing in the middle of the road, the lampposts emitting light on either side of the street.

They got home and Hiccup was wary. He made sure to keep 911 predialed less something happen.

He took the box out and grabbed a bowl from the kitchen. He empties a water bottle into it and went to his room, leaving the door partially open. He carefully used one hand to carry Toothless out of the box. His fur was finally dry.

He used one of his thicker blankets as a bed, using one layer to drape over half of its tiny body. He set the bowl of water next to the makeshift bed. Keeping the medicine and food on the desk where Toothless wouldn't be able to reach. He went to sleep, and woke up on a Saturday morning to mewling below him.

Toothless' eyes were green, just like his.

Author's Notes:

This fanfic is dedicated to my lovely kitten Iggy, who unfortunately passed away last August when she was only a few weeks old. Given her age and when I got her, I calculated she was maybe born in early summer, sometime in June to be exact.

She's the cat I use for my profile pic now. While I love my calico Scope now, Iggy will always be in my heart as a fond and playful kitty.

Word Count: 2701

~CoronaCrown~