"No!" Hiccup screamed. "Stop, you'll – you're hurting him!"

The sound echoed futilely off the claustrophobia-inducing walls of the Kill Ring. Inside, Hiccup lunged desperately for his companion, his partner-in-flight, his best friend, but Spitelout had Toothless's snout pinned and five other Vikings spread out across his wings and Toothless could do nothing but moan miserably.

Astrid latched onto Hiccup's arms. With the force of the axe she carried, she pinned them against his back. "Toothless," Hiccup whispered, still shoving against Astrid's wiry arms, wishing with all of him that there was some way to make them see, all their lives they'd been blind

But Fate was not so kind as to grant them a reunion that day. Toothless was forced struggling out of the Ring and Hiccup was dragged into the Great Hall and thrown across the floor, sprawling out like a sack of moldy potatoes. The words "you're not my son" rang like a eulogy in his ears, even after his father pushed him onto the ground, outcasted him from the tribe, took away his home and his family and his best friend.

Long after the doors swung shut behind his fath – no, not his father – behind Berk's Chief, the stone floor remained cold, drawing on Hiccup's warmth. He sat, half-lying on the floor, and breathed. He really should have gotten up. He should have devised a clever plan to rescue Toothless and kill the Red Death and save the tribe, to finally win his father's pride. But he was done with trying. He curled in a ball instead, on the frozen floor of the once-merry Great Hall, and did not cry.

Several minutes later, Hiccup felt his muscles begin to lock up. With a hitched breath, he pulled himself off the ground and toward the door his father had so kindly left open, allowing him a view of the solemn and cowed village outside. Hiccup imagined Toothless, strapped to an iron cage somewhere, trapped and alone and scared. He banished the image forcefully from his mind as quickly as it had appeared. He ignored the salty burning in his eyes, blinked and railed against it, and forced himself slowly to his feet. Hiccup didn't quite make it outside the doors. Instead, he leaned against the frame and struggled to keep himself standing on two feet.

For the first time in his fifteen years, his head was bowed, his feet were heavy, and Hiccup Horrendous Haddock the Third had no plan, no idea of what to do to fix the situation.

But he would not cry, because that was not the Viking way, and even if he wasn't a Viking any more it was all he had left.

Of course, another rule of being a Viking was to always kill dragons, but he'd always been an – an unconventional Viking.

He remained leaning against the doorpost for a long time. Something had been keeping him steady, stable, for the past couple of months. Now that thing was gone, trapped inside the arena and bound to Death. And if he could have, he'd go after his other half in an instant – but as an Outcast, there was no way he could ever safely access the Arena in time, much less rescue a tied and condemned Night Fury.

Gobber passed by the Hall, balancing a series of wooden planks easily with his mechanical hand. He almost didn't see the boy slumped and lifeless against the doors of the Great Hall. But the shape of a still Hiccup arrested his attention, and he debated with himself for a mere quarter-second before dropping the wood in the dust.

"Hiccup," the man intoned gruffly, limping toward his former apprentice. "Hiccup? Hiccup!" Gobber reached out and latched onto the boy's shoulder with his flesh hand.

Hiccup started, falling against the door, then stopped himself. "Oh," he said, and his tone was flatter and duller than Gobber had ever heard him. "Hi, Gobber."

Something wrenched uncomfortably at Gobber's insides, as if someone had taken his father's axe and stabbed him with it. "You all right there, Hiccup?" Gobber asked, knowing that Hiccup would smile and lie to his face and really not be all right at all.

"Yeah," Hiccup did indeed grin his best for Gobber, trying to reassure the man and convince him that Hiccup didn't blame him, but the effect was quite ruined by the shining in Hiccup's eyes that the boy continued to fight. "You…you probably shouldn't be seen with me," he said, voice wavering.

"Nonsense," Gobber said sharply. "I'll have none of that."

Hiccup's face crumpled like paper for a brief second, but the expression was there and gone so fast that Gobber wasn't sure he saw it. "Thanks, but I…I'm an Outcast, now. Don't want to be associating with those types, right?" Hiccup tried for a laugh and ended up croaking a wet cough instead.

(His father had used the horrible Outcasts as a method to scare a young Hiccup away from exploring, when Hiccup was small and hardly able to see over his father's waist, peering around his father's sheath to make sure nothing large and hairy and treacherous approached.)

Gobber paused, thrown off by the un-Hiccup-like display of sadness. The boy was nothing if not resilient, and seeing Hiccup finally beaten down simply shredded his guts more.

"Don't give up, lad," Gobber advised, trying to meet Hiccup's averted eyes. "Oi, look at me." He forced Hiccup's chin upward with his living hand, dragging the boy's attention toward his face and his words. "Hope ain't lost yet, Hiccup. You know your father, stubborn as a dead mule and twice as dumb. Ye've got to prove it to 'im, about that dragon."

Hiccup huffed and pushed himself off the door with peculiar vehemence, nearly overbalancing in the process. Privately, Gobber smiled at the fire rekindling in his apprentice's eyes. "I've tried everything. Seriously! I tried everything, Gobber! I made friends with a Night Fury, I tamed that Nightmare in the Ring, he even saw when Toothless came to protect me! How can – what else can I do?"

"Ah, but I'm not the one that comes up with ideas around here." Gobber patted Hiccup on the back, sending him forward a few paces and nearly into the blacksmith's stomach. "That's your job."

"Well, I'm fresh out."

"Oh, I don' believe that."

Hiccup jerked his shoulders up, arms waving furiously in Gobber's direction. "Well, do you have any ideas?" he challenged.

"No, but I've never been good with the whole thinking mess. That's why we have you."

"Who's we, Gobber? I'm an Outcast, remember?!"

Gobber couldn't answer that fast enough. The fire went out of Hiccup's eyes as fast as it'd lit, and his shoulders sagged. "Sorry," he muttered.

"Oi, don't be doin' that." Gobber grabbed Hiccup by both shoulders. "Outcast or no – that depends on what ye do about it. Don't go givin' up now, boy, because if you do that I'll know it's not a Hiccup we outcasted."

Hiccup looked up, looked at Gobber's hands gently grasping his shoulders, looked in his mentor's face and digested his words with a chain of logic as steady as a hammer over an anvil.

And with those peculiar words, Gobber released Hiccup, grabbed the bound planks and hefted them over his shoulder, and retreated toward the docks with a parting nod that both knew concealed a hundred more words.

"Why are we doing this again?" Snotlout called from his unsteady perch on the Monstrous Nightmare. "Hiccup is an Outcast, you know. We could be exiled for this."

Astrid stiffened in front of Hiccup and yelled right back over the speeding winds. "Because this could save our tribe, Snotlout! Think about it. I know that's hard, but try for a second. If we could get rid of the thing controlling the dragons, then the dragons would stop raiding Berk, and people would stop dying."

Snotlout processed this for more moments than was strictly necessary for anyone with more than three brain cells to rub together. Than he shouted back, swerving above the Nadder, "But why are we following Hiccup?"

"Unlike you, Hiccup knows what he's doing."

"Hey, I know what I'm doing!" Snotlout exclaimed indignantly. "Get in there and bash the thing controlling the dragons!"

Hiccup could've felt Astrid rolling her eyes through closed eyes. "Ignore him," she sighed, eyes fixed on the Nadder's spine she held in a death grip.

"It's fine," Hiccup joked drily. "I've been doing that my entire life."

He felt Astrid slump and hastened to rephrase that. "I mean, um, just Snotlout. Because Snotlout is a marsh-eating troll. Not you."

Her spine instantly stiffened as she realized her guilty reaction. "I'm not feeling sorry for you or anything. Don't get the wrong idea," she hissed.

Hiccup grinned faintly.

She half-twisted around to face him, still hesitant to take her eyes off the roiling ocean below. "What's the plan, now that we have dragons?"

Hiccup shrugged. "Find Toothless and kill the Queen."

Astrid arched an eyebrow at him. "Any more details?"

Hiccup cursed his luck that he should be riding with the cleverest Viking on Berk besides himself. He shook his head, grimacing. By his standards, it was a stupidly simple plan, but a mantra of toothlesstoothlesstoothless kept running through his head and effectively blocking out all other coherent thoughts.

Astrid squinted at him, expression unreadable "Sounds like a Viking plan to me."

Hiccup shrugged uncomfortably at that. "I know, I just-"

Astrid noticed and smacked him (companionably? Hiccup couldn't tell with her) on the shoulder. He flinched. "It's a good plan. Maybe your father can make you in charge of tactics when we get back," she tried.

Hiccup tried to tell her through a dry throat that hey, he was an Outcast, remember? But before he could say anything, Astrid arched both eyebrows at his inevitable denial and whipped him with her braid as she turned to face front, hunching awkwardly over her Nadder's neck. "None of that."

"O-um, okay."

Seconds twisted into minutes. A raised cacophony drew their attention. Ruffnut and Tuffnut had begun experimenting with their new dragon. The twins were fascinated by the idea that if they got the Zippleback to spin in a circle around them and spark to create a ring of flame, they could light themselves on fire. Ruffnut tugged on her head – which she'd named Barf in jest (at least Hiccup thought it was a joke, he couldn't actually tell) – in an effort to spin the dragon and gas a circle around them. But as if the dragon was already aware of its rider's stupidity, it growled at her and refused to take its eyes off the horizon.

"I think our dragon's broken," Ruff whispered to Tuffnut, glancing down at Hiccup to make sure he couldn't hear, though her voice stretched behind them for miles. Hiccup made a noncommittal gesture in her direction to convince her that he had no idea what was going on. She grinned and flashed him a nervous thumbs-up, even as her brother added "Don't tell Hiccup."

"I wasn't going to, you idiot," she hissed back, glaring sparks at her brother. "What if he tried to flame us with that Night Fury?"

"Ruff, you idiot, that Night Fury isn't even here!"

"Wait, then how is he flying?"

Both twins slowly turned toward Hiccup. Barf snorted impatiently at his rider's unpredictable antics. "He's riding a Nadder," Tuff muttered.

"How is he doing that? Two dragons?"

The twins shared a glance, then yelled "Cool!" and nearly fell off their dragon helmet-bashing.

"Odin help us," Astrid sighed.

"How did you deal with that for fifteen years?" Hiccup asked incredulously.

"That and Snotlout," Astrid added irritably, jerking her head toward where Snotlout was emitting a verbal stream of praise toward both his dragon and himself. He'd named his dragon Fanghook, calling it a work-in-progress. He was convinced his dragon's name needed to be as terrifying as possible. "Do you think he even knows where we're going?"

"Maybe."

Astrid snorted. "All he knows is that we're going to kill things."

"Well, he is good at killing things," Hiccup granted, glancing toward where Snotlout was sitting heavily on the Nightmare's neck.

"Unfortunately," she muttered mutinously.

"We'll need him." He looked from his thick-skulled cousin toward the roiling ocean below. If he concentrated, he could tune the ocean's waves to the acrobatics his stomach was performing.

"Worried?"

Hiccup's first instinct was to deny it, but there was no point. "Yeah," he breathed quietly.

"Smart of you. To be worried."

"Thanks?"

She nodded. "You'll get Toothless out. I'll flame you myself if you don't."

"Astrid, I really don't know what message you're trying to convey here."

"I'm being nice."

"You're threatening to kill me."

"Same thing," she dismissed the protest with a wave of her hand.

"Not quite."

Miraculously, she let it slide. Hiccup suspected it was more due to her constricting grip on the Nadder's scales than any compassion. And he would have continued thinking that, but-

"Survive and the Chief will have to let you back in the village."

Hiccup slumped forward toward the expanding and contracting scales of the blue Nadder. "I don't know, Astrid," Hiccup whispered back. "I've been trying all my life to get my dad to accept, y'know, me, and look where that's gotten me so far."

Astrid twisted around again. "That's because you were trying to get him to accept someone other than you," she said, and her words cracked like a whip in the freezing air. She gestured toward the teens amassed on their magnificent dragons. "This is you."

"This is me coming up with a half-cooked plan to save the most deadly dragon in the world."

"Exactly!" she exclaimed proudly. "That's you. You come up with stupid and brilliant plans to do stupid and brilliant and impossible things."

Toothless smelled his human coming before he saw him. The scent was muted, mingled with the she-human and a Spinethrower he'd smelled briefly in the Ring. He tried desperately to message the dragon that carried his human, but the Queen's signal blocked out all others, including even the Night Fury's own.

Toothless watched as his human commanded the other teenagers to battle stations. Toothless saw a bit of an Alpha in the human, just a spark of something new; he saw as the human King watched his son in amazement, tracing the Spinethrower's curving path in the air with wide stunned eyes. He was glad to sniff fresh regret and guilt pouring off the human leader as he stared after his son's commanding voice and shining ingenuity.

Serves him right, Toothless sniffed to himself, ignoring his current predicament for pride in his rider.

Unfortunately, not even a Night Fury can fend off fumes and flames forever, and as much as he wanted to witness his human's triumph and the death of the treacherous Queen, his dual eyelids slid shut without his consent – until a pair of human boots thudded to the deck.

"Help the others!" Hiccup commanded the Spinethrower and her new rider, gesturing toward the Death, then without delay set his full strength to Toothless's bonds.

Gathering the remaining threads of his strength, Toothless yanked on the wooden restraints, but even together dragon and Rider couldn't dent the snaked ropes. Toothless had about given up – Hiccup had not, brave human – when the Queen's wrath plummeted toward the boat and snapped it in two.

Toothless panicked. Sky dragons and water were never meant to mix. Ocean means drowning, ocean means death and destruction and flame extinguished. They hit the water with a cold and terrible splash. He sunk like a stone toward the deep lake's bottom. Hiccup paid no mind to the abrupt environmental change and dove fearlessly toward Toothless, heedless of the water that raked past his pale skin. The dragon tugged furiously on his restraints, blind to everything except the delicate human who heaved in tandem at the ropes.

When Hiccup ran out of air, Toothless's panic switched from himself to the human. He strained toward his rider who was alarmingly limp and unmoving, his Hiccup who was always dancing and talking and trying, who floated silent in the deadly water.

Hiccup! he screamed through an abrupt mouthful of salt. He couldn't care that he was swallowing the water brought death faster. He jerked even harder on the Hel-cursed ropes, willing them to bend and snap he would not see Hiccup drown-

Then something plunged toward Hiccup, a human form that grabbed his Rider in both hands and heaved toward the surface. But Toothless was not slighted. Instead, he was relieved; without Hiccup, the others could not defeat the Death. Without Hiccup, there would be no peace, no hope for his home. He would not wish a Hiccup-less world on anyone.

Toothless's vision tunneled black. He now gazed at stars he had touched, long ago. He watched them twirl without regret.

Toothless's eyes slid shut without him noticing that same thing speed toward him, slicing powerfully through the water. At the abrupt shift of currents, Toothless forced his eyes open. And the face of Hiccup's father registered in Toothless's vision.

The man and dragon stared, head cocked and eyes wary. For a reason unbeknownst to the dragon, the human King came to a decision and heaved once, twice, on Toothless's cage, snapping it in two.

For a moment, Toothless faltered, unsure. (He had only been unsure about Death once before, when he was freed from a deadly trap and ready to kill the one who had wounded him.) But Hiccup had loved that man. Had loved him despite the apparent disdain the man showed his son. And Hiccup's love constituted reason enough to save a human, even a Viking King and a murderer. So on the way up, Toothless dragged the man out of the deadly water.

Come on, he barked at his Rider, flapping past the King and his daring son. It's go time.

END

To be continued.