AN: Soz I'm a bit late with this one, but life inturrupted me. Anyway, here it is, 3K! More words than I thought i could manage! Enjoy.
SmokeyStorm: Thanks for the idea, I'll keep it in mind.
For those who do not understand how my mind works:
"Norse"
"Dragonese"
Thoughts and/or the occasional bit of emphasis
Definate emphasis/Gobber's shouting
Disclaimer: I own HTTYD in my dreams, but not in reality
Floating. Floating in a cocoon of darkness. A darkness in which time means nothing. A shell of protection. Wait, is it protecting me or protecting something from me? I'll never know. I don't really care either, as long as I have my memories. Memories of pain, memories of joy, victory, defeat and whatever comes along. Memories of fire. Its what makes me, well… me.
The memories are being pushed aside now, something is happening. What is this? It feels familiar. Ah, yes, heat. Fire? Memories of fire flickering in front of me. My first scar from the fire in the forge on the tip of a finger, running from a creature of fire, fire dissolving part of my leg, a pillar of fire reaching for me and my best friend out of a cloud of fire.
No, this isn't the feeling of fire, just heat. It's a strangely comforting heat. Gives me a warm fuzzy feeling. I want it to last forever. At least time means nothing here. A flicker of movement, or a lifetime of shaking. My curiosity flickers to life, I know the darkness will keep me safe, but I want to know what's happening. The heat has returned, stronger.
Wait, something's changing. The darkness is getting closer, the cocoon is shrinking. Seconds stretch, years vanish. The darkness is pressing against me now, its not as nice here anymore. But I am comforted by the other presence here, which is also being pushed into me, but not uncomfortably.
Ok, this is starting to get annoying now, I want to know what's happening. Its starting to feel more like a prison now, maybe I can force my way out. Something urged me to give the darkness a good kick, so I did so. My ears twitched as I heard a slight cracking noise when my foot connected with the darkness, the first sound I've heard for a long, long time. I gave it another kick to see if I could get it to make the noise again, which it did, but what I noticed more than the noise was that the darkness felt weaker!
Feeling the other presence stir next to me I decided to see how far I could go. A small barrage of kicks and punches shake the darkness satisfyingly, the other one pushing against the other side of the darkness. Straining together we worked to push back the suddenly constrictive darkness, until…
CRACK!
A crack louder than any of the others that I had made assaulted my ears as I was propelled out of the darkness. I opened my eyes to see what was outside the darkness, but I was not prepared for the confusing blur of colour through the painful light. Noises barraged my sensitive ears in a cacophony of sound. Scents pushed their way up my nose to disorientate my mind. Unable to focus of any one thing I squeezed my eyes shut and tried to push everything else out of my mind for coherent thoughts to form. Maybe it would have been better to stay in the darkness. No, I am Hiccup Horrendous Haddock, heir of the Hairy Hooligan tribe,… and I have no idea what is happening.
The thought threatened to push my despair and desperation to the front, but I focused on what I could do. Prying an eye open a crack, I immediately saw a large brown blur in front of me. Forcing the other eye open slightly I forced myself to focus past the dazzling light to figure out what it was. Slowly, it came into focus, and as it did so I realised that the light was no longer as painful, neither were the scents as offensive nor the sounds as confusing.
As my eyes focused on the brown object that took up all of my vision, I discovered that it was not a single shade of brown, but instead had various shades. There were also some large cracks in the brown, surrounded by other, smaller cracks. There was also one or two bits that did not fit in with the random pattern of cracks, circular patches of rings within rings. There was something strangely familiar about this. Things clicked into place in my mind as I realised that my neck was loose, and my head dangling a little. It's the floor! I frowned for a moment before thinking I'm standing on a piece of wood, timber to be precise. Only a human can get it this smooth, so I must be in someone's house.
After a few moments of figuring out which muscles moved my neck, I managed to lift my head, fighting disorientation as everything shifted. Due to staring at the floor for too long (which I felt a bit silly about) everything was distorted unrecognisably. I could tell that my eyes were adjusting slowly, as I could pick out a huge vertical blurry log not far from me.
Crawling over to it clumsily I muttered a curse at my unresponsive limbs. BONK! I rebounded slightly from the tree-sized thing, muttering about the dull ache in my nose. For some reason I started sniffing it, then stopped as I realised what I was doing. Well, that was weird. After turning to the side to get the giant pillar out of my sight, I waited as my eyes adjusted. When they did, what I saw confused me greatly.
A smallish black blob was stumbling its way from pillar to pillar, stopping for a moment at each one before moving on to the next. I could not recognise what it was for a few moments, before my eyes focused properly on it. Then I could recognise two wings hanging loosely from its sides, four short legs underneath moving it along. Still, I did not recognise it until I saw the tail with its distinctive tail fins. A Night Fury! Something about this dragon seemed familiar.
"Toothless?"
The dragon's ear flaps rotated instantly in my direction, then his head turned so he could look at me properly. I could see that he was having the same problems as I was with focusing my eyes.
"Hic…uh"
That was definitely Toothless's voice, but why did he trail off? Didn't he recognise me? And why was his voice higher than normal? And why does he look smaller? Too many questions.
"Toothless? It's me, Hiccup?"
That simply caused him too look at me strangely, and a wave of confusion washed over me. I tried to crawl across to him, but I only managed to stumble a few steps before falling splat on my face. It was then that I managed to focus on my nose, or rather, the black snout that had replaced it.
"Whoa! What the heck?!"
I shouted (or squeaked) as I stumbled away from it, tripping over myself again to land on my back on the floor. Flailing around as if to try to escape the inexplicable object on my face, I ended up waving one of my hands in front of my face, and froze.
Instead of seeing the usual five digits covered in pale pink flesh, I only saw four digits, but covered in the black scales of a Night Fury. I concentrated on twitching every muscle in my hand just to make sure that it was really mine, not just some practical joke, but no, my new 'fingers' twitched when I moved certain muscles. Just then one of my ears twitched and I looked over at Toothless, who had started making his way over to me. I realised that he had said something, but I did not hear what he had said while checking out my hand.
"What?"
"I said that that's as Hiccup a move as I'll ever see"
As he said that an image flashed in my mind of what I looked like on the floor, staring at my hand, but it was gone in a moment, as if it never existed.
Rolling myself onto my hands and feet I ignored him and looked myself over as well as I could. Lowering my head I could see four complete legs supporting my weight, yes, four whole legs, not three and a half as I had sort of expected. Craning to see over my black shoulder I could spy two dark wings hanging off my back, and further down my new sleek body was a tail, swaying slightly with its distinctive set of fins twitching on the floor.
"How…? What…? Why…?".
Numerous questions were trying to force their way out of my mouth at the same time, each one choking off the previous, leaving me standing there spluttering. A flash of amusement, flashed across my mind before dissipating instantly.
He started circling me. "I asked the same thing". A burst of irritation swelled in my mind and I had to bite back a scathing comeback when he said that, but I did notice him stumble a little.
"Why am I a Night Fury?". At least I managed to get that question out. He came to a halt in front of me and gave me a draconic shrug, a subtle movement with his head and wings, before replying.
"No idea, but it has probably got something to do with that".
He gestured with his head to something behind me, which I could tell from the crackling sounds was a dying fire. I turned around to see what he meant, which became immediately obvious. Through the dying flames I could see the distorted outline of what could have only been a hatched dragon egg, but more immediately was the fragments of the egg that had been broken off, all of it a plain jet black.
Toothless P.O.V
Why do I feel like I've done this before? I mean, kicking my way out of a prison-like thing. Gah, nothing's doing what I tell it to do! I can't walk, I can't fly, I can barely even open my eyes! What if Hiccups in danger again? Come on, open your eyes, there's nothing to be afraid of, you're a Night Fury.
Opening them wasn't the hard part. It was keeping them open that was painfully hard. I managed to keep them open long enough for my eyes to remember how to adjust, and I could see a couple of blurry objects near me. Seeing that my eyes weren't going to obey me just yet I decided to use my other senses to determine where I was, to be precise, my nose.
Hobbling along to the nearest of objects, I gave it a cursory sniff. Smells of wood, with a hint of smoke, and also the scents of humans. Giving what I was standing on a sniff, then looking at the rest of the blurred ground for a moment I realised where was. This has to be a human nest, it's the only thing that would smell this way. Hearing the crackling of a small fire behind me I decided to see what else was around me.
Stumbling along between two blurry objects, I heard a familiar call. "Toothless?". That has to be Hiccup, no-one else sounds like that. Turning to face I started to call back to him, but only got partway through his name as I realised that it was not Hiccup I had heard. Instead of seeing the human I cared about, there was another Night Fury standing there.
The Night Fury opened its mouth. "Toothless, its me, Hiccup?". Confusion battered at me as my thoughts spiralled. Ok, this is weird. A Night Fury is telling me that he is Hiccup. It sounded like Hiccup, mostly. Just a bit more squeaky than usual. The strange Night Fury tried to walk over to me, but instead tripped over his own legs. Its almost like he doesn't know how to walk. I frowned when he fell over and he seemed to focus on his nose.
"Whoa! What the heck?". This isn't normal for a Night Fury, but I wouldn't put it past Hiccup (or most of the other humans I knew) if he suddenly got changed into a Night Fury. He ended up landing on his back and staring at his paw. I felt a strange sense of shock and confusion for a second. I shook my head, that has to be him, somehow.
"Now that's as Hiccup a move as I'll ever see" I said as I started walking over to him.
"What?"
"I said that that's as Hiccup a move as I'll ever see". I had to restrain myself from laughing at the image I had in my mind of the Night Fury staring at his paw on his back. He managed to roll himself onto his legs and examine his body, before trying to splutter out some sort of question. Now I had to stop myself from laughing out loud. "I asked the same thing" I joked as I started to walk around him, to see if there were any major differences between us, but in between a step I felt a wave of irritation slam into me for a moment, causing me to stumble for a moment. Well, that was weird.
"Why am I a Night Fury?" Hiccup asked. I stopped my circling in front of him then gave him a slight shrug, before gesturing to what I could see in the fire behind him. "No idea, but it has probably got something to do with that" I replied.
He stared at the egg fragments for a few seconds before spinning around to face me, wide-eyed. "An egg? Did I…? Did you…? I mean, did we just…?"
I cut him off to stop his panic from rising "Yes, I think we just hatched." The look on his face was just priceless, I couldn't stop myself from laughing at him. "It would explain why you're so small!". I could feel my tail slapping the floor in my laughter, and my eyes were blurring again, so I didn't notice the signs Hiccup was showing.
A flash of anger was the only warning I got as Hiccup launched himself at me, tackling me into one of the pillars. I was caught so off guard by this that I could not prevent myself from hitting the pillar head first. A dull ache echoed in my head from where I hit, but it did not stop me from squirming out of the tackle and biting down slightly on his foreleg, not hard enough to do any serious damage though. Hiccup yelped as I clamped on, but then I pulled back as I felt a small pain in my leg. Looking down at it I realised something. He didn't get near my leg… so why did it hurt? I thought, very confused.
We pulled back simultaneously, not saying anything over our surprise, mine over the random pain, Hiccup over his tackle. Hiccup broke the silence first. "Did your leg hurt when you bit mine?" Obviously he had recognised what I was thinking, so I simply nodded. His eyes narrowed with what he said next "Hmmm. When your head got hit, I felt something at the same time, on my head. You felt something on your leg when you bit mine… ever heard of this before?"
"Nope, never" My eyes narrowed accusingly "Wait, you felt angry before you tackled me, didn't you."
"Yeah, I was getting a bit mad at you" Hiccup looked at the floor sheepishly for a moment, before his head shot up. "Wait, how did you know? You was too busy laughing at me!"
I tilted my head curiously before answering "Just before you tackled me I felt angry. It just…came. I had no reason to feel angry so maybe it was yours."
Hiccup snorted slightly, and turned away from me slightly before replying. "So we felt each others pain and feel each others emotions. That just sounds crazy. And stupid. And ridiculous. Do you want me to go on?"
"I know, I know. But its not like anything else makes sense! And I think that it is only strong emotions that we shared."
I shrugged before continuing "Heck, we both got turned into Night Fury hatchlings, so anything is possible!" I finished off by nudging his shoulder affectionately.
Hiccup visibly brightened at my nudge, and pushed out a small laugh before adopting a serious look. "Yeah, but this is quite a shock to me, bud. I don't know how much more I can take before I break from it all." He finished off by rolling his eyes.
Just as Hiccup finished talking I heard a small squeak, and muffled breathing off to the side. Clearly Hiccup had as well because both of our heads snapped to whatever was making the noise, to see a massive door open, and a huge boy standing there with a large dragon that I did not recognise perched on his shoulder.
Beside me I heard Hiccup say in Norse "What in Odin's name is going on?!"
Clearly Hiccup was about to break.
AN: Ok, so Hiccup and Toothless can feel each others pain and can sense strong emotions from the other. I've done this because it will be essential for their survival in the future (evil cackle) and cos I felt like doing it...
Anyway, I still haven't decided on their names yet so please give me your ideas