Chapter 7: Coming Back Around

Tracks: Where's Hiccup?/Coming Back Around
...

Hiccup isn't waking up.

It's been three days.

Toothless is worried.

The dragon had a hard time letting go of the boy once the smoke cleared and the Green Death was definitely dead. Once Stoick (Hiccup's dad, you know) approached, the Night Fury enlaced the boy a little harder in his limbs. The boy's faint beating of heart felt oddly comforting.
"SON!"

Kneeling fearlessly next to the black dragon, the tribe leader whispered, "Hiccup." Stoick sighed, "I did this."

A part of Toothless wants to agree with him wholeheartedly, but the stronger, Hiccup part of him, wanted to pat the man in the back, to tell him that it wasn't his fault. Though that'd be awkward since he has paws.

"I'm so… I'm so sorry," he said in a low, almost ashamed voice.

Good, Toothless thought weakly. Just like Astrid, Stoick apologized. Now, and only now, would he give the man what he wanted - just like he had done with the girl and the flight.

He slowly opened his wings to reveal the boy. The dragon almost felt bad for holding out on the father, for his relief was obvious at hearing the very same heartbeats that soothed Toothless.

"He's alive!" He announced. "You brought him back alive," Stoick said with wide green eyes, much like his son's.

Of course he brought him back alive. He's too fond of the little human for his own good, anyway.

With a faint nod, the dragon laid his head, exhausted.

Now, he is pacing around Hiccup's room, a chamber he has become used to in the last couple of days.

In truth, it's kind of boring to wait for your friend to wake up. He's alive, you know. Do humans usually sleep this much? Because Hiccup used to visit him every day, so he couldn't sleep for more than a single night!

His conclusion is, this much resting isn't natural, and even Hiccup's father vocalized his concern. Yesterday was the first time Stoick spoke to Toothless directly and in private. It was only sentence, but it was enough.

"I worry about him."

The dragon analyzed the phrase. It wasn't simply a state of mind, otherwise he would've said "I am worried about him."

Instead his words showed his concern was genuine and perpetual, and immediately Toothless decided to forgive everything. Forgive the Vikings of Berk, forgive Stoick, forgive everyone. What mattered, what truly mattered, was only the here and now. No use dwelling on past mistakes and offenses. And Stoick, from what he gathers (bits and pieces he picked up from dialogues on the previous days between Gobber, the blonde man, and Hiccup's father), committed quite a few mistakes with his son. But he always meant well – at least the dragon likes to think so – so he and the chief entered some sort of agreement. They'd at least try to get along, for Hiccup's sake - because it was pretty clear, from the moment he woke up, that there was no separating Toothless from the boy.

The dragon conveyed all of it through a nod of his head.

Stoick nodded back, and that was it.

Toothless nudges the freckled face with his snout to make Hiccup wake up faster.

It doesn't work.

The dragon looks through the room's window with a sigh. He really wishes his human would wake up, look around, say something sarcastic, and get up to walk around on his skinny -

Legs.

Except there aren't two now, are there?

The injury caused by the Dragon Leader's tail scared Toothless when he woke up, already on Berk. He started roaring and growled at each human who approached Hiccup, and in his irrational moment of overprotectiveness he didn't even hear Gobber saying that, if left untreated for much longer, his leg could get infected.

Oddly enough, the one who knocked some sense into him was Astrid.

The girl approached him with hands raised in sign of surrender, but her body language screamed awkward. It caught the Night Fury's attention for long enough to stop growling for a few moments. When he glanced at her blue eyes, usually so fearless, he understood why she was feeling strange.

She was nearly crying.

"Look," she whispered to the dragon, getting nearer to him than all the other villagers around them. "I know you can understand me. Hiccup talks to you. He's not crazy, so that means you understand us." She breathed deeply. "We need to get to Hiccup." Her voice was surprisingly firm for someone with eyes that moist. "He's hurt. Bad. And he needs our - well, her assistance," she glanced at an old woman who was standing beside Gobber and a fuming Stoick thirty feet away.

"He might... d-die if he doesn't get that leg looked at," her voice broke. "You don't want that any more than I do."

The dragon's eyes widened, and he finally understood how serious this was.

"Please, Toothless," she addresses him by his Hiccup-given name for the very first time.

And that did it.

Hiccup was taken away and now his left foot is somehow gone. The Night Fury is certainly glad he wasn't in the room when that happened - he's not sure he would've been able to handle it.

The boy is a cripple just like him now. What an odd pair they make.

But Toothless would sooner have a disabled friend than a dead one. He just feels sorry. Hiccup doesn't deserve to be punished in any way, not when he and his dragon just paid the whole island an enormous favor.

The Night Fury falls asleep. He is used to sleeping during the night now. Has it really been an entire afternoon? Well. He does tend to get lost in thought. The last few days were a lot to take in.

...

Astrid comes on the next day.

The fourth day, this is.

It's the first time he sees the girl since they came back. She looks way better than last time, at least. He remembers her wiping a single tear when Gobber took Hiccup into Stoick's house.

He assumed, taking in the context, that tears were something the humans used to express sadness. Dragons don't do that. They cry only once they gave birth, and even that was rare; most of them laid eggs. A mother's tears are licked by her babies when they are born, and it serves as nutrition until they are old enough to get their own food (which normally doesn't take more than a week).

Yeah, it is kinda gross if you ask Toothless. He doesn't even know how he knows that... So. Back to Astrid.

The girl greets him when she enters the room with a small smile and a "Hey, Toothless."

The dragon practically purrs. That's much better behavior than their first meeting.

She's carrying some sort of metal thing, and the Night Fury looks at it curiously.

"Oh, this?" She asks following his gaze to the object. "It's, uh... Gobber made it. For Hiccup."

At the dragon's tilted head, the girl explains further. "It's meant to help him walk. It's called a prosthetic. Like a metal peg leg, you know? Wood wouldn't work. He's at the forge all the time, it would catch fire easily – rots too often, too."

Astrid approaches him slowly – familiar, but not intimate. She sets the prosthetic down on the bed and kneels near Toothless. Her hand touches his metal tail fin.

"This," she looks into his eyes, "is like a peg leg."

Ohh.

He gets it now.

"So, about the other day," she began hesitantly, her eyes and hand dropping to the ground. Oh no. Are they really doing this now?

"It'll be our little secret, okay?" Astrid pleads, looking up at him again. "I know you'll find a way to tell Hiccup I was crying over him if you really want to, annoyingly enough," she half-smiles. The dragon is pleased. She knows of his massive intellect, then.

Her eyes widen suddenly. "Not that I was crying over him! Gods, that's not what I meant, at all..." The girl trails off as Toothless looks pointedly at her.

"It wasn't even proper crying," she arguments with a childish pout. Really, what's it to her? Can't she have feelings? Isn't she allowed to cry if she feels sad?

Studying this specimen was proving to be harder than he originally thought.

"Great, and now I'm talking to a dragon. I must be going crazy, or Hiccup's brushing off on me," she mumbles.

A low grumble and an indignant look from Toothless make her laugh. "Sorry! I just... I'm not used to it, you not being able to answer and everything."

If only she took a trip into his mind. She'd be surprised.

"So," she gets up from her kneeling position and makes her way to the bed. "You don't mind if I put this on him, do you?"
Why would he stop her, exactly? If it is meant to help Hiccup...

He's not that unfriendly and overprotective of the boy, you know.

After successfully strapping the attachment on the sleeping form, she takes a step back. Toothless approaches the bed to examine her work too.

"It's not that bad," she shrugs. "It may need some friction on the foot part though. Otherwise he'll just slip all over the place."

The dragon eyes her. She smirks. "You're right, it's Hiccup we're talking about. He'll probably slip anyway..."

Astrid trails off while looking at the sleeping boy. Toothless feels a change in the atmosphere as the room grows quieter, but maybe that's just his impression. Her smirk fades altogether and she acquires a pensive expression.

What can she be thinking about?

The blonde snaps out of it moments later, and her eyes are wide - but the emotion in them is a mystery to the dragon. She glances at him as if in fear of him finding out her train of thought.

Please. He's smart, not psychic.

At Toothless' clueless stare she relaxes visibly.

"I..." She breaks the silence abruptly and clears her throat. "I have to go. I'll tell Gobber to, um... To make some more pins on the foot to keep him from falling all over Berk."

Leaning down, she brushes Hiccup's hair away from his forehead and leaves a kiss there. Seeing the dragon's wide surprised eyes, she rolls hers. "Shut up," she says approaching the dragon again.

"Bye, Toothless," she pats him in the snout. The dragon doesn't even have time to react - she's already out the door.

Astrid doesn't ask him to keep the kiss a secret, but he decides to.

...

The next day, Hiccup wakes up.

Toothless can't very well blast inside the house (something he has a feeling he'll have to get used to), so he starts jumping up and down.
"Does my dad know you're here?" the boy asks worried.

Oh dear, dear, Hiccup. In what universe would Stoick be able to stop Toothless from being next to his best friend?

The Night Fury is so excited he manages to reach the beam he's been trying to hang on for five days.

"Toothless!" Hiccup sounds stern, as if the dragon is not supposed to be playing around. When he finally glances at the boy, both their content expressions fade.

Hiccup pulls the covers away, and the boy's breath catches in his throat softly. Toothless gets down from the beam and approaches the bed. He knows the feeling. The feeling of uselessness you get when you find out you're disabled. He was practically doomed. Unable to hunt, unable to fly. He would have certainly met his death if it wasn't for this skinny excuse of a Viking.

The dragon just hopes Hiccup isn't as depressed as he was when he found out.

But Toothless reckons the boy is stronger than him in many ways, and he is proved right when Hiccup gets up from his bed. It hurts – the metal is probably bothering his rosy skin, with half his weight being pressed onto it – but the human puts on a brave face and takes a step forward.

The Night Fury has never felt more proud of anyone than right now. Even though the boy slips – Gobber didn't have the time since yesterday to fix the little problem Astrid pointed out – the dragon catches him, and they know they can do this, as long as they're together.

...

Opening his front door, Hiccup encounters a - dragon?

"Whoah!" He closes the door behind him with a startle. "Toothless, stay here."

With wide eyes the boy makes his way out, intent on helping the village however he can.

Even if all the villagers scowl at him.

Even if there's a good chance of him making things worse.

Even having just lost half a leg in the process of protecting those people.

Hiccup still wishes to go out there and help in his own way – with his crazy 'inventions', whatever that means – and it amazes Toothless.

The dragon steps aside to watch over the boy through the window. He's taking in his surroundings slowly, probably arriving at the conclusion that Vikings and dragons now share an alliance. The Night Fury pushes the window open – no, that's not spying! It's… making sure Hiccup's okay. Yes, that's it. Toothless? Pfft. He's not nosy at all.

"I knew it," the freckled boy shrugged. "I'm dead!"

The human's idea of Valhalla was an island full of people smiling at him – as if happy to see him up and about – and dragons living peacefully with his own kin. This realization made Toothless' appreciation for the boy increase.

Stoick's booming laugh made the dragon flinch in surprise. Well, at least it was a chuckle, not a growl. To see the chief mad would truly make the Night Fury shake. He's not even a mature dragon by their standards – so the fully-grown man sort of… terrified him.

Hey, don't give him that look. The vast man is scary!

"No," Stoick assures. "But you sure gave it your best shot. So, what do you think?"

The boy opens his mouth, but nothing comes out.

"Look, it's Hiccup!" Someone shouts, and people start gathering around the confused teen.

"Turns out all we needed was a little more of… this," Stoick says, a proud glint in his green eyes.

"But you just gestured to all of me," Hiccup's eyes widen. Toothless wants to… do something. He doesn't know what sort of warm feeling this is – but he wants to pin the human down and roar at him affectionately, or lick his face with his scratchy tongue – whatever sounds less weird. He wants to express his fondness; but all of that can wait.

Let the boy have his well-deserved hero moment.

"Well," Gobber says as he approaches. "Most of you. That bit's my handiwork. With a little," he gestures broadly, "Hiccup-flair added to it. You think it'll do?"

The boy smiles. "I might make a few twigs."

And the relief on Hiccup's face at the sound of laughter – people are laughing with him, and not at him, for what Toothless assumes is the first time – makes the dragon want to push open the door and run towards him.

A punch on the teenager's arm stops him from doing so, though.

"That's for scaring me," Astrid clarifies.

Hiccup rubs the sore spot with a pout. "Wh-what, is it always gonna be this way? Cause –"

The girl interrupts him by pressing her lips to his. Well, there's one way of shutting the boy up that Toothless never thought of. Next time he starts blabbering, he'll just fly them over to Astrid so she can kiss him.

(Note to self: drop the investigations on the female specimen for lack of coherence of behavior.)

"…I could get used to it," Hiccup shrugs, intent on appearing nonchalant.

Hah. Toothless knows better.

Gobber approaches again – did he leave at all, or…? – with something attractively red.

"Welcome home," he says to the boy, and the dragon knows just how much Hiccup feels at home now on Berk. He knows because he feels exactly the same –

Wait is that a new tailfin?

Toothless dashes out the door as villagers scream in warning, "Night Fury!" and "Get down!" although these words now have a completely different meaning.

Hiccup cringes at the fallen Vikings behind his dragon and tries to give him a stern look.

Astrid laughs.

They couldn't go flying on that same day – the healer insisted – but they're able to on the day after, first thing in the morning. Hiccup attaches the new (and red!) tailfin, and Toothless can't wait for them to be up in the air. It's been a week since they last flew, but having Hiccup as the rider is definitely worth the wait. The dragon lowers and when the boy clicks his prosthetic into place, they're off.

The Night Fury soars happily, and he just knows Hiccup is smiling. The other dragons join him in the sky, and being accepted by them makes Toothless just as happy as flying again. He can't think of a better way to end things.

No, he counters. This isn't an ending, but a start.