I'm rather proud of myself for posting another chapter so soon. XD This chapter put up quite a struggle though; I had a very difficult time writing it. I made many, many edits to it. Hopefully, it'll still be to your satisfaction. :) Oh, and exciting news: this story has now had over 10,000 hits! Thank you so much for the continued support! Enjoy. ^_^

The Death Line by SilverstarsEbonyskies

Ch. 10: Turning Point

"What," Fang spat, temper flaring, "Are you doing?"

Hiccup shuffled back up to a sitting position. "Um, well. You see-"

"You shouldn't be here!" Fang shouted, beginning to scale the house.

"Ah, do you mind being a little quieter? It's better not to make a scene..." Hiccup looked around nervously, glad that, for the moment, no one else was in sight.

Fang jumped up onto the roof and took a menacing step forward.

"Why? So that you're not discovered?" Fang fumed, "I should make a scene! I should draw everyone here, yell as loudly as I can because YOU. SHOULDN'T. BE HERE."

"Shhhhhh!" Hiccup hissed, flailing wildly, "Please! Please be quiet."

Fang drew a knife hidden his his boot and brandished it at Hiccup's neck. "In fact, I should kill you right here for having the...the utterly stupid audacity of sneaking into the village! Landing on my roof! Do you have any idea what you're doing? Do you have any sense? It's...it's my duty to-I'm obligated to kill you now!"

"Toothless-"

"Don't call me that!" Fang shouted, "That is not my name! My name is Fang, you absolute idiot!"

Fang saw Hiccup's head drop and his shoulders slump in defeat and felt strangely bad about it. He tried, he really did, to stay mad, but his anger cooled without his permission. Fang suddenly felt a little ridiculous, standing on the roof of his house and waving a knife.

"You shouldn't, couldn't, have expected a warm welcome." Fang muttered, resigned. He re-sheathed his knife, but kept his gaze razor sharp.

"Heh, no, not really," Hiccup replied, lifting his head, a small rueful smile spread across his lips, "I...don't know what I was hoping to do, really."

Fang scoffed, unsurprised by this revelation. "So why did you come? This is stupid and suicidal."

"I...I had to see what this place was like," Hiccup admitted, eyes combing over the landscape around him, all the huts and houses, the fences and fire pits, "All my life, and I've never seen another village." Hiccup met Fang's eyes. "Isn't that a little sad? I'd never left Berk. Ever."

"So? You feel a touch of wanderlust and decide to visit a town of people that won't will kill you on sight?" Fang questioned, skeptical and more than a little irritated.

"You hesitated." Hiccup pointed out, "And y'know," Hiccup continued, "This town looks so similar..." He shook his head. "The layout's different, and the ground's less rocky and tiered, but all the buildings are built the same way. I bet the people...I bet the people act the same, go about the same chores..."

Hiccup fell silent after that, overcome with some deep emotion Fang couldn't identify. Fang almost felt compelled to leave him to his musings, but their situation wouldn't let him. He had to speak.

"You need to go," Fang said bluntly, unsure why he was even being this kind,"Leave now. You were lucky, most of the people are on the other side of town, preparing the corpses, and my father's on night watch, but your luck won't hold out if you push it so far. You will get get killed if you stay."

"I can't." Hiccup mumbled.

"...what?" Fang asked, "For gods sakes, why not? You are putting your life in danger with every second you're here."

"Haha, I'm glad you're so worried for me," Hiccup chucked darkly, "but I can't go back. Not yet, anyways."

"Explain yourself," Fang demanded in impatience.

"The group that's bringing the dead back to your village, they were spooked about something and talking about searching the Death Line. It was easy to hide from them when they were all clumped together, but if they're going to spread out, trying to find something..."

"Missing corpses." Fang said.

"What?"

"There are whispers in the village about a corpse-stealer. Bodies have been going missing. And not just a couple." Fang's face darkened as he spoke, "Adder has been trying to cover a lot of things up lately-"

The sound of far-off voices arguing interrupted Fang. People were coming. He cursed, looked at Hiccup, and cursed again.

For a second, Fang deliberated, caught in indecision, but he made his choice, jumped off the roof, rolling to break his fall, and motioned for Hiccup to follow him. Hiccup clumsily, and agonizing slowly in Fang's mind, made his way down the side of Fang's house. At Fang's frantic urging, Hiccup finally dropped to the ground, narrowly avoided twisting his ankle in the process.

Fang quickly grabbed his arm and pushed him into the house, following immediately behind and slamming the door closed. Fang heard the voices grow closer and then slowly fade away. The people were gone. Fang gave a small smile in relief.

Suddenly, the weight of what he had done fell over him.

"What am I doing," he groaned, leaning against the door, close to feeling sick.

"What do you mean?" Hiccup asked, clueless.

"What do I mean." Fang echoed hollowly, "I mean I'm hiding the enemy. I'm acting against my clan. I'm...this is...this is traitorous. I could be banished, killed, for this." Fang laughed bitterly, "But you make it so gods damned easy to forget that you're the enemy."

Hiccup quickly got over his shock at Fang's admission.

"Well, why should we be enemies?" Hiccup asked earnestly,"Our clans have been fighting for gods know how long, but does anyone even remember why? Is there even a reason anymore? We're each taught to believe that the other is a monster. But that's wrong. Everything we know about each other is wrong. So why are we all doing this?"

"Because this is the way things are," Fang snapped.

"But they don't have to be." Hiccup retorted, trying desperately to get Fang to see things his way.

"And who's going to change the way things are?" Fang demanded derisively, whirling to face Hiccup, "Me? You? What difference could you or I possibly make?" Fang snarled, "Whatever our small talents, we are powerless."

Hiccup tried to interject, but Fang cut him off. He had to finish what he was going to say. Because it was true. Because, as cruel as the gods could be, it was true.

"In the eyes of our clans, we are nothing."

After a good while of extremely uncomfortable silence, Fang ushered Hiccup upstairs, saying that his father would probably be relieved of his night watch duty fairly soon. And if he was going to break the laws of his clan, Fang said, than he was at least going to do it well. Being caught was not an option.

Hiccup was currently sprawled on the floor, staring blankly at the ceiling and contemplating something terrible. Why did associating with one of the most interesting people he'd ever met mean betrayal? Hiccup had acted without thinking nearly this entire night, and acted against the express wishes of his own father. His father...he would break apart if he found out what Hiccup had done. The villagers, if they ever knew, would demand his blood. They had no love for him. The truth of this tore at Hiccup's chest, but Hiccup couldn't bring himself to regret his actions. He couldn't.

"Hiccup," Fang said, cutting through his thoughts, voice urgent, "What is that?"

Hiccup sat up and looked where Fang was staring. One of the scales had fallen partway out of his pocket. It gleamed in the dim candle's light. Hiccup grabbed it and held it out to Fang.

"I'm not sure. I found a bunch of them down in the Death Line though. There were even more, but I didn't have enough space..."

Fang snatched the scale and stared at it intently, looking at it every which way. He brought out the one he found, comparing them side to side. They looked very similar, almost identical. The same strange, shimmery shade of blue.

"Oh, you found one too?" Hiccup said.

"This one I found in the stream. I never would have thought to check the Death Line for these..." Fang lost himself in contemplation. "What could this mean...?"

Hiccup got up to study the scales along with Fang, bringing out the others in his pockets in the hopes that they'd off some extra insight. They were all of the same hue, but some, while all relatively large in comparison to normal scales, were of variable size.

"Look at how curved this one is," Hiccup commented, tracing the edge, "I think...I think maybe this creature has limbs. It's probably not a type of fish, so it could be an amphibian or reptilian sort of animal. Eh, strike amphibian. It spends too much time in the Death Line for that..."

"I...didn't know you were so educated," Fang said, astonished. "And to be able to tell so much information from so little..."

"Ah well, y'know, I don't have much potential for physical strength, so I just sort've spent most of my time with books and things. I'd go outside and sketch animals and stuff in spring, and research things from the dusty old books that no one else would bother to read all the other seasons."

"That's impressive." Fang said.

"You really think so?" Hiccup said, surprised, "My father would always shake his head when he saw me with a book instead of a sword..."

Their conversation faded into awkwardness. Both Fang and Hiccup stared at the scales, unsure of where to go from there. There was an inherent sense of rightness when they lost themselves in their conversations. It's like they had known each other for years. But when the talking ceased, they were always reminded of what they were, and why they shouldn't be talking. They were enemies, they should be fighting, killing each other, not conspiring together.

When they first met in the Death Line, Hiccup should have killed Fang. When Hiccup let Fang go, Fang should have killed Hiccup. But they didn't. They chose to walk a different path.

"Hey, Toothless?" Hiccup asked.

The nickname still rankled Fang, but he let it slide at the quaver in Hiccup's voice.

"Yeah?"

"Are we friends?" Hiccup was fidgeting, and refusing to make eye-contact. He almost seemed scared.

Friends? The suggestion surprised him. Fang didn't normally think or care about these things. He was a loner. He avoided people, and they avoided him in turn. Fang didn't make friends, therefore he'd never had any. So Fang had to seriously consider this question. His answer, he could sense, would change things irrevocably. He could turn Hiccup away, turn him out, leave him, reject him. Fang had never needed friendship before. Why would he need friendship now? Why would he agree to be friends with someone like him? Would Fang dare stray so far from his plans? So far from the path he'd vowed to take when he was but a child?

"I suppose we are." Fang replied. He was astounded, scared, exhilarated at his choice.

They were supposed to be enemies, not friends, but they were different, always had been.

They walked a different path.