Disclaimer: I own nothing you recognise; if you're on this site, you know the drill. Also, thanks are owed to athingofvikings, who gave me a much-appreciated sounding-board for a few aspects of my planned world-building for this particular crossover; hope you like it.

Feedback: Appreciated as always.

The Dragon of Wanheda

"And you're sure you don't mind?" Clarke looked anxiously at where Charlotte was squatting in the foundations of what would become her hut, on one of the rock pillars closest to the edge of the main camp. "I mean, it's not like I wanted another dragon, and I'm still going to be going around on Griffin…"

"Well, you wouldn't exactly be the first of us to basically have a second dragon, you know," Hiccup assured her, even as he looked at the grinning purple Gronckle in front of the group. "Granted, most of ours don't hang around after we've trained them…"

"You've trained other dragons? Personally, I mean?"

"Not in the sense that we've spent a long time with them, but we've spent a few days with some wild dragons that we ended up training to a degree," Hiccup conceded. "Ruffnut bonded with a Scauldron a while back, Tuffnut and I each ended up training the first Typhoomerang we found at different points in his life… we have our personal partners, but that doesn't mean we haven't let ourselves train a few other dragons as well."

"So long as I'm not being… greedy," Clarke smiled tentatively as Charlotte looked up at her with a broad grin. Even after the other Gronckles had left the Edge to return to Dark Deep, Charlotte seemed to have become particularly attached to Clarke and had chosen to remain with her, and Griffin appeared to be resigned to the additional figure in Clarke's life.

"Eh, one extra Gronckle's not that big a deal," Snotlout shrugged, before he looked impatiently at Clarke. "Now are we going to put this thing together or is it going to stay on paper?"

"Oh, we're doing this," Clarke grinned as she pulled out her completed plans for her hut. "I didn't send the twins off to get all that wood to give up now that we're all here."

"You know, for your first job at drawing up this kind of plan, you've actually done a good job," Astrid observed, giving Clarke an approving smile. "I mean, obviously you had to take a few ideas from our own plans, but if this is your first time creating something like this you did a good job."

"I've always been keen on art," Clarke explained, returning Astrid's smile with her own as she took back her sketch. "I never exactly considering architecture as a career because there wasn't really the opportunity to do anything like that on… the ship… when I was growing up, and I'm not sure I could come up with anything on my own, but this is basically just taking what works for your huts and bringing the subsequent drawing to 'life'…"

"OK, fascinating stuff, but can we just get on with putting this all together?" Snotlout asked, kicking a foot against the pile of wood.

"Snotlout," Hiccup and Astrid said simultaneously, Astrid reaching over to slap the back of Snotlout's head.

"Thanks," Clarke nodded at the other girl before she held up her plans. "Let's get down to business; Hiccup, if you would…?"

"Snotlout, you're on foundation-digging duty," Hiccup said as he clapped his hands together. "Clarke, you supervise his efforts and make sure he sticks to your planned measurements; Astrid and I can prepare the wood we've gathered so far for the main construction effort, and Fishlegs can help the twins put the bridge together once they get back…"

The next few days were spent gathering more raw material for Clarke's new hut, starting with the obvious step of cutting down additional trees and progressing to gather rocks and other materials for the walls and roof. Fortunately the Edge already had raw materials for the roof as part of the surplus material they'd brought with them from Berk in case they needed to repair existing houses, so all Clarke had to 'worry' about was getting together enough to create the right look. She had obviously been expected to chip in when the time came to actually prepare the wood, but Hiccup and Fishlegs were patient instructors and helped her do the job well enough, while Astrid showed that her skill with an axe went beyond its use in combat as she cut the gathered wood into appropriately-sized pieces.

Once the initial framework had been completed, Hiccup, Astrid and Snotlout helped Clarke build the hut itself, while the twins had been given the responsibility of putting together the bridge that would link the pillar to the main outpost, since they had to least have an alternative to dragonback for accessing the hut. Fishlegs had been willing to help with the hut itself, but on Hiccup's suggestion, he ended up coordinating the twins' efforts on the bridge, as it was easy for him and Meatlug to maintain a stationary position and take a look at the bridge from different angles to be sure the twins hadn't missed anything.

As for the hut itself, as the building took proper shape, Clarke found herself making various minor adjustments to her original plans, but she was grateful that Astrid and Fishlegs had at least confirmed to her that the basic structure would be fine before they had started work in earnest. She'd needed to revise her original draft to give Charlotte a place to rest in the hut as well once the purple Gronckle decided to stay, but the dragon seemed to be content with just being a creature of leisure rather than an active participant in events in the Edge, so at least Clarke wouldn't have to adjust her training schedule.

The building work went so well that Clarke had even managed to find the time to get a few language lessons from Hiccup and Fishlegs as they worked, particularly when they needed to prepare the wood for the construction as Astrid was the best qualified in that area. Clarke was relieved to find that the actual language wasn't that hard to pick up, although she guessed that was mostly because she was dealing with a 'language' that had originally been intended as just part of the role-playing games in the Sanctuary rather than actual old Norse. There were a range of terms she guessed had been taken from the original language based on some of the more consistent runes, but most of the time, like with Trigedasleng, she could make a reasonable guess at the intended meaning of certain words and just be a little 'off'.

The bridge to her hut was basically finished after a couple of days, which left all seven of the Riders free to focus on making the hut itself, completing the job just another couple of days later. As Clarke had originally planned, the central hut included a secondary room that could basically act as an infirmary if anyone on the Edge needed medical attention, and the main area included a blank wall for any artwork she felt inclined to create, as well as a bed and desk for furniture. The bed was basically just wooden boards with a blanket and a kind of bag thing that seemed to serve the same purpose as a pillow, but after sleeping on rough ground Clarke could cope with a hard surface so long as it was a flat one. The desk included a few drawers for any medical supplies she might need, and Hiccup had provided her with some papers from his own room so that she could make notes. Fishlegs had even volunteered to help teach her how to write in runes as well in case anyone ever needed to read her medical notes when she wasn't available, which left Clarke feeling truly struck by how easily she'd fallen into her current role as the team's medic.

She might have spent so much time trying to be the leader to the Ark because she didn't trust anyone else to do the job, but after seeing Hiccup in action, it was reassuring to know that she could focus on her original plans to take over for her mother as a medic rather than have to take responsibility for everyone's lives on a constant basis. She might still take responsibility for peoples' lives as a doctor, but at least she only had to focus on saving them from their current injury rather than try to keep them from making stupid large-scale mistakes…

In the end, the work was completed so quickly that Clarke could only wonder at how long it must have taken the original residents of this area to become so used to reassembling their homes after dragon attacks if her new friends could do it this quickly even after years of relative peace. Compared to the other huts on the Edge, hers was relatively simple in design, lacking a dragon figurehead and basically resembled a standard wooden house, but there were a pair of secondary buildings on either side, one to be the infirmary once Clarke had time to put it together and the other serving as a private nest for Charlotte.

"Nice," Clarke said, looking around the building in approval.

"Good design," Astrid nodded at her in approval as she took in the hut herself before she looked back at Clarke. "Anyway, there's nothing planned in particular for the next couple of days, so we'll give you some time to settle in while we deal with things out here, but let us know if it turns out you need anything else, OK?"

"Check," Clarke nodded, giving Astrid a grateful smile before the other blonde walked out, leaving the former Ark resident to take in her new home with a growing smile.

It might not be a big house compared to what had existed on Earth before the nuclear war, but this was still the first place she'd ever had that Clarke could truly call her own home. She'd shared quarters with her parents back on the Ark, the dropship had obviously belonged to everyone, and during the war with Mount Weather she'd never really picked out a place for herself but just slept wherever it was convenient.

OK, so she still had to share a semi-public toilet area with the other Riders, but considering the basic design of the huts she hadn't exactly expected them to include a more modern drainage system no matter how brilliant Hiccup was, and it was better than squatting in the woods…

"What am I doing?" Clarke shook her head, grinning in a bemused manner as she turned around in her hut before she saw Charlotte looking curiously at her from her new nest. "I have my own house for the first time in my life, and I'm thinking about toilets?"

Laughing at the sheer ridiculousness of it, she practically leapt onto the bed and lay down on it, staring up at the ceiling with a grin.

"This is my bed," she said, feeling a need to proclaim it as she sat up and looked around the room again. "These are my walls." She stood up and walked over to the room's other items of furniture. "This is my desk." She went over to the infirmary area with a proud smile; it just consisted of a couple of basic beds and some shelves she'd need to stock up later, but she could work on that soon enough. "This is my infirmary."

Sitting down on the chair that accompanied that desk, Clarke spread her hands across it and grinned again as she looked over at Charlotte, who was looking at her curiously from the corner. "And this… this is my home."

Charlotte let out a sound that seemed like an expression of pleasure, prompting Clarke to smile at her in turn. "Yeah, you can stay here too; just be sure to get in some exercise when I'm off with Griffin."

As though summoned by his name, a subtle thump from outside was followed by the dragon in question poking his head through her door, looking around the hut before his gaze settled on her and he let out a curious rumble.

"Yeah, this is where I'll be sleeping from now on," Clarke replied, standing up from the desk and walking over to give Griffin's face a hug. "It's been kind of fun spending time on that tower, but I need somewhere more comfortable and… well, more me."

Griffin looked around the hut once again before his gaze returned to Clarke and he let out an approving rumble, even as he rolled his eyes in a certain manner.

"Hey, just because you can sleep outside wherever you want doesn't mean I can," she countered. "I've basically been dependent on someone else to give me somewhere to live for most of my life; now that I've got somewhere just for me…"

Clarke's voice trailed off as she lay back on the bed again, only to be surprised when Griffin's head was suddenly resting on her stomach, a low rumble in his throat as he looked at her. Clarke thought about moving him aside for a moment, but the comforting warmth of her dragon's head… the growing sense of belonging she felt as she rested here… the knowledge that she was in her own home at last…

She wouldn't even realise that she had dozed off until she woke up the following morning as the sun rose, Griffin's head still resting on her chest and Charlotte squatting alongside the bed with what looked like a sleepy grin on her face. For a moment, Clarke was reminded both of her occasional childhood sleepovers with Wells (before he became old enough that their parents found that kind of behaviour inappropriate) and of old films where people slept with their pets, as she watched the two dragons slumber around her.

Her life would never be normal, but right here, for this moment, she could almost imagine that this was the kind of life she could enjoy here on Earth, as opposed to constantly struggling to prove herself to everyone else and make people find peace when they seemed to prefer trying to kill each other…

Back in his own cabin, Hiccup thoughtfully studied some of the items he'd retrieved from the mysterious ship once used by Clarke's people. The metal samples the Riders had collected to use for the dragon armour was easy enough to modify once he got the forge to the right temperature, even if he'd needed some help from Toothless to get a hot enough flame to make it suitably malleable, but it was everything else he'd found that had left him wondering.

He still wasn't sure what the strange black oblong things he'd found in a few areas actually was; the best analogy he could come up with was an odd mix of glass and something else he didn't know the name of. They didn't seem to actually do anything when he examined them, and even the strange buttons he'd found didn't respond when he touched them, but he made a note to ask Clarke about them once they had the time to spare.

Right now, the thing that interested him the most was the design of the chairs he'd salvaged from the remains of that ship; Astrid and the twins had helped him transport a few of those chairs back so that he could look more closely at them, even if Barf, Belch and Stormfly had inadvertently torn up much of the strange leather-like design covering them with their claws. He'd given the twins a lecture on taking care once he'd seen the damage, but he'd already made a note to assure them that he wasn't that bothered about it in this case, as the damage had allowed him to take a better look at the padding inside the chairs that was the main reason he'd been interested in them in the first place.

"Yeah…" he nodded thoughtfully as he examined how the padding fitted into the metal of the chairs before turning his attention to the dragon armour he'd been assembling for Toothless. The armour fit will enough at the moment, but he could tell that Toothless didn't find it particularly comfortable, and he doubted the other dragons would like it any better. He'd need to find a better material to use if he wanted to make something like this for Hookfang, as this padding would never be able to survive being burnt whenever the Nightmare set himself on fire, but if he could get the stitches right, he might have solved the comfort problem while still giving the dragons some extra protection…

The armour, that sword idea, and the wingsuits? I'm definitely going to need to pass something on to someone else if I'm going to get all these done soon…

On the bright side, while two of those plans required experience in the forge that he was pretty sure only he could pull off, the third was a bit easier to hand on to someone else…