Chapter 7

Hiccup

It was confusing. He didn't really sleep. Sleep was more peaceful than this. But he was still, and he rested. Where was he again? What had happened? Oh yes he had smashed Astrid's head with his tail when she had tried to hurt Toothless. That had been fun. She wouldn't be happy when she woke up. Wait. He didn't have a tail. Did he? Maybe he did. No humans didn't have tails. But he did. Or did he? Was he a human? No he was a dragon. Or maybe he was a human. Toothless! He was a human. No wait. Toothless was a dragon. But then he would have to be a human. Yes, Toothless was a dragon. Was he a dragon? Was he Toothless? No! He was Hiccup! Yes! Of course! He was a human! And Toothless was a dragon! Toothless had hit Astrid with his tail! But then… If Toothless had hit Astrid, why did he, Hiccup, remember doing it? Was he Toothless? No.

Now things were starting to go in circles. Why was it so dark? Maybe he WAS asleep. In that case he needed to wake up! Slowly, very slowly, he started to open his eyes.

His gaze was met with a black scaled surface. Next he would try to raise his hand. Unfortunately, he never got that far. The second his eyes were fully open, his head exploded in agony. Images began to appear before him, before quickly evaporating to be replaced by new ones. It felt as if he had remembered several thousand things that he had forgotten, all at once.

He was soaring above a land made of ice, blanketed in snow, being nuzzled by a huge dark presence that felt like home. He was falling from a very high place, with his wings spread uselessly at his sides. He was spitting fire at an enormous white furred cat. He was being wrapped in tendrils of leather and he could not move. This last image stayed and he fell down, down, down, screaming as he went. Then he crashed into the trees and carved a furrow of destruction down the side of a hill, pain lanced upwards through his tail and all went dark again.

Then a voice through the darkness.

"Hiccup! Hiccup are you alright? Hiccup say something! You're awake I know you are! Answer me dammit!"

With a Herculean effort he tried to lift his eyelids for a second time. The pain was starting to fade a bit from his head. Unfortunately, this only allowed him to become aware of another pain. A burning pain. It felt as if someone was shoving a red hot poker into his shoulder. The heat was awful. Then his eyes finally obeyed his will, and opened. Instead of that dark scaly surface, he was faced with a large scaly face, with eyes of a very light green, and a look of concern so deep that it frightened him. Then he finally managed to unlock his jaw, and mutter a few words.

"Wha… Happen…" He took a deep breath and swallowed. His throat felt like it had been vigorously scrubbed with a sanding file. "Toothless? Are you ok?" The look in his friend's eyes was close to panic. Suddenly a voice reverberated through his confusing slew of memories;

"Am I ok! Am I OKAY?! Are you insane?! I just pulled an ax out of your shoulder an hour ago, and you ask me if I'M ok!"

Great. Now he was hearing voices. This was just great. Maybe he had hit his head on the way down.

"You did actually. I was reacted too slowly to catch you. I did deal a pretty good wallop to that bitch over there though."

As these words popped into his head, Toothless' eyes darted to the side and his mouth contorted slightly into a snarl. He turned his head slightly, and his shoulder gave a particularly painful throb. There, next to a boulder, he could see the crumpled form of a human.

Ahh. So that was why Astrid hadn't made any progress towards killing Toothless.

"The more important question is, are YOU okay?"

Gods he hurt. He realized that it wasn't just his shoulder. His entire body hurt. And the pain was fluctuating. Every second the pain seemed to get more intense, and then ebb away. It was like a rhythm, very steady. It felt like a heartbeat. Wait. Every single fluctuation of pain he felt, was in precise time, with his heartbeat.

With every contraction of his heart, burning pain shot all throughout his body. It felt as if there was liquid fire, pulsing through his veins. Every beat inflicted new burns, yet now, as he struggled to sit up, and inspected his hands and arms, he could find no evidence of damage to his flesh. He turned to Toothless, who was staring at him with a strange emotion in his eyes. It looked... happy. No more than that it was exuberant.

"What?"

XXX

Toothless

It was one of the most severely disorienting things he had ever experienced. One moment, he had been lying quietly beside Hiccup, waiting for him for him to awaken from the unnaturally deep sleep that the wound seemed to have induced, the next moment, he had felt a nudge. Not a physical nudge like something pushing at his scales, but a push against his mind.

It was something that he had not experienced in more than thirty winters. He could remember feeling a similar caress against his thoughts when he was only a hatchling. That of course had been his mother. She had touched his mind about a month after he was out of the shell. She had shared things with him that would shape his life. The feel of the air beneath his wings, the smell of the bears that roamed the ice.

The important things. The things that he needed to survive. She had shown him her love, beyond any shadow of a doubt. Then only a season after his hatching, his mother had been ripped away from him and he'd been forced into the solitary life of his kind seasons early.

When he felt that nudge, that little push against his consciousness, it was almost like feeling his mother again, and he reacted exactly like he used to. He opened his mind wide and let it flow outwards toward the foreign presence. All of his memories, his thoughts and feelings over all of the time that he was away, he would share them all.

He started with one of his most prominent memories, his very first flight over the ice of his homeland. Then he reverted to his youth, being nuzzled by his mother, after that he moved on, forward through his life. His very first free fall from the high cliffs, then his first encounter with an ice cat. He ended with one of the most important things that had ever happened to him.

The restraints of Hiccup's inventions surrounding him, enveloping him, and then his fall to the earth below. It was then that he finally felt a response from the foreign mind.

But it was nothing like his mother's mind. It was small. Weak. And it was only experiencing one thing. Pain. It offered no thoughts or feelings of its own besides the pain. And the pain stemmed from the memories that he was forcing into it. He withdrew with a start. This was not his mother. But there were no other Night Furies anywhere near here. Who else could it be. Then he caught a single image. A tiny thread of memory from the foreign mind.

It was a memory of falling, falling straight down from a point of safety, to the cold ocean below. Then, a shadow. Far above was a silhouette of wings. Black as night. It slowly became larger, until it appeared as a Night Fury. The mighty jaws opened, and the teeth retracted. Then the jaws clamped down on a leg. A human leg.

This could only be a memory from Hiccup. This was impossible. No other creature of the land or sky could commune in this way. Every hatchling tried of course. As soon as they met a creature different from themselves, they would try to connect with any creature they met. The foreign creatures mind could be sensed, but it never responded. It was like conversing with a stone. It was there, and it could be felt and action could be inflicted on it, but it never responded.

Now he felt a new mind. One that was different from any other Night Fury he had previously encountered, yet vaguely similar at the same time. It could only be Hiccup. It had his memory.

But then… That was how he had heard Hiccup without him even opening his mouth. Hiccup had thought, and he had heard. Not only that, Hiccup had responded! The boy had heard him speak!

"Hiccup! Hiccup are you alright? Hiccup say something! You're awake I know you are! Answer me dammit!"

He hadn't meant to sound so angry but he was scared. He stared down at Hiccup's face, his eyelids were slowly rising. Soon they were completely open. And then the boy demonstrated his seemingly limitless ability for absurdity.

"Wha… Happen… Toothless? Are you ok?"

The wretched child showed no ability whatsoever to care about himself! How dare he! What if the scrawny human had died? Where would that leave HIM? Alone. Alone and left to wander the earth without purpose.

"Am I ok! Am I OKAY?! Are you insane?! I just pulled an ax out of your shoulder an hour ago, and you ask me if I'M ok!"

Hiccup's thoughts spun. The boy obviously didn't believe that it was he, Toothless speaking to him. His thoughts turned to speculations about hitting his head.

"You did actually. I was reacted too slowly to catch you. I did deal a pretty good wallop to that bitch over there though."

As he said it he felt his lips pull back into a snarl and he looked towards the offending pile of disoriented flesh. Then he looked back at Hiccup.

"The more important question is, are YOU ok?"

Hiccup was in pain. Constant thrumming pain. To him it felt like he was being burned, with every pulse of his heart. Toothless did not know what it was like to be burned. Dragon scales were completely proof against fire. But now he shared the feeling of burning with his rider. And though he had never known the feeling of burning before, this sensation felt familiar.

He sensed his own heartbeat, so much slower than Hiccup's. Each pulse of blood through his own body was a warming tingle. This was far too strange. Then Hiccup turned away from Astrid and looked at him.

"What?"

"Hiccup. I know you can hear me." he kept his thoughts even, even though he felt so happy that the tips of his wings were twitching. "You can hear me. You shouldn't be able to, but you can. You don't have any mental endurance, so you couldn't block me if you tried, but I still wish to ask your permission. May I have entry to your mind?"

Hiccup's eyes widened. And then the boy fell backwards onto the ground, apparently, unconscious. Toothless let out a sigh. This would be difficult. The sun's light was beginning to fade from the sky and the stars were appearing in the east. Well at the very least this was more comfortable. It had been hard to adjust to Hiccup's life. His human was active during the day. He had forced himself to adhere to the new and backwards life. Now he was finally awake at the proper time.

There came a muffled cough from the lump of disheveled flesh that was Astrid. He felt his eyes narrow, and he acted quickly. Gently he lifted his human in his mouth, teeth retracted, and leapt for the other side of the cove. The night was his element. He and Hiccup would seem to have vanished.

The human girl groaned and shifted, then froze. She got to her feet, probably in as quiet a manner as she could manage. All the while she was clutching her head and looking around. She probably expected him to leap from the shadows and devour her. She would probably taste awful. All that clothing and leather. Ugh. It took her about a half hour, but she finally found the crevice in the rock and scrambled back to the forest above.

He waited until he was certain that she wouldn't be able to see the light, and burned a bed of ash into the ground. He wrapped Hiccup tightly in his legs and wings, and kept watch over the cove, which was now bathed in the silver light of the moon. Hiccup stirred.

He said that he would await Hiccup's permission, but he was just too curious. Slowly, ever so slowly, he reached out towards Hiccup's thoughts. Dreams were spinning through the boy's small mind. He watched the dreams twist and leap, appear and disappear. The mind felt so fragile, so very tiny. He made sure that none of his own thoughts would overflow into Hiccup's.

He had caused Hiccup great pain today. Hiccup was feeling pain even now. It was a tone that overlaid all of the dreams that spun through his mind. Was that his fault too? He hoped not.

Then all of Hiccup's scattered dreams congealed and became a single image. Hiccup was dreaming of him, Toothless. And the things he felt were incredible. It was an affection so intense, it didn't even deserve the name affection. It was love. There was no better description.

He smiled down at his boy, sleeping curled in his embrace. Sorting out all of these feelings when Hiccup woke up was going to be complicated. Not only that, but as he stared down at Hiccup, his own possessive thoughts intensified. He'd felt possessive before, but now, he felt as if he would never allow the boy to leave his side. Anyone or anything with ill intentions that came near HIS Hiccup, would suffer death.

Or worse.