Author's Note:An especially big thanks to Fizzlemcschnizzle for betaing this chapter in particular. The first half was a mess. And of course, thank you as always to reviewers, favorite-ers, and followers. I especially like any predictions as to where the story is going. It helps me gauge how subtle or obvious my writing is.

"Let's take this nice and slow..." Hiccup was nervous. They were flying, just gliding right now, over the ocean around the back side of Berk. No one to see them. Perfect weather. If something went wrong, it was almost certain to be his fault.

'I'm a Night Fury, what do you mean by slow?'

"Very funny. Just don't go top speed right off."

They slowly worked through some simple turns. Hiccup could see what he needed to do by looking at his cheat sheet. After some successful turns, Toothless gradually put Hiccup into faster and faster changes in tail position. He was keeping up, though he had to take time to think about what position was needed. They soared lower, under a large sea stack that naturally formed an arch, like a lot of the sea stacks in the area. Speaking of which... Hiccup hadn't been looking where they were going, and Toothless had to alert him to the fact that they were flying straight at the side of another arch.

'Watch out!'

"Sorry."

'No, I mean right now!'

"That was my fault." They had just bounced off of not one but two separate sea stacks in rapid succession, the first time because Hiccup wasn't been paying attention, and the second time because he was looking at his cheat sheet. As necessary as it was, Hiccup couldn't wait to have it memorized so he wouldn't have to look down. Toothless slapped him with his ear as payback. "Yeah, yeah, I'm on it."

They angled upwards, towards the clouds. Toothless pumped his wings harder than before, and they soared high, almost but not quite angled straight up.

"Oh, this is amazing. The wind in my..." Hiccup looked down- well, forward, given the angle they were at- and noticed at that moment his cheat sheet ripping loose. "...Cheat sheet! Stop!"

Toothless listened and responded without thought. The abrupt lack of forward momentum didn't carry over to the passenger of the Night Fury, who floated off of Toothless at the apex of their climb. And they both plummeted downwards. Separately.

Toothless was panicking.

Hiccup was also near panic, but he knew he needed to get back to the saddle to work the tailfin. He tried to angle himself towards the dragon but was knocked back by his flailing wings. Twice.

"Toothless, you've gotta angle yourself!" Hiccup saw an opening, and he leaned face first towards the saddle. They were almost out of time. He grabbed onto the saddle, hauled himself down into it, and slammed his foot into the pedal to open the tailfin to its fullest. They abruptly reoriented, skimming just over the trees of the mountainside forest, but they weren't slowing down, just turning the downward drop into an insane forward speed.

It was all they could do to fly straight and avoid crashing, but they quickly found themselves entering the most complex maze of sea stacks he had ever seen. He couldn't even see the far side from here. He looked down at the cheat sheet grasped in his whitened fingers, but the high wind from the breakneck speed made the madly fluttering thing impossible to read. He only had one idea now, and it didn't involve the cheat sheet. He let it go and accessed Toothless's perception. Because they were in so similar in view right now, it felt as if his eyes were expanding, his vision sharpening as he switched over. He was still looking at death quickly approaching, but sight wasn't what he was going for.

Like before he could vaguely feel Toothless's limbs, the extensions of his body. He couldn't control them, but in this state, he was aware of them in a different way. And that included the small stubs that were all that remained of Toothless's tailfin. Later he would ask about that, and Toothless would explain that sometimes he could feel the tailfin as if it was still there and that sometimes it hurt for no reason. Right now, he was focusing on how the now disconnected muscles twitched in response to what Toothless needed the tailfin to do. He concentrated entirely on this and ignored all of the carefully sorted information he had been memorizing. That was how flight worked in theory. In reality, all he needed to know was how moving his foot moved the tailfin. Toothless's instincts could take care of the rest, and he would let that guide him.

This was all done and realized in the few seconds before they entered the stone deathtrap.

Toothless began the horribly fast and complex maneuvers that were their only chance, but he fully expected to crash. No matter how smart Hiccup was, their combined reaction time was too slow. But somehow now they weren't. Through all the hairpin turns and dives through narrow crags, Toothless could feel the effects of his missing left tailfin responding as if he was controlling it himself. He even stopped telling Hiccup what they would be doing like he had been up until now in their less crazy maneuvers. There was no way Hiccup was reacting to what he had been saying, the tail moved in response before he could even call out the instructions for Hiccup to follow. He was entirely happy with this at the moment because it meant they could spiral, dive, and jackknife their way through the maze of pillars without splattering on a sea stack. They turned once more, and after almost a full thirty seconds of hurtling through the maze, they emerged from the pillars in one piece.

Toothless roared along with his rider and let out a celebratory fireball that exploded in front of him and expanded vibrantly, fading as it went. He realized at the last second that only one of them was covered in scales and instinctively flipped his tailfins up. He dropped, and they narrowly avoided the fire. Then he took a second to review what he had just done. He had instinctively moved both tailfins, forgetting that he was missing one... and they both had moved at the same time. 'How are you doing that?!'

They landed on a nearby island, so they could have a proper conversation.

"We survived!" Hiccup laughed triumphantly.

'Yes, and it was awesome.' Toothless turned his head to look at Hiccup, who was still in the saddle. 'Now I'm more interested in how. Are you reading my mind?' He turned in a small circle, trying to get at the rider on his back. He wanted to thank Hiccup properly for restoring his flight, and that would involve being able to reach his friend.

Hiccup laughed, knowing what Toothless had in mind, and made no move to dismount. "No, of course not. I'm using your senses. You still have a tiny bit of your other tailfin, and I can feel your muscles move whenever you want to move that fin. You still try to move it by reflex, or maybe instinct. I can tell what you want to do as soon as those muscles shift, and I just react to those changes, instead of thinking about what I should do." He looked at the hyper dragon still circling below him. "I'm not getting away from an involuntary bath, I can tell."

'Nope. Now get down here.'

After cleaning the spit off of his face, Hiccup turned to his friend. "Is there any other way to express gratitude for dragons?"

Toothless snorted. 'No, not really. Why would we need another way?'

Hiccup wiped an errant strand of saliva he had missed out of his hair. "Oh, no reason. I guess you guys don't have to worry about washing it out."

'To be honest, it really doesn't happen very often anyway.' Toothless looked down. 'Gratitude was never a big thing in the nest. More despair than anything else.'

"In that case, don't stop on my account." Hiccup sighed. "But I'm happy to have fixed what I broke, even if only partially."

Toothless was suddenly very interested in distracting his friend before Hiccup began blaming himself again, as he was prone to do. 'Well, we can definitely fly now.'

"That we can." Hiccup picked up on the change of subject. "Now what?"

They decided to spend some time fishing, dragon-style, now that Hiccup had figured out how to fly as naturally as Toothless could want. To Toothless, if he closed his eyes and ignored the weight on his back, he might be able to forget he was missing a fin. But he didn't want to forget. This way of flying was great! He spotted another school of fish and fired into the water. Once the stunned fish had floated to the surface, he swooped over and grabbed as many as he could in his mouth and claws.

Hiccup was enjoying this and didn't mind the spray. They quickly had more than enough food. Upon the successful completion of their first fishing trip, the two returned to that small, barren hunk of rock they had landed on earlier because it was close and had enough driftwood for a decent fire.

Hiccup leaned against Toothless's side as he roasted his fish. Toothless had the rest right in front of him and was taking his time in eating them. A few minutes in, several Terrible Terrors decided to crash the party. There were three of them, and they clearly wanted some of the fish in Toothless's pile. Neither Hiccup nor Toothless were particularly scared of Terrible Terrors now, especially after what had happened in the arena.

Toothless was surprised to see Terrors that didn't flee from a Night Fury on sight. He had figured that in all the time the Queen raided around here, all the Terrors not afraid of Night Furies would have been wiped out. He grabbed a few fish and tossed them at the Terrors. The small dragons looked even more shocked than normal (large bulging eyes made them always look a little startled) at the sight a larger dragon voluntarily sharing.

Hiccup smiled and scratched Toothless's head. "Someone's got a soft spot for these little guys, huh?"

'I'll do my best to balance how the Queen treats Terrors. They see a Night Fury when they see the Queen killing them, so now they'll see a Night Fury voluntarily sharing food. Hopefully, the two cancel each other out.'

Hiccup could understand that. The idea of fixing something that you felt was at least partly your fault was a very familiar concept. However, this particular act of kindness had a side effect. When Hiccup and Toothless flew back to Berk and the cove, the Terrors followed them.

Toothless didn't want to have to scare them off, so the Terrors hung around for a while in the cove. Neither of them particularly minded. Hiccup spent another night there because he honestly couldn't be bothered to go back to the village. The next dragon training still wasn't for another six days. Gobber and Astrid were going to leave the day after tomorrow, to go catch another Terror. Tomorrow, Hiccup planned to spend most of the day flying with Toothless.

That was exactly what they did. That is, after Toothless ran with Hiccup in the forest. He insisted so that Hiccup would get his practice in. It went about how Hiccup had expected. He could almost match the Night Fury in the denser areas, mostly because he was smaller, but in the less dense areas Toothless had to slow down so Hiccup could keep up.

Toothless quite enjoyed being able to run with Hiccup, as opposed to just watching from the boy's senses. He also found it quite entertaining to watch Hiccup in the denser areas. It was entirely different from the bullheaded charging that passed for a run with Vikings. Toothless thought Hiccup might not entirely like that, though he saw that as an improvement in itself.

They flew for most of the rest of the day, only stopping at around noon to fish up lunch. Now that Toothless was feeding himself, he wasn't limited to whatever Hiccup could sneak out of the village. That had been quite a lot, by human standards, and Toothless had by no measure been starving, but it was nice to finally eat his fill, knowing he could get more if he needed to. As a result, he had even more energy than usual.

They dealt with it by flying, Hiccup perfecting just accessing Toothless's senses enough to feel the signals, without necessarily full embracing his other senses. It wasn't difficult, once he had the trick down.

And the flying had a purpose. Hiccup and Toothless had retrieved the empty basket from the cove, and filled it with fish. Hiccup was going to sneak the full basket of fish to the storehouse later. They would need to space out these deliveries to avoid suspicion, but Hiccup was happy to begin paying the village back their unwitting loan of food now that he could.

They also tried to practice Hiccup talking to Toothless in his head, but they made no progress on that. Neither of them was sure if it was even possible for Hiccup to do. Maybe it only worked for the creator of the link, or maybe only for dragons. But it was still possible Hiccup might eventually figure it out. That would be nice, as it would mean he could fully respond no matter who was around.

They were flying back to Berk, weary from the day's activities, when they saw it. More accurately, when Toothless saw it. 'Hiccup, use my sight for a second.'

Hiccup did as requested, and with Toothless's superior vision, he could see a fleet of ships approaching Berk from the distant horizon. They were in tatters. Sails patched hastily, holes left open above the waterline, scorch marks everywhere. They could only be one thing. Hiccup had seen his father set out a few weeks ago, but he hadn't been expected back for another month. At least.

'Do you know who they are?'

"Yeah, unfortunately. Looks like my dad is back... early. Great."

Toothless was worried. Hiccup had only told him a few things about his father, barring his rant on the cliff. He was chief, he was a dragon killer almost of legend, and he was searching for the nest, for at least another month. But the way Hiccup had talked about him, and his tone now... 'This isn't good.' It was somewhere between a statement and a question.

Hiccup took it as a question. "No, it really is not. Let's get back to the cove." Once they had landed, Hiccup jumped off and immediately started pacing. "Okay, we need to think. What changes now that he's back?" Hiccup seemed to be talking to himself as much as Toothless and answered his own question. "Everything. I won't be able to spend so much time missing anymore. He might eventually notice. And I definitely can't spend any nights here without a good excuse beforehand. We'll need to be more careful in the woods, and flying, because there are way more villagers now, and it's more likely someone will decide to go for a walk. Man, this is a mess."

'It's going to be really hard to keep all of this hidden.'

"Yeah... and that's another thing. I really need to figure out how to talk to you with my head, because he'll be way more likely to notice me mumbling randomly..."

'Maybe that's the answer!' Toothless had a crazy idea. Hiccup would have been proud if he wasn't so distracted. 'You can just pretend to actually be crazy! Then no one will care if you talk to yourself, and no one will find it weird you disappear all the time.'

Hiccup smiled sadly. "Good idea, but most Vikings are weird anyway. Either I'd not do it well enough, in which case no one would care, or I'd do it so well that they ship me off the island. And I'm not ready to leave Berk. Not yet, anyway..."

Toothless didn't like the sound of that. 'What do you mean, not ready to leave? When did we consider leaving?'

"Well, we'll have to leave at least temporarily when we take out the Queen. And, we can leave now, if we want to."

'But you don't want to.' Toothless was pretty sure of this, though he didn't know exactly why.

"Leaving feels like giving up. I don't want to leave Berk without knowing I either tried everything or physically can't come back safely. But if something goes wrong, we do have that option."

'When you say tried everything...'

"I still need to figure out a way around someone killing that Nightmare in the arena. And if I leave, I can't stop Astrid from 'accidentally' offing the other arena dragons. And I think it might be possible to show the village that dragons aren't the enemy... maybe if we can take down the Queen, then I could convince them."

Toothless wanted all of that to happen, but... 'You want to convince Vikings, the people that list 'suicidal stubbornness' as a positive quality, to reverse three hundred years of fighting and make peace with the enemy they slaughter for entertainment?'

"Yes. If I can. But it wouldn't surprise me if they can't change, either. I have to at least try. But that has to wait until we end the Queen. The raids would counter anything I did to change minds."

'Alright, so we need to save the arena dragons somehow, avoid being detected by your father, and kill a mind-controlling Queen. Then, after that, we can work on changing a village of Vikings. Got it.' Toothless was being completely serious. Now was not the time for sarcasm.

"Yup. Alright, step one. I really need to be able to communicate with you in my head. Tell me again how you do it."

'I just think what I want to, like talking to you now. If you're not right here, I expand the pocket that has your perception. Then I single out your hearing, and just kind of... connect them. That's all I do. I can do it almost instantly, without even really thinking about it. That's how the Queen talked to me when she was in an extrapolative mood and felt like monologuing. She liked to explain at length how superior her powers were compared to mine, or any other Night Fury. Horrible to sit through without being able to ignore her or respond, but quite helpful now. She gave me quite a bit of information, and I don't think she cared what I knew. Not like I could ever escape.' That last part was said wryly.

Hiccup tried, for what felt like the hundredth time, to do what Toothless described. He thought of a message and tried to push it to Toothless's hearing. No matter how hard he pushed, he never could get it to go through. "It isn't working."

'Maybe you just need practice? Try doing it whenever you can, it might just click after a while.'

Hiccup didn't believe that would work, but he would do it anyway. "I will, but for now I'll just have to be really careful. I should head back before his ships are visible from Berk. Don't want Gobber searching for me to tell me the great news." That was definitely sarcastic. Hiccup made it sound like the worst news possible. "Will you be okay until I can get back here? I don't know when I'll be able to slip away tomorrow, we're gonna be overloaded in the forge."

'I'll be fine. Worry about yourself.'

"I have you to do that for me."

'Reckless.'

"Overprotective."

Hiccup began his run back, Toothless directing him, even if it wasn't really necessary. He figured Hiccup would want him to be there. He would be watching through Hiccup the entire time. It was all he could do.

Hiccup made it back, and as predicted Gobber found him in the Great Hall with the news an hour later. He did his best to act excited, though it became almost impossible to maintain a happy facade when Gobber let something seemingly unrelated slip in his excitement. A Terror had been captured sneaking around the fish storage, and so Gobber wouldn't need to go get another from some random island, something he was quite happy about.

'I just checked. The Terrors that followed us back are gone. It's probably one of them.' Toothless's voice was low.

Hiccup felt sick, and Toothless wasn't much better. He managed to see Gobber off without making him suspicious. As soon as it was safe, he started talking. "It's not your fault." Hiccup knew Toothless would be blaming himself for feeding those Terrors and inadvertently leading them to danger and possible death by Astrid if past experience was any indication.

'It is. But we were already going to make sure no one kills the arena dragons. Somehow.'

Hiccup was relieved. Toothless still blamed himself, but the fact that they could still do something to fix it was probably helping him cope. "I just hope the other two leave. The village doesn't need a Terror alive for the arena now."

By even optimistic estimates, the fleet wouldn't return until after midnight. Hiccup had a good excuse not to be there when they docked. He spent the night in an uneasy sleep, with unsettling dreams.

A short time after midnight, the fleet docked. Gobber made a beeline to Stoick, anxious to hear what had happened, along with one other, possibly more important matter that he wished wasn't his responsibility. Stoick stepped off of the leading vessel, looking none the worse for wear, unlike the ship itself. He and Gobber talked business for a few minutes. As they did, Gobber pieced together what had happened.

They had apparently never even made it to Helheim's gate, the starting point for nest hunts. On their way there, they had happened to cross the path of a raiding party setting out to some other island. The dragons had decided the fleet made an easier target. When all was said and done, enough sails were incinerated, among other things, that the time it took them to patch the ships up while still at sea and sail back with jury-rigged equipment accounted for the rest of the time they were gone. Stoick, understandably enough, was not happy about that.

He did perk up, however, when several villagers congratulated him in passing about his son's performance in dragon training. He also heard talk that Astrid was shaping up into a fearsome warrior.

Gobber wasn't looking forward to what was coming next.

"So, how's dragon training been going? I'm already hearing things I don't believe!"

Gobber squirmed inwardly at Stoick's hopeful tone. "Yeah, abou' that. Stoick, we need tah talk. Privately."

Stoick frowned but followed him to an isolated table in the mostly empty Great Hall.

Gobber grabbed two tankards of mead and brought them over.

"So, dragon training?"

Gobber scowled. "The twins, Snotlout, and Fishlegs are doin' as one would expect. Not well. Fishlegs is too scared, the twins are too reckless, and Snotlout might do okay if he would think before he attacks. Oh, and Astrid offed a Terror. Annoyin', bu' we got another one by luck just today, so no 'arm done. What I want to talk to yeh about is Hiccup."

"Well?" There was a note of excitement in Stoick's voice, but he was picking up on Gobber's reluctance.

"Hiccup is actin' a bit... stranger than usual, lately."

"Stranger than usual? How is that even possible?"

"He's always been, eh, different, but ever since startin' dragon trainin' he's..." Gobber trailed off for a moment, trying to compose the vague oddness he had noticed into words. "He talks to himself, now. Not just a few words. I saw 'im talk for a few minutes straight, once. In the arena, when he thought no one was around. And he's been getting angrier easier. He's doin' good, better than good, in trainin' itself, but he's disappearing all the time. I'm nae quite sure if he even comes home at night anymore. And he's been actin' weird, besides. He taunted Astrid after he took down a dragon once. And as far as I'm aware, Hiccup isn'nae normally suicidal, so that was odd. If I 'adn'ta interfered, ah think she woulda killed 'im."

"Astrid's lack of discipline is disturbing. How did the other trainees react to her killing a Terror?" Stoick knew that things like that usually weren't seen until much later when the trainees fought in real battles and raids. It affected most differently, their first time seeing something like that. And the arena dragons had a pretty good survival rate, for some reason.

"The usual. A bit of shock, ya know the drill. 'cept Hiccup. He saw the whole thing, but it seemed to make him angry more than anythin' else. Apparently, he criticised Astrid's actions after she left. Somethin' about her not bein' in the heat o' battle, that she did it intentionally."

It disturbed Stoick that Hiccup had reacted like that. It went against pretty much all he knew of his son. Then again... "You made it seem like you had horrible news, Gobber. The thing with Astrid wasn't great, but she is shaping up into a fine warrior. And Hiccup, from everything I've heard so far, is finally growing into a real Viking! Good against dragons, developing a temper, reckless behavior! The talking to himself is odd, but I'm sure we can break him of that bad habit." Stoick reconsidered his son's stubbornness. "And if not, at least it'll unnerve his enemies!"

Gobber could see that Stoick was set in his opinions. He himself was still very worried about Hiccup's sanity. The speed the boy changed just wasn't normal.

Stoick laughed and asked Gobber a question he wasn't sure how to answer. "So, who do you think'll win dragon training?"

Gobber decided to go with the easy answer. "Hiccup or Astrid, it'll be a surprise to me too." He didn't add his last, sneaking suspicion. Hiccup... if something doesn't accidentally 'happen' to him. It might not even be Astrid. Snotlout made no secret of hating third place. He didn't mention it, because Stoick either wouldn't believe or wouldn't care if he did. The way he was now, he would be sure his son could fight his own battles. Gobber just hoped he would see the strangeness in Hiccup's behavior when he interacted with him personally. Although, that would be relying on Stoick's perceptiveness. Never a good idea.

Stoick left the Great Hall, but Gobber stayed. He could use a few dozen mugs of ale, but he would have a lot of work tomorrow. Stoick was back, and that meant the holiday was over. Over for Hiccup, too.