Hiccup watched as Astrid struggled to her feet, moving away from himself and Beryl, retrieving her ax. Once she had it she spun, her eyes searching for the enemy that had disappeared into the night while she was unconscious.

He took that time to try and calm down. The battle rage was fading, leaving behind weariness and pain, both physical and emotional. That could be dealt with later. "Beryl. Are you hurt badly?" It was obvious both of them were hurt, the question was how severely.

"Not really. Just a bunch of little things." Beryl shifted, eyeing him. "You fought to protect me as much as to attack her. You took more damage than I did." His voice was cautious.

"I'll live." None of his injuries were life-threatening. But why would that reassurance make Beryl flinch?

Oh, right. It might be a bit odd to say that... while in Ember's form. He was going to have to switch back, sooner rather than later, if only to... explain. Gods, how was he going to explain any of this?

With the truth. There was nothing to be gained from hiding things now. Maybe if he had stayed as Ember for the entire fight. That hadn't happened. He had switched back to his other form multiple times, visible to anyone who was watching.

Looking up, he could see spectators, shocked Vikings watching from the shadows, from all sides. It must have been quite a spectacle, to keep the Vikings from joining the battle. A very bloody, violent spectacle with no clear purpose apparent.

Astrid had by now determined for herself that the threat was gone. She was staring at Hiccup, or more accurately at Ember. "I saw..."

He met her eyes and bowed his head. She knew, of course she knew. At least she wasn't attacking on sight. Or maybe she just didn't have the strength to do so at the moment. Aware of the watching eyes, he shifted back to his human form, the blue flames mercifully concealing Astrid from his sight as he did, if only momentarily.

Astrid's eyes widened. She had seen it before, but this time there was no distraction of battle. "What... are you?"

"Myself." Hiccup shook his head sadly. "I had hoped to leave. To draw her away. It didn't go as planned." He could see the other teens creeping into hearing distance, warily keeping their distance. From him.

"Who... is her?" Astrid's voice was shaking. "I saw Stormfly. I saw you kill her." She shifted her hold on her ax. "I saw two Night Furies kill her."

"She was already gone. Every dragon and Viking you saw us fight... already dead. Their bodies were there, but the mind inhabiting them was not theirs." He scowled. "It was the mind of the one known as Vithvarandi. She is who we fought."

"We." Astrid's voice wavered. "Toothless... you... and..?"

"His name was Ember." Hiccup turned away, not meeting Astrid's eyes. "He too is also already dead. The only difference is that I took him from Vithvarandi." His voice dropped to a whisper. "There is no difference between us, Astrid. She gave me the same powers she has, though I didn't want them."

Astrid was slowly regaining her confidence. "That makes no sense. What-"

"I wish I knew!" Hiccup yelled. "I don't know where it comes from, or why it's even possible. I just know a bit of how it works. Enough to despise it." He was distinctly aware of the crowd that had gathered, of the fact that he was basically talking to the entire village. "So that's what's going on. There's a monster in human or dragon form killing people and stealing their bodies and memories. The perfect impersonator, because she can remember everything. Vithvarandi. She's after me. Because she made me like her, but I will not be like her."

Astrid stared at him as if he had lost his mind. But those blue flames and that other body of his proved his words beyond doubt. "When..?"

"A few weeks ago, while we were away." Hiccup looked down. "There's an island, one of dying trees and thorns everywhere. Never go there. I don't know what else might be down there. What we found was bad enough."

"So... what now?" Astrid's voice was cold. "You're... even weirder now. I don't know what Stoick is going to say about all of this."

Hiccup felt his heart drop. It probably showed on his face, as Astrid frowned after a moment. "Yeah, we'll never know. That's how the fight started. I caught her... as Stoick. He's gone too."

"Which... makes you chief." They both heard the mutters of shock and surprise from the village around them.

Hiccup noticed that the village was entirely content letting Astrid speak for them, which was nice as it prevented a screaming mob, at least for the moment. An idea came to him, one solution out of the many he needed to find. "No." He was not going to be chief. Not now, not like this. He'd be driven out of the village. Vikings did not tolerate wielders of black magic, and he didn't blame them. Besides...

The painful conflict between two fundamentally different languages.

The awkward interactions with everyone around him.

Astrid, cold and in control. Stoick, dead. Other Vikings, dead. Stormfly, gone.

This place held nothing for him or Beryl now. Berk was no longer home. Home was where family and safety existed. Nowhere was safe from Vithvarandi, and the only family he had left was Beryl. Who didn't like living in Berk. Hiccup agreed, now. They would leave.

"You're his son, you can't-"

Hiccup cut her off, his voice sad but determined. "I have to. She'll come back if I don't." His presence brought death, it was clear now. Vithvarandi had no regard for the lives of others.

He continued loudly. "I hereby renounce any claim to the throne of Berk, in favor of Astrid Hofferson. May she lead long and well." He looked over at her. "You'll probably do better than I ever could anyway."

Astrid was shocked into silence by his declaration. Her ax fell from numb fingers, landing with a muted thud in a small pool of blood.

"We have to disappear. Off the edge of the map, so to speak." Hiccup was talking to himself as much as Astrid or Beryl. "She can follow us, will probably find us somehow. So we go somewhere isolated, somewhere no dragons or humans live. That way we cannot be surprised." It would work.

"So you're just going to leave," Astrid spoke as if in a daze. "You trash part of the village, fight a shape-shifting witch as a Night Fury, and then just up and leave?"

"Thank you for summing that up. Yes." Hiccup glanced over at Beryl. "Looks like our saddlebags survived the fight mostly intact, so we're ready to go."

He didn't go to Beryl yet though. Looking around, there were a few final things he could do, before they went. He walked over to the other teens, who flinched but held their ground as he approached. Why Snotlout was in his underwear was a mystery. "Fishlegs."

Fishlegs jumped a good foot into the air with a squeak. "Yes?"

"Is Meatlug around?" He didn't see her.

"I'll go get her!" Fishlegs ran off. At least he was heading towards the Ingerman household.

Hiccup turned to the twins. "Stay crazy, you two. But not too crazy. And thanks for the help. I was hoping you'd catch Vithvarandi, but it was a good attempt."

"So that's why you wanted us to..." Ruffnut smiled. "Coulda just told us, H. We can keep a secret."

"Yeah! Especially one as cool-"

"It's not cool." Hiccup cut Tuffnut off brusquely. "Not something to show off, or play with."

"Well, way to ruin the mood," Ruffnut muttered.

Hiccup turned to Snotlout, who took a step back. "Relax." He managed a small grin. "I know you don't want to be seen as afraid of me."

That got Snotlout's ego into the matter. Snotlout scoffed, doing a fairly good job of hiding his discomfort. "I'm not scared of you." The hidden corollary to that was that he was scared of the Night Fury Hiccup could be.

"Good. Are you mad I bypassed you? You were next in line." He'd make sure Astrid became chief, no matter what Snotlout's response was. Snotlout wasn't fit for the job.

Apparently, Snotlout knew that. "No, she can have it." He sounded entirely sincere. "I kinda figured out I didn't want the job over the winter when my dad started getting me ready. You know, in case you... didn't wake up."

"Right." Hiccup saw Fishlegs returning with Meatlug. "I wish you luck with whatever you end up doing." He turned to Fishlegs and Meatlug, the former nervous and the latter annoyed at being woken up. Apparently, she had been able to sleep through all of that noise.

Meatlug spoke in annoyance. "What is going on?"

"What is going on is that I want to know if you have anything to say to Fishlegs." Hiccup smiled. "Now's your chance."

Fishleg's mouth dropped open. Hiccup frowned at him. "You didn't even suspect they were more than animals, despite her trying to show you."

"Yes." Meatlug looked over at Fishlegs. "Tell him I'm not satisfied until he can hold a true conversation with me. And tell him the communication problem is on his end, but I don't blame him for his ignorance." That was said lightly.

Hiccup repeated Meatlug's words, and Fishlegs' eyes were as wide as they could get by the end of it. Then Hiccup added his own comment. "If you do learn, be prepared for the side effects. Knowing both languages isn't the most fun for humans or dragons." He felt Fishlegs deserved a warning about what he was getting into. "But it's worth it."

"Side effects?"

"It's kind of hard to explain, but our speech and that of dragons don't really play well together. Hearing both at once is uncomfortable. It's tolerable though." It was worth it, though living in a village wasn't comfortable. Maybe it couldn't be learned normally by a human. But if anyone could do it, it would be Fishlegs.

Hiccup realized what he was doing. Saying goodbye. Might as well make it obvious. "Fishlegs. I left the chieftainship to Astrid. I leave advocating for dragons to you. The human side anyway." To Snotlout, he handed one of his knives. "To you, defending all of this." The twins got nothing tangible. Hiccup didn't exactly have anything they'd want anyway. Except... "Ruffnut, Tuffnut. You have my permission to never grow up."

The twins high-fived. Snotlout nodded solemnly. Fishlegs was not satisfied, however. "Hiccup, do you have to go right this second?"

"Well, it would be a good idea." Who knew where Vithvarandi was. Hopefully, she would really give them time. He wasn't counting on that.

"Can you... uh, maybe show us? The other Night Fury." He squirmed. "Just for a few minutes. I never got a good look, what with the... fighting."

Hiccup would be surprised if Fishlegs had even been able to watch that. Violence was not the studious teen's preferred entertainment. But he really didn't want-

"You should."

"What?" Hiccup stared at Beryl, who had spoken. "Why?"

"We fought to defend them, in part." Beryl's voice was considering. "Let them see the other part of you. So that they don't remember him as a weapon of war."

"He is no weapon." Hiccup agreed wholeheartedly on that. "Okay, fine. A few minutes."

"Oy!" Gobber pushed his way through the crowd. "Aren't ya gonna say goodbye to me first?"

Hiccup grinned. "I wasn't planning on leaving like that. Beryl needs me human to fly, remember?"

"Beryl?"

"Oh, right. That's Toothless's real name." Apparently, that didn't really surprise Gobber.

"Eh, it suits him. Not that Toothless didn't... though from what I saw, neither of you is. Toothless, that is. Plenty of teeth in that brawl." Gobber coughed. "See ya around."

"Probably not." Hiccup could see that Gobber wasn't planning on accepting that as an answer. "Then again, you never know."

"All I ask." Gobber waved a hook vaguely in the direction of the burned house. "It hasn't really... sunken in yet, has it?" The way he said it, Hiccup knew he was speaking for the both of them.

"No, it hasn't." He'd deal with that later. There would be no funeral to attend to, as there was no body.

That thought cracked his resolve. He needed to get out of here before it shattered. But he had one last thing to do. That pocket in his head was still there, and he knew how to use it.

"Everyone. This is Ember." The rest of his statement was too quiet for anyone else to hear. "My other half." With that, he triggered the change, watching the blue flames flood out of his hands and up his arms. They were in no way natural. Burning to the touch, impassible by physical force, but entirely painless and intangible to him.

When they receded, he could feel his wings, his far more maneuverable ears. The multitude of wounds this form retained. Ouch. Still nothing deadly, but several of them needed to be rested. Later. So many things to be saved for later.

He turned and lifted his wings, giving Fishlegs and the rest of the village a good look. As the only other Night Fury they'd ever seen, he knew they'd like that.

But his attention was drawn to the one person who'd seen Ember before. So long ago. Beryl was staring sadly, eyes solemn and pained.

Beryl whined softly. "He's gone, but standing in front of me. It hurts."

Hiccup couldn't resist. He walked over and pawed at Beryl until he looked up, eyes showing his sorrow. Once Beryl was looking at him, he carefully set his chin on top of his head, leaning in. The Fury equivalent of a hug, from what he remembered. "Partially. But his memories are still here. And so am I."

Beryl relaxed and leaned back into the gesture. "It is strange."

Hiccup couldn't help but voice his opinion on that, the one he'd been slowly forming over the weeks. "But not necessarily bad or good. Just strange." That was something he needed to believe. Because if this power was inherently evil, so was he. He would choose to believe that it was what a person did with it that made it evil or not.

"Maybe." Beryl sniffed, inhaling deeply after a moment. He then pulled away reluctantly, ears flicking towards a familiar sound.

Hiccup heard it too. Well, this would be interesting. Hookfang and Barf and Belch had finally arrived onto the scene. Both were eyeing him suspiciously.

Beryl pawed at Hiccup. "You want to tell them, or should I?"

Hiccup answered that by action. "Hookfang. Barf and Belch. Have good lives, and protect your charges. They need it, in your cases." He smirked as both dragons nodded absently, clearly confused.

Hiccup changed back. Without looking at anyone else, human or dragon, he got into the saddle. Beryl took off without another word, lifting them out of the village, off of Berk. Away from Berk, probably for a very long time. Berk was no longer safe, no longer home. Nowhere was.

O-O-O-O-O

Beryl set them down on a small sea stack. It had clearly been chosen as a discrete resting place, situated as it was in a very familiar maze of sea stacks, the place they had almost died on that first flight, what felt like so recently and yet also so long ago. Hiccup slid out of the saddle dully, his mind finally forcing him to deal with what he knew for fact. Stoick was gone. He had gone the way of Stormfly. Of Flint, Ember himself. Dead, by Vithvarandi's hands or claws or teeth. How had she killed him? A sneak attack, more than likely. Some troubled Viking, requesting the chief's help? or had it been a dragon, one he had conditioned himself not to be alert around because they were friendly now? Either way hurt because both ended the same.

"Hiccup?" Beryl chuffed, turning to look at Hiccup. "Are you..." He trailed off, the answer clear.

Instead of asking anything more, Beryl carefully pulled Hiccup in between his front paws, sitting down as he did. Hiccup was forced to sit too, his head under the Night Fury's chin, in an ironic reversal of how he himself had comforted Beryl earlier that night.

The irony wasn't lost on Beryl. "My turn," he rumbled. "Don't hold it in. It doesn't help to do that."

Hiccup knew his friend spoke from experience. But fully thinking about it was too much. He couldn't do it. "Does it help not to?"

"Yes. And it helps to have someone with you." Beryl inhaled, digging up old memories, for Hiccup's sake. "Spark and I cried for weeks afterward, every night. It isn't something you just move past. But until you let it out, there's no healing." That he knew.

Hiccup laughed, a sound sad and low. "One more thing we have in common. No living parents. Thor, even the same person killed our fathers." That did it.

Beryl purred comfortingly, trying to soothe Hiccup as the boy mourned his father. The last new similarity between them was far too morbid to say out loud. But he definitely noticed it.

They had both killed the other's father, in fighting Vithvarandi. He was sure that fact would torment them both in nightmares for years to come. Seeing one's best friend kill one's father in real life was perfect nightmare fodder.

For now, it didn't matter. What mattered was being there for Hiccup. He would always be there, and he knew Hiccup would return the favor without question.

O-O-O-O-O

The next morning dawned cloudy and dreary. It didn't help Hiccup as he tried to pull his mood out of a looming depression. The world consisted of various shades of grey and blue, the sky, sea stacks, and the ocean. Nothing else in sight.

"Where are we going?" Beryl was looking contemplatively out to sea.

"Nowhere in particular. Away from humans, away from dragons. Just away, as far as we can get."

They set out, heading in no particular direction. The archipelago was fairly dense around Berk, so there was no danger of having nowhere to land. Hiccup figured they'd get their bearings later. For now, he just wanted to lose himself in operating the tailfin.

O-O-O-O-O

Astrid stared into the rising sun. She was sitting on a ledge facing the East, looking out across the village. Part of her still didn't believe what had happened. Stormfly dead. The chief, dead. Hiccup and Toothless, gone. For good, from what she could tell. A deadly brawl between some witch, Toothless, and Hiccup of all people.

The part about that which was most disturbing was not that Hiccup could use magic. Not that he fought like a wild animal while in dragon form, cutting, biting, and ripping in fatal ways, just like Toothless. She had never truly seen that side of Toothless either, until last night.

No, what disturbed her most of all was one moment in particular. A still frame, a picture she would never forget. Hiccup, a long knife outstretched in front of him, stabbing a Terrible Terror through the chest. The blank look of rage on his face. The fact that there was no hesitation. That the Terror's body disintegrated, and that Hiccup had clearly been expecting that, shifting back into dragon form to engage the witch in her newest body.

Hiccup had changed these last few weeks. Become subtler, less unsure of himself. More dangerous, clearly. And something else, something she only now recognized. He had felt older. Whenever she looked into his eyes, the weight of time far beyond his experience had disturbed her.

But if she was being entirely honest with herself, that wasn't an excuse. Oh, she'd like to be able to tell herself that her entirely cold and arrogant attitude towards him was because of the clearly unnatural changes, even if she hadn't seen them for what they were.

Yes, that would be nice. A comforting fiction. The truth was much less simple.

How had it started? Maybe at some point over the winter, as she reluctantly took on the task of keeping the village in one piece, of figuring out how to live with the creatures they'd killed for hundreds of years. She'd had to defend her goals, motives, and authority from every little snipe made by Mildew's sympathisers, and in the beginning many of the otherwise neutral villagers who had made pointed comments, insinuated that she was not good enough, not smart enough. That Hiccup would be better suited for her job, that she was a substitute.

It had been difficult, frustrating, but successful. No one save for the most obnoxious haters of dragons questioned her by Spring.

Then Hiccup had woken up. She'd been happy for him, kissed him. The taunts of some of the more cynical villagers later on had been less light-hearted. She'd ignored them, but their words had planted doubts. Hiccup is back, they said, so of course she was getting into his good graces, to keep her position. Because she so obviously was inferior to the one who had started it all.

So she'd kept her distance, despite herself. Focused inward, continued her life as if he hadn't recovered, interacting only when necessary. But most importantly, she'd watched him.

It had become apparent, after he returned from his little trip, that he wasn't satisfied. What she'd wrought was, just as the doubters had said, flawed. Not good enough.

He never truly said it, but the jabs at her authority and casual flaunting of her legitimately earned and deserved position had spoke volumes. Or so she had thought.

Looking back, it was clear that he'd never really blamed her for whatever imperfections he saw, never meant to make her feel worthless and pointless.

But she'd felt it all the same. For someone who'd felt some brief stirring of affection for him, cooled over the Winter months, but not gone, it had hurt, broken something that could never truly be fixed. So she'd hit back, telling herself that he was defying the chief by defying her position, that he wanted to shake things up over and over again, to destroy what she had built just because he wanted too.

Which he did. That, she saw now, was how he worked. Never truly satisfied with the easy, good enough answers. Willing to destroy to fix. She needed to learn that lesson now, as chief.

No, she had not been in the right, though he hadn't either. They were both flawed, normal people in that regard. She'd just have to do better, and try to move forward.

Her musings turned back to the more practical side of the night's events. The oddness Hiccup had displayed of late had puzzled her. Now it made sense. She attributed everything strange of the last few weeks to whatever allowed Hiccup to do the impossible. The similarities between him and the witch were unnerving. It would have been very awkward to question him about it though. Especially given the entire village was scared stiff of magic.

It was likely for the best that they had left. She didn't like to think about what might have happened if they didn't. Though, being chief herself was not what she had wanted. Leadership was something she kept taking because no one else could do it. And once it was hers, she kept it through competence and skill, no matter the assignment.

This felt out of her league. To be fair, it had probably been beyond Hiccup's capabilities too. What now?

Whatever it was, she'd have to figure it out as she went. Improvising, learning on the job. Learning from Gobber, who had been Stoick's right-hook man. Would be her right-hook man, now.

This was not how she had seen her life going. To be honest, she hadn't really looked to the future. But her future had always seemed to include Stormfly, ever since that fight against the Red Death. Her only companion that she could trust and rely upon completely, the only one who never questioned, who always listened.

Gone.

She might blame Hiccup for that, but it so clearly wasn't his doing. His own father had been another victim. He probably blamed himself regardless though.

No, she had no one to blame but an apparently unkillable witch who was gone, hopefully never to return.

If Astrid closed her eyes, the world almost felt as it should be. She could almost hear Stormfly standing nearby, quietly waiting. The sounds of the village, Stoick somewhere in the distance, his deep voice echoing like a distant thunderstorm. Hiccup and Toothless, on the other hand, left no imprint on the sounds of Berk. The two had never really been comfortable in the village, before or after the Red Death. A quiet dragon and his equally quiet...

Not right. She had been about to say owner. But Fishlegs had been working nonstop ever since the moment Hiccup and Toothless disappeared, dead set on learning how dragons spoke as quickly as possible. She had dismissed him as overzealous... but he had made progress already. By his measurements, anyway. She personally thought learning the meaning of one sound wasn't that impressive. Especially when that sound apparently meant 'no.'

Still, it proved Hiccup right. Again. Stormfly had not been an obedient pet, but a partner. Not that she had treated her dragon badly. But it hurt, to be shown that she had been so oblivious.

It was a helpful reminder that she was not flawless. She'd need that. Humility as well as determination and courage. She'd power through regardless. That was what Vikings did. Berk would continue. It always had.

She rose, to go about getting official support for her ascension to the position of chief. It was a pointless formality. The only challenger would be Spitelout, who because of certain rules as the brother of the late chief was ineligible himself for the position. Spitelout did not know Snotlout was planning on publicly turning the position down. She had been surprised when Snotlout told her that a few hours ago. But he had seemed sincere. So it was a foregone conclusion.

Time to begin a new chapter in Berk's history. No one knew how it would unfold, but she knew they'd be there to see it. Unlike Hiccup, who was gone. He had cut himself loose from Berk, taking his only companion into the world, pursued by danger.

She'd make sure that he wasn't forgotten. The boy who did the impossible, then the unthinkable, and then the unnatural. The one who broke every single mold and tradition he came across, who changed the world to fit what he wanted.

It felt like writing a eulogy, what she was thinking. Which was appropriate. As far as Berk knew, Hiccup was gone for good. As good as dead, to them. They would mourn him along with Stoick, Stormfly, and all of that witch's other victims.

Author's Note:

Well, now we finally see Astrid's side, though only in retrospect, and tinted by her perception of things. I hope her actions make sense now. She made mistakes, Hiccup made mistakes, but in the end she's learning from them, and though what might have been is not retrievable, the mistakes will at the very least not be repeated.

I hope Astrid fans can be happy with that. To be brutally honest, if I had left her and Hiccup together, she would not have survived Vithvarandi's stay on Berk. It is only because Hiccup showed no visible affection to Astrid in the present that the 'witch', to put it in Berkian terms, didn't pull out all the stops and kill her when she fought back well against Stormfly's form. Vithvarandi no longer saw Astrid as the ultimate goal, and was unwilling to trade one normal form for another, especially when every moment of conflict ran a risk of being stumbled across, discovered, possibly alerting Hiccup through hearsay.

In other news, this story is far from over, but I am looking to the future. The sequel, which does not have a finalized name as of yet, has gained more than ten chapters- in less than nine days. Over 50,000 words so far… and it's only a third done. That would make it about half again as long as this story. It was and continues to be very difficult, technically speaking, and very, very dark, but I am making steady progress. At this rate, we will be able to continue straight from this story's epilogue to the sequel's prologue with no break in posting schedule. So while this story is about half over, there is much more to come. I would say more (having just come from said nine days, in which the sequel took up the majority of my writing time), but spoilers abound, and I'd rather not, as even the general premise will spoil how this story develops.