Hiccup had smelled this smell before. It was that too sweet, deep scent of decay. Dead roses. The aroma of it was so much more potent than he remembered. It wasn't a bad smell, but it was too strong in such a concentrated dose. Oppressive.

He tried to turn his head from it but for some reason found little room to move.

He wondered if he was dreaming. Or still dreaming . . .

Or was he dead, locked away forever in a flower-filled casket?

Did the dead dream?

He became aware of the pressure across his shoulders and behind his knees. Pain, too, invited itself into his brain like a bad memory, pervading his entire body.

The next sensation that occurred to him was that of movement. He was moving. Cold air prickled the tiny hairs on his arms. He wanted to open his eyes to see where he was, what it was that transported him, and where he was going, but at the same time, he didn't. Why, when it would be so much easier to drift away again, to settle back into the cocoon of sleep, that blank place between dreams and reality, where the word "nothing" found its true definition?

He felt the press of something like fabric against his cheek and gathered beneath his curled fingers. His hair tickled his brow in the wake of another breeze, and through his eyelids, he sensed light.

By now he had surfaced to consciousness enough that it was too late to fall back into the deathlike chasm of rest. Against his will, he became more and more aware of himself, of the seemingly limitless aches in his body and finally of that steady one-two rhythm of movement beneath him. His thoughts broke through the muck of oblivion, and he stirred.

He opened his eyes to the sight of a black breastplate under a navy-blue tunic. So close he could count the stitches. A violet stream leading out of a small waistcoat pocket gleamed in the light, and Hiccup saw that he grasped the loose fabric of the tunic. That was when he realized that the pressure at his back and behind his knees was the pressure of arms, arms he currently occupied, arms that carried him.

Her body felt neither cold nor warm next to his, solid, but somehow not alive. He listened, but she never breathed. His gaze trailed up the brown hair styled into a fishtail braid and up to the chin. He squinted, trying unsuccessfully to peer through the shadow cast over her face by a horned helmet.

Starts dotted the sky around the edges of her, visible through tangles of knotted limbs that could not have belonged to the same trees as the woodlands. Their leaf-dotted boughs were too peaceful, too normal.

Could it be possible he was back in his own world?

At first he didn't say anything, because he was too afraid to hope. He wanted to suspend time and just be still for another moment, to let his tired mind and sore muscles rest. The stale, moldering odor that clung to her didn't bother him as much as it had before, and against her, he felt comfortable. Safe.

Hiccup released his grip on her tunic and, curious, let his fingers spider-crawl their way to the glinting stream that had caught his eye. He pulled at it, and the ribbon he had lost at the cliffs came free in his hand. He turned it over, his eyes following the light as it chased across the smooth surface. He ran his thumb over it, and there was no blood. Hiccup traced his thumb over the initials. "Mom," he spoke aloud. His voice came out small and hollow-sounding, as though it had been a long time since he'd last used it. "Mom?"

"Hello my child." She said as, over her shoulder, the pale slice of moon became visible between the knit of branches. "Nice to see you're finally up. I was beginning to think you wouldn't wake."

Hiccup was about to rewind the ribbon around his wrist, but instead, placed it in the inner pocket of his red cape. "Where are we going?" he asked, snuggling into his mother's chest.

"Home," she sighed.

Hiccup was quiet before he spoke. "Which one?"

His mother didn't answer.

Hiccup felt a choke sob in his throat.

"Shhh," his mother cooed. "Don't cry, honey." Hiccup looked to her.

She had her horned helmet off, her hair smooth and slicked back to tuck behind her ear. Her beautiful emerald eyes were greener than the most precious gem Hiccup could think of. Inside them, her iris seemed to fade from a darker outline to a lighter green at the center.

"You," she spoke finally. "strange puzzle of a boy, are very lucky."

"Where – where are we?"

"We are nearly through the park behind your home." She said.

"You – you mean . . . ?"

"You are home."

Home, he thought with a sudden pang of yearning. He pressed his lips together and felt his face pitch with sudden emotion. He fought the sting that threatened his eyes and instead forced himself to laugh. The sound that came out of him was more like a choking ark than anything else, and it rocked his body with a tight tremor. How? How had he managed to survive when his demise had been so certain?

Hiccup shut his eyes again and released a long breath. His sore muscles relaxed. Safe. He was safe.

He leant into his mother. "I almost don't want to go home."

"Why's that, honey?" said his mother.

"I miss you."

Hiccup let his eyes water as he felt his mother's soft lips. She pressed her lips to his brow, holding the silk soft kiss for a long moment.

"Plus, I've put the villagers of Berk through so much." Hiccup adds on. "It'd be better for everyone if I just, left."

"Then your father would have no one. He wouldn't have an heir to the throne." His mother said.

"Like the people of Berk would follow me." Hiccup retorted. "A deranged leader who does witchcraft and sees imaginary people."

The buildings around them grew larger, and Hiccup became aware of the roofs of houses, what were houses, still he knew that they must have just entered the rear of his neighborhood.

The moon drifted out of sight again behind the curve of her braid, and the glow of the stars lessened as the houselights around them grew brighter. Hiccup turned his head enough to see the approaching outline of his house, the dark windows and drawn shades. Everyone inside must be asleep.

His mother's footsteps made no sound on the stone walkway that led to the front porch. She carried him to the door, but instead of setting him to his feet, she laid him gently on the cushion of the long wicker bench. As she stepped back from him, Hiccup sat up, worried that she might leave him without another word.

She paused though, and crouched down next to him. "Hiccup," she began. "you know I want nothing more than to touch, and see, and feel you again. And you want the same, would you not agree?"

He frowned, not sure where the question had come from and even more unsure of how to answer it.

"But to pine for those we have had and loved and once held but will never clasp again," she continued. "it is a torture of an unbearable degree. It is the worst pain possible. Enough to drive you away from yourself."

"Why are you telling me this?" he asked. "Am I dead after all?"

His mother merely chuckled, and hiccup realized that it was the first time he'd ever head her laugh. It was a soft and melodic sound. Slowly she rose, sending him another waft of fermented roses.

"I don't understand," Hiccup said breathlessly. "I burned with Jolene, Lilith. Why am I still here? Why didn't I die?" it was the question he had been waiting to ask, one that now fought its way through a crowd of others.

"Ah," said his mothers, "that is something I do not fully comprehend myself, though I suspect that it was somehow your friend's doing."

"Hadrian? But how could he-?"

She turned to him. "Allow me to attempt to explain with an example I do understand. The demons. They are part of your imagination, part of your story, and so, part of you. If you would not hurt anyone, then it only makes sense that they would not be able to do so either. They are the deepest parts of your subconscious. Shrapnel of your inner self. As you might have learned, they have the same desires and conflicts as their maker. As separate pieces, freed from the soul and from the confines of a human conscious, however, they develop minds of their own. And, as demons created in the dreamworld, they are compelled by law to answer to its queen. That is why they attempted to harm you, but in the end could not."

"That doesn't explain why the fire I made didn't burn me."

"You created the fire in a dreamworld that is subject to the rules of its queen, yet influenced by the imagination and desires set I motion by an outside force – you. Therefore, the same power that protects you from the demons perhaps also protected you from the fire. Furthermore, when you destroyed her – and she destroyed your friend – you also destroyed sole connection to the dreamworld. It was destroyed, and you existed here in your world once more. And finally, because the fire was created by you in the dreamworld and was, essence, a dream itself, it also ceased to exist the moment the link was severed, the moment the two worlds parted."

"She asked me to join with her." Hiccup blurted.

"Then," she said, sounding unsurprised. "I suspect that she knew of the power that protected you. Invulnerability in a physical form caught between two realms? There is no greater power she could wish for."

A knot of discomfort deep in his stomach tightened to the point that he felt sick. He swallowed with difficulty. Hiccup blinked long and slow. He glanced down at his hands in his lap and past them to the tattered and stained fabric of his once red cape and black tunic.

"If I have the ability, to go between realms," Hiccup started, "does that mean, I can choose to go with you?"

Her silence was her answer. She watched him, and in return, Hiccup studied her young eyes. Hiccup's hand reached up to the locket, which he nearly forgot about, and opened the oval with a click. Together they stared at the thumbnail photo of her.

"You're so pretty." He mumbles.

"Yes," she replied. "whatever happened?"

Hiccup laughed, but the sound came out hollow. He looked to her, "Please don't go away mom." He softly pleaded, his voice cracking towards the end. "I don't want this to be over."

His mother raised a dainty hand and caressed his cheek. Hiccup pressed into it, the smell of decaying roses becoming more temping with each loving gesture she gave. He grasped her hand and wrist with both of his.

"You're needed here, my darling. It is not your time." She spoke, and Hiccup released a chocked sob. "After tonight, it will all go away."

Hiccup folded his lips in to fight back a sob.

"As will I."

Hiccup shut his eyes. "Please don't leave me." His whimper barely audible and understandable through his sobs. A rust of emotion caking his voice.

"By beautiful Hiccup. My love. Don't forget, I am always with you, and I will always be watching over you. I will see you again . . . eventually."

Hiccup stared at her with his quivering hands, able to do little more than lean towards her and wrap his arms around her neck.

Despite her literal meaning, he knew that she had meant it to say "good-bye."

Never, he thought, burying his nose into the crook of her neck. A thousand times never. They were entwined no, irrevocably. And if this rift that stretched between them now extended beyond the confines of time and space, of dreams and reality, he still had to believe that there was a way to cross it, still a way to see her. There had to be.

Slowly, Hiccup retreated, lifting his hands to brush away the tears that fell. Looking to his hands in his lap once more.

A chill of ice air rushed up to him. The breeze stung his dampened cheeks and combed cold fingers through his hair. He looked up, at the place where his mother had knelt.

She was gone.

Hiccup sprang to his feet. He looked toward the corner of the house, almost expecting to see the furl of her tunic disappear around the corner edge. There was no sign of her, though, and it was hard for Hiccup to suppress the wild sobs that forced their way out of his mouth. He clamped his hands over his mouth to mute them as his kneels wobbled and he sank to the ground.

They were cut short has he heard the sound of hurried footsteps. He perked up, wiping his face with the heels of his palms. He pushed to his feet and descended the steps to meet Fishlegs and Snotlout carrying buckets of water, a rag dangling over the lip of Fishlegs'.

"Hurry up Snotlout!" he screeched. A tone urgent and frantic. Hiccup stepped down next to the boys.

"Hey, what's going on?" Hiccup asked.

Fishlegs ignored Hiccup as Snotlout approached. He was breathless with a canteen in his other had. "Sorry, just needed to fetch this for Stoick."

"Guys what's up?" Hiccup repeated.

"Come on they need these at the Hall." Fishlegs said, pivoting on his heels.

"Fishlegs!" Hiccup yelled. He turns to Snotlout. "Snotlout, what is-"

Snotlout passed cleanly through him, and Hiccup stumbled back.

Astral, he thought. He was projecting outside his body - which meant that he wasn't dreaming after all. This was all real. Hiccup tried to remember the last place he was on Berk. Back at Grandmamma's house, but it Fishlegs and Snotlout were rushing to the Great Hall, something was wrong. The mention of Stoick's name made it clear that the reason revolved around Hiccup.

Suddenly Hiccup heard Gobber's voice. "Boys," they stopped. "you need to come with me."

"What is it?" Fishlegs demanded and stood.

"What's wrong?" Snotlout asked. "What's happening to Hiccup?"

"They're starting to think-"

Snotlout's face crumpled. "No, he's not headed there!" he shouted. "He was fine! We just saw him, he was fine!"

"Snotlout-"

Fishlegs reached for him, but he jerked his arm away and skittered away, running past Hiccup and towards the Hall.

Hurrying after, Gobber and Fishlegs continued to call out to him.

Hiccup began to follow but stopped suddenly when a glimmer of light erupted in the space right in front of him, like the glint of a shining object. It drew his attention downward. There, extending outward from his center, he saw it – the silver cord. It wavered, fluttering in and out of existence, as though struggling to remain intact.

When it glimmered into sight again, visible for longer than an instant, Hiccup reached out and touched his fingertips to the ethereal strand. Suddenly, in a whir of movement and a haze of images, he was somewhere else – another room. The Great Hall, filled with men and women, all of them rushing this way and that.

Most stood gathered around a long table that had been cleared of dishes. Judging by the mess at one end, it was urgent and done with one clean sweep of an arm. Whoever was lying on the splintery wood surface, Hiccup could see only his bare feet, which poked out from the huddle of medical personnel. Astrid was outside the huddle, her face red and blotchy, streaked with tears. Stoick was standing at the center on one side of the table, watching with intense eyes.

"Clear!" he heard someone shout, followed by a harsh slamming sound.

The light inside the room grew instantly brighter around him. Intense enough to smudge away the walls and the tables and the giant doors that flapped like shutters in the wind as villagers came and went. Clean and white, blindingly bright, it erased everything but those two limp feet, the table, and those who stood closest to it.

Already knowing what he would find – who he would find – in the center of their frenzy, Hiccup slowly rounded the table. All the while, Grandmamma and Goathi and aiding villagers remained oblivious to his dual presence, taking turn applying instruments, their frantic movement reminding him of swarming ants.

Peering between the shoulders of two of the medical personnel, Hiccup did not think the battered and bruised boy on the table looked much like him. And yet he knew by the thin scratch on his cheek that it could be no one else.

Hiccup lifted a hand to his face but felt no trace of the scratch. Yet he remembered in an instant how it had gotten there.

Hadrian.

Hiccup peered closer and saw Grandmamma had taken the wool of sheep, glued it to metal disks the size of a hand and connected to a metal box with two rods sticking out, a copper wire wrapped around each.

"Clear!" someone shouted again.

Grandmamma shocked him again, and Hiccup saw his body convulse.

The sight made him wonder whether he wanted to continue watching, and yet he knew he was dying. Or he already dead? How? What had brought him here, to this point of destruction?

"We've lost him." he heard Grandmamma announce. Her voice rustic, filled with tears.

Lost.

Hiccup watched as Astrid's head jerked up, she pushed from her seat to rush toward the huddle. She pushed and shoved her way through, the word 'No' escaping her lips over and over again. Stoick fisted his hands, walking away as Astrid approached. Hiccup jumped with the rest of the villagers as he punched a separate table, smashing it to bits and splinters.

Astrid was crumpled to the ground, her face concealed in one arm while the other outstretched and her fingers intertwined with Hiccup's. Hiccup had never seen her so broken.

Looking back at his father, he was seated at another table, head braced between his hands, Gobber offering a hand to his shoulder in a form of comfort.

Hiccup looked back, distracted from his thoughts when he saw Bucket and Mulch guide Astrid away from his lifeless form on the table. She didn't fight them, but horrid wails of grief echoed from her mouth.

Hiccup looked down at his astral body, searching for any sign of the silver cord, but now he could barely see the outline of his astral figure either. It was as if he was fading out, like a ghost.

But it couldn't end like this, he thought. He had to know what happened to him. He couldn't leave, he couldn't go anywhere until he knew for sure.

"Stop," he said to the man who'd begun to unroll a smooth, clean white sheet over his body.

Astrid wailed as she watched from her spot opposite of Stoick. Stoick himself, face red and streaked with tears, his body shuddered with sobs.

"Stop!" Hiccup shouted again, and this time, as the fire in the pit stuttered and fizzled, he did.

Hiccup took his chance. He closed his eyes, using the split second of bought time to imagine the silver cord back into existence.

But it was too late, he was slipping backward, falling away. Dissolving. He opened his eyes to see the world whir into an indefinite blur.

The snap came like a punch in his gut.

Then his eyes flew open for a second time – his real eyes. He gasped, sucking in air as though he'd been drowning. He looked up and saw the sheet poised above his head and knew he was back in his body. Raising an arm, he pushed away the hands that held the white sheet just above his face.

The pain in his body came first, an intense surge of fire that raged like lave through his veins.

But it could not compare with what followed after.

A wail rose up from his depths. It left him as an inhuman cry.

Finally, he remembered everything.