Alrighty everybody, so another chapter up, and I like this bunch a lot, if I do say so myself. #76 is dedicated to Dawnstar08, who wanted one where Toothless couldn't fly, and I think it turned out alright. Lotsa angst ;D Anywhoo, enjoy!

~.~

76. Longing

To a dragon, flight was everything. Flight was life. Thus, life without flight was nothing.

Of course, you could try to distract yourself. For years and years you could try to forget the fact that you were a dragon, and yet you could not fly. Key word there: try. You could try to forget, and you could tell yourself that it worked, but—it never did. Not really.

Toothless had been lucky. The day he had lost his tail fin, he had been lucky enough to stumble across a friend with a sense of duty strong enough to drive him to not only befriend the Night Fury, but return to him his natural abilities of flight. It had been years ago now, but Toothless could still remember when he first felt that unique longing that burst into flower inside of him when he had realized that he couldn't fly. It was a longing unlike any other—a desire to regain something that had been with you since birth, then suddenly and painfully ripped away. Toothless had been lucky—he met someone who, with some patience, no understanding of the phrase "give up," and a good dose of inventive genius, could take that longing away.

His luck hadn't held.

Now he perches on the precarious, collapse-prone edge of one of the many cliffs near Berk that juts out over the wild sea, his face turned to the horizon and his body leaning into the wind, attempting in vain to replicate the sensation of flight. The breeze ruffles his outstretched wings—although the dragon is loathe to call them that. The limbs are more like lace now; delicate and thin and tattered beyond usefulness with holes. Destroyed by fire, they can no longer come even close to holding his weight in the sky. They serve no purpose other than to stand as a painful reminder of what used to be.

The longing is strong, stronger than Toothless had ever thought possible. It's almost a physical pain by now, or at least he imagines it is. He wonders what is going to happen when he can no longer subdue the longing that boils and smolders inside of him.

Because this time, there's no one to take it away.

77. Babysitter

Babysitting, while not one of Toothless' favorite pastimes, was something he often found himself doing. He wasn't one hundred percent sure if wrangling destructive Viking teenagers really counted as "babysitting," but it certainly was a job of epic proportions.

Instead of having to prevent them from chugging mud or getting lost, as he would have to if they were ten years younger, he had to worry about slightly bigger things—like having them destroy small cities, make scientific breakthroughs that enabled them to teleport for short periods of time, and violently kill one another. It was a dangerous profession, and unrewarding (although every day that went by without a fatality was indeed a reason to celebrate).

To keep his patience from dwindling, Toothless often insisted to himself that it was good practice for life. When Hiccup had kids, they would have the best babysitter in Berk; those kids wouldn't be able to sneeze without the dragon knowing about it. And compared to what Hiccup put the dragon through—the whole teleporting business, that episode with the rats and the reflex tests, the uranium craze, Astrid's threats of violence, the twins' dramatic "death scene," the Experiment That Can Not Be Named—a killer flu epidemic would be, like, nothing. A case of the sniffles? Psh.

Unless, of course, the kids turned out like their parents and their parents' friends. In that case, Toothless was doomed.

78. Outnumbered

Panic was not a sensation common to Toothless. The very fact that he was on the verge of feeling it was nearly as scary as the situation that triggered the emotion. He was struggling with it as it welled up inside of him, attempting to drive it away before it overcame him and put his senses on lockdown.

Vikings from the regions even farther northward had all but taken Berk. In a village crawling with the enemy and nearly barren of it's citizens besides those who lay dead on the ground, three remained: Hiccup, Ruffnut, and a ground-bound Toothless.

Backed up against a wall, it wasn't looking good. Toothless was wounded and incapable of flight, and Hiccup, while not as painfully scrawny as he had been in his youth, still looked like he could be stepped on and squashed underfoot by even the smallest of their adversaries. Ruffnut may have been able to hold her own and escape, but Toothless knew that she was too good a friend to leave them here to die alone, and so she was in danger, too.

Don't panic, the dragon ordered himself. Don't panic, don't panic, don't—

The man who had been eying Ruffnut in a way that made Toothless want to rip the guy's throat out—a big ugly jerk swathed in obscene amounts of furs who looked like he could smash through walls with his forehead—looked down in surprise at the ax blade growing from the middle of his chest. The silver weapon was ripped away, and before he had even hit the ground the hulking warrior next to him had met a similar fate.

The panic building in Toothless' chest melted away when he saw the bright eyes and the grim, determined smile that had arrived with their usual spectacular timing.

You were never outnumbered with Astrid around.

79. Pointless

Ruffnut and Tuffnut were at it. Again.

"You are such a sexist pig!" Ruffnut exclaimed as she grappled with her twin brother, kneeing him viciously in the gut when he tried to get his arm around her neck and strangle her.

"Yeah well," Tuffnut grunted as he blocked her blow and struck out at her head, "if you weren't so high and mighty all the time, we wouldn't have this problem."

His sister tripped him swiftly, and he drug her down to the ground with him. "You're one to talk," she snarled as she fought to pin him down.

In the typical fashion of male Vikings, Toothless and Hiccup, accompanied by Snotlout and Fishlegs, had been watching the fight unfold and not doing a thing about it. Why interrupt the free entertainment?

Tuffnut landed a hard blind-side blow on his sister, momentarily stunning her. She retaliated by kicking him in the ribs and jarring the air from his lungs. Astrid, attracted by the commotion, appeared just in time to watch the twins roll by, spitting profanity at one another. She looked from them to the rest of her friends, who were leaning against trees and watching casually.

She frowned. "What is it this time?"

Snotlout didn't take his eyes off the fight as he replied. "No idea. Somebody said something that ticked somebody off and now they're ripping each other's throats out."

"Nothing unusual," Hiccup added. None of them seemed to be making any moves to stop the attempted sibling slaughter.

Astrid looked caught somewhere between disdain for the male species and mild amusement. The twins scrambled by again, trying to draw blood, and she sighed and sat down beside Fishlegs. "How pointless."

80. Directions

"Okay so, we are. . . here?" Hiccup peered at the map. "Eh, no, never mind. Maybe we're here."

Toothless sighed. Never, ever again was he letting Hiccup be in charge of reading the map. It was a wonder they had made it this far.

The boy squinted against the sunlight. "Oh, it's upside down." He flipped it around, then frowned. "Okay, no it wasn't. What on earth does that say? For the love of Thor, there's no compass on this thing."

They were walking through the woods. A very large woods, apparently, because they had been in it for several days. Either that or they were going in circles. Toothless was pretty sure that was the case.

Hiccup glared at the piece of paper. For being an inventive genius, Toothless noticed, he needed some work on his map reading skills. "You know what?" the boy said. "I give up. We're flying." He tossed the map over his shoulder and hopped up on his friend's back.

The dragon looked wearily at the boy. Which way do we fly, then?

Hiccup shrugged. "How should I know? Go. . ." He pointed in a random direction. "That way. We'll hit civilization sooner or later."

Good enough.