Monday was uneventful right up until I was hobbling towards my first period classroom and Astrid held the door open for me.

It wasn't obvious that she'd done so; she'd simply gone through first, and paused with her hand on the door rather than instantly going to claim her "too cool for school" seat in the back. What made it special was that, just as I was getting myself across the threshold, her lips parted in a smile and a breath of sound came out in a short, soft greeting.

I'd like to say I handled it well, but I'm sorry to say I got extremely flustered and dropped my bag and nearly had a panic attack right on the spot. Fisher had to come to my rescue, and by that point Astrid had gone to her seat.

Real cool, Hiccup; real smooth. I took some comfort in the fact that she couldn't possibly have been expecting any other reaction: I as good as admitted to her that I didn't get positive attention all that often.

"What was that?" Fisher asked softly. "You haven't acted like that in…at least eight years."

"She looked at me," I whispered back, still scrabbling for my inhaler and trying to fit a suitable response to what had just happened. "She smiled at me…she said hi to me…"

"These panic attacks of yours, are they triggered by any high emotion or just fear?" Fisher looked worried that I might collapse screaming at his feet.

I finally managed to take a couple puffs and looked around. There was Astrid, lounging back in her chair with her hand over her mouth; she wasn't pointing, and she wasn't making any sound that was particularly audible, but her eyes were practically glowing with amusement.

"And now she's laughing at me," I finished, half-complaining. I couldn't be too mad, though; not after learning that she came from an increasingly abusive home. I could definitely believe that she didn't have a lot to laugh about in her life.

Fisher helped me to my desk and helped me get settled. "At least she's giving attention to you; attention that is somewhat better than zero on the mood scale."

I mumbled some sort of affirmative and pulled a well-polished ruler out of my pencil case.

Astrid always sat in the back of every class I have ever shared with her; my seat was always chosen (mathematically chosen, according to Fisher) based on how well I could use my equipment and environment to look at her without making it obvious that I was doing so. This meant I was usually in front of her, though not directly in front of her – I'd be something like one seat over and two seats forward. I could spend almost the entire class watching her, using the windows if the outside lighting was right and my ruler if it wasn't; I'd long ago memorized the way she sat up straight and tall when she knew the answer, and slouched back with an air of disinterest when she didn't, and how she chewed fiercely on her pencils while she was thinking.

I was either a stalker, or the worst kind of pathetic.

This was probably the first time Astrid caught my eyes on her, though; or at least, the first time she acknowledged that I was watching her. She didn't – quite – smile at me, but she did cock an eyebrow and wave her finger a bit. Either saying hello or scolding me for peeping.

The entire day went like that. Every class Astrid shared with me (which was nearly all of them), she would theatrically time her entrance to be just before mine so she could hold the door for me. As I passed her, she would look directly at me for a second or two and mouth a brief "hello." Once in class, she would figure out how I was watching her and make faces at me when the teacher wasn't looking. Sometimes I would make faces back; we were practically communicating in some kind of code – the key for which, I did not have, so I have no idea what we were saying to each other.

She didn't hold the door for me when classes were over; evidently she couldn't figure out how to time her exits with mine to make them properly discreet. But that was okay, because I also shared a lot of classes with Fisher and he would make sure I got out of the classrooms in one piece.

I actually found myself looking forward to field hockey.

"How are you doing, Astrid?"

Astrid carefully flexed her quads and looked at me. "Everything works, nothing hurts; it's a good day to play."

I lowered my voice as I approached with her gear. "What did your dad say when you got home?"

Astrid dropped her voice, too. "Technically I'm avoiding him. He knows I'm coming home for meals and such, but he hasn't seen me to corner me."

"So…he hasn't noticed that your bruises have healed faster than they should have."

"Nope." She very nearly snatched her padding out of my hands. Then she suddenly switched to a normal tone of voice as she started buckling things on. "Hey, here's a question: what are you going to do with…your new pet…when your dad gets home?"

That question stopped me cold.

I had not thought that far.

Of course the minute my dad saw Toothless he would try to kill him. And Toothless, perceiving a threat, would try to kill my dad – especially since he couldn't teleport to a safer realm. Everybody involved would be hurt: either Toothless would be dead and my dad would be seriously injured, or Dad would be dead and Toothless would be crippled…or worst-case scenario, both would die, but no matter how the fight turned out I would be heartbroken. Probably I'd go find a nice high cliff to jump off.

I was just opening my mouth to say that I didn't know when suddenly I did know. "The house. Borden's house. When my dad gets home I'll keep Toothless there. Not the most elegant of solutions, I'll admit, but…"

"You'd keep him at a haunted house?" Astrid sounded incredulous.

"And you've just proved my point."

Astrid opened her mouth…closed it again…and looked thoughtful. "Nobody would ever look there, because everybody would assume that because they wouldn't go there for a million bucks nobody else would either."

"There you go." I wasn't sure that was the most elegant phrasing, but she got the idea.

"Have you actually been there, by the way?"

I took a deep breath, considered my own heart rate and decided that I could think about my previous excursions in that direction without bringing on a panic attack. "Yes. Before I landed in the hospital, my wanderings have taken me ever closer to Borden's house. That day, I at least made it to the doorstep."

Astrid made a face at me. Then her eyebrows shot up. "Wait, you can't think too hard about 'that day' without a panic attack, can you?"

Oh…she was wondering why I didn't know if I got farther than the doorstep. "Nope, so I don't know if I went inside or if my 'new pet' came out to say hello." Actually, I knew he probably had come out: it seemed pretty unlikely that he would drag me outside after I'd changed his name, considering I'd scared him when I did that.

What I really didn't remember was which of us opened the door.

Gordon would be calling the girls onto the field at any moment, but Astrid wasn't moving. She was glaring at my cast – no, that was a speculative look. She was debating something very serious, and it was cast-related.

"Astrid…" I paused. "Are you…going to sign my cast after all?" It seemed like too much to hope for…

"I'm thinking about it."

I looked over my shoulder. "You might want to think about it later. Your coach will start bellowing soon."

Astrid socked my shoulder as she jogged past me. I think that was something like a "see you later."

She's a violent person.

"Hey, Fisher, you take a lot of notes on school dynamics…"

School was out, and Fisher was walking with me to make sure I didn't wipe out on the way home. He glanced at me and made an encouraging noise, catching on to the fact that I had a question about said dynamics.

"What kind of magic talisman would Astrid's autograph be? Like, on my cast."

Fisher chuckled. "Hick, Astrid broke your leg in the first place; there's got to be only a ten or twelve percent chance that she would sign your cast following such a loss of control."

I figured the odds were better than that, since we were sort of friends now; I let it slide, though, because I didn't want to talk about that. Yet. "Just suppose."

"Let's see. I'd say about ninety-seven percent of the student body knows Astrid broke your leg, so if against the odds she actually laid claim to that damage by autographing it…that would be something like a warning. 'Don't tread on him or I'll tread on you,' kind of thing."

That was something. Maybe that was why Astrid was considering it now. "And…of that ninety-seven percent, how many of them would catch the warning and take it seriously?"

"Oh, at least three-quarters."

That was really something; that would be so sweet, if she cared enough about my physical safety to put a ward on my cast.

"Why?"

"Huh? Oh…" I debated for a second and decided to share a small part of it. "At field hockey she seemed to be considering it."

Fisher stopped walking altogether for a second and stared at me. I could practically hear the synapses firing in his brain, trying to factor in this new variable in some way that made sense. "Are you sure that's what it was?" he finally asked.

"I asked her. That's what she said."

"…And she didn't hit you?"

I snorted. "Oh, she hit me; after she answered, as a goodbye before she took the field."

Fisher slowly shook his head. "Wow. That's…a statistical improbability."

"How…" I hesitated. My next question was very dangerous ground. "How much do you know about Astrid's life outside of school?"

"Very little." Strangely enough, that realization seemed to cheer him up. "Huh. Maybe something happened over the weekend…an unknown variable. Probably not an injury – if it were serious enough to be a variable, it would actually increase her hostility by at least eight points…"

"And she wouldn't be offering to sign my cast; she'd be snarling threats at me," I added, enjoying myself immensely. I knew exactly what that unknown variable was, and it did involve an injury.

Fisher sighed dramatically. "I do hate trying to factor in unknown variables: the best I can ever do is approximations based on what I observe."

I eyed him curiously. "And you're still cool with the idea that something like that is even there."

"Well, sure. Just because there was an X hidden in the equation doesn't mean I didn't execute the steps correctly." He got me through my own front door and waved goodbye. "Sorry I can't stay, but I want to get home and adjust my formula."

I waved after Fisher and closed the door. Then I looked over my shoulder at Toothless, who was sitting on the stairs and looking confused.

"He's a complicated guy."

I hobbled to the sofa and collapsed there, heaving my foot up onto a stack of pillows. My leg had been aching all day.

Toothless flew over – well, more like he glided – and landed next to me. Once there he sniffed me up and down with a level of concentration that made me think he was learning about my day from the changes in my smell.

Then he got very quiet.

"What's wrong?" Sudden stillness from a dragon made me uneasy.

Toothless looked at me. Then he waddled around the sofa and sniffed the back of my neck. Teeth scraped briefly over my skin, and his tongue probed a sensitive spot just under my hairline.

I closed my eyes quickly. Toothless wanted a dream-state conversation, and going into those was always disorienting when I was awake. Seeing the world tilt around me as my body went numb…it was a bit too much to handle. "So, what mystery did you solve today?"

"How you changed my name."

I sat forward and turned to stare at hot-vampire Toothless. "Explain."

Toothless looked very, very worried – and the way he was rubbing my shoulders and studying my face, I was more than half convinced he was worried for me. "All along, I had wondered what power you must possess to completely transmute the basic elements of my being – to so completely transform me. Now I see that that wasn't what you did."

"I hope you're going to tell me what I did, because…you know I didn't have any idea what I was doing."

"All living things bear certain amounts of those basic elements; you gave me some of yours – joined it to my corresponding energies – and since I can only bear so much elemental force at a time, some of my power flowed to you."

My eyes widened. "Oh…I didn't destroy your power to teleport, I just absorbed it. Does that mean I can teleport now?"

"I wouldn't recommend it." Toothless looked even more anxious now. "The energy that enables us to cross the Void is, in effect, Void itself. Before you changed me, I had as much Void as a living thing could safely carry. According to the scents you bear of those you touched, humans as a species generally carry half that. You used to carry that much. Now I have almost no Void left, and you bear all that I used to."

Suddenly I had a good idea where this was going, and why Toothless was so concerned. If I was doing the math right, he was saying that I now had nearly three times my original amount of "Void" – and half again what a living thing was supposed to have. "I'm guessing by your attitude that this is a very bad thing. Just for me, or is it also bad for you?"

"If I were in the Realm of the Nest and still had to deliver tributes, it would be very bad. Otherwise…" he shrugged, "…I knew dragons with so little of other elements, and they live."

I shrugged, too. "I guess I should be glad that nothing bad has happened yet."

Toothless looked me right in the eyes. "Do not dismiss this, Hiccup. It has begun."

"What?"

"Your panic attacks. They began the day you claimed my Void, did they not? The periods of unconsciousness following a bad attack have been getting longer with each strike, have they not? And the anxiety preceding it: you have needed the Little Puffing Thing more frequently, haven't you? And are you truly going to tell me that you are adding more blankets to the bed and the sofa because winter is coming?"

I felt poleaxed. He was right – about all of it. A dislike of winter would only go so far, especially since Toothless himself was about as comfortable as a hot water bottle. "That's all because of the Void?"

Toothless nodded. "I think if this continues, you will die."

I stared at my feet. "I don't suppose you can take the Void back, can you?"

A heavy sigh answered me. "When a dragon has one element reaching maximum strength, all others are fit together with flawless precision. Your elements are locked into my patterns and have done little to soften their edges. No, Hiccup, I cannot take the Void back."

Well, it was worth a try.

Wait…

"Fitted together?" I echoed. "Because there is less of them, so they need extra precision to make the difference?" Maybe, just maybe, there was a chance.

"Yes…" Toothless had noticed the change in my mood.

"Okay, so you can't give back what I gave to you; can you reshape the non-Void elements I have left into something that can keep me alive?"

"I…" Toothless looked excited for a moment. Then he caved. "I can't. I mean, I could, but…you have more Void now than I did before. I can't pattern things for your entire body."

"But if you fixed my head and torso – everything with vital organs – I wouldn't have panic attacks or anything else that would ultimately impair my ability to live," I insisted, jumping up and spinning to grab Toothless's hands. "Just do as much as you can in order of how important to survival it is, and cut the losses."

"You won't enjoy it at all," Toothless warned, but he was looking hopeful.

"I'll still be alive in ten years. That's what matters."

Toothless nodded decisively. "All right. But not from here – I hate to tell you this, but the back of your head is too solid a piece for me to adequately sense what I will be doing to you."

"French kiss again?" I sighed. "Whatever. Just do it."

At least he did sound apologetic…

There was a weird sensation on the back of my neck – that felt like a Velcro clasp sounded when you opened it – and I was sitting on the sofa again, with Toothless pulling on my body like he was trying to get me comfortably positioned for what he was about to do. I squirmed a little to help and soon found myself settled with my neck bent back on the arm of the sofa.

"Okay, so I won't enjoy it," I muttered, "But please try to make it painless."

If Toothless understood, he didn't answer. He just came up next to me and positioned his mouth over mine. Like a CPR dummy. What wasn't like CPR was the way his long and snaky tongue probed around the inside of my mouth. I tried to brace myself, ready to fight down my own gag reflex if he brushed something in my throat the wrong way.

To my surprise, I found myself in another dreamscape. To my greater surprise, it wasn't one of mine at all. I was sprawled on my stomach on a beach I've never seen before, with something like the wingless body of a jet plane away off to my left. The sky was dark, with a couple of moons like eyes trying to peer through the clouds, and the water was a murky black.

I tried to move and couldn't. I tried again, harder – and a dragon paw pressed down on my back. Toothless looked me in the eye, silently informing me not to move.

He was a dragon in this dreamscape.

Then I noticed something else as I rolled my eyes around at my surroundings again: I was a dragon, too. My peripheral vision was way wider than it should have been, my neck wasn't kinking even though it should have been with my head bent back as far as it was, my hands were clawed and skeletal, and my arms had wing membranes growing off the backs of them.

If I said I was shocked, I'd be lying. I was a little surprised, but the more I thought about it the more sense it made. Toothless didn't know human patterns: only dragons. So, to prop me up from the inside he would have to shape me as a dragon, and to do that he took me to his dreamscape – where I would take his form. No wonder I couldn't move! I didn't have any experience at being out-of-body and taking on a form that someone else could understand.

Probably he was working with the assumption that when he put me back, the patterns would realign to something human. I hoped he was also building those patterns with some flexibility to them so that they could realign.

Toothless put both of his paws on the back of my head…at about the vicinity of my ears, I think…and pressed down. Like a trapdoor, my jaw came up, and he looked inside.

It was strange, being aware that my mouth was so large compared to the rest of my face.

His tongue found mine and…fastened to it…that felt really weird, like he was turning my tongue into an extension of his…and only then did he move his paws, and my top jaw fell back down to meet my lower jaw. There must have been a gap in my front teeth, or something, for me not to bite either of our tongues. Then he lifted my face up a bit with his paws under my chin, and the next thing I knew the tips of his teeth were pressed around the end of my muzzle…

And…

For just a moment, everything spun. A shudder went down my draconic body; I didn't have the coordination to fight him off, but in that moment I dearly wanted to. It was some kind of instinct, human or dragon or both, not to let anyone or anything have even the chance to cut off breathing.

Dominance. Before he can set those patterns, he has to establish dominance. I struggled to calm my reaction, to let him be dominant; it was the hardest thing I'd ever done. Control was always something that I had, and I didn't willingly give it up to anyone. But if I didn't give it up now, I would eventually lose it anyway: I would fall into the abyss of madness and never come back.

I didn't stop shaking, but I did manage to quell the feeble struggles of my limbs.

Then…he…I…

Oh my God, that was weird…

I wasn't feeling pain…I wasn't feeling emotion, at least not the way I normally did…

How did I feel emotion normally?

My brain was starting to overload, to short-circuit under the weird stimulus. My dragon-skin was pulsing with sensation, and I couldn't figure out if it was pushing or pulling or banging or scratching. My guts writhed, like I'd swallowed a basketful of prey that wasn't dead yet, and I couldn't decide if it was legless and slithering or had way too many scratchy legs and was crawling…or if it was a mixed basket, a smorgasbord. I was shaking harder, and if Toothless hadn't been holding my muzzle shut, I probably would have been screaming. For no reason other than that this was intense.

Suddenly – I have no idea how much later; time doesn't mean much in dreams – there was a series of cracking noises like every joint in my body popped near-simultaneously, and the dreamscape grayed out. I felt…numb. But it was a pleasant kind of numb, considering the sensations that had been rushing through me before. For a little while I drifted there, not really thinking anything.

"Hiccup. Hiccup," a voice – Toothless's voice – called through the gray. He sounded a lot less worried; he evidently thought he'd succeeded.

I stirred cautiously and opened my eyes. I was back in my own dreamscape; it was my house, and for some reason it had been flooded and was now draining. Toothless was holding me still and keeping my head above water as I floated.

"We did it, then," I said lazily.

Toothless nodded, grinning broadly.

"No more panic attacks?"

He faltered slightly. "Well, the patterns were established in your brain; not your body. Your brain will eventually apply those patterns to the rest of your body, but it will take time. The panic attacks will get no worse, however, and will gradually lose their power."

"Always a catch." I could live with a slow and steady improvement, though. Besides, now that I was really thinking about it, wouldn't people get suspicious if I magically recovered from my Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder in a day? "Well, I really ought to wake up now."

Toothless nodded like he'd expected that – and his dragon-tongue started unwinding from my brain.

Yeah, that was how I translated that sensation in my head. It was one of the reasons I liked him nuzzling my neck when he wanted to share dreams. The French-kiss connection was disturbingly intimate, reaching straight into the deepest and darkest recesses of my mind; the neck-nibble was more…chaste, I guess would be the word.

Also the side effects. Toothless had yet to figure out how to put his tongue in my mouth – or get it back out – without setting off my gag reflex.

Still…

It could be worse. A lot worse. And because he was able to reach so deep, he was able to fix the source of the worst trauma damage. That was enough for me.