About midway through their last leg of the journey from their final rest stop at Changewing Island, Gobber gets Fishlegs to pull up beside Astrid.
"Just wanted to congratulate you" Gobber calls over, "Was mightily impressed with your plan for dealing with Jormung back there."
"Can't forget Snotlout's involvement y'know" Hedgelout pipes up.
"Oh yes Hedgelout, he was amazing as bait while Astrid did the impressive parts." Gobber rolls his eyes.
"To be fair I couldn't have done it without him" Astrid chuckles, making Hedgelout look smug.
"Oh you give that boy too much credit." Gobber smiles. "What you did, and managing to get the rest of us out of there unharmed was amazing. I'm sure your mother would love to hear all about it."
Astrid couldn't help but smile, knowing how all too eager to hear the details of the fighting her mum would be.
At long last Berk starts creeping off from the horizon towards them. The dragons, weary after the days action, dug into their energy reserves at the sight of safety.
Toothless especially started flying with renewed determination, foregoing flying with the rest in favour of getting Hiccup back as soon as possible.
Sköld encourages Ruffnut and Tuffnut to try and keep up with the others, "We need to fetch Gothi as soon as we land.".
All bar Barf and Belch come in to land by the infirmary, and the few Berkians around the buildings all watch with growing concern.
Gobber and Fishlegs unstrap Hiccup's limp body from his saddle, and carry him towards the infirmary.
They are almost through the door when Stoick arrives to ask them about how it went, and falls to his knees as he sees the unconscious body of his son.
Toothless follows his best friend into the infirmary, wanting to make sure that he is comfortable and safe.
Astrid runs over to the chief, "Don't worry, he's alive. He's stable. Sköld has gone to fetch Gothi already."
She starts to tear up and she leans her head on his cape's fur lining on his shoulder.
"I-It's my fault. I failed you again, I couldn't keep your son safe. I'm really sorry sir, I should have..."
"Shh, it's ok. It's not your fault lass." Stoick assures her, his voice soft but breaking. His unstable tone cracks and morphs into one of pained resentment, "It's that Night Fury's fault."
Astrid looks up from his shoulder in surprise and a little concern, eyes still glistening.
"Toothless-?"
"Yes. That creature let my son lose his leg." His brow steels even further, and he carefully pushes Astrid to the side as he gets up.
Ignoring her pleas to listen, he marches towards the back of Gothi's infirmary, from where Fishlegs had just managed to coax Toothless away from Hiccup so that there was space for him to receive further treatment.
Caught by surprise by the veritable tree trunk of muscle stomping towards him, Toothless whirled around to face Stoick and warbled.
The dragon was clearly confused, and showed no signs of reciprocating aggression until the Chief of Berk unhooked a small axe from his belt.
Upon drawing the blade, Stoick starts yelling at Toothless, shouting curses and threats at the night fury before him.
Taken aback by the Chief's demeanour, Toothless bares his teeth and growls, but the Viking's leather boots don't stop marching onwards.
The distance between them was narrowing rapidly and Toothless was backing away, now getting desperate to avoid attacking Hiccup's dad. The growls turned into roars in any attempt to scare him off and his wings were arched defensively to look imposing.
But the enraged Viking was pushing back the dragon, the space behind him rapidly decreasing as they got closer to a small cliff edge.
Right before Toothless was about to take emergency action and leap backwards off the cliff, Gobber runs between them huffing and catches the axe Stoick is whirling around in his hook-hand.
"Stoick." Gobber says in a warning tone, twisting his hook and disarming his greatly vexed chieftain.
Finally taking the hint to step down from that fight, Stoick clenches his jaw, saying, "So would you care to explain to me then how my son's predicament isn't that beast's fault?"
"Of course, ya know better than most my penchant for a good story-" Gobber tells him, slowly starting him walking back to the infirmary so he can see his son.
As Stoick walked away, eyes starting to tear up, Toothless let out a large huff in a sigh of relief.
"Don't worry Toothless" Fishlegs says, "Once he knows you saved him the first time I'm sure he won't blame you anymore."
Toothless rolls his eyes, but keeps his eyes glued on the infirmary as now both Astrid and Fishlegs pet him. His mournful warbles rumble the teen Vikings and they chuckle slightly despite themselves.
"We miss him too Toothless, we miss him too." Astrid whispers as she rests her head down on the Night Fury's.
"Not much we can do standing about here." Fishlegs points out, gesturing across to all the other dragons around, getting pats from a couple of the braver Vikings.
"Yeah, let's get them to their stables." Astrid stands up.
"I'll take Toothless back to the house. Ruffnut, try and encourage your brother to stop hanging upside down off of Barf's neck and help would you?"
Ruffnut grinned, and brought out a small fish from a back pocket and offered the horrendous smelling item towards the Hideous Zippleback.
"How long has that been- Actually no, never mind. I don't want to know." Astrid stops herself and resigns to watching both heads of the Zippleback dart down towards the fish, hitting Tuffnut into the floor.
Turning to Fishlegs, Astrid asks "Can you take the rest from here? Make sure Hookfang has the bucket of water on standby."
"Sure. See you tomorrow", Fishlegs bids her farewell while Astrid pats Stormfly's snout as the Nadder follows the congregation towards the stables.
Both Night Fury and Viking trudged towards their houses, subdued at the loss of Hiccup. Despite him only being knocked out and in the infirmary, the lack of his presence reminded Astrid all too well of the first time he was presumed dead and it had her worried.
They get up to the house Hiccup and Toothless had been using, and Toothless casually bats a paw at the handle, opening it and trooping inside.
"Huh." Astrid verbalised her puzzlement and surprise.
"Didn't know you knew how to do that." she shrugs, closing the door behind him and turning off to her house next door.
As she walks the few metres to her house, her mum steps just outside their door to meet her.