A/N Thank you FanWrither02 (Thank you very much!), AquaJinx (Thanks again for letting me know!), Foxxlight (:D Thank you! I'm glad that you think so.), and Bellator Regina (I'm sorryyyy for the suspeeeense... Oh, wait. I'm not. :D Ha, I kid!) for leaving reviews on the last chapter, and thank you to everyone else who favourited it or otherwise just enjoyed it!

Not including this one, there will be two more chapters. In the next one a whole lot starts to go down, so think of this chapter as... the calm before the storm. (Or just me being really mean to some of our favourite characters.)

I hope you enjoy! As always, let me know what you think!

HTTYD still doesn't belong to me; Dreamworks didn't accept the bribe of twenty dollars, unfortunately.

"So, Hiccup. Hey, Hiccup! Hiccuuuuup-!"

Hiccup heaved a sigh, irritably curling his fingers into the fabric of his pants to keep the mounting urge to throttle Tuffnut at bay. Astrid felt the exasperation radiating off of him in waves and craned her neck to peer back at him, one of her hands reaching back to move his own to her waist, offering him a timid smile. He reflexively returned it though his eyes were too tired to fool Astrid. When she drew her hands away from his, Hiccup kept his own wrapped around her waist.

It occurred to him how thankful he should be that in all of Midgard, Astrid Hofferson herself had appointed herself his caretaker. He was pretty sure Fenrir Greyback himself could throw himself at Hiccup, jaws slavering, and Astrid would fight him off with nothing but her hands and mean looks.

She was basically the human embodiment of sheer force of will.

The poison's effects on him were increasing with every passing hour, making him feel weary and achy, and the rocking motion from the beating of Toothless's wings (that prior to his, you know, encroaching death, he'd rarely spared thought for) made him feel nauseous. He felt like he was in the middle of the ocean, in a storm, in naught but a dinky little rowboat. For a flight-junkie like Hiccup, this defilement of flying was a cruel, cruel irony.

Toothless, for his part, was doing his best to keep Hiccup as comfortable as was possible, flapping his wings only when the glide began to lose altitude. (Unfortunately, the gentle wave-like pattern this resulted in didn't fare too much better with Hiccup's jumbled insides. He'd dry-heaved into a sack he'd brought once or twice; Astrid had politely pretended not to notice.) Astrid, too, worried over him, clenching tightly to his arms when he was overcome with a coughing fit as though he would pitch sideways from the saddle and plummet head-first towards the water.

Which, quite honestly, was a possibility.

"Hiccup, lad! Can you hear me, or did the poison kill your ears first?" Tuffnut asked histrionically.

"No, I think it got his voicebox," Ruffnut supplied helpfully.

"Ohhh."

Don't they have an off switch-?

If ever there was a time he'd wanted to physically assault the Thorston twins, it was today. Hiccup, ever the optimist, was one of few Vikings to managed to see past the twins'- uh- idiosyncrasies, appreciating them for their out-of-the-box thinking, skewed as it might be. However, right now Hiccup felt entitled to a little snark and irritation.

He was dying, after all.

"What do you want, Tuff?" He was too tired to mask his aggravation. Tuffnut either didn't notice or decidedly ignored it. (The day Tuffnut Thorston learned to take a hint would be the day Muspelheim froze over.)

"By Odin, he speaks! So, since we're flying all the way across the archipelago for you, I figured pretty soon you're gonna have a hankering to return the favour."

"Yeah," Ruffnut chirped breezily. "You'll owe us, like, a million ones. Big, shiny, gold ones."

Hiccup glowered at them in answer. Tuffnut grinned, unnaffected, as usual.

"Great! You're on board! So I was thinking the other day-"

"It's true, I was there," Ruffnut interjected.

"-and I said to myself, Self- why are we not try to breed different species of dragons? And I replied, Self, that's a good point! Why aren't we? Think how cute a little Nadd-onkle would be! So I've been meaning to ask you, if Toothless is ever free sometime-"

Hiccup blanched in horror; Toothless growled; Astrid lobbed a mug from the basket at Tuffnut's head, hitting him solidly in the helmet with a loud clang.

"Gods, shut up," Astrid shouted. "No one is breeding Toothless with anything." She peered back to Hiccup, still scowling. "They're insufferable!"

"You think you have it bad?" Snotlout hissed, swooping next to them. He gestured emphatically at the unhappy passenger trussed up behind him. "Ryker keeps complaining every five seconds about how he hates the air, hates the dragons, wants to skin the dragons." That explained the makeshift gag in Ryker's mouth. He reminded Hiccup of a roasted pig all dressed up for Snoggletog- only a little more irate and much less appetizing. "Why did I get stuck with him, anyway?"

"Because we couldn't trust anyone else with the job," Hiccup said, appealing to Snotlout's egomania. (The truth: no one else had wanted Ryker, either.)

"Oh." Snotlout puffed out his chest with pride. "Obviously. I'm the best at transporting people. I transport things all the time. I'm the best at transporting things."

Rolling his eyes at Snotlout, and trying to cleanse his mind of the unpleasant thoughts Tuffnut had incurred, Hiccup surveyed the dark ocean beneath them with bleary green eyes.

"We'll need to find somewhere to bed down for the night soon," Hiccup said after a moment, gesturing to the water. "We haven't seen any islands in a while, so we should take the first one we're given. Hopefully it won't be the habitat for any wild-card dragons." He paused. "Or, y'know, nefarious dragon hunters, as goes our luck."

Astrid tensed; he could feel her spine stiffen under his hands.

"Are you sure we should stop for that long?" Astrid asked carefully. "I think we should just touch down, feed and water the dragons and ourselves, and then keep going."

Hiccup frowned. "You know we can't do that. We need rest. The dragons need rest."

Astrid straightened up, her countenance her objecting, and Hiccup knew to expect an argument. It was only a moment later, however, that her shoulders drooped and her face fell. "There's just so little time," Astrid said, her voice uncharacteristically small; Hiccup could hear the tremulous note belying her otherwise calm tone. He wrapped his arms comfortingly around her waist, resting his chin on her shoulder, and she angled her head so that it rested comfortably against his crown.

Hiccup tried not to dwell on the fact that he might only have a few days left with her; that he might never fly with Toothless again; that he might never again see his father. He tried not to dwell on it because it was too much for him to handle, and so he did the "healthiest" thing he knew to do- he buried it, along with everything else, deep enough down that even a Whispering Death couldn't unearth it.

"It'll be okay, Astrid," he said, for her sake. Of course he couldn't know that for sure (and he didn't really believe it himself) but Astrid trusted Hiccup and relaxed visibly at the reassurance. She turned to press a chaste kiss to his lips but was startled when Hiccup jerked away, coughing into a clenched fist, the sound deep in his chest. Her expression hardened again as she faced forward.

Toothless crooned at her concernedly. Astrid ran a comforting hand along his scaly snout, echoing Hiccup's words: "It's going to be okay." Then, louder, she said to the rest of group, "Keep an eye out for an island. We'll touch down for a few hours to rest up."

Hiccup silently watched the way the rest of the group responded to Astrid, his green eyes faraway. His left hand, the one he had coughed into, was clenched absent-mindedly to his chest; a small, but still worrying, amount of blood painted his palm scarlet. A morbid thought wormed itself into his fever-addled mind.

We aren't going to make there in time; and if we do, it'll still be too late.

He shuddered; he didn't want to die.

If we fail, this going to be hardest on Toothless, he thought somberly. He's not going to want to fly without me, at least not at first. Astrid knows where I hid the special tailfin I made for him in case I died; maybe she'll help him move on.

Maybe they'll help each other.

As little as Hiccup wanted to die, he wanted to abandon his family even less.

He leaned his forehead against Astrid's shoulder and closed his eyes; he didn't look up or speak again until they'd landed for the night.

Toothless blinked owlishly in the darkness as he heard rustling nearby. Peering back, he saw Astrid kneeling beside Hiccup, gingerly touching the back of her hand to his forehead. He could tell from her tight, worried expression that his human's fever had only worsened. Hiccup radiated heat like a lantern, and even with his limited knowledge of humans and their bodily needs Toothless knew that it heralded something being terribly wrong.

Feeling Toothless's gaze on her, Astrid looked up at him.

"Hey, Toothless," she whispered. "You're not sleeping, either, huh?"

Toothless huffed in reply.

"Yeah, I know," Astrid said, her eyes soft as she looked down at Hiccup's sleeping form. "I'm worried about him, too." She turned back to the fire where a few sparse flames weakly sputtered. "I'm going to get more firewood. I'll be back soon."

Toothless watched after Astrid as she disappeared into the dark treeline, then turned his attention back to his Rider. Hiccup was fast asleep, tucked warmly beneath the tough membrane of one of the Night Fury's wings. He was propped against Toothless's forelegs and chest, his arms folded over his chest and his head lolling to the side at an awkward angle.

Curling tightly in on himself, Toothless brought his tail whipping forth so that his tailfin flickered just below Hiccup's feet (or rather, foot and prosthetic). Like a Nadder to her hatchlings, Toothless's mind surged with unadulterated feelings of protectiveness and possessiveness at the vulnerable state of his best friend. Usually, when Hiccup was in trouble (as he tended to get into a lot- the wiry little human had a knack for sticking his nose where it didn't belong) Toothless would be able to leap into action- snap peevishly at a few weaker dragons, intimidate a dragon hunter into submission, or what have you- and protect him. But this- this was beyond Toothless, and the dragon felt completely and utterly useless.

His Hiccup was hurting and he could do nothing to help.

Hiccup rolled restlessly to one side, then to the other; Toothless noticed that he'd begun to shiver, and a thin sheen of sweat glistened on his brow in the moonlight. Slowly, so as not to wake him, Toothless freed his wing and extended it more fully before tucking it back in around the sleeping Viking, effectively sealing Hiccup into his own private cocoon of wing and scales. The shivers didn't cease entirely, but Toothless was at least pleased to note that they subsided somewhat.

Resting his head on a foreleg, Toothless fought his drooping eyelids to stay alert. Sleep was tantalising, but he couldn't leave Hiccup alone. He didn't know when Astrid would be back, and he was worried that Hiccup would need him during the night. What if he asphyxiated soundlessly, or choked on his own blood, or-?

No. He wouldn't risk it.

Resigned to a sleepless night followed by a long day of flying, Toothless maintained vigilance over his self-ascribed charge into early in the morning, when the sun was just cresting over the tops of the trees in a dazzling explosion of colour.

"Mmf! Mmrmf!"

Astrid tensed, cracking a few sticks in her hold as she turned to stare daggers in Ryker's direction. The man had been carelessly deposited against a tree on the outer edge of the thicket the riders had slept near, still bound and gagged.

He looked worse than he had before the flight. Although Astrid felt no pity for his gauntness- after all, it was because of him that Hiccup wasn't faring much better- they still needed him alive, and she didn't want Hiccup to die over a grudge (albeit an understandable grudge).

Dropping her gathered twigs and sticks into a pile, Astrid walked over to Ryker, dropping to one knee and roughly- perhaps more roughly than the situation warranted- pulling free his gag.

"What do you want?" Astrid hissed between grit teeth as Ryker coughed as his lungs were suddenly flooded with air. She'd been away from Hiccup for too long and her patience was already worn thin.

"Needed to talk to ya," he gasped, "away from the others."

Astrid's leery expression hardened. "And why would you need to do that?"

"It's about the cure," he said, "and this is somethin' I don' think you wan' Hiccup hearin' about."

The sun was peeking up over the trees when Astrid returned with the firewood. The fire had long since gone out so she began a new one with flint and the edge of her axe. She fed the flame until it was a hearty blaze and then outstretched her arms to warm her frigid fingers as she lost herself in grim thought.

I have to do it, she resolved. Hiccup deserves a longer and happier life than any Viking on Berk, and even if he doesn't like it- even if he hates me- I have to save him. At whatever cost.

Her thoughts were a million miles away, mulling over the new information Ryker had relayed to her, when she heard a rasping cough and a mumble from behind her.

Turning, she saw that Hiccup was gently shouldering aside Toothless's wing to crawl out from beneath the organic tent. The shadows on his face seemed bolder than she remembered, but she desperately explained it away by wavering light cast by the roaring fire.

She didn't want to face the reality of Hiccup's worsening condition because that meant having to face the fact she might lose him.

"Thanks, bud," Hiccup said weakly, scratching the scales atop the Night Fury's nose. "I'm sure you've been up all night. Try and-" He broke off into a wheezing cough that rattled his entire body. He blinked his watering eyes and smiled reassuringly at the worried Night Fury. "Try and rest while you can. I promise I'll be here when you wake up."

Toothless murred a quiet reply and closed his eyes, relaxing under Hiccup's hand; his rhythmic breathing that sounded a moment later told that he was fast asleep.

Astrid guiltily turned her attention back to the fire as Hiccup turned his soft eyes to her; she stoked the flames with a stick disinterestedly as he flopped down, cross-legged, beside her.

"How about you?" he said. She could feel his eyes on her and was suddenly glad that he couldn't read thoughts. "Have you slept?"

"Don't need to," was the curt reply. "I'm fine. You're the one who should be sleeping."

"I am. I was. I mean- I've been thinking..."

"Oh boy," Astrid said, a smile tugging at the corners of her lips in spite of everything. "Hiccup Horrendous Haddock the Third has been thinking. Isn't that one of the signs of Ragnarok?"

"Oh, ha-ha," Hiccup said dryly, though Astrid could hear the smile in his voice. "I'm being serious." Hiccup slipped his hand over her own; her breath hitched as Astrid made the mistake of looking up into his eyes.

His large green eyes, though dark-rimmed as they were, sparked and roared with reflected firelight, and every ounce of keen intelligence and thought was trained on her. In typical Hiccup-fashion, he looked not just at her, but into her, and though her. In that moment, Astrid Hofferson felt smaller and lesser than she ever had before.

"Astrid," he said, bringing her scarred and rough hands to his chest, cupped gently in his own, "if I'm dying, there are... things... that I need be known." His voice was incredibly quiet; Astrid leaned forward to better understand him, their faces now only inches apart. The rings under his eyes were more pronounced up close. "Things I need you to know. I've known you for a long time, and... well... the time I've spent with you... The things we've done together, built together..." He looked away, abashed, into the fire, then returned her gaze with all the intensity of a full-blooded Viking. Astrid's eyes widened with understanding at his intention. "Astrid Hofferson, I-"

"Hiccup, stop," Astrid said, quickly pulling her hands away. Hiccup first looked startled, then slightly hurt, though he quickly tried to mask it with an awkward chuckle. A rose hue seared his fair skin, creeping up his neck and settling across his face in an unmistakable blush as he stammered apologetically.

"I, uh- sorry, I just- I know it's a bit- sudden- and soon-"

"No, Hiccup, it's not," she said quickly, squeezing Hiccup hands, still clenched tightly in her own. Hiccup looked down at them, his expression inscrutable. "This just- you're not going to die, okay? And you shouldn't say things just because you think you're going to. You deserve your perfect moments, Hiccup." Hiccup slowly met her eyes, something akin to gratitude now reflected in them. "Don't let Ryker take this from you. Save it for your- no, for our perfect moment."

And for a day when you can forgive me, Astrid thought bitterly.

"Okay," Hiccup said in a heaving sigh, clearing his throat a couple times to keep from coughing. "But, Astrid..." He smiled at her then, his eyes half-lidded and his smile crooked. "I- I do, you know."

"I know," Astrid said. "And, Hiccup..." She looked down. "I do, too."

Her stomach churned with guilt as he leaned forward to press his lips to her own; her eyes stayed open until he pulled away.

Tomorrow, she thought. We just have to get through tomorrow.

When Hiccup fell into a restless sleep Astrid set to work sharpening the edges of her axe.