"…No, but you gave it your best shot."

Hiccup blinks. The colors are too bright, swirling around his head. "Where's Toothless?" He was there when Hiccup woke up, wasn't he? He remembers him being in the house—was he? What's going on?

The sadness on the faces of the villagers – his dad, Astrid, Gobber, the twins – strike panic into Hiccup's heart. "Where's Toothless?!"

Gobber's face is in sharp focus, and Hiccup's in the house without knowing how he got there. Before him, Toothless lies by the hearth. His beautiful green eyes widen at the sight of Hiccup, and he croons, and shuffles forward.

There's something wrong with his tail. It's dragging like a dead thing. In fact—Hiccup's breath is stolen. Toothless' back legs don't work. His entire rear half is dead weight, dragging uselessly behind him. When he sees Hiccup's eyes widen, he cringes, looking away in shame.

The sight rends Hiccup's chest in two. "What's wrong with him?" he breathes.

"Broke his back when he hit the ground, poor lad," Gobber says as if Toothless were a human. "He couldn't spread his wings to break his fall because he was protecting you. He lived, but he'll never fly again. Never walk like a normal dragon."

"No!" A great keening cry bursts out of Hiccup as he falls to his knees, flinging his arms round Toothless. The dragon croons and purrs against him. "Toothless… oh, Toothless…" He looks up at Gobber. "I'll make him something so he can walk again. I'll take care of him. He's mine. I'm never letting him go." He nuzzles Toothless. "I'm never leaving you, bud, never. You'll never be alone."

"Ye can't spend the rest of your life taking care of him."

Hiccup's arm tightens around Toothless' neck, already drawing up schematics in his head for a wheeled platform to replace his back legs, a house without stairs where the disabled dragon can feel at home. "Just watch me."

"But you need a dragon to fly."

"I never flew before Toothless," Hiccup retorts, shoving aside the ripping pain in his heart at how he'll miss flying. "I'm a human. I'll survive."

"A downed dragon is a dead dragon."

"We're not at war anymore."

"That's true." Fishlegs has somehow replaced Gobber. "But every dragon manual says that a dragon deprived of flight dies of grief."

Hiccup clings to Toothless tighter, and wakes with a yell.

He immediately finds himself with an armful of concerned dragon, all wide-pupiled green eyes and worried croons. "It's okay, it's okay, it's okay," he repeats, letting Toothless lick him all over, because he needs it. "Toothless," Hiccup maneuvers him away to arm's length, looking sternly in his eyes, "did you hurt your back in the fall? When we fought the Red Death? When you," he has to swallow, "saved my life?"

Toothless looks away.

Hiccup grows cold. "You were hurt and you didn't tell me?"

Slobbery licks cover his face. "Don't change the subject! Why didn't you say anything?"

He's met with a raised eyebrow. "I know you can't talk. But to hide something like this from me…"

To reassure him, Toothless hops off the bed, swishing his tail and wiggling his butt in what would be a very funny motion if Hiccup wasn't so upset. "Yeah, I know you're okay now, but I heard stuff in my dream that—Ah, this is ridiculous. Dad!" he calls out, clattering downstairs.

"Mornin', son."

"Hey, dad." Long years of controlling himself in front of Stoick help calm Hiccup enough to ask what he desperately wants to. "I had a dream last night where I thought I was hearing people talk about Toothless getting hurt when we went to the nest? Did you guys… was that real stuff I heard? When I was unconscious?"

He's desperately hoping for his father to brush off his concerns in that way he has, expansively waving a hand and telling Hiccup it was all in his head. Instead, Stoick sinks into a chair, setting his porridge-spoon aside.

"It was touch and go there for a while." His voice is dark.

Hiccup feels dizzy. "You mean there was something wrong with Toothless?"

Stoick's gaze is fixed on a point high up behind Hiccup's head. He'd think his dad was lost in memory – but Stoick's focused.

Hiccup whirls to find Toothless on the staircase, frantically shaking his head. When Hiccup catches him, his eyes widen. Then he licks a paw and starts busily washing his face, while Stoick's spoon clunks back into his bowl of porridge. Looking from one to the other, Hiccup sits down heavily on the steps.

"Aaand… my wish for my dragon best bud and my dad to get along comes true, just when I don't want it to."

"Just let me tell 'im." Stoick's eyes are still looking over Hiccup's head to Toothless. "I know him when there's something he wants to find out. Like a dog with a bone, he is."

From behind Hiccup, there's a resigned sigh. He doesn't have to turn to know the dragon is gesturing, Go on.

Stoick inhales deeply, the sound like a bellows. "When we got you out of his arms…" Hiccup would be elated that his father is speaking of Toothless as if he has human arms, if he wasn't so wound up, "…he couldn't move."

Hiccup feels something pierce his heart. He reaches out blindly, and smooth scales meet his hand.

"We were afraid the fall had snapped his spine. He was bent over, curled around you, and he hit the ground at full speed. When we took you – it was touch and go, I don't need to remind you of your condition – he tried to follow. But he couldn't move his back half. We feared the worst."

Toothless is nosing his shoulder and purring, but Hiccup can't respond. He feels he will shatter if Toothless moves away from him, as if his touch is the only thing keeping him from falling to pieces all over the floor.

"It was Gobber who had the idea of putting him on a stretcher," Stoick said, "just a plank of wood, actually. We put 'im next to you. Found it was the best way of making him stay put."

Mournfully, Toothless lays his head in Hiccup's lap. Hiccup winds an arm so tight around his dragon's neck that he's afraid he'll choke him. Or he would, if he wasn't such a fishbone. "What happened next?"

"We kept 'im still," said Stoick. "Gothi… She has a way with him, she made him listen to her. She said to him not to move, even to do his business, and told us to keep ice on the lump on his spine. 'Twas a big one, too." Hiccup tries to meet Toothless' eyes, but he looks away. "She said either the swelling went down and he could move again, or… or his spine was severed. And time would tell. That must have been what ye heard us talkin' about, in your sleep."

"There's no ice this time of year," Hiccup blurts, more in an effort to fill the space between the words and get his head around it than anything else.

"Don't I know it," Stoick chuckles. "You have yer friends to thank for that. They wanted to make it up to you for how they treated you before. Every morning and night, rain or shine, they took it in turns to fly up the mountain and get a bucket of snow to put on yer Night Fury's tail. He never wanted for ice all through his recovery." Stoick grins. "Made a hole in the stretcher for him to do 'is business in a bucket. They took that away too. Don't mean to say they did it without complaining, though! Especially Snotlout."

Hiccup stares. All this while he was comfortably lying in bed, enjoying what Toothless had paid for. "When did he start to get better?"

Looking at his son, Stoick realizes the shock and concern he must be feeling. It's old news to Stoick, but he supposes that to Hiccup, it must be a lot to take in. "Oh, maybe two weeks into your, well," Stoick deliberately clears the darkness from his face, "while you were still sleepin'. Started to get some feeling back in his legs and tail. Gothi almost had him tied down in that period. Said he might do himself an injury with how eager he was to climb up next to you and be around you. We had already moved your bed downstairs, there was no way he would have stayed still that long if he'd been forced to be apart from you." Stoick took a spoonful of his breakfast. "Never let you out of his sight, he did. I don't think he left the house for more than a few minutes at a time all the while we were waiting for you to wake. Probably didn't trust us with you." The joke falls flat, Stoick's face clouding again at the thought that the dragon might not have been entirely mistaken, based on what he'd seen from the villagers before Hiccup became a celebrity.

"Was he… did it hurt him?" Hiccup asks, knowing it's stupid but needing to know.

Toothless licks him on the face repeatedly, pushing him against the banister and showing all the signs of initiating a play-fight. Hiccup's heart sinks. "That bad, huh?"

The dragon pulls himself up with an air of affronted dignity. I was not trying to change the subject!

"Ah, give over, Toothless." Stoick waves a hand. "If we don't tell him, the others will." He sighs, looking at Hiccup. "It wasn't pleasant, that's for sure. The snow helped, but not entirely. Woke me up some nights with his crying."

Hiccup stares at his friend in shock and sympathy. "Oh, Toothless…" The words are inaudible, a wisp of breath. Green eyes meet his, then look away. Hiccup scoots closer to the dragon, running a hand down his spine, his other hand rubbing Toothless' chest. "I thought you were okay! I never asked..."

"Well, ye had your hands full with other matters," Stoick says, as delicately as he can for a Viking. "And he was all healed up by then."

"Yes," Hiccup rasps as he pets Toothless, who croons comfortingly, "but I didn't know he was this hurt!"

"Look, all right," Stoick says bracingly, "he was in a lot of pain. How do you think you'd feel if your spine was nearly snapped? But he got better. You both did." Seeing Hiccup still speechless, he adds, "We did talk about what would happen if he couldn't walk again. That's probably what you heard in your dream. He was all right once we started letting him move around, though."

Hiccup stares up at Toothless, who's accepting his caresses, but still looking away, almost shyly. Then he says, "In that dream… I think someone said he hit the ground because he protected me?"

"Well—yes." Stoick's honestly surprised now. "Did no-one tell ye?"

Hiccup shakes his head.

"When that beast exploded… You fell into the fire." Stoick's trying to keep this simple. "He dived in after you. Then, nothing. We found him lying on the rocks, with his arms and legs and wings around you. You'd have," Stoick finds he has to clear his throat, "been burned to death if he hadn't." He eyes Toothless, who's looking shy and small. "My best guess is he wouldn't open his wings to break the fall because it would have exposed you to the flames. So…" He finds his voice is getting hoarse again. "He sort of wrapped himself up around you and took the fall. Pretty bad one, too, the ground was rocky. No good for landings," he adds slightly redundantly, and covers for any stray feelings by taking a healthy spoonful of porridge.

If Hiccup wasn't sitting down, he would have staggered. Even so, he lists to the side, away from Toothless, as if his touch will hurt the dragon. Toothless leans in, crooning and offering a head to lean on. Hiccup scoots backwards and looks at his friend as though seeing him for the first time. "You should have told me," he says, completely illogically.

"Not like he could talk!" Stoick booms with his mouth full. "Besides, he was so happy when you woke up that he probably forgot everything. After all, it was what he risked everything for. Part Viking, that dragon," he half-smiled, lowering his voice and chuckling.

Hiccup sits on the steps for a long time, picturing it. He recalls the great bludgeon of an appendage, and then nothing. But he knows the inferno that lay beneath him, and in all honesty when he'd seen the spiked club-tail hurtling toward him, all he could imagine was waking up in Valhalla. But now he imagines it… Toothless, pushing forward with his wings as he does to catch Hiccup in the air… Hiccup unconscious, unable to swing into place in the saddle… Toothless plucking him out of the fire… And then, what was it his dad said? "Hey, Toothless, come upstairs for a minute," Hiccup says. But Toothless just sits on the stairs, wide-eyed as if he's been caught doing something wrong. "Hey… Bud. I just want to check on something. It's okay. Please?"

His friend's black head bobs, and they slip upstairs again as Stoick booms his goodbyes and heads out for his day of chiefing.

Once they're in the privacy of his room, Hiccup asks, embarrassed, but needing to know. "Toothless… Could you show me how you, uh… y'know, caught me? In the fall?"

The dragon squirms. Well, it's nice to know embarrassment isn't exclusively a human trait. "C'mon. No fair, I was asleep. You gotta show me." He keeps his voice carefully casual, as if he's only motivated by idle curiosity.

Succumbing, the dragon lies down on his stone slab, and opens his wings. He jerks his head. Crawl in here.

Hiccup does, and is immediately enfolded, not by wings, but by the soft embrace of his friend's scaly-smooth, warm forelegs, wrapping tenderly around his chest and pulling him close to Toothless' body. Toothless' hind legs wrap similarly and pull Hiccup's legs in, careful not to press or jostle his metal limb. Hiccup's breath stutters as he's overwhelmed with a surge of kindness and affection stronger than anything he remembers experiencing in his fifteen years of living. "T—Toothless, I…"

A croon, and everything stops. You okay?

Hiccup swallows. "Yeah. Yeah. Just needed a minute." He clears his throat and forces a smile, limbs weak, heart melting. "Go on."

A soft rustle. First one wing, then the other, folds itself around him, forming a cocoon. Toothless shifts and eases Hiccup impossibly closer, close enough for Hiccup's cheek to touch his velvety chest and hear his friend's slow, powerful heartbeat. The wings wrap him tighter, weld him to the dragon's body, and finally Toothless' head comes down to close the last remaining gap, concealing, protecting.

Fireproof.

Safe in the cocoon, Hiccup can understand how it was: the very air igniting from the searing heat outside, at temperatures that would sear a human's flesh from bone. Himself, sheltered and protected close to the dragon's chest. Toothless, enduring not only the flames… but the impact against the ground. "You could have died," he feels the words scrape from his throat.

Toothless croons and gives the top of his head a small lick. Acceptable risk. You're worth it.

Hiccup skips over arguing either of those points because he knows he'd just lose, and goes straight for the open wound in his heart. "How do you think I'd have felt if you'd died!"

Toothless loosens his hold a fraction, allowing Hiccup to see his face. He narrows his eyes, lifting one brow. About the same way I'd have felt if you had.

That shuts Hiccup up, of course, and his shoulders slump. "Okay, I give up. Reel me in," he mutters, letting Toothless pull him in again. It's the world's most wonderful embrace, the safest he's ever felt. And no wonder: his body probably remembers being snatched from the fire. "Bad dragon," he grumbles from inside the cocoon. "You don't get to die on my watch. You get that?"

Toothless chirrs. Hiccup has been around him long enough to hear amusement.

"Yeah, yeah. You think it's funny now. I'm going to build myself up and be a big Viking like my dad and then I'll be able to protect you."

The arms holding him loosen, Toothless' eyes meeting his. His tail comes round, the fin tapping Hiccup's temple, waving the tailfin in front of his face. "Yeah, okay, whatever," Hiccup grates, but a smile slips from him in spite of himself. "You telling me I protect you with my brilliant mind and razor-sharp intellect?"

The dragon nods, dead serious.

"Boy, are you in for a shock. Okay, whatever…" Hiccup grins. "You up for a fly, or you wanna stay like this all day?"

He's shocked when Toothless' face shows that he's considering it. "No, lemme up…" Hiccup slips from Toothless' embrace. "We can do this at bedtime, how's that?"

He's rewarded with a nod, slightly slower, with the indication I'll hold you to it.

"Okay. One more thing."

As Toothless blinks curiously, Hiccup sits down on the slab and gathers as much of Toothless as he can into his arms. His hands stroke down his friend's sides, not scratching or massaging, just rubbing firmly, driving it through his senses that Toothless is alive and whole. "I'm not Dad," he tells his friend, voice rough again. "I can't ever wrap myself around you the way you protected me. I'm just a fishbone." Toothless grumbles—Hiccup knows he doesn't like to hear self-deprecation from him. "No, just listen. Toothless. You aren't expendable. You don't get to sacrifice yourself for me, okay?" Soft eyes meet his. "No. I know you're stronger than me. You can protect me, okay? You can save me. But you have to promise that you'll let me save you. It's got to go both ways."

As the soft green eyes blink what may be acquiescence, Hiccup tenderly touches the base of Toothless' spine. He sees surprise flicker in Toothless' face and knows he's hit on the exact nerve bundle that was damaged in the fall. He splays his hand over it, his other hand encircling Toothless' neck. "No more of… this," he murmurs into the dragon's scales. "I can't stand you being hurt any more than you like it when something happens to me, okay?" He holds him tighter. "I wish I'd been there for you, bud. Like you were for me."

Toothless presses into him for a long moment, nuzzling and purring. The warmth, the smooth scales, the reassuring thrumming, heal Hiccup's heart, heal the ache of knowing that Toothless was injured and he wasn't there. Perhaps his own heartbeat is doing the same for Toothless. "Okay, bud," he whispers. "We got a deal? You save me, I save you?"

Toothless half-nods, still purring.

"Race you to the Great Hall!" Hiccup darts out of the room, hearing the Night Fury's outraged shriek behind him. As he hears Toothless scramble out of the skylight, he's already planning a shortcut…