A/n: Okay... this wasn't as long as I thought it would be. Pretty vague I'm afraid too, like if you haven't seen the movie it might be confusing. And... it's kind of basically the end. ._.

As I look through this story, I realize yeah, I definitely should have either given more explanation as to Toothless' origins or held off on bringing it up. This was going to be a three part fic, which may or may not still happen but I'm really not so sure anymore it will, and the second part was going to explain that in more depth. If it's not too off-putting, I just ask that it be accepted for now, even though the human characters don't know it yet and all. And hey, the offspring of Asgardians can be pretty nuts in Norse Mythology lol. I figured it wouldn't be too surprising to suggest they'd breed with a type of dragon and just kinda... leave it at that. :B

Btw I know I should probably try to stick to using Toothless or Windwalker, but I keep just interchanging them at whim. D: I mean I do try to go with Windwalker when it's more from his pov or he's alone, and Toothless when he's with Hiccup.

Enjoy lovelies~

Heavy mists engulfed the sea vessels in its thick, gray embrace. The warriors aboard could hardly make out their own fingers held an arm's length from their eyes. In the eerie quiet, the only sounds were the wooden creaks of the ships and the slap of light waves – and in the distance, the echo of a demonic song.

The Red Death's cry tore through the bound Night Fury's weakened psyche. He jerked instinctively against the chains, lolling his muzzled head towards the will-binding call. Warriors backed even further from their captive, staring with rising caution at the hollow glaze in his yellow eyes.

Stoick took in the jolt of Windwalker's head and the twitch of his ears, all leaning one way, and the man marched over to the helm, turning the wheel in the same direction. As the boat turned, the creature continued to tilt and squirm, slightly northward, somewhat more eastward, until the boat was adjusted so that the Night Fury's focus was only ahead, leading the entire fleet onward.

The fog began to disperse, and the men cried out and pointed to land.

They had reached the dragon island.

Pouring from their many ships like a colorful swarm of ants, the Vikings unloaded their catapults, donned their axes and shields, and gathered together before the vast mountainside wherein their enemy lay. The mighty chieftain lifted his hand, and the catapults launched against the rocky mountain, collapsing its outermost shell and tearing an opening into the cavern beneath. Inside, brief breaths of flame illuminated an entire sea of dragons clinging to the walls.

Stoick released a great cry, and lead his warriors in a charge against the beasts. But the enemy only flew over and past the Vikings, evacuating their cave like rats from a sinking ship. The army looked up at their fleeing foes, confused. Windwalker's ears dropped, and he sank as low as he could to the deck where he was still imprisoned.

She was coming.

A tremor rose from beneath the Viking's feet. Rocks crumbled and fled down the mountainside. Then the ground burst open, flying apart from enormous horns and a mass of sickly blue scales. As easily as one leaps from the waters, so the Red Death erupted from stone, debris streaming down her colossal hide as she narrowed her six hideous eyes at the intruding humans.

The Vikings ran.

They were no bigger than this monster's nostrils, no mightier than her smallest toe. Stoick backed from her as she let out a deafening screech, parted jaw vibrating, the scaly neck stretching long and swaying loosely. The chieftain could only watch, dumbfounded in the face of an enemy unlike any he had ever before faced.

"I promise you, you can't win this..."

"...Odin help us," whispered the chief, his mistake suddenly and cruelly so clear.

The monster spat a long, thick ray of fire at the harbored ships the warriors fled to, catching them all alight. Flame danced in little steps around the Night Fury's binds.

All hope seemed lost. Lost to a selfish cause, heedless to warning.

Stoick commanded that his people make for the other side of the island. He had led them here. He would see that they escaped.

The man ran up to distract the gargantuan creature, along with Gobber, who refused to leave his old friend's side. The two humans made their valiant attempt to draw the monster's deathly eye from their people. She drew a breath, ready to incinerate the puny creatures.

But a shot of flame slammed into her neck, choking her own draw of firebreath. The beast turned, and the running humans looked past her giant form.

A small flight of dragons emerged from the gloomy skies. Upon their backs rode young Vikings, raising their fists and voices in sharp battle cries. The sun hinted through the clouds as they flew over the island. Leading the dragon and Viking battalion, the deadly eye of the storm of guttural shouts and waving weapons, was a young man with a maiden at his back, eyes a sharp green and dark hair glinting almost red in the peek of sun.

Stoick gaped up at the unparalleled spectacle, eyes nearly so round as his shield when he recognized the slender leader of this uncanny attack.

"Hiccup..."

The boy's voice lifted above the others with a set of orders, and the troupe separated, the youths diving to pester the Red Death, Hiccup and Astrid swooping for the ships.

When they found Toothless, Hiccup dropped from his Nadder's back onto the fire-licked deck. Astrid swept back to help the others, and Hiccup turned to Toothless.

In the flickering yellows and reds, the youth reached out for his friend's face, just to touch him again, just to let him know he was here, his human was here for him. His palms cupped the muzzle-clasped cheeks, and their eyes locked.

"Toothless..."

The boy's gentle voice and adoring eyes sang a song far more ensnaring than even the Red Death's hypnotic call.

It wasn't more than a couple seconds before Hiccup tore at the muzzle, unfastening the leather until the dragon man's jaw was freed. Then he went to work at the chains, prying them one by one from their hinges with the end of a metal bar.

But the boat lurched under the furious stomp of the Red Death's giant paw along the ship's edge, and the rickety wooden vessel collapsed into the sea.

The Night Fury sank within his knot of chains, most torn off but enough surrounding him to keep his limbs tightly locked. The boy swam after him, catching hold of his binds and struggling in the cool deep to pull them loose. Before he could wrestle long with the metal, Hiccup's eyes closed, his limbs fell limp, and his breath left his lips in trails of bubbles.

Windwalker thrashed in his chains to help the drowning youth, but a large hand snatched the boy's collar from behind him, and dragged him out of the water, leaving the half-dragon's sea-swallowed scream behind.

Stoick laid his child out on the shore, and just as the boy began to regain himself, the chieftain dove back into the watery depths after the other being he'd wronged this day.

The man stared through the bluish glow at the half-beast. The half-beast stared back. When Stoick reached out, the Night Fury squirmed – but the man ripped at the binds, prying them away with all his warrior might. Once his arms were finally free, Windwalker shed the rest with ease.

Out of the water leapt the Night Fury, wings spread, Stoick in tow. Carefully dropping the human, the demigod landed at Hiccup's side, taking him up in his arms almost before he even reached the ground. The youth held him back tight as he could.

A roar separated the reunited friends. The Red Death snapped at the dragon riders flanking her, sending one of them spiraling down dangerously close to her feet. Hiccup looked at Toothless. His pupils were narrow when they turned to him.

"...Does she fly?" the boy asked, noting there were wings folded along her spiky back.

Toothless nodded.

Something grim settled over the young man's features.

A compassionate man is the one least willing to harm another. Yet when the will finds him, in the name of the greater good, of the protection of entire civilizations or species, he is the most dangerous man alive. For a compassionate man can perceive weakness. And empathy coupled with scientific inquiry forges a devastating battle weapon.

Reading the determined glint in his friend's eye, the Night Fury turned to allow the human to mount the saddle still strapped to him from yesterday. But just as he climbed up, Stoick grabbed the boy's hand.

"Hiccup," the man said softly. "I... I was deaf to your warnings... and I'm sorry. I'm sorry for... for everything."

It was not an admission easily given by the proud chieftain. But he knew it was no longer a little lost child's hand in his, but a man's, a man who rode the beasts cowards only slew, a man who crossed the boundaries between species and gathered an army more formidable than all Berk's men and women together. It was a man Stoick had never truly seen past a meek smile and soft eyes, because all he'd believed a warrior should be ran no deeper than the surface of what Hiccup really was.

And he was his son, the inheritor to a fierce legacy, carried not in his arms or his voice, but in somewhere Stoick had never thought to look – in mind, and in heart.

The boy's hand squeezed his father's. "I'm sorry too," he said in kind.

Then his father let him go, and the boy and the half-beast took to the sky.

When they rose, the other, slower flyers retreated. Hiccup and Toothless faced the great enemy head-on with a blast of the Night Fury's powerful purple flame, then they swept away to goad the creature into following.

It worked.

The Red Death spread her colossal wings, and pumped herself from the ground, stirring the island foundations as she leapt. Her foes dodged her flame and darted away from her vicious jowls, while the Vikings below cheered on their comrade while he battled godlike forces on a demon's back.

Higher they flew, up into the thickest of the clouds, where they slipped into shadowy gray out of the Red Death's sextet sight. She turned and turned in the gloom, nostrils flared and man-sized teeth grinding. But the monster could find no trace of her preys.

Then they struck.

Under Hiccup's shouted guidance, the Night Fury shot at the great creature, speeding out of her jaws' grasp and back into the thick darkness between each flash of purplish flame. In a tantrum, the beast simply threw back her head and released a long sea of fire all around her.

The flames reached after the fleeing boy and half-beast like a claw.

"Watch out!" Hiccup screamed. Toothless tried to dodge the flickering yellow path, but it consumed his tail. The fire-resistant scales lay unharmed, but the leather prosthetic was alight, the ropes controlling its mechanism snapping.

Their time was out.

They turned round, drawing the Red Death's attention before diving back down from the high mists. She dove after them. As they approached the island below, Hiccup whispered in his companion's ear.

When the moment came, he shouted, "Now!" And Toothless whipped around, firing directly at the monstrosity's open mouth, where the gases of her own flames were cultivating. They ignited still within her, as with the little Terror in the woods. But the combined blasts she was made to swallow carried the power to level mountains.

She writhed in the air. Hiccup and Toothless flew around her giant figure as her speed never broke, and she collided headfirst with the ground, sending an explosion of rocks and flame as the Red Death crashed.

And she was no more.

But as she fell, the Night Fury's prosthetic finally broke apart under the whittling fire. There was no means of steering away when a monstrous tail came swinging down towards Hiccup and Toothless, no way of dodging its heavy smack against them. Though the demigod turned to take the brunt of the blow, Hiccup was knocked from the saddle, and the young Viking fell unconscious, dropping towards the mass of fire below.

"HICCUP!"

Toothless reached, and with every last bit of his might, the Night Fury plummeted after his friend, screaming his name into the fires.

...

A light touch beckoned Hiccup's mind to disentangle from the embrace of dreams. As the unconscious images drew off into the distance of his thoughts, until he could no longer recall their shapes, the boy's eyelids slowly drifted open.

The yellow gaze above him held all the solace of sunrays parting a dark sky.

Toothless' cool palm pushed back from Hiccup's brow, excited fingers combing into matted locks. The half dragon carried smiles everywhere, in the creases around his eyes, in the slight quiver of his jaw, in the other palm that came to cradle the face below him, and in his voice that jolted like a shout but fell like a whisper.

"Hiccup..."

Weight clambered suddenly over the youth's stirring body, sharply enough to draw a creaky tremble from the wooden bed frame Hiccup lay upon. The half-dragon's face was laughing, but his voice seemed to stagger once it spoke his name. Tear-bright eyes closed as the Night Fury's face burrowed against the boy's narrow shoulder, the tender hold around his face dropping to tuck under Hiccup's back, and squeeze.

A smile found Hiccup's blinking eyes and parting lips as well. With a little tripping laugh, rising up in his chest against the thicker torso above him, the boy's arms folded around his friend's neck. Unhindered by a single thought outside of the Night Fury's secure touch, the human's fingers rubbed gently up the back of Toothless' neck, his own eyes closing to bask in his other senses, into feeling the closeness of another and to hearing his rumbling breaths against his neck.

"Happy to see you too..." he mumbled with understated cheer, eyes partway opening.

Then his sharpening awareness recognized the pattern of rafters above them, and a widening glance took in the room – his room. "...My house?" he murmured aloud. With growing alarm, his hold dropped to the Night Fury's shoulders. "You're in my house?"

Toothless' head lifted, an innocent glow bubbling over his features as he nodded.

"Does my father know you're here?" asked the boy with trepidation.

"He gives me watch of you," the Night Fury explained in his clumsy speech, with a giddy flick of his ears. "Always here for when you are back."

Hiccup grinned softly. His father sanctioned Toothless as the boy's sentinel while he slept? "And how long was I 'gone'?" the boy wondered, moving to sit up. With reluctance, the half-dragon drew far enough away for Hiccup to reposition himself.

That was when the strange little ache first cried out.

It was no more than a sting, just one tiny peal in the many little whines of his battle-beaten body. But there was something, something so foreign in its tone, so odd, something Hiccup couldn't place right away.

But it was only seconds before he began to realize that it wasn't the presence of something new that jarred him, but the absence of something old.

It was with a calm, slow kind of melancholy in his face that the boy suddenly pulled aside his covers. His mouth fell open when he looked down at where his two legs should be, though not a sound left him when only one trousered limb of flesh could be found. In the stead of its twin, there lay to its left a metal and wooden peg.

Hiccup stared for a while, head bowed. Muted were his features in the moments of realization, though from behind the murky windows of his eyes, a cyclone of panic and fright tore at his quiet acceptance.

Wordlessly, he moved. First one, full leg stepped out of the bed. Then the prosthetic followed. He could feel its impact on the floor as a clunky tremor up his shin. There was a squeak of metal in the place of the tap of flesh on wood.

The boy looked up. Toothless was beside him, saying no words, though his kind eyes said it was true. No nightmare or trick was this, but waking life. And under the gentle, gentle watch of his friend, the boy's visor of calm began to collapse.

He breathed. He had to remind himself to do it again. And again.

Hiccup was barely awake for minutes, yet his arm was out on the headboard of his bed, and his body was heaving from the bedside, rising until he stood with his hand anchored on the bed.

There wasn't another second to wait, to fester in the questions of what it would be like to walk without one leg, whether he even could – no. The boy's features furrowed stubbornly.

He could. He had to.

He took a step.

He staggered.

There was another breath – it struggled not to break. Another step.

The little sighing ache erupted to a scream. The veil of determined reservation flew off and only pain was left beneath it, pain of flesh and pain of soul, pain of losing not just a bodily extremity, but of losing such a simple freedom, of losing the strength to take even a single stride without a sharp cringe and a plummet towards the ground.

But his sudden fall broke in warm, steady arms.

Hiccup pried his eyes open. Toothless' sure, beautiful face lay below his. The Night Fury had crouched slightly to catch him, and as he rose, the boy in his arms was slowly straightened, green stare following his yellow one all the way until it reached its usual perch above him again. His hands pressed into the scaly torso, and his ebbing wince turned to a newfound awe.

Something was lost. But another something was found.

Though neither spoke a single word, every wall in every home of the village couldn't contain the volumes said between them in these next few moments.

The youth knew, knew in his gut sure as a promise, while his friend's arms encircled him, and his eyes penetrated his own and his dark face showered tenderness on his heart – Toothless was there. Not just in this place, in this time. He was there in every place and every moment where Hiccup was. He was, and ever would be, with him, whenever he needed a well of strength to draw from, wherever he needed him, without a second thought.

He heard the declaration in the warm glow of his yellow eyes, saw it in the soft edges of his dark lips, knew it in the tightening hold around him.

And Hiccup realized... he would do the same.

There was no other side he wanted more to stay by, no other hand he would have in his own, or embrace he would welcome around his slender form, or laughter he would share. And to be with Toothless, he would do anything, fly with death, drown in shame, fall from any height – even if it be the summit of honor or grace.

A name for what he'd felt for so long now, for what he'd seen eagerly returned in sweet gazes, suddenly rose to Hiccup's awareness. And he began to understand why Toothless had touched him like he did in the sand, what it was in both of them that drew their bodies close and tangled their hearts together.

It was too early to speak of. Too much careened through the boy's world to take on this new revelation with his waned strength. So he didn't say it, not by anymore than a tense hold and a long, soft stare.

He only angled his broken body towards the doorway, his friend helping him turn, providing a leaning for the boy while his tail -his own brokenness- swished behind them.

And as the half-beast led the human to the light-streamed world outside of the gloomy room, as the scene before them moved the boy to a state of silent wonder, as the shock of harmony between dragons and men, walking together peaceably in the village streets, overtook the youth's already challenged hold on quiet, mirthful tears... metaphoric love songs passed between their linked touch.

A/n: Daw babies in lourve. :B

Yeah so rushed and long-winded as always lol, but hopefully a nice kinda semi-conclusion...

There will either be one more chapter, and this fic will get an M rating (hellz yeah), or I might actually post the epilogue as a separate one-shot fic. ._. It may be kinda long... and sex will definitely be a thing mwahahaha.

Thanks for your patience, and for reading!