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His mate is content, sleeping next to him. She had caught fish from the waterfalls that surrounded this place – Hidden World, he remembers. Haven, she insists. – and they are both well-fed. He wants to sleep. He aches from flying in a too-large flock, he cannot focus for long after trying to find his dragons. He can’t sleep.
Above, water and gemstones glisten like stars, and he wonders if it is night or if it is day. He can’t remember. There is warmth against his scales from his mate and the warm rock beneath him, but it is not the same. The cavern walls glisten but he cannot follow those. They wink out and disappear and he never learned to read what they meant. He starts to stand – he has to know if it is light or dark, if he can still read the sun and stars and knows the wind’s moods – but his mate stands up before he can and croons at him.
Leave stay? She asks. He feels guilt at her hurt and confusion. She knows the sky, loves it, but wouldn’t let him see it again. She fears his recklessness. She fears losing him. Love love love.
He croons back at her and settles on the rock again. His heart-fire flickers and leaves something cold to fill where the sky should have been. He doesn’t remember the last time he used his fire. He doesn’t remember the last time he chose where he flew, or when. He wants to – needs to – keep his mate safe, for even in Haven she is scared. Love you-us-me, he assures her. She sighs, nestles into the rock again, and closes her eyes. He wants to pull her closer and have her nestle against him. He remembers nights of piling with his flock, impossible to tell where a body started or ended and all huddling together; sometimes a smaller, delicate body curved under his wing. It is warm in Haven, and there is no need to huddle, so she will not.
He aches.
His eyes close and sleep will not come, so he tries to remember instead, because if he does not, he will fly, and she will not stop him again. There is much to remember. Good hunting, good fishing, the scents of his flock and his new flock. He remembers the smell of metal and leather and pine and ocean. The only of those Haven shares is ocean, but that is different. The ocean-scent is cloying, thick. It clings like a second skin no matter how he shakes or what freshwater he swims through. There are no trees here, no pine. There is no snow. There is metal in the walls but it is raw and more rock than iron and copper. He remembers a human nest, and that is good.
If only he could remember what it was called. What he was called when he had a name. Dragons do not need such things. They are called in tone and emotion and scent, they do not need names, but humans did. Humans do. He cannot remember names.
He never said goodbye.
The realization is not new and it’s not a realization, not really. He remembers smoke and blood, rich with copper and fear and acceptance. He remembers pine-ocean-metal-love-love-love. He had been confused then, and had not said goodbye. He was coming back – he would come back. When his mate was more confident and when he had tasted the sky again, he would be back. He would take his flock and his mate and any other dragon who wanted to go, and he would return to the human nest and all would be well.
His fire flickers again, and he wonders how long it has been. Days and nights do not pass here, and there is no moon or stars or sun to read. Only gemstones and water flickering on cavern walls and ceilings. He stands again. He must see the sky. He must. He will remember if he sees. His mate stands too, her wings already starting to flare. She is smaller than he and weaker, and so are all like her – he has fought with others like her, proving himself and defending her from overeager suitors. Others with far more experience in battle than she.
He would never fight her though – never. Not even to escape. He couldn’t.
Go, he says, wings flaring and rustling in the stale cavern air. Home sky air home go!
Her pupils thin in fear – she is so scared and he will cater to that, he knows how to live with it and prove again and again it is wrong, but she is never any less scared than she was before – and his mate flaps her wings violently. Stay! Danger safe stay!
Sky! He insists. He doesn’t have the words but he has the feelings for it and he pushes them at her, the longing, the misery, the difference and this is not home. Sky out out out want home out sky fly!
Haven safe safe home safe! She shrieks back. Her teeth are out, her hind claws digging into the earth and she is screaming, demanding he stay. Love stay home safe Haven love stay! Human gone love stay love gone safe here gone gone gone Haven stay!
Something freezes in him and he screeches at her in a rage he will not, will never act on, but gas filters into his throat and he fires it at the nearest empty patch of wall. He doesn’t have the words, never has, this is not the first time they have had this argument but his heart-fire gutters and air is pulled from his wings every time she says it. He is not gone, his human is not gone, he is waiting – he knows it! He knows like he knows his home and his flock and her! She doesn’t react to his shot, doesn’t back down. Her eyes are slits and her claws and teeth are out and gas is filtering from her throat to disappear in the air.
There is nothing to say so he doesn't. He shoots again at the wall, starting to shake – and he if dares to speak now, he will say things he can’t take back. He knows she misunderstands this as his surrender, as his acknowledgment and denial in one, but he crouches, and then he flies. He flaps hard and fast. She is sleeker and smoother in the air but not made for true speed – she is for winding through pillars and narrow places and that is all she would know. He knows speed with a human on his back. He is even faster without. So he flies, and when she chases, he doesn’t bother looking – just pushes, harder and harder, his tired wings filled with new energy from anger and longing and she has disappeared far behind him by the time he escapes out into the open air.
It is dark and warm and all emotion drops out from him as he sees the stars.
Summer stars, but not the ones he left to. They are beautiful and he knows them, has seen them after many seasons, but what the mean drives the heat from his throat. It has been years. Panic roils in him – he hears his mate calling after him, furious, terrified, and he cries out a call he remembers only by instinct. There is no answer.
No, there wouldn’t be – he is too far, so very far from home. He remembers the path and he remembers this flight and he remembers his human. Pine and leather and metal and love love love, his brother and half of him.
Hiccup. Hiccup. He drops to the rocky mouth of Haven, dizzy and shuddering. Hiccup. He says it aloud as best as he can, a guttural, miserable moan that steals the strength from his legs and leaves him to curl on the rock, wings shielding him from the rest of the world. How had he forgotten? He was – Night Fury, no, Toothless. He was Toothless. He repeats it, will not forget it. Not again. There is too much air on his back, had been for years – he remembers blankets and buffing oil and hands calloused but still so soft on his scales, muttering new ways to keep his – his, his what? What was it? His saddle, yes, saddle – to keep his saddle from creating sores. Toothless never had that problem, but Hiccup worked through it anyway. He scents his mate before he hears her, and shudders as she pushes a wing aside to look at him. She is not angry, not anymore, but Toothless can’t care. What had Hiccup called her? There was a name, a Fury – he thought she was one of his, or close enough. She was and wasn’t. Similar but not family. Family.
He never said goodbye. It has been years and he never said goodbye. Toothless scrambles forward and almost stumbles into the ocean. Years. He needs to fly. He needs to find Hiccup. His wings spread and Toothless takes off. The flight is not long, it is not hard, and he navigates by star and moon. It is morning when he reaches the human nest – Berk, he remembers, and he repeats, as he had been the entire flight over. Hiccup. Toothless. Night Fury. Meatlug. Hookfang. Astrid. Fishlegs. Stormfly.
Toothless clutches the scraps with greedy, desperate claws, holds them close to his heart-fire and lets them feed his inner warmth. These are his now, forever, he will not forget again, cannot forget again, he can’t.
But the nest is wrong. It is empty and falling and he – he remembers. Fire and blood and fear – so much fear. Hunters – yes, dragon hunters, yes, they attacked – fear digs into Toothless with a Nightmare’s claws. Hiccup. He hadn’t said goodbye. He prepares to fly again – surely, surely, Hiccup was somewhere. This was home, this was the nest, this was Hiccup’s and his and his flock’s and Hiccup had to be here. Toothless calls as he flies, lets the wind scream with him because he knows as well as he knows Hiccup that Hiccup knows him and will know the sound and will never forget it. He flies over Berk and the Edge and every island they have ever camped on, spent nights stranded on, nights where Toothless was the only thing between Hiccup and death by exposure, when Hiccup had mended his broken wings, when, when, when, where was Hiccup? His flight is stopped by an attacker slamming into him, Toothless too surprised to defend himself or even notice, but he recognizes the glittering white scales and the worry in her and he doesn’t fight. Toothless let her ground him, offering little more than a token attempt to rise once he hits the packed earth that was once his human-dragon Berk nest. Light Fury holds him close with a wing, and what strength Toothless has flees him.
He screams his loss into the daylit air, through the hollowed out and fallen buildings, his apologies and longing and his failures. He remembers tearing his claws apart to escape the cove and save Hiccup. He remembers falling into flames, not daring to so much as flare his wings to slow their descent. He remembers Hiccup cutting him loose. Staring him in the eye as Toothless prepared to fire a deathly shot. Of long nights with Hiccup scratching into his papers, and even later flights. Maps and islands and adventure.
He lets it all out in one grief-stricken keen, so heartbroken he can feel the force of his mate’s flinch and how she huddles closer in commiseration. When the sound fades, Toothless feels hollow.
It is night when he can move, and that night his mate guides him back to the Hidden World. He sleeps with his flock that night, does not move the next day, or the next, or the next. The Haven flock cater to his misery, and when others of his flock join him – briefly or not – it is in understanding of the humans they have lost and may never find again.
Toothless remembers, and he clutches those scraps and moments close to his heart-fire with greedy, desperate claws, every new recollection a fresh wound, new grief, old joy. There is still too much air over his back, and when he has cubs, they are small and delicate and thin and remind him entirely too much of such a frail body curled against his own, seeking comfort or warmth or simply companionship.
He does not wish to see the sky anymore.