Chapter Text
This is Dragon Island. To most, better known as Helheim’s Gate. The resting place of the dragon’s queen, but still the Dragon’s Nest, and so enshrouded in fog only I or another dragon can reach it, hidden safely from the rest of Berk who I know will come after us at the soonest given opportunity, if not by the end of winter.
After Red Death, the volcano collapsed in on itself, leveling a lot of the island, but leaving it still hospitable. It’s dormant. We shouldn’t have to worry.
It’s an island that’s entirely crawling with dragons. No sane human soul would think about setting foot here. Every tree, every rock is a hiding place for another wild dragon.
But my human brother Hiccup and I don’t really have a choice. See, we defeated the Red Death. We could have ended the four-hundred-year war between Berk and the dragons. But people never change. All they see in me is a monster.
Maybe they’re right.
But Hiccup wanted me to live, so we had to run, leaving the rest of our family behind. And we set our eyes on the one place no sane Viking would venture into alone.
Dragon Island. We might not have a home, but the caves do well enough.
Hiccup and I practice flying as long as we’re able. As long as… I’m able. I haven’t flown since I was a hatchling, and every flight leaves my wings achy and sore as I struggle to tame the winds as my brother once fought to tame whatever he set his heart to.
It’s night most of the time, and too cold to enjoy the views anyway. But it’s what makes Hiccup happy. Even in the dead of winter, the best comfort against the cold is those you keep close to your heart. And for him, that’s dragons.
For me, it’s Hiccup.
And I will do anything to keep him safe.
He’s all I have anymore.
He probably always will be.
“Think we should’ve brought an axe?” Hiccup swipes sweat from his forehead with his sleeve, jumping down from a stone.
Toothless grunts deeply, not really, he doesn’t know. And pulls back to plasma blast down another part of the tree and goes back to keep doing what he was doing, cutting down a dry, dead log on Dragon Island, one of the few parts not destroyed from Red Death’s battle, and sets it up to light the night’s fire as they’ve been doing every night since leaving Berk.
Every night – except the ones the snow comes, or the nights the wild dragons block them up into the caves where they stay and wait, wondering in frozen fear every second if they’ll ever make it back out, if this once it’ll be a dragon too strong for even Toothless, something like the Red Death or something so much worse.
He grabs the next piece of log with his mouth and drags the thing, dumping it into his best imitation of the fireplace their dad once used to so painstakingly build.
He steps back with a tired huff, shaking his head and lifting his tail to push another piece of log back in place, jumping off to go get more. If they need more.
“I mean, I guess I could’ve,” Toothless’s brother continues, “It wouldn’t’ve served much purpose, considering I can’t use it, anyway. Although.” He looks up to where Toothless blasts another piece of the log off to be small enough to carry. “It probably would’ve made things a lot easier for you. Sorry, bud.”
Toothless shakes his head, grumbling a sincere it’s fine deep in the back of his throat. Hiccup is halfway starved already; he doesn’t need to use up whatever bits of energy he’s got hacking up logs when Toothless is far more capable. He’s bigger, he’s stronger, he can move anything with ease as long as it’s a bit smaller than he is, which logs certainly are. Hiccup would’ve already strained his tiny little arms off.
His brother’s hand comes to his snout, settling on it and gently stroking the scales as his knees give out shakily and he sits on the rock.
Toothless leans closer into Hiccup’s arm draped around him, warm and loving. His rider little brother other half second soul is leaning a lot of his relatively light weight into the dragon’s side, the soft wool of his vest still a weird feeling against Toothless’s rough, insensitive scales.
“Do you think we made a mistake when we left?” Hiccup asks quietly.
Toothless grunts deeply at his brother’s voice, a question too difficult to really ever put an answer to. He knows what he feels and the island far away his heart still lies on, and he knows the facts, too – he knows how much Hiccup could have been hurt.
He misses things from long ago, hearing their parents’ laugh, seeing their sisters’ smile. All things in the past he aches for.
And Toothless knows what he wants to tell him. No, he rumbles deeply, except, he does, a little bit. He knows Berk hates him, has lived in fear of humans his whole life, but somewhere way deep inside he knows he’d rather live than life than whatever horrors might be to follow – or maybe it’s only the part of him that’s been ruled for too long by that fear.
He left Valimara behind. Safely, where she won’t be hurt because of him anymore, where Toothless will never have to watch her throw herself at the nearest human twice her size for insulting him or raising their weapon.
Humans are cruel. He knew that long ago. Maybe way, way back before after he lost… a part of himself. For life, until his brother gave it back on pain of his own life. Both of their lives. He knows deep down inside there was never a way he and Hiccup could have stayed on Berk forever, drowned with too many memories and too much pain.
Valimara was fighting herself to the ground for them. Toothless can’t remember the last week the girl’s lived through without coming back with a bruise or something she got from her endless fight in protecting them both. Toothless can protect Hiccup fine, he thinks, hopes prays and whatever and everything, but he can’t protect Valimara.
He has never been able to protect Val. It’s best if he’s just away. Far away, somewhere he can’t keep hurting her. Where he can’t keep hurting everyone.
“Don’t fear yourself,” is the last thing is mother said to him before he flew away, breaking his own heart and his sister’s even more. Kind, sweet Val, who cares too much, and neither of them can keep safe out here. But Toothless doesn’t know how not to be afraid.
Hiccup is small and weak, even with a mind of fire and flame, and the soul and spirit stronger than the Viking’s most dream worthy warrior – but he’s still human, still just a little, sickly human lost in a world beyond without human care.
All it will take is one wrong step, one wrong move and Toothless could hurt or main or kill him, or he could be watching, watching as another does the same way he always does with Val.
Toothless spent his entire life training and forcing himself not to fight. But he needs to now, and where does he start?
“Don’t be afraid to be a dragon. Don’t be afraid to be my son.”
And no, they didn’t make a mistake by leaving. Everyone is better off without Toothless. Maybe even Hiccup will realize that someday.
He probably won’t, because he cares too much, like his mom, like his sister, like… their dad, too. Stoick, who fought to keep Toothless alive, and he will never forget that kindness either.
And they are still almost out of food.
A distant dragon screech has Toothless pulling straight, head lifting away from his brother’s to sniff the air and narrow his eyes at the approaching sound.
For a minute, he almost thinks he smells mom. But then it’s gone, and the random assortment of dragon species that fly overhead are nothing familiar. Even if they smell like… smell like Cloudjumper.
Toothless lowers his head again with a little sound of misery, but Hiccup is standing now.
“Look!”
He grunts, confused – he saw, what’s Hiccup all excited about?
“These are the dragons from the arena! The Nadder – it had the same colorations. The Nightmare was orange, The Zippleback – well, I actually didn’t get a good look at the Zipple,” Hiccup admits, abashed. “But Mom did it! She got them out.”
Of course, Toothless thinks ruefully, and then the aching in his heart is back into something agonizing with longing. Valka Haddock, the first to tell him he wasn’t a threat, that he didn’t need to live in fear of himself, who he left and will never see again.
Or at least not for a long time, not until their sister is grown up enough for Valka to leave her safely. She needs her mother.
Valimara, who has the future of a true Viking, a bloodthirsty dragon killer, the killers of Toothless’s kind. He may have been raised Viking, but the dragon in him is a dragon, all the same. He’s a bridge to both worlds. The dragon too human to live among dragons, the dragon too dragon to live with humans.
And with a sister of a future killer, one somehow, despite it all, Toothless loves with every piece of him. The sister who he left behind. She probably hates him. He knows he deserves it.
He destroyed – a dragon. The dragon’s queen. He killed a dragon. But that still made him a monster instead of a hero like every other Viking. It didn’t matter. It never does.
He snaps a branch from a tree, scratching it on the ground and trying to trace a drawing. A messy trace of his mothers’ face.
“I miss her, too,” Hiccup answers quietly.
What do they do now, if their only reason in life is… to live? To ‘live’ and not ‘protect’?
***
“Come on, we can do this, bid.”
Toothless grumbles over his shoulder, trying to balance himself against the wind’s wild waves. A storm harder to tame than the ocean itself – his wings ache, the sudden weight and strain on them so hard to fight. And he understands every one of Hiccup’s struggles now, as his weight struggles to balance on his wings which sat unused for so, so long.
He pulls up, then arcs down as they go for a wild spinning twirl over the water, water spraying up over them and Hiccup shrieks with glee.
Toothless laughs, and doesn’t think about how their first real flight was with Cloudjumper and Valka at their sides. With the air rushing over them, flying cold and free, he can finally let go. Feel the gift he was born with, realize what he’s been missing on the ground for the last thirteen years.
All those years, a dragon in a Viking world, are lost and forgotten in the blue of the skys.
Toothless weaves them closer to a sea stack, kicking himself off it just barely.
Hiccup shrieks. “Whoa, bud, still working out the tight turns, are we?”
Another dragon shrieks overhead. A Monsters Nightmare glides overhead, calling Toothless’s every willpower not to snarl and spit fire. Dragons aren’t the enemy – he needs to get used to seeing them here now. But Toothless pulls down, just a bit closer to the water, and watches the dragon weave itself around sea stacks, cutting downwards through the water and then flying out with a splash, dousing them and letting out a series of brief grunts that sound like laughter.
Toothless, embarrassingly, struggles to understand dragon-speak even more than human.
But the other dragon cuts upwards and flips over a few times in a spiral, flaming up and perching atop a nearby sea-stack with a shriek of glee.
Catching the competitive challenge, Toothless’s eyes slit and he snarls.
“Toothless, what’s up?” Hiccup’s hand gently pats his neck, snapping his attention back to him and off their would-be opponent.
The Nightmare cocks his head and keeps watching.
He’s challenging, and Toothless’s every instinct makes him feel obliged to go. He goes, diving downwards on sore and achy wings, twirling over the water but not quite going for a dive, upward spiral and spin, and dive for a bridge between two sea stacks on Hiccup’s prompting with a yell of glee.
It’s Toothless’s split second of panic as Hiccup disconnects himself from the saddle and the tailfin drops limply and simply dangles, throwing him off-balanced every time and with the moment of terror where Hiccup could fall and Toothless could fall, and Cloudjumper isn’t here to catch either of them.
He twists himself just a bit, balanced against the wind in a move that’s started to come naturally, like a limp he would’ve struggled with a lot more if he hadn’t spent his life this way. (But if he did spend his life in the air like he has all rights, his wings wouldn’t ache so, sometimes too sore to fly for days at a time.)
Hiccup runs over the sea bridge and then he’s back onto Toothless’s back again, fin latching out and his wings spread, carrying them to a safe halt just over the edge of the sea, water splashing over the back of his tail as he pushes himself up.
And then they’re spinning up again and flip over, Hiccup with a little adorable smile of joy, and he unbuckles himself from the saddle entirely, flipping over as they fall.
With nothing but each other and the sun warming icy air around them, wind whipping past and… mostly just, each other.
And for the first real time in a long, long time, Toothless forgets everything, everything but Hiccup and the air all around them, and falls back into that little part of his mind that’s still stayed light and happy. And Hiccup is grinning, and Toothless carefully pokes his brother’s shoulder with a non-sharp part of his claw, the claws he learned to manage a long time ago.
He spins in a circle and smiles against the wind.
Happy in a world where it’s just Hiccup and Toothless, two halves of a whole, forever. And he’s more than happy, if there’s anyone who has to use his tail and carry a part of him, that it’ll be his brother – forever.
Toothless swings around to offer Hiccup his saddle when the water is cutting it too close, and Hiccup swings himself around onto his back with already well-practiced move. They narrowly splash off into the water again, Toothless dragging them upwards breathlessly with a laugh and fires off a plasma blast they dive through with a trail of soot.
“And then, you do that,” Hiccup tells him breathlessly, panting and laughing.
Toothless laughs, too, winded, dropping onto the sea stack to catch his breath and gives his wings a break. The limbs drop beside him, radiating with constant stabs of pain aching up and down their entire length.
“They’ll be okay,” Hiccup tells him with a reassuring pat, stroking the edges. And that does feel good. He purrs up at him happy, turning his head and nearly laughing at the Monstrous Nightmare’s disappointed scowl.
Toothless laughs.
The other dragon moodily flies away in a streak of flames.
“That was not a competition, but it was pretty great,” Hiccup tells him with a smile.
Toothless grunts a deep-felt agreement. He could get used to this. A chance to go flying with his brother is the best thing that’s ever happened to him.
“Hey, if those dragons are hanging out,” Hiccup adds, “We ought to give them some names.”
Toothless, as far as he’s concerned, does not like the idea of Hiccup hanging out with any other dragon, and makes his complaints voiced loudly with a grumpy growl. He knows how to be careful, mostly – he grew up with humans, and Stoick wouldn’t take kindly to anything he broke. Not to mention the fear. Toothless was trained to be gentle and careful from the time he was a baby.
If another dragon starts hanging out here, they could hurt him.
“Come on, Toothless! We’ve got nothing but dragons from now out. We gotta get used to it.” Blunt, but true. “It’s gotta be… hook-something. Ah, gotta work on that.”
Hiccup leans his head back against his side and they sit there alone way into the evening.
It’s… not like they have anywhere they need to go. Not anymore.
***
“We are really running low on food. Bud.”
Toothless grunts deeply, scowling at his brother’s back. Obviously, they are, considering Hiccup fed half their remaining stash off to a Terrible Terror to get the thing to purr at him. Sharpshot is terrified of humans after spending a month trapped in a cage and used in dragon murder training, but Hiccup’s already got him melted.
And Toothless at least likes Sharpshot. He will, albeit begrudgingly, give his brother that. He picked a good dragon to pick up, but it doesn’t change how he’s still eating up their food.
And, it’s past Snoggle Tog now. Barely, a day or so – if days even count, and the holiday almost ruined and forgotten alone together in the icy cold of their new cave home. It’s a thing that he – doesn’t want to think about what’s goin’ on back on Berk. How anybody is.
“I don’t know what to say.”
Toothless doesn’t, either. Hiccup can’t live on fish forever. He’s a human. He can’t live like a dragon, at least not like these dragons, all of whom are living on their own freed for the first time, and who are simply terrified of the human living on their island after years and years of war.
Toothless would be stunned if it were any other way.
Hiccup, the human that’s too dragon to live with humans. Hiccup, the human that’s too human to live with dragons.
They are really in this together, and it’s the only comfort they’ve got – each other, forever.
“We don’t really have anything to sell,” Hiccup continues thoughtfully, “But… maybe there’s something we can forge on another island? Or…” He drags a hand through his hair and tucks his knees up to his chest with a thoughtful face on. “We can’t forage for food forever… but there might be something we could do in a forge! If – if I could just find a – you know what, bud? You and I are gonna go on a little adventure.”
Toothless stretches his always-sore wings and grunts in understanding.
Maybe if they’re lucky, he’ll get to have bread again. Bread is amazing. Even if… he normally eats fish.
Hiccup heads back to their little camp and the door they’ve hatched together mostly through luck, careful placement, and Toothless’s carefully aimed plasma shots, and pushes the make-shift door that doesn’t even have hinges aside.
It takes a minute over the dimly lit stick they have burning in place of what should’ve been a candle for Hiccup to spread out the map he brought along with him across the caves’ floor. Toothless patters in closer, carefully peering down at the map he’s come to learn to read over the years of time on Berk.
“Bog Burglar? No way. We’d land and I’d probably get my pants stolen.”
Toothless snickers.
“Yeah, rule that one out,” Hiccup says, trailing his fingers over the map to read some of the other nearby islands. “Not Outcast Island, no way, we’d better throw ourselves into the ocean than face off with Alvin right now. Not interested. Rather try my luck with Camicazi.”
Toothless snickers again. The girl has a strange, overwhelming fondness for Hiccup that Toothless thinks might be a crush, but for Hiccup’s part, he finds her too overwhelming if not a bit scary. Chances are, it never would’ve gone anyplace anyway.
It was still funny though.
“The Meatheads? No, no, not trying our luck with Thuggory’s dad, not a good idea… hey, what about this?” Hiccup’s finger lands on another island, entirely unmarked, but definitely large enough to be populated. Weird that it’s got no marking. Most islands are either marked off as dragon inhabited, or are simple unknown spaces that are probably dragon inhabited.
This one is marked with human habitation, but…
“It doesn’t have a tribe name. Huh. Weird. And it looks like there’s a tribe living there.” Hiccup grins conspiratorially and sits back on his knees. “What do ya say, bud? Fly into the unknown? Feeling big on adventure?”
No, Toothless grumbles.
It’s cool, yes. But also, he has no idea what horrors they’re gonna face, and he’d rather not try their luck after they already lost their island. They had to leave Berk.
“And… i-it’s pretty close to Berserker,” Hiccup continues, “Yeah, I think I remember something about it. It’s a farm island, it’s pretty big on export, a number of tribes get all their food from them. But I can’t remember what they’re called. And the Berserker proximity? That’s gonna be…” he sighs and sags. “Fun.”
Toothless bumps his snout into his brother’s shoulder reassuringly. He’s got mixed feelings about the Berserkers, too. Valimara loved them, the wild insanity and all, the violence and bloodlust and Dagur. He’d liked Toothless. But Toothless found him… intimidating at times. Hiccup even more so. And the Chief’s son’s infatuation with his siblings meant chaos and constantly putting them at risk, of which Toothless does not approve.
“Yeah, I guess we’ll take close to Berserker. Doesn’t mean Dagur will be out and about, Oswald’s gotta have everything locked down. It’s Devastating Winter now after all.” Hiccup straightens and gnaws on his lip. “Guess this means we know where we’re going to, bud.”
Yep. Some tiny, unnamed island midway between Berserker and Outcast islands. No way that could go wrong.
***
First things first, the next morning, Hiccup and Toothless gather whatever few belongings they have, pack up, and fly out. Toothless feels nothing about leaving. Dragon Island wasn’t really their home, anyway, just a stopping point in a much bigger journey.
He feels mostly apprehension over where they’re heading and hoping for a better source of food, and a good place to hide out.
Hiccup looks behind them and unexpectedly laughs. “Oh, look! Here come the arena dragons. Those things have really taken a liking to us.”
Toothless lets out a worried little grumble, but keeps flying. It’s not bad they aren’t alone, he’ll admit. He just doesn’t trust the dragons, or really anyone. But Sharpshot comes happily fluttering up to land on his brother’s shoulder, and the nightmare newly named Hookfang roars deeply, the other three dragons spreading out behind him… behind them.
For better or for worse, they’ve picked up a flock who won’t stay away, which means they aren’t alone anymore. That feels…
Toothless will give it a lot more thought once he’s sure these other dragons are safe for his little brother. If Hiccup got hurt or worse…
Unnamed island, unknown tribe and untamed waters, with a group of new potential friends… no way that’s going wrong.