Work Text:
I have never known love or family.
I don’t know what I am. Even at home, so long ago, I was a shadow. A fire born of lightning – too small, too fast, too wild to be tamed. Or maybe my family saw the spark within, the fire I am.
The wind slaps my face as I fly alone. I can’t remember a time that I wasn’t – the memories that hum in my mind are so far away. I can barely remember a time before.
I’m not alive now because I’m an idiot. I’m not the only one of my kind because I don’t know what I’m doing.
We live, dodge our alpha in a way that makes me miss my own, and I fly.
I don’t watch the human village. The humans slaughter us in droves. They hunt us for sport. I’ve seen enough, heard enough – so I avoid them. I don’t stick my neck out for anyone – anymore.
That’s how I survive.
But tonight, I see the fire.
And tonight, I don’t run. The fury within is alive when I see my herd falling.
I fire.
The air whistles with a tearing explosion, and I fall.
The pain is almost… alive. It’s raw and searing, and I wail at the fire, trying to break free.
I never fall.
I can’t fly. I hit the trees, tumble through the woods.
I can’t move.
The ropes are too tight. I fight for all I can – but the trap holds firm. I’m going to die here.
Fear has eaten at me since I was a hatchling. I never knew a reason to fight. I never knew a reason not to fear.
But here I lie, trapped in helpless terror, unmoving. The sun has risen on me now, and I’m still here. I fought for hours, and I’m too exhausted to move.
I hear sounds. A human approaches, and I’ll die here. No more fear, no more flying, no more… anything.
I’m just waiting to die, for the inedibility I can never tear free from. Terrified, and as always, so alone.
Something lands on me. I growl and yank away, panic leaping tight in my throat.
I’m going to die; will it hurt?
A shriek reaches my ears. Whichever human found me, it’s scared.
He thought I was already dead.
He’s the one who knocked me down. Somehow.
I don’t want to die.
“I’m going to kill you, dragon.” Silver glints in his hands. “I’m gonna cut out your heart and take it to my father.” The blade lifts. “I’m a Viking. You hear that? I’m a Viking!”
This is it. There’s no way out. I can’t fight. I can’t… escape.
His eyes are green, like my own. Wide and terrified, the blade raised over his head, over mine.
I close my eyes and wait for the pain to start.
“I…”
And wait.
“…did…”
And wait… forever.
“…this.”
The rope shifts. Something shudders, and the bonds slide free. A way out – I rip them free and whirl. He hits the ground and scrambles back, cornered against a rock.
I should fire.
He tried to kill us. He’s a human – that’s what they do.
He let me go.
He looks so… scared.
The terror in his eyes that mirrors my own, the fear in my heart, the hours of struggling in that trap –
They’ve killed so many of us. He doesn’t try to move. He lays there, eyes wide and terrified, accepting of his fate. And all I see… is me.
I
let
him
run.
I
can’t
fly.
I claw the walls and howl into the wind until my paws ache and I’m too worn to keep getting back up. My tail hurts. It’s a fiery pain, not like something broken or a scale tear, it’s like something’s missing.
I need help. I hate needing help. Dragons don’t survive because they’re weak. I was the hatchling of the Alpha. I should have taken that role.
But my family is gone, and I can’t escape. The human freed me, but I’m still going to die. Or at least I’m trapped. I’m not chained, but I’m trapped. Hours fade to another day.
A rustle has me look up.
The boy crouches at the edge of a rock in the cove wall, out of my reach, unmoving, weaponless. He does nothing, just sits there, watching.
He’s watching me.
I watch him, too.
I hate lightning. I am a dragon, but I hate lightning. The rain is long, the storm is long, and I dive into the back of the cave to wait alone.
Always alone.
The boy comes back.
He walks, careful, tentative, but he brings me food.
He throws his knife in the water.
I don’t trust him.
But he’s nice.
Humans are supposed to be brutal, mindless – but I just see my own curiosity.
He’s afraid me.
I’m scared of him.
But he doesn’t go, and I can’t go, so we circle each other, careful, watching. Intrigued. I wonder if he’s as curious as I am. He doesn’t want to hurt me. He smiles, and I try to smile back.
He’s rigid every time I walk close to him, hover over his shoulder, close, but not enough to touch.
He tries to touch me, and I run.
I still can’t fly.
He’s drawing. He likes drawing. He has something with him he sketches in, and then he draws with a stick in the dirt. We do that, too.
He steps over the lines – finally. Circles through it with a smile.
Dragons do this. I wonder if he knows. The slow circling, the drawing, the spinning. He’s careful. He keeps his distance and I shadow behind him.
The boy turns. He looks away and raises his hand.
He trusts me. I trust him.
I let him touch me, callused hand warm on my snout.
I open my eyes, and he opens his.
Humans and dragons. We don’t do this.
I run.
He goes.
He keeps coming back. He brings me fish, and we fly again. He’s a human. He belongs here with his family. He’s on my tail – I throw him off.
I can’t fly without him.
He comes again, and brings something else. He says I need to wear it to let me fly.
He doesn’t talk about how he’s the one who shot me down. He’s trying to make it right. It still hurts. It helps when he rubs it. He cleans the blood and ties something over it. I can’t move it. It flops and drags when I swing my tail, but it looks like a part of me. It’s not black, but I like it.
“What do you think about colors, bud?” he asks, leaning on my side.
I growl over his head – humans see colors different than dragons. Red I think, anyway. Red is nice. It clashes with black nicely, and I see so little real red.
“You know what? We can make it any color we want after I figure out how to get this working.”
He’s a… friend.
A human and a dragon. But I love him.
He uses my new tail fin. Prosthetic, he called it.
He calls me Toothless. I like it. I haven’t heard my name in years.
He brings me food, and he brings me him.
I’ve been alone for years. Flew the sky, ran in our home wherever it was so long ago, but I have no memory of anything before. I’ve never had anyone. Not even at home. Not even my own kind.
I trust him.
He trusts me.
I need him to fly. I need him to live.
He could have killed me. He would have been a hero to his kind. He didn’t.
He
chose
me.
We tripped and trapsed around each other until we formed this, and now I know he comes here every day, and we fly the skys together. We laugh, we play – and finally, the one hatchling of my parents, I’m not alone.
He has to leave me in the cove at night. “I can’t let them find you, bud,” he promises, regretfully, hand cupping my cheek. I wish I could follow him at night. He’s afraid of the rest of the humans. He has nothing but me, and I have nothing but him. I should be able to watch him. The nights are hard, but he always comes back.
There are things I wish I could tell him.
He’s too good for this world.
He’s too good… for me.
And small.
He’s small for a human, barely a hatchling, just like me. But so small. Humans are larger, and strong. My rider isn’t like them.
I love you, I try to tell him, purring.
“Yeah, I know,” he promises, voice soft, hands on my snout. “I love you, too, bud.”
Someone is else here today. I don’t like her. He says the humans can’t find me, so I stay hidden in the darkness of the cave, but there’s another in the cove. My rider is afraid of her. I can smell his fear, and her rage. I try to hide.
I try to hide, and then I hear his cry.
I don’t care if they hurt me. I won’t let them hurt him.
He says she’s a friend.
I don’t care, she hurt him.
My fury is a living thing, and when he tries to make her ride me, I take off, wild and free.
She’s terrified. Good – she should be. Let her be afraid – she hurt you.
He’s yelling at me to stop, but I don’t. Not until she finally caves with an apology. She hurt him. My rider, my friend. My kin. I still don’t like her. But she apologized. She’s afraid of me, too. I slow to flying gracefully through the sky. She needs to see the truth.
“It doesn’t change what they’ve done to us,” the girl says.
They don’t know, I remember. They won’t, until I show them the truth, so I fly. Though the dragons, down the no longer active volcano into the Nest where the Alpha lies. I can’t tell you… so I show you. Everything. The alpha, how it attacks us if we don’t feed it, how it keeps us enslaved, and we barely escape with our lives.
“It all makes sense now,” the girl – Astrid – says, swinging off me and running towards the trees. “They’re the workers, and that’s their queen! Let’s go find your dad.”
“No, no, no, not yet!” my rider yells, scrambling to block her path.
He won’t fight for himself, but he’ll fight for me. I wish he wouldn’t risk himself. I hate seeing him in danger. I think we should have left together.
But wherever he wants to go, I’ll follow.
I spent my life alone until he found me, he freed me, he road me, he helped me – when I had nothing but the shadows to keep me company. I always wanted to go home, a home I never had until he gave me one.
And I will give him a place to belong.
A world to fight for, a life to live. If he will go against his village to keep me safe, then I will stand beside him.
He’s… late. I try not to worry, pacing exhausting me into sleep, and I wake at a distant, muffled cry, echoing in my own head.
Hiccup.
My rider.
My friend.
Nothing stops me on the way in – I won’t let it.
Not the wall
Not the flight
Not the chains atop the cage
I tear the dragon off of him, snarling and chasing it back into its cage.
His hands are on me, telling me to run. I shake him off. His humans locked him in a cage with an angry dragon. He’s afraid of them. I won’t let them hurt him. But they are humans, and I can’t fly.
He tells me not to hurt them.
I don’t.
But there’s too – too many, even for me.
“Please don’t hurt him.”
I hear the plea. His sire, the human’s alpha, I think, does too.
He could kill me. He doesn’t.
My eyes hold my riders’. There are so many things I want to say as they drag us apart, the girl from before dragging Hiccup away from me.
I’m sorry.
I love you.
(Help me.)
His eyes hold the same. Pain, loss, terror, regret.
We’re a mirror.
I look at him… and I see myself.
I’ve never known love… but I love him.
And I don’t know if I’ll ever see him again.
I want to see him. I don’t know if they hurt him, what they did with him, but they take me. I see him from afar, fleeting, at the edge of a cliff, watching as they drag me out to see. I don’t know if I’ll see him again.
They take me to the alpha. They want to destroy our home, but unlashing this will kill us all.
I wish he killed me in the woods. It would’ve been better for everyone.
He doesn’t.
The dragon’s alpha emerges, and the ship sets aflame, the chains still too strong for me to break – but he finds me. He won’t leave me.
Not even when the boat burns or when the ship sinks, dragging me beneath. Someone pulls him out to safety, back into the line of flame. When I open my eyes, his sire is in front of me.
I don’t like him.
He hurt Hiccup.
But Hiccup loves him, too.
When he breaks the chains, I jump ashore with him, dropping him on the embankment.
My rider runs to my side.
We can finish this. He and I. As one. The way we were always meant to be.
We make it.
He almost doesn’t.
The flames catch my tail, and I fall.
He falls,
towards the blaze so far below.
I won’t let him die.
He’ll follow me through water. I follow him through fire.
I never knew love
until I met you.
When I wake, it’s to the eyes of my friend’s alpha, be it whatever the humans call him. His eyes are sad, but I don’t trust him. He hurt my friend, my family, my rider, my kin.
My brother.
Me.
“I did this,” he whispers.
He knows. Maybe I don’t forgive what he did to Hiccup, to me. But I know he loves him, too. He saved my life. Maybe I can trust him, too. Maybe.
When I unfold my wings, he takes his son in his arms. I miss Hiccup’s warmth against mine, but he’ll be safe. I know he’ll be safe.
He survives.
He lost his foot, like I lost my tail, and I wish I could tell him I’m sorry. I should’ve saved him. I know it hurts. I help him walk, like he helps me fly, and when he’s ready, we fly again.
I have nothing. We have nothing, but we have each other.
Night Furies fly in flocks. When I lost my family, I lost that. I’ve been alone for all I can remember, and now I never have to fly alone again. We have each other.
And we will – I know we will
forever.