See end of chapter for notes.

If it didn't sit right with Stoick, he couldn't imagine what Hiccup felt. Fifteen years of seeing his son as defenseless at best, a liability at worst. Two days of being the proudest father on Berk when he learned his son was rivaling the Hofferson girl in dragon training. A few hours where his heart hadn't so much as broken as it had disappeared into a sea of anger and betrayal. A few minutes of complete shock and awe while he watched his boy do battle against a monster few could speak of without going pale in the face. An unknown amount of time immediately after the battle when his heart had disappeared again, this time not melted with anger but simply gone, gone with his son to Valhalla. Joy, relief, and the torturous, endless days when Stoick had kept the village running like an unthinking automaton, his mind and heart where he knew his body should be, at his boy's bedside waiting for him to wake up so he could apologize and listen. And now…

Well, he thought he had been proud of his son when he was killing dragons in the ring. Ha!

But it had all happened so fast. Stoick couldn't reconcile the reckless, danger-prone, hapless Hiccup he'd seen for so long with the dragon tamer walking, or flying, or very occasionally hobbling, around the village. Hiccup veered between uncomfortable with the attention to darkly amused by everyone's inability to reconcile the "Before" with the "After."

There'd been more than once when Stoick needed to stomp down viciously on the instinct to snag the back of Hiccup's shirt as he approached an angry Monstrous Nightmare and yell at him to get back inside—and he'd only been up and walking around for three days.

He complained to Gobber, of course. Both of them had, he learned when he approached the smith, which he supposed was another thing they had in common. He was stumbling over those more and more often, lately, each recognition sending the confused jumble of pride and humility jerking in his chest. Gobber had informed him in no uncertain terms that nothing would change unless the two of them actually sat down and talked to each other.

Sailing into Hel itself would be easier. He knew, he'd practically done it with that foolhardy trip to the nest. And look at what that had gotten them both, the last time he hadn't listened to his son.

But it was Hiccup, and Stoick was quickly learning that anything he could do to mend the relationship between himself and his son, he was willing to do. He put up with Toothless living in the same building, didn't he? (Sometimes it felt rather the other way around, that the Night Fury tolerated his presence so close to his rider, but that was a guilt inducing thought for quite another day.)

Stoick had left the forge determined to talk to his son. Actually talk, and actually listen, and maybe he'd be able to reconcile the half a dozen different versions Hiccup he saw every time he looked at his son. So he fetched dinner from the Meade Hall and took it back to their house (a house that was slowly, ever so slowly, becoming a home). And he waited. And he carved two or three wooden ducks while he waited.

It was dusk before Hiccup turned up again, a thud on the roof announcing the arrival of one black dragon and one slim teenager, before he heard Hiccup's reedy voice and hid a smile in his beard. Stoick would never admit it, but he found Hiccup's habit of talking out loud to his constant reptilian shadow to be as endearing as it was ridiculous.

"Okay, yes, I know that second collision was my fault, you don't need to remind me. But I really think we're getting a lot better, bud. My reflexes are almost as good!" A dull thwack. "Ow! Yes, I know, almost as good is not as good, and of course you demand absolute perfection. You know, I've been thinking about that one stack—you know, the one that curls horizontally?—and I'm wondering if we couldn't get—oh. Hi, Dad."

Stoick chuckled to himself, glancing up at his son as he came through the door. He couldn't even tell if he was limping or not, given that Toothless kept a head under his left arm like a living crutch. "Welcome home," he said, and nodded towards the fireplace. "I grabbed food from the Meade Hall. Thought you might be hungry after all day in the air."

"Huh? Oh, yeah. Thanks." Hiccup shuffled awkwardly, but Toothless nudged him towards the table to sit. Stoick followed, placing both plates down in front of Hiccup and sitting across from him, folding his hands on their table.

Now to figure out how to actually talk to him.

"So, did you have a good day?" Yes, good. Good start.

"Yeah. Sorry, if there were things I was needed for in the village…"

Stoick waved it off. "I think that lizard of yours was getting stir crazy. It's fine." Toothless gave him a narrowed eyed look, but didn't move from where he'd curled up around Hiccup's chair, shaking his shoulders and settling himself back down. For a moment, Stoick thought of the Meade Hall, and five, ten, fifteen years, and visiting chiefs from other, hostile tribes, and the effectiveness wickedly green eyes in a dark hall could have. But that was for later.

"Thanks, Dad."

Silence. Again. Stoick turned his fork over and over in one hand. Well. It could be worse. It had been worse. What next, what next? Stoick's attention drifted to the dragon again, and he brightened immediately. It was a question that had been on everyone's mind, especially his, but he hadn't had a chance to actually ask, yet. Now was an excellent time. Yes, it would show interest in his son and he knew his boy took every opportunity to talk about the dragons.

"So, son," he started, and nodded to himself. Yes, that was a good start, even better than before. This was a good question. "I was wondering if you'd tell me exactly how you manage to go about training Toothless here." Toothless lifted his head at his name, but Hiccup looked startled. They shared a long look. Another vague regret about brothers and his Val dug into his heart before he was able to think of something else. Toothless tilted his head back towards Stoick with a grunt, before returning to his nap. That was a "I wash my hands of this" gesture if he'd ever seen one.

Hiccup grinned. "Well, um… sure, Dad. I don't mind telling the story, I guess."

Stoick hid another fond smile in his beard. 'Don't mind,' ha! Hiccup was eager to explain what happened. He knew this would work. And Gobber said the two of them couldn't communicate!

"Okay, well, you've probably figured out by now that Toothless is the Night Fury I shot down during that last raid," Hiccup started, squirming in a way that assured Stoick he was just as reluctant to talk about "Before" as he himself was.

"I did get that much, yeah," he murmured, and gestured for Hiccup to continue when nerves and guilt flashed across his son's face. It had no place there, after all. No, the nerves and guilt about "Before" belonged in his own chest and throat and stomach, exactly where they were.

"Well, after Gobber walked me back to the house, I went into the woods after it," Hiccup elaborated. Stoick froze, and looked incredulously at the Night Fury.

"You… what?"

Hiccup didn't seem to have heard him, watching his dragon and looking even more guilty than before. "Yeah, I wanted to, well… make sure he was dead, bring back proof, all that. You know how it is. Was. Er. Anyway!" he rushed on before Stoick could wince at Hiccup's desperation to prove himself to Berk and his chief, but even more to a distant father. "So I managed to find him, and I thought he was dead for a bit, since he was all trussed up and everything." Toothless had shifted to press his face into Hiccup's chest, and the boy rubbed at his ears and jaw. "But he moved when I put my foot on him—like the tapestries, you know? The mighty Viking hunter gloating over a kill…" Toothless huffed, tossing his head up to clack Hiccup's teeth together. "Ow! Okay, okay, I'll stop. Not like you didn't get me back when I let you go."

Stoick's blood rushed in his ears and he could just see his little slip of a son doing exactly what he'd just said. First getting close enough to a downed dragon—a wounded animal that, however intelligent, had been trapped and backed into a corner—to put his foot on it, without first checking entirely that it was dead. And then letting it go? He cleared his throat, trying to figure out exactly what to say.

"Oh, yeah, sorry, skipping ahead a bit, aren't I?" That… that was not what he was thinking. He was thinking more like he wanted to know what Hiccup had been thinking at that point, and if he had anything like a sense of self preservation. "Um, right, so I put my foot on Toothless's shoulder and he shoves me off, and I just… I look at him." Hiccup frowned, not with sadness or anger but only in thought (and really what had his boy been thinking!). "It's… hard to explain, Dad," he admitted, hands running across Toothless's scales, and Stoick realized that it was as much in comfort to himself as it was for Toothless. "He was trapped, and in pain, and afraid, and… alone. And I had done that." Hiccup's voice dropped until Stoick, accustomed to shouting and being shouted at for hours at a time as he dealt with the obstinacy inherit in Vikings, could barely hear it. "Me and my stupid, desperate desire to fit in. I couldn't kill him, not after… not after seeing myself in his eyes. So I cut him loose. I let him go."

Stoick sighed, nodding. He couldn't fault him for letting the beast go, not really. He wouldn't have. Gobber wouldn't have, none of his peers, either. Not one of the people of Berk would have let the beast go. But this was his Hiccup, his son, and of them all, Hiccup would have chosen to forgive. Han't he done as much for the entire village, "After"?

Toothless made that strange, woofing noise that Hiccup had finally convinced Stoick was laughter, and father and son smiled at the dragon. "Yeah, you got me back, all right. You pinned me to a rock by my neck before roaring in my face and flying off," Hiccup continued with a wry grin, and then he laughed, along with his dragon. "I thought for sure he was going to kill me, but he didn't. I fainted afterwards, just took three steps and collapsed. That's why I was back so late, really, trying to figure out what had just happened."

Stoick's jaw dropped, before he forced himself to swallow again, eyeing Toothless skeptically. He'd seen how the dragon treated his son. They'd shared those endless hours, however unwillingly at first, as they waited for the boy they both loved to wake up. He'd seen their friendship and knew the dragon had loved his Hiccup before he himself could express the same thing, but still. That was not a promising first meeting.

"Don't be mad at him, Dad. I really should have expected something like it. After all, I knocked him out of the sky and ended up crippling him, though I hadn't meant to." And Hiccup sounded guilty for the whole thing. Oh, son, you're going to turn me gray… "At the time, I thought he'd flown off and that was the last I'd see of him. I was wrong, of course, but that's how it started. With mercy."

Hiccup was looking at him, barely-there smile crooked and eyes flicking over his face, and it wasn't hard for Stoick to figure out why he was nervous. Mercy was not a trait highly valued by Vikings. Again, Stoick thought about the Meade Hall's council table and retirement, and suspected that might change in the next several years. "Of course," he said, and smiled.

It wasn't until he reminded himself that Hiccup was sitting right in front of him, none the worse for wear save a metal leg (and he knew exactly how he had gotten that, and the dreams of his son's screams still woke him some nights) that the smile turned more real. Of course it hadn't been a promising first meeting. What had he expected, for Toothless to have come bounding out of the woods, instantly friends with his son? Hiccup was right. He should have expected something like that. The important thing was that Hiccup was still perfectly safe, and had made friends with the Night Fury. Some of the best friendships were based on a first fight! Hadn't he made friends with Gobber by starting a fight with him? It was reckless and self-endangering and made him question his son's sanity more than anything else he had ever done, including the incident with the chickens and that one raid, but maybe his son had a bit more Viking in him than he had expected. Making friends by fighting. He could deal with that. "Go on, son," Stoick said, and settled back in his chair with a smile. "I'm listening."

His whole face brightened. "Right, so I thought training to kill dragons was going to be the worst thing to ever happen to me when I got back, but actually it ended up giving me some excellent ideas. Some of the things Gobber said helped a lot, though I'm pretty sure I took the advice the exact opposite way I was supposed to." He puffed his chest up, accent thickening in an imitation of the smith. "It's the wings and tails you're after. A downed dragon is a dead dragon!" Toothless laughed again, and Hiccup smiled broadly at him. "But, again, I'm skipping ahead. Sorry. Oh, right! So, after the first day in training when I almost got killed by a Gronkle—"

"You what?!" Stoick demanded, and this time Toothless straightened, too, crooning in an accusatory way that suggested Hiccup had never mentioned this to him before.

"Yeah, first time I met Meatlug, actually. She almost burnt me to a crisp. Anyway, Gobber's 'sage advice for the day' was that a dragon will always go for the kill. And Toothless here hadn't, so I went back into the woods—"

Stoick stared. He would need to have a serious, serious talk with Gobber about his teaching methods. Draconic mutterings as Toothless settled back under the table suggested that the Gronkle which had attached itself to Fishlegs would be having a close encounter as well. Good, saved Stoick the trouble. They both exchanged a long look, before Stoick turned his attention back to his boy, who was continuing on as if he hadn't heard a thing.

"—I don't know what I was expecting to find, since I had assumed Toothless was capable of flying on his own, but I went back to where he'd landed, and after wandering around for a bit I found a cove. I'll have to take you some time, Dad, it's a beautiful place. But Toothless was stuck down there, trying to get out."

"And you… you approached him?" Stoick asked carefully. He knew, knew that dragons weren't what they'd thought for years, that they weren't mindless killing machines, but still, to think that his son, with just a knife at his belt in defense, had approached the most dangerous dragon known, when it was cornered and hurt and scared and angry…

"Oh, no! Not at all! I wasn't ready for that." Hiccup assured him, and Stoick relaxed. Good, his son had some sense of self preservation after all. "No, I stayed up on the cliffside and drew him." And the common sense enough to stay hidden and observe! That was downright clever of him. "I dropped my stylus by accident, though, and got his attention… But he didn't do anything, just looked at me."

"And you left at that point?" Stoick asked, praying his son would say yes and prove his father right, that he could be sensible.

"What?" Hiccup seemed surprised that the question had been asked. "No, that was my only stylus. When he didn't do anything, I climbed down, got it, and then left." Something about Stoick's face betrayed his disbelief, because Hiccup raised one eyebrow. "What? Toothless wasn't even growling that time or anything, he just watched me."

"He probably couldn't believe anyone would be so daft as to approach a downed Night Fury," Stoick mumbled. Toothless snorted agreement, and they shared a long look, for once on the exact same page.

"Huh? What did you say, Dad?"

Stoick rubbed his forehead with one hand, before gesturing at Hiccup to continue. "Nothing, son. Nothing. Go on." A stylus. Maybe he should get the boy more of them for Snoggletog.

"Right…" Hiccup eyed him suspiciously, but shrugged and continued to chatter about how he'd been throwing his life to the winds of fate in order to find out more about the dragon. Odin help him. "Anyway, I got back late for dinner that night, read the Book of Dragons, found out we knew nothing about Night Furies, and asked Gobber a lot of questions the next day during dragon training."

"Ah, slow day of training, then?" Stoick said with a teasing grin.

"…I… wouldn't say that. Astrid and I almost got eaten by Stormfly, and Fish nearly got impaled but he got his shield up in time. I… probably didn't help with my questions. But, really, how was I supposed to get closer to a Night Fury if no one knew anything about them?" Hiccup protested as Stoick just stared at him again. He was doing a lot of that, tonight.

"So… how did you get closer?"

"Well, I took a shield and a fish and went back to the cove."

Stoick regretted ever thinking that not having mead with his meal was a good idea. Oh, right, they were meant to be eating dinner. Mechanically, Stoick cut into the venison. "Well, at least you had the sense to take a shield with you," he said finally.

"Er… Yeah… It got stuck in the passage going in. It's probably still there," Hiccup informed him with a shrug. "So I just went in with the fish."

Stoick cast another incredulous glance at Toothless, who was doing his best to look innocent. "So… You approached the most dangerous dragon we know of with nothing but a knife and a fish."

"Yeah, pretty much. Except without the knife."

He had to put his own knife down again. "You forgot your knife at home?"

"No, no, I had it! But I threw it in the pond." He'd done… what? "See, after I got the shield stuck in between two rocks, I went in holding the fish instead to find him, since I figured he was hungry by then—and I was definitely right about that. He saw the knife when I went to hold out the fish—or smelled it, or something. Anyway, it was made abundantly clear to me that unless I ditched all my weapons there was absolutely no way Toothless would let me get anywhere close to him, so I dropped the knife. When that still wasn't enough, I kicked it into the pond."

"Oh, well… That makes sense…"

"Yep! It's why a lot of dragons are still kind of nervous in the village proper, I think. Generations of killing each other… doesn't exactly go away overnight." Hiccup was rubbing absently at Toothless's head as he thought. "We're all learning to… learning to trust, again." Toothless crooned, nudging his chest. "Yes, yes, the story. That was the afternoon we started trusting each other, actually."

"With fish?"

Hiccup laughed. "Fish and patience. And an iron stomach. I fed him—thought he'd taken my hand off for a moment, when he snatched it away—and then he, er… gave half of it back."

Stoick grunted. He'd seen it happen once or twice around the village, though only between two dragons. Something niggled at his mind, suggesting quietly that this was somehow significant, but he dismissed it. Dragon-slimed cod did not sound particularly appetizing.

Grimacing in sympathy, his son continued. "Yeah, pretty disgusting. He didn't let me get away without swallowing, either." The dragon chuckled from underneath Hiccup's chair. "I spent the rest of the day with him."

"Oh?" Stoick asked, amused. That was his boy. Nice and slow, getting the dragon used to his presence and bribing him with food before getting closer. He'd had to go through a similar phase of skeptical distrust before Toothless got used to him. "Doing what? Not flying," he added, hiding a grin in his beard. "After all, that's what you do now."

"True," Hiccup conceded with a bright laugh. "No, that first day I mostly spent trying to touch him. Right after I swallowed a bite of regurgitated fish, actually. But he growled and ran off before I could."

"And you let him sulk." Right?

Hiccup blinked, as if the notion hadn't even crossed his mind. "No? He'd gone off to lie down, so I went to try again. He wasn't happy, so I left it." He paused, mouth twisting into a concentrated frown. "In retrospect, I probably shouldn't have reached for his fin, since it was damaged. I didn't really get at the time, though, that he couldn't fly when he was missing half his tail." Stoick resisted the urge to bury his face in his hands. Barely. "Anyway, he came over to watch me doodle, then—Dad, it was so cool! He uprooted a sapling and started drawing himself!"

Stoick pushed aside the growing headache to look at him in curiosity. "Drawing?"

The mild skepticism prompted an enthusiastic explanation. Hiccup tripped over his words as they rushed out, as he always had, and Stoick didn't bother trying to hide his amusement this time. "Yeah, it wasn't mimicry or anything—or, well, it was, but he was protective of the drawing. I stepped on it by accident, and he growled at me. I stepped on it a few more times to make sure I was seeing things right, and when I stepped over the line he was so pleased! It was amazing, Dad, like dancing, kind of, and I ended up right in front of him. Inches from him, Dad, like he'd—like he'd planned the whole thing. I didn't even notice, though, not until he blew into my hair." Toothless had snuck out from under the chair, and interrupted the babbling with a huff into his rider's hair, and Hiccup grinned up at him. "Yeah, like that."

He nearly knocked the plate to the ground with his enthusiastic gestures, before abandoning his half-eaten dinner and leaping to his feet. "Inches from him, Dad. Inches away from a Night Fury. I turned around, and just looked at him." He did so, staring up at the black beast.

The fire light and candles cast more than enough shadows, until Toothless looked far more fearsome than his name suggested. Stoick thought again of the future, and glowing eyes in the dark, picking up every possible glint of the firelight. There was a slight tension in the air, but it didn't taste like any tension Stoick had felt before. Nothing like the sparks before a brawl, or after a compromise which left both parties angry and unsatisfied. Nothing like the nights he'd spent in front of the fire with his son "Before." If anything, it felt like the moment right before a storm, when the world held its breath. Waiting. Just waiting.

Whatever those two had felt when it was actually happening… He was seeing a shadow of a reflection.

"Dad," Hiccup whispered, though his eyes remained locked with his dragon's. "I knew. Right then, I knew. And I…" Hesitatingly, Hiccup lifted one hand, his right hand, out to the dragon. Palm out, fingers splayed. He ducked his head, avoiding the dragon's eyes in a way he never did—not anymore, at least.

Stoick studied the picture in silence, pride welling in his chest for his son. He could have lost his hand pulling a stunt like that. Gods, anyone else probably would have, because they'd press the issue, lash out, get angry. Charge headfirst and damn the consequences. He'd do the same thing; stick to his guns, follow the Viking way right to his death. But his son—his vulnerable, clever, brilliant son—approached the problem carefully, side stepping and backing off and patient, but never giving up. Maybe that was as much the Viking way as anything else.

Toothless nudged his hand, then bypassed it entirely to lick his face. Hiccup squawked, the tension in the room broke, and Stoick laughed loudly as Hiccup spluttered his indignation.

Still grumbling, Hiccup went to the water bucket next to the fireplace to scrub dragon spit off his face as Toothless grinned widely at Stoick. The dragon curled up around Hiccup's chair again, waiting for his return, and Stoick took the opportunity to eat another few bites of his meal, settling back in his chair. "Go on, son," he encouraged when he sat again. By now he was genuinely curious about the entire story. "What happened next?"

Hiccup rolled his eyes. "Dinner with everyone, again. Gobber told the story of how he lost his hand and foot for the thousandth time. It's a good thing I went, though, because that's when I got the inspiration for Toothless's prosthetic, after his comment about downed dragons being dead dragons. It only took a few nights to get Toothless's measurements and build the prototype, and from there I managed to figure out the gear. Trial and error. Lots and lots of trial and error…"

"Ah, lad, Gobber's been going on about that kit of yours since we were on the boats back to Berk," Stoick rumbled cheerfully. He tapped the table in front of Hiccup, a tacit reminder that he was, in fact, supposed to be eating supper. With a sheepish grin, he complied. "Even I can recognize impressive craftsmanship. Did it really only take a few days?"

"Er… no, not as such. I mean, it was just a prototype. At first it was just the fin—I had a long way to go before I figured it all out, and even then there were a few falls and false starts. More than a few. That first day I just had the fin, like I said, and Toothless took off before I could get off his tail, and it was a huge mess and he threw me into the cove's lake. By accident, I think." The dragon made the same chuffing noise, and Hiccup nudged the scaly jaw with one foot. "Or maybe not… But he was up in the air, so I knew it would work, I just had to figure out how to keep the tail fin open. Except I didn't know until my second swim in the lake that Toothless adjusted the tail like, all the time, to steer and land and it's really complicated to fly, did you know that?"

Stoick numbly shook his head, still a little stuck on Hiccup being dumped in the lake, from gods knew how high. And to keep getting back on afterwards? Dimly, he remembered what Gobber had told him on that Odin-forsaken island, when they'd both stood in quiet awe and watched Hiccup soaring on the back of their worsy enemy—Every bit the stubborn, boar-headed Viking you ever were. Gobber had had as much a hand in raising his boy as he had, maybe even more. Yes, maybe there was a great deal more Viking in Hiccup than he'd ever expected.

"Anyway, I tied him to a stump to figure out the controls and wrote them all down on a cheat sheet. Though that was after the wind snapped the rope and the safety line I added got latched to the saddle and we had to sneak into the village to get it." Oh, good, he'd added a safety measure of some sort. Stoick hadn't even thought of that as being a problem. Good to see his son thinking ahead like that. He deliberately ignored the fact that he probably wasn't thinking ahead, and had only added any sort of safety precaution when he realized he needed them. He also ignored the knee-jerk reaction of sneaking a dangerous dragon into the village. "That… that was the second most terrifying experience of my life…" Stoick cleared his throat. "Oh, right! Um. Our first flight was…" Hiccup hedged over the word for a moment, before settling on "Interesting."

Interesting. Oh, no. Things Hiccup called interesting would normally be described by Stoick as worrisome or problematic or disastrous or, occasionally, explosive. "Hiccup…"

"Well, there were good and bad moments," Hiccup decided. "We were going to go slow—" Toothless whacked his thigh with one of his ears. "—ow! I apologized for that. I ran him into a couple of rocks because my reactions were slow. Then we started climbing—Dad," he stopped suddenly, eyes shining with joy and voice fervent. "Dad, I need to get you on the back of a dragon. Flying is… All the gods in Asgard, Dad, words— it doesn't fit into words."

Stoick cocked his head to one side. "Try," he suggested gently. Hiccup frowned, doubtful, but Stoick just pushed his plate to one side and leaned forward, clasping his hands in front of him. "Try, Hiccup," he encouraged again. "I'm listening."

His son lit up. "It's… It's freedom, Dad," he finally said. "Freedom and anticipation and pure, undiluted potential… You know that moment on a ship, in rough water, when you and the boat are right on the crest of a wave? You're standing right on the edge, and you go rolling down into the trough and you leave your stomach up in the air, and your heart in your throat for a few seconds?" Stoick nodded slowly. "And you know how, on a clear day on a ship, you can see for miles, in any direction? There's nothing but water and sky and the horizon, and you can only imagine what's on the other side of that horizon?"

"Yes."

Hiccup nodded excitedly, pleased his Dad was following him. "It's nothing like a boat, Dad. Not really. Because on a boat, you're still at the mercy of the sea, especially in the middle of a storm. Sometimes you can only pray and hope for the best. In flight, a dragon works with you as a partner, and you have to listen to the wind and feel the air, but you have so much more control. I feel so much safer in the air with Toothless than I do on a boat, because I trust him way more than I trust the sea. Sailing has those tiny tastes—the anticipation, and the freedom, and the… the exhilaration. And flying has all that, all the time, but there's the trust, there, too, and the partnership with Toothless. And I… I feel like I could go anywhere, that anything is possible, that I could do anything. I saw our village, Dad."

Pride and joy sparked up in Stoick again, and he smiled. Our village.

"I'm scrawny, Dad, I know it, but I've never felt smaller than I did the first time I saw our village from above. But… But I've never felt bigger, either, because I knew that I was the first to ever see Berk like that."

There was silence for several long minutes.

"I need to get you on a dragon, Dad. You need to see it. You need to understand."

"Hiccup," Stoick said softly. "I believe you." His son smiled, and nodded. Stoick tapped the table again, and he ate in silence for a few minutes. But there were still things Stoick wanted to hear. "So, you said there were good moments and bad moments?"

"Oh! Yes. Um. The wind blew away my cheat sheet, and I fell off Toothless. Don't know how high," he said, contemplatively. "I wonder if there's a fool proof way of measuring it, without landmarks for comparison. Higher than Raven's Point, easily. Higher than most of the spires on Berk. Anyway," he continued, dismissing the near death experience and completely ignorant of the way his father's heart had started pounding in his chest or that his dad was wide eyed with shock and terror.

Hiccup almost died. Hiccup almost died, alone, and he wouldn't have known anything about how it had happened. It could have been days before someone came across his body, broken and crushed—Stoick couldn't think of it. Or lost to the sea, if he'd fallen over water. Stoick couldn't think of that, either. Hiccup failed to notice his father's horror, but Toothless crooned softly. Their eyes met with understanding, and Stoick relaxed. Not alone. Hiccup had had his dragon, of course he had. Not alone.

Never alone, those eyes promised. Stoick didn't make a habit of trusting dragons, not even now that he couldn't walk five steps without tripping over a Terror. But he did trust this one.

"We managed to hook back up, but we didn't recover fast enough to avoid this whole bunch of sea stacks. Tiny ones, too, all stuck together and crooked—it was like trying to run at top speed through a forest! But something clicked, seconds before we hit them. It felt like instinct, like I'd been flying with Toothless for years! Ah, Dad, you should have seen us. It was—that was the first time I really flew. It was amazing. And don't worry! I've not fallen since." Toothless snorted. "All right, at least, I haven't fallen by accident since," Hiccup corrected himself.

"By… by accident?"

"I've been practicing free fall. Just in case Toothless and I get separated again. And it's fun, besides. The closest I'll get to flying by myself—unless I develop wings or something." Hiccup laughed. Stoick silently vowed to keep a very close eye on what his son got up to in that little back room of his.

"Ah," Stoick said finally.

"Actually, I think my first proper flight with Toothless was the day you came home," Hiccup said thoughtfully. "So you pretty much know everything else after that."

Stoick nodded. Reflexively, he raised one hand to massage at the bridge of his nose, a gesture he hadn't used in a few weeks. "You know," he said, hardly thinking about the words. "When I got off the boat and Gobber told me how well you were doing in training, I thought he was joking. Then I thought he'd been wrong, after… well, your exam. And all." They both flinched, not wanting to talk over that moment right then. And, Stoick acknowledged, probably not ever. A wry smile tugged at his lips. "But now… Well, I think he was more right than any of us every expected."

"Wait, really?" Hiccup said. "You think Gobber was right when he said I was doing a good job killing dragons?"

"He never said you were doing a good job killing dragons," Stoick corrected, smile widening. "He said, and you can quote me on this, 'cause those words have been rattling around in my skull for days. He said, 'He's got this way with the beasts.'" Hiccup turned brilliantly red, reaching down to scratch behind Toothless's ears and setting the Night Fury purring. "Hiccup," Stoick said at last, figuring there was no better time than now. "I know you've been off with your Night Fury any chance you can get because you're not quite comfortable in this village. And sometimes when I look at you, I can only remember, well, Before."

"Is that why you asked tonight?" Hiccup asked. He'd always been clever.

Stoick shrugged. "Curiosity, too. It's not as if anyone saw you make friends with the devil." Hiccup frowned, but the dragon just snorted. "I suppose I needed a way to link the two."

Hiccup shrugged, fidgeting with his fork. "Sorry," he tried, and Stoick shook his head.

"Don't. You haven't changed, Hiccup. We have. And I think we were the ones who needed to."

"I'm pretty sure I've changed a lot, Dad."

Stoick scoffed. "You've still no sense and you make me wonder if you have a death wish. You're still getting in trouble and building contraptions and turning me gray well before my time. But now at least I know someone is going to be keeping an eye on you."

"I have sense!" Hiccup protested.

"Son, that dragon has more sense in one claw than you do in your entire body. Toothless," he added, and the dragon perked up. Stoick spoke over Hiccup's continued indignation. "I expect you to keep him safe. He doesn't listen and he'll still pull stupid stunts like jumping off a flying dragon several hundred feet in the air, but I expect you to get him home, remaining limbs in tact. Agreed?"

"Dad, you can't just—" Toothless nodded once, settling back down into his nap. "Toothless! You're taking his side?" The dragon cracked one eye open and warbled at him, before shifting his front two legs and settling again. "This—this isn't fair, you're ganging up on me!"

Stoick settled back in his chair, watching his son interact with a dragon. Two months ago, this image would never have crossed his mind. His words preceding Hiccup's final exam floated through his memory again, and he sighed. It was a mad world, and he had a half-mad son who was just going to make it better, and a half-mad dragon who would be by him every step of the way. Gobber had been right. All he'd really needed to do was sit down and talk to the boy—well, listen to him talk, at any rate, and make sure Hiccup knew he was listening. It hadn't passed his notice that every time he'd said that tonight—I'm listening, Hiccup, keep talking—his son had grinned as brightly as he did every time he took off on that blasted beast. He'd never been good at listening, not really. Not "Before." Well, he was going to change that.

What can someone do in a changing world but change with it, after all?

I have a confession to make: I have a severe weakness for those "the cast of the film watches their film" stories. Especially in this fandom, and almost entirely because of Stoick figuring out just how much danger his son actually gets into. The father/son relationship between Stoick and Hiccup is one of the most wonderfully written relationships in the franchise, I think. So, I wanted to try my hand at writing them. This one's been sitting on my computer for a while, waiting to be cleaned up. It still feels a tad rushed towards the end, but I'm really not sure how to go about fixing it... So, concrit would be welcomed.

This takes place before "Gift of the Night Fury," and yes, the sea stack Hiccup is talking about at the beginning is the one he's trying to jump over at the beginning of that short.

Read and review, please!