Gobber has never considered himself to be a complicated man.

He has fought for his tribe since he was old enough to wield an axe. He'd nearly sliced his father's beard clean off the first time he'd swung one. His father - long gone, now - had only laughed, swung him up into his arms and hugged him, then showed him how to wield it properly. When Gobber began hanging around the forge, his father had joined him when he had the time, glancing between his son and the blacksmith with a grin, and had whooped with delight when Gobber ran into the house wielding the first sword he had made on his own time. It was small, and the metal was a bit warped where Gobber hadn't moved it out of the fire in time, but his father had placed it above the fireplace right beneath the man's own axe.

Now this, he had proclaimed, swinging his son onto his shoulders so Gobber, flushed with pride, could put the sword there himself, this is the start of something great!

And then his father went on a raid and didn't come back, and it was Gobber who took his place on the next ship, his mind fogged with grief and fury. He left the forge and his love for the flame behind and said a prayer for his father every time he killed another dragon.

Then - his hand. Gobber shoved it in the way of a dragon's flame to cauterize the wound and then shoved his sword through its throat in the next movement, but the pain had sent him reeling and two minutes later his leg had joined the hand.

And on the ride back, clouded and shaking from the pain and shock, it was Stoick who had sat by his side as he drifted in and out of consciousness. Stoick had supported him as he learned to walk again, had dragged him home after many valiant attempts at drowning his sorrows in ale, had casually mentioned that the blacksmith was looking to retire soon and hey, didn't Gobber know a thing or two about that stuff?

Gobber's father had been a good man - loud and brash and when he smiled his whole face crinkled with the force of it.

I tried my best, Stoick had said, and Gobber had looked down because he, more than anyone, knew that Stoick had lied.

Gobber knows he is not a complicated man. He fights to defend those he cares about. Once that was with an axe and sword. Now he wields a hammer and pumps the bellows with the same determination. He has never backed down from a fight.

He cares about Hiccup and Stoick both. His apprentice and his best friend. Gobber isn't shy with his words, but Hiccup is beyond any of their reach at the moment - and good thing, too, his mind whispers, for they had all witnessed the incandescent rage writ large across Stoick's face but he alone had been close enough to hear the thin whistle of breath forced from Hiccup's throat. He glances over - beyond the barrier is a seething wall of scales and teeth, and Gobber doesn't fancy his chances of getting through that.

But Stoick is right there, and the shock is beginning to fade away like mist in the face of the anger bubbling in his chest.

"Stoick."

The chief looks paler than Gobber has ever seen him. Fragile is not a word Gobber ever would have used to describe the fiery chief, but now...

"Stoick," he says again.

"What, Gobber?"

Stoick sounds exhausted. He gestures at the wall.

Hiccup pulled the last of the ropes from the dragon. The creature blurred into movement and in less than a second Hiccup was pinned against a rock beneath its claws. Hyperventilating, he looked up and into narrow green eyes.

Gobber stares. The dragon's eyes fill the wall, and there's something... they're not just green. Something crackles in the iris - colors. Hundreds of them, flashing in and out of prominence, crisscrossing behind the pupil -

Hiccup shoved himself backwards, as far as he could get, and the dragon reared up and -

Every Viking in the cavern covers their ears reflexively. That scream could shatter eardrums.

The dragon turned and fled. Its flight was clumsy and staggered, and it collided with an outcropping of rocks before dropping out of sight.

"I failed, Gobber. He didn't kill a dragon - he let it go! He was about to walk off, leave it there to starve, but no, he had to let it go - "

"Oh, shut up."

It's only out of shock that Stoick actually obeys, but Gobber was never one to look a gift horse in the mouth. "I don't care - no, wait, that's not right. I do care. I want to know what on earth the lad was thinking, but first I want to know exactly what the hell was going on in your head when you tried to kill him!"

A flash of defensiveness crosses Stoick's face. "You heard the Trickster. I didn't - it was magic -"

"Oh, I understood him plenty," Gobber snaps. "It was magic, sure, but you thought it was okay. You didn't realize it was magic even after it was gone because you thought you were right!"

"He was my son! I -"

Gobber throws a hand up at the scene playing in front of him. "Was he ever, really?"

Simultaneous, frustrated -

"I don't want to fight dragons."

"It's time you learn to fight dragons."

"You were always running on opposite paths, Stoick. We wanted to kill the beasts, and we're damn good at it, too. He's got something different going on. I mean, I didn't think - I didn't think it was this -"

"You get your wish. Dragon training... you start in the morning."

Hiccup's eyes widened. "Oh, man, I should have gone first. You know, we have a - a surplus of dragon-fighting Vikings, but do we have enough, bread-making Vikings, or small-home-repair Vikings?"

"You'll need this," Stoick said, and dropped an axe almost as tall as Hiccup himself into his arms.

"I don't want to fight dragons -"

Stoick laughed and turned away. "Oh, come on, yes you do."

Hiccup ran after him. "Rephrase. Dad, I can't kill dragons!"

"But you will kill dragons!"

"No, I'm really very extra-sure that I won't!"

"Oh, for gods' sake, Stoick, he all but told you what happened!"

"It's time, Hiccup."

"Can you not hear me?"

"This is serious, son. When you carry this axe -" he lifted it out of Hiccup's arms - "you carry all of us with you."

Stoick dropped the axe back into his arms and prodded him to stand up straighter. "Which means you walk like us, you talk like us, you think like us."

Gobber had never really noticed how much Stoick loomed.

"No more of... this."

"You just gestured to all of me."

Gobber takes a second look at Hiccup's face and winces. This, he thinks, was when it ended. The face on the wall looks frustrated, but there was none of the sadness there that Gobber had seen before. None of the yearning, none of the grief. Just resignation.

Is that what sent him to them? Gobber wonders. A lifetime of that?

"Deal?"

"This conversation is feeling very one-sided-"

"Deal?"

A sigh. "Deal."

"You lied, Stoick," Gobber says quietly. "When the Trickster asked if you thought you were a good dad. You didn't try your best and you know it."

Stoick runs a hand down his face and glares at him. "And if I had? You really think it would have changed anything, Gobber? You really think that he would have been a proper Viking?"

"No," Gobber admits, "but I don't think you would have lost him. Not if you'd tried to listen. And now - look at them, Stoick."

The dragons have just about settled, now. Five of them - Gobber recognizes the ones from the arena almost instantly even with the distortion of the barrier, which, honestly, yeah, he's not surprised - are clustered close to the border, and when he squints he can make out a blurry black figure wrapped around a small, distinctly human one.

"I know how animals act around their offspring. He ran to them when you went after him, Stoick, not to m- not to anyone else. They've taken him in."

He glances over one more time, accidentally making eye contact with one of the Nightmares - the one from the ring.

Three words drop into his head with the subtlety of a boulder.

Ours now, smith.

Gobber jerks back. Blinks.

No. There's no way. If they can understand him -

They're mindless beasts. He knows this. They steal and burn and always, always go for the kill.

And then Gobber remembers the scene that had just played out in front of him and realizes exactly what it implied.

The Night Fury didn't. It didn't kill him. It had prey at its mercy, it was most likely hungry, but it didn't kill.

It was repaying a favor. A life for a life.

And that -

Can you understand us? Gobber thinks, and then immediately feels foolish for it.

He turns to the trickster god behind them.

"Trickster, can - "

The god, holding a red-and-white-striped bucket of something that smells delicious, raises an eyebrow.

Gobber coughs and rolls his shoulders back. He doesn't know how to address a god - a god, by the Norns - but he's never let a lack of propriety stop him before.

"Trickster. Loki. Can the beasts -" he hesitates, curses himself for it, continues - "Can they understand us?"

The god's hammock sways gently in an invisible, intangible breeze. The god himself gives every appearance of relaxation, but his eyes are dark and narrow. He pops a handful of whatever is in the bucket into his mouth, chews excruciatingly slowly, and swallows.

"Well, of course," he says, and Gobber's world grows ever more unsteady under his feet.

Loki smirks.

"You're not that complicated, after all."

Emberskin shoots a last glare at the smith and turns his attention back to the others. That was risky, he knows, but he can't bring himself to regret it. From what he's glimpsed of Featherstone's life on Berk, the smith was the one man who'd cared about him and not just the person he could be.

If that holds true - and Emberskin hopes it does, for the hatchling's sake - the smith will leave Hiccup with them.

He glances over. Featherstone is curled up and dozing against Toothless's side, and his heart aches. He had seen the fear on the hatchling's face, smelt its sour tang, and even now he can see the bruises blooming around his throat. He stretches his wings as fire arcs down his tail, and Featherstone uncurls slightly as the heat washes over him.

Shock.

He can still smell the blood on the hatchling's hands.

Toothless.

A ripple of silver.

Hm?

His hands.

I know, says Toothless. His voice is thick with grief. Nothing to be done about it now. We wait until we get back.

A rumble of resigned discontent. Featherstone's sleeping face twitches, and the Network quiets immediately.

You spoke to the smith, Emberskin?

I did, he says, and then hesitates. I... do not know how. I was angry, angry and scared. I know he heard me, though. I felt his confusion.

The boundaries are thinner here, I think, Stormfly adds. I felt it too. Less division. Her lilac spreads, caution careful eavesdropper, and the message is picked up and passed along.

They watch as the Viking children grip hammers and axes and spears and maces and stride into the arena. The grey walls reek of death, Emberskin knows, and the floor is stained with blood, but their faces show only a terrible, gleeful hunger.

No wonder they did not recognize the Queen's influence, he thinks. That look is just the same.

"I hope I get some serious burns," says one.

"I'm hoping for some mauling, like on my shoulder or back," says another.

"It's only fun if you get a scar out of it," a girl sneers.

Emberskin sees the wariness in their hatchling's face as the others turn towards him, and how he folds his shoulders and snarks back to avoid attention. He aches, and he knows the pain is shared.

Firework shifts next to him, and a small swell of unease curls into the Network.

Too much emptiness, above their heads and in their hearts, she says. It must be very lonely, being human.

"Oh, great. Who let him in?"

Never again, says the Fury, and exhales a puff of warm air into the boy's hair. He glances at Emberskin. Ours now.

The words ripple across the Network, and they know they mean it.

A/N. Final word count: 2160, not including this note.

Shoutout to the lovely Aurora Borealis and everyone else who continued to review even after over a year of no updates. I meant what I said - I will get this fic done, no matter how long it takes me. When I think about where we were this time last year... well. How fast things change.

I'll keep this short. I hope that, during everything that is going on, you are all staying safe and well. I hope that, when you can, you stand up and fight for justice. Care for one another and for yourselves. Black lives matter, and for god's sake, wear a mask.