Warning: Again, probably unnecessary but spoilers ahead as well as a semi-long Author's Note.

Grief of a Dragon

Being an Alpha had never crossed the Night Fury's mind.

He cared little for power like the Queen had though he would say he enjoyed the respect he held by both humans and dragons because of his own talents and renown as a Night Fury. He liked for them to look up to him but he never actively pursued it. All he really cared for was his boy and sharing in the joy of flight. And codfish.

Yet he had taken on the Alpha and challenged him for his position of power to protect his rider with no hesitation and would do it over again a hundred times the same way.

Having won the battle, he was now the Alpha even though he was nowhere near as large as the massive beasts that usually hold those roles. It made things difficult considering he could not feed them like the great Bewilderbeast. He couldn't fly with them without the assistance of a human and many of the dragons were still wary of humans considering the brutality of the traps that had been imprinted on their minds. There was little he could do without his rider on his back and more often than not, his boy was no longer available to go flying on a whim.

His boy had been running to and fro since the Alpha's defeat and Toothless had been doing much of the same. The dragons looked to him for direction and nutrition. He often had to direct them in the ways of fishing for themselves until the feeding stations were fixed and surprisingly, many had forgotten the basics as they were used to having their food sprayed up into the air by their previous Alpha every night. Toothless would then be forced to grab the sunshine female or the boy's dam to ride him as his boy would be too busy. While he did not mind the sunshine mate of his boy or the wild spirit of the boy's dam he missed flying with his rider. With his mate or dam he could not do the stunts he adored so much.

What hurt more than the lack of flying with his original rider though was the distance he could feel between them. His boy stayed by his side and when they were together would offer the dragon smiles and scratches however he seemed… different.

The Night Fury could feel the boy's fear when his pupils narrowed during certain situations and that fear directed towards him caused his heart to tighten in his chest every time. His boy had not looked at him with such an emotion since their first meeting when he had freed him.

He could understand the boy's feelings towards him considering the circumstances though it was still rather hazy in his memories. Yet that unshakeable trust they had seemed to have had a weakness after all and the dragon grieved for that loss.

He cursed the first Alpha for losing. He cursed the scarred man's Alpha for winning, for forcing his will onto him until he folded under the pressure. He cursed the scarred man for using all the dragons including himself. Most of all though he cursed himself for being too weak to withstand the Alpha's will the first time.

Some nights he had what his boy called night terrors. The dream was always the same blurred image, red smeared across the corners like blood.

He was always thrown back to that moment. This time though, he was aware. He screamed at his body to stop, pulled at his legs, tried to lash his head away from the terrified face of his rider yet his body was no longer under his control and he would continue to stalk towards the human. He could hear his boy as he yelled, see him slowly back away and he willed for the boy to run, to do something rather than back himself into a corner. He could feel the gas begin to accumulate in the back of his throat and hear the cry of the boy's sire. He would try to stop himself but as always, the plasma blast shot forward and a cloud of ice and sulfur would cover them.

And when it cleared, it was not the body of his boy's sire crumpled under the ice but his own rider. Smoke rose from the charred remains of his leather armor and mingled with the smell of burned flesh. His rider was as still as the ice that covered him and he would screech his despair until his lungs withered away.

Usually, he would be awakened from these night terrors by his boy and when his eyes snapped open he never missed the boy's flinch at the sight of his narrowed pupils. And that feeling of losing his boy in the dream would only intensify. He hadn't lost his boy physically, but sometimes he feared he lost his boy in another sense.

However, his rider wouldn't leave his side and would murmur soothing words as he scratched the dragon's scales in a slow, careful way that rather than soothe would make the dragon feel like Red-Hot Itchyworms were crawling under his scales.

As if he would torch the boy were he to rub him wrong.

Some nights though, the positions would be flipped and the dragon would awake to the distressed cries of his rider. He would bound off his rock bed and often the blue aura he had acquired during his challenge with the Alpha would alight and coat the room in cyan hues. When he determined there were no enemies he would go to his rider's bedside as the blue subsided and carefully nudge him into awareness. The boy would usually awake with shuddering breaths and trembling shoulders. After a moment's hesitation, he would turn over in his bed, wrap his arms tightly around the dragon's neck, and bury his face against his shoulder.

That hesitation sent prickles of sorrow across the dragon's heart. The boy had never hesitated when it came to holding the dragon, something the Night Fury had grown fond of during his years of friendship with the boy.

That grief for the loss of their relationship would only grow. But Night Furies were nothing if determined, stubborn beasts. Toothless was not a dragon that would wallow in self-pity. He would get that relationship back one way or another.

So, despite the protests of his rider, the dragon would carefully climb onto the wooden bed of his boy and encircle him protectively. He would wrap his tail around him and use his wing to finish up the cocoon. The boy would sometimes squirm a bit and mutter something about overprotective reptiles but would eventually settle against the dragon's side. Toothless would wait until his breaths deepened before giving the boy's head a gentle nuzzle, desperate to make it the way it was before.

He regretted killing the boy's sire greatly as he had grown to like the red-faced man yet if faced with the choice of who the blast incinerated he wouldn't change the events that had occurred. So while he would grieve for the change in the bond they shared, he could not grieve for the man who had taken the blast for his rider.

Because he would rather have this strained relationship with his boy than no rider at all.

A/N: Toothless was a bit harder to do, why it took me a while. He calls Valka 'dam' and Stoick 'sire' as those are the animalistic versions of most parents. The scarred man is Drago and the sunshine female is Astrid. I don't think he'd use names. I believe that Toothless would feel bad about killing Stoick because he probably did grow to like him and knows it hurt Hiccup badly but I feel he would grieve more for the change in Hiccup.

I added that because my belief is that it wouldn't be all sunshine and roses between him and Hiccup. He may have not meant to do it, but Toothless is still the cause of his father's death and I feel like it would take him awhile to get over that fear of seeing Toothless in that feral way. That strong trust between them would be weakened then by that and Toothless would be able to sense it. That hesitation and fear Hiccup has to overcome.

Red-Hot Itchyworms are dragons in the books that are like fire ants but about five times worse.

That's the end of my three-shot story. Thank you all for your reviews/faves/follows. They make me uber happy~ If you have any more people you'd like to see, drop me a review/PM and I might try to write them in, if I can think of their grief angle. It might help me get over my feels for this movie… Thank you again my chickadees!

Until we meet again~

- Zehava