It'd been nearly eight months since they'd seen his father sail to Valhalla. All things considered, life was moving on smoothly. The cold winter gales had begun to move in, but they were ready. Berk was steadily growing stronger with each day. His mother was slowly acclimating to a human life once again, he was finally beginning to respond when someone called him 'chief', and with every chisel's blow on the mountain's face, the stone sentinel outside the mead hall looked a little bit more like Stoick, and something in Hiccup's heart began to heal over. They were all healing, from ice and death and loss and the realization that the world was huge and more violent than even the vikings had ever known. But they were healing. They would be fine.

Unbeknownst to Berk's young chief, however, there was one person on the island who had yet to heal, because they hadn't yet realized how broken they were. But, one quiet autumn night, they remembered.

Toothless wailed.

Hiccup sat up bolt upright in bed, utterly startled by the roar and unsure of what had caused it. He screamed in fright, and turned to his dragon. "Toothless? Toothless, what happened? What's wrong?" Were they under attack again? Was Toothless hurt? Why… why was he looking at him like that?

Toothless was staring right at Hiccup through the dark, eyes wide, face pinched. He groaned something that Hiccup couldn't understand, turned fearfully, and bolted out the window. "Toothless!" Hiccup called after him, "Where are you going?" He watched Toothless flap haplessly and glide to the ground. From there, he bolted for the woods and disappeared in the dark. "Toothless!"

Hiccup's metal foot was loud on the stairs in the middle of the night. Valka was waiting for him at the bottom, a candle in one hand. "What's happened?" She asked, holding a blanket around herself for warmth, "Is he alright?"

"I don't know," Hiccup said, grabbing the thick fur cloak he'd inherited when he'd become chief, "I have no idea what's wrong with him. I'm going to go find him."

"Do you want me to…?"

"No," Hiccup put a hand on her shoulder and kissed her cheek, "Stay here. If anyone else heard that, they might come asking what happened. Just… tell them it was nothing." He didn't look certain as he turned and headed out the back door.

Hiccup let his feet guide him through the paths he knew well, the paths he'd trod more than anyone else on the island. When he got close enough, he heard Toothless crying, and frowned.

It wasn't quite as easy to manage the slippery climb down into the cove with his foot, but he managed. The place had changed little, save that the trees had grown taller, the brush more wild. Toothless was curled behind the same rock that Hiccup had always found him behind. He was nearly too big to fit behind it, now.

"Toothless?" Hiccup asked. Toothless jumped and spun, and when he saw Hiccup, keened miserarbly. He flinched and cowered away, until his rump hit the cove wall and he couldn't move or hide.

"Hey, hey but, it's okay, it's fine, what's gotten into you?" Hiccup asked, reaching out a hand calmly, "You're scaring me, bud, what's wrong?" He tried to make his voice soft, not as scared as he felt.

Toothless mumbled something. Hiccup frowned because he couldn't make it out. "What?" He asked. Toothless refused to look at his rider.

"I did it.", he sounded more miserable than Hiccup had ever heard him.

"You did… what?" Hiccup asked. Toothless moaned loudly, and shivered his wings until they scraped the ground. Hiccup had never seen a dragon cry before.

"I did it!"Toothless wailed, "I… I killed him! I…. I'm the reason that… He's not here because of ME," Toothless curled tightly on himself and shook like a frightened child.

Hiccup only stared. Whenever the subject of his father's death came up, he shut down, didn't speak. It was an instinct, a way of coping, moving past the grief. Of course he'd had to face the fact that it'd been Toothless' fire that had killed Stoick. It'd been Toothless who'd stood over the body with smoke trailing out of his maw. It'd been Toothless who advanced on him to the point that his father felt compelled to intervene. It'd been Toothless. But he hadn't actually thought of whether or not Toothless would remember. Memories made for the very worst nightmares. Hiccup knew that, despite his instincts, he had to say something.

"It wasn't your fault, bud, you know that," Hiccup said, easing himself closer, "You would never hurt him," He couldn't help it when his voice cracked.

"I was going to… I would've killed YOU," Toothless wailed, almost in hysterics, "I would have…" He whimpered, unable to speak of it.

"You would never hurt me," Hiccup said, repeating the words he'd spoken to Toothless months ago, reclaiming him mid-air with Drago above them both, "It wasn't you, bud, it was him. It was always him. It's not your fault."

Gently, Hiccup's hand eased onto Toothless' snout. The fury melted, and Hiccup sat down onto the ground and held Toothless' head in his lap as the dragon groaned out dragon-sized sobs. After he quieted, he pressed into Hiccup's stomach and stayed there.

"Is that it?" Hiccup asked quietly, "You just now remembered?"

"I was confused," Toothless told him, "It was like before we met, when I worked for Her. I forgot how old I was when I was under her control, where i'd come from, what my name was. And then… when I… I didn't know why you were crying. I… I thought I had blacked out. I figured out later that it'd been the alpha, that I'd been taken. I blamed myself for not being there, for not doing anything to protect…" He stopped and cried for a beat. "I never thought that it was… that I was… I did more harm by being there! I shouldn't have been there! I should have been far, far away! Far away…" His voice was so tortured, Hiccup had begun crying himself.

"Oh, Toothless," He said sadly, petting the fury's head. In Dragonese, he said, "I'm sorry, bud. I'm so sorry."

They cried together. Not for a long time, but for a time nonetheless. Then, Toothless said, "You shouldn't forgive me." and Hiccup knew it had to end.

"There is nothing to forgive, Toothless," He made sure his voice was authoritative, "Not a single thing. None of it was your fault. None of it… " his voice cracked for thinking of it, "None of it could've been different. My father would have seen it the same way. You're my best friend, bud. You would never hurt either of us. Never. That wasn't you, and I don't have anything to forgive. You're my best friend, and you always will be." He hugged Toothless' massive head, and then crawled up under to hug his neck. "Alright?" He asked. Toothless said nothing, but he brought his chin down to press his human into a dragon hug, and Hiccup understood. "Let's go home, bud."

When the two of them walked back in the house, downcast but calm, Valka stood from where she'd been tending a midnight fire. Hiccup paused by her and let Toothless continue on upstairs. Her eyes asked him the question.

"Just a nightmare," He told her quietly. Then, even quieter, "He hadn't remembered what… what Drago made him do." Hiccup couldn't meet her eyes. "Until now." Valka's mouth fell open, and her eyes followed where Toothless had gone. "He'll be okay," Hiccup said, putting a hand on her blanketed shoulder. "We all need to get some sleep."

Hiccup had already taken off his prosthetic and sat on his bed when he looked over and realized that Toothless had forgone his usual spot on his bed and was curled tightly in a ball, facing away from Hiccup. Sighing, Hiccup climbed off the bed and, without his foot, crawled over to Toothless' nest.

To the confusion of the sleepless fury, Hiccup went around to his front, pried back one of his wings, and crawled inside, up near Toothless' head. Then, he turned on his side and found a comfortable spot, using Toothless' leg as a pillow. The fury was watching him uncertainly. They used to sleep like this often, years ago, when Toothless was small and Hiccup was smaller, when Hiccup was aching from his leg and Toothless wasn't sure how to be a dragon among so many humans.

"It'll be okay, bud," Hiccup said, closing his eyes, "I promise it'll be okay."

Toothless stared at the human for a long time, his thoughts all his own. But, after a while, after glancing out the window and back again at Hiccup, Toothless slowly lowered his head and wrapped his wing around Hiccup like he had in the past. Quietly, not quite happily, the boy who was chief and the dragon who was alpha fell asleep.

As they slept, Berk's healing process inched quietly on.