The Wait

He doesn't even know why Hel - the goddess of death - took pity on him. Maybe she thought he would go on a rampage and kill someone accidentally. Maybe his heartbroken warbles, the dragon version of sobbing, softened her heart. Or maybe she found his cries of anguish, pure pain, annoying.

But she came up from the ground, cloaked in gloom, and made a deal with him. She couldn't take his life, as only mortals can, but said that she could allow his human's soul to transfer from body to body. Reincarnation.

He nods - anything to be with his boy again.

He knew how long dragons live, and he was only a hundred years old when his rider passed at a ripe old human age. Still young with many moons to see. His tailfin had grown back at the very end of his boy's life, so flying wouldn't be a problem.

All he had to do was find his human in each lifetime.

##

The first appearance is roughly sixty years later with a toddler born into the Roman Empire. The dragon had been keeping a lookout, of course, over the years. They had passed agonizingly slowly. How long did the reincarnation process take anyway?

Hel had told him he would recognize his boy's next body by two things: he would have the same green eyes, and one way or another, he would have an amputated left leg.

The toddler had the bright shade Hiccup had, and a birth deformity - coming too early - had left him crippled with his left leg being replaced by a stump. The dragon lurked closely to the household, joy filling him. He had found his boy, at last.

The Romans family that lived there were wary at him, but soon found that he wasn't a threat, and let him wander around their garden, even when they're children were around. Singultare was the toddler's name, and he instantly took a shine to Toothless.

The Night Fury wondered if the baby could remember all the times of their past lifetime together, and hoped so. Slowly, Singultare grew up into a young man, spending hours with the dragon, who learned that indeed although the boy didn't realize it, his dreams were memories of his past life.

Despite having no full memories, Singultare called him Edentulus, which as the pleased creature had found out, was the boy's native tongue for Toothless. Some things, it seemed would never change.

And then, as per tradition, Singultare was shoved into being in the army, and no matter how much the dragon whined and tried to show how he would be a valuable asset in battles, the Roman soldiers wouldn't let him come with the boy.

The letter arrived a few weeks later, when Singultare would have still been in training. There had been an ambush on the trainee camp. Singultare had died.

His family wept, but none mourned as much as the dragon that had loved him, in both lifetimes.

And the search began anew.

##

This time, it's only fifty years, and it throw him for a loop.

The green eyes are there. But he never expected for those eyes - so often he referred to Hiccup as his boy - to belong to a girl.

An Anglo-Saxon girl, brought up in the very country Viking tribes loved to invade, now being rebuilt from it's wasted ruins. She is small and short but with the same stubbornness Singultare and Hiccup had possessed, that stubbornness is the very reason she's wandering the woods outside of her home alone.

Toothless watched her carefully yards away from the sky, not wanting to startle her into running or screaming for her father to come. He could barely make out the pack of wolves scouring ahead for prey, and by the time he's on the ground he's too late.

They're on the little girl, but he fought them off. Her left leg is mangled. Her father came to help her, seeing the dragon fight off the last of the wolves. He allowed Toothless to come back with him, and is very curious why such a great black beast is so interested in his youngest daughter, whom Toothless learns has been named Alva.

Elf. Befitting for someone so small.

They give her a prosthetic, and Toothless helped her grieve. The little eight year old soon grew up though, and marriage was going to come young when she decided to fly away with him. She didn't want the responsibility; she wanted to be more than what her society expected of her as a woman.

She got sick one winter, only three years after she had flown away with him at fifteen. Toothless did his best to help, but she didn't make it to spring.

##

He searched for almost a hundred years before finding his boy - girl, as well now - reincarnation in a little village of the middle ages. He found him younger than before, only a baby, tossed out into the cold because of the disability of his left leg.

The dragon took the baby to a cave. Fed the baby, kept him warm, watched him grow. The little baby grew into a man, and Toothless was grateful. Already he had gotten more years than he had with either of the previous two. Maybe he would get as many years as he had with Hiccup in his first lifetime.

He named the man Hoquet - Hiccup in the fast-talked language the people around spoke. Hoquet loved to fly, just as the original Hiccup had. He possessed all of Hiccup's memories and they had many wonderful days together. And like Hiccup, he possessed an enormous amount of nobility, so when warring groups came to the village, he fought with all his fury on the back of his dragon.

Together they blasted enemies to bits. But even with the strength Hoquet had - enough to easily make a prosthetic for himself out of what was in the woods - he got shot by an arrow and fell.

Toothless let out a roar and flew after him, but didn't reach him in time.

But he was still grateful. Hoquet had been a fairly old man by the people's standards, and had had half of Hiccup's initial lifespan: roughly forty years, which was more than Toothless had shared with Alva the Anglo-Saxon or Singultare the Roman.

Now, as Toothless later learned as he began his search again, a Frenchman had been added to the list.

##

The Middle Ages is in full swing, but Hiccup, despite being raised in a brutish culture, had always loved to read and write and draw, and Toothless should have known to look at the town's local church only forty years later. Monks were the only ones who could read or write at that time.

The monk - green eyes and a wooden peg for a left leg - is scared out of his mind and stumbled backwards when he saw the beast for the first time. He hit a wall and couldn't back up anymore, and surely thought the Devil had come for him as the dragon approached.

But the fear soon faded as the dragon nuzzled him. He was kept a secret from the other monks, and Toothless was not found. Hiccup's hiding skills had improved in this lifetime.

The dragon had missed some of the lifetimes - most people died young. This was probably Hiccup's fifth or sixth lifetime, but Toothless only had one grey scale; there were still many more lifetimes to go.

Invaders, possibly descendants of Vikings, loved to come to the helpless monks and attack. Toothless saved them all, but when the other monks found out about his rider's treachery, they had him hanged. Rage over took the dragon and he almost killed all of them. Still, a few hadn't been so lucky.

##

He supposed waiting for another hundred years to find Hiccup again was a punishment for his actions. And he found his rider in the most peculiar person - an old man. He had almost missed a whole reincarnation of Hiccup.

The old man knows all of his past lives though, even his first life, and Toothless enjoyed hearing about the ones he missed. And the old man, who calls himself Johnson, can even tell where his soul will end up next.

"Wait a few years," said Johnson, with his metal leg and the light in his green eyes dimming. "Then fly across the ocean. I'll be in a new land, one with people who hunt bison and live in harmony with nature. They will worship you and treat you will."

The dragon waited until Johnson had passed before following his orders.

##

He spent the next three hundred years with the people Johnson had described. The flight was long and treacherous, but worth it. He was blessed, able to be there from the very start to the very end with six of Hiccup's reincarnations. The majority of his scales had finally turned grey, as had the hair of the reincarnation he was with right now.

The Chief of his small village, asked to speak with the dragon alone. "You must go back across the ocean, Toothless." It is a good thing the dragon grasped languages quickly, since many of the groups speak similar to each other. "Strange men have come, and they will harm you."

He stayed until the Chief died. He even stayed around, waiting to see if Hiccup's reincarnation would be born here. But nothing came but the strange dangerous men, and he went across the ocean.

Hiccup had never steered him wrong before.

##

Toothless felt his body slowing down. Getting up from a nap was harder, his joints hurt and he got tired from a flight more easily. His life was drawing to close; he could tell. And at this point, he was ready for it. Death would mean peace at last, and he could be with his Hiccup without having to search.

It had been almost a thousand years, but he could still picture that first face so clearly - freckly and narrow with a round nose and auburn hair. Even the boy's face at fourteen. Which, as he peered out of the forest, he saw staring back at him, grinning.

He blinked in surprise. The nose, the eyes, the face, the freckles, the hair. The boy looking at him joyfully was an exact replica of his boy at fourteen years old, and this one couldn't have been older than that. The prosthetic was there too, even the same model. Only the clothes were different - simple brown clothes that were rough and dirty.

"Toothless," breathed the boy. He rushed forwards with no fear and wrapped his thin arms around the dragon's thick neck, and Toothless found himself remembering the exact same thing happening at his first Snoggletog with the humans. "Hel made me like this. You still liked the first version of me best, didn't you?"

The shock faded and Toothless nuzzled and licked him - because this was Hiccup, completely Hiccup in every way.

"I've missed you too bud. You've been searching hard for me, haven't you? It's been almost another hundred years since I was those chiefs." The boy took a deep breath, patting the dragon's soft nose. "You're on your last year bud. Let's have one last flight?"

Toothless felt tired, but with renewed energy he shot into the dark night sky with the boy on his back. And the boy told him how he had grown up in an orphanage in a human settlement called London with all of the memories of his past lives, and since his dead parents hadn't given him a name, and he used to hiccup all the time, that's was what he had been named.

The Night Fury was gone by the next winter, as was the fourteen year old boy.

##

Going to the afterlife was a very peculiar thing, even for a dragon who had seen many strange things. White mist swirled around him, and he was on the shore of an island that looked very familiar, and he finally realized where he was: Berk.

And standing on the beach with him were all of Hiccup's reincarnations; all thirty-two of them, grinning at him with various smiles, and although he had loved each, he sought the crooked smiles of the first and last.

But before he could reach the first, all of the reincarnations turned to more mist, this time grey, and poured themselves into the original Hiccup, the first one he had loved.

Hiccup wasn't the old man he had been when he had died, but a young boy of fourteen. Hiccup stretched his hand out, facing downwards, and tears fell from his eyes when Toothless walked over and like over a thousand years ago, placed his nose in his hand.

It was a brief moment of bliss before Hiccup - still with his prosthetic - ran forwards to hug him. Toothless lifted a paw to hug him back, but realized something he hadn't for almost a thousand years; his left tail-fin was gone, and it's prosthetic was in place.

Hiccup got in the saddle, and his leg clicked in place. Toothless felt his own prosthetic move (neither would hurt either of them here, but he still enjoyed that it symbolized their bond) as they soared into the sky of Berk, the village bustling with activity.

Hiccup gave Toothless a pat on the head, saying, "Thanks bud." And they flew over their eternal paradise, finally together and they would never have to say goodbye again.

A/N: I've the idea of reincarnation for Hiccup for a while, and although I'm not entirely happy with this, I hope you enjoyed it. And here's some references for some of the names:

Singultare = Hiccup, Hiccough in Latin, which is what the Romans spoke
Alva = elf in Icelandic, Old Norse derived
Johnson = John was a popular name during that time period, probably around the 1300's - 1400's but before European people came to North America to set up settlements. And 'son' was added to most things.

Also, so there's no confusion: this is not meant to be historically accurate. I did a little research, but it was proving to be too much work, and I wanted to be able to play with as many semi-plausible timelines and eras as possible, so if something isn't completely accurate, that's why. I do hope I'm within earshot of some of the time periods though, as to avoid confusion for any of you readers.