Two Months of Peace. Part II

For those of you who read my Chronicles, it's back to Toothless and Hiccup! This one is a fairly calm, mostly character building one, but it's more significant than you would think! It's not too long... about eight pages worth. I'm extremely happy to be posting this and anticipate writing more. Sorry it took me a bit to get back to them, but hopefully it will be worth the wait. Feel free to post comments with thoughts or questions. I love hearing from my readers. It's really good to have this finalized, and hey, it's my third one with and illustration! Click the "read more" to read the Chronicle.

Dimension Splash Chronicles

Event: Two Months of Peace Part II

Pov: Toothless, The Doctor

Time: Year 10.15 of Hiccup and Link’s existence in the game

     Hiccup learned to go into his sleep cycles the hard way. This evening he had put it off, and before he knew what was happening, a massive wave of nausea had slammed into him. He had fallen out of his chair and lain gasping on the floor with Toothless desperately whining overtop of him. The nurses had been quick to respond, and they put Hiccup efficiently into a coma like sleep. It had been difficult to get the dragon off of him. Because of that, it was decided that Hiccup would be put in a room to sleep, alone. Toothless would be forced to wait in the hall, and as much as Link tried to protest, the doctors all insisted that Toothless’s meddling with the equipment could prove disastrous for Hiccup’s recovery. And so Toothless turned and sat sadly staring at Hiccup’s door. 

     He was in the general waiting room, along with several dozen other people. They, like him, were the friends and family of the ill, and the entire room was stiff and tense with longing for loved ones to recover. Link walked up to Toothless and tried to think of something to cheer the dragon up.

     “Do you wanna go outside with me? I’m going to go visit Skari. Why don’t you come visit Skari, it isn’t good for you to sit... we both know it isn’t good for you.” Link remembered the how pathetic Toothless had become when staring into Hiccup after the boy had been deleted. The dragon would never be the same. Toothless looked over at Link, shook his head in tightly as if he was physically shaking off the offer, and then stared back at Hiccup’s door. He wasn’t going to leave Hiccup even if he couldn’t quite get to him. Besides, a visit to Skari? Toothless thought back on their last conversation with annoyance...

     “The food they give us is awful.”

     “I think it is some sort of protein pack... and yes, I’ve never tasted much worse.”

     “Well, if you ever get too peckish, you could always snack on him again.”

     “Shut up.”

     “What? I mean, you did it before.”

     “Shut up.”

     “I guess if you don’t want to then I should get a try.”

     “Don’t you dare... shut up.”

     “Guilty, that’s what you feel. Guilty ‘cause you know you’d like to.”

     “Are you ever gonna stop?”

     “Nope. It’s too fun. You judge, I judge.”

     Toothless shook his head again. Nope, definitely not. Skari may have reformed, but he still had a biting tongue, and he liked to tease. Toothless had given him plenty of ammunition for that as well, and he didn’t like being reminded or teased about the incident in the labyrinth. I carried him. Toothless thought firmly as he furrowed his brow slightly and gave his nose a quick twitch. He then gave Link a stare that made it very, very clear that he wasn’t going to budge.

     “Fine” Link sighed, “have it your way. Just don’t get into trouble. I’ll be back in a bit.”

     Toothless watched as Link left the room, then he shifted his back legs a little and laid his stomach down more comfortably on the cool, smooth floor. He fidgeted his front arms around trying to get them as cozy as possible and then laid his head down on them with a satisfied hum. He locked his eyes on the door in front of him. Hiccup was in there, and Toothless almost felt sure he could hear him breathing, but as he craned his ears out to listen, the annoying buzz of sounds from the people in the room drowned Hiccup, or at least what Toothless thought was Hiccup, completely out. He growled a little at this, slightly baring his teeth and giving the nearest noisy person a mean sideways look. The fellow, an odd humanlike thing but with green skin, stopped babbling and moved away. Toothless watched him and then scanned the rest of the room, his eyes moving slowly back and forth over the many odd forms. It was a big room, and there were many doors leading to many patients in the sleep cycles, and near over half of those doors where people. Or... at least some of them looked like people. Toothless looked with a small, keen curiosity at the fishlike man in front of him. Was that a jar on the front of his face? Still, the dragon breathed out and looked to a new individual, he had seen stranger.

     It didn’t take long for Toothless to catch on, he kept on nearly seeing it, right at the corner of his eye. These people noticed him. All this diverse crowd with all their differences, they seemed fine with one another, but he was an oddity to them. More than that, Toothless felt sure he made them uncomfortable, even afraid. He raised his brows and flexed his wing shoulders a little. That wasn’t so unusual really, he had grown very accustomed to people being uncomfortable around him. He hardly minded, it was only when Hiccup felt it that Toothless became bothered. Back in the Gemnodes’ world there were entire nations who were terrified of him. Small Roman children would cry if shown an image of him, and grown Imperial Stormtroopers would feel a tremor of fear at even the mentioning of his name. He was a legend, but not in the way he would have liked to have been. Once he and Hiccup were famous for the creation of peace, now he was known as the bringer of death once again. He had been that before, at least until he met Hiccup, but now he was that again. It couldn’t be helped, and he blinked his eyes quickly as he tried to stop thinking about such things. He was just misunderstood, even by these strangers, but so long as they did not intend to harm Hiccup, he would do them no harm. He looked up and tried to force a hum to make himself appear more friendly, but it came out sounding choked and didn’t really improve the room’s overall opinion of him. He snorted and pressed his snout back into his arms.

     Toothless breathed in and out deep and slow. He twitched his ears around and listened as one pair of people gabbed loudly to one another nearby. He let a moan slip quietly up his throat and shut his eyes. Then there was a different sound, very close to him, very strange, and so unexpected that it startled him. It was a high pitched, curious little oohing sound. Toothless’s eyes shot open and he raised his head quickly off the floor and twisted his neck around to see what had made the noise. No one in the room had previously gotten anywhere near him before, but now, down by his rising and falling side, was a strange little creature. Toothless’s eyes widened and his ears perked as the small thing made another cooing sound. It was very pale, pudgy, and square with beady black eyes and stumpy legs and arms. It looked up into Toothless’s green eyes and smiled, squeaking again and walking closer. Toothless scooted away from it, but it reached out its tiny arms and continued to walk towards him. The dragon looked around, wondering where this strange creature belonged and whether or not he should mess with it, but then it cooed again, this time a higher, happier sounding pitch, and Toothless couldn’t help but focus on it. His pupils dilated, and his curiosity kicked in. What was this thing? The stumpy creature thing waddled up to Toothless’s side and put both hands forward, pressing them against the dragon’s scales. Toothless slowly twisted his neck so as to get his head down near the visitor. He sniffed it, snuffling quietly. His warm breath puffed over the pale skin of this new little curiosity, and the adipose, for that is what it was called, made a giggling noise. The sound was human enough for Toothless to recognize, and he liked it. It had been a long time since something so small and helpless had been completely unafraid.

     Toothless warbled at his guest, and the adipose stepped back and stared with childlike wonder into the dragon’s face. It oohed again and slowly lifted its squishy little hand up beside its head. The adipose waved, and Toothless hummed happily. He’d done this before. He and Stitch had always found it a tricky, yet very fun, mannerism to copy. Toothless raised his claw up, and with some difficulty flexed it open and shut. It didn’t look much like a wave at all, even Toothless’s gummy smile would have been a more recognizable gesture, but the adipose liked it. It jumped a little and then ran back and forth, back and forth in giddy excitement in front of Toothless. Toothless’s eyes followed it until the adipose lost its footing and tumbled over backwards with a little splat. It laid on its back, reaching its arms up in a pathetic manner as it tried to stand back up. It flailed around and whined. Toothless moved his brows down with a bit of snark, but he he didn’t like to see his new found friend stuck. The dragon looked around, just to be sure, and then he retracted his teeth and gently gummed the adipose back onto its feet. Toothless smacked loudly after doing so, the thing tasted disgustingly close to human fat. Just as Toothless was getting rid of the flavor, he heard a little whoop and looked down to see that the adipose had fallen again. Toothless drew his lips tight in displeasure. He gummed it back to its feet, and then watched as it stood oohing. Just as Toothless blinked, he heard it again, that little splat of the creature’s squishy back hitting the floor. Toothless twisted his head sideways, picked the adipose up firmly in the crook of his mouth, and then placed it firmly on its feet. Toothless stared at the adipose as it stood there discombobulated and slick from drool. Toothless didn’t notice it, but that is why the creature kept slipping. Its fatty body offered very little friction when wet and on this smooth floor, so every time Toothless tried to help, the creature just got wetter. The cycle continued. Before long the adipose decided it was a game and was laughing sillily, but Toothless was flustered that he couldn’t get the thing to stand upright. 

     Just as Toothless picked the adipose up in his mouth and was using his tongue to twist him as straight as possible before putting him down, a woman screamed. Toothless’s head bolted upright to see the two people who had been chatting so loudly nearby pointing at him in panic. It was a man and a woman, though they looked too pink to be human, and the woman was shrieking at him. The man opened up a panel on the wall and slammed his hand onto a large teal colored button. Sirens blared and everyone in the room rushed as far as they could from Toothless. Toothless spat the adipose out gently by his own front legs. He had jumped to his feet, and now he curled protectively around the little friend he had just made. The woman continued to scream, high and obnoxious and erratic. What was wrong with her? The adipose had begun to cry from the sharp noise of the sirens, and just as the noise of screams and sirens and crying and growls reached its peak, two large, deadly looking turrets dropped from the ceiling. They clicked into gear and aimed themselves directly at Toothless. He snarled. What on earth had gone wrong so quickly? Figures entered the room and forced everyone to rapidly evacuate, and then they marched quickly in Toothless’s direction. He eyed back and forth over all of them, his teeth bared and his lip curled in a snarl that very clearly told them to back off. These people where wearing full body suits with faces masked by tinted glass. They had long prods in their hands with a sharp needle fixed to the ends. Toothless spread his forearms apart and crouched down low in a defensive position. He could feel his chest getting hot, his throat tightening, his mouth getting dry. Who were these people? If they meant to do him harm, what would they do to Hiccup sleeping in the other room? At that thought Toothless let out a hot, warning roar. This was going downhill very fast, and as the dragon saw that he was surrounded, he prepared himself to fight. The figures moved in, readied their weapons to strike, and just as Toothless was about to throw himself into battle, a familiar voice shouted over the sirens and muffled commands of Toothless’s enemies.

     “STOP!” 

     It was the Doctor. He rushed into the room and stepped between the troops and Toothless. “Stop, stop, stop! Just trust me, and stop.” He pulled out his sonic screwdriver and pointed it towards the ceiling, making the turrets suddenly droop and the shrieking sirens stop. 

     “But sir, he was trying to eat a child.” One of the figures lifted its visor and said.

     The Doctor looked at Toothless whose gaze was still darting around warily. “No he wasn’t! If he’d have wanted to eat that dear little adipose he would have sliced it to bits ages ago. He’s got teeth!” The troop looked at the Doctor with concern.

     “Well we have to get it away from him all the same.”

     “Then let’s ask him, not rush at him with a bunch of tranquilizing spears and point guns at him. You leave the room, I’ll get the adipose back to its parents. Go on.” The Doctor tossed his head towards the door and turned to Toothless.

      Toothless snorted as the troops marched out, but he caught a glimpse of the woman standing outside of the room, and she was crying profusely. Toothless suddenly wondered if he had done something wrong, and it made his heart hurt. The Doctor walked up to him very briskly, but Toothless did not tense. The man leaned down and looked him in the eye. “Hey, it’s alright. I’m sorry about all that, you’ve not done anything wrong.” The Doctor’s voice was quiet and soft. He pulled his tongue up behind his teeth and spoke even more quietly. “That little guy you’ve got is someone’s baby. They thought you were hurting him, and they want him back. Can I seen him?” The Doctor put his hand out a little. The adipose was cowering and clutching Toothless’s leg. Toothless moved his body up and let the Doctor hold his hand towards the trembling form underneath, and after a while it let go and walked silently into the Doctors hands. “There you go. Let’s go find mum.” The Doctor stood, but then he looked into Toothless’s eyes. The dragon was sad, pathetically sad considering how trivial this meeting had been, and his large eyes slowly followed the adipose. “Wait here, I’m going to come back for you. Do you understand, Toothless?” The dragon didn’t respond, just sat there staring, and in time the Doctor turned and walked out of the door.

     Toothless sighed and shook himself. He paced over closer to Hiccup’s door, turned, and sat down in front of it. He didn’t fully understand what had happened, but he needed to keep Hiccup safe, and those people could come back. He looked up at the drooping ceiling turrets and growled. If he didn’t think he might get in trouble for it he would have blasted them both into molten slag. Suddenly this whole facility that had seemed very safe felt hostile to him, and he didn’t like it. His pupils contracted as he listened to people arguing loudly outside the door. He could feel his spine and wings tensing, and suddenly he noticed that it stung badly. He smarted and winced, his lip pulling up in a pained whine as he twisted his neck sharply to the side. His back was still in that brace, and he had moved a lot more just now than he had since receiving the injury. The pain eventually subsided, and he moaned sadly. He missed being well, missed flying with Hiccup joyfully whooping on his back. He’d seen the outside of this world, and it was a beautiful, sun-lit landscape. His heart longed after those open skies, any skies, just to be able to rocket through them and feel the vertigo pulsing through his senses. He felt caged, almost dead, and then his dear boy was much the same... all hooked up to that horrible equipment. Toothless turned his head and looked sadly at the door. He wished he could get into the room. He could blow the door down... he thought about it for a second, but then he felt sure that that would cause chaos. He breathed out through his slightly opened mouth and turned away. Then his stomach twisted in a growl. He glanced down at his middle, and then looked up starring off in deadpan annoyance. He hadn’t eaten his protein packs, he was sick of them, but now he was running on empty.

     The door swished open, and Toothless whipped his head over to see who was coming in. It was the Doctor dragging a very large wooden chest behind him. It was old and dirty looking, and it left long smudge marks on the perfect white floor. He pulled it up within several feet of Toothless letting out a loud “Ah!” as he dropped it to the floor. “There we go. I brought you something. Don’t worry about what happened earlier, I’ve handled it... everything is going to be be fine.” He looked into Toothless’s eyes and nodded slightly, more to himself than to Toothless. Toothless was staring him in the face, but the dragon’s sniffing nose was beginning to wander elsewhere. The Doctor smiled and opened the chest. He wrinkled his nose a little as a plume of fish smell emerged from the box. The Doctor may not of been overly keen of the stench, but it was heavenly to Toothless whose eyes fixated on the open chest. It was chock full of cod and other fish. Toothless got to his feat, his tongue moving in and out of his lips with a smack. He eyed the Doctor, who gave him a reassuring nod. That was all Toothless needed. He buried his head into the fish and began loudly eating. His teeth sliced in and out of the revolting pile of meat, and the noise was gross to say the least. As Toothless’s head worked its way deeper and deeper into the chest, the Doctor sat himself down next to him. He looked at the dragon and patted him gently on the side of the neck. Toothless removed his head briefly to give the Doctor a hum and reveal a hilariously overstuffed mouth. Four fish at a time was a little much for Toothless, and their tails stuck out at odd angles. 

     “Whew, you’ve got an appetite!” The Doctor said raising his brows. Toothless awkwardly tried to swallow his mouthful, but wound up spending a lot of effort trying to get the fish to go in the right way round and one at a time. The Doctor chuckled when Toothless finally managed it and then stuck his head briskly back into the box. This was so much better than protein packs. The fish didn’t taste quite like the ones from Berk, but they were close enough, and the salty-sweetness was mind-numbingly nice for Toothless after almost a month of sticky, chalky protein. The Doctor leaned to try and look into the box, but Toothless’s head was taking up most of the view. “Are you gonna...” Toothless retracted his head, flipping the last fish back into his jaws. “...eat it all?” Toothless swallowed and thrummed in satisfaction. He then spent the next good part of two minutes licking his lips and nosing around the chest. When he was absolutely sure he’d gotten every bit of the fish flavor he plopped down to the floor and warbled at the Doctor. He could feel that he was going to like this fellow. 

     “Wow.... glad I got more than one chest. You’re quite the big eater, must have a fast metabolism.” The Doctor looked Toothless over as if quickly studying his anatomy. “Well... glad you liked it.” The Doctor widened his eyes and smiled. “I actually got them from vikings, so I figured they would be close to what you’re used to. Funny thing is... I actually saved the fishing ship from a sea-serpent. Although it wasn’t a real sea serpent, it was an aquareptilian squamatoid.” The doctor leaned back and breathed out. He looked at Toothless, and was surprised to see that the dragon looked very much like he was listening. Indeed Toothless was very keenly taking the Doctor in. He couldn’t understand much of his speech, but he grasped the cadence, felt the emotions, but there was something more. This Doctor, he was no ordinary man, and Toothless’s senses, both physical and emotional, were beginning to scratch the surface of this amazingly kind stranger.

     At first Toothless thought he was imagining it, when he had first met the Doctor he had been in crowed rooms buzzing with noise, but now he was absolutely sure. The Doctor, his chest was making a funny noise. It was a heart beat, Toothless could feel it pumping in his focused ears plain as day, but the heart beat was so different. One-two-three-four. One-two-three-four. Not the calm or flitting pump-pump of Hiccup that Toothless was so in synch with. This heart was always pumping, always throbbing hard in a feeling of power and action. It was fascinating. The dragon had seen many strange things, but they always looked extraordinary on the outside. Cyborgs, Daleks, Orcs, Droid Ekas, Basilisks, he’d seen them all, and they all used to be fascinating, but this man, this Doctor, he was different. He looked so small and ordinary, yet beating in his chest and glinting in his eye was something different, perhaps something more powerful than Toothless had ever seen before. He felt... but then he wasn’t sure... for some reason he felt he could relate to this man. There was some hidden emotion, buried deep, but an emotion that Toothless himself had buried. Toothless’s staring was now being met by an equally calculating gaze of the Time Lord, and the Doctor was feeling almost the exact same thing. Their eyes were locked, but they felt they could see straight through them, Toothless into those deep brown eyes, and the Doctor into the wells of gorgeous green. The Doctor finally breathed, vocalizing what Toothless could only vaguely grasp. 

     “You’re the last one, aren’t you?”

     The Doctor’s voice was sad and small, almost just a whisper. “At least you are convinced you are.” Toothless sat breathing, he wasn’t sure of the question, but it felt like a knife wound, an accusation, a heartbreak. “You watched the others die, didn’t you?” Toothless’s pupils contracted tight, and his chest twisted in pain. The Doctor’s words, though vague in his mind, shot home a clear meaning. The dragon remembered the battle, that fateful day when his father and so many others had been snatched from him. His entire family, his entire world, destroyed by the blood feud between his family and Skari’s. Just as Toothless was reeling from the memory, lashing out in self defense against his own mind, the Doctor spoke again. “I did too. I lost everyone as well, and I know how it feels, and I think you feel it too.” The Doctor sighed and looked down at the dragon’s paws. “Makes you want to run, to forget everything, but then it never really leaves you.” The Doctor’s eyes were distant. “You fly away, you explore, you even make friends and take them with you...” The Doctor’s voice grew even quieter more broken, and Toothless unconsciously leaned in to hear his words. “Toothless, don’t lose him... just don’t.” The Doctor’s lip tightened, and Toothless could feel loss eating away at the man’s hearts. The dragon had never felt such a draw to anyone this quickly except for Hiccup. He put his head forward, and nudged the Doctor gently on the shoulder, unintentionally getting some fish grease on his suit. The dragon hummed, hard and firm, and the Doctor knew what it was, it was a promise. His countenance changed from distant and sad to peachily happy. The Doctor smiled broadly with a gleam of delight in his eye. “Of course you’ll keep him safe, of course you will.” 

     The Doctor rubbed Toothless briskly on the side, and the dragon scooted himself around so as to lay his stomach on the floor. His large meal was starting to catch up with him, and that contented fullness made him want to sleep. “Right, thank you.” The Doctor rubbed the smear off of his shoulder with a smirk. “You get some rest, I’ll keep an eye on you. Hiccup’ll be awake in just a few hours, so I imagine you can nap that off.”

     Toothless rolled happily to his side and breathed out deep. He’d forgotten how much being hungry or tense would keep him awake. Finally he could truly rest. He felt confident that this Doctor, this strangely relatable creature, would keep him and Hiccup safe. Toothless closed his eyes as the Doctor left the room, and ever so faintly he could hear the calm breathing of Hiccup in the other room. That calm, quiet, beautiful breathing. Toothless let his breaths sync with those of his boy, and in just a few moments he was lost in the peaceful world of sleep.