YOU CAN ONLY TRY.

      but there’s nothing to be done. the poor thing’s almost gnawed her entire foreleg off where the iron teeth sink past the scales into the flesh of her thigh. he thinks about – prosthetics, like his and toothless’ – sees the back leg, too, and knows it’s a squall dream. he thinks about – rods in the wings, set in there like fake bones, but they aren’t really wings anymore, are they? they’re crumpled pieces of fabric. there’s no tension to them – they’re torn leather, flapping to the whim of the breeze.

     he swallows again.

     and again.

     all that might have been salvageable. all that might have been saved. she might not fly again, but she’d have a happy – an alive home on berk – but the cloyingly sweet stench in the air and the white, paste-like pus that seeps from her wounds and the way her breaths come in quiet shallow pants and there’s a feverlike haze to her eyes that he doesn’t like, and he knows from the glaze that her second eyelid is milky yellow, not white, against her eyes which is not how any dragon should look but either way she’s been here a long while – 

     and he’s stalling, he knows – any viking would have done this by now ! and every moment that he hesitates is another keening cry from her, another moment suspended in a pain that he can’t even believe, an agony that wasn’t his fault to begin with but now is because of how long they’ve stood here – how long his mind’s been scrambling for ways to fix this – to heal this – but he can’t – he doesn’t know how – there isn’t any way – – –

     the knife slips from his fingers. lands with a thud on the cold soft dirt.

     (as if he could have done it with that.)

     he takes a step back.

      his hands float, shaking, and tangle into knots in his hair. for a brief second he looks towards his dragon. toothless, he whispers, except it’s not something he whispers and more something he breathes out, half there and half not because his voice can’t, won’t do anything, and his eyes are wide and his face pale and his body can’t, won’t do anything, and even after all this time he still can’t kill a dragon – – –

     toothless can. he turns with a warble and takes a step forward. a bright, piercing sound fills the air. charges.

     the dragon – sensing her time – breathes out something – a sigh – and knocks her head against the rock it rests over – and it reminds him so much of that day in the forest that something in him splits clean in two and his chest collapses, the air whooshed out – but he doesn’t look away. he can’t look away.

      in this, he has to watch.