This is the first time I have written a story for anything other than Percy Jackson - exempting original works, of course. But I love How to Train Your Dragon as much if not more than I do Riordan's works, so I decided to give it a shot. I am dabbling in character analyses first, and if I get a full-fledged plot concept, I'll work with that.
Summary: Astrid didn't fall in love with Hiccup. She simply sauntered expectantly into it, like she did with everything else.
To Be Limitless
Astrid didn't fall in love with Hiccup.
Rather, she fell in love with the sky, with the sensation of flying - air stretching your skin taut over your bones, wild hair blown back out of your face, droplets of cloud vapor catching on your eyelids, gathering on your fingertips - but most of all, she fell in love with the loss of control.
Vikings are not known for their lackadaisical attitudes. They live in the harshest landscapes with bitter winters that dip into lethal subzero temperatures in a culture that thrives on warfare and conquest. There is a reason they command the seas and not the earth - the seas are something just tamable enough to make them feel accomplished without threatening their pride. On the rapids, they can stick a ship with a Viking flag and proclaim their divine right to have, to commandeer that which Ægir possessed. On the seas, they can harness the uncontrollable and channel it to their means.
You can catch water in a bottle. But what about air?
No. Vikings hated the skies for more than just fear of dragons - they hated the clouds because of their boundlessness, their possibility. Because Vikings slam heavy helmets (sometimes recycled breastplates, too) on their heads and trap in their imaginations, their creativity.
Hiccup never wears a helmet.
Hiccup never wears armor of any sort, actually, but that would be a consequence of his severe lack of common sense. The helmet isn't.
Hiccup is the only Viking - no, the only person - Astrid has ever met who creates. Not just hammers molten iron into shape and thrusts it in the arms of an awaiting Viking like his mentor Gobber. He imagines, reshapes, challenges the status quo. For a people who have lived in a blind rut their entire seven generations, that is a terrifying proposition.
Now, all of that is perfectly clear. Hiccup is a breath of fresh air, a step into the vast expanse of possibility. Someone to be admired . . . mostly.
But Astrid didn't always think that way. For a long, long time, she was just like every other Viking - tough, tasteless, impossibly stubborn. She had an itch for adventure, a craving for the thrill of battle and the rush of bloodshed. After all, everyone else did.
But Astrid wasn't sheep. She didn't conform. So she had to be the best of everyone else.
The day she learned what being a Viking meant was the day her mother strode through the door of her house at the naive age of three with an expansive smile on her face. "Your father isn't coming home," she told Astrid excitedly. "He died killing a Nightmare. Can you believe it? A Nightmare!"
Astrid didn't really care for honor at that point. She just knew Dad was lost to her forever and ever, and she cared about that. But eventually, she realized what she had to do: She had to be her dad.
She had to be tougher than her dad.
At five, she cut herself trying to practice with a knife. Her mother found her and started teaching her. By the time she was ten, she could heave a shield with purpose and swing an ax with . . . some purpose. By the time she was thirteen, she was the child prodigy of Berk. "The female Stoick," people praised.
At sixteen, the age she started Dragon Training, there was nothing in her way.
Except Hiccup.
Wherever she went, the loser was standing there. Messing up her shots, getting in her way, risking her life. Although Astrid wouldn't mind going down with a dragon, she had some serious issues with dying because some scrawny roadblock decided to trip her or get her ax caught in his shield.
"Is this a joke to you?" she fumed at him one day, having only just freed the shield from his arm in time to whack the Nadder away. "Our parents' war is about to become ours. Which side are you on?"
Astrid had expected him to get belligerent like every other Viking she'd met, raging that it was his off-day, and of course he was with the Vikings, his father was the chief. But instead he just laid there, a dumbfounded look on his face. Almost like . . . almost like he was asking himself the same question.
It was terrifying.
The next lesson, he was a completely different person. Well, not a different person. But he should have been snack food when he missed the Zippleback's fiery head. Instead, he coaxed the beast back into its cage, and then he just . . . left. "Oh, wait, I have something to do. Bye!"
He stole Astrid's thunder, and then he left.
No.
She comforted herself with the thought that it was a fluke. Maybe it was a retarded dragon. Maybe it just didn't like the smell of scrawny and incompetent.
But the next day, he did it again. And the day after that. And the day after that. And the next day. And the next. He took the program by storm, and eventually it got to the point when the other teens stopped trying. They all but threw down their weapons and let Hiccup the Horrendous handle it - when it used to be Astrid the Fearless.
She was furious.
And then, the last chance she had to claim the victory, she made it clear what he was going to do. Sit there and let her take the prize. And as she tumbled and leapt after the Gronckle, she knew the Nightmare was hers - just like her father.
But when she got there, the Gronckle was unconscious at Hiccup's feet, and everyone was cheering for him. The elder picked him. He got to fight the Nightmare.
She was done with playing games. It wasn't fair that Hiccup got to do it. She had worked her whole life for this opportunity, and he was just going to snatch it from her. He wasn't even worthy!
So she was going to discredit him. She was going to find out his secret and shout it to the whole village, and then she'd be the victor.
And when Hiccup saw her atop the rock, sharpening her ax, he was thoroughly flustered. But there was something about his behavior - he wasn't afraid of Astrid, he was afraid of what she could do. He was protecting something.
And then the black monster thundered toward her, and she tackled Hiccup to the ground on reflex. Getting him killed wouldn't earn her any brownie points with Stoick, that was for sure.
Until Hiccup surged to his feet and protected her.
"She's a friend!" he'd screamed, and Astrid couldn't have been more alarmed when the dragon listened to him. "Astrid, Toothless," he introduced.
And then she ran.
Of course, what happened after that was without compare.
She had ducked and leapt through the woods at the faster pace she had ever set, but it wasn't nearly enough to outrace a airborne dragon. When she saw Hiccup astride the sleek beast, she recognized it for what it was - a Night Fury. Hiccup had said the truth that day so many weeks ago, when he was almost killed by a Nightmare; he had downed the most untouchable of dragons - but, apparently, he hadn't killed it.
He picked her up, dragon's claws curling around her arm and lifting her into the air. And that was the first time in Astrid could remember being scared - really scared. She looked down at the ground in blind terror, screaming to be pick down, wailing for mercy. And when Hiccup dropped her on a tree and she had to cling to a branch so she didn't fall to her death, she was beyond terrified. It was either accept his hand or fall all that way, so she accepted his hand.
She would never regret it.
It was a very sticky situation, certainly; Hiccup had to kill a dragon for his final exam the next day, and they were the only two humans alive who knew the location of the dragon's nest - and what lurked inside it. But what were they to do? They were Vikings; they had to follow the strict rules implemented by the ages before them.
The skies are too dangerous, Astrid's mind warned. Stay to the land and the seas. Let the dragons be, or kill them. Those are the only two options.
But Hiccup wasn't so conformist. She begged him to be careful, newfound concern for him surging in her chest at the thought that whatever he was planning wouldn't work and he would die. "This has to end," he told her.
And then the gates opened with Stoick's proud declaration of: "Today, he becomes one of us!"
Hiccup strode forward through the cheering and took a knife from the rack disinterestedly. Astrid already knew he wasn't going to use; it was all for show, all to fool them until the real plan took shape. She watched from the gate fearfully, heart in her throat as the Nightmare prowled toward him and he dropped the knife. There was murmuring in the stands, but it was the moment when Hiccup took off that limiting helmet and said, "I'm not one of them."
It was the moment when Stoick realized he didn't know his son at all, the village realized they didn't know their champion at all, and Astrid realized she didn't hate him at all.
As a matter of fact, she liked him. She respected him. She envied his ingenuity, revered his ability to shed the shackles imposed on him by his unimaginative people. But it was more than that. It was stronger than that. There was an attachment between them, an unexplored potential that stood the highest chance of eventuating in something stronger than friendship. A bond transcending simple loyalty, linking them together by hearts, minds, and lives.
No, Astrid couldn't hate Hiccup. But she could love him.
At first, the Nightmare hesitated, and for a moment it looked like the two would reconcile, but then Stoick bellowed "Stop the fight" and everything fell apart. The Nightmare panicked and loosed a stream of fire. Hiccup ran, and Astrid screamed. He was going to die. He was going to die because he dared to be limitless.
And then Toothless came.
Like the savior he was, Toothless swooped in with a miraculous blast. He swooped into the Arena to protect Hiccup from the Nightmare, and faced with a Night Fury, it quickly backed away. But then everyone started coming in, meaning to subdue the exotic dragon, and Hiccup begged them to stop, to leave him alone, he was only protecting him. Don't hurt his friend.
Astrid caught up to Hiccup the very second Toothless did to Stoick, and she had seen such wild indecision in his eyes that her heart shattered just as his did. Let Toothless kill his father, his own flesh and blood, or give his friend the chance he needed to save the both of them.
Astrid knew, all too well, that Hiccup could have stayed quiet and let Stoick die right then. He could have hopped onto Toothless' back and flew away, far away, where Berk could no longer limit him. And a part of Astrid thought he should have. But he didn't; he screamed "No!" at the last second, and Toothless turned innocent, loving eyes to him just before he was overwhelmed and wrestled to the ground.
Hiccup had broken then, into little pieces as he fell to his knees, begging them to just stop. Astrid had held him back the whole time, afraid of what he would do if she let go.
And then they set sail. Stoick was taking Toothless to show him to the dragon's nest, where he would kill every reptile in his way. Little did he know he was leading those ships to slaughter.
Hiccup stood on the heights overlooking the dock, eyes sad and regretful. And it reoccurred to Astrid that she loved this boy - this wimpy, weak, unremarkable whelp - and she couldn't let him be so destroyed by this.
So when he said he should have just killed Toothless when he had the chance, she said, "You're right. Most of us would have. Why didn't you?"
It took a little longer to convince him, to coax out that bravery she had seen in the Arena and the clearing, but it was still there. It wasn't gone, not yet.
"I was the first Viking who wouldn't kill a dragon."
"First to ride one, though."
And when he looked back to her that time, Astrid could only smile. Because there it was; there was that characteristic stubbornness and determination that ran in the veins of every Viking alive.
She never fell in love with Hiccup, she reasoned as she flew toward that isle miles away. She accepted that she loved him, and she embraced it - but that didn't mean she had to show it. Not one bit.
(They both knew it, though. Especially after the fight with the Red Death. But that was a story for another time.)