Why We Fight

Premise: A marauding warband of Berserkers have captured Hiccup, but then they made the mistake of capturing Astrid, too. A look inside Astrid's mind as she stabs dumb bad guys with knives. Canon-verse

The Berserkers didn't bother with metal chains or cuffs for Astrid. No, they thought binding her hands with some rope and putting her behind some metal bars in a cave would be enough for "this little wench". That upset Astrid. It upset her a lot.

She could maybe understand their thought process, though. She was actually a bit slimmer and lighter than her raw strength would suggest, and even then, she sadly had to concede that some of the men of her age on Berk had her beat. It was unfair, really, for none of them trained as hard as she did.

Instead, the gods had gifted her with levels of speed and agility that left her opponents reeling in confusion. She also had excellent senses in general, night vision being quite a relevant one now. Oh, and no one save for Chief Stoick himself even came close to her in fighting skill, but that was mostly through her own hard work.

And this was why when a large Berserker guard entered her cell with a sick grin on his face, threatening her with one of her own knives, she was able to snap kick him twice—once in the groin, once in the head—before he could even really comprehend what was happening

But strength-wise, she was still a Viking from Berk, and that was why her second kick killed the man instantly, forcing his head back with a sickening snap.

One.

If the guard standing just outside the cell had any brains or respect for what Astrid just did, she would've run off screaming for back-up. But no, she thought she could handle the "little wench". Astrid's hands were free by the time she'd taken a step inside, and two steps later, the poor woman was choking on a well-thrown knife to the throat.

Two. Astrid took pride in her excellent throwing technique, but she was still quite miffed about being underestimated by her captors. She wasn't the one who got captured first. Hiccup just had to—

Shit, where was that idiot?

She smoothly slit the throat of a guard who'd apparently taken quite a liking to her second knife, among other personal posessions. Three, she counted as she strapped some of her gear back on her.

Perhaps she was being too hard on Hiccup. Four. Whoever planned the ambush clearly knew what they were doing: waiting for them to land and get off their dragons, dipping their arrows with dragon root to quickly incapacitate their dragons—five and six—ganging up on poor Hiccup and taking him hostage first because she obviously would've kicked all their asses if they didn't...okay, maybe one-on-forty was a bit too much, even for the mighty Astrid Hofferson.

There was no moon tonight, so she managed to sneak up on—well, more like walk up to—two Berserkers who were still in the process of lighting a torch and gutted the larger one right in the heart while holding a knife under the other's chin. Seven.

"My friend," she growled as the and the man—boy, really—reluctantly dropped his crossbow. He gulped slowly, trying to suppress his fear.

"Wh-who what?" He wasn't doing a very good job at it.

Astrid leaned in, letting her knife draw a bit of blood. "Tall, peg leg, annoying voice? Tell me where he is before I get bored."

"Oh, uh, in that...that hut over there, on the hill" he squeaked. "He's, uh, he's fine, we didn't hurt him too much, I mean, at all, we, uh..."

Astrid's eyes flicked to where he was pointing, and the boy misinterpreted it as a chance to turn the tables. A deadly mistake.

"Eight," she muttered as the boy's mouth stopped moving and his eyes lost focus. Just numbers, she reminded herself. But still, she regretted killing him, mostly because he probably knew where the dragons were too. If they'd taken even a single scale off Stormfly...

What do they even want with us? Astrid wondered with something a little heavier than annoyance as she prowled up the hill. She'd actually been willing to play as a weak, helpless captive for just a bit longer to learn what they wanted from Hiccup and her, but she saw her chance when she noticed most of the Berserkers had left for some other mission. And then that guard came in and, well, she wasn't that willing.

She was so engrossed with this question as she marched up the hill that it was only with the narrowest of margins that she managed to sidestep a Berserker swinging a large, double-headed axe at her from her right. He nicked her in the right arm, instead, and she rolled back on to her feet, putting just a bit of distance between her and the weapon.

"YOU KILLED THEM!" he roared. Wait, was that...

"That's my axe!" she shouted back.

"THEY'RE ALL DEAD." He sounded...quite broken up about it. "They're all fucking dead because of you, you bitch. My brothers..."

Astrid didn't care, really. Couldn't. No time. "Give me back my axe," she said, "and I might even let you live."

Well, he obliged, throwing it straight at her with deadly intent. She instinctively dodged it, and it lodged into a tree right behind her with a loud thunk. She drew both her knives just in time to deflect the large dagger that was suddenly in the man's meaty hands.

Judging by the power of his swings, he was definitely stronger, and was just fast and skilled enough to keep up, so she didn't want to get too close, especially if it resulted in grappling on the ground. She danced around him, deflecting and dodging his lunges, searching for an opening, until...ah, there it is. A subtle look of surprise crossed his face as he stepped on a tree root hidden by the soil, and that was all Astrid needed to kick his see to weave her way in, twisting the knife in her left hand into the flesh and muscle and bone of his right shoulder; she'd been aiming for a fatal blow to the vital point in his armpit, but it was good enough that he dropped his dagger.

At the same time, he caught her stomach with a left hook that sent her reeling to the ground, but she pulled him in with her, still ruthlessly twisting her knife as he howled in pain. Pressing her advantage, somehow getting in a few more savage slashes across his chest and legs as they rolled down the hill, she managed to place herself above this beast of a man and keep him pinned, giving the knife one more twist—he called her a "shit-eating halftroll" for that one—before using both hands to force her other knife towards his neck, her two arms gradually overpowering his admittedly very strong left one. She leaned in closer to better push down the blade and speed up the process. She saw tears; good, he was cracking.

He was screaming some semi-coherent words about revenge and whores and death, legs thrashing but unable to reach back far enough, but she wasn't really listening, instead worrying about Hiccup and the dragons. And then he was begging, pleading about...something, but she didn't stop there either.

"Tell me where the dragons are."

"No, I don't know, please."

"Sure you do."

"Stop...please sto–" But the knife went in anyway, robbing him of his ability to breathe. Nine. She didn't wait for him to die as she pulled out her knives from the body and her axe from the tree, and ran up the hill.

Astrid only saw two other people in the hut when she entered: a slightly blue-faced Hiccup—Astrid immediately noticed the metal cuffs around his hands and fumed—flopping his one and a half legs like a dead fish on the ground, and a bleeding Berserker she instantly knew to be lucky number ten, who was sitting on the ground, chin over Hiccup's head, arm wrapped around her boyfriend in a chokehold. Other than that, there was a table off to one side with a lamp and some parchment, a pile of furs for a bed, and shattered wooden fragments of a chair.

But by the time either of them saw her, the Berserker's head was already in the process of being split open by an axe. There was less resistance than she'd expected, and her heart skipped a terrifying beat as she stopped her axe just over Hiccup's head. Ten.

He looked up at her with an expression of pure terror. She froze as well, suddenly aware of the blood on her axe, her knives, her hands, her...well, everything.

"Um, hey Astrid," he finally said between uneven breaths. "You...you're looking good."

Astrid nodded absent-mindedly. She found a key on the table and helped free his hands from the cuffs.

"Not that I really enjoy seeing you chop people's heads in half or anything." Hiccup shuddered as he flicked brain bits off his hair. "Or be covered in blood. Or nearly kill me..."

Astrid found his metal leg tossed to one corner and handed it to him. "It's kind of your fault, you know? You sharpened my axe this morning without telling me, didn't you?"

"Maybe..." He gave a crooked smile, and Astrid had to fight her urge to kiss him and take him right then and there. Wall, table, furs, in that order. Later, when we're safe on Berk, she had to remind herself. The rush of battle did funny things to people's heads.

A sudden, terrifying realization crossed her mind. She angrily punched Hiccup the moment he got on his feet, and he doubled over with a loud "Owwww."

"What were you doing?" she asked accusingly. "Stop trying to get yourself killed! If I hadn't gotten here in time—"

"We heard fighting outside." He groaned. "I figured that it was you coming to save me. So I tried to help by keeping this guy here. I wanted to make sure you weren't outnumbered, a-and in my defense I did accomplish that, but...you know." He waved awkwardly to himself as he strapped his silly flaming sword device on to his belt. "Hands cuffed, missing a leg, toothpick arms...you can figure out the rest. Seriously, what are these guys made out of? I broke a chair over him, and it just makes him mad. I don't get how that's even...what?"

Astrid just shook her head. "You don't have to die for me Hiccup."

"Thank you for giving me your permission, milady, I really appreciate it." And there it was again, that dorky smile of his that melted her heart, that way his eyes fixed its gaze upon her and lit up in awe and joy and relief. It was then that Astrid remembered that she'd be willing to fight and slay ten or twenty or a thousand Berserkers for him; Hel, she'd declare a one-woman war on the entire world if it meant keeping her best friend safe and happy. And now she knew for sure that Hiccup would do the same for her.

But really, it'd be stupid for him to die so she could live, because if he even dared, she was going to hunt him down with an axe all the way to Valhalla. So just for good measure, and for giving her sass, she punched him again—in the same spot, too, to make sure he remembered. She'd make it up to him later anyway.

A/N: First story, so I tried to cover all the important bases: some slight, perhaps rather dark humor (at least, I hope it got a chuckle out of y'all), we got the violence I advertised, and of course there has to be Hiccstrid fluff to really reel people in.

I learned about the axillary artery under the armpit while researching stuff so I could come up with a sequence that very vaguely—maybe if you squint at the words hard enough—seems like a knife fight. Or a knife vs machete fight. And yes, the slow stab into the neck was ripped from that nasty scene from Saving Private Ryan.

This is generally how I imagine Astrid would be in an edgier/darker HTTYD. She'd be somewhat like what Kurtz from Apocalypse Now would consider an ideal soldier, someone who can switch from normal, loving, moral human being to cold-hearted killing machine the moment the people or things she holds dear are in trouble. Astrid threatening to chop your fingers off while waving her axe at you is scary, but I imagine Astrid simply staring at you with dead eyes and a wooden stake she'd just sharpened pointed at you would be straight-up horror movie slasher stuff. Doesn't matter if it's a guy's last day on the job or a girl who's about to get married or a generally good Samaritan who's struggling to keep his family from starving, if you're some underling who's blocking her on her quest to save Hiccup and company, and you don't get the fuck out of the way before she reaches you, she's going to crack open your skull with her bare hands and not shed a single tear of regret about it for the rest of her life because Hiccup is all she's thinking about when she does it.

Ah, Viking love.