"You were wrong earlier, you know," Hiccup said.

Astrid turned to look at him, startled. She was sitting alone at the edge of the docks with her legs hanging over the water, and the wooden planks creaked as Hiccup bent down to join her.

"Hello to you, too," she said, her voice hoarse and bleary. "Wrong about what?"

It was two days after the battle on Berserker Island, and the gang was back at Berk—a much shorter trip than heading all the way back to the Edge—recovering. Nobody had been seriously wounded, thank Thor, but once the adrenaline wore off, it became painfully clear how hard the Riders had been pushing themselves. Week after week of skirmishes with Krogan's fliers had slowly worn the gang down, but the final battle left them totally exhausted.

The crash hit them hard, and after arriving early in the morning and swapping information with the council, everyone slept until well into the evening. There had been a feast in the Great Hall that night to celebrate the victory, but with the chief still bedridden and the Dragon Riders practically falling asleep into their mugs, it was one of the tamest parties Berk had ever seen. The guests of honour left early—all of them, even the twins—and slept until late the next day.

It was just getting dark now. The few hours Hiccup had been awake so far he'd spent sitting at his father's bedside, talking quietly to his dad. Stoick had been drifting in and out of consciousness, and was lucid enough to smile in the right places when Hiccup told him how their victory had gone down. He wasn't out of the woods yet—Gothi and Gobber confirmed that—but things were already looking a lot more encouraging. He was sleeping again now, and Hiccup had left Toothless and Skullcrusher both by his side to go for a walk.

Hiccup smiled and took Astrid's hand as they sat together by the water.

"That story you told me," he said. "About what life would've been like if I hadn't shot Toothless down."

Astrid raised her eyebrows. "Really? You came looking for me here, now, just to tell me you didn't like my imaginary alternate life for you?"

"How could I pass up a chance to finally win an argument against you?" Hiccup said, squeezing her hand gently.

"You're unbelievable," she replied, rolling her eyes, but she smiled. "So maybe I took a few creative liberties here and there. I'll admit that. But my point still stands."

"You took more than a few," Hiccup scoffed. "For one thing, I refuse to believe that you'd have actually ended up betrothed to Snotlout."

Astrid burst out laughing. "Is that what's bugging you? You're jealous of imaginary Snotlout marrying me in a made-up thought experiment?"

"There's absolutely no alternate universe where you'd be able to put up with him unfiltered for that long, let's be real here."

"But I left him for you at the end! I put that in!"

"I wasn't really sold on your whole sudden-change-of-heart thing, I'll be honest."

"Cut me some slack here! I didn't have time to work in a whole slow, romantic courtship or something. We had a war to fight!"

"Well, sure, but—"

"And that wasn't even the biggest leap I made," Astrid continued. "I didn't even get to how we'd actually end the war with the dragons. I totally skipped over the Red Death, which was kind of a big deal, if memory serves."

"Yeah, that's another thing! You remembered that one angry Whispering Death from four years ago, but the mountain-sized evil behemoth dragon literally exploding doesn't make the cut?"

Astrid threw her hands up in frustration. "Come on, I was trying to make a point, and I made it, didn't I? You try making up an inspirational story on the spot."

"Maybe I will," Hiccup said, grinning. He made a big show of stretching his arms out in front of him, cracking his knuckles in mock preparation.

"Oh, boy."

"Really, though—I think the problem with the story was that we started from the wrong place."

"How so?"

"Well, I've been thinking about it, and, well, shooting down Toothless isn't really the part that changed things for Berk."

Astrid looked at him in total confusion. "It's not?"

"No," Hiccup said. "I mean, it changed things for me. It changed everything for me."

"Right…"

"But it didn't change anything about the way the village saw things."

"Yes, it did, because you—"

Astrid tried to interject, but Hiccup kept talking.

"Not because I did anything," he said. "See, that's the biggest detail you left out of your story."

"What is?"

"You."

She raised an eyebrow. "Me?"

"Think about it," Hiccup said. "I could've shot Toothless down, found him in the woods, faked my way through dragon training up until the end, and left."

"Left?" She looked up at him, bewildered. "Why would you have left?"

"Why?" He met her gaze, his face suddenly serious. He hadn't considered that she really wouldn't know. "Astrid, that's what I was doing when you found me with Toothless at the cove that day."

Her eyes widened in surprise, with a hint of something else, something Hiccup couldn't quite identify.

"You were…about to leave? As in, leave Berk?"

"Did you really not know? I mean, this is…I thought this was kind of ancient history."

"Well, I guess I missed that one detail, what with the, uh, mountain-sized evil behemoth dragon, and all."

"Fair enough."

Astrid was quiet for a moment, and Hiccup could see everything she was thinking on her face as she put all the facts together.

"So you won dragon training over me," she said softly, "and you were going to just…take off? Did you even know where you were going to go?"

"Not really," Hiccup admitted. "I was fifteen. All I could really think about was getting as far away from the killing arena as possible, for as long as possible." He paused for a moment, then added, "I was planning on flying due south."

"South…" Astrid said softly. "So you never would've been caught up in the dragon stampede."

"Probably not," Hiccup agreed.

Astrid felt a chill run through her as she processed the idea. She shivered visibly. Thinking she was cold, Hiccup slung an arm around her waist and pulled her close to him.

"I had no idea," she said quietly. "When I found you there, I was…I was just angry. I wanted to win, and I wanted to know what you did to ruin it for me. That's all I was thinking about."

"Oh, I know," Hiccup said, smirking. "Pretty sure it's all my bruised ribs were thinking about for weeks afterward."

They were both remembering Astrid dropping her axe handle onto Hiccup's chest, and they both winced.

"Right," Astrid said. "That one was my bad."

"No, but that's the point," Hiccup said. "Astrid, if you hadn't shown up when you did—even if it was only to kick the living yakdung out of me for beating you—then none of this would have been possible."

"What? But I didn't—"

"Yes, you did," he said, firmly. "Listen…if we go back to that moment, and you're not there, everything changes.

"Toothless and I would have flown due south with everything we could carry. Maybe we would've survived just fine, found a deserted island, built some kind of proto-Dragon's Edge just the two of us, something like that. Or maybe, we would've flown too close to a neighbouring island, and we both would've been shot down by their defences. Maybe we would've gotten hurt, or sick, or eaten by a wild Changewing. Maybe I'd have died in some way more mundane way, because, well, I was a kid, and not exactly the most careful kid."

Astrid snorted. "Yeah, the old Hiccup wouldn't have lasted a week."

"I would so!"

"Oh yeah? Tell that to Mr. 'this is my new invention, I'm going to take it and jump off a huge cliff with no backup plan.'"

"Okay, you may have a point," Hiccup said. "But what I'm saying is…I would've left. I was ready to do it. It was the only plan I had, and you were the only thing that stopped me."

"Just me? What about…I mean, Berk was still your home, Hiccup. Your family, all your history, the throne—"

"I wasn't thinking about any of that," Hiccup replied. "It was totally impossible to picture any of that being compatible with, y'know, a life where I didn't kill dragons."

Astrid rested her head on his shoulder. "Of course," she said. "It's crazy how hard it is to remember that feeling, even though it's only been four years. There was no way we could even imagine the kind of lives we're living now."

Hiccup turned and planted a kiss on the top of her head. "No kidding."

She smiled. "But I still don't think that makes me the only thing that stopped you. It doesn't mean I can take credit for—"

"For Thor's sake, Astrid," he said, gently exasperated. "Yes, it does! Without you there to stop me, I leave. Without you there to almost turn me in, I never convince you we can trust dragons. Without you up there with me, we never find the nest."

"Well—"

"Without you egging me on, we don't go after Toothless. We don't train Stormfly and the other dragons. We don't go after the ships, and practically everyone gets killed by the Red Death, including our parents. The threat level from the dragons never goes down, and without so many of our warriors, Berk doesn't necessarily survive at all."

"Okay, that got a little dark."

"Maybe. But think about it!"

"I am, but—" Astrid lifted her head to look Hiccup in the eye again. "I don't buy that you needed me. I don't think you would've let anything like that happen. You're braver than that, Hiccup."

"No, I wasn't," Hiccup said, his voice firm. "That's what I'm trying to say. Without you with me, I wasn't brave enough to do this. I meant what I said back at the Edge, Astrid. None of this could've happened without you, and I don't just mean the logistics."

Astrid reddened, and she looked down at the water.

"When they had Toothless captured, and we were trying to decide what to do, I had nothing left to lose," Hiccup went on. "You even said so yourself."

"Not my best motivational speech then, either," Astrid said, grinning in spite of herself.

"Definitely not," Hiccup said. "But you were right. My dad literally disowned me, the village hated me, I was basically public enemy number one, and Toothless was gone."

"Right."

"But you, on the other hand—you had everything to lose! You had everyone's respect, you always had. If it hadn't been for Toothless, you'd have won at dragon training without breaking a sweat, at least. And forget getting betrothed to Snotlout—you'd probably be able to have your pick of the sons of all the other chiefs. You were everything Berk expected you to be."

Astrid blushed even further. She didn't know what to say.

"But you were the one who pushed me to do something," Hiccup continued. "I was so stuck, and you were right there the whole time, and you somehow knew exactly what to say to get me to react. You took this huge gamble on me, and on doing the right thing, Astrid, and if you still don't—"

She smothered the end of his sentence with a kiss, slow and hard and deliberate. After a long moment, Hiccup smiled against her lips as they broke apart—just barely—with their foreheads touching.

"Wow," Hiccup said simply, his eyes heavy-lidded, a little stunned by the kiss.

"I told you," Astrid said softly, "you were in the right place at the right time."

"Great, so we're agreed," he said, leaning in to kiss her again.