Astrid had woken up just before the sun as always, and had set off for a leisurely hike. At least it had started as a leisurely hike. Her anger from yesterday had not subsided as she had hoped it would. She had brought her faithful ax as protection, but found herself going out of her way to travel overgrown paths.

She swung her ax before her, slicing at the weeds and pretending each overgrown stalk was Hiccup. A sliced stalk for every time he ignored her. There weren't enough weeds on the island to take out her anger in its fullness.

Astrid was coming to the crest of one of the cliffs, and looked up to see the silhouette of a person sitting on a log at its edge. For a moment Astrid was swept away with the trill of an upcoming fight. Maybe she had gotten lucky and some other viking had invaded her old island, and she would have to fight them off!

She got close enough to identify the viking and her excitement crumbled like a sandcastle at high tide. It was just Tuffnut. She had forgotten that he had moved back to the Edge after his twin had married Eret. With a frustrated sigh she dragged herself up the last bit of the incline and plopped down on the log next to him, dropping her ax so that the handle landed squarely on his feet.

He made no move to acknowledge either her, or the ax handle that had landed on his toes with a solid thump. Astrid heaved a heavy and exasperated sigh, waiting for him to address her. Tuff took a sip from the mug he held, a slight wisp of steam rising from it. So, he wasn't dead. Just ignoring her. Just like Hiccup.

"GRRRAAAHH!" Astrid let out a furious scream.

Several moments passed while Astrid panted and Tuff did nothing. Without looking at her he finally said "Good morning Astrid." No inflection on his voice. She may as well have just given him a polite greeting. He took another sip of the hot liquid.

"I hate this! I hate everything and every one!" Astrid screamed, rising to her feet. "I just want someone, anyone to treat me like an actual person! To listen when I talk and notice whether I'm there or not!" Her words echoed off of the far cliffs opposite them.

"Alright." Tuff said in the same cool tone. When the reverberations of her shouting stopped. That was the final straw. Before she even realized it, Astrid was screaming out everything that she had been wanting to say for the past three years.

She screamed about Hiccup ignoring her, even mentioned the lackluster nights they spent together. She screamed about hating him becoming chief, how much his mother ticked her off, and exactly how much she hated cooking for someone that never complimented her food. She screamed things that would ordinarily make her blush if mentioned in any other context… but she didn't regret a single word.

She went on about almost everyone on the island of Berk and how she hated that everyone seemed to find themselves the most important person on the island. She even told him how, despite how much she loved Stormfly, she hated that almost every dragon on Berk seemed to be smarter than it. Toothless was like a scaled human, but her nadder just squawked and played fetch.

She wasn't sure when her screaming turned to crying. Maybe it was when she got into how much it hurt that Ruffnut had gotten married the year before and was expecting a baby soon, and she was still trying to get Hiccup to even consider furthering things. Its not like he had many other options on Berk.

Somewhere along the lines her crying turned to sobbing and finally the tears took over and closed her throat up, and she just curled in on herself and cried. "Have you gone blind as well as deaf, or is it just fun to ignore me." Astrid spat from her hiding place in her knees.

"I'm not ignoring you." Tuff said, so calmly it made Astrid want to scream again.

"Fine. If you're not ignoring me, then what did I say?" The words slipped out of her mouth before she could catch them. Thats what she always ended up saying to Hiccup when they were fighting. The thing that made it more painful was that he never actually knew because he had wandered off to some place in his head.

"That you want someone to love you." His voice was soft and smooth, calm as a breeze in mid-spring. Astrid snapped her head up to scream at him for saying something so horrible, but her words disappeared when her eyes met his for the first time.

His eyes were deep, thoughtful and more than anything they were sad. It was as though looking into those eyes sucked the air out of her lungs. As though she could drown in the sorrow those eyes held. It wasn't pity, or sympathy. Just endless sadness.

Astrid stuttered to recover herself. "W-well. Fine. If I just want someone to love me, then show me. Show me what thats supposed to look like. Because to Hiccup that looks like me doing all the work. To my parents it looks like me disappointing them by not giving them a grand-viking to swoon over. To the rest of the village it looks like trying to use me to get their demands to the chiefs ears without having to wait in line. So, show me."

Tuffnut turned away from her to take another sip of his drink. She waited expectantly for him to snap at her for being selfish, or yell at her. Anything. He took another sip and said "Alright."

That was all. Alright. She took a breath, ready to start yelling at him again. But she hadn't decided yet what to say.

"Come to my hut this evening." He said softly. Then he seemed to notice that his cup had run out of hot liquid to offer, and moved to stand up. "Fine! But if you play some kind of Loki prank on me, I'll make sure you regret it!" Astrid snapped. She had intended for it to be a scathing retort, but when he looked at her with those deep sad eyes and a soft smile that didn't quite reach them she wished she could take her words back.