The bakery was warm. Too warm for the layers of clothing and the winter fur wrapped around her shoulders. Sweat gathered under her arms and between her breasts and in the back of her knees. Her grip on the chair pushed back against the far wall was hard and unyielding, and her jaw was beginning to ache from how tightly she clenched it.
"Why did you give up?" Her voice was the coldest thing in the room. Her thumbnail scratched at a whorl in the wooden seat.
Hiccup didn't glance up, brushing his shirtsleeve against his forehead before returning to the dough on his table. His bangs were dark with sweat too, both sticking to his face and jutting out at odd angles. "It was overworked. If I'd baked it, it would've been too tough. Better to just start over with a new batch."
"Not the bread," she breathed. Her tongue slid over her upper lip and tasted salt. "Dragon training. Why did you quit?"
He froze. His shoulders stopped rolling, his hands going still in the pile of soft, pale dough. For a half second, it was just the crackle of the flames in the oven popping between them. Then he seemed to come back to himself. His forearms flexed as he began kneading again.
"I sucked at it," he answered flatly. "You were there. You saw."
"You didn't try," she retorted. She couldn't understand why that made her so angry.
"All I ever did was try," he muttered. This time his voice wasn't toneless. It was quiet and bitter. Then louder, he said, "I was useless. I got in the way."
She didn't lie to make him feel better. "You were fine. You were obnoxious and in the way and you spent more time chatting up Gobber than actually training." Finally releasing her hold on the chair, she threw her hands up at her sides. "And then one day you didn't show. You just… quit."
"I knew I wasn't going to be killing any dragons." Hiccup stepped away from the table to retrieve a pan from beneath the counter. He set it down on the table with a little more force than necessary and then began breaking the dough into little pieces. Dusting his hands with flour, he rolled the blobs into small spheres. He still wouldn't look at her.
"We knew that," she pressed. "But that never stopped you before. You ran around with your inventions and gadgets and swore that you were going to take down Nightmares just like your dad. What changed?"
The tendons in his neck flexed. She was touching it— that nerve that was so raw. How he'd hidden it from her for four years, she'd never understand. Had she just not been paying attention. Had anyone? How had he gotten this far without anyone questioning it?
"Show me the necklace," she whispered.
The ball of dough in his hands slipped out and fell to the floor. Hiccup didn't pick it up. He laid his hands flat on the work table and exhaled sharply, glaring out the window. "I told you. It's personal."
"I saw it once before," she reminded him. The heat of the memory was a separate warmth from the broil of the bakery. He finally looked at her, and that morning passed wordlessly between them.
That morning when they'd been the only two on the island awake. It was dark— the sun hadn't risen yet. When she'd gone to the bakery instead of finishing her workout, and when he'd pressed her back against the table he was working on now. His hands had rested so properly and so comfortably on her waist, but she'd scraped over his body with searching fingers. She'd pulled his shirt over his head and let it tangle around her wrists before it fell to the floor.
His lips were slow against hers, even though she tried with all her might to deepen the kiss. He was confused— obviously eager, but baffled by her behavior. In her efforts to rile him further, she dug her nails into his shoulders and pulled him close. That's when she felt it digging into her collarbone.
"I don't want to talk about it," he warned her lowly. She wondered when the chief's scrawny boy had turned into a lean and handsome young man. Someone who could summon authority in his voice.
"You did it, didn't you?" A niggling thought told her to back off, not to press against that exposed nerve, but she had to know. "All those years ago. The Night Fury."
His gaze turned to ice. His hands clenched into fists on the table top. Scowling, he slowly dropped his gaze down to the floor. "The bola launcher worked. It went down a little farther than Raven Point, but it went down."
Her gasp was drawn through her teeth. Somehow she'd known for a while now, but hearing him admit to it still shocked her in a way she didn't expect. Astrid sat forward in her chair.
"I found it tied up in the woods. It was already half dead, all I had to do was finish the job." Hiccup's head shook just slightly. "I was ready to do it. I was gonna— gonna cut out its heart. Take it back to my dad. He was gonna be so proud of me." He laughed short and bitterly. "So proud."
"What happened?" she dared to murmur.
"I couldn't." He sniffed and shrugged, wiping his face on his forearm. Flour smeared over his cheek and upper lip. "I couldn't do it. I cut it free and let it go."
"But…" Astrid stared at him, this man she'd known her whole life. And yet— somehow she'd never known him at all. "It never came back."
"It died anyways." Pushing away from the table, he picked the dropped dough off of the floor and forcefully tossed it onto the counter. His expression was hard as flint. "I ruined its tailfin. It got caught in that cove down by the stream and couldn't get out. It eventually starved."
Speechless, she watched him leave the kitchen and walk towards her. He reached beneath the collar of his shirt. Grasping his secret tight in his fist, he pulled the necklace over his head. Then he dropped it in her waiting hands.
The Night Fury scale shimmered just barely in the dim firelight. It was blacker than the sky had been in those moments before dawn when she'd kissed Hiccup like she needed him. It was light, surprisingly rough, and no bigger than her thumbprint. She was hesitant to touch it, like it was made of some precious metal.
"I went back a week or so later looking for my knife. I found scales. When I followed them to the cove, I saw its body." Hiccup swallowed, the noise rough and painful-sounding. "It took a few days to dig a hole deep enough to bury it, but I didn't want—"
He cut off then. His gaze flicked away from her, staring harshly somewhere over her head.
"You should've told someone," she told him, shaking her head. "I mean— a Night Fury. You actually took it down."
"I'm not exactly proud of it," he suddenly hissed, snatching the necklace back. Slipping the cord back over his head, he hid the scale beneath his shirt once more. "That dragon looked at me, and I… I saw…"
Astrid stood, folding her arms uncomfortably over her chest. "What? What did you see?"
Hiccup kept his gaze on the ground as he turned back to her. "I saw fear. And intelligence. A soul." His hands gestured vaguely in front of him, trying to grasp at something but just catching empty air. "Astrid, they're not just mindless beasts. They feel stuff, just like we do. And once I realized that, I couldn't…" He sighed, arms dropping to his sides. "I just couldn't anymore."
"Hiccup, they terrorize Berk." She gestured outside the bakery, to the homes that had been rebuilt thousands of times over. "They steal and burn and kill."
The chief's son returned to his work table. He went back to rolling dough into balls and fitting it in a bun pan. She watched his long deft fingers shape the pieces and tried to picture them wrapped around an axe or a sword.
"Sounds just like any Viking I've ever met," he muttered. And then she knew that the conversation was done, and he was done, and all the notions she'd had about him and his selfishness were done. She didn't know this boy who baked and took down Night Furies and hid his shame beneath his shirt collar. She didn't know Hiccup Haddock at all.