AUTHOR'S NOTE: I can't believe I managed to write and edit this entire chapter in only a day. New record for me.

Hiccup ran. He just ran and ran and ran, down and through abandoned suburban streets, dark sleeping houses, and street light after flickering street light. Cold air rushed across his skin. He didn't want to think about anything; he ran until he lost his breath and had to stop.

He stopped, gasping and clutching at his side. His lungs burned. Adrenaline had left him trembling so hard it felt like he was going to shake apart at the seams, and his spent muscles ached.

He pulled himself back together slowly. Hands, limbs, heaving chest. A breeze picked up and dragged a cloud of dead leaves down the street with rattling, whispery sounds toward Hiccup. One stuck itself to his face, and when he pulled it away it was spattered with drops of red.

The breeze became a raging wind. From somewhere in the distance came a hollow, wailing echo like wind in caves, the night growing wild, the tops of trees rushing, loose leaves and pine needles skittering across concrete and floating through the air. A blast like a hunting horn pierced the steady whooosh of it, and—

—and then Hiccup realized: behind the wailing of the wind was a cacophony of real howls and wails, and more sounds, baying and laughing and screeching.

No.

He'd read about the wild hunt, known that it existed, at least in theory. But now it was here. Down the street came a hoard of the Aos Sí, shadows leaping and shrieking at its feet like water. The folk riding creatures like horses but not, mounts made of darkness with glowing empty yellow eyes and swirling ethereal manes and tails constantly dissolving into the atmosphere. And behind the riders, a stream of the folk on foot, running along with their own hair flying.

Before he had a chance to move they were on him and he was lost among them. They reached out for him. He was shoved and grabbed at and a confusing tumult of voices spilled over his ears.

"Poor lost soul!"

"Let's take him with us."

"Oooooh, what a pretty human pet!"

His heart raced. He was passed from faery to faery, hands grabbing at his arms and fingers brushing through his hair. The air crackled with excitement that was both electric and alarming, and he could so easily get lost in it again, but.

No, please, no.

Not again.

It was chaos. Dark and bitter and dangerous chaos.

A creature with bird claws for hands snatches at him but he dipped out of reach. He didn't want to get lost in this, and he clung to the memory of who he was, how he'd got here. The hunt was fear, horror, rushing adrenaline, the writhing mass of bodies around him, the howling and screeching, the wildness of it. He wanted to be anywhere else but here, do anything so they wouldn't take him. He had to remember who he was. Where he'd come from. It was so important.

His chest felt like it was being squeezed, something in him shrinking and winding itself up so tight he's going to die. Everything in him recoiled. His limbs froze up, his mouth clamped shut, his eyes looked frantically from one face to the next, trying to see everything at once, trying to avoid the grasping claws and hands.

"LEAVE ME ALONE!"

The words tore themselves from his mouth but were immediately swallowed up by the fray. No one could hear him. No one was listening.

One clutched at his shoulder, laughing. "He's been under the hill already!"

"Why not come with us? You're already half there!"

A chorus of laughter bubbled up at those words. There were jeers and words like "lost boy" and "pet" and "changeling" thrown around. A pair of hands descended on him, deposited a crown of thorns onto his head, and pushed it down, scraping his scalp.

They were moving. Taking his hands, pulling him along with them. Chanting. Join the hunt, join the hunt, join the hunt. Words were jumbled and lost among the savage, joyful screeches.

"NO!" His feet flew across the ground but he couldn't see where he was being led. He tried to pull away only to be passed to fresh hands. He strained to see through them and caught a glimpse of a bright spot of light in the middle of the dark suburbia.

A gas station.

With one last effort, he wrenched himself free of their clutches and sprinted toward it.

"Where are you going?"

"They won't take you back now!"

Their disappointed catcalls followed him as he stumbled into the pool of fluorescent light, but they didn't follow. He staggered inside. The door shut behind him with the faint ting! of a bell. He couldn't hear them anymore. He could only hear faint classic rock and the mechanical hum of an slurpee machine.

Outside, the hunt circled the station, keeping their distance from the metal, but as the faeries quickly lost interest in him, most of them began to trickle away.

Get away get away get away…

The employee behind the counter didn't even glance up as Hiccup staggered through the shelves of prepackaged convenience food toward the back where the bathrooms were and shut himself inside. Finally he could breathe. He ripped of the crown of thorns and flung it away from him. It bounced off the wall and landed behind the toilet, and leaned against the door taking slow, even breaths until his heart rate slowed down and he could feel his hands again.

He was a mess. Somehow he'd lost a shoe, so one foot had nothing but a sock. Blood covered the lower half of his face, his neck, and his chest. He stared at himself in the cracker mirror over the sink. He looked…

…like his father: hollow-eyed and pale-skinned. But unlike his father, there was still color in him: clear green in his eyes, red splashed all over him. The bright lights washed him out and made his look as exhausted as he felt. A bruise was already blooming across one side of his face.

He splashed cold water on it, tried to scrub off all the blood he could with a flimsy paper towel, but some of it had already dried around his nose. He scraped his finger through his hair, retied his one shoe, and checked his pocket. His phone was still there, but the battery was almost dead at only 5%.

He shot a quick text to Astrid while he still could.

—please please please be awake right now

He slunk back out to press his face to the windows, but the folk were all gone now. He practically melted with relief. His limbs still felt shaky and he could almost hear Astrid's voice in his head telling him, it's low blood sugar. You should eat something.

Well, he was here anyway. Digging around in his other pockets produced a ten dollar bill, so he picked a package of donuts off a shelf and went to the counter.

"Hey." He dropped his food and phone on the counter. "Do you have a phone charger I can borrow for a minute? Mine's almost dead."

The cashier didn't look up from his magazine. Hiccup waited for a minute, but the cashier reached the end of his page and turned it over to continue reading.

"Uh. Excuse me?"

No reaction.

"Hey!" Feeling a wobbly spike of irritation, Hiccup waved his hand under the cashier's nose. When that produced no response, he reached over and yanked the magazine out of his hands and threw it.

With a terrified shriek, the cashier leapt to his feet, sending his stool clattering to the floor. He backed away, staring around with wide eyes. "Hello?" he called. "Is someone there?"

Hiccup stared back, feeling cold. "You…" he tried, "you…can't see me?" Panic threatened to flood him again. For a second he felt woozy and he just wanted to fold into himself. But he was stuck at a gas station in the middle of sleepy suburbia with no way out except his own two feet, and Astrid wasn't answering his texts, so he couldn't. He couldn't stop here.

Astrid, was the only thought in his tired brain. I need to get to Astrid.

He left the cashier quivering in the corner with a packet of salt clutched in his hands like a weapon, put the bill on the counter, and pocketed the donuts and a portable cell phone battery. It was a long walk to Astrid's. He tried to eat the donuts but one left his stomach churning so he shoved the rest down into his jacket pocket.

It took him over an hour — an hour of jumping at every noise and nearly making wrong turns in the dark — to reach Astrid's neighborhood. He saw only two folk along the way; the first took one look at him and flew away laughing, and the second was so busy digging through a dumpster that it didn't even spare him a second look. Hiccup was grateful that they left him alone. He didn't know what he would do if anything else happened to him tonight.

Hiccup snuck in the back gate, fetched the spare key from under a potted palm tree, and let himself in the side door to sneak up to Astrid's room. Astrid was a terrible night owl who stayed up way too late constantly, but even she was already asleep when he crept in.

Toothless was there, too, lying on the floor by Astrid's bed with his paws tucked underneath him. As Hiccup came in he jumped up and trotted to greet him with loud happy purring, rubbing all over Hiccup's legs until Hiccup finally picked him up and let Toothless rub all over his face. Hiccup scratched him behind the ears.

"Toothless," he said wearily, "what are you doing here?"

Toothless just latched onto Hiccup's neck with his paws and purred louder. Hiccup shifted him to one arm so he could wake up Astrid.

"Astrid." He tried to shake her awake, too freaked out to be nice about it. "Hey! Astrid!"

She mumbled sleepily. Her eyes flew open. "Hiccup!"

"Ohthankgod." He let out a wet gasp and slumped onto her bed. "Oh my god. Astrid."

"Hiccup, what the hell?!" She pushed herself up on her elbows and reached to turn the bedside lamp on. It flooded the room with a warm golden glow, and Astrid squinted at him. "Hiccup," she said, voice low and serious. "Why do you look like that?"

He laughed unsteadily. "Like what?"

"Like hell." Her eyes swept over him and her frown deepened. She sat bolt upright and leaned forward. "Is that blood on your shirt? Wait, fuck—" She leaned even closer. "What the hell happened to your face?! You have a huge red mark all over one side of it!"

"I kinda…" He struggled for words to describe everything. "…had a fight with my dad?"

"WHAT." Her face went white and her next words were hissed through clenched teeth. "Did you do this to you?"

"Yes. No! It's—" He dragged a hand down his face. "—it's complicated. It wasn't his fault. Look, can I just stay here tonight?"

She didn't even hesitate, just scooted over in her big bed and patted the space next to her. "Or course you can."

With a relieved sigh, he curled over and rested his head on her shoulder. "Thanks."

He was tired and miserable and he so badly wanted to be angry, but the only person he could be angry with right now was himself. He'd been bitter with Jack for messing with his life, but he'd gone and ruined his own life far more thoroughly than Jack ever would have been able to. That was the worst part. This was all his fault.

Toothless leapt from his arms and settled in the spot on the mattress next to Astrid.

"I guess Toothless knew I was going to come here," he mumbled. "He was waiting for me when I came in."

"Toothless?"

"Yeah, my cat." He said that automatically, forgetting for a moment that he'd never talked about Toothless around Astrid. Maybe he'd never called him by name. Come to think of it, had he even mentioned that he had a cat?

"Your what?" she said, eyeing his strangely.

He sat up. "My cat."

"What cat?"

Hiccup looked at Toothless, who was laying on the mattress right next to Astrid, staring up at Hiccup with his big green eyes and still purring loudly, seemingly unfazed by everything else going on.

Toothless flicked an ear and twitched the end of his tail.

Oh. Fuck. Fuck no.

He'd never really had a chance against the fey.

That was the last straw for Hiccup. That was the last weird thing he could handle in this very long night of very weird and very bad things. His expression crumpled. He let out an exhausted, strangled sound, buried his face in his hands, and broke down sobbing.

I'm such an idiot.

Astrid rubbed his back with wide eyes and a pinched mouth and no idea what was happening, silently freaked out. She'd known him a long time and she'd never seen him act like this. Even when his mother disappeared. Even when he was bullied for having imaginary friends. Even when he was diagnosed and sent to therapy. Never.

After a while, she asked, in a very quiet voice as if she were afraid he might break if she spoke too loudly, "do you want to, um…talk?"

"No," said Hiccup miserably. "Honestly I just want to sleep."

"Are you…wearing only one shoe?"

Hiccup took a deep breath and let it out slowly, wiping off his face. "I'll explain in the morning," he mumbled. Then, more quietly, "my cat is a fucking faery."

Toothless went quiet, watching Hiccup with his eerie eyes, but Hiccup just ignored him.

Astrid found him a clean t-shirt. By the time Hiccup had taken off his one good shoe, left his stuff on her desk, and stripped down to just the shirt and his boxers, she'd fallen asleep on the bed again, leaving a space for him. Hiccup, still ignoring his fey cat, crawled in next to her and went out like a candle flame.