AN: Hoo boy, today it's been exactly a year since I uploaded the first chapter of Rivalry. To 'celebrate,' I tried my hardest to crank out a chapter over the weekend. Not gonna lie, the first bit had me tearing up as I wrote it, but hopefully it makes sense and is somewhat enjoyable. With this chapter, the story now has over 30,000 words (not including ANs; I deleted most of those when I rewrote the first 18 chapters), which is kind of mind-blowing to me.

A couple of important notes: I KNOW MEATLUG IS A GIRL! I see a lot of comments on fics that came out shortly after the first movie about it (and dragon names; seriously, we didn't know those at the time those fics were written, so the authors took some creative liberties!). Gift of the Night Fury is canonically where Fishlegs discovers Meatlug's true gender, and since the events of that special haven't happened (yet *wink wink*) in this AU, I'm going to align the belief that Meatlug is male with canon.

Sorry about the mini-rant, but if it didn't happen I guarantee there'd be at least one review/message about it. Thanks for understanding. :)

Chapter 20: Relationships

Astrid's POV

After talking through my Dad's proposal with Hiccup and Stoick, I grudgingly left the Haddock house and trudged my way back to my own. It was dark out, but having lived in the village all my life I knew my way around like the back of my hand.

The past two weeks had been absolute Hel on Midgard. Neither of my parents wanted me to see Hiccup and fought every night about dissolving the blood feud. The only time they had civil conversations was when Stoick was present, and even then, you could taste the tension in the room. Stoick and my father were as pleasant as possible, but Mom was refusing to act any warmer than a frozen Icelandic cod. She didn't even want me in on the discussions, but Dad insisted that I was practically an adult and could learn a thing or two.

I also had the headache of dealing with my own feelings, which I'm not used to doing, and with my feelings about Hiccup being the biggest frustration, I couldn't use my regular methods of axing the problem or destroying trees until I felt better. I couldn't even have my own dragon anywhere near the house; Mom forced me to leave her in the forest at night. The Nadder, who I have yet to find a name for, somehow senses my guilt every night and nuzzles me until I smile, chirps happily, and proceeds to her small nest on the edge of the woods.

A month ago, life was simple: kill dragons, usurp Hiccup, win dragon training, appease my mother, and avenge my brother. But of course, Hiccup had to go and shoot down a Night Fury, thwart my attempts of winning dragon training, enrage my mother, and kill the giant monster causing all the dragon raids, all while somehow chipping away the rocky exterior of my heart with that stupid dopey grin of his. Now all I want to do is either be around Hiccup or in the air on my Nadder…or both. The guy's starting to drive me crazy in more ways than one.

I shook my head in agitation. I had bigger problems at the moment.

As I neared my house, I could clearly hear the voices of my parents, shouting at each other. I'm sure the neighbors have been getting as much sleep as I have with all the yelling and screaming; which is to say, none at all.

By the time I'd reached and opened the door, the house had gone silent. At the end of every argument, Mom would storm off to their bedroom, and Dad would sit and stare at the fire for a while. There was also a bedroll in the corner close to the door opposite of the stairs; Mom refused to let him sleep with her after the first quarrel.

I went to the kitchen to grab a bit of bread and a mug of yak's milk before sitting down on a chair next to Dad. He turned slightly and looked at me, dark circles under his piercing blue eyes, almost mirrors of mine. His red-brown hair and beard were scruffy and unkempt. I'd offered to let him use my bed while I slept on the floor several times, but he'd always refuse, insisting that I needed rest more than he did.

"Astrid," he started softly, "What did Hiccup have to say?"

I swallowed the bite of bread I was chewing and replied, "He's willing to try, but neither of us really know how to go about actually training the Flightmare. Toothless was one thing- the Night Fury showed up almost every raid- but the Flightmare only comes once a decade, and Hiccup wasn't allowed outside the last time it came."

Dad nodded and returned his gaze to the fire. "If anyone can do it, It's Hiccup."

A comfortable yet tense silence followed his words. After the fiasco at the Nest, nearly every villager started looking at Hiccup differently. I could almost imagine his face when he finds out he's considered a hero.

I had just finished my snack when Dad spoke, almost too quiet for me to hear; "Ragnhild wants to leave."

My eyebrow rose. "Leave? Like, a trip?"

"Nay," Dad shook his head. "The household."

I inhaled sharply, clasping a hand to my mouth in shock. Viking couples very rarely split up, save for the occasional death by dragon or Outcast raid, and arranged marriages weren't common on Berk. And the look of hurt and anguish on my dad's face told of how much he loved Mom, no matter how difficult she can be at times, and how much it'd hurt him to see her leave. "Where-" My voice cracked. "Where would she go?"

Dad took a deep breath and looked at me with tears in his eyes. "She- she said she'd leave Berk on the next trader ship that comes through."

Oh, Gods. I knew she was angry, especially at me, but to leave Berk completely…

I stood up and wrapped my arms around my father, holding him tightly. He returned the gesture eagerly, sniffles already emerging from both of us. "Do you know when she's leaving?" I asked, my voice shaking.

A sob escaped my father's mouth before he replied, "With the next trader ship that comes in tomorrow and leaves the day after."

We both broke down after that, sobbing into each other's shoulder. It would be much later that I realized sobs were coming from my parents' room as well.

Berk is a fairly small, tight-knit community, so when something happens, it doesn't take very long for the whole village to hear about it.

I quickly grew irritated with all the pitiful and sympathetic looks I was receiving, so after I took a small basket of fish to my Nadder (I really need to give her a name), I walked over to Hiccup's home.

I knocked twice, and without waiting for an answer, I opened the door and stepped inside. Toothless looked up from the corner he was resting in, smiled his gummy smile at me, and bounded over. I absently scratched behind his ear flap as I walked over to the chair next to Hiccup's bed.

Hiccup looked up from the Book of Dragons. "Hey As-" His brow furrowed. "Astrid, are you okay?"

"I'm fine," I muttered, "Find anything useful?"

Hiccup scowled at the Book. "Not really. Extremely territorial, freezes victims in terror, extremely dangerous… The usual stuff. I don't think there really is a way to prepare for this thing unless you can remember something that could be helpful." He glanced sideways at me.

I shook my head. "I was so young, and I was so worried about Finn, it's all kind of blurry."

"Understandable," Hiccup said, returning his gaze to the Book of Dragons, "Going through the rest of this book though, we really need to rewrite it. 'Kill on sight' probably isn't the best way to earn a dragon's trust."

I snorted and Hiccup cracked a grin, somehow managing to help me relax with a simple, stupid joke.

We started idly chatting about anything from flying, to Hiccup's attempts at winning Toothless' friendship, to their first flight. We were chuckling at Hiccup's story of the Terrible Terror trying to steal Toothless' fish when the door opened and Snotlout came sauntering in, followed by Fishlegs and the Twins. Hiccup blinked in surprise.

"Hey, cuz!" Snotlout greeted, pulling a spare chair from the table, setting it down, and leaning against the wall with his head behind his hands.

"Uh, h-hi, guys," Hiccup stuttered, "W-what are you doing here?"

"Uh, duh," Ruffnut drawled, "After watching you blow up the Red Death, we wanna help you blow up more stuff!" She banged her helmet against her twins.

"Red Death?" Hiccup questioned, looking at Fishlegs.

Fishlegs explained, "That's what the village started calling the giant dragon at the nest since it had red spots all over it and would've caused our death."

I chuckled. "And I thought Toothless wasn't obvious enough."

"Hey!" Hiccup protested, "At least he has a name!"

I raised my eyebrows at him as the Twins ooh'ed. "I've had bigger problems to deal with, like a certain unconscious Viking that kept getting a fever after losing his leg."

Hiccup stared at me; eyes wide in surprise. "Th-that was you?"

"Oh yeah," Snotlout snorted, "Astrid was practically living here while you were dead to the world. I kept telling her to forget about you and hang with a more manly Viking like me." He flexed his muscles, kissing his left bicep.

"Snotlout," I growled, my face burning.

"And, ah, I think I'll leave the blowing-things-up to you two for now," Hiccup said to the Twins, "I'd rather not lose another limb before I turn sixteen."

Tuffnut shrugged. "Your loss. I'll just get Belch to help."

"Belch?" I questioned.

"His head of the Zippleback," Ruffnut stated, "Belch is the sparky head, I ride the gassy head and named it Barf."

"That's, actually kind of clever," Hiccup mused. The Twins high-fived.

"Yeah, well, Hookfang is five thousand pounds of flaming muscle," Snotlout boasted.

"Five thousand and forty pounds actually," Fishlegs corrected.

Snotlout grumbled something unintelligible; probably something like "Shut up, Fishface."

"Fishlegs?" Hiccup asked, "What'd you name your Gronkle?"

Fishlegs grinned sheepishly. "I named him Meatlug because-"

"Because he has to lug around a hunk of meat called Fishlegs, ah haha!" Snotlout chortled.

The husky blonde glared at him. "No, because I thought it suited his personality!"

I stared at the bedsheets, thinking about my dragon and trying to find a name that felt right.

"Astrid?"

I jerked up and looked at Hiccup, who was looking at me with concern. "You sure you're okay?"

I nodded. "Yeah, just trying to think of a name."

"Well," Hiccup said slowly, "The yellow scales against the blue kind of look like lightning, don't they? Like a storm, or something."

"Storm…" I muttered. And then it hit me; how she was always begging to fly, doing all sorts of crazy stunts with or without me on her back. "Stormfly!"

There was a happy trill that came from outside through the door that stood ajar, and a bright yellow eye peered through and looked at me happily.

"I think she likes it," Hiccup smiled.

The euphoria of finally coming up with a name for my dragon almost overtook the pain that was slowly tearing my family apart.

Almost.

But for the moment, I was content to just talk and laugh with my friends and figured we'd all get through anything thrown at us.

Together.

AN: Another quick note: I did a bit of research (not extensive, I'm going off of information from a single site that got it from a book), and it turns out that Viking divorces are relatively straightforward. I'm not gonna say much about it because spoilers, but there we are.