She did not want to trust Hiccup.
But she was lying to herself. She wanted to trust him.
She watched him sleep, adrenaline still peeling her eyelids back and letting her scan the dark world around them every few minutes. Hiccup was peaceful in unconsciousness, both when Astrid had knocked him out with a frying pan and when he had fallen asleep in the folds of her hair.
Astrid hated the feeling of uncertainty plaguing her brain. Was he conspiring with the group that had blitz-attacked them outside the caves? Her gut was trying to tell her "yes" and "no" at the same time. Every time she leaned into one answer, a tug at the pit of her stomach would lurch her back into uncertainty. A frustrated breath hissed between her teeth.
At the end of the day – and even now, surveying the edges of the horizon, Astrid could see the day was at the cusp of birth – it didn't matter if he was conspiring with the group or not. Right now, Hiccup was her most reliable method of returning home. Even if she ditched him and found another wanderer in the woods to guide her, at least Hiccup was not a complete stranger. Staying at his side eliminated at least some of the unknown factors that came with trusting a new person. She'd spent time with Hiccup. He wasn't utterly unknown to her.
As far as she knew. A pit of paranoia deep in her stomach wanted her to remember that Hiccup could be acting. His weakness, his awkwardness, his fear of her wrath and physical abilities, his non-threatening nature, his cynicism, his stuttering laughter, his crooked grin—
Astrid squeezed her eyes shut. A few hours had passed since she'd strung her hair through the branches to set up their makeshift camp. She needed sleep. Flexing her toes, she reached out with her right leg and kicked Hiccup in the side.
"Ow." Apparently she'd kicked harder than she thought. Hiccup swung wildly and nearly fell out of the hammock of hair.
Burrowing down into her hair, Astrid tightened her eyes and shoved away the paranoia. "Your watch."
Hiccup replied with something, his voice sputtering off into the sleep that overtook Astrid the moment her head dropped.
She awoke to warm sunshine, a cool breeze, and a gigantic black dragon snarling in her face.
Astrid screamed, flung herself out of her hammock, dropped to the ground, and tried to start running. Her hair was still very much entwined in the branches, and she tugged at it furiously, unleashing a swarm of curse words she didn't even realize she'd learned from the tavern the previous night.
Hiccup let out a yelp that informed her he'd fallen asleep at his watch. Delightful. His sarcasm was contagious enough to snarl in the back of Astrid's head even as the rest of her brain was in full-blazed panic. Hiccup toppled to the ground beside her, landing somewhat less gracefully than Astrid had. The dragon crouched on the ground. Its bright green eyes were narrowed, and two rows of gleaming, terrible teeth alerted Astrid that she and Hiccup had probably intruded on its territory.
Hiccup leaped to his feet. Astrid was still tugging frantically at her hair and yelling at Hiccup to grab her frying pan when he decided to compete for the award for World's Most Colossal Idiot of the Year and run straight at the dragon.
If that award didn't exist, Astrid would make it herself and slam it down on his soon-to-be-dug grave.
Hiccup flung himself onto the dragon's wide snout, yelling, "Toothless! No!"
Astrid must have wanted that same award more than she thought, because she yelled out, "It clearly isn't toothless!"
Flashing her a look of part confusion, part shut-up, Hiccup rubbed his hands all over the dragon's nose. For whatever reason, he seemed to be effectively holding the dragon back. "No, bud, she's a friend," he repeated over and over, just loud enough for Astrid to hear.
Bud?
Oh no.
This could not be happening.
Murderers, assailants, thieves, con-artists, drunkards, and thugs in this world, and she'd managed to pick as her guide an absolute maniac who wielded a dragon.
Hiccup yelled at her over his shoulder in what she realized was an accusatory tone. "You scared him!"
"I scared him?!" Astrid yelled back. "Who is 'him'?!"
The dragon had actually calmed down under Hiccup's care, though it offered her a menacing snarl when Hiccup politely stuttered out, "Astrid, this is Toothless. Toothless… Astrid."
By this point, all of Astrid's hair had tumbled from the trees and puddled around her ankles. So she had no obstruction from nature when she gathered her tresses in her arms and began to run in the opposite direction. At the very minimum, she needed to get out of here. When she encountered anyone else, she'd be sure to let them know a dark terror was still hiding in the kingdom, waiting to kill. She might not have been the most social citizen, but she wasn't going to let people die because they didn't know the threat in the shadows.
In the blink of an eye, Hiccup, on the back of the dragon, was blocking her path. The young man's eyes were flooded with panic as he pushed a hand down in the space between them, palm facing her. "No," he said. "Please. No. Please don't leave."
His tone halted her struggling to move past them. Hiccup was begging her.
"Astrid, I can't tell anyone about Toothless. They'd kill him." His eyes shone with the faintest of glimmers. "You don't know what it's like for dragons in this kingdom." Hiccup's gaze flickered away as his face filled with a distant but real memory of horror. "They hunt them. Parade their corpses. Nail their heads to walls. You can't…" He focused on Astrid again. "I can't let that happen to him."
She knew just enough about dragons to imagine burning villages and charred human corpses. "You can't?" Astrid sputtered, not quite believing his obvious madness.
Hiccup leaned back and dropped his outstretched hand to the saddle on the dragon's back. He straightened his body as his entire face hardened. "I won't let that happen to him," Hiccup answered.
The dragon stared at her, still clearly displeased with her general existence and even more so with her proximity. Its scales were such a deep shade of black that some streaks of sunlight yielded glimmers of rainbows bubbling across its hide. Leathery, gigantic wings spread out on either side of its torso, no doubt as some kind of intimidation tactic, and Astrid's eyes traced the sharp ridges creeping along its spine from neck to tail. She couldn't ignore the missing tail-fin and the human-made leather contraption attached to the tail-tip.
Hiccup had softened. He wasn't begging anymore, but his voice had dropped as he continued to watch her. "This is the point where I'd ask you to trust me-" he nodded down at her winding tresses – "but I want to believe I know the answer."
Shock hit Astrid first. Then relief. The relief was confusing until she understood. This was his greatest secret. Astrid's fingers wound through her hair. Just as he knew her hair was powerful – her most precious secret – she knew about his dragon. She knew about his dragon, which he could have called down at any time beforehand to overpower her but never had. This was his greatest strength and his greatest weakness. She could understand that duality.
She nodded.
Hiccup's jaw dropped.
The dragon… no. Toothless snarled. Astrid stepped back. It was still a dragon, but she was willing to trust Hiccup. "Okay," she said.
As Hiccup slid off Toothless' back, still barely seeming to believe she was trusting him, he seemed entirely different to Astrid. For just a moment, he had gifted her with a glimpse of someone who was more than just a stuttering, sarcastic sapling.
Astrid cleared her throat. "I guess it's… with us now?"
Hiccup pulled his lips between and bit down before answering, "At least until we reach the surrounding villages." Astrid frowned. Hiccup had dropped sporadic details about their end destination, but he'd never mentioned exactly where they were heading. And, she realized with a curious twist of her stomach, she had not thought to ask.
"Then what?" she asked, catching the briefest flicker of eye contact with the dragon before its wildness overwhelmed her into focusing on the ground.
"He has his hiding places," Hiccup said. Smiling slightly, he slid his fingers under the dragon's head. The dragon gave Astrid a protective but somewhat hesitant snarl before closing its eyes and shimmying its neck at Hiccup's touch. It seemed… happy.
Astrid's jaw dropped slightly. Hiccup had trained a dragon.
She gripped her satchel in her hands and swung its strap over her shoulder, ruminating on this new development. Hiccup was watching her, equal parts concerned and cautious. Did he think she was about to turn and sprint off to report him? Who would she even report him to? She felt a thrill of shock as she realized… Hiccup was the son of the lead general of the royal army.
What would happen to him if Astrid spread the news of his pet dragon?
What would happen to the dragon?
Astrid did not, she realized, want to think about it.
"Which way?" she squeaked, before clearing her throat, straightening, tugging at her satchel, and repeated in a hopefully more confident tone, "Which way?"
Hiccup nodded into the forest, slightly to the left. Astrid couldn't imagine how he knew his way. The dappled green forest of gigantic, beautifully monstrous trees seemed to sprawl out without distinction or landmark endlessly around them.
"This way," Hiccup said. His voice was quieter, more contemplative. Astrid didn't know how to feel about it. She shivered involuntarily, and Hiccup noticed. He lowered his chin slightly and raised his eyebrows at her, but she shook her head and looked away.
She needed time to think, but they needed to keep moving. The angling of shadows and cool breeze of the air told her noon was still a few hours away, but a twist of her stomach was insisting that she was running out of time.
"Are you ready?" Hiccup asked, still strangely calm as he watched her.
She lifted her chin. "Let's go."
For a while, as the three traversed through the forest, their movement fell into a pattern. Hiccup's eyes were on Astrid. Astrid's eyes were, despite her best intentions to seem cool and unaffected, on the dragon. The dragon did not take its eyes, narrow black slits signaling clearly that it was in no mood to trust, off Astrid. The new trio climbed over twisting roots webbed across the forest floor in silence.
Maybe it was the dragon – okay, it definitely had something to do with the dragon – but Astrid did not like how much the dynamic of her and Hiccup had changed. Already she missed being able to twirl her frying pan in her fingers and leave Hiccup yelping and leaping away. She missed being the one with the secrets, the one still deciding who to trust. She wanted to be in control. Now she felt like the weak one. Now Hiccup was the mysterious, reserved being.
Astrid had grossly underestimated Hiccup.
At the bare minimum, she felt sorry for it.
Memories of their conversations and laughter in the tunnels came back to her, new memories that were already rimmed with fond nostalgia. "So…" she let the word tumble out in front of them in the scraggly grass. "Where are we going?"
Hiccup let out a breath, allowing his tense shoulders to fall with it. "The capital city. Our ancestors named it Berk when they conquered it and settled here. It's the sunniest, warmest place in the entire country-" a smile slipped onto his face "-which is saying something, considering what an ice hole this place is normally."
Astrid frowned. The tower was constantly surrounded by cobalt skies and warm sunbeams. "Really?"
Chuckling, Hiccup tipped his head back and replied, "Twelve days north of Hopeless and a few degrees south of Freezing to Death." He swung his arms out, and the dragon tracked his motions with some level of tolerant interest. "It's usually hailing or snowing. The princess's birthday is right in the middle of the only sunny part of the year."
Astrid cleared her throat. "Interesting." The silence that followed was truly uncomfortable, and Astrid plunged into the only topic she could think of in the moment. "Were you there when she was?"
Hiccup kicked at a smattering of stones in front of them. They scattered in a purposefully distracting chaos through the reeds of the grass. "Yeah," he answered with a half-shrug, "but I was a baby. We all were."
"All?" Astrid caught herself as her brain supplied information before Hiccup could. "The prince," she murmured.
Clearing his throat, Hiccup nodded. "Yeah."
"Are you two close?" Her question felt awkward beyond her comprehension of why.
Hiccup laughed. "Yeah. We grew up together." He swatted at a tree branch in his path, only for it to slam back into his face. Yelping and wincing, he rubbed his face before continuing: "He's also an impossible standard of perfection."
Astrid smiled thinly but what she hoped was sympathetically. "Let me guess, your dad does a lot of comparing."
Hiccup groaned. "Oh yeah, always." He lifted his hand from his head to reveal a red mark where the tree branch had unleashed its revenge.
She huffed out a small laugh at his comical misfortune and teased, "Nice."
Hiccup rolled his eyes. "Yeah, I really hope they get this hardcore new tattoo right on all my wanted posters," he replied.
Astrid liked the banter far more than the distrustful silence.
Judging from the crooked smile twisting on Hiccup's face, he liked the change too. "So," he said, tossing up his hands. "We have a lot of time to kill before the lantern display tonight. What do you want to do when we reach the capital?"
Reaching over, Astrid punched him lightly on the arm. "I thought you were my guide. You're going to guide me to do things, right?"
Hiccup rubbed his arm and grinned at her. "You said guide, not tour guide. If – geez, if I'd have known I was your tour guide-" he pivoted to start walking backwards. The dragon sniffed boredly at the grass beneath its paws, but Astrid had the feeling its gaze never completely left her. Hiccup continued, gesturing at the world around them. "- I'd have given you so many more intriguing and little-known details about the local flora and fauna!"
"Who are flora and fauna?"
"Aha!" Hiccup held up one finger and shook it in the air. "First intriguing and little-known detail! 'Flora and fauna' is a term used to describe local plant-life!"
"Wow. Did you just now remember that entire thing?"
"I'll have you know that sarcasm is my specialty, milady. Leave me to my craft."
They walked like this for a while – Astrid teasing Hiccup, Hiccup retorting to Astrid's prodding, and the dragon keeping narrowed eyes pinned on Astrid. She tried to ignore the suspicious enduring snarl, but for whatever reason ignoring hostile dragons just wasn't an easy task. Hiccup's chatter eventually drew most of her attention into the cackling, questioning, and Hiccup's faked gasps as she teased him.
She found she had, in fact, been too focused on Hiccup when they passed by some small cabins and farms and she realized Toothless had disappeared.
"Where'd he go?"
"He knows nobody's really going to throw a welcoming party for him." Hiccup gestured vaguely. "He'll be around."
Astrid watched a throng of dirty children chasing chickens and tickling each other with reeds. "Where was he when you were in the tower?"
Shaking his head, Hiccup shrugged and replied, "Who knows? He could have been off fishing for a meal, or your mom could have spooked him. He's obviously smart enough to avoid most humans."
"But not smart enough to avoid you, apparently."
"Ha. Ha-Ha. Ha. Amazing."
Astrid noted another detail of his explanation. "Where would he be fishing?"
As he raised his eyebrows at her, Hiccup answered, "We're a coastal nation. Berk is a harbor. But of course you would know that seeing that you've left your tower so often, right?"
She grimaced. Clearly Hiccup could tell she was lying about leaving her tower before yesterday, but she wanted that false confidence anyway. "Right." She'd never seen the ocean before. Astrid added this to a list of things she was about to experience for the first time. She was no list hugger by any means, but she'd always been more practical and analytical than her mother.
Her mother, whom she had lied to, disobeyed, and was currently disrespecting. Astrid's hands balled into fists. How was she supposed to feel about this? Maybe all the ridiculous obsessing over whether or not to trust Hiccup – and the internal ambiguity did feel ridiculous in this moment – was just Astrid's attempt to distract herself from the guilty reality. Her mother, to some extent, had trusted her. Astrid had thrown that trust out the window. Well, she threw herself out the window. And in all the running and leaping and hiding and bantering with her ruffian, somehow Astrid had managed to push away any worry about her mother. Her only hope was the entire journey would be neatly confined to her mother's absence. Tomorrow evening, Astrid would be lounging on her bed, unsuccessfully trying yet again to knit a scarf, and waiting for her mother to call up the tower wall for a lift. Astrid's excursion into the real world would be a fantastic memory, a life goal achieved and treasured, that belonged to only her. Her mother, whom she loved and trusted, would be none the wiser to Astrid's betrayal.
Astrid released the tension balled up in her fingers and plunged ahead on the greystone path. She did feel guilty. She did not feel guilty enough to turn around.
Hiccup realized far too late – as in, minutes before they approached the bridge leading into the heart of the city – that he had not prepared Astrid for the reality of a metropolis. Then again, he himself was barely prepared for anything anymore, apparently. He couldn't remember the last time he was in a situation where he didn't have at least some idea of what would happen next. The past twenty-four hours had been a perilous festival of unpredictability and adventure.
He liked it.
"Okay, so now that you've got flora and fauna, time to talk about the wall."
Astrid's eyebrows dropped. "Wall?"
Hiccup peered ahead as he explained, "The main city is inside a giant circle of a fortress. The castle that the old jarls conquered is in the center, but before we get there, there are a lot of houses and huts and stalls to get through."
"Wouldn't the wall be guarded?" she asked, and Hiccup took the time to marvel at how quickly her mind understood security measures.
"Sure," he replied, "and we'd need to worry about that if we were going through a gate. But we're not."
Astrid looked even more confused. "You don't want to be seen?"
Chuckling mirthlessly, Hiccup scratched his neck and said, "I'd rather not have the guards reporting on my whereabouts to my dad right now. I may or may not be... in some trouble with him."
"What did you do?"
"Cavorted with a mysterious woman in the woods." He deeply enjoyed the brief look of confusion quickly chased away by indignance that tripped across Astrid's face. He'd probably deserved all her other punches, but he definitely deserved this one.
They rounded a twist in the road, and the fortress was unveiled by the pine trees. Beside him, a tiny gasp escaped Astrid's mouth, followed by a thick cough as a poor concealment of her surprise.
What the wall lacked in height, it well supplied in thickness and sheer communication of immovability. Centuries of felled trees braced themselves vertically along the outer side of the wall, with stone ramparts peeking over the top. Laced at the foundation were matted clumps of briar and vine, some patches more voluminous and prickled than others.
Hiccup darted to the left, behind a hut, and raced, slightly crouched, along the wall of the attatched sheep pen. Astrid, he saw with a glance behind him, was following suit, frying pan at the ready. They circled the wall this way for several minutes, swerving around cow stalls, ducking under clotheslines, and skirting the pastures of only vaguely impressed animals.
As usual, Hiccup turned back toward the wall once he passed two large red vases cowering under a hut awning. Still bent over, he slid a farmer's rake out from a pile of tools. After glancing around at all angles to assure anonymity, he darted forward. The rake's prongs served well to comb back a particularly large mass of briar, and light glinted through the small, shallow tunnel dug beneath the wall.
The tunnel was just tall enough to keep Hiccup's knees from dragging through the dirt, but Astrid's hums and huffs behind him told him that this path was much more difficult in a dress. Hopping out - thankfully the tunnel was obscured on both sides by brambles and hid on this side by a particularly noisy bakery - Hiccup offered his hand to Astrid. It didn't surprise him that she ignored his advance to leap up on her own.
Then the city of Berk loomed before them, and Astrid let out a gasp of genuine shock and excitement that she no doubt did not intend to let him hear, and Hiccup grinned.
"Berk," he said, trying to pretend he wasn't obsessed with and intensely tracking her reactions, "is located solidly on the meridian of misery. In a word? Sturdy. We like to pretend we're a progressive village, so despite seven past generations of vikings and countless more peasants before them, we've got a lot of new buildings." As they crossed the bridge, Hiccup realized Astrid was too captivated by Berk to notice him, so he took this rare but welcomed opportunity to openly stare at her and enjoy the view while he rambled on. "We have fishing, hunting, a charming view of the sunsets – you name it, we probably don't have it, unless it's those three things." She was paying just enough attention to laugh a little, and Hiccup's shoulders pushed back with the little triumph.
Sunshine flowed down through the tall, Nordic-heritage buildings, and as usual, the mood of the people matched the weather. While the normally rainy and dreary weather produced a general attitude of hearty but grim perspectives, the sunshine seemed to put a bounce in most people's gaits as they sped through the streets. Preparation for the main festivities tonight were in full-swing, but some were already beginning to celebrate in various ways. Well, Hiccup reasoned, eying a grizzled man already twisting pigs on a spit above metal-pot fires, as much as anyone could celebrate the birthday of a long-gone princess.
Astrid was still smiling.
That realization was enough to distract Hiccup from almost everything around them – not enough for Hiccup to, as covertly as he could in order to avoid Astrid's notice, pull his dark hood above his head.
He tried to see the city through her now bright eyes. Traveling with the jarls' families had exposed him to enough cities that he knew their capital was fairly lower to the ground and speckled with more trees than most other capitals. Most of the residential buildings sported high ceilings with lofts tucked inside, so they towered above them. Due to a lessening in dragon attacks in the past few years, decorative arches and more architecturally complex structures had slowly bloomed across Berk. Hiccup appreciated the change. As Hiccup and Astrid progressed through the cities, dodging and weaving and peeking at the occasional rousing performance by street musicians, the buildings grew more stone-based, taller, and closer together. These were remnants of a time gone by, long before the Vikings had conquered and settled, but still in relatively solid and usable conditions.
As time progressed, Hiccup couldn't help but notice the one thing darkening Astrid's experience in the city. Feet, wagon wheels, and horse hooves were treading over Astrid's winding tresses and clearly wrecking havoc on her scalp. She kept jumping and wincing even as she enjoyed the city around her. Hiccup focused on finding a solution, and he soon found it perched on a vine-tangled well in the center of the square ahead of them. A gaggle of pale ginger Berkian girls, bouncing and wiggling, were fully invested in their braiding trains.
"Remember what I said about your hair?" Hiccup said, leaning into Astrid's shoulder and directing her vision with his finger to the young girls.
Astrid saw and nodded, but she suddenly hesitated in her gait. Hiccup didn't need to question why. He had enough observational evidence to know that he was the second person Astrid had ever talked to. Striding forward and weaving through the ever-bustling throng of Berkians, he cleared his throat. The three girls looked up.
"Excuse me, gang, but I couldn't help but notice you seem to be the local braiding experts," Hiccup said. The girls nodded, clearly guarded but proud. Hiccup swung his arm back to showcase Astrid, who had followed him at a somewhat reluctant pace. "My friend here could really use your skills and knowledge-"
He didn't have to use another word. The moment the trio spotted the mountain of golden hair Astrid was piling into her arms, they shrieked with delight and charged. Within seconds, two of the girls were grabbing Astrid's hands and dragging her toward their perch on the well, while the third girl had already buried her hands in the mound of blond hair. Hiccup watched a grin spread back across Astrid's face as she began answering the girls' enthusiastic questions. He spotted a fried fish stand just a few feet away. Even as he kept the corner of his eyes pinned on Astrid, he started fishing an emergency-stash coin out of his boot and walking to the fish stand. This, Hiccup reasoned, would take a little while.
To his surprise, a familiar face greeted him at the fish stand, leaning onto its railings and smirking at the stuttering, acne-spotted teenage vendor.
"Dagur says he wants his kukri back," Hiccup said, in lieu of a hello. Pushing back a lock of wavy dark hair behind her pale ears – a move that made the vendor even more red-faced than he already was – Heather gave him a smile and a welcoming green gaze under thick lashes. Hiccup couldn't ignore that she was pretty, but she was also Heather. She was a friend. His list of friends, to nobody's surprise, wasn't that long.
Leaning into Hiccup, Heather's smile changed from effortlessly seductive to warmly familiar. "It's my kukri," she replied quietly, tossing two coins to and retrieving two impaled fried fish from the disappointed vendor. "He's got to stop claiming my weapons."
Hiccup gave her a quiet laugh in return and slid one of the sticks of fish from her long fingers. "Shouldn't you be working?"
"Nah, I chased off all the overnight drunkards already. Mulch said I could take the day off until it picks up tonight." Heather investigated the remaining fish spike before biting into it.
"Ah." Hiccup realized that at this angle, Heather and Astrid were facing away from each other and thus unaware of each other's existence. He found that he'd rather keep it that way. He enjoyed Astrid being his secret. His and the braiding ladies, anyway. Anyway, he couldn't imagine Astrid would appreciate being noticed and talked about. She wouldn't tell him, but he knew she was banking on her travels remaining a secret from her mother for now.
Not that Heather seemed like the type to betray anything or anyone that she knew Hiccup was keeping close to his chest. Even that internal metaphor made Hiccup's pulse quicken in embarrassment, and he quickly asked, "You seen Snotlout around?"
Heather shook her head. "No. Thankfully." Biting his lip, Hiccup nodded in agreement. He doubted Snot would try anything too ridiculous in public when his pride had been so recently hurt, but nobody could ever rely on Snotlout acting reasonably. Heather studied his reactions. "Why?" she asked. "What's he on about this time?"
"Pick a reason."
Astrid turned. Hiccup knew he was blowing everything far out of reasonable proportions, but the way her face darkened and twisted at the sight of Heather seemed to be pulling his vision into a slow and tunneled frame.
He nodded at Heather, who raised an eyebrow when his smile dropped from his lips. "Thanks for the fish. I'll talk to you later."
"Scheming, Hiccup?"
"Me?" he guffawed. "Never."
Heather's eyes swept back and forth across his face. "You're so different from what you were when I first met you."
Fifteen-year-old Hiccup had been dripping with sarcasm and insecurity the way Snotlout was soaked in stupidity now. At least at the age of nineteen, Hiccup had accepted his place in the world and stopped sucking up for any level of acceptance. His father's disappointment, once a knife in Hiccup's stomach, was now more of a geographical feature than anything else.
"Thank Thor, huh?" he replied, offering her a wry grin.
She laughed. "You're much better looking, at least." Hiccup had just enough control to not turn as red as the vendor, and he winked lightheartedly at her instead. Heather pulled herself onto her toes, tapped a kiss onto his cheek, and swept off into a throng of soon-to-be intoxicated Berkians. "You owe me for the fish," she called.
Hiccup rolled his eyes. She'd never hold him to that, even when he would inevitably try to pay her back anyway. He dropped the coin he'd already retrieved from his boot onto the stall deck and grabbed another fish spike.
The vendor couldn't decide whether to gawk after Heather or glare at Hiccup. "How'd you get that?" the kid grumbled, nodding at the kiss he probably imagined to be gleaming on Hiccup's cheek.
"She's an arrow that you'll be glad missed you," Hiccup responded. Double-fisted with fish spikes, he strode in the direction of Astrid and the fountain.
Astrid eyed his approach even as she winced. The plaited trio was not packing any punches as they braided, discussing their stylistic machinations with the gravity of a warrior jarl sending beloved fighters into battle. Hiccup dropped down next to Astrid and extended his culinary spoils toward her. She grudgingly accepted it but didn't take a bite, even as her body tensed from what Hiccup could only guess was surfacing hunger.
"I really did find the local experts," Hiccup cheered, and the girls, no longer guarded now that Hiccup had guided them to the hair to end all hair, giggled at his praise.
Astrid, still facing away from them as they worked, offered no such positive response. She grunted.
Hiccup couldn't identify the reason for her attitude shift, but something was definitely increasing his own heart-rate. In a good way, somehow.
She lifted her chin and asked, "Are you always this popular with the local women?"
"Oh, yeah, usually I have to fight through a crowd of them just to get into town. I'm fending off proposals of…" he glanced at the little trio working hard and decided to tone down his language "…marriage on a daily basis."
Astrid pulled a scowl in response. Hiccup, crouched on his toes at her side, wanted so badly to diffuse the sudden tension, but his usual technique of rampant sarcasm apparently had only made this problem worse now.
Maybe honesty would work. "Heather's an old friend," he offered. Astrid's features tightened rather than softened. A grimace that pulled into a genuine grin surfaced on Hiccup's face as he continued, "She's actually Dagur's sister."
Jaw dropping, Astrid turned to face him.
"Hey!" squealed a small voice.
"Don't move!"
"You'll mess it up!"
Astrid had the decency to blush slightly as her vexed trio pulled her shoulders back into their prior position. Hiccup cackled, and Astrid, though sucking her lips in at first, let the tiniest and rarest laugh out too.
"Sorry," Astrid told the girls. "I'll keep still." Her attention swung back to Hiccup again. "Really? Dagur's sister?"
Hiccup nodded, shifting to prop one elbow on his right knee. "It's one heck of a story," he explained, shrugging. "But yeah. They didn't know for a long time."
"How'd they react?"
"Heather took a while to come around, but Dagur would do anything for her since the moment he found out. He was…" Hiccup tried to find positive words "…not the best person before she came into his life." Astrid's eyebrows quirked, and Hiccup laughed. "Yeah, what you saw back there was a very reformed version of Dagur."
"Yikes."
"No kidding."
Astrid took in the hustle and bustle of the city around her. A gaggle of children stumbled by, carrying the smaller ones and pulling at each other's tunics, Watching them, Astrid folded her hands tightly in her lap and admitted, "I always wanted a sibling."
"Kind of hard for your mom to do that without a dad around, huh?" Hiccup realized his mistake the moment immediately following his mouth slamming shut.
Astrid twitched as if she were about to turn back to him, but she remembered her stylists' warnings and remained still. That didn't prevent an icy, shocked stare from burning into Hiccup's own eyes. "What? How did you know?"
He groaned in response. Holding his hands up in some ridiculous, guilty attempt to placate her, Hiccup replied, "I may have… woken up in your wardrobe and heard a telling conversation…"
Huffing, Astrid stared straight ahead. They remained in silence for a moment, listening to creaking wagon carts and palace officials calling instructions to workmen hanging decorations on lampposts and signs.
"You knew?" she finally asked.
Hiccup nodded, rubbing the back of his neck. Astrid clearly held her sense of self-sufficiency and independence as uncompromisingly important – that and the appearance of both to others. He could have teased her on it. He knew, however, that some things were just too delicate to use even as playful ammunition. And yeah, fine, he'd been teasing her about it 15 minutes ago a tiny bit, but now that felt stupid.
Hiccup's shoulders dropped as he pointed to the spike of fish still enclosed in Astrid's fingers. "You must be hungry," he murmured. "We haven't eaten since last night."
Astrid opened her mouth to retort, but then she seemed to shake off her negative emotions, nod with a firmed chin, and began to eat. Hiccup, starving himself, dove into his own food, and the two ate in silence.
Hiccup used the stasis of movement to sweep the world around them with his eyes. He didn't see any guards, so there wouldn't be any annoying reporting back to his dad or grabbing him by the ear to drag him into a "talk" (argument).
To be fair, the guards had stopped doing that when he'd gained a foot in height and some basic self-respect. Eventually, the "Everyone hates me and my life is the worst" mentality had gotten old for him. Not that it was ever very endearing to anyone else anyway.
Another absence Hiccup noted with thankfulness was Snotlout & Company. Hopefully they were chasing down a bar so they could spend the entirety of the festivities in a powerful fugue of intoxication. Snotlout, Hiccup knew from spending an unfortunate amount of time with him, seemed to think women found him more attractive when drunk. Hiccup smothered a smirk so he wouldn't look like a weirdo, but the knowledge that Snotlout actually just found everyone more attractive when he was drunk was very hard to contain without grinning.
Astrid, her eyes dark in thought, opened her mouth, and Hiccup looked toward her attentively. "We have a few hours until the lanterns, right?"
Hiccup nodded. Then something bloomed in his brain. Several things, actually. "You've never seen the ocean before," he said slowly.
She glared. "Maybe I ha-" but stopped when he rolled his eyes at her. Astrid cringed slightly, and Hiccup realized, with a warming feeling, that she did not enjoy lying to him.
"You've never seen the ocean before," he repeated. "And I bet you've never been to a library either."
She didn't look excited or confused - just blank. Hiccup realized that the word "library" itself would be entirely unfamiliar.
When he opened his own mouth to offer a plan for the day, a squeaky, intrigued voice interrupted them.
"Why couldn't you braid your hair?" the middle-sized girl asked, gazing up at Astrid.
Astrid opened her mouth, paused, and then quietly responded, "I don't know how to braid."
The trio paused in their artistry to gasp.
"Really?"
"It's easy!"
"We'll teach you!" The tiny child yanked Hiccup close so quickly and so hard that he nearly chocked on his fish. Her tiny hands yanked at tufts of hair at the nape of Hiccup's neck. He yelped, but the child harbored resolve rather than remorse. "Here," she yelped, jerking Hiccup's head around to shove the hair into Astrid's hands. "Follow my directions."
He hoped so dearly his neck wasn't flaming, but he could already feel heat flowing off his face. As usual, his luck was terrible. Then Astrid's fingers brushed his skin as she clumsily followed the girls' instructions, and Hiccup changed his mind. He sat perfectly still. This was a fantastic idea.
Ten ethereal minutes later, a tiny voice proclaimed, "There! See! You did it!"
As the girls resumed work on Astrid's hair, and Astrid dropped her hands, Hiccup slid his fingers up to tug at the tiny, lopsided braid poking out. A part of his mind insisted that his days of brushing and washing his hair were over. No, that was stupid. Incredibly unsanitary. Totally pathetic. Absolutely plausible.
After a few more minutes where Astrid and Hiccup gazed around at everything but each other, the tiny trio started squealing.
"We're done!"
"We did it!"
"It's so preeeetttyyyyyyy!"
Astrid twisted her head to look back at the two long braids, and a smile gleamed on her face. Hopping to her feet, she did a twirl. Her braid swung around her, entwined with tiny flowers of purple and white and gold. The soft fabric of her blue dress fluttered around her ankles. The glow of her smile spread to the rest of her face, and she glanced at Hiccup. Her eyes sparkled.
He was done. It was over. Here lies Hiccup. It was a nice life while it lasted.