ASTRID

Her mother yanked the hood off, and only the iron still encasing Astrid's wrists behind her back kept her from hitting the smirking woman. Instead Astrid pivoted her torso to yank herself from her mother's grasp. Pressing her cheek against her shoulder, Astrid bit down on the cloth of the cloak's hood and jerked her head in various angles until the hood reluctantly returned to its position atop her head.

"Feisty one," the pasty thug said, leering and grinning down at her. Astrid kept her attention steadfastly pinned to the darkness creeping across the treetops.

As it turned out, the trio of miscreants possessed a wagon and a few more associates. Her mother's dainty steps and fluid motions, combined with some syrupy flattery, got them both seated in the bed of the wagon as it rumbled along. Astrid kept her knees pulled as close to her chest as she could, her heart spiking with relief every time she felt the wonderfully long skirts slide across her toes.

The other passenger accompanying the two women in the back of the wagon was the dark-haired brute who winced every time the road's lumps jostled his clearly broken leg. Drowning out the natural rustles and chatter of the forest, the warriors laughed, teased, and boasted. Whatever had happened just prior to Astrid and her mother meeting them had proven successful for the crew. Judging by the names juggled around and referenced, this group's full number extended well past their current companions - and some of the absent compatriots were carting some "shipment" along, a day behind her new captors on the journey they all seemed to share.

Every once in a while, the pasty man walking alongside the wagon or the thin man guiding the horses belted out a question clearly directed to Astrid. She kept her lips sewed shut and glared at the men, who always snickered as they tossed a glance at her over the sides of the cart. Mother unvaryingly punished her with a swift kick to the ankle. Astrid retaliated with a kick back and resumed her survey of the fluttering leaves above them.

The scenery around them proved too montonous for Astrid to keep track of with any success. Her mind and eyes briefly strayed to her mother, to pondering what her mother's scheme exactly entailed, but the dredges of fear began stirring in Astrid's stomach.

She hissed through her teeth. Panic had been wringing her mind dry for hours now. Enough of that. Astrid grasped at anger and determination and shoved them into the place the panic was attempting to permanently occupy. She pulled her gaze down from the sky, sharpened it into a permanent glare, and began to investigate the men around them.

The first conclusion was admittedly obvious: the current scenario held no possibility of escape. Even if she slipped out of her mother's fingers, the uninjured men of the crew could easily drag her back within seconds of an escape attempt. It would be a waste of her time and energy.

The second conclusion was even drearier. Wherever they were headed, the conversations implied that the number of thugs would drastically increase at their destination. She ran through the few names she'd learned through listening.

Shockley. The pale, large-mouthed one who hovered close to her mother.

Mellor. The driver of the cart, a thin man with brown teeth and a mace strapped to each hip.

Arshkil. Red beard, high voice, and a seeming obsession with his sword, based on how often he bragged about it.

Binek. He grunted every time the cart jostled his broken leg, but beneath his dark beard he was biting down on his lips to keep his protests muted.

Their conversations, in addition to discussing their absent companions transporting the "shipment", often referred to a "camp" as their destination. She had no idea what kind of settlement a "camp" could be, but it had to be large enough to hold two dozen men - certainly more.

When Astrid stretched and twisted her painfully stiff back, the gait of the pasty man caught her attention. For the past few hours, his steps had swung forward with steady, lumbering thuds. Now his movements had changed to eager, bouncing steps. Astrid strained her ears for some source of their rejuvenation and new-found enthusiasm. Sure enough, within a few minutes of Astrid noticing the man's change, distant voices and general clamor grew in clarity and volume. Although Astrid tried to peer ahead, the brief slivers of color through the trees ahead were impossible to decipher when the wagon bounced and rattled as much as it did.

Finally, a clearing opened up in front of them, and Astrid felt her attention and eyes torn in a hundred different directions.

As far as she could tell, there wasn't a single building in sight. Rather, the "camp" was filled with various assortments of large fabric pieces pitched up on sticks. As a child, she'd tied her bedsheets to the posts of her bed and hidden beneath its span. What the "camp" contained seemed to be an only barely more sophisticated version of the same. Her stomach seized to see the many men of all sizes, shapes, and colors bustling or lounging about.

I've seen larger numbers in the city square,* she reasoned. *So it could be worse.

It could be better, too, though.

From what she could tell, judging from how the men ducked beneath or out from the giant pieces of fabric, the fabric served as some sort of cover for living abodes. A gap in the fabric flapped, and she glimpsed only a basic sleeping cot beneath the swath of cloth.

Scattered between the fabric abodes were benches circled around fires and large cooking pots. Men poked at the contents of the pots with long wooden spoons as they conversed with compatriots lounging on benches. Astrid spotted others tinkering with weapons using large mystery contraptions as well. Some of the contraptions looked menacing and sharp enough to damage her iron cuffs. Astrid counted this as good news for future possibilities.

This, of course, was all secondary information buzzing in Astrid's mind, in comparison to the bigger, much more shocking existence of the gigantic metal contraptions scattered around the outskirts of the camp -

Cages, with dragons strapped down inside each one.

Astrid's jaw dropped.

Various dragons - species she'd glimpsed in the dragon manual but foolishly hadn't memorized the names of - struggled inside the metal cages. Strapped around each creature's snout was a heavy iron contraption that kept their mouth tightly sealed, explaining why Astrid hadn't heard any dragon cries as they approached. She had only ever heard Toothless's and the Whispering Death's calls, so she couldn't be sure she would recognize these dragon's noises as draconic even if she could hear them. Now, though, focus revealed that the metal contraptions couldn't totally silence the creatures' low growls and hums..

Peering at them, her stomach lurched. Some dragons trembled, their wide eyes darting around as their stomachs oscillated rapidly. Others paced. A few slammed their heads repeatedly against the bars of their cages. Every creature that Astrid could see sported some kind of untreated injury or gaping gash. The wounds had likely led to their downfall and capture.

Men stood outside several of the cages, some prodding the dragons with sticks. The creatures shied away from the objects, pressing themselves into the bars to avoid the prodding - only for another man to shove another stick through the other side of the cage.

Astrid shuddered, and her chains rattled behind her. She met the gaze of a small burgundy creature shivering in a cage as her wagon rolled by. Astrid felt a stab of empathy, piercing deep.

The dragon's pupils shrank as it lunged forward. Astrid jumped. The creature hissed, blew a shot of weakly fluttering flames, and curled its claws around the cage bars as it crawled up the side of its enclosure. When Astrid cast her eyes around and spotted a thug with a twig-thin mustache chuckling at her, she grimaced and cast her shoulders around to make the cloak slide and cover her more fully.

Her mother had started up some muttered banter with a man whose lanky height matched his high voice. Whatever she was saying, it was bringing two small spots of red onto his cheekbones and a long-toothed grin onto his jaw. Astrid cast her eyes to the corner of the wagon and watched the man through her peripherals. His own eyes roved across Astrid's mother, who preened and stretched under the attention. Astrid set her body against another involuntary shudder, tempering it somewhat.

A voice grunted out, "Aye, Bolvil!" The wagon stumbled to a stop. Astrid tensed her entire frame as tight as she could, but her mind raced far too quickly for her resolve to keep up.

A flabby man with pale skin and paler hair darted to the back of the wagon, ran spindly fingers over Binek's injured leg. "Get him to my quarters," the man rasped.

Straightening her spine to peer over the sides of the wagon, Astrid watched two squat thugs grab a contraption leaning against one of the fabric abodes. Holding the contraption - two long poles with a swath of fabric stretched between them - the pair hustled to the wagon's side. With a few hisses and grunts, Binek shimmied onto the fabric, and the duo scurried away with Binek balanced between them. At least he'd not bothered to look at her or attempt conversation for the entire ride mere feet away from her. Though that might be a result of pain rather than any respect or propriety.

"Boss will be back by sundown," said Shockley, slicking greasy red hair back from his long forehead. His laughter crackled like rogue fire when he yet again swept his gaze across Astrid's frame. "He'll have his fun then."

Behind her back, Astrid's nails burrowed into the palms of her hands.

Her mother's voice - or some syrupy, drawling version of it that Astrid had only encountered today - rose above the din. "Shockley..." The woman drummed scrubbed-clean fingernails against the frame of the wagon, and a single eyebrow curved upward on her forehead. The pasty thug's responding smile was crooked, like it it had been dropped and fractured several times, and sneering. Her mother continued. "I must confess... to some intrigue. How did your leader inspire such... devotion?"

Astrid's disgust was momentarily cast to the side upon witnessing Shockley's fractured smile dipped slightly along with his whole narrow face. His adam's apple bobbing somewhat, he gazed off into some invisible corner. "The boss- well, he takes care of us, so we take care of him." Catching Astrid's cold and calculating gaze on him, he readjusted himself back into a tense-shouldered sneer. "And we'll take care of you ladies as well, of course," he cackled. "So I hope you both return the favor."

Only Astrid knew her mother well enough to see how her mother's smile didn't quite stretch across her whole face or reveal as many teeth. "Of course," she purred. After a eyebrow wiggle and a nod, Shockley swung around to chatter with some other men in his company. Astrid watch her mother's sultry expression and posture dropped for just a moment. She tossed her wrist and rolled her eyes. Shockley's explanation of the power dynamic of the thugs had yielded little in the way of actual illumination.

Whatever their boss does for these men, Astrid thought, it must be impressive.

Though her legs ached from hours of sitting without moving, Astrid refused to budge. Her mother had dragged her to a cooking pot in the center of camp, and Astrid planted herself on a log wide enough to work as a stool but not so wide that she'd be forced to share it. She affixed her eyes to the fire, hammered her body into stone, and focused only on listening. Even as the fire bloomed brighter, the chatter of unknown names and strange locations turned to topics of food and nocturnal company, and the sun abandoned Astrid in its creeping path to the horizon, she remained still.

Every proposition or verbal prodding from the men had gone ignored. Astrid kept her eyes pinned to the fire, even when its light left residual spots on her eyes when she blinked, but she knew her mother was shooting her glares quickly masked by fake-fond laughter. After a few attempts to rile Astrid and pull her into the conversation - where all attempts were met with silence - her mother gave up and graciously hoarded all attention for herself.

Astrid tuned it all out, letting voices fade into buzzing background noise. Weariness had wrapped itself around her for too long. All information bounced off her skull. She couldn't take anything else in.

Judging by her comments and insinuations, her mother had no intention of spending the night alone. This would have inspired hope in Astrid, twisted as it may be, that she might be left unsupervised. Or at least supervised by someone who underestimated her.

No hope could sprout. Every conversation where her mother graced her with mention of her daughter's existence ended with the same insinuation: Astrid would not be spending the night alone either. All the men seemed intent on letting their boss "have his due time" with her.

Something finally changed some time after a grizzled fellow hung a rusted pot above the fire, and Astrid tensed every muscle and forced her gaze still on the pot in order to ignore how her stomach seized and growled. The din of the camp swelled from a point beyond Astrid's back, and Astrid strained her ears and quieted her mind. It seemed like the thrumming voices were being pulled toward a specific location.

She let her peripherals find Shockley, sauntering up to the pot, prodding at its orange contents with a metal prong, and announcing, "Boss's back."

"I'm anxious to meet him," Astrid's mother purred.

"And you will, lovely Gothel, you will," Shockley said, and that broke Astrid's determination. She barely kept her jaw tight as she looked between Shockley and her mother.

In all their years together - despite repeated pestering that was halted by scolding and eventually terminated by a screaming tirade - her mother had never told Astrid her actual name.

Was that it? Gothel? Or was that a disguise her mother pulled onto herself like the many insincere faces of love she'd shown Astrid throughout her life?

She'd let herself get distracted, and her thoughts were violently jarred when Shockley wrapped clammy fingers around Astrid's forearm and violently jerked her to her feet. "Let's go!" he chirped.

Astrid stumbled forward before digging her toes into the dirt. Now that she'd released her gaze from the fire, the leader's abode loomed rather obviously. The fabric stretched across a fairly large area, and it seemed like it was composed of several pieces of large fabric carefully stilted up - as opposed to the single large sheets clumsily propped up for the other men's resting places.

Shockley yanked her again, too forcefully for her to resist with any success. His strength didn't keep her from trying to break away or at least halt their path to the giant fabric structure.

A tall, burly fellow with thick reddish braids resumed Shockley's position at the cooking pot. He raised wiry eyebrows. "Can't he see her just fine out here?"

Every crooked tooth was unveiled in Shockley's smile. "Wanna surprise him."

A noise burst through Astrid's teeth - a grunt or a whimper, she couldn't be sure. She twisted her arm out of Shockley's grip, only for him to grab her other wrist and finally drag her through the gap in the fabric.

It was sparse - if Astrid could accurately judge the interior decorating customs of fabric dwellings, which was doubtful. Various candles in diverse stages of melting had been scattered about the room to provide a honeyed scent and warm, fluttering light. In the corners sat a sizeable chest and a simple mattress. Faded rugs splayed across the otherwise bare floor. At the center of the room, a thick wooden table sat at the foot of a wide bed piled high with furs. It sent shivers tumbling through Astrid, who huffed and growled as she fought against Shockley.

His gaze was on her chains, dragging from her wrists out the door. Shockley clicked his tongue. "Boss isn't a fan of metal chains. Rope will have to do."

Rope, she could work with. Rope was far easier to manipulate and escape. So Astrid, predicting how Shockley would react, protested all the louder. "No!" she cried out, only to have a hand slapped over her mouth. She spat on it. The next person to attempt forcing her silence would be bitten.

Shockley swore and drew back his hand into a flat, open palm. Astrid glared at it, as if that made a difference, but Shockley dropped his hand into a fist at his side. "You're not my merchandise to punish," he informed her, for once not sneering or cackling at her. "Not yet, anyway."

She fought down the next childish instinct to bare her teeth at him, instead doing her best to shoot daggers with her eyes.

Conveniently, Shockley had circles of rope coiled on his belt-loops. He made quick work of binding Astrid's wrists together, even more tightly than the metal cuffs that he somehow managed to release from Astrid's wrists. The rugs muted the sound of iron clattering onto the floor.

But... he didn't tie her to anything. Astrid's furtive scanning of the room was not lost on Shockley, who pulled his grin back to his lips and wagged a finger at her. "Don't bother, girl. Your mistress has informed me of your escape attempts. I'll have men stationed around the camp. Around the tent too, until the boss gets here."

So the fabric abodes were called tents. The discovery was a fleeting spark drowned in a deluge of rising horror.

Shockley's laugh crackled, and he took three swinging steps through the gap in the fabric and out of the tent.

Astrid scampered around the room. She flicked the trunk open with her toes, and dug through the clothing inside: no sharp objects. She scanned the tabletop: nothing there of use. She nudged the single chair: nothing that could cut her rope or her captor. Another frantic turn about the room, and still no-

Something flashed in the candlelight, and Astrid sunk to the ground beside the large bed. On the floor, under the head of the bed, lay a meticulously polished dagger.

She wasted no time on celebration. Her foot dragged the dagger out from its hiding place into the middle of the floor. Astrid dropped down and rolled onto her side, with her back to the dagger. Reaching slowly, her fingers mercifully found the hilt first. Their tentative journey determined the direction of the blade and grasped the hilt tight. She knew the blade would be pointing at her lower back - a dangerous but necessary angle. Doing her best to saw without fumbling, Astrid rubbed the blade against the rope, pausing ever so briefly every few seconds to yank her wrists apart as a test of the rope's give. She was slowly making progress. The breath built within her, begging her to yield with a sigh of relief, but Astrid couldn't spare a fraction of her energy on an early celebration.

Outside, the din of boisterous had rumbled louder and louder as it crept closer and closer to the leader's tent. Astrid didn't bother straining to hear Shockley's self-congratulatory yet utterly sycophantic soliloquy, though a new voice's occasional interruption sent the crowd into cheers and howls.

Sweat on her palms made the dagger harder to grasp, but she struggled on. That new voice must belong to the leader.

With one final yank, the rope severed. Astrid gasped before biting down hard on her lips, enough that her tongue tasted phantom blood. She chucked the shards of rope deep beneath the mattress, grabbed hold of the dagger, and clenched her wrists together behind her back. Backing up, she stood as close as she could to the back of the tent without disturbing the folds. The last thing she wanted was a thug stationed outside to barge in and foil her plans.

More cheers roared outside the front of the tent, and Astrid tried her best to soothe the nerves ripping her apart inside.

"Lads, I am- well, you know!" The new voice called, and the crowd exploded in laughter. "I would spend all night thanking you for this, but obviously I have some important things to attend to!" Astrid's hearing fluctuated, and all she could hear were the crowd's whoops echoing madly around her mind.

The fabric fluttered.

Astrid schooled her face into frozen terror.

A meaty hand reached through.

Astrid bent her knees and her back.

A tall, burly man slid through the curtain, still facing the mob outdoors as his laughter spilled out over his admirers. Astrid had predicted he'd be large, but her predictions had not accounted for the extent of his robust sturdiness, clothed in a variety of animal hides she had no doubt he'd collected personally. Even with her newly acquired weapon-

There couldn't be any blood left in her fingers, tightly gripping the dagger. She would fight to the death.

The leader dropped the folds of the opening, and his entire demeanor dropped with them. His head tipped down as his shoulders sagged. His laughter petered out naturally, but it affected the men outside far more than it seemed to affect him, judging by their whoops and jeers.

His voice - no longer boisterous, devoid of cheer - spoke again. Softly, no matter how impossible that seemed. "Whatever they paid you, I'll pay you double."

Astrid's jaw dropped. She stuttered out, "Wh-wha-"

Still not turning to face her, the man didn't let her spill out the full jumbled question. "I'll pay you double your normal rate. Say that you had a wild night, imply a few things- but spend your night on that mattress. I've ensured it's of high quality."

Her fingers nearly dropped the weapon as she fumbled with a hundred questions. Only one - a useless one - managed to fully form and stumble out of her. "Who... are you?" Because whoever she'd planned on meeting, surely this couldn't be him.

She stared at his hand as it reached up to rub at his face. The man groaned out his answer: "I'm the leader of this camp. Eret, son of Eret... at your service."

Astrid glared at the back of his head. That tells me absolutely nothing.

She took a step forward that the rug muffled entirely. She'd already committed to this plan, and she certainly didn't trust him. She'd have to stab him.

HICCUP

You'd think a three-week coma would leave me feeling way more rested. Who knew?

Hot water rushed over his shoulders as he sunk down, and Hiccup tipped his head back and sighed at the wondrous burn. Carefully, he rested his skull on the edge of the bath. The steam wafted across his skin and curled through his hair. Humming under his breath, he closed his eyes.

Hiccup had made a genuine attempt to find Flynn Rider immediately after learning his identity, but Cass - as he should have expected - dragged him back to his room, shoved him into bed, and yelled at him to sleep. Hiccup would not be admitting Cass was right out loud, not by any means. So he privately conceded that yes, sleep was probably a good choice. This "Flynn Rider" guy could wait. After that coma, Hiccup had woken up to learn he'd lost a limb, been nearly assassinated, and would have to partake in an upcoming civil war. All this, and he'd began concocting his most elaborate escape plan yet. All before dinner.

Fine. Cass was right. He'd needed those hours of sleep. All thirty-one of them.

Frankly, he'd probably tumble back into bed right after this cleaning.

His polite but - as always - awkward inquiries yielded the discovery that twice servants had scrubbed him clean during his dallying in the fun hobby of being in a coma. That discovery led to his inability to look any of the servants in the eye on his quest to the royal sauna.

Who did it?

Don't think about it.

Cerak? He cared for me when I was a baby. That wouldn't be too humiliating, if it was Cerak.

What if it was Irla?

Nope. Don't think about that. Nope.

It probably was Irla.

I am choosing to believe it was Cerak. Nice, wrinkly, grandfatherly old Cerak.

Jarl Corran's marriage to Alyse had proven fruitful - if not in the realm of children then at least in the realm of health. Alyse's nobly-born but immensely practical parents had insisted their youngest daughter receive extensive training in healing and medicine. A week after Corran and Alyse's wedding, she had endeared herself to the country by leaping into the throngs of a poorly-contrived but bloody failed deposition. He'd heard the tale every year: Alyse, tying up her long dark hair, stabbing an attacker in the leg, and setting three warriors' splints within a matter of minutes.

Once Hiccup had awoken from that three-week sleeping marathon and cleared his head of the subsequent fog, he'd recognized the blend of herbs and texture of bandages as Alyse's preferred methods.

She'd taken Irla as her apprentice a few moon cycles ago.

I always get the best luck.

"Hiccup?"

Hearing his nickname echo against the walls of the sauna was disconcerting for a moment, even though obviously he'd recognized the voice as Fishlegs. Pressing the heels of his palms into his eyes, Hiccup sighed. "Hey, Fish," he croaked.

The door swung open, and Fishlegs tiptoed into the room with all the stealth and hush of a Gronkle. "I looked for you everywhere."

Hiccup rolled his shoulders backwards a few times to enjoy the burn of the movement. He said nothing.

"Glad to hear you're awake! Alive! Not dead!" Fishlegs chirped. The groan of the bench against the wall told Hiccup that Fishlegs had perched upon it Even though the room was too clogged with steam and shadows for Fishlegs to see much of Hiccup in the water, Hiccup preferred that the librarian sit rather than just hovering while Hiccup enjoyed the sauna.

"I'm also glad I'm not dead," Hiccup said. He slid his hand down from his knee to the stump of his leg. A small price to pay. The fullness of his situation hit him again, reminding him of what he owed. Twisting around, Hiccup offered a weak smile before saying, "Fish, you saved my dragon. Thank you." He had to clip his words down to what little he could force out through a throat swelling with emotion.

"Uh- well- you know- for science, right?" Fishlegs stuttered. "And it's not like scholars have had ample opportunity to study the Night Fury! Killing it on sight would be wasting so much possibility." His voice squeaked higher and higher, crescendo with his anger. "I mean, come on! They didn't even stop to look at the scale pattern varieties, the eye shape, that clear fluctuation in pupil size-" Fishlegs huffed. "There's so much to learn."

Another wan smile crossed Hiccup's face. "You still think I'm crazy for befriending a dragon, don't you?"

"Oh, absolutely."

"Good, just checking." Hiccup couldn't contest it. He was definitely crazy.

A pause. Then Fishlegs slowly ventured the question: "And... you can ride it too?"

"Yup."

"Oo-okay! Yeah! So I have... a few thousand questions I'd like to ask you."

"Naturally."

"So how exactly- no, don't answer that, I need to have your answer properly cataloged, and all my supplies are in the library, but oh, Thor, I'm so curious-"

"Fish."

Pausing at the interruption, Fishlegs's gesturing with his hands abated. "Um. Yeah?"

"I need your help." Hiccup's voice cracked. His eyes traced the beams of the sauna holding the roof above them, waiting in the resulting silence.

Fishlegs took a moment before asking, "With what?"

"I need to break Toothless out."

"Toothless?"

"The dragon."

"You named it?" Fishlegs screeched.

"Fish."

"Are you insane?"

"We've already established that."

"Fine then! Do you think I'm insane?"

"No-"

"So then how can you possibly ask-"

Hiccup sighed, and Fishlegs dropped the rest of his sentence into obscurity. "I'd like to believe that you'd do the right thing if given the opportunity," Hiccup said. He lifted his hands to gaze absently at his now pale and pruny fingers. "Would you?"

"I mean, yeah, but... unleashing a Night Fury? Come on."

Crushing his hair in his fingers, Hiccup hummed to himself before replying. The heat of the sauna and his own lingering fatigue made words spin around in his head. "I trained him. It'll be fine."

"A dragon trained by a crazy person? Yeah, of course it'll be fine. Silly me."

"You need to stop being friends with me. Your sarcasm is getting too powerful." Twisting around fully, Hiccup folded his arms on the edge of the sauna and perched his chin on his overlapping wrists. "Come on, Fish. It's a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to study dragons up close. To understand their behavior on a deeper level."

Fishlegs paused twiddling his thumbs in his lap to squint down at Hiccup. "You say that like I'm going to be interacting with more than one dragon."

That was the plan, but Fishlegs didn't need to know everything yet. Hiccup shrugged. "Eventually."

"Eventually?"

"Peace, Fish. With the rebels... and with the dragons. Isn't that the goal?"

Frowning, Fishlegs studied Hiccup. "I thought the goal was to get rid of all our enemies."

Back in his time as Gobber's apprentice, Hiccup had stared at so many contraptions and weapons with a gut feeling that some small piece or curve was off, but that twinge of discomfort served as his only indicator of anything being wrong. So he recognized that discomfort now too. His eyes slid shut as his entire body sunk. He couldn't pinpoint what he didn't like about Fishleg's words, but he also didn't have time to sift through it all right now.

Fishlegs scratched at his forehead and swung his legs back and forth. "Hiccup, I don't know."

"What's holding you back?"

"Uh," Fishlegs whined, "Isn't this... treason? I think liberating a dragon from the jarls' dungeons would be considered treason."

Rather than point out how often Fishlegs had covered for Hiccup's own escapades, Hiccup sucked in a breath and gritted his teeth. Fishlegs spooked easily. Reminding him of all the rules he'd already technically broken would only scare Fishlegs away from the whole endeavor.

He was asking Fishlegs to enter a position of uncertainty.

Hiccup's mind offered up fresh memories: Astrid glaring at him, shoving a frying pan into his face, tugging the hood of her cloak further over her forehead, sprinting away from him and Toothless. She'd only started to truly trust him when he'd revealed his own vulnerabilities to her - when he made an effort to put them on equal ground.

"I... I need Toothless." Hiccup pushed away from the wall and tilted his head back up to gaze into the shadows of the roof above. "I never had to be anyone but myself around him. With everyone else, I was the local weirdo, or the jarl's failure of an heir. With Toothless, I'm just- I'm just me." And even then, that doesn't feel like enough. Hiccup paused, but Fishlegs seemed to be listening, though Hiccup couldn't bring himself to glance over and check.

The water curled around him, and he took comfort in the way it flowed through his fingers as he continued. "He needs me too. I take care of him. You saw his tail fin, right?"

"Yeah. You... you made that?"

"I did, and I'll show you the prototypes and diagrams." His toes curled from the effort of dropping his head and looking at Fishlegs's pinched face. "Toothless doesn't attack unless provoked or endangered. He and I have what might be the first dragon-human bond in Berk's history. For Thor's sake, I might be one of the few humans who understands the physics of flight. Fish. Come on. Tell me all of that doesn't fascinate you." A dry chuckle dropped from Hiccup's mouth. "Every day, you're surrounded by records of everyone else's discoveries. At some point, you've got to start adding some of your own."

For once, Fishlegs remained still and unreadable. Hiccup felt a breath held tight in his chest, and he let it go as his fingernails scratched through his hair. He might still be able to pull this off without Fishlegs, but it would be far more difficult, especially if he couldn't get the infamous Flynn Rider on board-

"Fine."

Hiccup started. "What?"

Rolling his eyes, Fishlegs pushed himself up off the bench and shambled to the door. "I'll help you, against my own trepidations."

"Thank you, Fish."

"Don't thank me, Hiccup," Fishlegs retorted as he pushed the curtain back and faded away with the tendrils of escaping steam. "Thank science. And my insatiable curiosity."

Hiccup dropped backwards and plunged himself fully into the hot water. As the water above made his vision wobble, he let himself hope that Flynn Rider would be easier to convince.

"Hm. Let me think about it. Hm. I've thought about it! No!"

Either exhaustion or Flynn Rider was responsible for Hiccup's festering headache, and at this point Hiccup would be pinning all blame on the criminal lounging in front of him.

Yellow light from the lantern swinging above their corner booth illuminated Flynn Rider's annoyingly angular face. With the tousled hair, toned muscles, and sharp cheekbones, Rider possessed the exact physique that made insecure men painfully aware of their own shortcomings.

Hiccup definitely wasn't insecure. No. Definitely not.

He resisted the urge to cross his arms over his chest and push himself into the shadowy corner of the booth. Instead, Hiccup cocked an eyebrow at Rider. "Go on."

Flynn Rider had settled back comfortably - worn leather boots on the table, hands behind his head, smile alight on his face, eyes closed - but one eye popped open at Hiccup's words. "What else do you want? I said no! There's your answer!"

"Well, you must have a reason, don't you?"

"Eh. Just don't feel like it." His smile deepened with a dramatic sigh.

Hiccup drummed his fingers on the table in a slow beat. "I see." Everything he'd observed so far had him believing that Flynn Rider loved to talk. So Hiccup tapped the table with one hand, rolled his wrist to watch beer slosh around his mug, and waited.

Though Mulchbucket's and the Moldy Cabbage far surpassed the Meridian in terms of noise and chaos, the silence between Hiccup and Rider did not extend to the rest of the bar. A few groups, none more than five in number, murmured and clinked mugs at the low benches and tables. At the bar, the tender hummed a seaman's lullaby as he scrubbed the counter. This, Hiccup realized with sagging shoulders, was about as quiet as his life would ever be for the foreseeable future.

Using his peripherals, he scoped out Flynn Rider. Intentionally or not, Rider's behavior revealed a few key aspects of his personality. He certainly had an ego - or at least projected one - based on the fact that he'd kept Hiccup waiting at least half an hour in this booth before sauntering out with a yawn and a wide grin. Most of his body language seemed perfectly smooth and exaggerated, in fact, which left Hiccup suspicious about just how much care and forethought Flynn Rider invested in showcasing the persona of a smooth, confident career criminal.

Funnily enough, though, Rider's love of talking and flair for the dramatic, whether real or contrived, explained why Snotlout was so besotted with him. With luck, both men also harbored an infintessimally small amount of patience.

If Hiccup had gained nothing else in his years spent in the fortress living as Berk's biggest disappointment, he had at least gained the ability to read people fairly well. The more disingenuous they came, the quicker they were to pick apart.

Hiccup's watchful vision revealed the smile on Flynn Rider's face gradually dripping down into a grimace. Internally, Hiccup counted down: Five. Four. Three. Tw-

Flynn sprung forward, swinging his legs back under the table so he could perch his elbows on either side of his own mug of ale. "You see, kid, in order for me to get involved, the reward needs to outweigh the risk. And in this case... the risk is about 200 punds."

"For the record, Toothless is only 150 punds-"

"The fact that you named it adds 50 to the risk."

Through the thickening fog of the headache, Hiccup surveyed his prospects. If Flynn Rider didn't agree to help him, Hiccup couldn't expect help from Snotlout, Tuffnut, or Ruffnut. His only ally in breaking Toothless out would be Fishlegs. Nobody else he knew had the willingness to go against the jarls and the skill set to be of use in this particular endeavor.

He needed Flynn Rider for this to work.

"You were willing to break into the castle for the crown of the lost princess. How is this different?" Hiccup knew the answer, but he needed to set this up properly.

Scoffing, Flynn tapped the reasons out on his fingers. "One! That was a small, inanimate object. Not a dragon. Two! Sneaking a large creature out of a building is very, very different than smuggling a small item. Three! That crown far outweighed - metaphorically speaking, of course - the risk." He chuckled at Hiccup and finished by saying, "Whatever you could reward me with, kid, is not worth the risk in this situation."

Rider only had a few years on Hiccup at absolute maximum, but at this point, pissing contests wasted indispensable time. Hiccup leaned forward and stared into Riders's face filled with carefully crafted boredom. Raising both eyebrows, Hiccup said, "What if the reward was the same?"

"The sa-" Shock flickered across Rider's brow before the thief smoothed his face back into amusement. "Nice try, but you don't have the crown."

This was true, but Flynn Rider did not need to know that. Hopefully Hiccup would devise a way to retrieve the crown before Rider ever comprehended its absence.

"Really?" Hiccup chuckled. "You're telling the future heir to the throne of Berk that he doesn't have access to the lost princess's crown?"

He almost wished Rider had been drinking his ale, just so Hiccup could watch a classic spit-take in action. Instead, he had to settle for Flynn Rider freezing, eyes wide and mouth pinched into a small "O".

When the man's pupils flickered toward the door, Hiccup took a sip out of his own mug. "Relax. I don't have any interest in turning you in to my father. Already made a deal with Snotlout and the twins to get them off the hook for the whole thing." He wiped his mouth on the back of his wrist before smirking at Rider and continuing: "Same offer's on the table for you, but since you were clearly the mastermind of the last heist, I figured you might appreciate some additional monetary compensation."

Finally, duality emerged on Rider's face - flickering between pride at Hiccup recognizing him as the mastermind versus concern that he was now in as much of a metaphorical corner as he was in a physical one. Rider's mouth balanced a narrow beam between a grin and a grimace, and his thumbs twiddled faster and faster on the table.

With a long, drawn-out sip of ale, Rider's body language settled. His brow raised as he swung his eyes back and forth across Hiccup's face. Pressing his mouth into a smooth line, Flynn Rider replied, "You drive a hard bargain."

He pulled backward only so he could slide his entire arm forward, hand open. Hiccup grasped it and shook it.

In the blink of an eye, Flynn Rider was bouncy and perky again, with a wide grin. He dropped back into his seat to resume his earlier lounging. "Eller," he called to the bartender, "bring another round for me and my associate!" Steepling his fingers together, he chuckled. Much more quietly, Rider said, "I gotta admit, I love planning a good heist."

Author's Notes:

Hey, y'all. My dog got murdered, I chopped off all my hair, two different family members fell and got seriously injured, another family member is in hospice care with brain cancer, I took a vow of lifetime celibacy, I started writing a novel, and now I'm in yet another quarter-life crisis.

(jazz hands) This is what we've got so far.

I wish I could promise you a regular updating schedule, but alas. It is not to be. I did miss you all, I promise. Hopefully this chapter was worth at least some of the wait.

If you followed me on Tumblr, just know I had to create a new blog. Same name: bannisterroadkill

Footnotes:
1. As per ususal, you can find a map on my tumblr if you need to visualize Berk.

2. The website ScandinaviaFacts helped me learn about Viking bathing procedures. Because I'm sure you were all wondering, right?

3. You may have noticed that Toothless is listed as being 150 "punds". A website run by The Viking Answer Lady states that Vikings used punds in weight measurements (equivalent to about 12 modern pounds).