The Raveling Chapter 3, a how to train your dragon fanfic

UPDATE 9/19/22: Hey dudes. Sorry no updates. But I heard a rumor that this website is on its way to a slow death. So. If you wanna download this and The Tangling, do it. I will still be updating this thing here as long as I can, but I will definitely also be updating it on Archive of Our Own. You can follow the story there. I'll also be posting updates and whatever on Tumblr (bannisterroadkill). Anyways, the hiatus remains, but I figured you deserved at least this warning.

Chapter 3

ASTRID

Her lungs burned, and from the way her mother was wheezing, Astrid could guess her mother wasn't doing much better.

How long they'd been running, in what direction they'd been running, if any of their efforts were keeping them safe - Astrid knew nothing. The trees formed a blanket over their heads, so she couldn't tell whether they were running alongside the mountain range or away from it. At least the relative evenness of the ground indicated they hadn't run up toward the peaks.

The cracking of twigs and branches, the squelching of mud between their toes, the startled creatures sprinting from their path, the rustling of leaves, and the chatter of birds all masked any potential indication of the Whispering Death tailing them. Astrid felt something slice her foot open, and she finally dropped to the ground. Her mother welcomed the idea and collapsed at her side. Together they knelt in the mud, wheezing as their lungs grappled for air. Over their panting, Astrid strained for sounds of attack. She heard none.

The ground soaked through her undergarments to dampen her knees, so she didn't bother an attempt at preserving her earlier bathing efforts. Instead, sinking her fingernails deeper into the mud, she wheezed out the healing song. Gradually, the glow reached and erased the slicing, oozing burn she felt on her feet - likely a cut, but she hadn't bothered to check. Other scratches lacing her calves stung before disappearing in the weight of the warmth. At her side, her mother groaned and rubbed at her ankle. She'd tripped during the escape and landed on her ankle rather than the sole of her shoe. Astrid rolled over to sit on a log, just as moist as the ground, and she tilted her face to the leafy canopy above.

"Whispering Death," she gasped.

"What?" Her mother swung up to her feet.

"Hi-" She took a breath. "He told me about it. He... He knew a lot about dragons. It was a Whispering Death, back there."

The woman grimaced, delicately curling her fingers to pull wayward curls out of her vision so that she could peer back in the direction from whence they came. Astrid briefly relished the lack of a response before her mother tossed her head, sniffed, and said, "Well, at least he was good for something."

Astrid shot her leg out and kicked her mother in the shin. With a screech, the woman stumbled backward against a thick, mossy tree trunk. "Astrid!"

Yanking her hair out of a short tree's grasp, Astrid jumped to her own feet. "How dare you," she snarled. Her eyes immediately fell to the unattended chain still attached to her wrist, but her mother's reflexes proved just as quick. The woman's hand flashed from her shin to the end of the chain. Astrid lunged forward, but a yank from her mother disrupted Astrid's momentum. Instead of falling onto her mother with fingernails readied to claw, Astrid fell stomach-down back into the mud. In seconds, her mother had a knee on her back and cuffs on both Astrid's wrists. Astrid lifted her chin up and struggled, an exercise in futility. She unleashed every curse she knew across the forest floor until her mother dropped down and slapped a hand over Astrid's lips.

"Insolent girl," she hissed. "You won't make even the smallest effort to be civil anymore, will you?"

Astrid spat into her hand. Her mother whipped her fingers back with a shriek.

"We're covered in mud," Astrid snarled as she squirmed, still reaping no good fruits from her efforts.

The trees must have shifted above to allow a patch of dim light through their leafy fingers. Astrid saw her mother's shadow on the ground in front of her, waving her hand frantically to get Astrid's spit off. The girl snorted. After wiping her hand on the back of Astrid's chemise, her mother sat on her calves. Astrid heard her loud, laborious sigh.

"Luckily for me, I happen to have a backup plan," the woman muttered.

Eying the rags that once comprised her dress, nearly shredded to pieces but still clinging to the chains, Astrid grumbled, "Does it involve getting me a new dress?"

Her mother sniffed. "As a matter of fact, yes, it does." Astrid heard her grunt as she swung back to a standing position. Then, with a yank, Astrid was pulled onto her feet. Turning, she watched her mother curl her lip as she surveyed Astrid's appearance. "You do need a good cleaning," the woman muttered. After yanking Astrid's arms behind her head and wrapping the girl in her own hair, she grimaced again at her daughter's appearance. Then she pivoted sharply and began walking. "Let's go."

Astrid followed, now accustomed enough to the limited mobility that she could maintain a relatively good pace. Noting that her mother hadn't managed to preserve the blindfold - but certainly she had enough cloth scraps to fashion a new one - Astrid kept her mouth tightly closed and offered no resistance. She would have to rely on her mother's sense of direction to get them out of the dense thickets of forest. Astrid didn't trust her own navigational skills enough to attempt an escape. Not that she had ever had much faith in finding a safe haven in her previous escape attempts, but at least beforehand she'd been fully clothed.

They traveled for hours burdened with heavy, wet air that left Astrid's locks plastered to her slick forehead and shoulders. Breathing seemed more difficult, she found, in this thick air that clung oppressively to her skin. A few paces ahead, her mother's groans of displeasure only increased in frequency, volume, and dramatics. On top of the strange, stifling weather making every action intensely laborious, her mother's hair curled into frizz and face powder mixed with sweat to dribble down her face.

Astrid tapped into the old skill of tuning her mother's whining out, a talent she'd honed on her mother's bad hair days in past years. Instead, Astrid took stock of the shadows. Investigation in her childhood taught her shadows responded to light sources, even dim ones. Watching her tower's shadow throughout the seemingly endless days revealed the relationship between sun and shadow. In the brief breaks of greenery above, she could see that her own was just a few steps before her, hunched and bulky. Astrid and her mother began the walk with the well-obscured sun behind them, but as the hours trudged by, Astrid's shadow shrunk as the sun reached its peak.

More than timing, the shadows also, she found, revealed direction. As the sun climbed to the center of the sky, Astrid tracked the shadows shrinking into the trees. She and her mother seemed to be for the most part following the sun's trajectory into the west.

Astrid muted her sigh of frustration as best she could, so as to avoid any further notice from her loudly complaining mother. If Astrid had only thought to track shadows before her escapade to see the lanterns, maybe everything could have been avoided.

Phantoms of dancers spun before her, and a nasally voice at her side joined in the crowd shouting a song of dancing and dreaming.

She'd never have met him.

But then, he'd still be alive.

Astrid didn't bother fighting her mother when shoved into the river. She dug her toes into the soil and waded around to find a patch where her hair would around her instead of slipping downstream with the current. Clutching a rag fashioned from her old dress - what little they'd managed to salvage of the garment that wasn't already filthy - she began scrubbing at her skin again. The process proved easier than it had been a few hours ago. Even after the cabin's collapse and fleeing the area, her skin still harbored far less dirt and grime than the two weeks' worth she'd polished away earlier.

A few paces away, her mother set on her own appearance with a determined scowl. Astrid was meticulous about her appearance, but not to the point of obsession the way her mother had always been. Perfectly curved nails, a glowing but not shining complexion, tediously powdered cheeks and eyes, flawless nail-beds - all steps that her mother devoted herself to with an unforgiving zeal.

Ignoring her mother's protests, Astrid twisted her locks and wrung them out with already wrinkling fingers working in quick, brutal motions. Some of the leaves, grass, and twigs had already dislodged themselves from Astrid's hair and floated away down the gentle river's path. After watching brown-tinged water gush out of her hair enough times to earn Astrid's nod, the girl slid her hands down the now-unwound tresses to pick at any bits of debris still clinging to the golden strands.

Nodding again when she could find no other remnants of forest in her hair, Astrid grumbled, "It would be easier to braid it." A flash of fluffy brown hair in her fingers, and bright-red ears peeking out- she shuddered and banished the memory to somewhere that her nightmares would eventually feast on.

"Absolutely not-"

"It would be easier to braid it," Astrid repeated, in a monotone this time. Her hands were already fumbling through the pattern the three girls had taught her. With heavy, sopping-wet hair sliding through the water, and her wrists still chained together with only a few inches of links to separate them, it took her a good fifteen minutes to work through the lopsided braid. Her mother stood watching the entire time, not pausing in plucking leaves out of her own curly dark tresses, and not hesitating to scold whenever Astrid's hands moved too rapidly or too jerkily. Her mother's words did not shift any of Astrid's movements even in the slightest degree.

Finally the woman slapped Astrid's hands away, delicately looped the strands around her own fingers, and began unraveling the braid. "At least make it look presentable," she hissed.

Astrid returned to scraping the rag against her neck and shoulders. "What does that matter?"

"Appearance always matters." Her mother began re-braiding with even, delicate motions that left a loose and balanced plait in her wake. "Especially now." When a breeze drifted across Astrid's skin, she only barely contained the shudder. Instead, she stilled herself completely as her mother's fingers arrived nearly to the conclusions of Astrid's hair. The girls in the city had procured a length of yarn to keep the braid secured, but Astrid watched with grimacing approval as her mother tucked the unbraided ends through the loops in the braid. The woman tugged the braid gently, but enough for both women to feel that the braid held secure. Astrid trained her gaze on the ends and replayed her mother's motions in her mind until she understood the method and determined that she could replicate it herself in the future.

Her chemise fluttered in the water, and Astrid dipped her hand into the river again just to feel how the water pulled through the gaps between her fingers. The ocean had dragged the water too, but in such a different way. Then again, she'd seen the ocean perhaps once, weeks ago. What did she know of water? Up until now, she and her mother had only encountered wispy streams, where the water had giggled and chattered. In this river, the water hummed and hushed. It weighed down and tugged at her new braid, teasing her to follow its path.

Astrid instead shoved her legs through the water's pull to the shore, her mother flanking her closely. A good while - perhaps an hour - before reaching the river, her mother had ripped a strand from Astrid's old dress and gagged Astrid, who was too flummoxed to put up a fight. Then she'd heard the clamor of animals whose noises were only vaguely familiar from her brief forays into the farmland surrounding the capital city. A farm, then. Her mother had wrapped Astrid against a tree, disappeared for too few minutes for Astrid to successfully wriggle free, and returned with two clearly stolen and heavily-patched dresses. Her spoils hung now on low branches just a few feet from the river's edge.

Finally reaching the land and feeling the river reluctantly relinquish her limbs, Astrid struggled ashore. She stepped gingerly, grimacing at the dirt sticking to her wet feet, but dirtying couldn't be helped. Her mother invaded Astrid's personal space, bent down, and began wrapping chains and hair around Astrid's feet. Astrid grimaced, but her mother's thinking was obvious - Astrid needed her wrists free to get into the dress, but her legs would have to be secured.

Unlocking the manacles with a key stored as a necklace, the woman kept a tight, fingernail-burrowing hold on Astrid as together they navigated the patchwork dress over Astrid's head and across her torso. The moment Astrid finished tying the lazy excuses for stays in clumsy knots behind her back, her mother re-shackled her wrists, pushed her against a nearby large tree, and chained Astrid against it. At least Astrid kept her arms in front of her, though they did no good locked against her chest by the chains.

She said nothing as her mother slid into her own relatively new dress. A part of her - the part that still felt like seven years old, wide-eyed and so much more desperate to please - prodded a habit forward and told Astrid to be grateful that at least her mother had removed the filthy gag from between Astrid's teeth once they'd put significant distance between themselves and the farm that had unknowingly provided these dresses for them. The streak of independence that had been with Astrid since birth won out. She would never be uttering the words "thank you" to her mother again.

Her mother, for once, didn't complain about the lack of gratitude. The gaze Astrid felt on her was cold and detached, like her mother was peering at a problem rather than her daughter. Astrid pulled her chin up, and the tree bark at her back crackled against her hair. She could ask where they were going, but why bother? Her mother would take the opportunity to prod and gripe as she had every other time Astrid asked a question.

Lip curled, the woman set about detangling her own curls. Her long fingers picked at each coil and stopped occasionally to fluff her hair. It was only when she tossed her hair back, finally satisfied, did they hear it. From a ways down their side of the river came the echoes of laughter.

Both women froze. They listened.

The laughter undoubtedly had bounded from the lips of men, adults from the sound of it. Astrid's body tensed beyond its already still position before she dropped low, bending her knees. She rolled onto the balls of her feet, waiting for her mother to unwind her chains from around the tree and drag her into the forest.

Instead, her mother whipped her dark cloak off the tree branch, swung the cloak onto Astrid's shoulders, and pulled the hood over her daughter's head. From the pile of tattered dresses they'd shed before entering the water, her mother ripped a stretch of cloth and pounced upon Astrid's mouth. Astrid couldn't even rebel properly, not wanting to risk alerting the strangers. She accepted the gag, eyes too wide to glare, and watched a smirk sprout on her mother's face. Astrid's jaw dropped. Her mother wasn't hiding. Rather, the woman was turning toward the noise. Her body fell into a gliding walk, slow and swinging her hips in a strange rotating way.

"What are you-" Astrid hissed - muffled by a gag yet still somewhat distinguishable - but her mother hushed her without turning around.

"I'll be back," the woman purred. Astrid's jaw dropped at the syllables rolling from a deeper, darker place in her mother's throat. "Just wait here." Her sniff of a laugh revealed her enjoyment of the irony.

A clump of large rocks and a lopsided fallen tree blocked their immediate view of the strangers until her mother somehow continued her glide over a log and disappeared from sight.

Astrid stilled. Trying to break free of the chains was pointless. The least she could do was stay silent and try to hear whatever was about to happen, even as her mother's footsteps grew faint. Pressing her lips tight together to soften the sound of her breath, Astrid focused all her energy on listening.

"Good afternoon, gentlemen," Astrid's mother said, her voice foreign to her daughter with its heavy femininity and drawling clarity.

The laughter of the strangers faded. Astrid gritted her teeth in concentration, which did nothing to increase the volume of the group. Wherever they were, the distance proved too great for Astrid to properly parse through their syllables.

When her mother next spoke, it too had faded into nearly indecipherable noise. Astrid barely heard "bathing" and "appearance" and "women" from her mother, but the resulting hooting and guffaws from the strangers was much easier to understand. A stripe of cold shot up her spine, and she grimaced as the chains rattled from the resulting shiver on her skin.

The next few minutes crept forward, with Astrid's mother speaking and several masculine voices replying or laughing - back and forth, with only a few words decipherable to Astrid's ears. Air brushed past skin still wet from the river, and her shivering sent rattling through the links of her chains.

When Astrid's mother's voice suddenly increased in volume, Astrid focused on the sound and heard her mother's footsteps growling louder as well. Her head snapped to the log that her mother had crossed earlier. Sporting a pleased grin, her mother reappeared.

"Good news, dear!" The woman pushed her brunette curls back with fluttering fingers before setting on Astrid's hair. "I found some fine gentlemen willing to help us!"

"Help how?" Astrid spat out, with enough practice speaking through a gag to enunciate with reasonable success.

Clicking her tongue, her mother finished wrapping Astrid's hair around her ankles and began unwinding the chains. "So ungrateful! I'm sure I've told you to never look a gift horse in the mouth."

She had told Astrid, many times, but it had never made much sense, and Astrid wasted no energy trying to decode the saying now. Opening her mouth as wide as she could to negate some effects of the gag, Astrid spit out, "What did you do, Mother?"

The woman's face immediately snapped up to loom only inches from Astrid, sneering with a curled lip. "I'm resolving the issue, Astrid," she hissed. Asrid's stomach seized, but she met her mother's narrowed gaze with her own glare. She didn't move, not even when her mother reached up and tugged farther forward the hood resting atop Astrid's head. "Come along, now."

The chains rattled in the woman's hand. Astrid rolled the stiffness from her shoulders, but her mother yielded only a second before yanking Astrid into a stumbling walk toward the sounds of the voices.

Panic flared hot, and Astrid dug her heels into the mud. Friction did not lend any assistance, and, with a growl, her mother easily yanked her forward again. Astrid tried to walk backward, only for her mother to pull even harder. Golden hair around her ankles made movement even harder for Astrid. Despite her best but futile efforts, Astrid's mother dragged her over the log and past the fallen tree - into the sunlight, and into the line of sight of the strangers.

The men at the riverbank matched every definition Astrid's mother had ever given of the word "thug". Though varying in body types, heights, and hues of skin, all three men sported thick and polished garments, a diverse array of weaponry strapped to their belts, and leering grins. One of the men, his face framed with dark, thick hair and a matching beard, seemed to be leaning on another pole-thin thug. Astrid spotted the reason immediately, even through the fugue of her panic: the dark-haired man's right leg was bloodied and bent at an unnatural angle. Regardless of his injury, his eyes matched those of his companions as the three stared at the women. Their darkened brows and slowly growing grins did not halt her mother's swift path in the slightest.

Gazes shuddered down her mother's curves and the front of Astrid's cloak, and she held her body as stiff as she could to fight off the tremors setting her heart on a fast beat. Her mother's cloak, initially a strange weight on her shoulders, was now a warm blanket sheltering her from windchill. Astrid clenched her fists so tight that her fingernails carved into her skin - which was preferred to uncontrollable shaking hands.

"Afternoon, Miss" said the tall, pole-thin man, as his ocean-wide grin displayed a chaotic array of teeth.

Any hopes Astrid may have dredged up in the back of her mind that these men would be sympathetic to her plight died. She began yanking her arms as she tried to pull away, to run, to go anywhere-

Her hood slipped off her head. Three wide-eyed gazes drowned her in air that she couldn't remember how to breathe. Her hands began to shake, because she'd made it worse. She'd made it so much worse, and she knew it.

Astrid felt her shoulders curl up near her shoulders, and she shoved them back down and squared them. Turning back to the crowd, she poured every drop of venom she could muster into her gaze and met every eye. Her spine clicked as she straightened it as tall as it could stretch. Locked together, she could feel the clamminess that enveloped both her hands.

"Will she do, gentlemen?" her mother purred.

The final man, a pasty fellow, displayed his brown-stained teeth in a too-wide smile. "I think the boss will find her more than satisfactory," he cackled, as his eyes climbed up and down Astrid's frame. Her resulting shiver was too strong to suppress. A glance at her mother bestowed no comfort; the woman too surveyed Astrid with a proud grin. Astrid's throat closed up, and she bit down hard on her lips. Her mother seemed to be inviting in the very nightmares she'd used to coax tears and fears out of Astrid as a child.

After impressed nods, the men returned their full attentions to their weaponry, bandages, and armor. Astrid kept her distance as best she could from their new companions, though the narrow-eyed smirks frequently tossed her way remained far too invasive. At her feet, the chains rattled, loudly enough that they couldn't have been missed by anyone, but nobody gave the metal links any attention or concern.

So Astrid said nothing. She could say,"I've been captured." She could say, "I don't want this."

But Astrid knew she was the only person who cared.

HICCUP

To his credit, Hiccup did try to keep his attention on Gobber's lecturing, but every flash of blond hair in the street had him craning his neck over the open counter of the blacksmith's workshop. It was foolish to let himself hope - she wouldn't be here, her mother wouldn't bring her into the city - but he'd accepted that he was always going to be foolishly hopeful when it came to Astrid. Worry gnawed at the pit in his stomach. He hoped she was alright.

He got a slap to the head for his efforts.

"Aah," he complained, batting away his old mentor's hand. "Do you know how many hits I've taken to the head recently?"

"Not enough to knock some sense into you, it seems," Gobber fired back, just as expected.

Hiccup rolled his eyes. He muttered, "I should have gotten apprenticed in medicinal herbs."

"Ha! As if any self-respecting Viking would ingest a substance you made!"

"Right, so I got access to half the city's sharpest objects instead. Makes sense."

Gobber grinned so big that his eyes squinted above its glow. "You couldn't carry most of 'em when you started," he jeered. Waving the hammer tool currently serving as his prosthetic arm at Hiccup, Gobber added, "Not that that's changed much."

A blond braid.

Hiccup jerked his body to lean backwards over the counter, but the braid belonged to a tiny girl stumbling over her too-long skirts. Dragging his gaze back to Gobber, Hiccup sighed. "'That' is me that you just gestured to."

His hands twitched. At this point in the banter, Hiccup would usually have migrated to the anvil, grabbing whatever weapon nearby in need of sharpening or strengthening and working away as he and Gobber fired back and forth at each other. His apprenticeship had ended around the time he met Toothless, but the old habits of perpetual tinkering and adjusting and creating never died out.

Nobody would ever guess how well-organized the barrel-chested swaggering grump that was Gobber could be. Taking stock of this forge, a place he could still navigate in his sleep, Hiccup felt fifteen again. Not one tool had been re-homed. Not one bench had been rearranged. He pulled his head up and to the right to see if- yup, his own workbench remained in that dimly lit corner. It housed the only clutter, covered and surrounded with tool racks and a variety of sketches, and so clearly had been left untouched.

Maybe Gobber had always expected him to come back.

A spike of pain latched onto the thought, and Hiccup's hair fluttered in the forge-heated air as he shook his head. I don't have time for any more guilt.

He glanced down at where his leg ought to be - that aggravating absence suspending all his habits. Using a cane to work in the blacksmith's headquarters seemed utterly pointless, especially with all the tasks that required two hands.

They'd both been edging around the topic at hand, and Hiccup gave a weak smile to Gobber in thanks. Beneath that weird mustache, pointy skull, massive girth, and peg leg, Gobber weighed the value of silence and patience as twice the worth of gold.

Hiccup nodded to one of the benches on the right, where Gobber had lined several prosthetic legs. "I'm guessing you measured while I was knocked out?"

"Not all of us can afford to waste time sleeping, you know," Gobber said, sauntering over to the bench. Jerking his shoulders toward a chair made of wide, sturdy planks, he ordered, "Sit."

Rolling his eyes, Hiccup limped over to the chair and swung himself down into it. This procedure was nothing new; Hiccup had witnessed dozens of prosthetic fittings in his apprenticeship. "You know I'm going to change whatever you make for me, right?" he called over his shoulder, listening to Gobber grumble as he fiddled with some final adjustments on the prostheses.

Gobber replied with one of his "Yeah, sure, whatever" grunts. His own wooden prosthesis thumped on the floor as he sauntered back to stand in front of Hiccup. Gobber dropped the two prostheses he'd grabbed from the bench onto the floor, where they leaned against the dark-wood wall. Hiccup propped his cane up beside them and then bent down to roll up the cloth of his pants. Squinting, Gobber surveyed the stump, tilting his head this way and that way. Hiccup slid his hand down his leg to run his fingers across the bumps of the lightning-bolt scars scattering out from his stump. Beneath the dark stitching, the scars flushed an angry red.

"The color will fade, but it will take years," Gobber said, and Hiccup's mind played through memories of the dozens of amputees sitting where he was now, showing their own red lightning scattered across their arms and legs. Stillness remained for a few more seconds before Gobber shrugged. "There is good news. You want to guess?"

Hiccup didn't have to guess. "I still have my knee."

Rather than tease him that he'd been paying attention all those times, Gobber just hummed and nodded, saying, "Aye, preserves a lot of your mobility. Above-knee amputations are a beast." His wooden leg swung backward to hook around a wooden stool that he dragged toward and sat on with a grunt. "And that's not the only good news. If you'd waken up earlier, we'd still have to wait to do this until your swelling went down. Looks pretty good now."

Hiccup frowned. He'd never been witness to the pre-prosthesis healing of any of the warriors who had sauntered through Gobber's doors. "How long would we usually have to wait?"

"Sometimes just under a moon cycle, sometimes well over." Gobber grimaced as Hiccup shuddered. Being awake for that long with such limits on his mobility sounded like torture.

Ambling over to a dusty corner, the blacksmith dragged out two stands holding parallel bars. Muttering under his breath, he shoved and pushed at them until they stood in front of Hiccup, looking like the rails of a bridge that stretched out beyond his foot. Gobber leaned over and grabbed one of the legs - a wooden peg much like his own. Hiccup frowned at it, which Gobber rolled his eyes at. "I knew you wouldn't like this one, but you've got to try a few different types to get a sense of what you need."

He nodded behind Hiccup. "Grab one of the sleeves."

Hiccup twisted to survey the darker wool sock-like things hanging on hooks on the wall behind him. He grabbed one that looked about average size, heard Gobber snort, and - huffing - found a smaller one. Turning back around, he pulled the sleeve onto his leg. His core broke out in tremors - it was a weird feeling, and it would likely only get stranger.

"Alright, before we get started-" Gobber ducked his head and pinned Hiccup down with his stare. "You know what I'm about to say?"

Hiccup had heard it many times. "If anything at all feels uncomfortable, even something small, I should tell you immediately."

"Aye, for once, you get to complain." Gobber shook his head. "Not that a lack of permission has ever stopped you from doing so."

"Give me that." Hiccup grabbed the leg, tugged at the straps to loosen them, and slid his leg into the socket.

It feels even weirder than the sleeve. Tightening the leather strips around his leg felt like he was strapping on a tall, heavy-soled boot.

Gobber said nothing, instead just frowning and loosening the straps ever so slightly. "Put some weight on it," he instructed. Hiccup pushed the leg down into the dirt and relaxed down into gravity. He rotated his knee and felt the peg wobble beneath him. It was secure enough that his whole leg wobbled with it. Gobber raised an eyebrow. "Well?"

Hiccup patted his hand against it as if that would help. "Socket's fine, but you're right, I don't like the leg design."

"Good about the socket," Gobber said, looking at it intently. "Still, give it a go anyway." He scooted himself and his wooden stool to the side.

Hiccup grabbed onto the wooden bars set before him and pushed himself up. He tentatively poked the peg-leg out in front of him. "Nope," he said, shaking his head.

"Put your full weight on it."

"I can already tell I don't like it!"

"For Thor's sake! I need to know if there are any painful points!"

Hiccup groaned but stepped forward in earnest with the prosthetic. He grimaced at the feeling. "Not painful, but still no thanks."

Gobber snorted. "Was that so hard?"

People with prosthetic limbs weren't in short supply in Berk, but Gobber was the only amputee that Hiccup knew well. Of course the person who would be helping fit Hiccup for a new leg would be the same person who he couldn't rightfully complain to about losing a leg. He knew Gobber's response: "At least you have all your other limbs!" It wouldn't be malicious, but it would definitely make Hiccup feel silly.

Instead of answering, Hiccup knitted his brow together and glared as he sank back down into his seat. "Give me the next one," he said, making short work of loosening the wooden leg's straps.

Hiccup was surveying his top choice in prostheses when the twins burst through the swinging doors.

"There you a-" Tuffnut's voice stopped as soon as he and his sister did, frozen. Speechless. Rare for the twins. Dragging his eyes up from the metal leg in his hands, Hiccup raised an eyebrow at their full-moon-wide stares. He could pretend he'd accepted the sudden absence of a left foot if it meant he could give the twins a hard time about it.

He heard Snotlout's wheezing and whining long before he could make out the words or hear the heavy footsteps of the thug approaching. "...ridiculous!" Snotlout wheezed. "...can't just... leave me... what are you... even good for..." He stumbled through the door and careened into the twins, shoving them aside. One hand on his knee and one on his heart to indicate to the world how hard he was breathing, Snotlout leaned over and loudly caught his breath. Hiccup rolled his eyes.

"What was that?" Snotlout demanded once he'd decided to publicly suffer enough. He waved a finger at Hiccup. "You promise me some money, spout some weird stuff about that hot blond menace, run off, and then die! And then not die! And then have some also-hot guard girl tell us to meet you here!" Snotlout glanced down and narrowed his eyes. "And then you lose a leg! What's your problem?"

Hiccup had been gearing up some fairly average-quality responses until the word "die" shot out of Snotlout's mouth. "Die? What do you mean die?"

"I'll be asking the questions!" Snotlout yelled.

From his position at one of the whetstone wheels, sharpening a pair of swords, Gobber yanked up his forge mask. "Your father decided it would be in Berk's best interest to tell everyone that the mysterious nobody Hiccup Haddock died in a dragon attack."

"He what?!" Hiccup shot to his feet, immediately realized that was a bad idea, and toppled forward. He only just managed to catch himself on the parallel beams, which were thankfully sturdy enough to hold his weight. Tuffnut and Ruffnut leaped to his sides, grabbed his arms, and dropped him back into his chair.

Hiccup grimaced. Although the help was nice, he could do without being manhandled. He opened his mouth, but Gobber beat him to it. The bolts he flung hit each twin square in the back of their skulls. Gobber ignored their yelps and called, "Always ask someone if you can help first!"

As Tuffnut scratched the back of his neck, Ruffnut cleared her throat. "It's fine," Hiccup sighed. "But yeah, ask next time." Tuffnut pointed both his fingers at Hiccup and waggled them, but Hiccup didn't have time to listen to apologies. He frowned at Gobber. "Wha- Why did Dad do that?"

Gobber grabbed his mask and slid it back onto his face, but not before offering an eye-roll and saying, "Ask our noble King Alick that question yourself. It made plenty of sense to me too."

Snotlout's pupils shrank to the size of flower seeds. "Your dad is..." He threw back his head and howled as his fingers dragged through his dark, greasy hair. "No, no, no!"

Back to their normal selves, Ruffnut and Tuffnut sunk into bows, realized they could compete, and sank into deeper and deeper bows until their dreadlocks dragged across the floor. "Your Majesty!" Tuffnut said with a serious face ruined by his twitching lips.

Hiccup would correct them that the proper term for one not yet on the throne would be "your highness" except that he absolutely hated both terms. "Don't call me that, please," he groaned. "Why do you think I never told anyone?"

"Such humility," Ruffnut intoned, having only marginally more success at holding a grin at bay than her brother was having.

"To answer your... whatever," Hiccup said, bending down to reattach his prosthesis - because even if he'd be making his own version later, he still needed to get used to the concept of walking with a fake leg, and the cane was proving a major annoyance. "I'll pay you back, Astrid is missing and still in danger, I clearly didn't die, and don't let Cass hear you calling her hot. She doesn't take well to compliments. And-" he swung his now-attached metal leg at the newcomers. "-not exactly my fault my leg is gone."

Snotlout folded his arms across his chest and stared daggers at Hiccup. "So what, you're going to have your dad execute us now?"

If Hiccup kept rolling his eyes, at the rate his luck was going, they'd probably strain. He closed his eyes, massaged them with his fingers, and sighed. "No, Snotlout, I'm not executing anyone. Gobber, can you give us a moment?"

After ripping his forge mask off his head, Gobber swung his wooden leg around so that he could join Snotlout in glaring. "You're kicking me out of my own forge?"

"Please, Gobber, I'll owe you." Hiccup was racking up debts he could only hope he could pay.

With a grunt directed at the table housing projects not yet completed, Gobber nodded before beginning his sauntering to the doors. "I'll hold you to that."

"That seems to be a common theme for everyone," Hiccup muttered, watching his mentor leave. Anchoring his elbows on his knees, Hiccup scratched at his skull and felt his entire body sag. Snotlout, Ruffnut, and Tuffnut said nothing. What would they say? Offer him a glass of water, ask him if he was alright? None of them were particularly helpful by nature, and Hiccup found himself relieved that they, at least, were staying the same.

Blinking away weary vision, Hiccup pressed forward with the barest figments of his plan. "Who made the plan for stealing the crown?"

Snotlout's chest puffed. "I did!" He seemed to realize he just admitted to stealing royal property in front of the royal family - or maybe Tuffnut's elbow in his back provided the much-needed clarity - because immediately he startled backward. "Not! I did not!"

"At least you told the truth the second time." Snotlout opened his eyes and his mouth wide in outrage, but Hiccup continued. "I know you didn't, Snotlout. There's no way you created a plan good enough to get past the defenses. Other than whoever it was who actually made the plan, I'm the only person who knows how to sneak in and out without detection. I've seen your attempts at stealth. I've seen the twins' attempts at stealth. It's not your strong suit."

Ruffnut waved a finger at him. "You want something from us, so you're going to insult us?"

"Our stealth is a blessing from Loki himself, thank you very much!" Tuffnut crowed, fists on his hips.

"Your chaos? Yes. Your stealth? No."

Ruffnut and Tuffnut took deep breaths to retort before shrugging. "I'll take it," said Ruffnut. Raising his eyebrows, Tuffnut pursed his lips, impressed, and nodded his agreement.

Hiccup looked between the three. "I'll conveniently forget you all had anything to do with the crown, but only if you help me find the person in charge of stealing it."

"Why do you want to know?" Snotlout said, leaning forward, eyes narrow.

It was Hiccup's turn to cross his arms over his chest. He raised his eyebrows and shook his head.

After a moment, Snotlout growled, "Excuse us." The three turned and huddled. Impressively, they managed to actually keep their voices low enough to be indiscernible.

"What?" Ruffnut hissed, loud. Hiccup snorted. Indiscernible to everyone involved too, apparently.

A few more seconds of muttering, flavored with the occasional "Huh?" or "What?", passed by before the trio turned to face Hiccup again.

"So we won't get in trouble if we tell you who helped us take the crown?" Snotlout reiterated with raised eyebrows.

Corran would be furious if he knew about this.

Which is why I'm never going to tell him.

Hiccup nodded.

Tuffnut lunged forward to poke him in the chest. "Swear!"

Holding up his left palm, Hiccup intoned, "I swear."

Another poke. "Swear what? Be specific!"

"I swear that if you help me, I won't tell the jarls that you all stole the crown."

Satisfied, Tuffnut pulled back to stand at his sister's side once again. He nodded at Snotlout. "Proceed."

A giant and unpleasant grin spread across Snotlout's face. "First of all, you're barely worthy to be in his presence, so we're doing you a massive favor just by telling you that he exists."

"Fascinating. What's his name?"

"He's broken into the castle at least a dozen times. According to him, he just wanted to give me the opportunity to prove I've got what it takes!"

So it was a risky plan, and Snotlout was the fall guy in case something went wrong. "Of course. And his name is?"

"Your guards aren't fast or smart enough to catch him, which is why he's one of the most infamous thieves Berk has never heard of."

"Completely makes total sense. Who are we talking about?"

"Nobody except us has any clue what he looks like. His wanted posters look nothing like him."

He just contradicted- Never mind, this is Snotlout. Low expectations. "Got it. Name?"

Snotlout paused, mouth half-open. "I... why should I tell you his name?"

"Because we already agreed I'd forget you stole the crown and wouldn't have you arrested?"

Taking a step back, Snotlout shook his head slowly. "Nah. No way. All I'll tell you is that you can find him at the Meridian. That's where he hangs out. Ask the bartender. He'll know."

Wrapping his fingers tight around the parallel bars, Hiccup pushed to his feet. Putting weight on his metal leg felt weird, but he'd already endured the lecture from Gobber on the importance of developing new walking and balancing habits. He grimaced as he dropped his weight into both of his legs, old and new. It still wasn't painful - just strange. "Not good enough. Tell me his name."

Snotlout huffed, pulling his eyes away from Hiccup's metal prosthesis. "That wasn't the deal."

Hiccup raised his eyebrows and said, "I swore that I wouldn't have you arrested if you help me. I decide what 'help' means."

Ruffnut shook a fist at the ceiling. "We forgot contract negotiations! Again!"

Tuffnut's shoulders drooped. "Loki'd," he murmured.

Nodding, Hiccup clarified, "You tell me, lead me to him, and then I'll decide if you've sufficiently helped me or not."

Fists tight at his sides, Snotlout hissed, "Fine!"

After waiting a moment, Hiccup raised his eyebrows. "Well?"

Snotlout's answer was indecipherable muttering. Ruffnut elbowed him, and Snotlout sighed, unclenched his fists, and said, "Rider. His name's Flynn Rider."

Author's Notes:

Hey.

I was just going to post this note on my writing blog, but I figured I'd hand y'all another chapter before the hiatus starts. Due to a traumatic family situation involving our beloved family dogs, I'm going to take a break from this story for a few months. I still have every intention of finishing (yeah, I know a lot of people say that), but writing about the bond of boy-and-dragon is... it's really painful right now.

How To Train Your Dragon has been in my life since 2010, through all my other worst moments. It's not going away any time soon. Neither will the stories I've created to extend the universe.

Thank you for your kind comments, and now thank you for your patience.

Footnotes:
1. Forgot to add this for the previous chapters, but Astrid's slowly improving sense of direction comes from ZenHabits.

2. The YouTube channel Silvousplaits taught me how to tie a braid without a hair tie.

3. ThoughtCo provided a nice article on their website about medieval clothing and fabrics.

4. The Amputee Coalition's Prosthetic FAQs for the New Amputee was a huge help in understanding the technical side of prostheses.

5. Jamie Gane is an adaptive athlete who runs a blog chronicling his life as an athlete with a prosthetic leg. His explanation of how a prosthesis feels was immensely helpful.

6. The company Premier Prosthetics provides a detailed explanation of health concerns immediately after an amputation on their website.

7. For hyperlinks, maps, and other details, check out my blog, bannisterroadkill, on tumblr.

If you have a pet, hug them for me.