All Astrid wanted was to take a long flight and try to clear her head. She didn't think that was an unreasonable desire; she'd had a nice rest after returning from the vengeance raid, her wings were only mildly sore, and she'd just filled the Night Fury's conch shell for the morning. There shouldn't have been anything stopping her from going out and enjoying the sunlight.
"Blue Flare," she called out as she flew over the empty shoreline of the nest, "I am busy. Stop following me." Stormfly was coming up behind her, almost within speaking range now. Astrid didn't want to get sucked into an endless conversation, and she definitely did not want Stormfly to notice she still had not gotten all of her old and dull scales off yet.
"Female Bolt," Stormfly cried out. "Inferna summons you!"
As much as she'd like to ignore Stormfly, that was no longer an option. Astrid slowed down, letting the Nadder catch up. "Seriously?" If this was a joke, she was going to give her a few bruises as payback for the unease she was causing right now.
"Yes, seriously," Stormfly exclaimed, flying up beside her. "The male Bolt is already on his way up. Where were you? The entire nest is out looking." She shuddered convulsively. "She is very awake right now. Something has her alert."
"Isn't she supposed to be going to sleep soon?" Astrid asked. She distinctly remembered hearing talk about how any day now Inferna would fall into a sleep so deep it would last all Winter, like she did every year.
"She should be, yes." Stormfly whined piercingly. "Last time she was fully awake this late in the season, I was a fledgling. I did not get to see what happened, but she called all the Blazes to her."
All the Blazes... Astrid winced. She recalled one specific horror story from a Blaze, and hoped this wasn't anything like that. "I am going," she assured Stormfly. As always, there was no point in fleeing when Inferna called. Not with Berk still on the hook if she succeeded in escaping. "Maybe you should not come back with me, though. Go do something else."
"But you might be in trouble– Stormfly objected.
Astrid cut that off immediately, snarling angrily. "I can only be in one kind of trouble, and if it is that, I would rather not have anyone watching." She hoped it was anything but that. "Especially not you, because you'd probably ask me how it was, afterward." That would be the peak of painful humiliation.
"I would not!" Stormfly squawked angrily. "Fine. I will not go. But if it were me, I would want friends there to support me!" She dropped like a stone and flipped midair, swooping down to fly right back out to sea, into the maze of sea stacks most of the nest was probably still searching.
Stormfly didn't know what she was talking about. Or if she did, she was thinking about it as a dragon. They didn't seem to care much for privacy. But Astrid knew she would hate having any more of an audience than absolutely unavoidable, were things to go as badly as she dreaded.
No more stalling. The longer Inferna had to wait, the worse mood she would be in, and Astrid didn't need to make the situation worse. It might not even be bad to begin with; for all she knew, Inferna was just going to remind her that if she fled over the Winter, Berk would pay the price come Spring.
That was the best possibility. It was all downhill from there.
Astrid dropped down into the volcano and was immediately met with a blast of pure, bone-shaking sound. She stumbled onto a ledge, slipping through the air and landing awkwardly as her wings faltered. It was only a hair shy of debilitating and lasted for several long moments after she landed, making her head feel like it was shaking apart.
Eventually, the blast of sound faded. She uncovered her head and tentatively looked up to see Inferna staring impassively down at her.
"That was for being hard to find," Inferna announced. "Go stand on the same ledge as the male Bolt. I would speak with you both." Her voice was calm, if annoyed.
That was not what Astrid had been expecting. She suspected it was all an act, but if it was not, she didn't want to break this good mood. She did as told, even going so far as to stand close to the Night Fury, who was staring straight ahead, not moving.
They were almost alone in the volcano at the moment. Mentor and two other Nightmares stood at attention on a lower ledge, and there might be a few unseen Terrors around, but that was it. Everyone else was probably still out looking for her. There was something even more ominous than normal about being so alone in the volcano. Inferna had more eyes than watching subjects, and several of them were focused on her.
"Explain why it took so long to locate you," Inferna demanded.
Astrid took a deep breath to steady her nerves. "I woke early this morning and flew beyond the fog like I do most mornings, then brought water back for the male Bolt. The Nadder you assigned to guard me caught up once she saw me over the nest." She didn't know why it had taken so long for her to be found; she hadn't seen anyone looking until Stormfly caught up with her. The Night Fury hadn't been at his rock, but Inferna had been asleep when she left that morning…
She couldn't see it as anything other than a run of bad luck. And maybe a consequence of her structuring her daily schedule around avoiding the volcano and flying as much as possible. She wasn't exactly a social dragon.
"No matter," Inferna allowed, apparently content to drop the subject. "I have been told you ended another Flightless, one that has troubled my hunters for a long time."
"I did," Astrid confirmed.
"Good. You are adjusting well," Inferna hummed, making the rock below Astrid's paws vibrate. "In other ways as well?"
Astrid decided to play her progress up a little. If Inferna thought things would come to their natural conclusion without interference, she would leave well enough alone. So, she hastily wrapped her tail around the Night Fury's and stepped aside a bit. "I think so, yes."
Inferna squinted with two of her eyes, no doubt looking at the small detail Astrid had just revealed. "Have you? Male Bolt, speak only the truth. Report the status of your relationship with this female Bolt... realistically."
"I do not believe she is attracted to me in the slightest," the Night Fury reluctantly admitted, "but she is kind, and we have forged a sort of truce. That is far more than I ever expected, but I do not see it going any further than that."
Astrid wilted a little. She should have expected that; of course, Inferna would just check with the dragon she was pretending to like! He couldn't lie, even if she could.
"Liar," Inferna breathed at Astrid. The gust of hot, rancid air that struck her was almost as intimidating as the accusation.
"I meant it," Astrid defended, doing her best not to show just how worried she was. "I am getting used to him. What he calls a truce is an understanding. I think we may reach a more... intimate... arrangement soon." That last bit was entirely false, but they did have an understanding. It wasn't as if she was faking their cordial little interactions every day…
Though maybe he believed she was faking even that. It was not as if he could be sure of her intentions, not when he knew she would have to act in a certain way regardless of the truth, in case Inferna did exactly what she was doing now. She was surprised by how much that thought made her stomach sink.
"You seem sure..." Inferna closed four of her eyes, leaving two to match Astrid's two. Unnervingly, she had left two on the same side, and they were focusing independently. Inferna was managing to look into both of her eyes at the same time, a strange thing that made her uncomfortable.
"You ask much of me, given it has not even been a season yet," Astrid complained, letting a little stress show on purpose. If she was totally confident, Inferna would be suspicious. "I am moving as fast as I can on my own, and I am almost there. Convincing the Bolt to be okay with it may take me longer, but that too will be done by the end of the cold-season." She was setting herself a deadline, but that was fine. If it bought her the entirety of Winter, she could consider this whole encounter a win. She no longer believed she'd have that much time if she failed to work for it.
"My Dam never fully adjusted, and she had years to do so," the Night Fury added truthfully, still under Inferna's last command. "This female Bolt impresses me with how fast she has adapted."
"Not fast enough," Inferna rumbled. "Not nearly fast enough. I must sleep soon, and I would not lose so much time to stalling."
No. Astrid flinched, looking at the three Nightmares waiting at the ready. Mentor would not meet her eyes
"Then let us compromise," she called out desperately, falling back on what had saved her last time. "Let us bargain. I possess the ability to make this difficult, and you possess the ability to make it happen anyway. Surely we can reach an agreement."
Inferna's other four eyes shot open. "You would bargain?" she hissed. "We already had a deal, and I only honor that because it amuses me."
"My will is untouchable," Astrid shot back, throwing caution to the wind. "I would compromise because we both know you want to."
Inferna let out a low, disconcerting rumble. "So I do, if only to enjoy this a little longer. You have spirit that I cannot touch directly." Her cruel but jovial tone dropped to something sinister. "You have me fully awake on the eve of my long sleep. Make it worth my time, or I will."
An offer. Astrid had to make an offer. "How long can you remain awake without major frustration?" she asked, trying to figure out what she might have to give that was better than the alternative.
"Three days." Inferna growled. "Two, though, for you. Two days."
"Okay." Two days was better than now. She was going to end up doing this. Now she needed to make it as not-terrible as possible with the very limited power she held.
A strange feeling had come over her in the last few moments, a dark calm that stemmed from somewhere deep in her chest.
She had lost. Not here and now. Not back when she made her first deal with Inferna. Maybe when she had just woken up, though the only way to win would have been to do things she didn't know how to do, for reasons she wouldn't have learned until too late.
The fight had been lost the moment she chose to pursue Hiccup into the woods. Everything after was just her playing it all out. Fighting for time, using the excuse of 'adjusting' to claw an indefinite extension while she chased goals too distant to ever be caught quickly enough to matter.
And she had known it. Every time she tried not to think about her end of the deal with Inferna, every time she told Stormfly or Mentor's mate off for their hints, subtle or not, she knew that she was living on borrowed time. That she hadn't won, she had just postponed her loss.
It was no more palatable now than it had been back then. She would still lie, cheat, steal, or kill as necessary to avoid it… If any of those things could actually get her out of it without bringing worse consequences down on her head. Which they could not, so long as Inferna held Berk over her head as a threat and refused to be easily killed. What she needed to win was shrouded in mystery, if it existed at all. Inaccessible.
She had lost.
But she would go down swinging, so to speak, and this loss was not the end of the war. Just the end of one personal battle.
"Okay," Astrid repeated, accepting that she was not getting out of this. "Two days. At the end of those two days, call the male Bolt back in here, and ask him whether he has been with me. The answer will be yes."
The Night Fury, throughout all of this, had not moved, objected, or even spoken. He was staring ahead with hard eyes, probably hating how powerless he was in all of this. But at that promise, he jerked away from Astrid, redirecting his stare to her with wide, unreadable eyes.
She didn't understand his seeming horror; surely he'd known just as she did that this was inevitable.
But then she did understand, as she remembered who he was and what he had lived through. If he had acknowledged the inevitable, it had undoubtedly been with the small comfort that Inferna would be forcing him, in the most literal, unavoidable fashion. That in the moment, it would not be him. Astrid's proposed compromise would take even that from him. He would have to do it willingly.
But while Astrid couldn't force the Night Fury to do anything, she didn't think he'd actually refuse once she explained herself. This was going to happen, and they might as well be able to do it in private, away from watching eyes. She would hate it, and he would hate it, but it was better than it happening here, now. If they had to lose, she could at least give them some control in the process. That was what she was bargaining for. Some small measure of control over the details, if not the outcome.
She would much rather have explained all of this to him before making a deal with Inferna, but things hadn't worked out that way.
Inferna eyed the both of them thoughtfully, a long silence following Astrid's proposal. "Good luck with that," she said dryly, her loud voice sounding almost mocking. "This is worth waiting up for. I will get a full report on the morning after next."
The morning after next. So, if she waited until the last moment, tomorrow night was when it would happen. She had tonight and tomorrow to follow her last small leads, and to mentally prepare. There was no escape, but she would not be broken by this.
"The morning after next," Astrid repeated, bowing her head. "We have a deal."
"Oh, and by the way," Inferna said slowly, drawing her words out. "I am going to call the Nadder who watches you in here, and add to her orders. If you leave the fog, she must be with you. If not, she dies, you will be brought back by force, and your pitiful island will die."
"I know I cannot escape this," Astrid agreed, only minorly annoyed by that. When something so terrible was happening, minor annoyances ceased to matter. The extra precaution wasn't going to hurt her nonexistent plans to flee. "I will be sure to keep that in mind."
"Then go." Inferna made as if to recede below the fog, before stopping once more. "Male Bolt. Disregard my last order. You may speak freely."
The Night Fury shuddered, moaning softly, and sunk down, covering his head in his paws.
Inferna rumbled in dark amusement and receded. Her snores did not follow her departure; if Astrid had to guess, she was planning to stay awake until the morning after next, just to be sure she did not go into her deep sleep until after this whole thing was over.
Astrid found she preferred it that way. If Inferna had gone back to sleep now, she would have had to guess whether or not Inferna would remember to wake up to check, and thus whether she had two days or several months to get her nerve up. At least this way there was no choice. It didn't make her feel any better about things, but it did allow her to focus on what needed to be done instead of wondering in vain if there was another way.
Although she did have one 'other way' to check in on later. One last-ditch effort, a final, ridiculously unlikely chance.
But she needed the Nadder for that, and Stormfly wasn't coming back for a while, so she couldn't do it just yet. Meanwhile, she needed to get the Night Fury on board with all of this.
Astrid approached him, knocking a paw against his side. "Up. We must speak, but do not give her the satisfaction of hearing it."
"That I understand," he groaned, standing and heading for the tunnel, running in his haste to be away from Inferna – or Astrid. She wasn't sure which. She followed him out, and all the way down the slope to the shore, in silence. He needed to stop running before she could begin explaining.
Oddly enough, he did not run to his rock. Instead, he ran to a square boulder she had just recently learned the significance of. He was trying to get away from her, to hide in the one place she would not be able to follow… so far as he knew.
She laughed sadly and got between him and the rock. "I am a friend of theirs, so you cannot hide from me there." In fact, if they had to do this, where he was going would be a better place than most. Secluded, private if she requested it be cleared for them, and totally isolated.
"How..?" he asked. "You... when?"
"They approached me during the last raid," she revealed. "I was going to ask you about it but it slipped my mind. But that's not what we need to talk about right now."
"No," he quavered.
"Just talk," she growled. "Let me explain. You will understand."
"I understand just fine," he growled, still shying away from her. "I don't have to do it. I can just avoid you and refuse until the morning after next, and Inferna will force it, like it was always going to happen. You cannot make me do it."
"She is forcing it," Astrid snarled. "Her will is pushing this, whether or not it's you or her moving your body. So you should at least let me have it done the way I prefer." She whined, letting her feelings on the subject show. "I dreaded it, I tried to forget about it, I did my best to put it off, but now it's here and all I have left to choose from is whether it is just you, or many dragons spectating and Inferna leering. Please, don't make it be that. We both know you're doing this against your will, whether or not Inferna commands it explicitly. Letting me keep my dignity is the right thing to do."
"There were only a few Blazes there just now, that could have worked," he muttered sadly.
"Mentor was there," Astrid blurted out. "I cannot be seen like that by him." He was a friend, a teacher. She wanted to be able to look at him knowing that while he knew what had happened, he had at least not witnessed it.
"Mentor?" the Night Fury repeated, totally caught off-guard. "What?"
"What I call the leader of the Blazes," Astrid explained. "He is a friend. I didn't want him to have to participate, to hold me down and be right there while it happened. Please, you have to understand."
"So... how do we do this?" he sighed, slumping where he stood. "I see your point. We know it is involuntary, and I cannot claim to be doing you any favors if you would suffer more were I to refuse. But I... I can't. Inferna could make me. I don't know if I can make myself."
"How could she make you?" As far as Astrid knew, Inferna couldn't, say, command a dragon to breathe ice and have it happen. If the Night Fury was physically unable to perform there was nothing Inferna could do about it.
"She has ways," he muttered darkly. "She can command me to think about certain things, and then command me to move as required. The more she commands, the more it hurts, but she could do it."
"The commands hurt?" Astrid asked, surprised she had never been told about such a thing. Thinking back, she saw signs of it. All the dragons shuddering after Inferna's revised command about destroying her past...
"They damage the mind." He flicked his lopsided tail dismissively. "Or strain it… Or something. There used to be a one-headed Blast here. He went crazy when he lost his left head, so Inferna used him as a test subject to see how much damage too many commands could do. She ended up removing all commands entirely, but he could not function without them. She had to command him to breathe, or he wouldn't. Obviously she ate him once she was done experimenting, but you get my point."
"So... she could make you do it by making you think certain things?" Astrid really didn't want to dig into that idea. She didn't need specifics. "Can you think those things on your own?"
"I might be able to..." He wasn't looking at her. "I could... maybe... but it is so wrong..."
"More wrong than doing it when she forces you?" Astrid asked. "Because I don't think there's a difference."
"There is," he whined. "It… All she would have to do is make me think of you," he admitted. "You are exactly what I envisioned when I hoped for a natural Bolt to come and somehow take me away from this nest, what I dreamed of for years on end. That body is hers. I recognize it. Strong, sharp, beautiful… "
So he had not just given her every advantage; she was wearing the body of a fantasy savior, a perfect, impossible dream. She had suspected something of the sort, knowing how Solar fire was supposed to function, but it was different hearing him admit it. She was extremely uncomfortable with this.
"But you are a real person now, and I cannot look at you without seeing someone I hurt, someone I cannot possibly take advantage of," he moaned. "Please, don't make me do it. I know you are real, not some happy dream, and I cannot."
It was too bad his pleas couldn't change the reality of the situation they were facing. She'd have loved to be able to back off and let him have this… but the price was too high.
"Look," she said softly, coming to stand beside him instead of facing him like a judge deciding his fate. She put a wing over him, and did not move it when he flinched. "I don't want to do it. You don't want to do it. But it is a little better if we can make ourselves do it without Inferna stepping in and forcing it. We can make it quick and painless." Or at least relatively so, compared to whatever Inferna would have them do. Astrid suspected Inferna would make it take a while, just to be spiteful.
"And if I cannot?" he asked, whining softly.
"Then we will go to Inferna and let her do what she wants," Astrid compromised. "I can get the Flickers to let us use their cave. We can spend a night in there, and if you cannot make yourself do it, then we will not. Tomorrow night, so you have some time to prepare. Not today."
"Not today. And if I truly cannot do it, you will not be mad?" He looked over at her, his green eyes shining with grief and pain.
"I am not looking forward to this," she said for what had to be the tenth time. "But I am hoping you can do it, because hearing Inferna manipulating you would be far more humiliating than just letting you do it on your own, with nobody around." She hadn't even thought about that part, but it was true. She did not want to hear Inferna directed every moment of the violation, as well as the lead-up.
"I think I understand why you value privacy in this," he admitted, looking away. "I do too. Yes. I will try."
She had just convinced him to try and mate with her. A part of her screamed that she should try and flee, and another part laughed hysterically at the scene. But the majority of her knew what she had done was the only choice she could make. If it had to happen, better like that than not.
"That is all I ask," she said consolingly. "Look. We are not in control. But we have taken just a little bit back. You see it?"
"Yes," he agreed with a bitter snort, "She will not get to see it happen. That is a small thing, but it is not nothing. She will not get the satisfaction of controlling it entirely, down to the last detail."
Astrid didn't have the heart to mention that it was entirely possible Inferna would hear the Night Fury's testimony that they had mated, and then make them do it again, just to be cruel. They would suffer that if it happened. Some things just weren't worth agonizing over.
"I have been through so many horrible things," he said quietly, leaning into her wing. "But this is one of the few I can say I did not face alone."
"You had a mother," Astrid remarked sadly, knowing the response and regretting the words before they even finished leaving her mouth.
"She did not care for me. I was a scary, foreign creature my Sire had forced upon her. She never even named me. Flightless name their children, I think. You named a friend just because."
"I named the Nadder too, if only because I needed something to call her," Astrid admitted, trying to distract him. "I call her Stormfly, after a stupid thing she once did."
He laughed, though it was more of a sob in the end. "What do you call me?"
Should she say Night Fury? That she had not named him at all? No, that would hurt him for absolutely no good reason, and even if she had not cared, which she did, she could not afford to break him. She decided upon a name she knew was not hers to give, and therefore one she was not giving him, just one he had already been given. "You already have a name. Your human friend called you Toothless."
"Did he?" The Night Fury huffed. "Then that is my name. It came from him. What was his, in your language? And yours?"
Astrid was happy to be off the subject of what they had agreed to do. "His was... not really worth telling you, you wouldn't like it." Hiccup was an insulting name, and there was no reason to give the Night Fury any reason to feel bad about whether or not he chose to use it. "Mine is Astrid."
Astrid. She had never said her own name in this body. It came out as a crooning purr, something oddly soft. She was used to her name being sharp, two syllables that took no prisoners, a name that flaunted tradition by not being terrible.
Even the sound of her own name had changed. It didn't bother her as much as it should have, and that in turn bothered her more.
"Ast-rid," the Night Fury repeated slowly. "Astrid. May I call you that?" He moved out from under her wing, looking just a little less pained and broken.
"If I may call you Toothless." She would do it, too. There was no point in keeping herself at an arm's length. They were allies in this, thrown together by circumstance. She may as well have a name for the dragon that was most integral to her life, and a name bestowed not by her, but by Hiccup, was oddly fitting.
"Astrid..." The Night Fury, Toothless, bowed his head in shame. "I am so, so sorry. You are taking this a thousand times more bravely and practically than I am. I wish I could do that."
"We are not the same," she reasoned. "You have past issues. I have many personal issues with this, but mine are more... fundamental. Practical, just like my attitude." Simple issues. She did not love him. She was not attracted to reptiles. She was not supposed to be doing this kind of thing before marriage. Stuff like that. At least she could face her own issues. His were far more insidious and complex, too barbed to even touch directly, things that had festered for a long time.
"Still." He looked up at her. "You know this is not a one-time thing. Inferna will keep pushing it. I see no escape."
"I choose to not think about that," Astrid countered. "Yes, I know, but right now, we have only this one time. Then we have months to go our own ways and recover ourselves. Months to hope for something to change." Months for her to figure out what she was missing. How to kill Inferna.
"That is true..." He stepped away from her, looking down the foggy shore. "What now?"
"Now?" She had a feeling he wanted to be told what to do. Lingering and procrastinating would just make him more nervous, and if they were going to do what they had planned, she needed to unwind him, not let him wind himself tighter. For both of their sakes.
"Now, we are going to walk down the shore, and spend the rest of the day together," she improvised. "We do not need to talk about anything. Just spend time with me." She could think of nothing more awkward than going their separate ways and not seeing each other until they met in the hideout of the Terrors.
Also, if she was going to do this, she might as well go on a date with him first, to make it feel more like something she might have done on Berk, were she less self-controlled. A cynical thought she did not truly believe for a second, but the underlying principle was the same.
Really, now that it was set, the die cast and found wanting, a future deadline now a solid reality, she wasn't finding any of it overly difficult to deal with. Viking marriages were a lot like this. Arranged, and in many cases even more abrupt.
Maybe that would comfort him, too. "You know," she said as they began to walk, "for Flightless, this is not so impossibly strange. They arrange things for their children. Sometimes, the male and female do not even meet until the day they are told they will be mates."
He stopped walking, eyes wide. "That is terrible and stupid besides! How do they know anything about each other?"
"They don't." It was only terrible because he was looking at it as being like this. "There are other factors. Usually, the male and female want to have a mate. They trust their parents to pick good matches. And the entire... nest... is there to celebrate them getting together. It's a big deal, a celebration. And then, that night, they do exactly what we're going to be doing."
"So in this comparison, Inferna takes the place of our parents, and is willing to force us to mate," he said slowly, "but otherwise it is all the same as would happen normally for Flightless?"
Put that way, it didn't sound all that bad. Or, more accurately, it made the customs she had been raised to expect look bad by association. "I guess so, yes." She left out that she'd had no plans to allow herself to be married off in that way; that wouldn't reassure him, and in truth she might have found herself married off despite her intentions.
"If we were not doing it anyway, I would say I am glad I am a flame," he remarked in a tone of disgust. "At least here what is happening to us is considered evil and terrible. You will see the ceremonies in a week or so. That is how we do it. Those flames know each other well. They pick for themselves."
How ironic, then, that Astrid would be dumped into a culture that so valued choice, only to be the exception to the rule and thus no better off.
"So the flames do it better than the Flightless," Astrid conceded. "You get my point."
"This is almost normal, for you," he summarized. "That makes me feel no better."
"It was just an observation." It made her feel a lot better. If her parents could have done it for her, then it was not so absolutely horrible to conceive of. The added complications of a different body and absolutely no attraction to dragons were more than enough to make it terrible on their own, and she would have been extremely unhappy if her parents arranged a marriage for her, but it was not all inconceivably wrong.
But all the rationalizing in the world could not make her like what was coming, and if there was any effective way out she would seize it with both hands. Perhaps even literally with both hands, if Snotlout had done the impossible and actually found something since the last time she saw him.
Author's Note: Despite the direction this chapter takes, I'd like to remind everyone that this story has a T rating. So you won't be shown (and by shown I mean I'm not going to write it, not that I'm just going to cut out the sense of sight and write a scene with everything else) anything above what that rating implies, no matter how imminent it might seem at some points. That would be an M-rated story, which this is not. It might still happen, but we would be doing a fade to black if it does. This isn't Usurpation of the Darkness, after all.
Also, on a completely different note, my most effusive compliments to Sully over on AO3; that bookmark is the coolest thing any fan has created in reference to any of my works, full stop. Such art definitely deserves to be mentioned in a footnote of the work it depicts, at the very least.