EDIT 1/24/15 I was in such a rush when I original wrote this chapter, I didn't describe any of the sensations of being close to a Nightmare. I tried to remedy it in later chapters by having Astrid reference it in her own thoughts. But that just wasn't enough. So I'm really grateful for this chance to add it in. I know most readers might not come back to read it, but at least I know it's here now.
Okay, let me get this out of the way. I really did try to write a motorcycle race. But no matter how many times I tried, it didn't have the right feel, or it didn't go in the right direction. Because of my current situation in life, I cannot (and will not) allow a fanfiction to cause me so much stress. And I would much rather keep the plot moving, then stall because of one scene that (while it would have been important to Astrid's character), would not be vital to the plot.
With that said, however, I really do hope that you enjoy this chapter, and that you continue to enjoy the story. Besides… this is when we really start getting to the main conflict.
(For this chapter, I do feel the need to mention that I'm getting ready to start college for fashion design – hence why I may have gone a little overboard.)
Chapter 4: Unusual Carpool
"Congratulations," Hiccup said, when she answered the phone Sunday night.
Astrid snickered. "Yeah. 'Cause I won by such an impressive margin."
She could hear the bitterness in her own voice as she said it – the same bitterness she had been nursing ever since the end of Saturday's race. It had not gone the way she wanted, by any means.
"So, it's not good enough that you won?" Hiccup asked.
"By two feet?" She opened the door of her fridge and pulled out a yogurt. "No."
It sounded as though Hiccup were trying to hold back a laugh.
She didn't find it funny. Not after she had to listen to a lecture from her father on what she should have done better. Karl Hofferson seemed to be incapable of nottalking like a coach – even when he didn't have half a clue what motorcycle racing was actually like. It was one of the reasons why she had moved into her own apartment.
And the margin…She would have ground her teeth if there wasn't a spoon in the way.
Astrid did not like the threat Vanellope von Schweetz presented to her position as the school's star racer, either. She had been racing Vanellope in the local circuit for almost three years. At first, she had enjoyed the challenge.
Right up until the first time the girl beat her.
Then Vanellope had joined the college team.
"Is there a reason you called?" she asked, shaking off thoughts of the race, and the two foot margin that had given her a hollow victory.
The race had been the day before, so it was a little late for a congratulatory call. And they weren't friends, so that would have been strange anyway.
"Oh, yeah," he said, and she heard a sheepish smile in his voice. "Sorry. Do you have time for a fitting tomorrow?"
Right. The jacket.
"I have kickboxing at six," she said.
"Calhoun?" he asked.
"How did you know?" Not only did strange people know her name, but now Hiccup knew her schedule?
"I have a friend in the phys ed program," he said. "Calhoun is the only one with classes that late."
That made enough sense for her to let it go. She had never understood why Calhoun always had her classes late in the evening. Considering the woman's military bearings, it seemed more logical for them to be at six in the morning or something. But, no. They were always in the evening.
"Anyway," he went on. "Can you come by the lab about three?"
"Sure," she said, scraping yogurt from the bottom of the plastic cup with her spoon.
#
The rain started that night, sometime before she woke up. Judging from the puddle already accumulated in the parking lot outside her window, it had been going on for a few hours at least. By noon, it was still going strong, the dark clouds heavy in the atmosphere. She had hoped it would ease up a little before she had to leave, but she couldn't put off her errands any longer.
She grabbed the keys to her car as she headed out of her apartment, down the stairs to the parking lot. Since necessity demanded that she pay an exorbitant fee for a garage to house her motorcycles, she didn't pay for a parking spot under the overhang. Instead it was in one of the spots closest to her garage unit… which mean she had to run across the parking lot, through the rain.
It wasn't raining hard enough for her to be soaked by the time she got to her car – but enough that she was uncomfortably wet. Water ran from her hair, down her temples and forehead.
Why hadn't she decided to go to school in California? Or just anywhere it didn't rain so much.
After a moment of shivering and wiping water off her face, she get the key into the ignition. Her first priority was to get the heater on. She really wished she could have put off going to the grocery store until after school. But if she did, she might not be able to summon up the will to do so after Calhoun's class.
Her errands took her across town before she finally got back to put her groceries in away. She had just enough time to make a sandwich and eat is before she had to head out again.
The rain was still falling hard a few minutes before 3pm, when she got to the school. Hiccup was already waiting for her at the door, a paper bag folded under his arm.
"There's a metal working class in the lab," he said, gesturing to the closed door with his free hand. "We can use one of the empty classrooms.
The room he led her to was obviously for the fashion program – if the dozen or so sewing machines that filled most of the room were any indication. As well as the dress forms in the back corner, clustered together like a gaggle of chatting girls.
Opening the paper bag, Hiccup pulled out and unfolded a plain, dark chocolate brown jacket. Actually, it didn't even qualify as a "plain jacket". It was more like the skeleton of a jacket. The pieces of leather were held together with a basting stitch, so there was some character created by the shape of it. But it had no lining, and few of the details that had been in the sketch.
Astrid looked at the thing skeptically.
"This is just to make sure the fit is right," Hiccup said, clearly reading the doubt in her face.
Neither her feelings, nor her expression, changed.
"What? You think I'm gonna make a finished jacket just so I can take it apart if there's something wrong?" He rolled his eyes. "I have a life, you know."
"It looks like it will fall apart if I put it on," she said, still skeptical.
"Sure, if you tug at it too much," he said. "That's the point."
"If you say so." What did she know about jacket making, anyway?
She shrugged out of her old jacket, and Hiccup helped her carefully into the new one. He stepped back to survey his work, while Astrid turned to look at the floor length mirror on the wall.
"Not too shabby," he said, knuckles pressed to his chin. "A few tweaks, and we should be good. How are the sleeves?"
Astrid had been gently tugging at the cuffs, the hem, and the collar, to adjust them. "Can you bring them in just like half an inch?"
He nodded.
"And can you make it a few inches long?"
Hiccup visibly hesitated, and she realized that would mean he had to cut more leather to replace most of the jacket body. But a moment later, she almost saw his brain racing behind his green eyes.
"What if I added a waistband?" he suggested. Thumb and forefinger a few inches apart, he held them up to the bottom of the jacket.
Astrid considered the idea, trying to imagine what he was suggesting. Slowly, she nodded. "That'll work."
"Yeah, I should have thought about how you have to lean over on a bike," he said. "How's the collar?"
They spent nearly forty minutes going over the jacket, discussing small tweaks. Hiccup jotted them down quickly in his notebook. She asked for both the collar and the sleeves to be a little longer as well.
"I don't have classes tomorrow, so I can probably have it done by tomorrow," he said, as he folded the potential jacket up and returned it to the paper bag.
"I'll come by the lab Wednesday afternoon," she said, shrugging into her old jacket – for what would hopefully be one of the last times.
He nodded as they left the room. "I'll text you if something comes up, but it shouldn't."
She thought she saw a glimmer of doubt in his eyes as soon as he had said it, as though a thought had crossed his mind. But he didn't say anything else.
He waved as he headed towards the side door, while Astrid headed for the main door, which let out closest to the athletics building. As she watched him walk away, she considered asking if he had finished whatever project he had been making with that huge bolt of leather… but the question seemed strangely personal, so she decided not to.
She spent a couple hours working on homework while she waited for six, but she was still several minutes early to her class.
As she walked in, she saw Professor Calhoun (often referred to Sergeant Calhoun by some students), over by the free weights. She was in conversation with a girl whose red hair surrounded her face like an aura. Blinking, Astrid recognized the lion's mane of curls she had seen leaving the athletics building the week before. She couldn't hear what they were saying, but she passed close enough by them to hear the red head's thick, Scottish accent.
She glanced back at them as she strapped on her workout gloves.
The red head was gone by the time class started.
Kickboxing II lasted an hour and a half, and Calhoun earned her sergeant nickname. She ran the entire athletics program, but only taught a few classes, and personally coached the motorcycle team. Her workouts were intensive and exhausting. Thought that was exactly why Astrid liked it.
By the time class ended, most of the students barely had the energy to get home. But Astrid found that, somehow, she still had some to burn. Maybe because she needed an excuse not to go back to her empty apartment.
Clahoun said she had paperwork to do, so Astrid could stay and use the gym until she locked up.
Returning to the weight room, Astrid got on one of the four treadmills in back.
The lights in the weight room were all on, shining off the metal of the well maintained equipment. The air smelled like sweat and sanitizer. During the day there was always at least a couple people there. If there was a class going on, the teacher usually had some kind of motivational music going to set a fast pace. (Calhoun had banned any song from any Rocky movie ever, though.)
At that moment, though, Astrid was alone.
There was something eerie about the stillness in the weight room. At first she was able to ignore it. But the sound of her own breath echoing off the white walls was starting to get to her.
No. She refused to be afraid of a brightly lit, empty room.
She increased the ramp's incline, forcing her thoughts to focus on her work out. One foot in front of the other. Rubber soles smacking the treadmill's belt. Why hadn't she brought her iPod? It was in her backpack, on the other side of the room. But she didn't want to stop running to get it.
Instead, she pushed herself harder.
Because she was sick of reliving Saturday's race. Thinking about how close she had come to losing.
Because she wasn't sure why she kept thinking about Hiccup. Strange, abstract thoughts she couldn't pin down; except that they were about him.
Because, a week later, her mind kept replaying Night Fury's fall. And she was getting really tired of it. Over and over, out of nowhere, her mind would be taken over by the image of him and the dragon careening toward the ground. Like the image had been set as the desktop background of her mind, and the moment there was space, it jumped into the forefront of her thoughts.
What was she supposed to do with that?
She still wasn't too keen on the Big Four. Which made it all the more annoying to find herself thinking about Night Fury.
Not just about the fall, either. But questions like: what happened to his left foot? Was there a reason he wore a helmet to cover his whole face, when his companions only wore domino masks? Was he just extra careful of his identity? Was his foot not the only thing he was missing? Or was it just to protect his face from the wind when he flew? And where did he hide a dragon when they weren't fighting freaks? Did he have an actual life outside of that?
She didn't like all these thoughts. Because she didn't want to know. Because she didn't want to care.
But she kind of did. She didn't know why. But she did.
The only person she knew who actually thought of them as heroes was her brother Anders – but he hadn't answered the one time she had broken down and tried to call and talk about it.
Where was he stationed right now, anyway? Was it awful that she had lost track of where her favorite brother was? Their family had never made that big a deal about closeness. She remembered the last time he had been transferred she had checked to make sure that he wasn't in an actual war zone, then promptly forgotten the country. (It had been during the peak of racing season, while she had been preparing for nationals.)
Those thoughts did not help.
She ran in the hope she would reach a point of exhaustion where she wouldn't think about any of it anymore.
And the thought of Night Fury came again. The image of him falling.
Falling.
Falling.
Falling.
Her stomach flipped.
A wave of vertigo washed over her just from the thought of it.
She felt as if she were following. Not like she had missed a step. In her mind, she felt the wind whipping her face. Gravity pulling her down, down, down…
Somewhere, in the back of her mind, she knew it wasn't real. But the sensation was so strong, her throat tightened. She gasped. Confused by the sensation of falling in her head, and her feet pounding the treadmill in reality.
Both so intense. Even though she knew – she knew – which one was real. But her mind started to get confused. Until she felt as though she was being pulled between the two. Ripped in half.
Sweat ran down her back. Cold against her skin. Familiar… but strangely foreign at the same time.
Another wave of vertigo.
So strong she missed a step.
Gasping, her heart skipped a beat as she felt herself falling. For real this time. Making her wonder how she had ever thought her imagination could confuse her so badly.
It snapped her out of whatever nightmare she had fallen into.
She grabbed onto the hand grips, her feet acting on their own to reestablish their rhythm now that she was once more fully in her body. Her nose probably wouldn't enjoy a collision with the control panel.
Her heart pounded from the shock of her near fall as much as from exertion. Chest rising and falling as her lungs worked to ensure fresh oxygen was constantly supplied to the blood racing its way through the four cylinders of her heart.
Feet braced on the edges of the machine, she hit the power button.
That had been wrong, her brain told her.
She argued with herself that it had been her imagination.
Admittedly, she had never had a very active imagination. She had always been too grounded to get swept up into daydreams, or flights of fancy. So why would it suddenly be so strong that she got so confused?
Because it hadn't been her.
Astrid frowned.
If it hadn't been her own mind… what could it have been?
A drop of sweat ran down her back. And there was nothing strange about it. It was the same sensation she had experienced more times than she could possibly count.
Night Fury's fall had gotten to her. That was all.
That had to be all it was.
Still, her legs shook as she gathered her things and left the weight room, and the athletics building. Into the chilled September air. Her jacket was in her gym bag, slung over her shoulder. But her skin was still so heated from her run, and blood coursing through her veins, that she barely felt the cold.
The rain had finally stopped, but the air was still heavy with moisture. Most of the clouds had cleared, unveiling the stars in the black sky overhead. A few large clouds still lingered, with a strange lighting that made them look surreal.
Her car was still in the parking lot adjacent to the arts building, so she had to walk across the lawn that stretched between the two buildings. A few lampposts illuminated the expansive space.
Not enough to fight back even a majority of the shadows.
Astrid wasn't afraid of the dark. Growing up in the woods, miles from the constant electric thrum of the city, it would be absurd to be afraid of it. Like every human being with a functioning self-preservation instinct, though, she had a healthy wariness of it.
Especially since she lived in Burgess, where anything could be lurking in the shadows.
At the moment, when she was already shaken, she really wasn't enjoying her walk across the dark, empty courtyard.
A couple times she thought she heard something – a whisper, or a rustling. Behind her, or to her right. Her head jerked towards it… only to find nothing. There wasn't even a tree on the lawn, so there were no leaves that could scrape against each other.
Part of her mind – the part that sounded like her father – chastised her for being so jumpy. For letting herself be so affected by Night Fury's fall that it was making her so jumpy.
…But her mind flashed back to earlier. Pretending she wasn't eavesdropping while Rapunzel and the brown haired boy talked. His face when she had used the word nightmares.
Astrid's stomach clenched.
Relief spread through her when she stepped onto the sidewalk, and into a pool of light.
Then she was in the parking lot.
Why were the lights spaced so far apart? You'd think a university that charged so much for tuition would be able to afford sufficient lighting for the parking lots.
Halfway to her car, she heard something she couldn't deny. A sound she couldn't identify. But one she decided then and there that she really didn't like.
Turning toward the sound, toward the edge of the next building, her stomach muscles tightened again. A small – tiny – part of her mind pointed out that the sensible thing to do would be to run to her car and beat a hasty retreat. It would not be cowardly. It would be sensible. And she agreed.
So why wasn't she moving?
Fear spread through her.
Not "I'm alone in a dark parking lot, and no one knows where I am" fear.
Unadulterated terror coursed through her system. Totally unfounded. But there. Like the nightmare from your childhood that never fully goes away, and shapes who you are. Like the unshakable conviction that there's something in your closet.
Or under your bed.
Around the far corner of the next building came a blue glow.
A blue glow she knew very well because of all the times she had watched the video of Night Fury's fall.
A moment later, a black and blue clad figure flew into view, illuminated by the glow of his own ice as he flew backwards.
Jack Frost flipped in midair, like a swimmer doing a turn under water.
Astrid couldn't shake a momentary thought of "woah", as she watched the way he moved.
Then she realized that he was fighting. And fighting hard.
Now really would be an excellent time to run… but she still wasn't running. Why, she had no idea. She only knew that she wasn't running.
Then she saw what he was fighting.
At first glance, it looked like a black horse. An anemic black horse, if your first glance was good. Then the next look revealed that the horse's body wasn't quite right. Rather than flesh and blood, it was made up of black sand that streamed behind it, its back legs sometimes losing form entirely.
Astrid might not follow the Big Four's fights, but she had lived in Burgess long enough to recognize a Nightmare with only one glance. Until that moment, she had been fortunate enough never to have seen one in person.
The fear came rushing back. Crashing over her like a wave. Pulling at her like an undertow. Reaching into her mind. Searching, probing, rifling through pages of long forgotten memories. Pulling at stray threads. Searching, searching…
The searching stopped.
They had found what they wanted.
She was falling again.
Still on her feet. But falling. Tumbling. Careening. Down, down, down.
Without moving.
Frost careened into the parking lot, more Nightmares coming from around the science building. A slick of ice formed on the tarmac as he flew over it.
She was trying to tell her legs to move when he saw her and pulled to an abrupt halt.
"What are you doing here?" he almost screamed. Was that panic in his voice?
Astrid tried to respond, looking over to her car, then back to Frost.
"Oh sweet vanilla," Frost muttered. He started to say something else, but spun on his heel (still in midair) to face the Nightmares that were catching up to him.
He cut through the air with his hand, and a spray of frost mimicked the motion. Cutting through one nightmare, which dissolved. The others reared back, out of the way.
"Go!" Frost commanded, without looking back.
Astrid turned to do just that, her feet finally regaining the ability to move… only to find her way blocked by another group of Nightmares. They weren't quite between her and her car – but that was clearly where they were heading.
"Uh, Frost?"
He glanced back over his shoulder. "Great," he said sarcastically. "You must be as scared as I am."
Under normal circumstances, she would have snapped back. But her eyes were locked on the Nightmares creeping closer to her.
"Do you trust me?" Frost asked suddenly.
"What kind of question is that?"
"Do you?" he asked.
"No." Though the moment she said it, she remembered that he was the one who had saved Night Fury. Of course, Night Fury was his friend and/or teammate, while she was a stranger.
Of course, it was undeniable that they had saved a lot of strangers over the past few years…
"Least that's settled," he said, with a cocky grin.
The next moment he was in front of her, a surge of ice shooting between them and her car. It knocked the Nightmares out of the way.
Frost grabbed her wrist. "Run!"
She didn't need to be told twice. And adrenaline kept her muscles from complaining too much.
Around her wrist, Frost's hand was as cold at ice. No surprise.
The Nightmares had already begun to regroup by the time they made it to her car.
Frost shot another bolt of glowing ice while she hit the unlock button on the remote and pulled open the door.
"Uh, can I get a ride?" he asked, from behind her.
She didn't have time to think as she slid into the driver's seat.
"Get in," she said, before slamming her door shut.
He pulled open the back door and got in. "I owe you."
"That's what they all say," she muttered.
Frost climbed between the seats to sit up front while she turned the key in the ignition. The car roared to life.
She didn't bother backing out of her space. She just drove straight through the one in front of her and curved back around towards the exit.
"What are you doing here, anyway?" he asked.
"What are you doing here?" she countered.
"I thought the parking lot would be empty!" he said. "It's almost nine o'clock."
"I'm a student," she said, since that should have been obvious.
He rolled his eyes. "The school closes at eight."
How did he even know that?
"Why am I giving you a ride?" she changed the subject. "Wouldn't it be faster to fly?"
"Not with them on my tail," he said, glancing through the back windshield. "Why are they here, anyway?"
"It's Burgess," she reminded.
"I know – but why are the Nightmares here, at the college?" he asked. "There's no one here."
She didn't bother trying to understand, let alone come up with an answer.
"Are they following us?"
"It doesn't matter," he said. "They can't get into the car." Which didn't really answer her question.
But when she glanced in her rearview mirror, she didn't see any Nightmares.
"I don't know why I even let you in the car," she muttered.
Frost snickered.
He was enjoying this.
"Where am I taking you?" she asked, as they came to the edge of the campus.
He pulled a phone from somewhere in his blue and black uniform. "Forth and Traction, apparently. Why there?"
"Downtown?" she asked, assuming the question wasn't aimed at her.
"The general direction," he said.
"What's going on there?" she asked warily. She had objections to driving into some kind of war zone.
"Something bad, probably," he said. "Braveheart's not big on details."
Astrid shook her head. "I can't believe you said 'Braveheart' with a straight face."
He snickered again. "Believe me, it took a few months."
She took the right turn out of the campus harder than necessary, hoping to rattle him a little. But he seemed un-phased.
Checking in the rearview again, she let out a deep breath when she didn't see any Nightmares.
Forth and Traction was almost a forty minute drive, and she made it all of five before she asked:
"Is Night Fury okay? After the fall?" There hadn't been any sign of him (or any of the others) for the past week.
Frost chuckled, though she wasn't sure why that would be funny. "He's fine. Toothless, too."
"Toothless?"
"The dragon," Frost said, leaning back in his seat. His domino mask didn't have lenses over his eyes, so she could see that he had closed them.
"The dragon's name is Toothless?"
"I did not pick it," he said. "I haven't dared ask how old Night Fury was when he picked it."
She tightened her hands on the steering wheel kept driving towards the glow that was the never sleeping lights of Burgess City. As they got closer, she could see the silhouettes of the skyscrapers that made up the city. She kept expecting to see police cars, ambulances, or some sign of the press. But there was nothing so far.
"Shouldn't there be some sign of… something?" she asked, as they took the Traction exit off the freeway and headed into the city.
"It might not have gotten out of hand yet," Frost said, leaning forward to look out the windshield.
"Maybe it'll stay that way," she muttered.
"We can wish," he said. "Let me out here."
Astrid didn't hesitate to pull up to the sidewalk, and Frost got out.
"Thanks, Astrid," he said. "Just in case, you might wanna head home." And then he was gone, flying down an alley in search of his teammates.
She was back on the freeway before she realized that he had used her name, and she was positive she hadn't mentioned it.
The fact so many people seemed to know her name was starting to get really infuriating.