EDITED 1/31/16: I mostly just fixed the typos, and changed the wording here and there. (I got distracted by the Heather/Viggo ship on tumblr, so I didn't get as much done this weekend as I had planned…)

Ok, I want to explain this one thing. The address, 1012, is the years the Big 4 movies came out – 2010, and 2012. Crescent rd is just because.

Chapter 6: Can You Keep A Secret?

Hiccup wasn't at the college on Wednesday.

Astrid went in before her 2 o'clock class, but there was no sign of him. Someone else was at the corner worktable, but she didn't look close enough to see what the guy was working on. Rapunzel hasn't been in their class that morning either, and there was no sign of her in the lab.

She shrugged it off, and decided it wasn't too big a deal. The guy probably had his own life, and they hadn't specified what time she could pick up the jacket.

She checked again, after her last class. Still no sign of him.

When the same thing happened on Thursday, she tried calling him. But the call went straight to voicemail.

Well, that was excessively annoying.

Scowling, Astrid leaned her hips back against her motorcycle, trying to figure out what to do next. She had pretty much paid for the jacket. It was possible he had just taken the money…but he didn't seem the type. Besides – it had been a measly two hundred dollars. Which was a lot, especially in the college world. But it seemed kind of ridiculous for a scam.

And he had come recommended by Gobber, for pete's sake.

Friday, she only had one class in the morning. Hiccup still didn't show up in the lab, so she decided to go back to the source.

#

Gobber's shop was a typical garage: lots of grease, tools, and spare parts. Usually very noisy, and very busy. The turnover rate was dizzying. Most people couldn't handle Gobber's standard, or his schedule. But people who managed to make it past the first six months were usually there for years.

That was why she had been so surprised when Hiccup said he had worked for Gobber.

Gobber was her father's mechanic, and they had been in every few months for maintenance on her dad's old pickup truck. Astrid had always wanted to tag along, since she had always liked the shop for some reason. When she had been thirteen, Gobber had taught her how to change the oil in a car, and to change a tire. He was also the one who had introduced to her the concept of racing, and helped her get started in the local youth circuit when she was fifteen.

She had figured that, if Gobber recommended him, Hiccup would make good. And if he said Hiccup was great with leather, that meant he knew what he was doing. Gobber wasn't the kind to give compliments lightly, or often.

The shop was busy when she got there, with four cars being worked on, and at least eight people in the waiting room.

She circumvented the waiting room, and instead walked through one of the open garage doors. She could hear Gobber yelling over the clang of tools, so she just followed that.

She found him muttering about incompetence, as he micromanaged a recent hire.

"Astrid," he called when he saw her, with the closest he managed to a smile, when she walked up beside him. "What brings you here?"

He wasn't one for small talk, which she liked.

"I was hoping you could tell me where Hiccup is," she said, hands buried in the pockets of her jacket.

Gobber looked over, quirking one side of his unibrow. "Why would you want to know that?"

"Because he vanished a few days ago," she said. "His phone is dead, and he hasn't shown up at the school. I'm waiting for my jacket."

"That's not like Hiccup," Gobber said, but then paused. "I can't – are ya tryin' to fix that engine, or sabotage it?"

The mechanic cringed.

Gobber sighed, and turned back to Astrid. "Eret's in the office – have him get ya the home number from the file. Someone usually answers if ya call in the evening. I gotta handle this before he destroys that engine."

Before she could ask anything else, Gobber was already at work on the engine, telling the kid exactly what he had done wrong. Astrid almost felt sorry for the kid. Almost.

She went through the door from the garage, into the waiting room. The smell of grease was only slightly less inside, tinged with the left over smell of a couple thousand microwave meals.

Eret was behind the counter, in the middle of writing down exactly what a customer wanted done to her car. He glanced up as she came in, and nodded a greeting before turning his attention back to the customer.

Eret had shown up out of nowhere about three years earlier. Astrid doubted he could do more than change the oil of a car, if that. But when she had asked Gobber why he suddenly hired someone to man the desk, he had said only that he was helping the young man get back on his feet as a favor to a friend. There had to be more of a story than that. Especially considering she had heard the phrase "probation officer" shot in Eret's direction more than once.

But she knew he kept his job because: 1, he rolled with Gobber's proverbial punches without a word of complaint; 2, his looks went over very well with the female clientele.

She waited for him to finish before she approached the counter.

"Astrid," he greeted. "It's been a while."

"Hey," she said. "Gobber said to ask you about the records of a former employee. I'm trying to track him down." She frowned inwardly when she realized she sounded like some kind of detective.

Before anything more could be said, the bell over the door jingled, announcing the arrival of another customer.

Eret stood up straight, turning to the man who had just come in. "Hi. How can I help you?"

As he spoke, he pulled the filing cabinet key from his pocket, and held it out to her. He nodded towards the office, in a silent "go ahead".

The nice thing about a place where everyone knew who she was.

Astrid spun the key ring around her pointer finger as she went into Gobber's office. The desk was a mess of papers and random office supplies. But she paid that no attention, and went straight for the filing cabinet.

"Bottom drawer," Eret called, just as she started to wonder.

"Thanks." She sat down in the worn office chair.

The drawer was full with past employees, and Astrid frowned as she realized that she didn't know Hiccup's last name. She really didn't feel like searching through the whole thing, but going out to ask Gobber wasn't an appealing idea.

Not when she could hear him yelling from the other side of the wall.

Letting out a breath of resignation, Astrid flicked through the folders.

Haddock, Hiccup H. III

In the back of her mind, she thought the name "Haddock" sounded familiar, but she didn't pay the thought much attention. Maybe Gobber had mentioned it at some point. But seriously – who gave their kid the same first, middle, and last initial?

Pulling the folder from the drawer, she flipped it open on her lap.

There was no application, just a bunch of W-2s for the past few years, and a few other odds and ends. The number on the most recent tax paper (from the previous year) was the same one in her phone, so she was about to go looking through the other papers for the home number… when she realized that she was looking at his address.

Well, that would save her time.

Pulling out her phone, she took a picture of the address – written in the same no-nonsense hand she recognized from the design sketches.

She closed the folder and put it away before getting up to leave.

She nodded to Eret on her way out (he was helping yet another client). A green Honda had just pulled up to the front, and Astrid glanced over at the driver got out. She recognized the redhead she had seen at the college the week before – mostly just because the lion's mane of hair was kind of distinct.

Once she reached her motorcycle, on the edge of the small parking lot, she looked at the picture she had just taken.

1012 Crescent Rd

Burgess

She had to check an online map to see where Crescent road was, but didn't bother looking up an exact route to the house. As long as she knew where the road was, she was pretty sure she could find the house without too much trouble.

#

Crescent road was a lot further out of the city than she had realized. Late afternoon traffic on the freeway certainly did not help. By the time she took the exit onto Crescent, she was starting to wonder if maybe she shouldn't have just gotten the home number…

She rode past large house on lots that provided a comfortable distance from their neighbors. And then the houses were gone, and she was riding past fields of tall grass divided by barbed wire strung from old, sagging wooden poles.

The fields gave way suddenly to a wall of trees, which formed a canopy over the road. At this point the houses were so far apart, and set back from the road, they could couldn't even be seen through the trees. There was only the mailbox at the end of the driveway to tell you that, yes, there really was a house back there somewhere.

Astrid had lived in Burgess all her life, and spent a large amount of her free time driving and riding around back roads as soon as she had gotten her license. But she had never been out this way before. It was so different from the crowded city, and yet nothing like the woods she had grown up in.

The mailboxes counted upwards, towards the thousands, so she knew she had to be getting closer. But they were getting further and further apart, so "closer" was a relative term.

Finally, she found the mailbox labeled 1012.

If the road had felt like a different world, the feeling was intensified the moment she turned up the driveway. She didn't know why, but she got the sudden impression that she had stepped into something that was nothing like anything she was used to.

The tree canopy over the road continued, sunlight filtering through the leaves above, to dapple the well paved driveway, and the temperature was dramatically cooler. Leaves that were already in the grand finale of their yearly show – most of them bright red or yellow. A few green ones remained, tucked away, while others had already turned brown. A few had fallen to the ground, littering the road. Evergreen trees would ensure that the path would maintain some green even in the deep of winter.

Astrid had grown up in a three room cabin, far outside the Burgess City limits. As the only girl, she had had her own room, while her three brothers all shared one. After driving this far out, she had half expected to find that Hiccup lived in something similar.

But when the winding drive finally ended, and the trees gave way, she found that her expectations couldn't have been further from the truth.

Astrid braked sharply, her motorcycle fishtailing as it came to a stop, and stared at the house.

Instead of some small cabin, she was looking at a sprawling, single story ranch house. It was painted light green, with white trim around the large, colonial windows. It was still more than fifty yards ahead of her, situated on a massive lot. And that was assuming that it ended at the tree line she could see beyond the house, and the two smaller structures.

Neatly trimmed bushes were nestled against the house, flowerbeds lining the walk up to the house. The lawn in front was briefly interrupted by what looked to be a garden, with several raised wooden beds, most of which were still frilly with green leaves.

Despite the size… there was something homey about the place. Maybe it was the garden, or the windows that already glowed faintly as the sun started to set.

The driveway went right up to the house, an offshoot of it leading up to the garage, which was angled away from the house. She recognized Hiccup's black truck parked outside, with a blue Subaru next to it.

Pulling up in front of the house, Astrid killed the engine and pulled off her helmet.

It was so… quiet. There were a few bird calls in the trees, but there was no sound of cars, and no buzz of life like there was constantly in the city. Astrid had almost forgotten just how quiet the country could be. And she wasn't sure how to feel about it. She knew most people found the quiet peaceful, but it was making her a little nervous. The feeling that she was trespassing grew suddenly stronger, even as she realized that coming here might not have been her brightest idea.

And then…

CRASH!

Astrid jolted, her heart hammering in her chest from surprise.

Leaving her motorcycle, she followed the sound toward the garage.

"—when we're the only ones actually doing anything!" she heard, as she neared the open door.

Someone responded, but they weren't yelling, so Astrid couldn't hear what it was.

The first voice had been male, but too deep, and too strong, to be Hiccup's.

"Can't they just make up their minds?" he asked. He had lowered his voice, but she had reached the corner of the garage, so she could make the words out. "In one breath the guy says we're public menaces that need to be stopped, but we still should have stopped the jailbreak that no one knew was happening!"

"This is nothing new." Hiccup. His voice sounded muffled, so he was probably facing away from her. "Well, the public menace stuff isn't."

There was a dull thud, which Astrid recognized from her childhood as the sound of something being kicked.

"They said nicer things about me when I worked for Pitch," the first guy said.

Astrid felt her throat tighten at the mention of Pitch, and felt a surge of wariness at the connection her mind was unwilling to make.

It couldn't be possible.

"If they'd actually known who you worked for they probably would have said worse," a warm, lilting, female voice said.

The first guy snickered. "That would probably depend."

"Our public image isn't the problem," Hiccup said. "Why would Pitch… Toothless? What's wrong, Bud?"

The next moment, Astrid found herself face to face with an ebony colored dragon. One she had become familiar with in the past week. And who had an awful lot of teeth, considering his name was Toothless. He had just come out of the garage, looking right at her with slit-pupil green eyes. A deep growl reverberated in the back of the dragon's throat.

"Toothless?" Hiccup asked, just as he came around the garage doorway. "Oh."

The dragon's long tail swayed, and she caught of flash of its one red fin.

Astrid looked between Hiccup and Toothless, seeing the way his hand rested on the dragon's side – as though it were the most natural gesture in the world. His left hand.

"What's going on?"

The two other speakers came out. Rapunzel, from the art lab… and Jack Frost. Well, he had the white hair, but he was dressed in a blue hoodie and a pair of cargo pants, rather than his uniform. She realized, a little too late, that she should have recognized his voice.

For a minute, the five of them stood there, the dragon's teeth still bared.

Astrid tried to wrap her head around the fact that she was looking at the Big 4. Well, minus Braveheart. And Sun Flower. Unless Rapunzel was Sun Flower.

She looked back at Hiccup. He was dressed as usual, in jeans and a tshirt over a turtle neck. But now, she didn't need the armor to make the connection. The dragon made it kind of obvious.

Hiccup – Night Fury – rubbed the back of his neck. "Well, this is awkward. Toothless, that's enough growling."

The dragon gave one last rumble for good measure, then sat back on his hind legs. His gaze never left her, though.

"How… how did you even find this place?" Hiccup asked,

"How did you get a dragon?" Somehow, that was the only question she was capable of forming at that moment.

"Uh…" He looked at the dragon, who looked back at him, head cocked to the side. "Would you believe me if I said he was a birthday present?"

Frost snickered.

"No!"

"I won't waste my breath then," Hiccup sighed.

Astrid stared at him.

Night Fury.

That was why he had been so amused when he asked if she wanted something like Night Fury's armor.

She looked down at his left foot, and the metal prosthetic. That was why he had stumbled of the weight of the leather.

That was why the way he had stood up from the chair seemed strange – why he put most of his weight on his right foot.

"My jacket," she said, remembering with sudden clarity why she had come all the way out there in the first place. With the sudden desire to get it, and get out. "I came for the jacket."

"You could have called."

"Your phone is dead," Frost said. "I told you yesterday." Of all of them, he was the only one who seemed totally un-phased by the situation.

Beside him, Rapunzel worried her lower lip as she looked between them all.

"So what's your real name?" Astrid asked, glaring at Frost.

"Jack," he said. "Or Jackson. But that's a mouthful."

"Jack…" Hiccup shook his head. "I'll get your jacket."

He vanished back into the garage, and Astrid was left with Jack Frost, Rapunzel, and the dragon.

"Thanks for the ride the other night," Jack said, grinning.

He was enjoying this, she realized. He somehow thought the whole thing was amusing.

"That still doesn't explain how you knew my name." Because that had been bugging her for the past four days. "And don't say you follow the local circuit."

"Well, I do," he said. "But…"

As she watched, his hair darkened. White strands turned a warm, reddish brown, deathly pale skin warmed to a fair, peachy hue. And the unnerving blue eyes she had noticed in the car turned honey brown. When the transformation finished, he gave her a two fingered salute. Astrid looked between Jack and Rapunzel, realizing he was the same one who had come in the classroom to pick up his lunch.

In a strange way, she almost felt better. Two of the four people who had known her name were actually the same person. That took the number down to… three.

She heard a door close, and the other three all looked into the garage. Where she guessed (or rather, hoped) that Hiccup had returned. All she wanted was to take her jacket and get away so she would have a chance to reassemble her thoughts.

Sure enough, Hiccup came around the doorway, carrying the paper bag.

"Look, Astrid—"

"I don't want to hear it," she said, cutting him off.

It wasn't entirely true. Her head swirled with questions that she wanted answers to, but she couldn't get them straight enough to give them voice.

She was just taking the bag when someone's phone went off.

"Not now," Hiccup muttered.

Astrid paused, though she wasn't sure why.

Jack was the one who pulled his phone from the pocket of his hoodie. His amusement was long gone as he read the screen.

"What is it?" Rapunzel asked.

"Downtown," he said, already moving for the garage as he pulled off his hoodie.

"Who?" Hiccup asked.

"Doesn't say."

Rapunzel dashed into the garage. And into the house, from the sound of her steps.

Jack glanced around the edge of the doorway, looking at Hiccup. "Are you coming? Merida's in class."

Hiccup looked at Astrid, and she saw hesitance in his expression.

For a moment, she thought he was going to say something to her to her. But then he looked away.

"Yeah, I'm coming," he said, turning into the garage. Toothless followed him with obvious excitement.

Did the dragon actually understand what was going on?

Astrid stood there for a moment, even more confused that a few minutes before.

Something in the garage rattled, and Jack said something she couldn't hear. It broke the spell, though. She turned away, and ran back to her motorcycle. Shoving the paper bag into the compartment under the seat before getting on.

She didn't bother thinking as she took off down the driveway. Instead, she forced herself to just focus on getting home. Or just anywhere that she could think.

The driveway, and the road through the trees, didn't feel nearly as long going back, and it was a relief to break through the tree line. But she didn't even make it a hundred yards before a shadow passed over her.

Breaking hard, she looked up at Toothless. His massive wings beat, and she felt the downdraft created by the movement. Jack flew over to her right.

Somehow, that was what made it hit home.

It really was them.

#

By the time she pulled into her garage, it was getting dark. Both with the setting of the sun, and the heavy clouds that said the sky was thinking about raining again.

Jack had mentioned that whatever it was happening was downtown. So she had ridden through the suburbs, rather than taking the freeway. The longer route – not that she had minded. It gave her a chance to try and clear her head. Trying to get her head around what she had just learned. Though even as she finally get home, she didn't feel as though she actually had anything figured out.

She barely remembered to get the paper bag with her jacket from the compartment under her seat before she went inside.

Her apartment was still and quiet, only a little light seeping through the sliding glass door to the left. But even turning on the light did only so much to make it more welcoming.

She kicked off her shoes, and hung her old jacket from the coat hook by the door. She tossed the new jacket, still wrapped, onto her couch before she went to take a shower.

The hot water warmed skin she hadn't realized was cold. Inhaling the steam seemed to help clear out her brain, as well. Some of her confusion eased, and she felt herself relax. She still hadn't totally sorted out her thoughts on the realization – but her brain was slightly more ordered. And she felt more capable of actually processing it all.

She changed into her pajamas, and considered cooking something for dinner… but settled on just ordering Chinese food. She wasn't up for cooking that night. Even if it did just mean dumping a can of soup in a pot for a couple minutes.

Once she had made the call, she looked around the living room of her apartment… and her eyes landed on the paper bag. It still sat on the couch, exactly where she had tossed it, the paper wrinkled from all she had put it through.

Unfolding it, she reached inside and pulled out the jacket.

The dark brown leather looked as though it had been polished since the fitting, and now it actually looked like a jacket. The decorative seams were done with black thread, and the inside was lined with dark red fabric. She ran her fingers over the tarnished brass zipper, and the designs pressed into the shoulders.

When she tried it on, it was a little stiff, but it fit perfectly. Even the waistband she had added at the fitting, which added nearly three inches to the length, looked as though it had been a part of the original design.

Well, Gobber had been right. Hiccup certainly knew what he was doing when it came to leather.

She exhaled as she set the jacket down… and did exactly what she had promised herself she wouldn't do.

The footage of Night Fury's fall was saved in her phone. Though she didn't have an explanation for why she had gone to that trouble. Though she had watched it so many times, it had been easier to have the file itself.

Everything was exactly the same.

The same images, the same camera angles, the same timing…

But everything was completely different.

Knowing the face behind the helmet made all the difference.

The video ended, but she continued to stare at the phone screen for a few breaths. Trying to process. Trying to put it all together.

Heaving a sigh of defeat, she reached for the TV remote. She had left it on the local news, so that was what came up now. There was no live footage of the Big 4, and the anchor didn't look especially somber. Instead, they were covering some local story Astrid had no interest in. But she left it on, because she didn't want to sit in silence. And because, if something had happened downtown, they would probably mention it.

There was a knock on her door, and she was grateful for the distraction of paying for her food. She settled back on the couch with her General Tsao's chicken, and the plastic fork that had come in the bag. (She didn't have the patience for the wooden chopsticks.)

The news had moved onto another story, and Astrid wasn't paying any attention to Seraphina Typhan's latest 'keep the world green' campaign, when her phone rang. She glanced at the screen, planning to ignore the call, but changed her mind as soon as she saw her brother's picture. She couldn't hit accept fast enough.

"Hey," she said, swallowing a chunk of chicken that she hadn't quite chewed thoroughly.

"Hey, Kid," Anders chuckled. "How are you?"

Anders was the eldest of the four siblings – and the only one Astrid could have an actual conversation with. Unfortunately, those conversations weren't as often as she would have liked. That was the one reason she wasn't happy with his decision to join the navy.

She tried to find the answer to that question. Thankfully, Anders was good at reading her silence.

"You okay?"

"I'm not sure," she admitted, then quickly changed the subject. "How are you?"

Anders sighed. "Tired. But that's nothing new. Sorry I couldn't get back to you. Every time I wanted to, it was 3 in the morning your time."

"It's okay."

"I don't have a lot of time," he said. "So, what's up?"

Astrid sighed as she leaned back into the couch. She had muted the TV, but she could still see Serphina Typhan talking behind the podium at her most recent press conference.

"Astrid?"

"What do you think of the Big 4?"

"The Big 4? The super hero team?"

"Them." She knew the answer – they had talked about it before. But she didn't know how else to bring up the subject.

"I think they're heroes," he said. "And they don't deserve what people like Dad say about them."

Anders and their father had had a rather loud argument on the subject the last time he had been on leave. The final brick in her resolution to move out as soon as she started college.

"Why?" she asked.

"Because they're the only ones actually doing anything," Anders said. "Burgess would have been leveled years ago if they hadn't shown up."

On the screen, they cut to footage of the Big 4. Well, Hiccup, Toothless, Jack, and Rapunzel. (That was four, she realized. So why weren't they called the Big 5?) They were fighting what appeared to be a group of super powered teens. Judging from the light in the video, it had been several hours earlier.

"I never understood why you didn't like them," Anders said.

"What do you mean?"

"I always thought you would appreciate that they were actually getting something done," he said. "And you always liked superhero comics."

Astrid frowned as she watched Rapunzel lasso a rope of her hair around a boy who had been running from her. She almost snickered when she saw the boy cry out in surprise. Even without sound, his expression was comical.

The camera switched to Jack, who was literally flying circles around two more of them. At first she couldn't figure out why – until one tried to punch Jack, but was so turned around that he hit his friend.

Anders had always been her hero growing up – even more so when he had gone into the military four years earlier. For some reason, she had never been willing to apply that title to the Big 4.

Night Fury's fall had changed her mind, even before she realized. Especially when his near death experience didn't convince him to give up the whole thing.

"What brought this on?"

How was she supposed to answer that?

"I met Night Fury," she said. That seemed safe enough. "And Jack Frost."

"Seriously?"

She laughed dryly at his excitement. "I gave Frost a ride from the college to the fight the other night."

"Why did he need a ride if he can fly?"

"He was being attacked by Nightmares," she said, though she wasn't sure how much of an explanation that was.

Ander's excitement faded immediately. "Are you okay?"

"Yeah, they didn't get anywhere near me." A bit of an overstatement, but still true.

She wanted to say more – to tell him everything. From meeting Hiccup, to finding out the secret. But she couldn't bring herself to do it.

"Look, Astrid, I've gotta go." He hesitated. "Are you gonna be okay?"

"Why wouldn't I be?"

"You don't sound okay."

"I'm just tired." She was still more confused than anything. "I'll be fine."

"Okay. We'll talk soon."

"Yeah. Bye, Anders."

"Later, Kid."

He hung up, and Astrid turned her attention back to the screen.

The last punk was just trying to make a break for it. Dollar bills fluttered out of the backpack he held by one strap as he ran (with awful form) down the street. For a second, it actually looked as though he would get away.

Something zipped across the screen, and hit the backpack. The momentum sent him reeling, since he refused to let go of the backpack.

An arrow was stuck through the thick fabric, pinning it to the wall. Before he could just let go, Frost had landed in front of him. Braveheart was just walking into view. Her red curls wild around her head, a contrast to her dark blue uniform.

Yanking the arrow from the wall, Frost handed the backpack to Rapunzel. The camera followed her as she took it back to the man who stood in the doorway of a deli halfway up the street. Astrid didn't need to hear what the man was saying to know that he was thanking Rapunzel profusely.

Until now, she had never applied the title 'hero' to the Big 4… but that seemed to be exactly what they were.

Astrid sighed as she looked back down at her phone.

She picked it up, hesitating for a moment, before she pursed her lips and typed up a message.

Can we talk? She sent the message to Hiccup before she could over think the simple wording.

She didn't expect an immediate answer. His phone was probably still dead. But she had just turned the TV volume back up and started to reach for her food again when her phone chimed.

Now?

Tomorrow, she sent back.

I'll be in the lab in the afternoon.