How to Make Your Leg

"Are you all right, bud?" Hiccup asked Toothless, a mere paraphrase of all of the worrying he had been doing over the past half an hour. Astrid let him get away with it since Toothless had come out of Dora's with lipstick marks and glitter all over him. She sympathized with the canine.

"How are we going to make a prosthetic? Don't you need special schooling or something to build that kind of stuff?" Astrid asked as they walked towards Gobber's.

"Well, I do have the blueprints," Hiccup reasoned.

"That's like saying you have all the directions for a warship but no wood, nails, or pitch. Or that you have the materials but no experience. Or you have a conjunction, a preposition, and a transitive verb, but no sentence. "

"What are you talking about?" Hiccup rolled his eyes. "I learned enough about gerunds and participles and sentence fragments in middle school grammar, thank you very much. Spare me now. Toothless, get out of that garbage can. I did make Gobber's prosthesis, remember?"

Toothless attempted to get out of the garbage can as commanded, but he was stuck. Astrid pried him out and the dog licked her hand before trying to herd her along the sidewalk.

"But you've never made a knee joint, have you?" Astrid picked up their conversation again. "What if you don't have all the parts you need?"

"Have you even seen the Back Room?" Hiccup countered.

"What's that?" Astrid asked.

"Oh, you'll see," Hiccup replied, winking mischievously. "Come, let me show you." Only several dim light bulbs hanging from the ceiling lit the inside of Gobber's shop. Astrid thought they would have to leave and come back later since no one was there, but Hiccup pulled a key out of his pocket and unlocked the door.

He held it open for her. "After you, Milady," he said, grinning. Astrid obliged his humor and swept into the shop like the Queen of England herself, Toothless at her heels. Hiccup locked the door behind them.

"Just in case," he explained, noticing her questioning look.

"Someone's getting nervous in their old age," Astrid remarked, poking him in the ribs.

"OW!" Hiccup howled. "My ribs are broken, remember?"

"Oh! Sorry!" Astrid poked him in the shoulder instead. "So what's the Back Room?"

Hiccup beckoned her to follow him. He bypassed Gobber's office, which was more like a pool room, and took out another key to unlock a big metal door. Astrid let him struggle with opening it for a minute before stepping in.

"I'm not completely helpless, you know," he grumbled as she tugged the door open effortlessly.

"Uh huh. You'd still need my help to find your way out of a paper bag!"

"Probably because you'd be the one who trapped me in it." Hiccup flipped on a switch. Big overhead lights came on to illuminate the hugest heap of metal scraps and junk Astrid had ever seen strewn on the ground.

"Ta-da!" Hiccup threw his arms wide, a wince cutting off the exclamation. "This is the Back Room, the only junkyard you'll ever need!" He selected a bucket off a nail on the wall.

"Do you need me to look for certain pieces?" Astrid asked as he began sorting through the pile and throwing articles in the bucket.

"No, thanks. There's a bucket of raw meat in the alley out back. You can let Toothless have it. Eureka!" With a delighted look on his face, Hiccup held up a long screw. "I've been looking for this for ages!"

Astrid let him do his thing and went to go find the bucket of meat. On the way out the back door, Toothless wove in and out of her feet, making her trip over him. She hit the concrete of the alley hard.

She rubbed her back, glaring at Toothless. "You used to be such a nice dog." He pushed his nose into her knee, and she rubbed behind his ear. His eyelids drooped in pleasure.

"Can you find that meat for me, boy?" Astrid asked him, not wanting to get up. She was cozy in her coat and fur-lined boots and now that she was on the ground, she might as well stay there.

Toothless barked an affirmative. The Border Collie set to sniffing around, nose to the ground with his black and white tail high in the air. A few minutes later, the sniffer found its target, and Toothless started scratching at a bucket hidden in the shadows.

Astrid hauled herself to her feet and pried the lid open before Toothless could rip the plastic to shreds.

"Bon appétit," she muttered, kicking it over so Toothless could have easier access to its contents. Meat spilled out, which Toothless commenced to suck up like a vacuum cleaner.

Hiccup poked his head out the door. "Hey, Astrid! I think I've got all the parts I need." His green eyes sparkled with excitement.

Astrid dusted off her jeans. "I'm coming. Is it all right to leave Toothless out here?"

"I think so. Toothless."

Toothless' ears pricked up at his name.

"Go home," Hiccup commanded. The dog barked and trotted off.

"He'll make it all the way home?" Astrid questioned dubiously.

"He should. He's got a doggy door." He rubbed his hands together. "Now, shall we?"

Astrid followed Hiccup to his work station, which wasn't in the basement. "People would start wondering if they heard too much commotion from down there," Hiccup had told her once, "so Gobber lets me use most of the machinery in the shop."

"What do you want me to do?" Astrid asked as Hiccup cleared a space on the table and set his overflowing bucket down on it.

"Do you happen to know how to weld?" Hiccup shot her a hopeful look, pulling out screwdrivers and wrenches.

"Nope!" Astrid had pretty much failed domestic sciences in high school. She hadn't seen the point, and her teachers didn't see the point in teaching her, either, after she'd blown up brownies all over the classroom and the whole building had to evacuate.

"You're going to learn," Hiccup informed her. Astrid groaned half-heartedly. She had offered up her services. Hiccup led her over to another table and handed her a large mask.

"It's to make sure you don't get any sparks in your eyes." Hiccup helped her put the clumsy thing on. "You don't want anything flammable near. This thing on the wall here controls the temperature, which I'll set, so don't touch it. Oh, almost forgot."

Hiccup handed her huge leather gloves and an apron. "Don't want your lovely looks burning to a crisp. "

"Thanks. I think."

Hiccup gave her something that looked like one of the spray wands on weed killer bottles. "Press down on the clamp when you want the heat to come, and use this metal bar to shape the gooey metal. And don't touch the finished product with your bare hands."

"I know that. I have enough brains to not touch hot metal. Shouldn't you use... I don't know... plastic or something?" she asked.

Hiccup snorted. "Yes, plastic. So it can bust at the worst possible times. I can just see myself in the middle of a fight with a criminal. 'I'm sorry, my prosthetic broke. Would you mind holding up a sec while I fix it?' That'll go over well." He had a point.

"What do you want me to work on first?"

Hiccup held up a piece of curved metal about three inches long and another piece that was flat. "Weld these together. The square one should be perpendicular to the first one's line of symmetry."

"Huh?"

"The square one should rest on the first one's center in a T shape. When you're done, show it to me before you dunk it in the water." Hiccup pointed to a bucket at Astrid's feet that she hadn't noticed before.

Astrid got to work. She welded pieces together and Hiccup inspected them, sometimes handing them back for corrections. Eventually, she finished all that he wanted done and took off the gloves, mask, and apron, noticing for the first time how hot all the leather had made her feel. How Hiccup wore a leather jacket constantly was a mystery to her.

Astrid pulled up a stool to Hiccup's table, where he had taped complicated blue prints up on the wall. He drilled a hole in one of the scraps Astrid had made, metal curling up as the drill bit sliced the metal away.

"So, where'd you learn to do all of this?" Astrid asked when the drill died down. As far as she knew, Stoick wasn't mechanically inclined.

"I picked it up in my mother's lab. She used to work late and give me projects to amuse myself." Hiccup laughed, and Astrid would have missed the slight trace of remorse in it if she hadn't known him better.

"You inherited her knack for science," Astrid observed, eyes roaming over the blueprints. "Is that a secret compartment?"

Hiccup scowled at her and snatched the paper she pointed at down from the wall. "Not anymore, obviously."

"Obviously." Astrid leaned forward to get a better look at the paper.

Hiccup hid it behind another diagram. "Tell me about your mother."

"My mother?" Astrid was surprised. "Why do you want to know about her?"

"I don't know. You always seem to wrestle stories out of me. Tell me a fact about yourself for once."

Astrid racked her brain. On any other occasion, she would have been able to think of something, but when it was requested, her mind went blank. "Uh...when I was in fifth grade, I joined the boys' soccer team at my school."

"You did?" Hiccup whooped. "I feel sorry for them!"

Astrid grinned. "You should. I had them eating dust every time we ran laps." Those were the good old days, when homework wasn't too demanding and she had time to rough it up with the boys.

"My dad tried to get me to do sports," Hiccup volunteered. "For some reason unknown to my older self, I chose volleyball. Didn't go too well."

"Really?"

"Let's just say that I looked worse than Scott Sterling after the first practice. Scalpel."

"What does a scalpel have to do with volleyball?"

"Sorry. I meant wrench." Hiccup pointed at the tool he wanted without looking up. Astrid fetched it for him and sat back down.

Suddenly, she snapped her fingers. "I keep forgetting. There's a new movie out in theaters called A Wrinkle in Time. I bought two groupons for the showing on Thursday at seven and thought you might like to go since you read Sci-Fi junk."

Hiccup bit his lip. "I'd really, really like to, but I already have a prior engagement."

"Oh." She should have known.

"I'm terribly sorry, Astrid."

"Nah. It's all right," she assured him, disappointed.

"I could-"

"Don't bother," Astrid said lightly. "Did I ever tell you about the time..."

While Hiccup worked on his leg, Astrid told him stories of her childhood. Hiccup occasionally threw in some of his own, the funniest one being about the time his dad and his uncle Spitelout took him and Snotlout camping.

"Trolls exist!" he declared, shaking a screwdriver at her. "They steal your socks, but only the left ones. What's up with that? Snotlout woke up one morning, got out of his sleeping bag, went to change his socks and BAM! Half of them were gone."

"There's no such thing as a right or left sock."

"There is! Ask Gobber the next time you see him. He knows exactly which one goes on which foot."

"What a load of rubbish. Did you ever find your troll?" Astrid teased him.

"We went fishing and I snuck off to hunt for troll tracks, but my dad discovered my disappearance and dragged me back."

"Ha." Astrid covered up a yawn.

Hiccup noticed it. "You should go to sleep, Astrid. Sorry for keeping you here. Selfishness on my part." He was wide awake. Astrid wondered where he got all of his energy without drinking coffee in copious amounts like she did.

Astrid frowned. "Are you sure you don't need my help? You sent Toothless home."

"I have everything I need."

"Okie dokie." Astrid covered up another yawn. "See you tomorrow. You are coming to work, I presume?"

"Yep, and this time, it'll be on my own two feet."

…

"You only have a couple weeks left to live," the doctor kindly tells her, although she couldn't care less. Death has no definition for her when she has power flowing through her veins.

In fact, she is not the only person who has a couple weeks left to live.

She has planned the death of a certain green-eyed red head in a couple of weeks, and she will not fail. Not this time.

A/N: On that happy note, please leave a review to tell me just how much you hate the ending! :D Can anyone get the paper bag quote? (Anonymous Noob the 2nd was correct in guessing the last quote. It was from the Fellowship of the Ring.)