A/N: One more chapter to go after this one! I hope you guys are still enjoying it :) Thank you for all the lovely feedback!

December 31st, 2017

Tonight, Astrid was a woman on a mission. To fix the mistakes she'd made. To retaliate against fate, and return the middle finger it had given her last year. Shove it up its ass.

Because what were the fucking odds of finally getting time alone with the guy she'd been intrigued by for years, making her think her life is finally going somewhere, that there is a light at the end of the seemingly endlessly meandering tunnel? Only for her to break her phone by falling on her ass. And lose his number.

She'd found out too late. Too late to rush after him and give him her contact details instead. Too late to try and figure out where Hiccup's cousin might be getting his nose fixed so that she might rush into the ER like the pathetic mess he'd turned her into. Because he had, in a way she couldn't quite explain.

She'd adored every second she'd spent with him. She'd wanted to kiss him, to hold him, ask him to take her home and never let her leave again. Because he'd felt like safety, a sense of security, the direction she'd been looking for that year. And her heart, which had been beating too quickly all night, had completely dropped when she'd pulled her phone out of her back pocket, intending to ask him whether his drama-fuelled cousin had made it out alive, and had found it basically snapped in half.

She'd tried every method Internet-experts suggested to recover the data. She'd taken her phone to a specialised shop, where they'd informed her that there was nothing more they could do for her, and that perhaps she should turn on cloud sync on her next phone. As if she hadn't reached that conclusion herself.

After that, she'd spent her free time in the first weeks of January digging through every social media website and search engine she could think of. But Hiccup hadn't lied about his lack of social media. No matter how long she tried, she couldn't find a guy with the same cute freckles, gap-toothed smile and messed up mop of auburn hair she just wanted to bury her hands in. No "Hiccup". And it didn't help that that nickname was the only thing she knew about him. She didn't know his cousin's name, she knew what he studied but not where. She hadn't asked him if he lived in Berk or just celebrated New Year's here. She hadn't a clue how old he was, or what his last name might be.

If only she hadn't tried to be funny by filling in his contact name as Fake Foot Guy. Then maybe he would've put in his full name. Then she could have Googled a lot better, or even asked around in Berk itself… After all, if only his friends knew him as 'Hiccup', she highly doubted simply that nickname and a physical description would get her anywhere. He couldn't be the only tall, Berkian guy with auburn hair and green eyes. And she didn't know how to explain what it was exactly that made him feel so, so special.

Towards the end of January, when she had been starting to seriously consider going to public media channels such as the radio and TV to ask if anyone knew a Berkian Hiccup, she finally sort-of regained her senses. He was just a guy, right? Sure, it had been a month since she'd last seen him, and she still couldn't get him out of her head, he kept showing up in her dreams every other night. His bright green eyes peering into hers, his long arms wrapped around her as he kissed over and over…

But Hiccup hadn't contacted her either. He had her full name, could basically look up and contact her anywhere. She'd kept her eye on all of her apps to see if she'd received messages from people she didn't have added… But he hadn't. Perhaps he wasn't that special after all. Maybe it was just her most recent obsession, filling the void that would normally be filled by another Netflix series. Desperately trying to tag along on his journey, since her own life wasn't heading anywhere else.

She had never been that person. And if she did find Hiccup again, she didn't want him to get to know that Astrid. She wanted to make his life better, like she felt he could do to hers.

But as the months passed, and December came around, she couldn't help but start thinking of again. Because she'd actually done it this year. She was getting her life back on track.

Remember that joke you made about me being an undercover cop last year? Well, I signed up for the police academy. I'm currently top of my class. And you helped me get there.

She didn't know why she hadn't considered it until Hiccup's joke had stirred in her mind. But after the first few months of training, she was convinced it had been the right choice. It allowed her to help people, and to protect them. Which was exactly what she'd always wanted.

And, as much as she felt silly for it, she simply wanted to tell Hiccup. Apologise for losing his number, while also admitting that maybe, it wasn't the right time for them to meet. But she felt better now. And she really wanted to try again.

She wasn't superstitious. But she just needed fate to work in her favour one more New Year's Eve, and allow her to find Hiccup once again.

She had never consciously looked for him before. All the previous years, it had simply happened for no apparent reason. But she didn't want to rely on something so intangible, so unsure. Hoffersons made their own luck, after all.

Hence, she visited every part of the inner city of Berk she'd seen him in before. The stall at which they'd bumped into each other, the cafe she'd wanted to hug him in, the square where they had finally talked. But he wasn't in any of those places, and she figured it was too early for anyone to be at a club.

So she pulled up her jacket, and made another round, trying to tell herself that she wasn't crazy and desperate, just hopeful. That even Heather had told her to try, because Astrid would clearly regret it if she didn't, and to bring Hiccup back with her to the house party she was throwing if she didn't want to lose him again in the inner city crowd.

And then she saw him.

He was on the ice skating rink, rounding the corner significantly more skilled than seven years ago, a smile on his face that told her he was actually enjoying himself. Regardless of his decreased clumsiness, he still managed to bump into a small, blond woman instead of the banister he'd been aiming for, making Astrid chuckle to herself because it was simply adorable. But Hiccup kept laughing too, his slightly embarrassed but overall delighted smile not fading as the woman wrapped her arms around his neck.

And kissed him.

Time cruelly slowed down at that moment, making sure that Astrid saw exactly how Hiccup buried his hand in the woman's hair, and returned the kiss.

It shouldn't hit her as hard as it did. It shouldn't make her feel like someone had punched her right in her stomach, her legs giving out as she was engulfed by an overwhelming sense of panic. The urge to run, to get as far away as possible. But her feet belonged to someone else, keeping her fixed in place and forcing her to look, for what felt like an eternity.

Until Hiccup broke the kiss and glanced up, the green eyes she doubted she could ever forget meeting hers. Widening in shock, a word that looked an awful lot like her name forming on his lips.

She fled. She turned around, her back towards him, and she walked away as calmly as she could. Swallowing away the tears she didn't think she could shed over someone she barely knew.

She'd missed her chance.

January 1st, 2019

No one at university had told Hiccup that graduating as an engineer did absolutely nothing for someone's ability to turn themselves into a fool. Because he was definitely still incredibly good at that.

Always a fool for Astrid Hofferson.

Even though they'd only really talked to each other once. Despite her not calling him while she'd said she would.

He knew he hadn't messed up his number, and he could come up with a thousand other reasons she hadn't called him back, such as her phone breaking or her being snapped away by Thanos. But it was the reality that he'd forced himself to accept after he'd looked up too many of her social media accounts and had typed out many, many messages, only to delete them again. Whatever connection he had felt, she didn't feel the same way. He was a tragic kindred spirit of La La Land, thinking he'd won the Oscar while the accountants of fate had simply messed up the cards. The idea, the notion that there was something between them, almost akin to soulmates, which had once seemed like a valuable Banksy painting, had been shredded and reduced to scraps.

Or perhaps it had been more like self-destruction on his end after all. A hope he'd clung to because she was just that damn beautiful.

But he had to move on with his actual life instead of believing in fairy tales. Only British princes got to marry girls who were way out of their league, after all.

Not that 2017 hadn't been good to him. Part of moving on had been saying yes when Camicazi had told him she'd stop stealing his trash if he allowed her to steal him away to a restaurant instead. They'd connected and had quickly started dating. He had dated before, but she'd become his first long-term girlfriend, and he couldn't say he regretted it. It was nice to have someone to talk to, someone to share the house with that still felt too big for him alone. Someone to hug, to kiss, to get support from and to return it to. He had fallen in love, Astrid Hofferson forgotten in the same way she'd forgotten about him. Or so he'd thought.

Until he'd seen her again on the New Year's Eve of 2017.

She'd looked stunned to see him, her face struck by devastation until she'd turned away from him. Exactly the opposite of what he'd expected. Because of course he had anticipated seeing her, had mentally prepared himself for the awkward dance in which she'd pretend to have called him after all, or that they'd never exchanged numbers to begin with. He had planned to tell her that it didn't matter anymore, because he'd found someone who made him happy.

It never came to that, since she fled the moment their eyes had met. He'd always thought she wasn't the kind of person to run from any problem. But apparently he didn't know her as well as he thought he did. Which was logical, they had only spoken once, after all, but he'd had this feeling, and he just… tried not to dwell too much on it.

But then Cami moved away from Berk for a job she absolutely adored. They'd agreed that Hiccup would follow her after his own graduation that summer, that they'd find an apartment together and that Hiccup would sell his house in Berk after all. He still hadn't found what bound him to the city so much, after all, thought that it had perhaps been Cami.

Instead, they simply forgot about each other. Their calls and texts lessened every week, their conversations becoming more detached and less intimate as the weeks went by. And while neither of them knew why it happened, the only upside was that it was seemingly mutual. Or at least, that was the conclusion they drew when they broke up by the end of summer.

Their split had definitely hurt him, but when he had worked through his first grief and evaluated their relationship, he couldn't draw another conclusion than that what had happened was incredibly weird. That he had forgotten about Cami that easily, while he'd never been able to truly forget Astrid. Especially when the winter months came around and he was properly exhausted off the back of his first months of full-time work, she invaded his thoughts again, with her beautiful smile and confident attitude. He started to hope, somewhere, that he might see her again on New Year's Eve. Just one more year. Because he wondered how she was doing, and wanted to at the very least ask her why she hadn't called. So that he could put a definitive end to the saga that, next to the Star Wars sequels, had been haunting him for the entire decade.

Which is why he felt like a fool, because for all of tonight, he hadn't been able to stop scanning the crowds in every bar and club he, Snotlout and Fishlegs visited. Actively looking for Astrid was a step further than simply hoping to see her, after all. But if he was being honest with himself, he didn't enjoy the loud music and the close-quarters dancing all that much. He never had.

It had been in vain of course. Every other year, he hadn't been looking. They'd simply found each other. So by the end of the night, when he got to his bicycle, he logically hadn't seen a sign of Astrid Hofferson.

Until he was done tipsily fiddling with his lock and intuitively checked behind him as he swung his leg over the saddle. And he saw her.

She looked like a vision, her blond hair bound into a ponytail, her face slightly pink from the cold. She was dressed more casually than the last time he'd seen her at a club, but stunning nevertheless. He couldn't imagine there was a day on which she wasn't gorgeous, inside or outside.

But she would never burst that particular fantasy bubble. Because she wasn't interested in him. As she was currently proving by getting on the back of a motorcycle, her arms barely fitting around the waist of a tall, dark-haired man with four times the shoulders he had. Laughing, as if the bodybuilder had made her laugh in a way he'd never gotten the chance to.

Then she flung her ponytail over her shoulder. And her eyes met his eyes, her delight instantly deflating into an expression he was all too familiar with. Which he'd seen enough in the past decade.

Pity.

She started to get off the motorcycle, her eyes set on him. But instead of letting that phase him, he finally found the strength to decide that he didn't need her apologies, let alone her pity. Not now.

She was free to call him if she had something to say. He wasn't going to let her string him along. He'd had nearly an entire decade of that, of life, of fate having its twisted way with him. By taking his father away, and by hypnotising him with a prize he could never win.

So he pushed himself off and cycled away, heading straight home.

December 31st, 2019 | Part 1

Hiccup's New Year's Eve resolution stayed with him for the entirety of 2019. He had focused on his work, on building a life for himself that would set him up for the next decade. The hopefully not-so-roaring twenties.

A life independent of his father's memories, of the weird connection to Astrid he still reminisced about from time to time. But he didn't act on it. He knew there was no use in it. She still hadn't called, after all. And he hadn't looked at any of her social media pages to see if she had ended up with her motorcycle hunk.

It wasn't as if he needed her profile pictures to remember what she looked like, after all.

But it was fine like this. He didn't need her in his life, and repeated that to himself every time he caught his mind wandering off to her again. Every time he started wondering what it might be like to see her again.

In those moments he simply reminded himself that he stood above that now. His dreams and creativity were meant for his designs, for his drawings, for stories that happened to people other than himself. If the past year, hell, the past decade, had taught him anything, it was that he should stay practical. By taking one step at a time, towards a clear, definable goal that didn't depend on coincidences.

He had been happier for it. It had given him a sense of fulfilment, of independence to be standing on his own feet - foot - and call the shots instead of wondering about the what-ifs. What if Dad had still been alive? What if Astrid likes me after all and her not calling me is one big insecurity-fuelled misunderstanding?

So he had asked himself what would actually make him happy on New Year's Eve, too. And he had made the boring, very adult decision to, for the first time in a decade, stay home. His feet propped up on the couch, a bag of Dutch doughnuts on his coffee table, the entire season of The Mandalorian ready on his TV to help him get through the post-The Rise of Skywalker void. Followed by The Witcher if he felt like staying up. It gave him every opportunity to cradle his new rescue dog, Toothless, to his chest whenever they both got spooked by the fireworks, and to simply be himself.

Comfortable and tucked in in his favourite sleeved blanket, he found himself wondering why he hadn't done this before. Going clubbing with the New Year's Eve crowds sucked, and the Berkian weather tonight was even worse than normal, the streets covered in snow and ice. He'd already seen Gobber and Uncle Spitelout that morning, and had agreed to meet with Fishlegs, Snotlout and the twins in the next days.

There was really no one else he needed to see on New Year's Eve.

Not anymore.

And he'd made his peace with that.

He could be perfectly happy in the absence of the most beautiful and interesting woman he'd met in the twenty-six years he'd been alive.

A/N: Of course, this is not the end… One more chapter left!