Here is the next chapter. I had fun writing this one as well. Thank you guys for the support, I'm always blown away. Remember I don't own anything.

Cold and Warm 9

Astrid shivered, the cold seemed to be creeping ever so slowly up on her. The fire, that burned brightly in the dark night, was doing less and less to keep her warm. Sometimes the darkness itself seemed cold. She would look out into its nothingness and it would reach long, dry fingers out and rasp them across her skin. Its fingers would choke out the warmth of the fire, and slowly siphoning her life. She shifted closer to Hiccup, his warmth giving her slight comfort against the cold.

Her thoughts remained on the fact that she had just learned that Hiccup was the Hiccup. The one that had run away, breaking his father's heart. It was crazy, he had survived. A thought struck her, "You know, I'd like to see Spitelout's face, when he finds out that you're alive."

Hiccup started, he had never thought of letting anyone know he was alive. Hel, he hadn't even thought that they thought he was dead, he had just never cared. They hated him as far as he knew and didn't want him back. "Does he have to find out?" Hiccup asked her.

"Why not, you'd make a better chief than he or Snotlout would."

"In all honesty, anyone probably would."

"That is true, but I think that you would have done very well being a Haddock and all."

"Not really," he said animatly, "I probably destroy the village in a day."

"No you wouldn't, you would do just fine," Astrid said confidently.

"But I'm," He gestured to himself wildly, "me."

"What has that got to do with it?" Astrid asked frustrated.

"The people kinda hate me, they would rather have some one more viking-like, like you," He gestured at her.

She turned away from him, her heart puckering at what he had said. He was right, she knew it. But what he didn't know is that they wouldn't want her as chief, they wanted something different. It was another reminder that she and him were hated.

Hiccup noticed her change in demeanor and wondered at it. He had probably said something wrong, it was his unofficial custom to ruin things that way. It was the cherry that he always put on top of any mess that he had made. But he couldn't let whatever he had said hang. "You never told me your story," he said a little more gently.

She was numbly conscience of what he had said. He had told her his story, so now she would tell hers.

"After you left," She started her narrative and Hiccup followed her gaze to the fire, "You know that Spitelout had control over the village. Snotlout, by default, became heir. He had an ever growing infatuation with me, and for his own reasons decided that someday I would marry him. He would always hit on me and was suggesting luid and inappropriate things. I gave him the cold shoulder but i was never able to say anything back because he was the heir." Her fists were clenched and she spoke with open vehemence. "He never gave up or went away, he became more and more persistent over the years and I was never allowed to talk back. I trained to become an even better warrior, it was my hobby. One day I was practicing some new techniques with my ax and he showed up. He made his usual comments about how he knew that 'I wanted him' and I said nothing. He continued until I couldn't stand it anymore and I told him that I was training and couldn't talk. You know you cousin well enough to know that he doesn't like being told what to do. He said that after I married him that I wouldn't be able to train at all. At that point I decided that I had had enough no matter the consequences and I punched him. After that I was kept locked in my parents house awaiting our immediate wedding." Astrid paused, her emotions threatening to break loose of her carefully master warrior character. She carefully and precisely cut away each emotion, she could not afford to be vulnerable. "While I was there he would come and threaten me with what he would do to me once we were married. I decided that I would escape. I tried several times before I succeed. When I did I realized that I had no plan for after escaping the village so I ran into the forest. You know the rest of what happened,"She finished.

She looked over at his face expecting his judgement to be apparent but anger was there. Hse did not know why and it scared her, she had just laid bare her history to him. What did he think of her, did he not like her?

"Damn, that cousin of mine," he said with passion.

"Why?" she asked, still feeling scared.

"He put you through hel, no one deserves what happened to you."

She felt a little better but not much, "But it still happened."

"That is no excuse," he turned ot her and looked her directly in the eyes. She looked back into his vivid emerald green eyes timidly.

"Are you ok?" He asked with a tenderness that caught her off guard. She was a warrior and she could handle everything, except for the emotions that he displayed. The feelings, that she had so carefully dammed up and cut off never to be shown again, came flowing forth in a torrential torrent that she couldn't have stopped even if she had tried. She turned from him her eyes stinging and her heart aching for the ability to be open without judgement. The wish to be able to let someone see her hurt was the cry that was ever on the tongue of her heart. A tear slid down her cheek and onto her lip, she touched it with her tongue and tasted the salt. She tried to hide her state of emotional disrepair from him.

"Astrid, what's wrong?" Hiccup asked.

She couldn't handle hiding any more and she turned to look at him, tears and all. He didn't blink but moved closer to her and wrapped his arms about her lithe frame. She pushed against him in surprise and the fear of having someone close. He held her and did not let go. She push against him, there seemed some fundamental rule that made this impossible for this to make sense. People weren't just nice to her, she must be dreaming. She pushed harder but he possessed surprising strength. His arms were strong about her, but they held her with a tender firmness. Eventually she came to terms with the fact that she was not dreaming and she let her body go limp and conform to his embrace.

He felt her relax, it was good to feel her calm. She cried softly into his chest and he marveled at the way her body perfectly fit against his. His left arm held her to him and his right was looser letting his hand trace inumerable patterns up and down her slender back. In the resistance, that she had put up, she had ended up in his lap and he wondered at why she wasn't mad with him for it. But maybe she didn't hate him like everyone else that he had known. It seemed, infact, that the same people that had hated him now had a bone to pick with her. Form her story, he had guessed, that the people of the village had done nothing to support or help her in her plight. They even might have supported Snotlout and his crazy ideas about owning her. They had now both been wronged by the same family. He remembered what the warrior in his arms used to be like, it was one of the few bright memories of Berk. He remembered how much spirit she had and how she was unstoppable. He could only imagine what his cousin had done to cause such a perverse change in her. As he held her against the odds of the world and Snotlout, he knew that he could not and would not let this go.

Astrid pulled her arms up and let them rest against his chest. His warmth was welcome and comforting as she let years of hurt leak out into his shirt. It felt good to finally let it out, it hurt but it was a good healing hurt. The secret identity that she judged herself by was slowly being taken away, her pain slowly changing into something new, foreign and strange. He hummed softly, the quiet tones vibrating through his chest and into her. It was strangely comforting. Her head was resting on his chest and shoulder, she could hear his heartbeat. In a moment of realization she saw that he was human, he had beating heart not just physically but he cared, about her.

Her tears came to a stand still and she looked up at him. He turned his eyes down to hers. Her azure blue eyes met his emerald green eyes. She saw so much more than she knew how to quantify with words, his emotions reaching out of the many and complicated artifacts of his strangely, beautiful eyes.

He could but helplessly look down in the swirling blue ocean before him. Waves of emotion after emotion colliding to reconstruct new feelings in a perfect storm. Stirring and changing the feelings that she felt as they broke each other open. He realized in one profound moment, that on her ocean of huge twenty foot breakers, that he was like a single drop that had caused a tiny ripple. It was then that he knew he loved her.

She felt more than she understood. Slowly she began to move, she didn't even realize till she had cover half the distance to him. But she did not stop, she didn't think she would be able to even if she tried. He moved to, closer and closer, centimeter by centimeter. Her lips pressed softly to his and her eyes closed and she kissed him.

OK, I admit that may have been a bad place to end it. Thank you guys for reading; in the three months that this has been up it has had 10,000 views. That is a huge milestone for me and I want to say thank you for making this a reality. Always feel free to comment, give your ideas or your personal thoughts. Thank You.

Hope whomever is reading this has a good day (or night).

nerdT14