Disclaimer: I own nothing you recognise; if you're on this site, you know the drill. Also, thanks are owed to athingofvikings, who gave me a much-appreciated sounding-board for a few aspects of my planned world-building for this particular crossover; hope you like it.

Feedback: Appreciated as always.

AN: This ended up being more of an 'interlude' chapter, but I hope you appreciate this calm between storms before the riders face their next few threats.

The Dragon of Wanheda

"How did we get talked into this?" Ruffnut asked as she stared at Hiccup's plans while trying to work the needle through the leather in front of her. "I thought even you thought this was crazy…"

"The early versions, yes," Astrid nodded at Ruffnut in agreement as she worked at cutting the assembled bits of leather into the appropriate shape. "Believe me, I'd be calling Hiccup crazy if he was asking us to do this from scratch, but when we've already seen him get these designs working for other people…"

"And Clarke thinks it could work too," Fishlegs put in, before he winced as he pricked his finger with the needle again. "Seriously, why did I let myself get talked into this? I'm not good at this sort of thing…"

"But you're better than my brother or Snot, and Hiccup and Clarke are doing their own things right now," Astrid observed.

"…Point," Ruffnut nodded, before she smiled. "And hey, at least Clarke not being here shows that this isn't just a girl thing."

"Uh-" Fishlegs began.

"Not saying you're a 'girl' the way Tuff would, Fish, but you can't deny you're not the kinda guy who gets stuck in there," Ruffnut clarified with a cool shrug.

"Besides," Astrid added, "Clarke said she doesn't sew herself, and she needs to do some work getting her infirmary together."

"All good points," Fishlegs nodded in acknowledgement at the girls before he let out a smile. "Can you believe we never thought about doing something like that ourselves?"

"Not really," Astrid shrugged. "I mean, I don't have the patience for learning everything we'd need for that job, you definitely don't have the right dexterity for it, Hiccup tends to be the one who'd get injured more than the one who'd treat it, and the less said about what Snotlout or the twins could do if we gave them access to Gothi's potions the better."

"Hey!"

"You know I'm right."

"Yeah, but it's not like I'm totally irresponsible-"

"We know," Astrid raised a hand to stop that particular rant as she looked apologetically at Ruffnut. "It's just that it's best to make sure you're not in a position to be easily tempted by the possibilities of a role like that."

"…OK, fair enough," Ruffnut nodded, before turning her attention back to the scraps of leather in front of them. "You sure Hiccup got these measurements right?"

"He said something about working out the right size for each of us to get the appropriate drag factor or something like that," Astrid shrugged as she returned to her work. "I don't entirely get what he meant by that, but Clarke… she seemed to get the idea of what he meant even if she couldn't explain it properly."

"She gets the idea?" Ruffnut asked.

"It's like… like how Fishlegs understands enough about smithing to help Hiccup and Gobber in the forge but can't do it himself."

"Hey!"

"Sorry, but we both know you don't have the focus for that kind of work," Astrid looked over at Fishlegs. "Besides, you get what I mean, right?"

"…In what way?"

"In the sense that you could probably give a novice smith a couple of pointers to stop them from making any of the big mistakes but you couldn't actually do the job yourself," Astrid clarified. "I think Clarke's like that in this case; she knows enough to understand the basics of whatever Hiccup's talking about, but she doesn't know the exact details the way an actual expert would… assuming there are experts in this kind of thing, anyway."

"Makes sense," Ruffnut nodded. "Like how Tuff and I don't need to know the details about Hiccup's nerd stuff to know how to pull off a few awesome pranks with his inventions."

"Yeah," Fishlegs nodded, his expression tentative for a moment before he looked back at the girls. "…Do you ever get the feeling she isn't telling us everything?"

"Clarke?" Astrid looked at Fishlegs in surprise. "What do you mean?"

"I just… I don't think she's lying to us, but I always get the impression she's leaving quite a few things out when she's talking about… well, what her life was like before Hiccup found her, things like that. I mean, she grew up on a ship and only saw land a few months ago? Doesn't that strike anyone else as odd?"

"People have weird ways of living," Ruffnut shrugged. "I mean, we spent generations living on an island that was constantly attacked by dragons when we were pretty much convinced they'd eat us if they could."

"You're objecting to it?" Astrid looked at Ruffnut with a smile.

"Just pointing out; not saying it wasn't cool, but like Hiccup said, we must have had serious stubbornness issues to stick it out that long."

"And her people had 'issues' that kept them on a boat for centuries?"

"Who can say what started a way of life like that in the first place?" Astrid pointed out. "Didn't Trader Johann mention some old tale about how one group of people ended up wandering in a desert for decades until they found their new homeland?"

"Maybe…" Fishlegs nodded uncertainly. "But all that other stuff… I mean, she's mentioned a war she was involved in after her people landed, but she doesn't really say much about it…"

"We already knew that she found Griffin when she was trying to protect him from some people even Hiccup doesn't think were dragon hunters," Astrid pointed out, putting down the leather in her hands to look directly at Fishlegs. "Look, for what it's worth, I agree with you that she hasn't told us everything about her past, but right now it comes down to a simple question; do you trust that Clarke is on our side and won't do anything to hurt us?"

"Yes," Fishlegs said, only for his brief confidence to falter. "I just… I don't know why she's not told us everything…"

"We just have to trust that she has her reasons," Astrid nodded at her old friend. "She's already helped us save the Dragon Eye; if she was working against us, she could have done a lot of damage just by doing nothing."

"And there's all that metal she brought for us," Ruffnut added. "Not saying I know how Hiccup's going to use it, but I trust that he'll come up with something good."

"Exactly," Astrid nodded at her friend before she turned back to the leather. "But right now, Hiccup asked us to work on this, so let's see what we can put together."

As she turned her attention back to her latest task, Astrid hoped she had sounded suitably confident in her new friend. She had been telling the truth that she believed Clarke had no intention of harming them, but at the same time, secrets could have a nasty habit of turning against people even if they weren't being kept for obviously negative reasons, and Clarke was definitely keeping a few secrets about her past…

Sometimes Snotlout wondered if any of the other Riders even took him seriously as one of the group. He accepted that Hiccup was the leader and Astrid was the second-in-command, and he even accepted that there was a place for Fishlegs' stupid dragon knowledge, but was it really fair that he always got stuck with the pointless patrols like this?

"We deserve a bit more respect, right, Hookfang?" he looked at his dragon. "I mean, we all know you're the hottest dragon on the team; just because Toothless is smarter and Stormfly's got those spikes, that doesn't mean you don't kick your own share of butt…"

The low rumble from his dragon was about what Snotlout had come to expect from Hookfang in moments like this. It wasn't that Hookfang didn't get why he resented this kind of situation, but the dragon never seemed to be that bothered about it himself. Hookfang would give it his all when they were dealing with the latest wave of dragon hunters, but at the same time he always seemed equally content to kick back when they weren't needed for the latest fight.

Glancing down, Snotlout allowed himself a brief chuckle when he saw Tuffnut walking through the forest, idly taking in the forest around him. Barf and Belch were basically grounded while Ruffnut was helping the others with whatever other thing Hiccup had them do right now, which left the male twin to do his own share of patrol duty as best as possible.

As he flew over the Edge outpost itself, Snotlout looked over at the new hut and wondered what Clarke was doing now that she had finished her new residence. He still recalled the thrill he'd felt when he and the others had finished their huts after they originally established the Edge, and from everything Clarke had told them about her past he imagined she had even more reason to be enjoying her new opportunities right now.

Granted, she didn't strike him as the type to just kick back and enjoy having a space that wasn't dependent on the good will of parents to be left in peace, but they couldn't stuck with a fourth workaholic, right? Hiccup, Astrid and Fishlegs did enough worrying for the rest of them, and it wasn't like any of them needed a healer's attention now, so surely-

"Who am I kidding?" Snotlout groaned to himself as he turned Hookfang around and continued his flight. "She volunteered for the job; she's just as big on hard work as those guys."

The problem with becoming the 'official' Healer for the Edge was that Clarke didn't know exactly what she was working with.

She'd been able to spend some time at the fallen Ark going over her mother's books to expand her general knowledge of field medicine back when she thought she'd be able to stop the mountain and then not have to take charge of everyone all over again, so at least she knew something about the natural resources she'd be working with. On the other hand, it was surprisingly tricky to work out what she was working with on this island or anything in the surrounding archipelago; Fishlegs was the only one of the group who had any particular interest in botany, and that was only going to take her so far when for all she knew there could be all kinds of different names for the plants she was looking for in this culture.

Her new associates were at least being generous enough to stick to a tongue she recognised when they knew she was present, but if she was staying around, she needed to step up her own language lessons; she wasn't going to be some elitist who never bothered to learn another language because she thought her own was sufficient…

With that thought in mind, Clarke grabbed one of the new books she'd received from her shelf, picked up the sheet of paper she'd received from Hiccup regarding a few basic translations, and set to work to test her reading ability. On her request, Hiccup had given her a few key words and written them out in a runic alphabet, and so far she'd been relieved that most of the written forms seemed to match up to what she understood of the English word easily enough. It was probably a long shot, but she hoped this would at least let her form a framework for any future translation effort, based on what she remembered from that Sherlock Holmes case The Dancing Men when he'd cracked a code by deconstructing what certain signs had to mean based on the context and the use of certain letters.

OK, so a different language doesn't necessarily follow the same rules as a code, but this started out as a language for the game, right? It can't be that hard to pick up…

After spending weeks just fighting to survive against everything the Ground, the Ark and the Mountain could throw at her, Clarke truly enjoyed the chance to learn for the sake of learning more than because she needed it to stay alive.