Guest reviewer: thank you for your kind words. I am very happy to be able to say that Astrid's father is based very much on my own. If my own dad were a Viking in a semi-imagined era of history.

Warning: bloody noses and weird Viking behavior ahead. Astrid is no fainting female. Also, miscarriage and emotional scarring, although without any gory details. Grab your Puffs.

Boys Are Definitely Stupid

Astrid had never thought she would ever want Snotlout to insult her. But now that she knew what the alternative was, she would gladly have gone back to their mutual animosity.

"Wow. I could watch you alllll day, babe."

She snorted in disgust and annoyance, looking down and left at the heir of the Jorgensons. "Go away." She pulled herself up again into a perfect, smooth chin-up, using the frame of the back door of her family's longhouse as a bar.

"Aw, playing hard to get! That is so you!" he replied, grinning obliviously.

She dropped to the ground and straightened up. At thirteen years old, she had finally gotten taller than he, and she rubbed it in every chance she got. Unfortunately, his new "crush" on her meant that he no longer reacted to her insults or jabs. Apparently, in Snotlout's mind she was crazy about him, and not all the years of familial and personal feuding could convince him otherwise.

"Listen up, 'cause I'm only going to say this one more time," she ground out between her teeth. "Come within ten arm lengths of me, and I will flatten you."

"You're pretty when you're mad," he droned. His voice, Astrid thought, resembled the scrape of a washboard crossed with a yak lowing. There was only so much a girl could take.

"That's it!" she spat. A moment later, she had tackled him like a dragon pouncing on a sheep and was using her fists on his stomach and face repeatedly. Fortunately for him, Snotlout was both wearing a leather jerkin and somewhat decent at wrestling. He certainly couldn't best her, but he could take a punch and dodge a few of her harder jabs. Unfortunately, however skilled his arms were at fighting, his brain was still completely inept at communication.

"You're falling for me, I can tell. You don't hit as hard as you used to."

That was absolutely the wrong thing to say to an already-enraged Hofferson. Astrid delivered two perfect hits to his nose and heard a satisfying crunch of bone breaking. Blood shot out from his nostrils and the stupid happiness leeched from his expression, replaced by blooming pain.

"See, that was a decent hit," he managed to say in a manly voice. Despite all his flaws, Snotlout was no coward and handled pain well. That said, he did make an effort to roll away and gingerly cradled his nose with one hand.

Astrid backed off and allowed him to get to his feet. She wiped his blood off her knuckles onto the metal skulls adorning her belt. She had asked for something that showed she was a deadly fighter for Snoggletog last year, and her father had had the belt made by Gobber. She liked the intimidating look it gave her and she wore it constantly over her tunics and short dresses. Now it also bore a stain that was a trophy of her fight.

"Go wash off," she ordered. "Next time I won't be so nice."

He hesitated, still holding his nose, and spoke in a half-lisp because of his injury. "My dad thays violenthe ith a thign of love from a Viking."

"My dad," she replied haughtily, crossing her arms, "says that violence is the best defense against stupidity." She wanted him to leave, but she refused to walk away. This was her family's property, and her home turf. He would have to back off, not her.

Whether because his nose really did hurt and needed to be set, or because he wanted to ask his dad about what female Vikings really meant when they used violence, he nodded to her semi-respectfully and ran off. He was headed, she noticed with a smirk, in the general direction of the Goethi's hut; no doubt the village would shortly hear a sharp cry of agony as the old healer and wisewoman set the bridge of his nose.

"Good," she crowed, chalking another point for herself on her mental scoreboard. His ridiculous crush had started about a year ago, and the tally was now Astrid: 17, Snotlout: 4. And one of those victories had been an entirely accidental slip in the Great Hall that left her covered in mutton, sauce, and weak ale. She hadn't really deemed that worth roughing him up over. Thor knew she had tolerated quite a lot of spills and mishaps whenever Hiccup was around her.

But it's different, she argued with herself mentally, going inside her longhouse for dagmál, the morning meal. Hiccup's my friend. When he trips, I know he's not trying to get my attention. He's just a silly klutz. Though she had attempted to teach him self-defense over the years, he still acted like his fingers were made of warmed yak fat, and his limbs were uncooked sausages - all floppy and slippery. Eventually, she had just given up and only engaged him in mental combat. He was smart, maybe even smarter than that cowardly Fishlegs, and she liked having someone her own age to discuss things like dragon hunting and the old eddas.

As she shut the wooden door behind her, the hinges creaked slightly. This was the longest she remembered a family house lasting - more than three years - and usually the hinges didn't have a chance to get rusty before a dragon blasted the house with flames. But the squeaking hinge was not enough to cover the sound of someone sobbing quietly in the corner.

Astrid frowned sharply. She could count on one hand the number of times she had ever seen her father cry, and her mother wasn't much more free with her tears than he was. What was going on? "Mom?" she called softly, her eyes adjusting to the relative darkness of the windowless house.

"Asta." Her mother choked out an endearment she had not used in years, not since her daughter had declared herself too tough for nicknames. "I'm sorry… I…" Yvla Hofferson cut herself off with another shaky sob. "I need your father, love."

Astrid stiffened, a horrible gnawing fear suddenly filling her stomach. Her voice, to her surprise, was steady and calm. "Is it the baby?"

In the dim light of the dying fire, she saw her mother nod. "It's… She's stillborn." And four months early. Her mother had been so hopeful for one last child, a little sibling for Astrid, and a solace for the four other babes who had all died young. Her father had been overjoyed when Yvla told him; their twin sons Argin and Bjorn had given their parents charms blessed by the Goethi to keep the baby safe. Everyone in her family had been so happy to welcome a new member of the Hofferson clan and the utterly broken look on her mother's face made Astrid's heart wrench.

Slowly, she approached Yvla and saw that she had already cleaned the tiny body and readied it for a proper funeral. Inside a little wooden box lined with cloth lay the little girl. She was dressed in a white dress that was too big for her, her tiny white hands were folded across her chest, and her eyes were closed peacefully. Her wisps of silky blonde hair were hardly paler than her face. Her mother was so strong, Astrid realized, to have done all of this on her own and only now asking for her husband. She had to be utterly drained and empty on the inside.

"I'm so sorry, mom," she whispered, sinking to her knees and wrapping her arms around the larger woman. Yvla sat with the box in front of her on a skin, staring at it and repressing her cries. At her living daughter's touch, she let one loud wail escape her lips before a rush of words tumbled out, each one more heart-breaking than her sobs.

"Oh, Asta! She was so perfect, so little! So beautiful! I… I wanted to call her Solvi, if it was a girl. She was going to be so smart, and brave, and such a spitfire as Berk had never seen! She would have killed enough dragons to thatch the roof with their scales! She would…" Another sob cut off her mourning, this one quiet and repressed.

Astrid rubbed her mother's back and hugged her harder. "She would have been just like you. She would have been perfect."

Yvla wiped her eyes with the back of her hand roughly. "Oh, Asta-"

"She would have been," she cut her mother off, desperate to comfort her. "She would have been amazing. She would have been a little Valkyrie. And now she really is one. Can't you see her riding on one of Freya's horses, beautiful as the sun and sharp as a sword?"

"She was only a babe," Yvla moaned. "The dead are not honored without earning it."

"She is a Hofferson," Astrid insisted. "Her line comes from the far south of the archipelago before the founding of Berk. Her blood sailed over waves unknown and into bitter cold and fought battles and beasts no one has ever seen the like of. Her lineage is one of honor! The gods won't fail to reward that."

Yvla, for the first and only time in her life, curled up against her daughter for comfort and wept. Astrid held her strongly, murmuring softly that it was alright, that little Solvi was alright, and most importantly, that it was not her fault. How long they remained like that, mother and daughter mourning the still child in the semi-darkness of the longhouse, Astrid could never afterwards remember. She only remembered that when he father came home late for the meal he had been grave and kind and broken and sent her outside while he wept with her mother. Some things, he said, were a husband's burden to bear.

She blinked in the sunshine, now fading as late morning rain began to threaten on the horizon. Her knees felt intolerably weak. The sight of her mother's face had twisted some deep knife wound of grief into her own heart, and she needed to take it out on something. She grabbed an old axe they used for chopping wood and headed off to the forest. She intended to kill trees, but if any living creature chose to cross her path, they'd most likely end up with a blade through them.

Just as she reached the treeline at the edge of the village, she registered someone calling her name. "Astrid!"

She turned, fuming, to see Hiccup running after her. He was carrying a small white and purple bundle in his left hand and panting with the effort of catching up with her. "Not now, Hiccup."

He looked taken aback. "I… we… you said we'd do our chores together after dagmál."

She actually almost pointed the axe at him. "I need to be alone."

He bit his lip, taking in her expression. "You wanna talk about it?"

He looked so caring, so hurt on her behalf. The whole village would know soon enough, and she had held in all her own pain while comforting her mom. She took one step towards him and almost hugged him when her brain registered what he was holding. "What are those?" she demanded suspiciously.

He looked down at his hand as if he had forgotten them and flushed pink. "Uh, well, they're generally called flowers. Or weeds, if you're Mildew."

"Why do you have them?" she pressed, shifting her axe back to a defensive stance.

"Well…" he trailed off and held them out to her. His mouth formed a half-hearted smile, but his eyes were still bright with worry.

Astrid felt her stomach turn over. "No. Not you too. I thought you were better than that." She felt her blood boil at the thought that her friend - her only friend, because all the other kids her age were either scared of their own shadow, crazy, or Jorgensons - would turn out to be just like Snotlout. Did growing up have to ruin everything?! She was in pain, she was dealing with the real world, and both of those stupid cousins had their stupid heads on backwards! He ought to know that she was more likely to skin him than court him, to court anyone! He had ruined everything about their friendship, and he had done it on the already worst day of her life.

Hiccup's eyes widened and he ducked clumsily. Her axe landed headfirst in the ground three feet to his left. She hadn't been aiming for him, but he understood the message. Leave. He turned, but not before courageously blurting out, "I'm sorry."

Astrid watched him go with a fire in her blue eyes. As far as she was concerned, he couldn't run fast enough.