Seize My Heart

by oh-you-pretty-things

He was so persistent and his tenacity annoyed her. He was so clever and his innovation annoyed her. He wore his emotions on his face so openly and that annoyed her. But what annoyed her more than anything was how much she noticed him. A series of short vignettes about Astrid and Hiccup. HTTYD & HTTYD 2 spoilers.

2. She was eight and he was nine

Disclaimer: I don't own How To Train Your Dragon or any of the associated characters or settings.

She was eight and he was nine. It was well-established that Hiccup was different from the rest of them. He was definitely missing that warrior instinct. Astrid didn't really mind though. Not everyone could be a warrior. Hiccup had started apprenticing with Gobber and that was no small feat. There weren't a lot of Vikings in Berk who were clever and patient enough to work metal. Blacksmithing suited him, Astrid thought. Which was precisely why she didn't understand what he was doing at weapons training.

He was awful with a dagger – never hitting the target. He could barely lift a sword and once he had it up, it was a hazard to everyone around him (including him). He couldn't get an axe off the ground. He was useless with bola. And that was it – the rest of them had started calling him Hiccup the Useless.

Astrid didn't like that. She didn't think it fit. Hiccup wasn't useless in a general sense. He had a lot of good qualities. He was smart and resourceful. He knew how to make use of what he'd learned smithing to his advantage. He just wasn't very…strong. Or even particularly fast. He definitely wasn't big. But neither was Astrid and she'd managed to find a way around that. She chose weapons that she knew she could handle. She made sure all the muscles that she would need to use for those weapons were strong and able. She made use of her small size for evasion. She made sure she was faster than everyone else.

Hiccup seemed determined to use weapons that were too big for him. He tried to do things that he wasn't meant to do. He was trying to be something that he wasn't. Astrid found that frustrating. She wanted to march him up to a mirror and push him into it and say,

"This is who you are! You're not meant to kill dragons!"

But Hiccup was Stoick's son and there was no way she was going to push around the Chief's son. There was no way she was going to get involved in any of it. She had something to prove and she needed to spend all her energy on that.