A/N: Time is starting to progress in this one. Also, I'm getting a little meatier. I do plan to expand on some of the secondary characters eventually, but the story's about Astrid, so that will have to wait for now. The good news is, things are starting to happen, romantic stylez.

That afternoon they prepared to sail home on Stoick's ship, and Hiccup lied with such confidence that if Astrid hadn't known the whole humiliating truth of the situation, she might've believed him herself.

"So you're saying," Gobber said after a long hush, "they had got it in their heads that Astrid here was the living embodiment of a goddess—"

"Freya," Hiccup specified.

"—and the Berserks decided to capture her and make her their patron—"

"They started a temple and everything, we saw it," he insisted.

Gobber stroked his straw-like moustache. "And where do you come in?"

Hiccup faltered, like he had forgotten to account for this factor in his complex fib.

"Well… you know," he began shiftily, and Astrid stepped forward.

"We were together when I was taken!" Stoick, who'd been listening impassively to his son's explanation, stirred at this, and Gobber raised a bushy eyebrow. At first Astrid couldn't place their reaction, but she caught a glimpse of the expression on Hiccup's face. "Practicing," she amended hastily. "Skirmishing, we were skirmishing? Sometimes, we do that, late at night, because…" She gave Hiccup a pleading look, her lying skills overextended.

"We're very competitive," Hiccup offered brightly. "Old rivals. Sometimes we go for hours, just completely lose track of time."

"Huh-huh, yeah," Tuffnut sniggered from the gunwale, and Ruffnut guffawed. Astrid gestured rudely at the pair of them.

"Well," said Stoick, exchanging a skeptical glance with Gobber. "Interesting tale, son. We'll have to keep an eye on these gods-fearing Berserks." Astrid stifled a sigh; she didn't think they'd be hearing the last of this.

Hiccup coughed and nodded, and the chief started giving orders for the fleet to move out. The riders mounted their dragons for the flight home to Berk, Astrid instinctively offering Hiccup a hand up on to Stormfly's back.

"Did they really think you were Freya?" Fishlegs asked, breathless from hauling himself on to Meatlug.

"Only Snotlout would be dumb enough to believe that," Tuffnut declared, and Hookfang's head burst into flame when his master glared at Tuff.

"I'm not dumb, shut up!"

"Your butt's on fire again," Tuff observed and, panicked and smoking heavily, Snotlout make a quick detour off the side of the boat, into the chilly sea.

The twins watched him fall, grinning, and then Ruffnut continued, "Yeah, we all thought it was just because they thought you were Hiccup's girlfriend."

"What?" demanded Astrid and Hiccup in unison, the latter so startled he slipped from Stormfly and floundered back on to the deck. Astrid visualized jumping in after Snotlout.

"Someone told Trader Johann that and now the entire archipelago thinks so," Ruffnut explained happily.

"You told him that," Tuffnut corrected.

Her face lit up. "That's right, I did! Awesome, I totally forgot. I'm hilarious."

"That was very," Hiccup huffed, climbing back onto Stormfly, "—irresponsible, Ruff, someone could have wanted to hurt Astrid, you can't just going around saying stuff like that!"

"What! Astrid doesn't even care."

Astrid had indeed been sitting in silence as the conversation progressed around her, her knuckles white from gripping the pommel of her saddle. Now everyone stared at her, even Snotlout, who'd clamored back on to the deck. They were waiting for a judgment.

She said leisurely, "I'm just deciding how I'm going to kill you." Everyone seemed to take this response in stride, since over the years death threats had become just Astrid being Astrid, and even Ruff waved it off, but as Hiccup settled into the seat behind her she saw him flinch. She'd almost forgotten—the events of just an hour ago felt distant and otherworldly. She remembered the sensation of her boot on Dagur's throat, and nudged Stormfly forward. "We're going!" The dragon, sensing her master's discomfort, shot into the air and away from the ship so abruptly that Hiccup hugged her waist in an effort not to slide off.

To her relief, Stormfly left the other riders well behind, and they soared in silence until Berserker Island was a speck at their backs. She struggled to batten down the irritating shame that came with Hiccup's disapproval, or disgust, or whatever it was that had caused him to call out to her in the arena; a lump of conflicted emotion formed in her throat and she had to swallow it, or go mad—her conscience and her inclination toward defiance were locked in a tug-of-war, and around there somewhere lurked consciousness of her feelings about Hiccup, and a frustration with the problem those feelings posed to her understanding of the world, a Viking's world.

See, here was a time it would've been easier to be angry. She did not care to go wading through the muddy waters of her mind; she'd opt to drain the swamp, if she could.

"Why'd you lie?" she asked Hiccup bluntly, after the need for a distraction grew urgent.

"Figured you wouldn't want to keep dealing with it."

"You're not wrong."

Stormfly dipped toward the sea, causing Hiccup's hands to shift on her waist. She hadn't noticed them there; it'd been months since they'd had to fly like this, but it came back to her naturally. She wondered if he felt that same physical ease—a nice contrast to the challenge in her head.

"So," said Hiccup experimentally. She shut her eyes.

"So?"

There was something to be said between them, and they both knew it, and neither of them wanted to let it go unsaid, because that kind of silence carved deserts out of plentitude, left permanent schisms, drained you of trust and sympathy. To lose her friend again, having only just got him back, would frustrate Astrid, but finding a way to talk about what had happened seemed like an insurmountable obstacle. Even Hiccup, who was better with words than any Viking had the precedence to be, sat there in foiled silence.

What was the problem? If she could get her head around that, maybe the solution would follow.

She began by reckoning, "We're different, Hiccup."

"I know," he sighed.

"It's not a bad thing," she said, surprised at his tone. "It makes us work better together. Even if you're confusing, sometimes."

"I'm confusing?" he repeated. She couldn't see his face, but his voice was grinning.

"You know what I mean." On the horizon appeared soaring spiral cliffs; they were nearing home. "Remember that night we got captured, on the boat, when I said I thought we were going to change Berk forever?"

"And then you remembered we already have?"

Astrid smiled, and spoke carefully. "It's still happening. It's going to take a little getting used to, I think. For someone like me. Some things come harder than others." She glanced back at him, but only saw the corner of his mouth, twitching up. "Will you bear with me while I figure it out?" This was a fair thing to ask, since she'd done the same for him, and in a big way.

She felt his chin come to rest on her shoulder, and exhaled a breath she hadn't realized she was holding.

"Yeah, Astrid," he said. "I'll bear with you."

Squirmy again, in the pit of her stomach, but her arms were lighter too—a very odd feeling. "Thanks."

Hiccup nodded, the motion rubbing her shoulder, absurd and pleasant. A minute ticked by; he didn't move, she didn't mind. Then, struck by a thought, he tensed and leaned confidentially into her ear. "Astrid?"

"Mhm?"

"Do you think Dagur has a crush on me?"

The wind swallowed her laughter, and they descended into the village.

Phlegma stood in the doorway when Astrid arrived home. She said only, "Hello, daughter," and then went to sit by the hearth with her mead. Their argument of the night she'd disappeared was neither forgotten nor resolved, it seemed. Astrid retreated to her room; it felt like eons had passed since she'd lain in her own bed without fear. Even if Ruffnut's idiotic rumor persisted, and she would be attacked again tomorrow, she felt secure. Stronger. It didn't seem like the foolish bravado of youth, thinking she could handle whatever came her way.

And yet there were different securities to be traded for that confidence. She had a sense that she would need to start over, now, like she had learned a strategy inside-out and finally seen its weakness—the realization necessitated a new approach, so she was left bereft, and not just because she'd lost her shoulder pads. And then there was Hiccup: they were okay, they were better than they had been in a year, they were closer and plainer to each other than they had been in their lives, but Astrid couldn't shake the look on his face as she'd stood over Dagur. That scene played her into sleep, and she dreamed she was in Dagur's place, her own boot across her throat.

She woke at dawn the next morning, having drifted off early. She expected to find Berk silent, but at the bottom of the stairs sat her mother at their dining table, waiting.

"Astrid. Please sit."

So Astrid sat, if reluctantly. She could hear Stormfly squawking in her stall, could see it was a sunny day. She didn't want to begin it like this.

"Are you all right?" asked Phlegma.

"You didn't ask me that last night."

"Does that upset you?"

Did it? Astrid frowned. "You're my mom. You're supposed to be concerned."

"I apologize," she replied, with infuriating simplicity. "Are you all right?"

"Yes," Astrid grunted.

It was quiet for half a minute. Astrid thought about leaving, though she had not been dismissed. What else could her mother have to say?

"You are getting to an age, Astrid," her mother finally began, "where you may feel you have a limited prime in which to enjoy your freedom. Have you begun to think about marriage, and children?"

"No," Astrid lied.

"But you will, because that is the way the world is for us." Phlegma sighed—a rare crack in her steely exterior, making Astrid's stomach flip. "What you should know is that there is no such thing as necessity in these situations. You have a choice. Your father is gone, and I won't stand in your way. Take your time. Do what you want and it won't seem like such a burden to grow older."

"Was it a burden for you?" she blurted, and blushed, but the curiosity was intense. She couldn't understand what her mother was saying without some biographical explanation.

Phlegma stared at her, and then answered, "It is now."

Astrid nodded and her eyes fell to her feet. Her father had died when she was six years old, but if she imagined losing Hiccup—or any of her friends—she sensed it was a wound that not ten nor twenty nor a hundred years could heal.

"Good morning," said Phlegma in dismissal, and Astrid left the house quietly.

After greeting Stormfly, she walked to the arena and stood feeling the sun on her face, fighting the cold of the air; with no weapon to her name, the sensation was one of nudity. She fought the hypothetical fear in her gullet at such exposure.

"You need a new axe," called Hiccup. He had appeared in the stands, sitting with his chin on his fist.

"How long have you been there?"

"Not long. I just was wondering why you weren't drilling, and then I remembered. Come to the forge?"

She shrugged, and went to meet him at the exit. They walked to his work in no particular hurry: there was only a short session at the academy today, and then nothing. They had trained so hard for the past few months, they were beginning to exhaust their educational material. Soon Hiccup and Fishlegs would've imparted all the knowledge they could, and then it would be time to foster a new generation of students. She hadn't thought deeply about being a teacher in this second academy, but maybe on the days they did Nadders—other than that, her future seemed wide open. A frighteningly blank canvas. That part of her mother's speech made sense, at least.

Inside, Hiccup got out some parchment and charcoal and began to sketch an axe, pausing every so often for her input. The resultant design was not so different from her lost double-headed weapon, but it would have slightly more weight, and some small insets toward the center. He then proceeded to measure her for new shoulder pads and leather wrist guards, and finally, a rabbit's fur hood. "For the winter," he explained, scribbling the measurements in his notebook, which gave her a few seconds to recover from the disconcertion of being so overwhelmingly cared-about.

Finished, he snapped the book shut and pinned his sketches to the wall. "Okay, I'll start them later today."

"Thanks," she said. He had rather a lot of papers lying around his drafting table, and she'd been trying to get a better look at some of them. She spied a large diagram, of what looked like a sword hilt with some kind of compartment for cartridges, but a preoccupied Hiccup swept the papers away.

"You're very welcome," he chirped, and started to rummage beneath the drafting table where they sat. "Now, next on the agenda—"

"Agenda?" she echoed skeptically.

"Yes!" He popped back up, a rectangular wooden box in his hands. "Our agenda. We're partners now, we have to collaborate in everything we do."

"We couldn't have collaborated on making the agenda?"

"It's open to suggestion." He waved a hand to move them on. "I've got to show you what I've been working on." Preciously, he opened the box, and withdrew what at first she thought was a stack of papers, but as he unfolded it across the table there was only a single large parchment, the painstaking lines across it forming familiar shapes. A map. "Well, when I say I've been working on it, I really mean me and Toothless. It's a group effort." There was Berk, in careful detail, surrounded by small sketches of its native dragons. She recognized Dragon Island, the homes of the Berserks and the Outcasts, the island where she liked to clear her head (had Hiccup been there?), in accurate and definitive arrangement.

"Wow," she murmured, leaning in to get a closer look. "How long did this take you?"

Hiccup laughed, with a nervous twinge. "How long has it been since I stopped being around?" Smiling, she traced the outline of Berk. "We would go out for hours, and I'd sketch whatever I saw. It was amazing, there's so much to see. But it's not finished," he added quickly, as Astrid hadn't been able to squash her look of disappointed exclusion. "I've barely even touched most of the archipelago, there's a huge chain of islands to the northeast that's all going to need to be explored. And that doesn't even include cataloging the local dragon species. The whole thing could take years." Sheepish, Hiccup nudged the map in her direction, and Astrid's stomach gave a little flip. "So, if you've got a free afternoon, maybe sometime—"

"Yes!" It came out with more force than she expected, and off of Hiccup's amused grin, she shrunk a little. "I mean, that sounds fun. I'll check my schedule."

"Okay. That's good. Check your schedule," he laughed.

Her heart was beating very fast, and it struck her as strange, to be so thrilled at the prospect of mapmaking. Maps fell under the category of nerdery that also included Fishlegs' class-this-or-that memorized blathering about dragon species and Hiccup's affinity for wasting his skill in design on public works improvements (even if the fire prevention stuff worked all right); generally, if a scientific endeavor lacked the allure of eventually fighting someone or flying her dragon, she distanced herself from it. But this map—it felt private and important. There again was that sense of privilege she got with Hiccup, sometimes, but broader. This couldn't be the important thing they did for Berk, not a map, but what if it were part of it?

She smoothed her hands across the paper, and then took a deep breath. "I want to add something to the agenda.

"Yeah?"

"Our Saturday flights. Can we do that again?"

Hiccup's mouth hung open briefly, and then he said, "Yeah. Sure! That's it? Not going to use me for target practice or anything?"

"That's—that's it, yes, but it's…" She stumbled, but folded her arms across her chest determinedly. "It's just important, okay?"

"Okay, Astrid," Hiccup beamed, like he knew something she didn't. She wanted to wipe that look off his face, so she punched him in the gut, sending him halfway from his stool to the floor. "Why would you do that?" he squeaked, trying to pull himself back to his seat.

"Another thing for the agenda," she announced, lurching across the table before he could stop her, "is that I get to see that sword you're planning."

"NO!"

"Yes!" She snatched the papers out of his reach, and strode across the forge with him on her tail, examining them. "It's a flaming sword, but how are you doing that? 'The Dragon Blade,' kind of a lame name."

"Lame! It's not lame, it's—it's Zippleback gas, the blade's telescopic and it… it coats it. There's a thumb lighter!" He frowned deeply, and fell back into his seat. "Do you really think it's lame?"

Astrid snorted. "Just the name. Cheer up, a flaming sword sounds amazing. A good weapon reflects the person carrying it, and this one is… nerdy but also impressive, so." He did cheer up, and fast. "But you need a better name. Something short and intimidating." Astrid wheeled around to face him, slapping the sketch back on the table. "I know—Inferno."

"Inferno," he repeated thoughtfully, gazing at his hand like he envisioned the blade there.

Astrid had made her decision. "Inferno is perfect. When are you going to start it?"

Hiccup deflated, and pulled the papers away from her. "It's just an idea."

"A good idea," she persisted, and then added, with uphill work, "You have good ideas." What about this exactly made her feel so stupid? Was it the meekness in her voice, or the compliment itself, which rang limp and insufficient? Hiccup was staring at her, just openly, like a freak, but not like a freak, because she didn't think he was a freak anymore, did she? She'd found better words to describe his unique deal. But the stare he gave her made her feel like a freak, and an instinct made her want to hurl the insult back in his direction.

"Astrid," he started, urgency in his voice—she could sense something heavy or difficult on the tip of his tongue. He would ask something big, something emotional, something that demanded a sworn answer, something that ventured into her head by an avenue she had yet to discover. He would ask her the same kind of question he was always asking himself, and she would have to remind him again that they were different.

"Show me another idea," she demanded quickly. He paused, shaking his head, and so she sat back down at the table. "Come on. We've got an hour before training. Show me something cool." She gestured to his notebook, which sat by him, its spine busting and frayed, the leafed pages crowded and well loved.

Hiccup wrung his hands—he wanted to ask his question, but she would have no answer, not now, so she gave him a smile that requested a little more time—or tried to, the nuance challenged her. If anything, there was obviously a plea to drop it that he couldn't ignore. Finally, he exhaled and plopped down next to her. "Show you something cool, okay."

Astrid breathed a sigh, and nodded, watching him flick through papers with a little frown that knitted his eyebrows together. There was a word for the look on his face but, when that word came to her, she was too embarrassed to repeat it, even privately. She fidgeted and tried to concentrate on a sketch he'd laid out before him. It looked like a drawing of Toothless's wings, but with a smaller span, and some arrows going all around them.

Hiccup tapped the paper. "Here. I'm studying flight mechanics, how dragons stay in the air."

"Huh." She squinted at the diagram a second time. "The arrows are the air, then?"

"Right, they track the direction of the air flow around the dragon's wings," he replied, thrilled by her comprehension. "And then," he grabbed another bunch of papers, "once you understand that, you can see that gliding is the aspect of flight that requires the least mechanical output—there's no pumping." A second diagram and a third and then a fourth appeared in front of her, different from the first—here was a drawing of a person, wearing some kind of dragon get-up.

"What is that?"

Hiccup mumbled something—she saw he'd turned bright red.

"What is it?" she repeated, trying not to laugh.

"A flying suit," he said hopelessly. "Gods, I knew this was stupid. Why did I think this wasn't stupid? Am I stupid? I'm stupid." He was trying to drag all the sketches together while simultaneously lying across them so she couldn't see.

"A flight suit? Like for you? Wait…" She pushed him off and examined at the diagrams again—yes, they did look like somewhat wishful self-portraits, and there were… wings. Sort of. She tried to imagine the suit in use, and instantly dropped the paper. "Are you planning on jumping off of Toothless?"

Hiccup, eyes on the ceiling, raised his hands and shrugged noncommittally. She returned the gesture, but with a very pointed glare.

"That is insane," she told him. "You are crazy."

"I thought you liked me being crazy," he said, looking hopeful. Okay, she had goaded him into craziness, once or twice. When he needed it! Did he really need to jump off a dragon five hundred feet above the ocean? No, he certainly did not.

Then again.

Would it have been kind of cool, if he pulled it off?

Yes. Yes it would.

Astrid stuck out her chin. "Okay."

"Okay?" Hiccup's eyebrows shot up.

"I think you should try it. Do you have the suit made?"

It didn't seem like he'd expected the conversation to go in this direction. "Uh… well, no, it's just an idea, I'm not even sure if—"

"Make a prototype. I'll come with you. That way if you die horribly there'll be someone to tell your dad how dumb you were being." She grinned at him, an expression he returned reluctantly at first, and then sensing her sincere interest, with a genuine smile.

"You're bossy, Astrid," he said delightedly.

She scowled. "What's wrong with that? One day it'll be your job to be bossy."

"There's nothing wrong with it. Not one thing. You're right."

This was a strange answer; she cleared her throat, and got up from the table. "You should be taking notes. Let's go find Stormfly and Toothless, I think I hear dragons."

Hiccup and Astrid would leave for their Saturday morning flights, and the twins would laugh while Snotlout grumbled and Fishlegs wished them a fun trip (and the twins would laugh again); when they landed home a few hours later, Stoick always managed to be lurking—as much as Stoick ever lurked, it was more like standing about importantly with him—in the village square, wordlessly awaiting their return. He'd look at the pair with a deliberately veiled expression, and then thunder off to the Great Hall for mead or council meetings, leaving Hiccup to shrug apologetically at her on his behalf. People watched them talk to each other out of the corner of their eyes, no matter how mundane the conversation. He brought her new axe to the arena a couple of weeks after they came back from Berserker Island, and a small crowd materialized to watch her test it out, or to watch him watching her test it out. It was weird—when they were alone together on flights they'd make jokes about the phenomenon, but neither of them really knew what the punchline was. Joking felt like the simplest way to acknowledge and disregard it.

To her intense relief, Phlegma had succeeded in righting Ruffnut's unfortunate rumor, and Astrid could once again roam Berk and the surrounding isles in relative safety.

And she did, alone and with Hiccup. After he'd taught her the basics of mapmaking she could go off and take her own notes when she pleased, though more than once they'd crossed paths on solo flights and ended up exploring together beyond their weekly arrangement. They developed an unspoken rule to stagger their arrivals back to Berk after these accidental meetings; reasoning served no purpose when their agreement was absolute.

The harbors froze over. Her new hood was rabbit's fur: she hunted the hides herself, and Hiccup had done strong work, he was as good with leather and fur as he was with metal; the garment warmed her even when it was down. He'd pack them small lunches of salted cod and bread and they'd fly out to wherever they were charting and picnic on the solid sea.

It was good to be friends again. It was even easy, when they were on their own, talking and exploring, and not in contention with the Berkian staring. She tried not to think too hard about what her mother had said, not such a maid after all. In fact, she aggressively ignored the possibility someone might jump to any conclusions about her maidenhead, and spent as much time as she liked with Hiccup in bold rejection of propriety; it was the only way she could think to fight what seemed like the as yet stupidest burden offered by her womanhood. No one seemed to be worried about Hiccup's virginity, though part of that might've been Hiccup being Hiccup. Like he had an innate sense of honor or something. Which made Astrid, what? Dishonorable? Pah.

This was the general spin of her complaint when all the aggressive ignorance and bold rejection of propriety came back to bite her in the butt.

"No," Phlegma told her flatly, not glancing up.

"But—"

"Day trips are one thing. Overnight is unacceptable." Her mother was in the process of packing a trunk for her next trip—it had been almost two months since she'd cut short her voyage to return home and help Astrid. It was January and the seas would be rough, but Berk needed supplies.

"But we've found a new island, and it's impossible to make the round trip in a day any get any good exploring done, we're only going to camp out for a few hours while it's dark—"

"You have your answer, daughter."

"It's for Berk," she pleaded, as though this were the most important, legitimizing reason in the world, inarguable. "Nothing is going to happen!"

Phlegma at last turned to look at her daughter, and said coolly, "You know very well it doesn't matter what happens. It only matters what could."

"That's not fair."

"You're right, it's not."

Her mother said this so plainly, without any anger at all, that Astrid saw red for a moment. Here stood Phlegma in armor, an axe on her back, preparing to lead an expedition that had been led by men for a hundred years before her tenure, but she couldn't manage a little rage at this obvious injustice? Her mother had not always been there for her, but she had at least instilled Astrid with the belief that she could be just as good as any boy, as long as she worked hard. And Astrid had worked hard.

She tried to temper her breathing, to calm herself. "You told me to do what I want. Remember?"

"This is not like that, dear. Some things you cannot change."

"I'll change them," she declared.

"But not today," Phlegma replied, definitively. She went back to packing; the conversation was over. Astrid rocked back on her heels, and stomped out of the house, beaten but not bested.

She met Hiccup in the cove, where he was sorting through some provisions—probably for their trip, and she gritted her teeth. Toothless was rolling around happily in some mud nearby.

"Stop that, bud," Hiccup groaned, not seeing her approach. "You're getting it all over the saddle, I have to sit on that—Astrid!"

She had appeared next to him, scowling. "Hi."

At the expression on her face, he asked weakly, "Did you talk to your mom?"

"Yeah." Something blue streaked over their heads, and Stormfly settled down near Toothless, who leapt up to greet her. "She said no." Hiccup's head titled to the side, watching their dragons interact. "I don't care," Astrid blurted out. "She's leaving on her trip tomorrow. We'll just go anyway, you tell your dad you're going on your own, and we can make it seem like I'm home alone."

Hiccup appeared to consider this for a moment, and then asked, "Why'd she say you couldn't go, again?"

"Stupid reasons," Astrid replied. He gave her an expectant look, and she groaned, starting to pace. "She says I can't be alone with you overnight, even though I told her nothing is going to happen, and then she said it only matters how it looks, and I said, 'How dumb is that?' and she said it is dumb but it doesn't matter, I've still go to do it. She says I can't change things today, or whatever." Astrid flopped down on to a rock.

"Everyone's going to know you're gone if Stormfly isn't in her stall," Hiccup pointed out. She gave him a glare that said, decidedly, you're not helping. He bit his lip and went to sit beside her. "Listen, if we get caught sneaking off, it's going to look ten times worse than if we go with permission. Why don't we just ask Fishlegs or someone to come with us?"

"Because the map is our thing, Hiccup!" she said desperately, enough that he glanced away, over to whether Toothless and Stormfly had paused a game of chase to observe their masters. "I don't want to have to make excuses for that, it's not right. I'll be seventeen in a few weeks. I'm an adult."

"It's not right," he agreed, but there was a thought he wasn't sharing, she could see it in the tiny line between his brows.

"What?"

Hiccup hesitated, and she punched him in the arm. "Okay, okay! I was just going to say, not like… well, if you want it to be just us, I'm not saying we necessarily—we've been spending a lot of time together, lately, and I haven't really been sure what that… what you…"

"Hiccup," Astrid grumbled, attempting to sound disgruntled through the blush starting up on her face.

"I'm just—I mean, I don't know what you're thinking because…" He got up, rubbing the back of his neck, and meandered toward Toothless. "Well, because you won't tell me. Which is your right, completely! But I was thinking, maybe the way it looks isn't… so far off, from the truth. For me, at least," he finished awkwardly.

"Hiccup," she said again, this time failing to hide her embarrassment. She really only had the gist of what he was saying, but it had turned her bright red anyway, and glued her in place. He'd had to go and complicate her war on injustice with… with this! (This was the look on his face just then as she sat there blushing and not saying a word excepting his name, a flabbergasted look, of terror and shocking stark candor, wrenching her heart more than a little.)

Startled by her silence, which she realized too late probably sounded as rejection, he started gesticulating wildly. "Ah, yeah, guess I did something stupid again? Or was this one crazy? Hey, maybe it was both. Amazing! Well, at least we know the trip's not happening, ha, I guess I'll be going now." He did a silly little bow and tripped off toward Toothless, which got Astrid on her feet, finally, in anticipation of what was about to happen.

"Don't you dare leave this cove, Hiccup Haddock!" she shouted, but he was already on Toothless, waving at her so he wouldn't have to meet her eye.

Toothles gave a small puzzled kick, looking back and forth between Hiccup in the saddle and Astrid charging toward them, but when his master gave him the command he shot upwards, with Hiccup crying, "Bye, Astrid!" as he disappeared above her head.

Through the beat of silence that followed, Stormfly and Astrid looked at one another, the dragon wiggling invitingly, ready to continue the game of chase, and a determined, manic grin crossed Astrid's face; a leap and a bound later, they were in the air, a bullet following after.

A/N: I wrote this quickly, didn't I? Probably don't expect another chapter until this weekend. Whoops!