A/N: Thank you all for the positive feedback, it's been a huge encouragement as I'm writing this. Now that I've shortened the chapters I have no clue how long this thing is going to be, but I definitely feel that it's going somewhere, so I guess it'll just get there in its own sweet time.

"How far South would you say they go?"

"Who goes?"

"I mean, how far South can you find dragons," said Fishlegs, waving one of his cards at her. He had the worn repositories of information scattered across the drafting table, and was shuffling them around in earnest.

Astrid snipped off a bit of Hiccup's damp hair, evening its length. He hadn't spoken since she'd dipped his head back into a basin and set about carefully wetting the hair with her fingers—the clumped locks were easier to trim, in her experience (and she had been cutting her own hair since she was nine). The three of them sat in the forge, lit as it now was by candlelight at the late hour.

"Oh, I don't know," she mused, twirling a strand of hair around her finger. "Four weeks, maybe. But not more than six. Once you've gone six weeks South there's pretty much no more dragons."

"That's still pretty far, did you see any new species? Anything above a class seven?"

"I don't know what that means, Fishlegs," said Astrid, smiling to herself. She fixed another snip of hair; she had nearly got it all, but was taking her time: Hiccup enjoyed the preening, judging from his occasional contented sighs and stirs, as he sat slouched on a stool with his back to her.

But Fishlegs was blind to any ongoing intimacy. "Well," he offered, always prepared to educate, "anything with a wingspan thirty feet or bigger, that's generally—"

"Fishlegs," said Hiccup suddenly, "maybe give it a rest with the dragon talk, Astrid hasn't even been back a whole day, she's probably tired."

She poked Hiccup's neck. "I don't mind."

"She doesn't mind," echoed Fishlegs, but Hiccup shot him a look and he shrunk away. "Okay, maybe we can talk tomorrow, Astrid? Do you have any notes I could see?"

She tried not to laugh but a grin was inescapable. "Not so many notes, no. I'll tell you what I can remember."

"Great!" He exchanged another glance with Hiccup, though this silent conversation was more complicated and, with Hiccup's facing away, Astrid couldn't quite intimate what he was trying to tell Fishlegs. "Hey," began their friend, getting up, "I think I'll—"

"HICCUP," boomed Stoick's voice from outside the forge, making all three of them jump. The chief entered in a stomping flurry, his face red. "Astrid," he grunted in greeting, "Fishlegs, outside now, I need to speak to my son."

Hiccup stood and glanced worriedly between his father and Astrid, who shook her head at him. "You're done," she muttered, meaning his hair but incidentally implying something very different.

As Stoick bristled at Hiccup—the beginnings of a serious dispute, she sensed—Astrid and Fishlegs scampered from the forge. She tucked her good shears into the loop of her belt as the two of them paused in the square, watching from whence they'd come.

"He's terrifying," whispered Fishlegs, wide-eyed. Astrid looked back to the workroom, where Stoick's impressive figure cast a massive shadow against the walls and into the square. His unintelligible shouting—well, it might've been reprimanding, but practically everything said in the chief's thunderous voice sounded like a shout—could be heard from within, following by what might've been the occasional protestation of Hiccup's higher voice. Astrid's jaw clenched. She felt a jolt of anger at Stoick. Whatever Hiccup had done couldn't be so bad, this was the sort of reckless parenting that had given them both so much trouble in the past. Had nothing changed at all?

So, ignoring the hysterical mutterings of Fishlegs, Astrid started back toward the forge.

At first she thought she might go in, but as she drew nearer, she could make out their argument, and an impulse made her duck beneath a window, listening.

"—make a habit of this, son, it'll only come to ruin you and this village," Stoick was saying, furious.

"It was one time, I forgot, I'm sorry—"

"You can't forget the one thing I ask you to do for the preparations, son, it's a small task!"

"I'll do it now," Hiccup promised, and she could hear the hopeful way his eyebrows flew up.

"Gobber's taken care of it." Stoick had calmed down, but his sounding disappointed instead of angry didn't improve the situation. "When I was a young man, I never allowed whoever I fancied—" Astrid's heart rose in her throat. "—to distract me from the good of the village, I always put my people first."

She didn't understand why this made her nauseous; she knew Hiccup fancied her, they had kissed many times, and yet to hear it said aloud—by his dad, with such dismissal and distain—

"If there's ever a day when I'm allowed some distraction," Hiccup argued, "it ought to be this one, right? It's her first day back—"

"A chief doesn't get allowances, Hiccup."

"It's just a sword, Dad—"

"It's never just a sword!" roared Stoick. "It's been the duty of the chief's first son to bring up that sword from the armory on the eve of Winter Nights for two hundred years, I did it, your grandfather did it, my grandfather did it, you've done it for three years, you know how important—"

Astrid had been crouching for a couple of minutes now and her knees finally gave out, sending her crunching on to the leaves beneath the window. She missed the last of Stoick's rant, and heard only silence from the building's interior.

Then the chief said, in a stony tone, "Being seventeen is no excuse." More silence, and thumping, as Hiccup's father passed through the exit beside her and headed toward the Great Hall, where the party's blaring had begun.

Astrid clamored out from the bushes in time to meet Hiccup as he left the forge, resembling a kicked puppy limping back to its bed.

"Sorry," she started, but he shook his head.

"Forget it happened, okay?" He shuffled past her, toward the sound of their night beginning. "I'm certainly going to try."

Now, Vikings knew how to do a few things. They knew how to build ships; they knew how to take baths; and they knew how to throw the kinds of parties Thor himself would've found excessive.

There was a ten-foot long replica of a longboat at the center table filled with fish and mutton and chicken legs and fat, shiny vegetables, and even sweets Phlegma had procured on her expedition, which were a rare luxury in Berk. A troupe of musicians played the great folk songs of their time, and intermittently men and women would break out dancing arm-in-arm. A man who told jokes for a living and wore a weird hat stood behind Trader Johann and twiddled quips while the latter tried to sell his wares. And there was mead—there was lots of mead, endless mead. It was warm, sticky commotion.

Astrid sat with her friends and nursed a flagon. Her time abroad had desensitized her to the illicit pleasure of alcohol—she now saw it less as the flavor of rebellion and more as a willing depreciation of her guard, which she would never endorse. Of course, the twins and Snotlout hadn't had the same experience, and were enjoying their unrestrained dip into Berk's libations. (Not that overindulgence was uncommon for the Viking teens, more that it was mediated by the next day's duties—which, during Winter Nights, did not exist.) Hiccup disappeared within the first twenty minutes of the celebration, muttering under his breath about Toothless's dinner, so Astrid had mainly Fishlegs to talk to, and she set about racking her brain for any useful travel anecdotes. He at least seemed amused by stories of Southerners encountering their first ever dragon in the form of Stormfly, and Astrid had plenty of those.

An hour ticked by and everyone grew drunker and Fishlegs did not bore of dragons. Astrid started looking over his shoulder, trying to spy something interesting. Her mother arrived, finally, to a chorus of some old hero's song; Astrid sang with the crowd. They had a sort of an understanding, nowadays. She could comprehend a little bit better why Phlegma had said the things she'd said.

At one point, Ruffnut turned to her, and asked with a wicked grin, "So tell me about the Southern men."

Astrid's palms started to sweat. Her eyes flitted down to her drink. "Uh."

This was enough to tell Ruff there was something Astrid didn't want to share, which to Ruff's drunken sensibility constituted information indispensible to everyone's survival. "Oooh," she crooned, "Does Hiccup know? That poor kid, first his leg, now—"

Astrid snatched the girl's mead away from her (Ruffnut groaned) and poured it out on the floor. "Trust me when I say that these two things are not even remotely similar."

Snotlout, even slower than usual, gasped, "ASTRID, AND HICCUP?" Several heads turned at the nearby tables to stare at him in disgust.

"Oh no," muttered Fishlegs.

"I think your eyes are broken," Tuff remarked, gently whacking Snotlout's head, "and also maybe your face and your ears. And your brain." Snotlout sat back, seething, but Astrid's attention was drawn elsewhere.

To her great relief, Hiccup reentered the Great Hall—with his father. And they were arguing again.

They paused by the entrance and exchanged a few more harsh words—their disagreement read in Stoick's clenched fists and Hiccup's scowl—and then Hiccup marched over to join his friends. She tried not to let herself get sidetracked by the obvious success of her emergency haircut, but he did cut quite an impressive figure now, well groomed and having filled out even more in the months she'd been away. Oblivious to her appraisal, he threw himself on to the bench behind her.

"Hi, everyone," he murmured. Ruffnut belched.

"Everything okay?" asked Astrid, eyeing him.

Hiccup gave her a look that wanted to say more but didn't know how, so he settled on a shrug. She would get it out of him later, she decided, and in the mean time he could be driven to distraction, but instead he sat there frowning into his mead as the twins tried to best each other in chugging. Astrid was caught between wanting to punch him in the stomach and cradle his head in her lap, though the latter of these urges snuck up on her. Anyway, she knew one thing for sure, which was that she didn't feel terribly warm and fuzzy about Stoick just then.

"I'm going to bury you alive one day," Ruffnut told Snotlout conversationally, making his face contort with anger.

"Stop saying that, it's so creepy, you're a creep."

"Only I'm allowed to call her a creep," declared Tuffnut. He swung sloppily at Snotlout across the table, missing by a foot, but the gesture was enough to goad the other teen, who (having grown increasingly incensed through the past ten minutes) tried to launch himself at Tuff and flopped belly-down next to Astrid's mead.

"Cut it out," she demanded, still more intent on Hiccup than anyone else.

But Tuff and Snotlout were now clawing ineffectively at each other, while Ruff laughed in the background. "You two look so stupid right now," she gushed, the tip of her braid sitting in her empty flagon. In their drunken tussle, Tuffnut whacked a flagon with his elbow and it flew to the floor, clanging loudly. Now there were eyes on their weird little fight, and Astrid started to forget Hiccup's moping.

And then Snotlout full on decked Tuffnut, and in doing so from such an awkward position sent himself spinning on to the floor like a roll of raw meat.

"Control your people, Hiccup," came Stoick's voice from across the hall. He didn't yell, but his lungs let him be heard over the distance, above the sound of the musicians playing on and conversations rumbling indistinctly. It was not a full stop in the room so much as a moment where time slowed to a crawl—the noise and activity when on, but everyone looked away from their merriment for a half-second, gazing from Snotlout and Tuffnut to Hiccup. They were waiting for him to stand up, to follow his father's instruction. To be a chief.

For Astrid, all it took was a quick glance, and she knew: it wouldn't happen right now. He was staring at Stoick, agape, infuriated. Shocked to be so publicly humiliated, maybe. But it didn't matter why he couldn't do it. He needed help.

And she would help him—Astrid grabbed Tuffnut by the collar, kicking him when he chimed, "why so strong, aren't you a lady?" With her other hand she seized Snotlout from the floor and dragged him, too, over to where sat a couple extra barrels of mead.

Grasping a chunk of either boy's hair, she dunked their heads in the barrels, shouting, "YOU WANT TO FIGHT DRUNK? I'LL TEACH YOU TO FIGHT DRUNK," and other such loose, random threats, until they both sobbed and coughed and spit and said they were terribly sorry, which took all in all about five seconds. Ruffnut's laughter echoed throughout the room, above the din of Hooligans gone back to their party.

The only ones still watching after she'd dumped them both on the floor and gone back to her table were her mother—at whom she shrugged, as if to say, a woman's gotta do, and the smile Phlegma gave her agreed—and the chief, whose mouth puckered severely as he assessed her. It made Astrid's stomach curl nervously to think she had disobeyed his wishes, even indirectly, but for whatever reason it made sense that her loyalty to Hiccup ran deeper than her loyalty any authority, even the chief's.

Speaking of Hiccup, he hadn't moved, and she caught the expression on his face as she returned to her seat: fury. It made her jump—was he mad at her? Had she been wrong in thinking he was immobilized? He couldn't be that angry, he was the one who hadn't moved when he needed to, all she had done was diffuse the situation.

Then Hiccup's hand wrapped around her wrist and her face felt hot. He was glaring over at Stoick. "Come on," he said, and tugged her along, out of the hall and into the night.

She stomped after him across the square, lit by a stream of orange from the open door to the hall, and the few lamps still burning in the windows of houses. There were a few sleepy drunks and one very much awake couple scattered about the green. Hiccup kept walking, past the feeding station and toward the harbor, and she called ahead to him. "Listen, I'm sorry if you're feeling upstaged, or whatever, but someone had to do something, okay, and it clearly wasn't going to be you—"

Hiccup whirled around to face her, looking annoyed but more pressingly, confused. "What are you talking about?"

She took a step back. "You're not mad that I took care of Snotlout and Tuffnut?"

"No, no of course I'm not mad—I'm grateful, actually, thanks for that." He gazed out at the harbor distractedly. A few pieces of this puzzle fell together in Astrid's mind. Hiccup was fighting with his father because his father thought he'd allowed her to distract him from his responsibilities as a leader; Hiccup had chosen to leave the party with her moments after he'd failed to live up to one of those responsibilities.

"So why'd you bring me out here?" she asked, though she already suspected the answer. That knowingness must've been clear in her tone, because Hiccup blushed deeply enough she could see it through the darkness on the harbor path.

"I'm sorry, Astrid."

"Don't you use me to make your dad angry, Hiccup, that's not—"

"I know, it's not fair." He put a hand on her arm, and she immediately forgot her frustration. A little because sure, there was a confidence and regard in the gesture that made her mouth go dry, but also because she knew the apology was authentic. He was sincere. She put her fingers over his. He went on, "You didn't hear him talking earlier."

"Er, well," she coughed. "I may have… I heard some of it when you were arguing in the forge."

His eyebrow quirked up. "You eavesdropped?"

"If it makes you feel any better, I was originally going to bust in and defend you, but I got distracted."

Hiccup grinned, and took her hand in his, drawing her away from the center of the path. They were not alone—she could hear someone singing in the square behind them—but the handholding felt private, and intimate, as long as no one was actively watching them. "Thanks," he said, just as his smile faltered. "Later he found me skipping the party and got angry again. He said I was fickle, and I asked him to remember what it was like when he was with my mother." He mentioned this as though it were a fact of the matter, an obvious parallel, but Astrid's eyes fell to her feet. Hiccup continued staring out at the moonlit sea, not noticing her embarrassment. "That didn't go over well. Now he's taking it out on me. Which is weird, I mean, you'd think he could find some empathy or something. Maybe he didn't love my mother at all."

These words landed between them and it was silent. She became very aware of their hands hanging by her hips.

"Astrid," Hiccup started, sounding like he'd realized his mistake. "I didn't mean—"

"It's okay," she interjected. A year ago she might have physically turned and run away, but she had learned recently that running away tended to aggravate whatever issue one left in the dust. Chin high, she turned to Hiccup, grabbing him by the shoulders. "I was really hoping we could put this conversation off for a few more days. It's only my first night back and I'm tired, and we have a lot to talk about."

Hiccup forced a smile and nodded. It had grown supremely awkward in a matter of seconds.

"And you know," she added, trying for supportive, "it's not like I don't want to talk about your mom, whenever you'd like to or—or I guess when you need to, and I don't mean want to talk about her, really, more like…" What a bust. She let go of him and made to move back toward the Great Hall.

"It's fine, I understand," Hiccup managed. She couldn't gauge which one of them sounded more pathetically embarrassed. This was bad, they were backsliding. She looked at him, squaring her shoulders. Equals, partners.

"I just wanted you to know that I don't run out for the tough stuff."

She expected him to smile and pat her or something, but he looked—taken aback?

"Astrid, I've never once doubted that."

"Oh."

She felt a peculiar expression cross her face, and judging from the little laugh Hiccup gave as he watched her reaction, he'd noticed it too. He gave a heaving sigh—heaving off the heft of the conversation, of the arguments with his father, of the discussion of his mother, who was gone. "Do you want to go back in? We could, I don't know, dance?"

Her response to this suggestion was so automated it cut right through any awkwardness she felt. "Absolutely not, I don't dance."

"That's good, because I was totally bluffing. I'm terrible."

"No, really? You, a bad dancer?" she joked, and as they walked back to the party, with laughter easing the density between them, he gave her hand a squeeze.