A/N: Everything's going to be fineeeeeee.

As they loaded the ship for Berserker Island the next morning, Astrid didn't look at Hiccup, Hiccup didn't look at Stoick, and Gobber watched the three of them passing each other in such frigid silence that he was eventually prompted to say, to no one in particular, "Why can't we all just get along?"

If Stoick sensed that something had soured between Astrid and Hiccup since she'd so ardently pleaded their togetherness with him yesterday, he did not show it. But why should he, really, when it was what he'd expected? She had failed to hear Hiccup and he had rejected her. Fracture.

No, no. She was getting ahead of herself.

It had been an argument, couples argued, they made up, they moved forward. As she said goodbye to Stormfly—the dragons would stay behind, Hiccup didn't trust Dagur around them—she resolved to talk to him, to swallow her pride and say her piece. Or attempt it, at least. They were on a freaking expedition to test their teamwork skills, and they weren't speaking; she had to try.

But between his avoidance and the stress of the impending visit to Dagur, she spent the first two hours of the journey too overwhelmed to do anything other than sit in the dark hold and guide a whetstone rhythmically over the blade of her axe. She tried to empty her mind, but kept coming back to her hasty departure from the Haddock house the night before, the bruise on her leg from where she dropped too quickly from the window, the chill on her neck before she managed to get on her hood. It was only once she'd sustained a nasty slice to her finger that she grunted, sheathed the weapon, and headed above deck. Here goes.

Hiccup hung over the rail toward the front of the ship, watching its creaking prow slink through the waves. She crept over and stood behind him on the deck, hands clasped, her mouth wound into an apologetic smile.

"You remember the last time we sailed to Berserker Island?"

Hiccup looked up. There were dark circles beneath his bright green eyes.

"Yeah," he said reluctantly, but it was more than they'd spoken all morning. Oddly enough, she remembered him trying to apologize as she'd left the night before—now the roles were reversed. Maybe they'd slept weird. They'd slept alone, anyway.

"It's funny, because," she said, conversational, coming to lean on the rail beside him, "then, I was mad at you, and you had to make me tell you why. And now you're mad at me." Astrid dug a nail into the grain of the ship's wood. "But I know why you're mad."

His eyes were trained on a speck in the distance, their destination. The wind twirled and smoothed his hair in and out of little spikes. When he spoke, frustration distorted his words into blips of anger surfacing from his throat. "So why am I mad, Astrid?"

"Because I didn't listen to you." He inhaled sharply at her side. "I bragged to your dad about how well I listen, I guess I got cocky." In the arena, she'd walked away from him, too distracted by the thought of proving herself as a woman to hear his doubt: in a moment where he needed reassurance and candor, she'd pulled into some stupid sexy mind game. What had happened in the bedroom shouldn't have come as a surprise, not when he had so much else on his mind, but she had expected… that he wouldn't be able to control himself. And if he'd been any other man, maybe he couldn't have, but this was Hiccup. How worried his father had been that he'd lose his wits to her beguiling, how antithetical that seemed now.

He turned to her, eyes closed, pinching the bridge of his nose. "I know you're independent, and you're proud of that, and I'm proud of it too, Astrid." His hand fell away from his face, uncovering a woeful expression. "But I need you to talk to me. Just let me in on your decisions every once and a while, and maybe I can let you know which ones aren't going to work for me, like—like that one, for example."

Astrid tugged on her bangs. The moment of rejection had been fast and potent and it made her chest ache, even retroactively. "I'll try," she offered.

"No more schemes?"

"I can't promise that," she joked half-heartedly, but it was good enough for Hiccup, whose gaze softened.

"I'm sorry I…" But he had seen how many people were on the ship with them—at least four or five of Stoick's men, some of them crew, others body guards. "Sorry for how I reacted," he explained, censoring his tone.

"It's okay," she said softly. Hiccup nudged her hand with his, and when she looked up, he was smiling. Her mouth opened. "You're very forgiving of me." This statement escaped her without consideration, and it caught him off guard, by the looks of it.

"What do you mean?"

"I just feel like I'm always messing up, or needing something, and you're always being—the best about it."

Hiccup scanned her, a small puzzled part between his lips. "Astrid, don't feel that way."

She gave him a skeptical look. "Sure, I'll just stop feeling this way, right now, okay, there, it's gone?"

"I…" He sighed, still eyeing the others on board uncomfortably. "I always feel like I need something too. I feel like I ask too much of you, to say exactly what you mean all the time even when you don't know. To help me do this leadership stuff—this guy," he gestured in the direction of Berserker Island, "tried to kill you because of me."

"Not your fault," she murmured.

"But you still had to go through it, all because you had the good luck to fall for me."

"I fell for you, huh?" Astrid repeated, almost kidding. He shot her an apologetic look bordering on the fearful, so she admitted, "Okay, so you're not wrong."

Hiccup seemed rather struck by the idea that he was not wrong in saying she'd fallen for him, his mouth moving to the rhythm of the concept working itself out in his head, strong brow furrowing in tandem. He seemed so struck, in fact, that she felt the need to grab his arm and distract him from it, lest he start to actually understand what she'd meant. "So… maybe we should both stop freaking out?" And they laughed, Hiccup drawn from his puzzlement into happiness, burying his face in his sleeve.

"That sounds like a good idea," came his muffled reply. She patted him on the shoulder, a grin stretching her face. When he came up for air, he took a long look at her. "Last night." Her grin receded a little, he sounded terribly serious. "I was mad about you being all mysterious, and I was mad at my dad, and Snotlout, and I was—nervous. It was… really bad, it happened so quickly."

It had been bad, and devastating, like the shattering of a precious figurine; one slipped finger and you had nothing.

"So what you're saying is, 'it's not you, it's me'?" she countered, going for playful, rather than apprehensive that they were continuing to talk about this when she wanted desperately to forget it, even when the latter was a better assessment of her feelings.

Hiccup gave her a compelling look, one that made her insides feel like putty. "It's not you, Astrid. It really—" Distraction filled his voice, and she thought she saw his eyes skate down past her chin, and lower—her confidence of last night scattered, Astrid blushed. "It's not you," he repeated emphatically, forcing himself to look out over the waves.

"Well," she murmured, "it's not you either, then." They exchanged a smile. It was not long before the ship would reach Berserker Island.

And the rocky land came into view, rising menacingly from the sea. Astrid and Hiccup stayed side-by-side on the railing through as they glided into the harbor.

"This is going to be tough," Hiccup thought out loud. He had just seen the new crest of the Berserker tribe, flapping on a flag above the docks: what had been a Skrill and then a Night Fury was now a red-and-black wood carving of Dagur's face. Modest, that one. Astrid saw it too, and let out small groan.

Awaiting them beneath the flag was the man himself, wearing the same devilish smile as in his now ubiquitous portrait—Hiccup saw shields and belt buckles and helmets, all carrying the image of Dagur's grinning, tattooed face. He had often questioned Dagur's intelligence when they were growing up, and their interactions over the past year hadn't precisely qualified him as a genius in Hiccup's eyes, but Dagur did seem to possess a talent for commanding people. Into horrible situations, against their will. He had some kind of screwed-up magnetism that way. Stomach kicking, he wondered what had happened to Chief Karl, the interim Berserk leader, but squashed that train of thought hastily when the first image of dismemberment popped into his head.

The Hooligan crew docked the ship and Hiccup dismounted on to the pier, followed by Astrid.

"Aha, the royal couple," Dagur announced, spreading his arms wide in a tremendous, obviously false welcome. Hiccup and Astrid shared a nervous glance.
"Hi there, Dagur," said Hiccup. Dagur clapped him on the shoulder so hard he nearly tumbled into the bay.

"HICCUP, my old friend. So sorry about that whole mess last time we saw each other—forgive me?" he asked, and without waiting for a reply, turned to Astrid. She caught a glint of fury in his gaze. "And you're the Lady Haddock now, I presume?" Hiccup winced, and then rearranged his face quickly, sensing Dagur's eyes on him.

"Nope," she said with a forced smile, hanging back from the Berserk party amassed on the pier. "Still just Astrid." Hiccup gestured at her expectantly. "Uh, and I'm sorry about the thing where I almost killed you. Really sorry." As if to emphasize her own awkwardness, she did a lame curtsey, and then shrugged at Hiccup's puzzled expression.

Dagur stirred, his lips flashing a brief sneer, and Astrid knew she had been right—she should have stayed on the Odin-forsaken boat. But their mad host, having let his glossy veneer slip, quickly refocused on Hiccup and swung a pseudo-friendly arm around his shoulders. "Not a problem! Let us go up to the hall and eat, and the negotiations will begin." He pinched the skin of startled Hiccup's cheek between his fingers. "We have so much to talk about."

"In what universe," asked Hiccup gloomily through the bars of their cell, "is it a good idea to try and negotiate a peace treaty with someone whose name ends in 'the Deranged'?"

"You get points for optimism," Astrid observed. She was sitting on the floor with her chin in her hands.

(They had been imprisoned about two minutes into peace talks. Hiccup had mentioned something about a five-year truce over the traditional two, and maybe some trade restrictions if the Berserks failed to comply, and it was bam, chains on their wrists, Hooligan guards being whacked over the head, back to that familiar cozy pit, where Dagur lectured to them for twenty minutes about the dignity of the Berserker tribe and injustices done to our honor and frankly, rudeness.)

Dragging his feet (or, foot and prosthetic), Hiccup came to sit across from her in the middle of their prison. She gave him a smile, at least we're in this together.

He grinned back at her. "Think we aced the exam, Astrid?"

"Your dad will definitely be impressed with our negotiating abilities."

"I think so too." But the humor in his face died. "Do you think he sent us here together because he knew it would fail?"

She frowned. "Your father would never put you in danger intentionally, Hiccup." He ducked his head, ashamed to have thought of it, she guessed. Astrid leaned over and pecked him on the forehead. "We'll just have to get out of here together. If anything's going to prove we're a good team, it'd be that, right?"

"Right. Of course," he said, and gave her hand a squeeze.

"You think he's got something planned for us?"

"For me, at least. He didn't know you were coming."

Dagur's last set of challenges had been so pointless and humiliating, Astrid found herself as much annoyed as frightened by the prospect of what was to come. "I guess we'll just have to wait and see."

They didn't have to wait long, it turned out; they were soon retrieved from the cell and led up through the Berserker camp to Dagur's quarters, where he sat at the end of a table piled with food—three kinds of cured meats and fish, boiled root vegetables, aromatically fresh loaves of bread. Her stomach growled: she hadn't eaten since yesterday's lunch, having skipped dinner and breakfast out of anxiety.

"Sit," crowed the Berserk leader, his men pulling up chairs, "Help yourselves!"

Astrid plunked right into a chair and went for a drumstick, but Hiccup, sitting opposite, waved her off. She pouted at him. Dagur spotted the disagreement, and grinned. "It's not poisoned, Hiccup, my friend." He reached down the table, pried the drumstick from Astrid's hand, and took a bite of it. The strands of meat hung from his mouth like shredded prey in the maw of a rabid dog. He chewed at Astrid. "See? All good."

She exchanged a disgusted scoff with Hiccup and then tore into some bread, her appetite for meat disappeared.

"So here we are." Dagur settled back at the head of the table. "Three friends, sitting down to a meal together."

Hiccup raised his manacled hands. "But Dagur, where's your friendship bracelet? Oh, that's right, I forgot—" The punch line descended into seriousness, "We're not friends."

Dagur winked at him. "Only as a precaution, brother."

Astrid swallowed a mouthful and started on a boiled carrot, noticing Hiccup grimace at the word brother. "What do you want, Dagur?"

The moment she spoke, the grin slid from Dagur's face, replaced with an expression like a beast caught mid-snarl. Teeth flashing, lips contorted. "I simply want," he said in a low voice, "for us all to get along." Hiccup sighed. Recovering himself, Dagur added, "Tell me the news of Berk, and then we can get back to our treaty."

"All the news?"

"Yes. Perhaps start with why you two are not yet engaged."

Astrid quickly said, "Because we don't want to be."

Dagur spoke in a tempered, drawling voice, his falseness less apparent under the thick glaze of generosity. "And why's that?"

"Because we're not ready," said Hiccup, with a terminating resolve. He did not want to talk about this, least of all with Dagur.

"Huh," Dagur remarked, "well, as long as your parents don't mind, I suppose there's no harm in it." He must've caught the cool glance that passed between Astrid and Hiccup, because he followed up, "Do they mind?"

Neither of them spoke at first. Then they said at the same time,

"They're just—"

"My dad—"

They stared at one another across the table. A stack of goblets obscured his right ear.

"We don't have to tell you anything about it," said Hiccup slowly, as though he were transcribing the statement in his head.

"What's to tell?" asked Dagur, with a calculating patience that exceeded anything of which Astrid had previously thought him capable.

Hiccup's mouth stayed open, struggling. Watching him, Astrid worried her lip, and then turned to Dagur. She did not see how behaving as if this information was delicate or private helped their situation—Dagur could only exploit their weaknesses, and to hide this was to name it a weakness. "Hiccup's father doesn't think we'll be good together because we're too different, and he doesn't think we should see each other until we're ready to get married." Hiccup groaned; the jig was up. Astrid waved a hand to indicate her lack of understanding. "It's got something to do with stuff he and Hiccup's mom disagreed about, I think, he's taking it out—"

"What?" came a small voice. She glanced over to Hiccup, whose face had opened with disbelief.

"Oh," she coughed. "Yeah, he said…"

"You didn't tell me that."

Her eyes flickered upward. "Well, I think he sort of said it to me in confidence, and—"

"He's my father—she was my mother, what's—how is he telling you things in confidence?" Agitated, Hiccup had pushed himself to his feet, fists on the table, shackles clanging. "He got angry when I just mentioned her to him when we were arguing, my mother!"

Astrid was finding it difficult not to feel a bit attacked, what with her boyfriend shouting at her across a table about something she couldn't control, and she too stood up. "You never knew her, Hiccup!"

"So you're on his side, now?"

"There are no sides, Hiccup—the only person who's not on our side is him." She pointed to a grinning Dagur, feet propped up on the end of the table.

"I'm having so much fun," said their captor, giggling.

"I can't believe he told you that," seethed Hiccup, turning away from her. "He acts like he hates you and he tells you that, and I'm his son!" The disassociation made her jaw tighten, and she grabbed his arm across the table, demanding attention.

"Stop being an idiot. I know it hurts, you're overreacting—"

"Overreacting," he echoed incredulously, "Are you serious, Astrid? You don't know what it's like, to lose a parent like that and never know her, and to have the one person left who's supposed to love you act like everything you do is wrong, then reveal everything to a stranger," he shook off her arm violently and she shrunk away, "We might as well not be related, I'm not family, I'm just an heir."

Hiccup had worked himself into fervor, and he fought to catch his breath against the pounding in his chest. The rant, a hormonal pulse, left him feeling drained; he looked to Astrid and saw with horror that her lip had begun to quiver, and her eyes were rimmed red. She held the hand that had grabbed him as though it were scorched. A light switched on in his head—what he had said, losing a parent, struggling with the one you having left—his stomach twisted, guilty nausea, he had been so stupid.

"Astrid—"

"I don't know what it's like," she said like she was trying to agree, but the threat of tears shook her voice. "You're a chief's son, it's different, I couldn't understand—"

"No," he shook his head, reaching for her, but Dagur flung himself up from his chair. A grin split his face.

"GUARDS. Separate cells, immediately!"

And they were being dragged away, him calling after her, and Astrid in affected silence, her eyes on the ground.