A/N: So I'm gonna say that there are 3-4 chapters left in this story, but there officially WILL be a sequel, once I finish the modern AU I just started.

Back on Berk, Stoick the Vast was, like his son, feeling that he had been very stupid.

Small in his hand was the ransom note from Berserker Island, delivered early that morning by ten heavily armed men. One Night Fury in exchange for two teenagers.

"When I was a boy," he told Gobber, "my father, the chief, said never to send an army to a peace summit. That was when peace summits were always peace summits."

"Kids these days," Gobber agreed. They were sitting in the center room of the Haddock house, the Berserker group confined to their ship in the harbor, awaiting an answer from Berk's leader. The fire crackled in the hearth, almost too cheerful and inviting, as though it couldn't sense that the heir of Berk and his future wife had been lost to a madman.

After all the antics, all the deceit, he had trusted Dagur—perhaps he'd been too absorbed with the opportunity to test Hiccup to see the danger in this so-called treaty, from this so-called friend of the Hooligan tribe. "He'll be furious with me," said Stoick heavily, rubbing his face. "He'll think I set him up for this, like he's meant to learn a lesson."

Gobber stroked an eyebrow. "D'you think they'd harm them?"

"At this venture I can't say I'm in a position to guess anything Dagur the Deranged would or wouldn't do." Stoick rose from his chair, the weight of a child in peril pressing on his heart. "Let's go find that dragon."

"Astrid," called Hiccup, for about the hundredth time in two hours. "Astrid."

Nothing. Just the drip-drip-drip of water on to the floor of his cell from a mysterious hole in the rock ceiling. The prison was not that large. Hiccup shut his eyes and leaned against the bars.

"Astrid, if you don't want to talk, that's fine, just please say something so I know that you're okay."

"SHUT UP," came the voice of a Berserk guard from somewhere toward the entrance. He flinched, and retreated to the back of the cell. There was some straw on the ground, maybe the remnants of a mattress. Whatever pitiable soul last occupied this drab hole had torn it to shreds, an impulse Hiccup understood. He plunked down and sat with his elbows on his knees, chewing his lip, knowing his face had scrunched in disconcertion but not remembering how to work the muscles, how to relax himself. Here was a problem that was in reality many problems—Dagur had them, Astrid hated him, there was no escaping as long as they were fighting, and there was no end to their fighting as long as Dagur had them. Dagur would make sure of that, he wasn't a nemesis for nothing. His brain itched with concern for Astrid's wellbeing; what if she wasn't ignoring him after all? Dagur liked the challenge Hiccup presented, so he never genuinely feared for his life around the Berserk, but Astrid… he would've killed Astrid that day when they'd fought, and that was before she humiliated him in front of his entire army. It had taken him a year to recover from that defeat. Hiccup couldn't imagine him taking pity on her. His stomach churned unpleasantly, and he got back to his feet, nerves ticking through him.

"Astrid," he tried again, out into the empty corridor. "Please, say something."

It was his fault. Hiccup had played right into Dagur's hands. He and Astrid had needed to present a united front, that was the whole point of this trip, and he—him, not Astrid, he was the weakest link—he had crumpled under pressure. At least he could tell his father precisely where the problem lay, now.

Silence. A frustrated cry escaped his throat, he kicked at the hard ground, stubbed his toe, and cried out again, doubling over.

"Calm down."

Hiccup snapped up. "Astrid?"

She leaned against the other side of the hall, key dangling from her finger, pensive expression on her face. A pink track ran down her cheek—a scrape, from some scuffle.

"Are you okay? How'd you—"

Astrid raised a finger to her lips, and he fell quiet. She crept to the door and unlocked it, careful to turn the key slowly, so the mechanism didn't clunk. Hiccup slipped out into the corridor with her.

"How'd you do it?" he whispered. He wanted to hug her, or take her hand, but she was moving away from him, not meeting his eye.

"You don't want to know. We need to get out of here."

"Astrid, are we—"

"Not now," Astrid said in a brutal tone, the muscles in her jaw twitching.

Hiccup felt lightheaded. He had ruined everything, he was certain of it. Certain doom flashed through his mind: they put off the conversation, the tension between them made their escape rocky at best, so her anger with him only mounted, and by the time they were back on Berk and they'd both had a good night's sleep—because they weren't going to get anywhere with the apologies if they'd just been through this forty-eight-hour captivity ordeal—by the time they sat down to talk about it, she'd have mentally dumped him days ago.

And then she added, a little gentler, "We don't have time," and started dragging him down the corridor. He felt a surge of reassurance, her hand warmly clasping his arm, and spoke in a gush of affection.

"I love you, Astrid."

Oh, no.

She stopped short—Hiccup smashed his nose on the back of her head. Stumbling back, he waited, sinuses stinging, for her to turn around and address him, but after a second and a squeeze to his forearm, she kept pulling him along. Without a look at her face, there was no telling what she thought, only fear and uncertainty—shouting started up somewhere in the prison, echoing toward them, Astrid dragged him behind her through the damp stone tunnels, the sound of running and arguments ricocheting off the walls, chasing them toward the only way in or out. Chaos around him, chaos in his brain. The dying daylight streamed through the cavernous opening, where two tunnels ran together. Hiccup and Astrid, arriving from the left tunnel, huddled around a corner, while a single guard peered worriedly down the tunnel on the right.

"They found the body," she breathed.

"The body?"

Astrid glanced at him sideways through her long lashes. "Just unconscious. They must've heard me take him out. Now they're investigating."

The last guard at the entrance started creeping down the tunnel. "He'll see us," Hiccup realized. She nodded.

"When I give the signal, you run for the entrance. Get into the forest. I'll catch up with you."

"Wait, Astrid, I'm not—"

"RUN," she screamed, pushing him toward the exit before she sprinted toward the stunned guard, who froze in place. Shoving down qualms about leaving Astrid to fight alone—she was better at hand-to-hand combat, at all combat, he reasoned, even if his conscience squirmed—Hiccup sprinted out into the twilight, scrambling about thirty yards for the nearest wooded area. He was lucky: the remote path to the prison was empty. He had no trouble getting up an incline to the forest, other than his prosthetic slipping out from under him a couple times. At the tree line, he paused and turned, staring at the entrance.

A minute passed, and then another. The air around the prison mouth did not stir.

He should go back. If she didn't come out in thirty seconds, he would go back, hand-to-hand combat skills or no. He could make something up. He was resourceful! Worse came to worse, Astrid got out and he didn't. Dagur wouldn't kill him, he was sure of that, it couldn't be too bad. If he caught Astrid, on the other hand—

She emerged from the tunnel, and headed straight for him. At once he knew from her gait that there was something wrong, a limp. She had been hurt; cover be damned, he burst from the safety of the woods, back out into the open, running to meet her.

"What are you doing?" she demanded, but didn't protest when he slung her arm around his shoulder and started helping her toward the trees.

"You're hurt!"

"My leg—it's fine." Grimacing, she wrapped herself around his torso, needing the support. It didn't seem fine.

Once they reached the small hill he took some initiative and swept her off her feet, carrying her the rest of the way. In any other situation Astrid might've objected, but her face had drained of color, and she only clung weakly to his neck. They went deep into the forest—Hiccup kept going, as far as he could, Astrid's face snugged in the crook of his neck, until his arms ached. Upper body strength had never been his forte, no amount of hammering could alter genetics. After twenty minutes of blind escape, of thoughtless forward, he collapsed in a clearing, nearly dropping his precious cargo to the forest floor. His shoulders felt weightless like someone had hollowed them out.

Astrid sat up and, nose wrinkling, flipped her skirt off her thigh. Damp redness circled the gash in her leggings. Woozy but determined, she started to tear the fabric open for a better look at the injury, but Hiccup fell to his knees and batted her hands away.

"Let me do it." And he ripped the cloth to reveal the offending red score against the white plane of her skin. In the encroaching darkness, the shiny bodily crimson appeared darker, nearly black. It wasn't deep—maybe a couple of inches, but not three or four as he had feared.

He tore a line of fabric off the bottom of his own tunic and bound it tightly around her leg, to staunch the blood flow, though there was not much—a good sign. "You're going to be fine," he said, hearing the relief in his own voice.

"Did you think I was going to die?"

Realizing he had become absorbed in his impromptu medic duties, Hiccup glanced up for the first time in several minutes, to find Astrid smiling at him, though the lift of her brows made it a little sad, or bittersweet somehow. She was joking with her question, but half-heartedly; he opened his mouth and shrugged. What was he supposed to say, yes?

"Thank you," she said softly.

He twisted off his knees and sat beside her. "When that bandage is finished, let me know and I'll tear you off another." He flapped his now slightly shorter shirt at her, and Astrid giggled. "Also, you are very welcome."

She gave him another little smile, but the conversation quickly slipped into a lull. Too many things to say, maybe. The big one was on the tip of his tongue, and he wanted to chastise himself for even considering it the big one. They'd just escaped from prison, Astrid had been wounded, they were now lost (or alternatively, hiding) in the woods on Berserker Island, a place unfamiliar to them. There were a lot of issues that could've been the big one, but in his own personal grand romantic tradition, Hiccup only cared that Astrid might be angry with him. Everything else, the danger and the running around, that was his week; him and Astrid fighting, now, there was a dilemma.

"Are we safe?" he heard her whisper. Night had descended and they sat together at the foot of a pine, under layers of shadow. She meant: are we far enough from the Berserker camp that they won't find us? Are we adequately sheltered from the forest at night? But he wanted to fiddle with the inflection: are we safe?

"I think so," Hiccup managed. "I ran north twenty minutes. I think there's a fair amount of forest for them to cover if they want to find us, and they won't do it until daybreak if they're smart."

"If they're smart," she echoed, grinning. It was cold in the darkness of this late October evening, and it would only get colder. She had lost blood and was shivering. He reached out to put an arm around her, that they might be warmer together, and their eyes met. His hand hovered over her, waiting for permission.

"Can I—"

"Yeah," she grunted, sounding embarrassed that he'd asked.

He drew them together, briskly stroking her shoulders to drum up some heat. "They never tell you to pack layers when you're escaping prison, do they?" he quipped.

"So you love me, huh?"

His head snapped up. She snugged closer to him, her face hovering nose-to-nose with his, imploring. He searched that expression best he could for a sense of how she felt, but in the dark he couldn't tell. At his silence—because again, what was he supposed to say, she was only repeating his words back to him, and the heat of the moment or whatever had made it tumble from his lips didn't make it any less true—she glared at her lap.

"It doesn't change what you said before."

"I know."

Raising her head, Astrid looked out over the clearing, to the moon above the pines. She spoke like she was relishing the self-discovery. "I'm mad at you."

"I know," he said again, miserably. "I'm so sorry, Astrid, that was so…"

"Stupid?" she offered, with a smile that was more of a grimace.

"Yeah." And then, quieter, afraid, "Are you going to forgive me?"

Astrid twisted to stare at him, slow and deliberate, her brows knit together. The plain-faced expression of deliberation, deciding his fate. When they were children, Hiccup remembered, she had never looked at him, or at least had never seen him, her eyes were always searching out other people and places. It was only once he'd realized he had to be someone worth looking at that he'd earned her attention. Never then would he have guessed there'd be a moment like this one, where she looked and looked—that was privilege enough, wasn't it? If she pushed him away now, he would know forever that he'd been worthy, at one point, however briefly.

It grew colder by the minute and, shaking, Astrid broke the eye contact to push herself against him. Instinctively, his arms folded around her, that felt right, and her weight on his chest was enough to assuage the fear he felt in the absence of verbal reassurance. For tonight, maybe they did have bigger problems.

And then, after a while, she mumbled (voice growing garbled with sleepiness, head lolling against his shoulder), "Don't say that ever again."

Hiccup exhaled. A winter night and he stayed warm. "I won't."

"Okay," came the small, muffled voice. "Forgiven."

Owing in part to the fact that they were not a little hungry and dehydrated, Astrid's forgiveness was more ceasefire than truce. As they woke the next morning, and went through the rituals of wilderness survival, he could still feel her watching him when his back was turned, and sometimes he'd catch the worried, distant expression on her face. They got into squabbles over stupid things, which tree they should sleep under, which bushes might still yield berries this time of year. The kind of arguments that meant something else was wrong.

After a while he thought too hard and he began to agree with her uncertainty; what had he ever really done to show Astrid that he understood her life? She had gone in front of her chief to plead Hiccup's case, and he couldn't even lie and say he'd be fine if she went away for a few months! He waited when she told him she needed time, he agreed to keep their relationship a secret as long as she didn't want anyone to know, but those were concessions he'd made at her request. He'd done as he was told.

Then again. How were you supposed to understand someone who hid herself from you?

"You never talk about your dad," he remarked on their second morning. They had spent the previous day trying to move around without leaving tracks, but had loitered on the bank of a stream to catch breakfast. The water babbled at Hiccup's back.

Astrid eyed him, crouched over the tiny fish she was roasting above a tiny fire. (Tiny fish because it was the best they could do in the stream and going to the sea was too exposed; tiny fire because they couldn't risk the smoke being sighted overland.) "What?"

"Your dad. You don't talk about him," Hiccup repeated, sitting across from her with his hands in his lap.

"So?"

He said innocently, "Well, you know, since you talk about him so little sometimes I forget he's even gone."

She raised an eyebrow and rocked back on her heels, a look of revelation and annoyance sliding over her fine features. "You're trying to blame what you said on me not mentioning him enough." Hiccup's stomach dropped.

"Of course not." Except that he was, only he hadn't noticed it when the words escaped his mouth. But in retrospect, yes, yes he was a bumbling liar and an idiot, fine. The mission here had been not to think too often of himself and he had gone and done it again, he had miscalculated. He fought off the urge to go jump in the river and see where that landed him, since clearly this whole empathy thing was proving difficult today.

Back at her fire, Astrid scraped some scales off the fish. "You don't talk about what happened with your leg but I'll never forget it."

Hiccup took a deep breath. She was glaring at the smoky embers now, which made him lonely. He had to resist looking down his leg to the strange metal there, the thing that was as much an absence as a presence. "All right. Touché," he muttered.

Astrid's head popped up from her work. Her voice, her face, had gone hard. "The whole world is already making everything about you, so I guess it's only natural that you do it too."

Anger surged in his throat. He couldn't be blamed for the way other people treated him, he didn't do that. "That's not fair, Astrid."

She looked as though she would shoot some epithet at him, but the intent melted away when something appeared over his shoulder, wrangling her attention.

"Hiccup."

He jerked around to get an idea of what she'd seen, but the answer was obvious enough: there in the stream, hooked on a rock, was a shield emblazoned with the red skull of the Hooligan tribe.

Instantly Astrid was on her feet—he saw her wincing, her thigh wouldn't heal for another week at least—and she dragged the shield from the riverbed. "This is one of ours!"
Hiccup went to stand over it with her, both of them puzzling down at this wet, weathered piece of equipment. They had agreed that Dagur would not ransom them, his grievances were too personal, so the plan had been to hide out in the woods for a few days, then head back to the Berserk camp under cover of darkness and steal a boat to get them home. The Hooligans were never supposed to enter into it. And yet clearly they were here, on the island, now—the shield had seen combat, but it had not been lying in the water very long at all.

Astrid sighed, and they looked at each other.

"Follow the stream?" he suggested.

"Follow the stream," she agreed.

They arrived back at the Berserk camp—and the water led them straight there, they found more and more battle scraps floating down stream, until they could hear the sounds of swords clashing and men screaming—they arrived to find the Berserks under siege. By the Hooligans. In fact, right in front of the very prison pit from which they'd escaped two nights earlier, Stoick was bearing down on Dagur.

"WHAT DO YOU MEAN YOU DON'T HAVE THEM?"

"Obviously I'm not proud of it," said Dagur, not immune to the threat of Stoick's hammer hovering two feet above his head. "But they escaped. They're somewhere in the—" Hiccup and Astrid arrived on the scene, the clusters of Berserks and Hooligans making way for them. "—RIGHT THERE!" cried the Berserk chief, pointing stupid at Hiccup, who was now standing not fifteen feet from him. Stoick's eye widened.

"Son!"

"Hi, Dad," panted Hiccup. They had sprinted to find Stoick once they'd understood what was happening. Astrid hovered silently behind her companion, not seeming terribly friendly toward either chief.

"Son," said Stoick, lowering his voice and his weapon, "I want you to know how sorry I am for all of—this." He gestured to a Berserk tent currently being consumed by fire.

Hiccup smiled an exhausted but genuine smile, that softened all the features on his face, a flash of his younger self, who'd wanted nothing but for them all to get along with the dragons. "That's great, Dad, but right now I really just want to go home."

"Aye, then that's what we'll do." Stoick raised a mighty hand for his troops, and rallied them for the harbor.

Hiccup caught Astrid's eye for a half-second before she glanced away. The dilemma—but he heard a familiar roar from lower in the camp, and his heart lifted so perceptibly it might've flown from his chest. Toothless: he was a black bullet bounding toward them, banging into trees with outstretched wings, tongue streaming out the side of his gummy mouth.

The dragon leapt at Hiccup, circling around him in a squirming hug. "I know, bud, I missed you too!"

Nothing less than glowing, Hiccup flipped his prosthetic into its flying attachment and was about to haul himself into the saddle when he saw that Astrid had stopped short of going to the harbor with the other Hooligans. She was watching the Berserker forces disassemble, observing Dagur spit at his men like somehow they had ruined this for him.

When Hiccup put a questioning hand on her elbow, she shook him off. "One second. Wait here."

So Astrid marched over to Dagur, tapped him on the shoulder, and socked him hard in the left eye. He let out a horrible feline screech, and she spun on her heel, booking it back to Hiccup. He let out a laugh, half-terror and half-astonishment, amused in spite of the fact that a small army of Berserks was rumbling toward them, hot on her heels.

"Sorry," Astrid wheezed, pulling them both on to Toothless's back. "But someone needed to do it."