How to Start a Self-Discovery

Chapter 6: Weak Vikings

The metal gate slammed down noisily behind them, and Astrid turned around to glare at the person who let it make such a loud noise. Standing in from of the gate, Fishlegs cowered under her stare, despite being much bigger than her even at the age of twelve. "Do you want us to get caught?" Astrid hissed at him, and he shook his head fervently. His voice was too weak to reply to her, and Astrid made a note to keep her eye on him. He could very well get them killed if he didn't man up.

Like some other half-baked 'Viking' she knew.

Rolling her shoulder to get some tension out of it, Astrid stepped further into the ring, the moonlight guiding her way. She paid no mind to the four other Vikings behind her, each of them progressively more scared of their current situation the further they were from her. Snotlout had attempted to stay close to Astrid's back, but made little to no protest when Ruffnut shoved him aside to walk ahead. Tuffnut snickered at Snotlout from behind him and Fishlegs took the rear.

"So… do we even know which cage we should unlock?" Ruffnut asked with her signature drawl, giving Astrid a pointed look. Astrid returned her look with fierce eyes and a tense frown.

"Do you or don't you want to kill a dragon?"She hissed back. Ruffnut shrugged, as if the thought didn't appeal to her, but didn't distaste her either. Astrid grabbed her axe from where she strapped it on her back and turned to the cage that usually held Deadly Nadders. Faintly, she heard Snotlout ask why she hadn't chosen to open the cage with the Monstrous Nightmare, but she was smarter than that. She might be the best fighter in their ragtag group of twelve-year olds, but she wasn't the Chief. Start small, right?

"You," she commanded Fishlegs, "open the gate." Fishlegs gulped, but shuffled quickly over to the gate's door handle. Behind her, the three other Vikings readied their weapons. None of them had shields.

Astrid glared at the gate, its thick walls preventing her from seeing what was inside, but she knew it was a dragon. Her father's axe was much too heavy for her slim form, but she had to do it. She had to kill a dragon with hisaxe or this perpetual feeling of shame would weigh on her shoulders until the end of her days. It had to be this axe or no axe at all. She nodded her head at Fishlegs, and he cranked the handle.

She was ready for it, the hottest fire on earth to blast forth from those depths. She would dodge it, get under its body and hack the softest part of its belly. She would gut it from the inside out, and hold its beating heart for everyone to see. Her hands would be splattered red with blood, but this time? This time they wouldn't shake. She would hack her own hands off if they did.

Vikings were not weak.

At first it was just darkness, and Astrid thought maybe the beast was just biding its time, watching for an opening. But when seconds ticked by and nothing jumped out at them, Astrid crept closer. The moon shone light on the inside of the cage, and instead of a Deadly Nadder, the ragtag team only saw rolled up blankets and pillows, and a note.

"Dear Troublemakers," Fishlegs read, "The punishment for breaking into the training ring again is to spend the rest of the night in it. I'll be back in the morning to let you out. Signed, Gobber."

...

...

...

It was a sunny day, again, and Astrid was sitting on Stormfly, watching her friends fly around each other, bickering as usual. Each of their dragons held a large chunk of log in their claws, waiting for Spitelout to give them orders for where to put them. The Chief and Hiccup had been working on constructing a new area for the town to gather in. The training dome was a good place, but didn't have much room for the dragons to hang around. And Hiccup said something about a new sport he invented that he wanted to try out. Hence, everyone on Berk was roped into helping with the construction of the new stadiums.

Even though a lot had changed in two years, there was still more growth to be had. Berk was definitely a lot more comfortable for all the new dragons, but Hiccup saw improvements everywhere. He was constantly sketching out new ideas and buildings, on top of his own little inventions that he tinkered with. Astrid was glad to be at the forefront of it all, in no small part because she constantly stole his sketchbook when he wasn't looking.

"Hey Astrid, can you come down here for a second?"

Astrid looked down to where her name was called, seeing Hiccup and Toothless standing next to a few Vikings. She steered Stormfly down carefully, laying the log onto the ground and hopping off her dragon. Her skin still tingled from yesterday, his words ringing faintly in her ears. She tried to push it out of her mind, trying to focus on the task at hand, but it was there, always present, like the tingle Hiccup left behind every time he touched her. It would linger for hours and she would rub her hand over the spot, as if somehow she could replicate that feeling by herself.

"Valkyrie."

"What's up?" she asked him. Stormfly and Toothless greeted each other, bobbing their heads and making strange noises, wings half-unfurled. Astrid watched them with amusement and curiosity. She had wondered for the longest time what exactly they were saying, but Hiccup's interest had long since died. They weren't causing any destruction with it, so it wasn't high on the list of "things to know about dragons".

"We need one of the logs to be cut up and used as floorboards," he told her, taking his charcoal pencil from behind his ear and sketching in his book. "I miscalculated a bit with all the wood this stadium's gonna need."

"Alright. What do you need me to do next?" Astrid asked. She didn't want to stay cooped up in her house, sitting in the main hall staring at her father's axe. And if everyone else was going to be helping out with construction, she certainly didn't want to be left with nothing to do. Idling away would make her twitchy. With the dragons, preparing for winter was much easier, and Astrid often found herself with too much time on her hands. She had taken to passing the time by training until her limbs felt boneless, or flying with Stormfly until well into the night.

Or perhaps she was just used to the outdoors. Her mother liked to sit in their house and sew when she had time off. From a young age, Astrid hated staying indoors. She would take any excuse she could get to leave the house, a possible factor in her de facto leadership of the rag tag group of young Vikings. Coming home late was infinitely better than coming home on time. When she came home late, she could just sneak back into her room without alerting her parents. A result of being smaller than the usual Viking meant that she was much quieter on her feet, and much less likely to be caught.

Stormfly nudged her hand, obviously finished greeting Toothless. Astrid looked down at her dragon, who had dropped a random stick at her feet. When she picked it up, Stormfly bounded away, readying herself to catch it. Even Toothless wanted to join in on the game, crouched in a pouncing motion next to Stormfly. Hiccup and Astrid smiled at their enthusiasm, and Astrid tossed it as hard as she could, watching their tails wag as they rushed to get it.

"Nothing yet. We might need some more logs, so I want you on standby for that," Hiccup said to her absentmindedly, watching his dragon and hers playfully fighting for the stick. Stormfly had it clenched between her teeth and Toothless was standing on his hind legs, his front paws trying to swipe at the stick in her mouth. Stormfly danced out of reach, daring not to squawk at Toothless because then the stick would fall out of her mouth.

The two were so entranced by their dragons that they hadn't noticed, or heard, the steadily rising bickering of the twins and Snotlout in the air above them. Fishlegs was just sitting on Meatlug, flipping through an assortment of cards in his hands, not paying much attention either. The dire moment happened when Ruffnut finally got sick of Snotlout's ridiculousness and punched him squarely in the face, knocking him momentarily unconscious and resulting in his falling off of Hookfang. The falling Snotlout had not bothered Meatlug, and only alerted Fishlegs because Snotlout had whizzed past his face (he was flying below the other Viking), but it was Hookfang that had dove down to catch her rider, letting go of the log she held in her claws. The log was headed straight for Fishlegs and Meatlug, and naturally the two of them panicked and dove to the side. Meatlug's gentle grip on her log had sent it flying towards Hiccup.

If there was one thing Astrid prided herself on above all else, it was her reflexes. Whereas Hiccup only had the minimum amount of reflexes to make sure he didn't die, Astrid's reflexes made sure she had a flat two seconds to retaliate at whomever had decided to attack her. In this case, Astrid's reflexes made sure she pushed Hiccup out of the way of the log flying directly at his face, and onto her ankle instead, crushing it at a weird angle.

The pain was incredible, and she had to bite her lip from screaming when they moved the log off her foot and tried to move her. She brushed away worried hands (Hiccup's, probably), and gingerly turned on her back. Astrid didn't dare look at her foot, not when she was in so much pain and the sky was so blue that it helped her focus. It didn't occur to her that anyone was talking until Hiccup appeared her in her line of sight, his face panicked.

"I'm okay," she said immediately, trying not to wince. They both knew that was a lie, but it made her feel better; less like a weakling and more like a Viking, she supposed. She sat up and finally saw the angle her foot had twisted. Ruff and Tuff were long gone, probably to get Gothi. Stormfly and Toothless had rushed back when they saw Astrid push Hiccup out of the way, and the Nadder was now squawking worriedly next to her rider. Toothless looked guiltily at Astrid's leg, his ears flapped down like a sad puppy. No doubt he wished he had been there to protect her. Astrid stroked his head to tell him she was okay, even though they both knew that injury was not pretty.

When Gothi arrived, she had to cut Astrid's boot off to look at her ankle clearly, and then Astrid was helped onto a cart to be dragged to the Hofferson house, where the elderly woman had given her some herbs to chew and rubbed a number of poultices on her bruised and purple foot. It was swollen like the chubby cheeks of Fishleg's face, Astrid noted with a grimace. Then Gothi had made a few hand signals, which Astrid understood as, "Rest! No walking!" and then left. Astrid had glowered at her even as the door shut. The fire crackled cozily in its hearth and Stormfly poked her head through one of the windows, squawking lightly. Astrid looked at her dragon with sullen eyes.

Great; what was she supposed to do now?

...

...

...

It turns out that Astrid had quite a bit to do whilst just sitting at home. Granted, she didn't care much for anything she was doing, but it beat staring at her father's axe on the wall and testing her foot every five minutes, only to realize that attempting to walk on it meant blistering, Hel-is-better-than-this-agony pain.

Her mother had given her some cloth and thread and needles and told her to get to work. Apparently Mrs. Hofferson had been making extra money by mending tunics and pants for the other villagers. Gobber was apparently one of her regular customers, given that he had no wife and no family to speak of. Astrid had never paid too much attention to her crafting skills as a girl, so this was ample opportunity, as her mother said, for her to start practicing.

Astrid wasn't sure what she hated more, her useless foot or the tiny little holes she poked in her fingers from thrusting the needle too aggressively through the cloth. (Crafts had never been her strong suit.) It was midday, and everyone was outside busying themselves with something, as Astrid herself was prone to do when she wasn't otherwise incapacitated. She frowned as she thought about the stadium still undergoing construction, and how she couldn't be there to help. Instead, Astrid had to sit in her house and mend holes in some random Viking's pants. She held them out and scrutinized them, the peculiar skinniness to them not lost on her. (At least she was fixing Hiccup's pants and not Gobber's.)

She was just about ready to throw Hiccup's pants into the fire from pure frustrated boredom, when someone knocked on the door. Short of leaping out of her chair in excitement from some kind of distraction, Astrid simply chirped out, "Come in!" Gods, she was so bored that any human interaction would satisfy her. Even if it was Snotlout.

(Thank the gods it wasn't Snotlout.)

Fishlegs peered into the Hofferson home, his eyes darting around as if he was entering a realm of impossibilities. Astrid watched him, slightly amused at how skittish he was about entering her home. Even after so many years of being the biggest, most-Viking-looking of their ragtag team, Fish was still also the gentlest. She used to think it was a weak trait, but when she saw how carefully he treated Meatlug, now she imagined it to be one of his strongest traits. He could never tame a dragon on his own; he didn't have the confidence and fearlessness to do that. But there was something to the way he stroked Meatlug's scales after a long day of flying, to help lull her to sleep.

"What's up Fish?" she asked him as he finally closed the door behind him. He was holding something in his hands, covered with a cloth. Fishlegs lingered in the doorway, still looking at all the things inside the main room of her house, suspiciously avoiding her eyes. She let him bumble forwards, making a wide arc around her to set his package on the table.

"Oh, ah, w-well Hi-Hic-Hiccup said...he said that you—n-not that I would assume what you liked!—b-but Hiccup said you really liked, um, s-skyr a-and—"

Astrid took the cloth off whatever Fishlegs had brought, revealing a bowl of skyr [1] with some berries thrown in. Her eyes lit up, and Fishlegs stopped talking when he saw her scoot the bowl closer to her. The large Viking seemed flabbergasted at the wide smile that had crept over Astrid's lips when she put the first spoonful of skyr in her mouth. He had seen her smile before, it was hard not to when Hiccup was around. He'd always thought that Hiccup was the exception to most things, but here she was, eating skyr and berries and smiling at him.

"Thanks for bringing this over," she said, spooning some more skyr into her mouth. A bit of it smudged on the corner of her lips but she wiped it away with her thumb. "Was Hiccup too busy to bring it himself?" she asked the other Viking. Fishlegs shrunk into himself, terrified for a reason Astrid hadn't figured out yet. She might have been quite… harsh… to him when they were younger, but had lightened up a lot over the years. Was she really that intimidating? The better question was: did she like being that intimidating?

"N-no! No, he was… he was going to do it but there was still a lot to do s-so I… I offered b-because I wanted to, um, t-t-t-talk to you," Fishlegs said. He was looking down at his hands, twisting his fingers and scraping the dirt from his hands under his nails. He had always been kind of fidgety, but when he was nervous that trait was exemplified. Astrid lifted a brow at him in mild interest. Fishlegs barely ever went out of his way to talk to her. Most of his interactions were between him and Hiccup, or him and the other three Vikings part of their ragtag team.

Astrid set her spoon down, a gesture to show that he had her full attention. Hiccup's pants were still on her lap, needle still sticking through the cloth. Fishlegs seemed even more intimidated when he realized she was just sitting there, staring at him, waiting for him to talk. He had been hoping she would only be half-heartedly listening to him while eating the skyr he brought her. Nevertheless, Fishlegs didn't want to ruin what was supposedly Astrid's good mood right now, given that she wasn't glaring at him for once or giving him this look like he was a sea barnacle that appeared on her foot. But he's been around Astrid since he was quite young, and he knew her propensity for weakness; Astrid didn't have a propensity for weakness.

Fishlegs, deterred by the full weight of Astrid's attention on him, gulped audibly and looked down at his boots. He had always been the largest of their little troupe, but unquestionably the weakest. It had made Astrid less than welcoming to him, but it hadn't mattered much because, although he was weak for a Viking, at least he didn't screw up like Hiccup. Fishlegs was content to just… be part of something. And now that things have changed, and he wasn't a weak Viking anymore, Fishlegs wanted to be… stronger. He wanted to stop Snotlout and Tuffnut's stupid teasing. He wanted to be told, "good job" and "great work!" He wanted to feel like he belonged to fill those big boots of his. Most importantly, he wanted to speak and be listened to without that stupid stutter.

Astrid saw the tiny, almost miniscule change in him when it happened. It was by no means some drastic transformation that turned Fishlegs into someone like Snotlout, but she could see it like she saw it in Hiccup, the first time he had told her 'no'.

Hiccup we just found the Dragon's Nest; the thing we've been after since Vikings first sailed here! And you wanna keep it a secret?! To protect your pet dragon are you serious?!

Astrid remembered, faintly, that it was also the first time he had told her:

"Yes."

(It was the first time she had said 'yes' too.)

Okay... so what do we do?

What will you do? Astrid thought as she saw Fishlegs trying to pull himself together. He chest puffed out, he stood straighter, fists clenched and lips pursed. He stared her straight in the eyes, and for a moment Astrid thought he was holding his breath for so long he would suffocate himself. But then…

"Astrid, I'm sorry for crushing your leg."

Astrid blinked slowly at him. "... what?"

Fishlegs started to perspire, rubbing the back of his neck, his eyes darting to the floor, cheeks burning red.

"W-well I… if I had been more aware I could have avoided Hookfang and Meatlug-"

"Whoa whoa whoa whoa, Fishlegs, are you blaming yourself for my twisted ankle?"

Fishlegs pulled at the collar of his tunic, clearing his throat nervously. "I-It's… it looks more mangled than twisted…" he said, almost like an attempt to distract her. But Astrid never lost sight of the big things, and she crossed her arms and gave him a very reprimanding look. Fishlegs had the perturbed feeling that it reminded him of his mother's own stare. She didn't even have to say anything, and Fishlegs already knew what he was doing wrong.

Suddenly extremely uncomfortable, not that he wasn't before, but that was before Astrid had it in her mind to start silently lecturing him, Fishlegs once again cleared his throat nervously and started inching towards the door. He did it in that wide, don't-get-within-grabbing-reach-of-Astrid sweep, eventually managing not to piss himself somewhere along the way because the female Viking was still following him with that reprimanding look.

When the door finally shut behind him, Astrid turned back to her skyr and smiled to herself.

At least to Fishlegs she'd still be the scariest Viking on Berk.

Skyr is a kind of Icelandic yogurt. Although I have no idea if, historically, Vikings ate skyr, it sounded much better than "yogurt", so I went with it.