So, I got on a plane to go to Portugal (reason I have not updated in forever...you don't really get WiFi in the middle of an archaeology dig in rural anywhere), and I had been having a pretty bad day. I had somehow lost something of minor importance on the first flight leg, I had eaten nothing but horrible airplane food, and I was exhausted. So not that bad, but you have to understand that when I lose something or forget to do something, I go insane. I can't process anything until I have fixed the problem, and if I can't fix the problem, I feel like I have completely let myself and everyone around me down. I just have a thing about responsibility and completing my responsibilities. Anyway, bad day, and I get on the plane to Libson. I'm in the exit row (heck yeah, extra leg-room), and I get myself situated, and I just start praying that a totally awesome movie would be one of the options on demand. And not just any movie...HowtoTrainYourDragon. And I knew this was insanely unlikely, since airlines tend to only have newer movies and I had seen on the lovely cover of the magazine that the plane was featuring RiseoftheGuardians. So two DreamWorks movies was a nigh impossibility. But I prayed for that movie anyway, because nothing makes me feel better than my favourite animated feature, that masterpiece of cinematography and storytelling. And I turned on the television, touched the movies option, selected family movies...And it wasn't there. And that's my pointless story for the day.
Just kidding. It was right smack dab in the middle of the screen. Just looking at it made my day infinitely better. And naturally I watched it. Twice. In a row. I have a problem. And you know what's funny about that? I really don't care. I own my issues.
Chapter 3
She bit her lip and looked at her hands where they were gripping two branches. She glanced down at her feet and then back up.
She was too high. She could not think about that.
She looked up at him, sitting high above her head with all the ease of a perched bird or squirrel.
"Astrid?"
She groaned and opened her mouth to make the hardest admission of her life. "I'm scared."
He grinned down at her. "It's alright. Just don't look down."
"No, Hiccup." She swallowed hard. "I'm scared. I've never been this high before..." She refused to even sleep in the loft with her brothers because it was too high above the ground and she had to climb a ladder to get there. She slept on a pallet in her parents' room.
"Ok, just wait." Hiccup quickly shimmied down the trunk of the tree until he was right above her head. He held out a hand. "I'll help you."
"Hiccup, I want to get down," she said. Taking his hand would mean letting go of the tree branch, and letting go would probably mean falling to her death.
She refused to fall to her death.
"Astrid, just–"
"Hiccup! Get me down from here!" She closed her eyes and held tight to the branches.
"Astrid."
She opened her eyes when she felt his hand on hers. Instinctively, she gripped it. "I don't want to go any higher."
"Alright," he said. His voice was smooth and quiet, as if he were calming a small animal. "Just to the branch I'm on, then."
She glared up at him. "That's higher."
He smiled, all crooked mouth and gapped teeth. "I'm not going to let you fall. Trust me." He squeezed her hand tight. "Please, Astrid."
She took a deep breath and nodded. It had been her stupid idea, after all. She had asked him to show her how to climb a tree as he often did. He was skinny and small, but that made him quick and spry, and she was small too. If she could just bury her fear... "What do I do?"
He pointed down at a knot at her right knee. "Put your foot on that."
She glanced at the knot and then back at him. "I'll slip."
"You won't," he promised. "And if you do, I'll catch you." He grinned again.
She almost laughed. There was absolutely no way he could catch her. If she slipped, she'd pull him down too. But his words gave her a bit of courage, and she lifted her right foot and put it on the knot. "Now what?"
"Pull yourself up."
She used all of her strength to pull herself until she was balancing on the knot. He still held her hand, and she could see that he was sitting on a branch just to the side of the one she had been gripping. Slowly, she pulled herself up until she was hanging partly over the first branch. His was only a small jump away, but she would not jump. "What now?"
"Pull yourself onto that branch. That's it, put your feet on it. Stand and grab the trunk."
Rather than grabbing the trunk, she fell against it and embraced the tree as if it were her lifeline, which it was at the moment.
"Just step to your right..."
She closed her eyes and reached out a foot and breathed easy when her toes hit the wood. She hugged the trunk tight and moved her whole body to the side.
"Good! Now just sit. You're doing great."
She slowly lowered herself to sit on the branch as his words of encouragement washed over her. She did not let go of the trunk. When she was finally sitting, she said, "Now get me down."
Hiccup laughed. "You're not even looking."
"I don't want to look."
She felt his hand on her elbow and slowly let go of the tree to take his hand instead, though she kept one arm wrapped around the trunk.
"Open your eyes."
"No."
"You don't have to look around, just look at me." He squeezed her hand. "Trust me."
She turned her head toward his voice and opened one eye.
Hiccup grinned and his shoulders shook. He was laughing at her.
She opened the other eye and kept looking at him. She would not look down. She would never look down.
"See?" He smiled sweetly at her. "Nothing to be afraid of."
"Easy for you to say," she grumbled. He was perfectly at home high above the earth. She preferred the ground. Astrid looked down at his hand in hers and noticed that there were little red welts on his fingers and palm. She had no idea how he had climbed with his hands like that. "Do your hands hurt?"
He shrugged and started to pull his hand away, but she held fast. "Not really." He looked at his other hand, which had matching welts on it. "Gobber says they'll turn to blisters soon, that they'll hurt, but they'll eventually harden as I get used to the work."
She nodded. He had only been working in the forge for a few weeks. She missed the times they could just play together, but he was eight now, and she would be as well in a few months. It was time for both of them to grow up. "I never thought you'd be working with Gobber," she said.
He shrugged again. "My dad says I need to be useful." He winced.
"You're not useless." She had of course heard people say that, particularly when he got in the way during dragon raids, but she could not agree. Hiccup had a good imagination; it made him fun. And he was nice. Those were not useless things. "You're not useless," she said again. "You taught me how to climb a tree!" It was not a very chiefly thing, teaching people to climb trees, and when he headed the tribe he probably would not spend his time teaching the rest of the village, but at the moment, climbing a tree was the most amazing thing in the world. It was certainly the bravest thing she had ever done. And judging from the way Hiccup was grinning at her, those words meant more to him than anything else she could have said. His smile was bright, like a gap-toothed sun shining through a cloud of freckles, so bright she had to look away for a moment.
And then she saw. She saw everything. She saw the little clearing where they played, dotted with little colours she knew were flowers; the dry creek bed that would be full in spring; far-off trees, black against the sky like quick, inky brush strokes; near-by trees with green tops where birds flitted and sang. It was beautiful.
"Oh," she said.
"Yeah," Hiccup said next to her.
A small butterfly darter around her head, as if taunting her, as if saying it had told her so. Which it had not. Hiccup had. And as she sat there, at the top of the world, looking at everything below, she realized she was not afraid anymore.
Well, maybe a little, but she would never admit that.
They sat there for hours, watching the clouds move and the birds fly and just talking about everything and nothing. Finally, they had climbed down, Hiccup going first and telling her where to put her feet.
"You're almost there," he said from the forest floor. He voice was close, and she knew he was telling the truth.
Astrid moved her hand down to another branch and her fingers slipped. She felt the horrible, sickening sensation of falling and waved her arms around as if desperately trying to fly.
"Astrid!"
She knew it. She was going to die. She never should have climbed the stupid tree or–
She landed with a thud on something soft, and the soft thing groaned. "Oh!" She had landed on Hiccup. "Sorry..." She scrambled off of him and pulled him to his feet.
"Thanks." He rubbed the back of his head and looked down at his shoes. Then he glanced up at her and smiled.
She smiled back.
"Dwarf!" she heard her brother call in the distance.
"My brother's going to teach me to throw an axe!" she said with excitement. "I'll teach you!"
"Oh..." Hiccup furrowed his brow. "Ok..."
She grinned and ran toward her brother. "Grimefoot! I'm coming!" She dashed through the trees and eventually found him wearing his usual grin.
Gimefoot winked at her and said, "Dwarf? What are you doing still asleep?"
Astrid forced her eyes open, though her lids felt as if they were stuck together with honey.
"Dwarf!"
"What?" she snapped back. What a funny dream to have. It was more of a memory, one she had not visited in years. It was shortly after that day that she had stopped hanging around Hiccup, that talent and society had driven them apart.
"Oh, you're up." Grimefoot's head popped up from the ladder leading to the loft. "You might want to eat something. And be quick. If you don't hurry, you won't be the first one there." He winked and climbed back down the ladder.
Astrid sat up sharply.
Dragon training.
She jumped out of bed and dressed quickly and slid down the ladder.
Grimfoot looked up at her. "That was fast."
She grabbed a piece of two-day-old bread from the table and picked up a small jar. Her mother had made a paste from honey and the first hazelnuts.
"You know, I was just kidding about that being first thing."
She dipped her fingers into the jar and smeared the paste on the bread before licking the remains off her hand.
"I mean, you don't have to be the first. It doesn't mean anything."
She ran out the door.
"Hey!" he called after her. "You forgot something!"
She skidded to a stop and turned around.
Grimefoot stood in the doorway holding her mother's axe. "Being first doesn't get you extra points."
She ran up to him and grabbed the axe, but he held onto it. "Grimefoot," she groaned.
"You haven't even washed your face."
She stomped back into the house, put the bread on the table, marched over to a small basin near the hearth, and splashed some water on her face.
"I try to be a good older brother. I try to get you to eat something. I try to get you to just take care of yourself..."
She straightened and grabbed the bread off the table before trying to take the axe from him again.
"Wait." He grabbed her and hugged her tight. Then he released her and dropped the axe in her arms. "Alright. Go make me proud," he said with a wink.
She nodded and bit down on her bread sweetened with hazelnuts and honey and started running for the Ring, smearing some of the khol she kept in her pouch around her eyes with her smallest finger as she did. The khol would help keep out some of the morning glare.
She had been there at least once every year, sometimes going every day for two weeks when it was someone she knew well. She had seen almost all of her family in the Ring; there were a few, obviously, for which she had not yet been born and a few others that were hazy in her mind because she had been too young to remember. But she definitely knew the way.
She ran past the docks, past the little platform that overlooked the ocean and the torches, and across the wooden bridge. The Ring had been cut into a large, stone pillar that was separate from the island.
She stepped off the bridge and onto the rock as she swallowed the last of the bread and hazelnut spread.
No one else had arrived, so she sat down at the gate and listened to Gobber whistling inside the Ring and watched up the carved passageway as the sun rose higher over the ocean. The light on the water sparkled like jewels, and she felt that nothing in the world could possibly ruin the promise and joy of the day.
"Astrid!"
Almost nothing.
She fought the urge to roll her eyes at him as he approached with his usual swagger. He held a morning star in his right hand and wore what he must have considered a very suave smirk across his face.
"Snotlout," she said shortly.
Snotlout rested his morning star on his shoulder. "You know, it's gonna be so great when I get to kill that Monstrous Nightmare..."
Then she did roll her eyes, because she knew that he stood absolutely no chance. Not while she had anything to say about it, at least. That dragon was hers.
"Oh! Hey! You guys are already here..." Fishlegs ran down to the gate and bobbed awkwardly on his heels. "I wonder what we'll be fighting first. My sister told me that on the first day they had a Nadder–"
"Did your sister ever tell you to shut up?" Snotlout asked.
Fishlegs looked hurt and closed his mouth. He gripped his large stone hammer in both hands
"...totally not!"
"Shut up, butt-mudge! You have no idea–"
"You really think–hey!"
Astrid stood up as the twins walked down the passage, each bearing a spear.
Ruffnut approached her. "He's being stupid again."
Astrid smiled. She and Ruffnut got along fine usually, though they did have the ability to rub each other the wrong way. "I could hit him for you," she said.
Tuffnut shook his head. "No hitting."
Everyone then went completely silent for a moment, all seeming to realize what they were about to do. They were all there. They were all ready.
Almost.
Astrid may have been the only one to notice Hiccup's absence, but it itched at her mind. Was he being kept out? Or was he just late?
And why did she care?
She cared because she had decided to try being his friend again.
The grate covering the doorway opened with a series of chains clanging and gears clanking.
Astrid turned around quickly as Gobber announced, "Welcome to Dragon Training!"
She gripped her axe in her right hand and took a deep breath. "No turning back." She stepped out of the tunnel and immediately had to squint her eyes against the bright sunlight. She looked to her left and to her right, and her eyes widened against the glare.
She was there. She was in the Ring. After years of hoping and waiting and training...Everything she had ever wanted was right there.
She started to brush back her bangs, and, realizing that she had resorted to an old nervous habit, steeled her face and flipped her hair back from her face instead. She turned completely, taking in the doors and the grates and the equipment scattered around.
She was ready. She had prepared and trained for anything Gobber could trow at her.
That Monstrous Nightmare was hers without a problem.
With that thought, she rolled her shoulders back and continued to walk forward.
"I hope I get some serious burns," Tuffnut said somewhere behind her.
"I'm hoping for some mauling. Like, on my shoulder or lower back," Ruffnut said.
"Yeah," Astrid agreed with as carefree a voice as she could muster. She was excited, but she could not afford to show it. Tough and determined and unafraid. That was the image she needed to show, because pretending sometimes made thoughts reality. She repeated her brother's favourite phrase, "It's only fun if you get a scar out of it."
"Yeah, no kidding, right?" a very nasal voice mumbled.
No way. She turned around to look at the passage and her mouth fell open slightly. It should not have been a surprise, really. Hiccup was there, just like every other young teen. He was the chief's son, and it was only right. He would die, maybe, but he was supposed to be there.
"Pain," he added as he hefted his single-headed axe in both of his hands. "Love it." He gave a small shrug and eye-roll.
They had shared almost the same exchange the day before. Perhaps it had been exactly the same. It would have been an inside joke if they were friends. She closed her mouth and wondered if it were too early in the relationship for inside jokes.
Hiccup met her eyes briefly and looked away.
Should she laugh?
"Aw, great," Tuffnut said. "Who let him in?"
He met her eyes again and looked down, dejected. He changed his grip on his axe and held it close to his body, seemingly protecting himself from further remarks.
"Let's get started!" Gobber said.
Hiccup looked at his mentor with wide eyes.
"The recruit who does best will win the honour of killing his first dragon in front of the entire village," Gobber said, punctuating his words with a twist of his hook.
Hiccup jumped slightly when the metal clicked and held his axe even closer.
He was like a frightened little bird. His body language could not make it more obvious that he wanted to be anywhere else.
"Hiccup already killed a Night Fury," Snotlout said in that obnoxious drawl of his.
Astrid glared at him.
"So...Does that disqualify him, or?"
Ruffnut and Tuffnut snickered at Snotlout's little joke, and even Fishlegs chuckled.
Astrid merely shook her head and turned away. As far as she was concerned, Hiccup was nice. He may have been always in the wrong place at the wrong time, but that did not mean he deserved taunting from his peers. Criticism would have helped, but not cruelty. It suddenly occurred to her that she should have defended him. If she was trying to be his friend again, she should take his side, right?
"Can I transfer to the class with the cool Vikings?" Tuffnut asked.
Snotlout ran up beside her and chuckled. "That was a good one. Man, I crack myself up."
"That makes one of you," she mumbled.
"What?"
Ruffnut ran up between them. "I just can't believe he's here."
Astrid shrugged and stopped in the middle of the Ring with her back to the gate. "It's Stoick's decision."
That put an end to the comments.
Tuffnut stood on her other side, and he held up his spear with his usual mischievous grin.
She took a deep breath and stared ahead. There was no time to think about Hiccup or anything else of minor importance. Dragon Training would begin at any moment, and she had to be ready.
She could see six doors in front of her, but she knew there were others outside of her peripheral.
Gobber walked into her view and she tightened her grip on her axe as her heart began to pound in her ears.
"Behind these doors are just a few of the many species you will learn to fight," Gobber said. He walked over to a set of doors shaped like a house with a huge beam across and gestured dramatically. "The Deadly Nadder."
"Speed eight, armour sixteen," said a voice that could only be Fishlegs.
She shook her head slightly as if she could dislodge the voice as easily as she could scare off an annoying fly.
Gobber passed a square door, and she took a moment to wonder what was behind it and why he had not told them before snapping her attention back to their teacher. He gestured to a double arched door. Twin heads. She could easily guess what was behind that door.
"The Hideous Zippleback," Gobber said.
"Plus eleven stealth times two," Fishlegs said.
What in Hel's name did that even mean? And where was Hiccup?
Astrid squeezed her eyes and opened them again, reminding herself to focus.
"The Monstrous Nightmare," Gobber announced when he passed a large square door with a vertical beam.
Her pulse began to race. She knew that one. That was always the most exciting part during the kill. The Monstrous Nightmare would burst from those exact doors, seeming to set the wood on fire, ready to attack. In just two weeks, she would be standing in the same spot, waiting for those doors to open, ready to make her own mark.
She was so busy thinking about her future battle, she failed to hear Fishlegs' statistical announcement.
Gobber walked up to a circular door. "The Terrible Terror."
She knew about Terrible Terrors. She had read the Dragon Manual. They did not come with raids, but they were common and pesky. She thought that there was an awful lot of door for such a small dragon. Unless there was a whole group of them hiding in the cell.
"Attack eight! Venom twelve!" Fishlegs announced.
"Can you stop that?" Gobber snapped before regaining his composure and walking up to a domed door. "And..." He put his hand on a lever just to the side of the door. "The Gronckle."
"Wha–Whoa!" Snotlout ran forward from the line. "Whoa! Wait! Aren't you gonna teach us first?"
Her breath caught in her lungs. Oh, gods. No one had warned her. She had been expecting a run-down of tactics. Maybe attacking some wooden dummies or talking about the weaknesses and strengths of each dragon...
She glanced to her left and saw that Ruffnut's eyes were wide. She glanced to her right and saw that Tuffnut and Fishlegs were making similar expressions, but Hiccup looked positively sick, as if he had completely expected everything but did not feel prepared at all.
Well, he had spent a good deal of time with Gobber.
The broad man grinned. "I believe in learning on the job." He yanked down on the lever.
She turned and bolted before the doors had opened. Her mind started racing. Was she allowed to kill the dragon on accident? Would she be disqualified if her first kill was not a Monstrous Nightmare? Was the Gronckle after her?
She glanced back over her left shoulder and saw that everyone else was running, except for Hiccup, who was long gone.
She had not even seen him take off.
Well, he had been expecting it, obviously. She had to give him credit for reflexes.
"Today is about survival," Gobber said in a calm voice, as if he were reciting a fish recipe.
Oh, there was the Gronckle. It was headed her way. She dove to her left and turned around to take a ready stance and saw that the dragon had crashed into a wall.
"If you get blasted..."
The dragon scuttled its tiny legs to get back up and swallowed a couple of rubble rocks on the ground.
"You're dead," Gober continued.
Rocks were ammunition for Gronckles. They melted the stone in their stomachs, and spewed out fire and molten rock, like a volcano. She knew she had best stay clear for a few minutes.
"Quick!" Gobber shouted. "What's the first thing you're going to need?"
"A doctor?" Hiccup called out somewhere to her right. It was a funny remark, but rather than make her feel like laughing, the comment irked her. The Ring was not the place for jokes.
"Plus five speed?" Fishlegs asked. What in Midgard was that even supposed to mean?
"A shield!" she said with confidence. That much was obvious.
"Shields! Go!" Gobber said.
She looked to the wall behind her and saw a nice row of round, wooden shields propped against the stone. She dashed over and grabbed one off the wall as Snotlout came up beside her and grabbed another. She ran away, toward the gate, as she secured her grip on her shield.
Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Gobber saying something to Hiccup as he forced a shield on the boy's left arm.
The twins were fighting, which was no surprise. Fishlegs was running from the Gronckle with his hands high in the air as the dragon closely chased him.
She bit her lip and looked away to keep from laughing.
Dragon Training was not comical
She heard a loud explosion followed by Gobber drawling, "Tuffnut, Ruffnut, you're out."
"Those shields are good for another thing," Gobber said as Fishlegs grabbed a shield and joined the small circle of survivors. "Noise. Make lots of it to throw off a dragon's aim."
She leaned forward and banged her axe against the side of her shield. She saw Hiccup to her left as he backed up. Snotlout ducked behind his shield and continued to warily peek out from behind it with wide eyes as he hit the metal center with his morning star. After a few moments of deafening clanging and banging, Fishlegs seemed to catch on and jumped up and down as he hit his shield above his head.
The Gronckle growled a bit and started to shake its head and flinch.
"All dragons have a limited number of shots," Gobber said. "How many does a Gronckle have?"
She stopped banging on her shield and broke into a run.
"Five?" Snotlout yelled.
"No, six!" Fishlegs said.
"Correct!" Gobber said. "Six! That's one for each of you!"
She reached the other side of the arena as she heard a loud explosion followed by Gobber's drawling, "Fishlegs, out."
The boy screamed as he ran out of the ring.
Her eyes darted around and saw the Gronckle headed toward a wooden weapon stand.
"Hiccup! Get in there!" Gobber shouted.
Hiccup stuck his head out from behind the stand, his axe clutched in his right hand.
She had a vague memory of being taught to write as a child. She had naturally picked up charcoal with her right hand, but Hiccup had always tried to use his left hand, and the village elders had finally forced him to use his right by tying his left arm to his side. He had stared at the bit of charcoal in his right hand and had bit his lip, his brow furrowed in concentration. He had tried so hard, and he had not cried when he could not form the letters as well, even though others had cried when they were using their natural hands.
Perhaps they had finally broken him of using his left hand. That was good. Some said that left-handedness was a mark of a changeling. She did not believe in changelings herself, it was a silly superstition from the mainland, but left-handedness was weird.
Go figure that Hiccup would have been born that way.
He yelped and ducked behind it when the Gronckle fired a shot at his head.
She counted down in her head. One at the twins, one at Fishlegs, one at Hiccup...Three shots left.
The Gronckle seemed to grow bored of Hiccup's cowering and turned around.
"So, anyway," Snotlout said behind her.
When had he appeared?
"I moved into my parents' basement..."
What was he talking–Oh, no. The Gronckle had noticed them. Did Snotlout not know to stand in groups? Single people were harder to hit, but if all the Vikings were in a clump, they were a larger target!
Hiccup was a weird coward, and Snotlout was an idiot.
"You should come by sometime to work out."
The Gronckle was headed for them. She took a step to her side. Two more steps and she would dive into a somersault, and tumble back to regain her footing, just like she had practiced. It was a quick evasive maneuver that covered more ground and was also distracting for an enemy. A single bee-line was easy to predict, but tumble rolls made movement harder to predict.
And...she jumped too soon. She had not even had her foot solidly on the ground, her ankle had twisted slightly, and she had fallen into the somersault rather than diving into it. She tried to roll backwards quickly, but she did not have enough momentum to follow through well enough and had to actually employ her stomach into lifting herself. Well, that had just been a bungled mess.
There was a loud explosion and Gobber called, "Snotlout, you're done!"
One more try. She had to redeem herself. She jumped off a sound foot, dove forward, rolled over her shoulders, twisted around as she landed, and let motion carry her back, over, and up...Perfect. She sidestepped a few times.
The Gronckle was headed her way again. There were two shots left...If she could just hold it off, for those two, maybe dodge them, she could take it down.
"So..." Hiccup said.
Hiccup. She had landed by Hiccup. Which equaled a larger target. Her eyes darted up and she noticed the Elder standing and watching.
That session mattered.
The Gronckle was still flying toward them
"I guess it's just you and me, huh?"
Was he...Was he serious? Trying to get friendly when a dragon was headed their way?
She took everything back. Hiccup was exactly like Snotlout.
And while most of her hated herself for what she was about to do, that realization brought a small amount of comfort.
"Nope," she said. "Just you." She dashed away from him.
She heard a loud explosion and the sound of a metal shield hitting the ground. That, she had no doubt, was Hiccup. He was out, the dragon would follow her, she would dodge the last shot, subdue the dragon...
"One shot left..." Gobber said.
"Alright," she murmured. "Here it comes...here it comes!" She turned around, ready to face the dragon and jump out of the way as it fired its last shot.
But it was not there. The dragon was on the other side of the ring and was chasing Hiccup, who was chasing his shield, which was rolling toward the wall.
It would have been a funny sight if Hiccup had not been about to die.
Her brief resentment dissipated as she realized that they might lose a future chief that day. Maybe Hiccup was not so much like Snotlout. Maybe he had just been attempting at friendship, even if the ring was hardly the right place to do so. Could he have not waited? Could he have–but never the mind. She was not about to let Snotlout become the heir to the tribe. While he certainly would have been a stronger chief, Hiccup would be a smarter one. Maybe. He would definitely be more tolerable.
Hiccup backed against the wall and the Gronckle opened its jaws.
Oh, gods...
"Hiccup!" Gobber shouted.
She started forward, but the older man was running as well and reached Hiccup and the dragon, stuck his hook in the Gronckle's mouth, and yanked hard just as the Gronckle released its final shot.
The fire blasted into the wall, stirring up a cloud of shrapnel and dust. For a brief moment, there was silence.
Oh, dear Freyja...Hiccup was dead.
"And that's six," Gobber said casually.
Astrid let out a breath she did not realize she had been holding. If Gobber was calm, then the situation was fine. Hiccup was alive.
The cloud cleared and she could see his tiny frame huddled in a small ball with his arms over his head.
The fact that he was nice did not change the fact that he was a coward.
"Go back to bed, you overgrown sausage." Gobber swung the beast around in a circle and flung it into the open cell. He quickly closed the doors and flipped the lever that bolted them shut. The doors rattled and the Gronckle bellowed in rage. "You'll get another chance, don't you worry!"
The others came alongside her.
"Remember," Gobber said, "a dragon will always..." He turned to Hiccup, who had not moved. "Always go for the kill." He grabbed the boy's arm and yanked him up.
Hiccup looked behind him at the wall that was still smoldering.
He was nice and smart, but he was a coward. He was barely more tolerable than his cousin, who was brazen and obnoxious. And narcissistic.
Hiccup turned his head away from the wall, and she was shocked to see that his face looked pensive.
What was wrong with him? She took her earlier thought back: he was not smart. Intellectual, sure. She'd give him that. But a normal, smart human would be terrified after almost getting roasted by a dragon. A smart person would not be thoughtful. A smart person would not look as if he were puzzling out some great mystery.
What was there to puzzle out anyway? Dragons killed people. Surely Hiccup could get that through his stupid head.
Gobber rubbed at the back of his neck. "Meet in the Great Hall for dinner," he said. He started toward the gate. "Don't be late."
"You could have warned me about Gobber."
Grimefoot grinned as he opened the bag of salt and rubbed the white grains on the inside of the flayed salmon in front of him. "No one warns about that. That's half the fun. It's..." He rubbed his nose with the back of his hand.
"Initiation," Kata finished as she salted her own fish.
Astrid sliced another thin ring from the cored apple and dipped the ring into the drying solution, a mixture of juices and just a little brine. She slid the ring onto the string holding forty other slices and tied a loose loop around it to keep it in place. They would hang the apples near the fire, away from the smoke so the fruit dried but kept its sweetness.
"Besides," Kata said, "it would be unfair if you had an advantage."
"I already have an advantage," Astrid replied.
Grimefoot shook his head. "They won't pick you just because you're a legacy."
"No," Astrid agreed. "They'll pick me because I'm the best." It was not a boast. It was a fact. She had slipped up a few times. She had not been as quick or coordinated as she would have liked, but she was still the only one standing in the end. That had to count for something.
"I'm sure the Elder would agree with that," Kata said kindly.
Astrid smiled. She may not have been at her personal best, but at least she had been better than everyone else.
Still, everyone had been decent. They had all survived, after all. They had been surviving all their lives. Diseases and cold and war had taken other children, kids of whom she had hazy memories from when she had been five or six. Few children survived to see the Ring. In fact, due to losses over the years, there had only been two competitors the year before: Dustmite Haraldsson and Squabble Hoarksson, both silly girls who preferred smiling at older boys like Blackmire Liefson, who had come in second to Thorhalla two years before. But they had survived to see the Ring, and they had survived the Ring itself. They all had, and that in itself was no mean feat.
It made her wonder how on earth he was still alive. He probably would have been long gone, had Stoick not kept him under lock and key.
"Who? Hiccup?" Grimefoot asked and she realized she had spoken aloud.
"Of course he protects him," Kata said. "As I parent, I know. You'd do anything to protect your children and family. And after Stoick's wife...well...you know."
Astrid nodded. Of course she knew about that. Everyone knew.
"It's no wonder he keeps him locked up tight," Kata continued.
"That," Grimefoot said. "And it's just better for everyone if he stays out of things." He reached across the table and took the ring Astrid had just cut from the cored apple. He bit into it and smiled.
Astrid gave him her best annoyed look.
He shrugged. "It's one ring. Mom won't notice or care."
"You've had nine," Kata said. "This is your tenth."
"Mom will notice and care that there's a whole apple's worth missing," Astrid said.
He picked up a small lump of stuck salt and threw it at her. It hit her between the eyes and he grinned at her.
She grinned back. True, she might not be ensured the honour of killing the Monstrous Nightmare because of her family legacy, but her family had certainly had a hand in securing that right. A loving, supportive family that had spent time with her, taught her, and raised her to be the best.
She was the best. And that was precisely why she would win.
She had been determined. She really had been.
Hiccup was nice. His inability to recognize proper situations and social cues was a minor failing that could easily be overlooked if they were to be friends.
And she had been determined that they would be friends.
It had suddenly occurred to her as she was stringing apples that while the gods had been kind to her and given her a huge, loving and supportive family, the gods had not been so good to him.
His mother was not around anymore, and his father was taking care of other things and probably did not have the energy to expend on his own son at the end of the day.
The sad fact of the matter was that no one really bothered with Hiccup. No one bothered with teaching or instructing him, since it was just easier to push him out of sight.
But she had decided that she would bother. If they were to be friends, a good starting point would be giving him some much-needed direction.
And she really had been determined. She had shown up early just to talk to him. He had not been in the Great Hall yet, but that had not mattered. She had sat down at a table, she had filled a plate from the spits over the fire, she had taken a cup of water.
Hiccup had not shown.
The twins had arrived and slid onto the bench beside her. Fishlegs had arrived and sat across from Ruffnut and had started casting very quick and nervous glances her direction.
But there had been no sign of Snotlout or Hiccup. They were late, and that fact had irked Astrid to the point of restlessness. Maybe Hiccup was just like Snotlout–self-entitled and cocky. He was nice, but being the chief's son would make anyone a little too big in the head. Perhaps that was why he always tried to take down dragons, not from a lack of confidence, but from an overconfidence.
And then Gobber had marched through the doors, strode up to the fire, and filled the mug attached to his arm. He had taken one large gulp and glanced around. "Where's Snotlout?"
Everyone had shrugged, and Astrid had furrowed her brow. Why just Snotlout? Had Hiccup dropped out? Surely he had, or else Gobber would have asked after him too. Honestly, that was better for everyone. He would not be around to mess things up.
But that thought did irk her. Did he expect that they would take care of the dragons while he watched? Or worse, continued to get involved and drive the whole island to destruction?
"Well, let's get started." Gobber took another gulp from his mug and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand as he started to pace slowly around the table. He set an extra plate down on a corner of the table and cleared his throat. "I think it's safe to say everyone here needs a little improvement, eh?" He chuckled to himself. "Alright, Fishlegs. Let's talk about you first."
Fishlegs looked down at his hands and mumbled something inaudible.
"What did he do wrong?" Gobber asked before holding up a finger. "And remember, we all have things we can work on. So let's make this constructive." He stopped directly behind the twins.
Tuffnut grinned. "He screamed and ran like a girl–"
"Constructive!" Gobber said as he smacked the boy on the back of the head.
Ruffnut met Astrid's eyes for a moment and then looked at her brother. "And how does a girl scream, puke-breath?"
Astrid smiled. Berkian women did not hold with stereotypes. There were some Viking women, like the ones in Iceland, who were not even allowed to hold weapons, but Berkian women were warriors and could easily hold their own against men.
"Like Fishlegs," Tuffnut replied.
"He wasn't focused," Astrid said.
"Exactly," Gobber said as he approached Fishlegs. "Focus is important. If you lose your focus, one minute you could be fighting, and the next, you could wind up–"
"Like Hiccup," Tuffnut finished.
Gobber gave him a lidded look. "Dead." He grinned slowly. "You seem eager. Let's talk about Tuffnut."
Tuffnut leaned forward. "I would not have gotten out if she hadn't been in the way." He gestured to his sister.
Gobber seemed to ponder this. "You did get out at the same time...Let's talk about the both of you, then."
Ruffnut grabbed her brother's head and pushed it to the side.
Gobber took a deep gulp from his mug. "Anything to say, Fishlegs?"
"Ah, no!" Fishlegs jumped slightly. "I mean, no."
Astrid rolled her eyes. "They were too busy fighting."
Ruffnut shot her a glare and Astrid straightened her back and took a sip of water.
"Right." Gobber nodded. "They let their personal problems affect their performance." The doors to the hall opened, and everyone looked up to watch as Snotlout sauntered toward the table while whistling, but Gobber continued. "In training, we will get to teamwork, but it is essential that you trust your partners and don't take your personal feelings into the fight. And you are late," he finished as Snotlout shoved Fishlegs over and sat down with his own plate of food and cup.
Snotlout shrugged and grinned at Astrid. She rolled her eyes and looked back at her plate, which was empty except for a couple bones. He could honestly be so...
"And while we're in the business of talking about where we all need improvement," Gobber said, "we can start with your timeliness."
Snotlout snorted. "Like I need improvement. He wagged his eyebrows at Astrid. "Am I right?"
Gobber pushed the boy's head down hard into the table. "Delusions of grandeur are not excuse for being late."
Snotlout sat up while rubbing his forehead androlled his eyes. "Chill out."
"So," Gobber leaned in close. "We'll start with your need to try. You're no better than anyone else, so you can't go around acting like you are." He poked Snotlout between his eyes. "In fact, I'd say you have the most to work on."
Astrid smiled. She really liked Gobber. He was slightly crazy and had his far-fetched stories, but he would definitely be able to knock Snotlout down a few notches. She could never manage that, and not for lack of trying.
Gobber straightned. "Anyone else want to say something?"
"He didn't use his brain," Tuffnut offered.
"Not that he really has much of one," Ruffnut said.
"Attitude?" Fishlegs asked. Snotlout glared at him, and he quickly looked away while murmuring, "I mean, I don't know..."
"Right, Fishlegs!" Gobber clapped Fishlegs on the shoulder and the boy looked up with a sort of awe. "Attitude is a major problem! Anyone else?"
"He spent his time flirting," Ruffnut said.
"He wasn't focused," Astrid corrected. She ignored Ruffnut's look and continued, "He let his personal agenda get in the way."
"Well, looks like you have everyone else's problems and then your own." Gobber nodded.
Gobber nodded. "Alright, where did Astrid go wrong in the ring today?"
She smiled. She had not done anything wrong. Unlike Snotlout, she actually had been perfect. Except...She tightened her grip on her cup. "I mistimed my somersault dive. It was sloppy. It threw off my reverse tumble."
"Yeah," Ruffnut said sarcastically. "We noticed."
Astrid shot her a glare, and Ruffnut rolled her eyes and looked away. Astrid felt a small, tight heat at the back of her neck, as if she had done something wrong. If she were honest with herself, she had probably been acting a little bit annoying as she had corrected anyone. But she had merely answered the questions, and that was hardly wrong, so she rolled her eyes back and took a sip of water.
"No! No, you were great!" Snolout said. "That was so Astrid..."
She noticed a movement that drew her gaze to the door. Hiccup. Hiccup was walking toward them with his head low. She watched him over her cup.
Late. He was late.
At least he had the decency to look embarrassed.
"She's right," Gobber said. "You have to be tough on yourselves."
Gobber did not mention Hiccup. Maybe he really had dropped out. Maybe the boy was just coming to get food. His father was gone, after all. He had to be lonely in that big house...
Hiccup reached over to grab the plate Gobber had set down earlier. A single chicken thigh and leg. Doubtless it was cold by now. Why did he not go get some fresh food from the fire? What Gobber had put out for him could hardly be–
Gobber had put the plate out for Hiccup. Hiccup had not dropped out. Hiccup was simply late. Soaking and late.
And Gobber had not said anything.
Snotlout moved over to block Hiccup from sitting and flashed an obnoxious grin.
Astrid set her cup down. Her earlier assessment had been correct. He really did expect that he could just watch as everyone else did the work as long as he could take credit for being involved in some way. He was just as self-entitled as his cousin. But the difference was that Hiccup could get away with such behavious since people generally ignored his existence. And that was not right. Astrid believed in justice. Everyone should receive the same treatment, regardless of status.
"Where did Hiccup go wrong?"
Hiccup continued walking and ignored Snotlout's antics.
She glanced away for the briefest moment. Ah. Time for equal treatment.
"Uh, he showed up?" Ruffnut said.
Tuffnut grinned. "He didn't get eaten."
Hiccup reached out and grabbed a random cup off the table. It happened to be Fishlegs', but the large boy did not seem to care as he was far too busy scooting away from Snotlout, who had slid over to block Hiccup once more. Hiccup did not even bother trying to sit, though. He seemed to understand that he was not welcome.
And as far as she was concerned, those who thought they were a cut above the rest were never welcome. "He's never where he should be."
Hiccup slowed his pace and turned his head slightly: the only acknowledgement that he had heard anything.
"Thank you, Astrid," Gobber said.
Hiccup set his food down on the table next to theirs and sat on the bench. With his upturned nose and freckles and big eyes, he looked like a petulant child.
She looked down at her empty plate. She did not need to be friends with him anyway. She was fine on her own.
"You need to live and breathe this stuff," Gobber said.
She looked up at Gobber, who was looking back at Hiccup. The boy ignored the man and merely nudged his cold cut of chicken.
Gobber pulled a book from a nearby table. "The Dragon Manual." He used his mug hand to push aside the plates and slammed the book down. "Everything we know about every dragon we know of."
Astrid sat straighter. She had read the Manual before. Twice.
Thunder sounded outside and she looked up. She had not noticed the rain start to fall, though Hiccup's state had been a sure sign.
Gobber sighed. "No attacks tonight." As he walked away from their group, he called over his shoulder, "Study up."
She looked down. A third reading would definitely help. She figured she was a bit rusty on her knowledge of some rarer species.
"Wait," Tuffnut said. "You mean read?"
She looked to her side.
"While we're still alive?" Ruffnut asked.
Astrid looked away from the twins and shook her head. They really needed to learn to work and take things seriously. Their immaturity would put them behind.
"Why read words when you can just kill the stuff the words tell you stuff about?" Snotlout said, punctuating his words by banging his fist on the table.
Fishlegs bounced in his seat. "Oh! I've read it, like, seven times! There's this water dragon that sprays boiling water at your face."
Astrid raised an eyebrow. That was a Scauldron. Her brother Cloutbeard had a scar on his back from a fight with one.
Snotlout looked at Fishlegs as if he had grown two extra heads.
"And there's this other one that, like, buries itself for, like, a week and–"
She knew that one as well. A Whispering Death. Cloutbeard had almost lost a leg to one a few years before.
"Yeah." Tuffnut clamped his fingers together to cut off Fishlegs. "That sounds great. There was a chance I was gonna read that..." He leaned back and looked at his sister.
Right on cue, she finished, "But...now?" Ruffnut shrugged, unimpressed, and rolled her eyes with a slight smirk.
Snotlout stood. "You guys read, I'll go kill stuff."
The twins and Fishlegs joined him as the latter continued to babble about dragons. She could not hear which dragon he was describing, but she was willing to bet that, whatever it was, her brother had a scar from one.
As she watched them go, she felt that she might be the only one their age fully prepared to tackle the challenge ahead of them.
Suddenly, she noticed Hiccup approaching. She huffed and fought to keep herself from rolling her eyes.
"So..." Hiccup began in a very familiar way. "I guess we'll...share?"
She shoved the book at him. "Read it." She stood up and started to follow the others. Like Hel she'd hang around with only Hiccup. She was far to annoyed to deal with that stupid nasal mumble and stupid upturned nose and stupid freckles.
She did not really need to read the book again anyway.
Later that night, as she lay in her bed with the many layers of furs, she let her mind wander back to him. The thoughts agitated like a rash or a flea bite.
Maybe she had been a bit too mean and quick to judge. Maybe he did expect that everyone else could take care of the dragons. It was a logical thought. She supposed that if she were as scrawny and as useless as he was she would think the same way. And maybe he was a little arrogant because he was the chief's son. But at least he was not arrogant in the same way Snotlout was. Hiccup never put people down. He was not a jerk. He was nice. Useless, but nice.
But would it kill him to try?
Yeah, it probably would.
But they were Vikings. It was an occupational hazard.
At least Snotlout tried, for all that he was annoying and stupid and mean.
Well. That was certainly the first time she had found a redeeming quality about Snotlout.
She let out a laugh.
"Shut up," Grimefoot groaned from the bed next to hers.
She rolled over on her side. Earlier that day she had made the decision to help him. Tomorrow, she decided, she would stick by that decision. She would let Gobber work on knocking him down a few pegs. But she would teach him. He would never be competitive in the ring, but at least she could help him get to the point of not being a laughing stock. They would probably never be friends, but she could at least get him to try.
Yes, I realize that I left lines out in this chapter, but I'm really only putting in what I think Astrid would hear. Also, I feel that Astrid and Hiccup work together because they push each other to become better, whether they mean to or not. Hiccup's obviously the more encouraging one and Astrid's the more aggressive one, but they bring out the best in each other. Iron sharpens iron and all that. And I hope that partly explains why I put in the scene at the beginning. I mean, I'll obviously refer to it later. I allude to it in Here Be Dragons. So, all of my reasonings will come out eventually. And I know I took absolutely no stance on Hiccup's mother's fate. And I don't intend to. Not in this fic, at least. Also, I made a reference to Hiccup possibly being right-handed. Because I happened to notice that while he writes with his left and uses his left hand when he's alone, he tends to use his right hand when he's with other people. So I played around with that for a moment. Headcannons. Also, I don't see Astrid and Ruffnut as close friends. I see them as those obligatory friends you have because you're in the same math class. They have to be friends because they're the only girls their age, but I do not at all think they're buddies. Or that they even particularly like each other. I believe Astrid thinks Ruffnut needs to grow up and start taking things seriously, and I believe Ruffnut thinks Astrid needs to just get over herself. And I really do hope that came out in the last scene...But I do think Astrid is projecting her worst qualities onto Hiccup. We get annoyed the most by our own problems we think are mirrored in others. And I do believe that Astrid is just a little bit...fourteen. Or thirteen. And I think we all know middle school. You're friends with someone one moment, and then she doesn't return your pencil and your friendship is so totally over. I think Astrid needs better reasons than that, but she is sort of fickle. I mean, if you watch her, she has so many turn-arounds in the movie. She goes from generally ignoring his existence to being annoyed with him to trying to get him out of her way to screaming at him to looking at him apologetically across the campfire to being amazed with his weird abilities to getting very jeal–frustrated. Yes. Frustrated. And those are all very subtle, but they are definitely changes in behaviour and thought. And of course, we're all familiar with the dramatic change in the clouds. The point is, I think she's very changeable. I think she's the sort of person who would quickly change her mind if she had reason and I think she's the sort of person who would stab you in the back or tell everyone about your pet dragon if she thought it was for the greater good. I think her personal loyalties would develop as she grew older as a result of being influenced by Hiccup. And I think his understanding of sacrifice and the greater good would expand as well. As I said way up at the top of this paragraph, they make each other better.
Today I decided that the only thing I absolutely need to happen in HTTYD2, like what must happen or I might cry, is someone's gesturing to all of Hiccup. That's it. Just once. I don't care if he finds it insulting or endearing, someone had better gesture to all of him or I will throw a tantrum that will put three-year-olds to shame.
As a super cool fun fact, there is no archaeological evidence that Viking women were warriors. In fact, most evidence seems to point to a division in that part of life. Sagas talk about shield maidens, so it is entirely possible that women were involved in war in the early years of cultural development, but there is no concrete proof of this. In some places, we know women were allowed to hold swords to defend their homes, but in others, like Iceland, women were forbidden from holding weapons at all, and such a crime would be punishable by death. Did this mean a woman had no chance of entering Valhalla or Folkvangr? Not necessarily. Many scholars and anthropologists have suggested that a woman could still get to one of these realms by fulfilling her own duties: getting married, having children, keeping a home...or at least trying. Vikings were smart enough to realize that sometimes women just flat out could not have children (and that sometimes it was actually the man's fault, which was a very forward concept for the time), and they did have provision in place in case of such circumstances. The sad truth is that since the dawn of time there has never been a culture that allowed men and women total equal standing in society. Even matriarchal and matrilineal societies defer to men. The Vikings were certainly more progressive than their European contemporaries, though, as can be seen in laws. Women could hold property and even have votes in some societies, women could be rulers in some societies, rape of a free woman was viewed as a heinous crime, and spousal abuse was not tolerated, which honestly benefits both sexes. And...oh, my gosh. I should never talk about anthropology again. I'm finished.
Still on the lookout for a Beta if anyone is interested. I know school is back in session, but if you'd still be willing, shoot me a PM!
I wrote this while listening to Chameleon Circuit. Wrong fandom, I know. But I'm already gearing up for November.
Leave a review if it suits your fancy. Don't if it doesn't. I'm not big on demanding them.