Just because I was sure Toothless was helping Astrid, didn't mean I had any idea what to do with the shrieking Valkyrie on my living room couch. She was thrashing in an attempt to fight him off; I couldn't tell if she was having a panic attack of her own or if she was just convinced that she was under attack. The only way to find out was to try and get her attention.

And that was an excellent idea.

"Astrid, it's okay," I called, trying to keep my voice calm even as I raised it to be heard through her screams. "He's just trying to…"

Her gaze locked on me. "HICCUP! WHAT THE HELL IS A DRAGON DOING IN YOUR HOUSE?"

She was in full command of her senses. That was either good or bad.

I sighed. "He tracked me home the day after you broke my leg. He's been living here for about a day and a night, and I'm still alive. Are you getting the message here?"

Astrid stopped fighting to stare at me in shock.

Which gave Toothless time to let go of her side and stick his head under her skirt, provoking another shriek and some attempted kicks (attempted rather than accomplished because he grabbed her legs in both paws).

"DOES HE HAVE ANY SENSE OF PERSONAL SPACE?"

For some reason, that was funny. "Ah, nope; he spent last night snuggled up with me in my rather narrow bed, so I would say his concept of personal space is pretty well nonexistent. By the way, Astrid, I can hear you perfectly well…could you stop shouting?" Probably just as well that she'd shouted the last time, though, because I was distracted by where that fist-shaped bruise used to be.

"YOUR DRAGON IS TRYING TO BURN ME ALIVE AND EAT ME, AND YOU EXPECT ME TO BE QUIET ABOUT IT?"

I rolled my eyes. "He is not trying to eat you, and the fire he's using on you is actually beneficial to you; evidently he has to break your skin to do it properly. Look at where he was biting."

There were teeth marks on her side, slashing up and down across the bruise. Purple-blue flames glittered beneath her skin – and, even as I watched, the slashes were closing.

A dragon's "Breath of Life" clearly was capable of regenerating flesh, but probably beaded up on whole skin and couldn't repair bruises without first lacerating them. Or maybe Toothless's version of the breath was too strong for the tiny repair work of broken blood vessels and he had to turn a bruise into a much bigger, open wound before it was a realistic project. Either way, he had to first bite through the skin to repair the damage beneath. That couldn't possibly be pleasant, especially since the breath itself was burning against tender flesh.

She looked, at least. And she stopped struggling altogether to stare in something like fascination at the dying embers and the flawless skin they were glowing through. When Toothless came back out from under her skirt she surreptitiously tugged a far edge up and looked at where another bruise probably had been (I'm not such a suicidal pervert that I would look up her skirt myself checking for bruises).

I leaned heavily on my crutches and spread my hands. "See? Toothless is helping you."

Astrid looked at me incredulously. "Toothless?" At least she'd stopped shouting. "You named it? And more to the point, you named it Toothless?"

"I didn't name him. Dragons have names of their own – not in English, of course; I don't think they can speak English. It's more of a…telepathic…concept that they expand upon over the course of their lives. 'Toothless' is just how my brain translated it."

Astrid considered me like I had morphed into some strange creature and she was trying to decide if I was safe to pet or not.

I seemed to be collecting all manner of looks from Astrid today. It was the most attention she'd ever given me; breaking her previous record of explaining why she broke my leg. Oh sure, she would acknowledge me somehow when she was taking her gear off my hands before practice or unloading again afterwards, but it was always like I was just a moving equipment rack. At this point, I was almost human to her.

She yelped again as Toothless turned to gnaw on her left forearm. "Gently! Don't snap my wrist!"

"If he hurts you, he'll make it better. I promise."

Astrid narrowed her eyes at me. "Really? His magic fire can repair bones, too?"

"It's not magic," and she wouldn't care, "And, I don't see why it can't."

"So why didn't you have him do your leg?"

"Ah…excellent question. Hadn't thought about it." I considered my cast. "First of all, he'd have to break the cast off and rip my leg open to get to the fracture, and I don't know if I could handle that. Panic attacks, remember? Second, if he used that fire to set the bone faster than Nature would otherwise allow, surely people would notice me walking around with no cast. And at least Fisher would ask about it, and I'm a bad liar and not much better at keeping secrets."

"He doesn't know about your pet dragon already?"

"He's as bad at keeping secrets as I am at lying. If I told Fisher, no matter how hard he tried to keep it under wraps, it would be all over the school the minute someone put a little pressure on him."

Astrid thought about that and nodded like it made sense. I wondered briefly if she knew Fisher.

"How does your head feel, by the way?"

She blinked in surprise. "Not too bad…my face still hurts, though." She flinched as Toothless started on her other arm, and looked miserable. "I'm going to have to let him chew on my nose, aren't I?"

I shrugged. "Well, unless you actually want to explain to everybody that your dad punched your lights out." It wasn't until after the words left my mouth that I realized that was exactly the wrong thing to say. And the winner of the Foot-In-Mouth Award goes to Hickory Harrison Haddock the Third.

Astrid stared at me with such a shocked, horrified expression that I knew I'd guessed right. She rallied desperately, but was barely able to whisper, "What makes you think it was my dad?" Not her best comeback; I'd rattled her.

Not a good thing: the minute she got her feet back under her, she would punch my lights out.

"That…didn't come out right," I offered weakly, pulling out my inhaler. I took a quick puff, composed myself, and tried again. "It was actually pretty obvious, once I sat down to think. You're strong for your age, Astrid, and have no problem fighting dirty; the only way you could lose a fight is if you were physically outmatched, and the only people in town who outmatch you are all more than a quarter-century older than you." There was almost nobody in town between sixteen and twenty-six years our senior. "And I saw those knuckle-dents, by the way: I knew it was a man, and one who still had his left hand. I remembered my dad talking to Gordon about your parents' divorce case, and later about your mother's death, and I just…put it together."

Astrid regained her footing. "That's ridiculous!" she huffed, "Why would he turn abusive?" She wasn't instantly trying to kill me, however, probably because Toothless was still practically sitting on her. Also…it was hard to tell because of her bloody nose, but I think she was pale.

I took a deep breath. My next words were dangerous, but they needed to be said. "Just for the record, I did not know about your Uncle Finn before this morning. I'm sorry."

To my surprise and consternation – though, at that point, not really to my shock – Astrid's face crumpled and she burst into tears.

Toothless stared at her and then at me, as though trying to figure out what he was supposed to do now. He couldn't start on her nose (which was apparently the last injury that needed healing) because she was covering her face with both hands.

Sorry, pal; I don't have a clue how to deal with this.

Toothless gently pulled her off the sofa and into an awkward embrace, nosing her chin and…warbling, I guess…he sounded anxious.

For lack of anything better to do, I hobbled back into the kitchen and started working on breakfast. Yeah, yeah, I know – how much cooking can a boy on crutches do? For your information, toasting bread was well within my culinary skills, and my balance wasn't so terrible that I couldn't fry some eggs. I just wanted to do something special for Astrid.

I hoped she would stay and eat. But if she didn't, well…Toothless would eat anything I let him eat.

Astrid came into the kitchen just as I was staring up at the cupboards, wondering how I was going to stretch far enough to get a couple of glasses without falling over. "That was the worst month of my life." Then she noticed me. "Problem?"

I looked at her red-eyed face. Then I looked at the cupboard. "Amazing how a person doesn't appreciate being able to balance on tiptoes until it becomes impossible."

Astrid followed my gaze. "And you're only noticing this now? How did you drink in the past two days?"

My face heated up. Rather than try to think my way to a glass-obtaining solution while on drugs, I had taken to swigging water straight from the tap and everything else straight from the jugs they came in – but I really, really didn't want to say that to Astrid. "Um…"

"On second thought, don't answer that." She reached past me and coaxed a couple of tumblers to her hands. Putting one down in front of me, she carried the other one (and one of the plates I'd already gotten down) to the counter between the stove and refrigerator.

I devoted all my attention to filling my own plate and glass, and then getting them both to the kitchen table without spilling everything. Considering the success of that endeavor an accomplishment was rather depressing; I used to do that without even thinking about it. Before sitting down to eat, I dumped the last of what I cooked into a pan for Toothless.

We ate in silence. I don't know what Astrid was thinking about, but I was wondering if she was going to continue with the "worst month of her life" on her own or if I was supposed to ask.

Finally she took pity on me.

"When I was a little girl, there were three very important people in my life: Mom, Dad, and Uncle Finn. First my uncle disappeared; then my mom. Dad…the dad he was started to die when Uncle Finn was carried away. That was why my mom left…why she tried to take me with her." She looked up at me across the table. "This is all hindsight, by the way. At the time, I just…I didn't understand why they were fighting. He'd started drinking; started insisting – loudly – that my mom just wanted to divorce him to distance herself from the disgraced family name."

I turned my toast over and over in my hands. "Did he…did you hear anything that suggested he might have beaten her? Was he abusing you before your mom left?"

Astrid sighed and shook her head. "I don't know about my mom, but he didn't start beating me until after she died. As long as she lived and there was a chance she would return, I was the company to his misery; a Hofferson who had fallen hard. Afterward…" She peered into her glass. "When he looks at me, he sees the woman who left him to never come back. The older I get, and the more he sees Mom in me, the more often he hits me. When he's really, really drunk, he calls me by her name."

I jerked upright as a horrifying thought hits me. "He hasn't…" I don't quite know why I didn't finish the question. Maybe I'm afraid of the answer.

Astrid looked at me confused for a second. Then her face cleared and she shook her head, for a moment returning to the Valkyrie I recognize. "No, he hasn't raped me." Then she spoiled the effect by folding in on herself and adding, more softly, "Yet."

For a second, I studied her face. Her nose was still swollen and purple, her eyes were still red, and the rest of her face was pale and blotched with the last of her tears. Somehow she was still beautiful…but the walls she normally held between herself and the outside world had some gaping holes in them. She was deeply afraid, and I could see that.

"The older you get, the more he sees your mom and the more he abuses you physically," I said softly. "You're starting to worry that one day he'll see her enough that he'll add sexual abuse, aren't you?"

Astrid tried to pull her emotional protection back together. "I'm not worried," she tossed out, confident – and strangely enough, I believe her.

She's not worried.

She's terrified.

I chose not to call her on that one, though. "Okay." I finished my toast and dusted off my hands. "Just so you know, that door's always open. If you ever have reason to think your dad's going to beat you again, you can come here for as long as you need. And it'll be our secret: nobody ever has to know that you're coming over here."

Astrid squared her shoulders and glared at me. "What makes you think I'll ever come here again? A Hofferson never runs."

"Do you still want Toothless to fix your nose before you leave?" It's kind of a low blow, really: reminding her that she has good reason to hide her face right now, away from her worshippers at school.

Her glare switches from indignant to sullen. "Yes," she muttered.

"Seriously, though. If you're following a trail and see that up ahead is a treacherous obstacle that you're not equipped to conquer, do you keep going until you're overwhelmed? Or do you turn around, and look for another route or the necessary tools?" I shrugged. "Scott, I think, would keep going – or stop altogether."

"Scott's an idiot."

Somehow, that pronouncement cheered me up. She didn't like my cousin any more than I did. "Fisher and I both look for alternatives. And you know, even though it looks like your Uncle Finn always charged forwards full-throttle to conquer or be conquered, you realize he would have to set up carefully before he tried his stunts. If nothing else, he would make sure there was a camera onsite ready to film."

Astrid sighed heavily and spread her hands. "Fine, I bow to your logic. I'm not so fond of bruises that I'll stay where I know I'll get them." Then she refocused on me. "But why would I come here again?"

"Why did you come here today?" I countered.

"Because…"

I waited. I wanted to know if I was right.

"Because…" she stared at her hands, as though watching something vital crumble to dust in them. "…I don't have anyone in my contact list for this. My bloody face would be on the front page of the school paper by Monday, or else I would owe a favor to someone I wouldn't want to owe." She didn't lift her head, but her eyes rolled back to my face with a suspicious gleam. "Speaking of which, what's in this for you?"

"What?"

"Come on, nothing is completely one-hundred-percent free. You must want something out of me. Or are you planning to hold my darkest, dirtiest secrets over my head for…"

"Astrid, the secret thing is mutual!" I waved at Toothless, who was watching our conversation like it was a tennis match. "I might know your darkest secret, but you know mine too. We hold each other hostage, like a balancing act. Okay?"

Astrid looked at Toothless, who blinked back like he was saying, your turn. She smirked a bit, conceding my point. "Okay, but I absolutely refuse to believe that there's nothing in this big-secret, emergency room-and-board for you."

I rested my head in my hands. "Well, if you insist on putting it that way…"

"I won't carry debts. And I won't pay a price that I'll regret later."

She had favor issues. Why didn't that surprise me more? "All I want…" I sat up straight and looked her in the eye, "…Is for you to acknowledge me as another person at school. Just a wave in the hallways, the occasional verbal greeting as we pass, would be enough; I'm tired of being ignored by…everyone except the bullies."

Astrid stared at me like she hadn't heard me right. "That's it?"

"That's it."

"You're really not kidding?"

"Not kidding."

"You just want my attention."

I was done echoing. "What else could I ask for? Fisher would definitely notice if you signed my cast, and he'd ask until I gave him an answer that makes sense to his highly logical brain, and remember I'm a bad liar; even if you primed me with a cover story, he'd know I was covering."

Astrid grimaced – then winced as the expression made her face hurt. "That…is an excellent point. All right, if I see you in the halls at school I won't just ignore you. I'll be civil." She pushed back from the table. "If it's all the same to you, I'll take that nose job now."

"Talk to me," Astrid ordered shortly.

Shortly, see, because she was holding as still as she could while Toothless nibbled on her nose. Her hands were gripping the sofa cushions so tightly that I was sure there would be handprints. I could understand her desire for a distraction: she was getting fire applied to her face.

"What about?"

"I don't know. Dragons are telepaths?"

I shrugged. "Well…yeah. Toothless can only hear my thoughts with either physical contact or a lot of focus on both our parts." Remembering some rather odd dreams last night when Toothless was in my bed with his muzzle tucked up under my hair, I made a leap of faith and added, "And, I guess, I can only hear his thoughts when he's brushing against…where my skull connects to my spine. With his tongue."

"What's it like?"

"I assume you're talking about when he's talking to me." I thought for a second. "Once I figure out that he's talking, it's like lucid dreaming. You know what that is?"

Toothless let go of Astrid and lay down at her feet.

"Yeah, I'm familiar with the concept. Wouldn't a talking dragon tip you off right away that you were dreaming?"

"He doesn't look like that in a…I just call it a 'dream-state.' Essentially when he visits my brain, he takes on a much more human form. That way, what he's saying is automatically translated into a language I understand."

Astrid rubbed her newly-healed nose and looked down at Toothless. "Huh. What's he look like as a human?"

I shrugged. "Um, like the male lead in a vampire-romance chick flick." I half-expected her next question to be along the lines of and how do you know about chick flicks?

Instead she cocked a sardonic eyebrow at me and asked, "Vampire, vampire-hunter, or clueless bystander?"

After a moment's thought I realized that the flicks I described would follow one of those three paths, and the male lead would look different depending on which he was. "Vampire."

"I guess that explains why I felt a little woozy before. Figure he'd been sipping while he was ripping?"

Huh? Oh. "At least he was keeping you from bleeding all over your clothes…and it's not like there would have been a good way to put the blood back." She hadn't seemed anemic when she came to breakfast…maybe the Breath of Life was able to function as a blood transfusion. Not perfect, but enough to hold her together.

"Didn't say there was. So. Why would your brain translate his name as 'Toothless,' do you think?"

"If I ever figure it out, I'll let you know."

Astrid stood up. "I need to go home and change."

I tottered up from my chair. "I'll walk you out." At her sharp look I added, "I need to lock the door after you anyway."

"Fair enough."

We got to the front door with no mishap, and Astrid paused on the doorstep to look at me like she was expecting something.

A braver Hiccup would kiss her goodbye. Brave Hiccup, apparently, didn't suffer panic attacks.

Suddenly her fist connected with my bicep, nearly sending me to the floor. I wobbled off-balance for a second and stared at her.

What did I do?

"That was for experimenting on me."

Experimenting? When did I say anything about experiments? She didn't have any way of knowing that Toothless had never used that particular fire on me – and in any case, the whole heal-the-bruises thing was Toothless's idea, not mine. Not like I wouldn't have asked him to heal her…or like she could hit the dragon…

If I hadn't been ready to get punched, I really wasn't ready for what happened next. Astrid grabbed my collar (and yes, I flinched; I was sure there was another hit coming), pulled me close, and quickly kissed my cheek. "That's for…everything else." Then she left, leaving me standing there staring out the door like an idiot.

Everything…else. Being understanding, being trustworthy, and keeping a standing offer of help whenever she needed it…

It was probably supremely pathetic of me, but I suddenly knew that I would help her every day for the rest of my life if only I could be on the receiving end of another kiss – and maybe, one day, a better kiss than that one.