"Am I interrupting something?"

Astrid's droll voice nearly gave me heart failure. I jumped so hard that I jarred my cast, sending spikes of pain up my leg, and I would have fallen on the floor if Toothless hadn't caught me. Twisting around in his paws, I saw her lounging in the doorway.

"What on – what, what…what are you doing here?" Geez, I sounded stupid; I struggled to compose myself again as Toothless put me back on the sofa.

The sardonic amusement faded from Astrid's face. "Let's just say the storm signals are up at home."

"Ah; gotcha." Now that I was looking more carefully at her, I saw that she had a bag at her feet. Presumably, it had overnight supplies in it. "Um…have you eaten?"

"Not really." The amusement was back. "Have you?"

"Uh – no." Now that she mentioned it, I was hungry. Very hungry. "Do you want pizza? I'm not up to cooking, but I could call for delivery…what's so funny, by the way?"

"Mm…funny is perhaps too strong a word. I just figured out that dragons can tap a nervous system from more than one direction."

I gaped helplessly at her for a moment. "How…long…were you standing there?"

Astrid checked her watch. "About ten minutes."

"And…what time is it?"

"Five-thirty-ish."

Wow. I'd gotten home at four…I was in dream-state for a long time.

"For the record, pizza sounds good; thin crust, lots of chicken and veggies."

I didn't register her words for a moment. Then I remembered dinner. "Right. Pizza." I got my phone out of my pocket, found pizza-delivery, and ordered…okay, two large pizzas. One was Astrid's request and the other was a meat-lover's.

"I can't eat a whole pie," Astrid protested after I hung up. "Not of the large size. And how are you going to explain one guy ordering too pizzas?"

I bared my teeth in a savage grin. At least, I was trying for savage; don't know if I was succeeding. "What, don't I look hungry to you?"

Astrid rolled her eyes. "Ravenous."

I let my face go back to normal. "And anything the two of us don't eat, Toothless will undoubtedly oblige."

"Right…Toothless. What was he doing a few minutes ago?"

I shrugged. "Rewiring my brain."

"No, seriously."

"That's as close as I can come." I thought about how to say it. "My panic attacks were the result of some circuits getting crossed in my brain, and the subsequent degeneration that caused in my body. When Toothless finally figured out what was wrong, he fixed me. No big deal."

"Really?" Astrid sounded intrigued. "So you won't need the inhaler anymore?"

"Eventually. My body needs time to recover – think detox."

"Ah."

I struggled to my feet and beckoned her closer. "In the meantime…" I pulled out my EpiPen, "I think you ought to know about this while it's still an issue." I held up the end that concealed the needle. "This thing has enough sedative to knock me out completely. If I go into a panic – and while I'm on crutches, I'm probably going to fall on the floor – hold me down, put this end right here…" I tapped my neck with it, at just about my pulse spot, "And press and hold the button on the other end for five seconds. I'll be fast asleep in a couple heartbeats."

Astrid looked at the EpiPen, a strange expression on her face. Then she looked at me. "Does anyone else know about this thing?"

"Counting grownups?"

"No."

I put the EpiPen away. "Fisher knows. I gave him the rundown about it a couple days after the incident. Other than that…" I shook my head.

"You're…"

The doorbell rang.

"And that would be the pizza. Excellent service." I waved Toothless over, focusing hard on conveying that I wanted him to carry me to the door and then get out of sight. "If you don't want Fred to see that you're visiting, I suggest you hide in my dad's room – it's just off the kitchen."

Astrid looked like there were a great many things she would like to say; ultimately, though, she decided that they could wait until the pizza guy had left. She grabbed up her bag and fled the room.

Fred was very polite and understanding; rather than press the pizzas into my encumbered arms, he carried them in himself and dropped them off on the coffee table. I made sure to tip extra, thinking of the service and the little fact that he didn't look around overmuch while in the living room. He completely missed the Night Fury saliva dripping down the back wall.

Astrid had hidden herself very effectively; it wasn't until I closed the door that I heard her voice – echoing out from under the stairs.

"You ordered pizza from a guy named Fred?"

Toothless's attention switched from the boxes to the stairs, as though demanding to know if Astrid had turned invisible for everybody to have missed her under there.

"No," I answered wryly, "We ordered pizza from a guy named Fred. With any luck he'll think I'm just expanding my pizza-topping horizons."

Astrid came back out, dragging her pack. "What?"

"I like veggies just fine; just not on my pizza." I opened the box on top. Meat-lover's. "Give me pepperoni, bacon, and sausage any day of the week." I sat down and started easing a slice out.

"Have you ever had veggie pizza?" Astrid sat next to me on the sofa and pulled the other box out from under mine. "I can't stand pepperoni. Gives me an upset stomach."

I took a large bite of my slice so that I wouldn't have to explain why I never wanted to eat a veggie pizza. It just seemed to me like the kind of thing a macho pizza-man would make as a compromise with his salad-eating girlfriend, so that they could pretend to eat each other's foods. No way was that ideal.

Trying to explain that to Astrid, however? When she clearly liked what she was eating?

Nuh-uh. Better to eat my off-the-butcher-block pie and let her have the planter box on a crust, and let things be. It was a difference of opinion, and one that we could live with as long as we kept the whole his-and-hers thing clearly defined.

Right.

"Toothless, would you kindly stop begging off my pizza? Astrid practically said that she wasn't finishing hers." I tried to turn the box away, making it clear that I thought he'd had enough meat-lover's. He'd eaten half the pizza in just under a minute, for crying out loud, and if he kept going at that pace he would finish off the pie before I'd had my fill.

Toothless firmly turned the box back and popped his jaws out to snag another slice.

It seems that dragons are carnivorous, though not to the exclusion of everything else, and when given a choice they will always gravitate towards the dish with more meat. There wasn't much point to arguing with a dragon, either – they have the advantage in physical strength, firepower, and psychic compulsions. If might made right, Toothless could easily lay claim to both pizzas; it was a sign of his partial domestication that he had not done so.

Astrid delicately nibbled at a slice of her own; I suspected she was trying not to smile. I knew she was trying not to look at Toothless – after he swiped that first slice, she'd made it very clear that she wouldn't be able to watch his jaws go in and out while she was trying to eat. Fair enough. I was used to it by that point, but I still remembered when it was disturbing.

I glowered suspiciously at the twitching corner of Astrid's mouth. "You're enjoying this, aren't you?" I grumbled.

"Sure. It's like a comedy, watching you two argue."

"Not much of an argument: I'm the only one talking, he's just ignoring me and stuffing his face. He's not even trying to hypnotize me or anything."

"He's not ignoring you, exactly; I mean, he responds when you do something."

"Excellent point." I grabbed the lid of the box and slammed it shut almost on Toothless's nose, defying him to take any more pizza.

Toothless looked at me like I was crazy. Then he shook himself in a kind of shrug, licked the side of my neck, and walked away.

Astrid looked after Toothless. "Hm. That was easy."

"Should have thought of that sooner." I looked at Astrid. "So, um…what did you mean by 'storm signals,' or shouldn't I ask?"

It was like a raincloud passed over Astrid's face. At least it wasn't a storm cloud. "Well…okay. You know how the air outside gets kind of still before a big storm and you just know – like, by the smell – that the weather's about to take a turn for the worse; have you ever encountered that feeling inside a building, like the negative energy of the people there?"

"Oh yeah." Given a choice, I wouldn't go into where and how I'd experienced that atmosphere, but I definitely understood what she was describing.

"Maybe there are tangible clues that inside a room is more dangerous than outside. Maybe you consciously pick up on them. But if it happens often enough…"

"If you've experienced the same atmosphere many times before, you get so good at catching the tangible cues that you start doing it subconsciously. Then it falls into the category of intuition."

Astrid looked at me knowingly. "Scott?"

"Well…yeah."

"Anyway, my subconscious has pretty well ingrained into itself the 'weather patterns' of my home. I can tell when being home is a bad idea, within a few seconds of walking inside." She shook her head. "I just never had a safe home-away-from-home to run to when things got bad. Holing up in my room is impractical – meals are kind of a necessity, and so are all kinds of different trips to the bathroom."

Bathroom. Right. "There are only two fully operational bathrooms in this house, by the way: the master bath, and mine. There's a third, but the bathing implements are…broken. And the window's jammed open a bit – never have been able to force it closed again – so it's always freezing in there."

Astrid lowered the crust of her second slice and stared at me for a moment, her eyebrows lifting. I wondered briefly what I said.

"…Broken."

"Um…yeah…I think the pipes are corroded or something, the water's a weird color and leaves spots on everything. If the point of the bath is to get clean, I would really recommend one of the other two bathrooms. Oh, and the showerhead only has two settings: narrow and panoramic."

"Panoramic?"

"I don't know how that happened; you turn the thing to try and disperse the flow of water and it sprays everywhere. The curtains can't contain it – well, unless they're tucked into the bathtub, and then it's like getting attacked by a ghost while simultaneously drowning in a monsoon."

Astrid stared at me for a second longer. Then a weird little snort escaped, her mouth twisted – and she was rolling around on the sofa shrieking with laughter.

It wasn't that funny. I didn't say anything, though; really, I was feeling very proud of myself that Astrid found me so entertaining. Shaking my head, I opened my pizza box again.

"Oh." That was why Toothless had surrendered so fast when I shut the box. There wasn't any pizza left to swipe: just some cheese that had stuck to the cardboard, and some toppings that had dropped off the slices. At some point when I was talking to Astrid, he'd emptied the box.

I'd only had two pieces of my twenty-slice meat-lover's pizza. I was hungry enough for a whole pie.

My face must have fallen a mile, because when Astrid came up from her laughter to try and say something intelligent, one look at my expression set her off again. In fact, she laughed so hard the second time that she fell off the sofa.

With a sigh I started picking at the scraps, debating making the effort to go and make a peanut butter sandwich. I would never get through the night on just two slices.

"Oh, for Pete's sake, Hiccup," Astrid gasped, sitting up to shove her pizza box at me, "Just eat the healthy-choice – and stop looking like, like…" she collapsed in giggles again. Evidently, whatever she thought I looked like was so hilarious that she couldn't say it.

I stared for a long moment at the spectacle before me. Astrid had only had three pieces of her own twenty-slice pie; I guess for her, that was enough. Peppers, onions, olives, mushrooms, and chicken bits liberally covered the cheese and sauce. Very…very military-camouflage. A sniper would never be able to spot this thing in the woods.

My stomach growled.

Well, really, hauling myself to the kitchen for that sandwich was too much work. It was this or nothing. I eased a slice out, considered it in my hands, and took a bite – not one of my previous wolfing mouthfuls, nor an imitation of Astrid's delicate nibbles. It was a cautious bite.

It crunched. Pizza was not supposed to crunch, unless you were trying to eat it frozen or if it had sat around long enough to get all dry and stale. I was hungry enough to endure, though.

About two slices later I figured out the crunchy stuff was mostly the peppers, but I didn't want to pick them off in front of Astrid. I kind of liked peppers anyway. A couple slices after that I decided that, texture issues aside, the "healthy-choice" pizza wasn't as bad as I'd feared. It wasn't simply a bunch of raw veggies tossed onto a crust; some things just didn't soften completely when they were cooked, which was why the peppers were still a bit crispy.

"I am so sorry," Astrid finally announced, sounding like she'd gotten back under control. "It wasn't that funny."

"What, my face? No, I'm sure it probably was that funny."

Fortunately for my ego (which had been bruised with the round of laughter that was clearly at me), Astrid managed to restrain herself from laughing again – but she did grin rather widely. "Well…yeah. You looked like you missed the winning lottery by one number; it was just a pizza, get a life!"

"Thank you for summing that up." I went back to eating.

"So…the out-of-service bathroom. Was it fully operational until you were old enough to pick up a wrench?"

I looked at Astrid, struggling to affect an air of offended dignity. "I have absolutely no idea what you're talking about." Punctuating my reply, I ripped my crust in half with my teeth.

Astrid lifted an eyebrow. "So tell me that the bathroom has never worked."

I chewed the stiff crust for a moment before working it away from my tongue. "Just because things started malfunctioning in there after I started walking, doesn't mean it had anything to do with me."

"Sure…" Judging by the fact that her grin was still there, she wasn't buying the story of my innocence.

Actually, that one wasn't mine – not entirely. A lot of it was Scott fighting with the showerhead while rinsing the most disgusting goop down the drain; I didn't get involved until later, trying to fix things and not having a lot of success. I couldn't get Dad to stop inviting the Jorgensons over for sports-TV nights, but I did take to locking Scott out of my bathroom. He could drown in the other shower with my good graces, seeing as it was originally his fault that it did that.

"Okay, no showers in the guest bathroom; how about other business?"

I didn't realize what she was talking about until I was halfway through another slice. Then I nearly choked. "Oh – ah – that. Um…there's…"

Both Astrid's eyebrows went up. "Hiccup. What's wrong with the toilet?" Excited was too strong a word for the energy in her voice, but she definitely wanted to hear the rest of it.

"There isn't one. In there."

That silenced Astrid long enough for me to finish off another quarter of the pizza. "As in, there never was one, or…"

"Exploding porcelain comes to mind."

That bought me two more slices.

"There's a story there."

"Not while I'm eating, thank you."

"Fair enough." Astrid watched me dig through a couple more slices. "I did leave a note for my dad before I bailed."

I went very still. My last bite of pizza seemed to have turned to clay, for all my ability to swallow it; I glanced worriedly at Astrid, trying to ask with my eyes what she'd said.

"Don't look at me like that; I didn't tell him I was coming here. This is a sanctuary from him, it wouldn't do me much good if he knew where it was. No, he thinks I'm doing homework and spending the night at a friend's – wouldn't be the first time I'd done that. I even wrote 'study sleepover' on the calendar for tonight, and with any luck he'll think it had been there for a week."

I finally managed to swallow and let out a sigh of relief. "I guess that's not lying. Well, trying to trick your dad into thinking you got permission for this, that's lying, but…I mean…you are spending the night somewhere other than home, you're probably going to do homework too, and…am I a friend?" I hardly dared to hope.

Astrid made a face at me. Like she was thinking. "You're not like any of the people I've been calling my friends," she replied after a moment's consideration.

"So this is…what, exactly?"

"Hmm…it's different. I can…" she looked surprised at a realization, "I can relax here – I mean really relax. Not just that I don't have to worry about my dad coming in stone drunk, but I don't have to…you really don't care, do you?"

I took a larger bite of pizza than I'd originally intended, making an inquiring noise around it as I started chewing. No way was I answering that until I had a better idea what I was answering.

Astrid pulled out her phone and waved it at me. "Something I finally figured out…that morning I banged on your door: everyone in my address book, they expect me to look and behave a certain way. I mean, yeah, I established what that 'certain way' was myself, but now I'm stuck with it. I always – always – have to keep up appearances, never ever show any weakness…I had to be perfect. A throne of glass…" she seemed to fold in on herself.

I got the idea that she was looking in a mental mirror…and didn't like what she saw anymore. "You don't really think that everyone you called friend," I began softly, "would turn away if they knew the 'you' that wasn't the previously-established perfect…do you?"

"I don't know." Astrid looked back at me, an expression of wonder lighting her face. "But when I'm here…I don't need my throne. Or…or my shell. I'm not Astrid the Popular, Astrid the Aggressive, Astrid the Fearless," that last with a sneer, before returning to thoughtful and wondering, "I'm just Astrid."

I smiled. "And who is this 'just Astrid'?"

Astrid was silent for so long I started to worry that I'd crossed some line that I shouldn't have. Then she laughed a little – and I've used self-deprecating humor often enough to instantly recognize it in someone else: that was it. "I don't know. Strange, isn't it? I've worn a mask for so long I don't recognize my own real face."

"Don't even know your own name…" I mused, playing with my last slice. Then I looked up and saw Astrid making a face at me. "Oh – sorry, that was…that was a dragon metaphor, actually. Toothless doesn't consider a name to be just a word that people use to identify you…"

As though attracted by the word used to label him, Toothless came back and started investigating the scraps in the pizza boxes.

"It's who you are; everything you've ever experienced over the course of your life, and constantly added onto by new experiences."

Astrid stared at Toothless, with such an odd expression on her face that I wondered if she was really seeing the dragon or something else entirely.

I took a deep breath. "So what really bothers you about the real you?"

"She's…" Astrid looked at me. "I don't feel anywhere near as strong or brave – or even beautiful – as I want everyone to think I am. I…everything goes in circles, because…I want to hate my dad for what he's doing to me, but then I hate myself for wanting to hate my dad because I have to acknowledge that part of him is inside me. He might look at me and see my mother; when I look in the mirror, I see him." She looked back at Toothless. "What part of one's own identity does he consider family?"

"That's easy: foundation. Parents, grandparents, great-grandparents…everyone who has ever been directly related to you by blood forms the roots of your identity." In one breath I realized that she wouldn't consider that to be a good thing, considering the closest remaining member of her family was an alcoholic who beat her; in the next, inspiration hit. "But there's also this: people's identities never stop changing unless they stop living. So if the whole 'forming a child's foundation' thing is like saving a copy of all they are onto a file and transferring it to the unborn child, it's only a copy of who they were at that exact moment. Who they became after they conceived the baby, that's not in what the baby has."

Astrid looked at me strangely. "What are you saying?"

"That the only part of your dad that is 'inside you,' as you put it, is a spiritual file of who he was nine months before you were born. This alcoholic child-abuser, he had nothing to do with your creation."

For a long moment Astrid stared at me silently as Toothless looked back and forth between us. Then she smiled – kind of wryly. "So I can hate him without hating myself?"

"Something like that. Oh, and if you want my opinion…"

"Can I really stop you?"

"You are stronger and braver than everyone thinks you are. How long has your dad been beating you, exactly? And you're still convincing everyone that everything at home is absolutely fine? If you weren't strong or brave, you'd have collapsed a long time ago and nobody would have bought that lie."

Astrid's brows lowered. "By the way, if you tell anyone I said I felt that way, I'll teach you a few things about the fear of the abused."

I dropped my last slice and spread my hands wide. "See? What kind of a wuss would say that?"

Toothless made a sound like he was laughing. Then he started after the slice I dropped.

"Oh no you don't – that last piece of pizza is MINE!" Completely disregarding the fact that until that evening I barely considered healthy-choice pizza as even being food, I staved off Toothless with my crutches and retrieved the slice as Astrid laughed again.