"Eg man jötna þá er forðum mig. Níu man eg heima, mjötvið mæran."
Consciousness was slowly returning to her and in turn returning her to the waking world. Somewhere, Astrid heard singing, low in tone with a slight hum behind it as fingers stroked through her hair. She felt warm, safe, and somehow she knew that whoever she was with wasn't going to harm her in any way. Sighing softly, she tucked her head closer towards the warmth before she realized what she was doing. A chuckle sounded from above her, Hiccup's voice reaching her ears.
"Awake, princess?"
Turning around so she was on her back, Astrid looked up at him, blinking sleep out of her eyes as she tried to make sense of everything. Hiccup's one eye looked down at her from where he was overhead, leaning back on one of his hands as his other stilled in her hair, dropping from her head. Darting her eyes to the right she saw a fire crackling in one corner of the room, her hand rolling off her stomach and dropping to the floor to find furs underneath them.
"Mmm...where...?"
"My quarters. I didn't want to take you back to Fishlegs and Snotlout and disturb them." Somehow she got the feeling that there was more behind it than that as he held a dish to her face. "Drink up."
Astrid wrinkled her nose and mouth. "You'll have to forgive me if I'm not a little suspicious."
He chuckled. "It's just water." Leaning up a little and lifting her head from the furs gracing his lap, Hiccup gently tipped the dish against her lips, watching her drink greedily before she pushed it away. "It takes a little while for grandmother's teas to be flushed from the body. I'm surprised you woke as early as you did."
"I only had a couple of sips." She ran the back of her hand along her mouth as she finished drinking, before she pulled away from his hand and nestled back down onto his lap, watching him reach behind him to put the dish down as her brow furrowed. "You knew what she was going to do, didn't you?"
"I had a hunch." He pursed his lips together and looked away.
'Cut the strings.' Astrid bit her lip as the warning from her dream self came back to her, staring up at him with a bit of worry on her face. Could she have been talking about Excellinor? She shifted so that she was less draped across his lap and more leaning against him, resting her head on his shoulder. "What happened after I blacked out?"
"You're lucky I was seeking her council when I came into the room, otherwise I'm not quite sure what she was thinking." Hiccup shook his head, lifting his arm to wrap it around her waist for support. "I've had her placed in one of our solitary confinement cells for now, until I decide what to do with her." His lips quirked a little teasingly as he tilted his head closer to hers. "I specifically told her she wasn't to lay a finger on you."
"Maybe that's why she did it." She watched him lift one of her hands up into his, cradling it in hands almost as calloused as hers from handling weapons. He looked at her with a questioning eyebrow. "Maybe she was trying to see if you'd gone soft."
He snorted, warm breath wafting over her face as he chuckled. "You think I've gone soft, princess?"
Astrid hummed a little, turning her hand around in his and watching the way their fingers slipped together, his hand only a bit larger than hers. "What would happen to me if I said you weren't as terrifying now compared to when we first met?"
Hiccup gave her a look of surprise, his eye shifting before he pursed his lips together. It had been almost a year since they met, that night on the rocks in the light of the moon, when she had pursuaded him to take her to Dragon Island. It was hard to imagine that the memories and feelings had happened to him, when looking back they seemed to have happened to an entirely different person. He hadn't changed that much, but perhaps the changes themselves weren't noticeable to him himself.
Bringing her hand up to his lips, he brushed them along the back, looking up at her from behind his hair, watching the slight tinge on her cheeks brighten before he raised his head, tilting it and placing a chaste kiss to her lips, pulling away only a short time after. Before he could open his mouth to say something, the door to his chambers opened, making him look over his shoulder at the mook who had barged in with a glare as he snarled. "How many times have I told you to knock?"
The warrior looked a bit flustered when he noticed the position they were in, coughing discreetly before he remembered what he had interrupted them for. "Lady Excellinor has disappeared, sir!"
The way he stiffened was unmistakable, and he gently slipped out from under Astrid, placing her down on the furs before he stomped over to the warrior, grabbing hold of his beard and yanking him down to his eye level. "Then go. Find her. Can you morons not think for yourselves?"
"W-we searched the entire island, sir. Even her room's been completely upturned! Not a trace of her anywhere! It's like she was never here!"
Hiccup gave a harsh yank of the guard's beard before letting go of it, upper lip curling into a small sneer. "If I know grandmother, she's probably hiding in plain sight. She's just pulled the wool over your eyes." He thrust his arm to the side. "Search again! And for Odin's sake, you had better not interrupt me once more or so help you, I will string you up by your entrails and hang you out for the wild dragons to feast on!"
Without much ceremony, the door slammed shut in the mook's face. Hiccup waited until he heard footsteps running down the hallway outside before he sighed and rubbed the bridge of his nose. "Grandmother, what are you playing at?" he muttered to himself, turning around to look at Astrid who was staring at him with a bit of a shocked expression on her face. "What?" He raised an eyebrow.
"Nothing, I was just a bit...surprised, is all." She shifted as he came back over, making room for him on the furs, leaning back on her elbows. The slight dizziness had stopped, and he sat down next to her, stretching his legs out. "You're not going to go find her yourself?"
He tilted his head, giving a slight roll of his eyes. "If grandmother doesn't want to be found, she won't be found. If she's still on the island, she'll have to come out sooner or later. Somehow I doubt she'd diappear to the mainland for another five years." Not when things were so close to fruition, he was sure of that. Hiccup shifted so he was closer to her, leaning forward. "Besides, my Queen comes first."
"You do know I can take care of myself, right?" she murmured, even as he placed a hand on her other side, rolling her eyes playfully and leaning back, wrapping her arms around his shoulders, shifting her head so that her hair flopped away from her face. A hand came up to her waist, cupping around it as he kissed her again, this one not quite as chaste as the last. When they'd been living together in Berk three months ago, there had been a slight tension, like putting one foot outside of tradition would cause things to crumble. They'd kept a respectable distance, showing just the bare minimum displays of affection. But here, in the privacy of his chambers, on an entirely different island, Berk tradition seemed to be thrown out the metaphorical window.
At least until there was another interruption, this time a knock as though the mook had remembered the threat. Hiccup grumbled against Astrid's mouth while she giggled, pulling away from him and lifting a hand, brushing hair out of his face. "Go take care of things. I promise I'll be fine."
"Fine, fine." Tilting his head to kiss her neck, he stood reluctantly, shifting his chainmail. "I'll have a warrior escort you back to your room once the tea has run its course. I don't want anything else happening to you."
"Hiccup." He turned his head to look down at her, watching the expression on her face shift. She wanted to ask a question, he could tell, and she opened her mouth but a second after she closed it again. "Stay safe," was all she said, her hand falling to her side where it looked like she'd been going to take his.
"I'm not the one grandmother wants dead." That was his only reply as he glanced at the door and the insistent knocking, rolling his eyes with a groan and earning a slight laugh before he turned on his heel and walked away, opening and closing the door to his chambers unceremoniously.
Astrid waited until she couldn't hear any footsteps before she stood from the furs, holding her arms out as she felt a little wobbly before her vision rightened itself. The room was dark save for the light of the fireplace and a lone candle sitting to the other side, but as her eyes adjusted she could make out shapes on the walls. She cringed as she recognized the head of a Changewing, followed by a Nightmare, a Gronkle, two Zippleback heads, a Nadder and, the tiniest of all, a Terror, long since decomposed and leaving nothing but a skull. Reaching to pick up the candle, she walked over, brow drawing close as she could make out runes on the wall underneath the Terrible Terror's head, tilting forward to read the faded carving in the stone.
"I'm going to be the best dragon killer on Outcast Island." The childish promise in the stone sent a shiver up Astrid's spine, all too easily imagining a younger Hiccup carving the runes, eager and bright. She had a hunch that the Terror had been his first in the, apparently, long line of many. She was sure that the heads on the wall were just a few of the ones he had murdered.
Walking along, each head had a different promise written underneath it, the writing becoming sharper, angrier as the years seemed to pass in front of her. The most recent one it seemed, the Changewing - barely appearing to be dead for a year - had the last. "I'm ready to face him. I'll make him regret what he did to me. He must be talking about Stoick here," she murmured under her breath, stepping back to look up at the Changewing. Changes according to its surroundings, acid venom...was this where his plan to infiltrate Berk began? She lifted her free hand, brushing her fingers along the runes, feeling a small twinge of sadness churning in her stomach. He must have been so furious, for the runes were crudely carved, jagged edges nicking her index finger as she trailed it along the carving, causing her to pull her hand back and slip it into her mouth, sucking on the injury.
Hiccup's life was virtually laid out in front of her eyes, the dragons on his wall representing stages of his maturity into a dragon killer, a man hell bent on vengeance. She paused as she remembered the words she'd said to him that night three months ago, pursing her lips together around her finger before she let her hand fall to her side. "How do I set you free?"