A/N – Yeah, yeah, I know, weekly update failed. I'm aware. You know that metaphorical 'ball' that is life? I fell off, hit the ground, and stayed there. Anyway, here you go – the last chapter. Sad, I know. This story has been super fun, possibly my favorite that I've done in regards to fan fiction.

The main reason why it's been so long since my last update was that while planning my novel for NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month, where the goal is to write a 50k novel in November), I kind of sort of started mid-October because I became obsessed. It's taken nearly all of my attention these past two weeks.

Anyway… thanks a ton for all the warm, encouraging words, feedback, and overall amazing reception of this story. It's been a blast! Seriously – every time I would find more positive reviews, enjoying this story, loving this story, anticipating the next update, it was like a heart fire in my soul.

Thank you.

X

Chapter 19

That evening, Hiccup celebrated by making one of the freezer pizzas he'd stashed in the far-back, frostbitten regions of the freezer. Astrid awed at the pre-made frozen pizza came out of the box, out of the wrapped, and into the oven. Hiccup explained how the oven worked to the best of his knowledge, and as the pizza went in, he moved onto the fridge and the microwave. Little changes. Little steps.

He saw the wonder in her eyes. She embraced it all, every word, every gesture. Fearless.

In the ten minutes until the pizza would be done. They sat on the front porch, watching the late summer turn into purple hewn twilight. The cicadas were un full song, filling the distance woods with a thunderous harmony.

"It's so different." Astrid rested her elbows on her knees, on the knees of his pants that she wore. "So much more than I thought. There's just… more of everything. How do you keep track of it all?"

He shrugged. "I don't know. I was born into it. I've had my whole life to get used to how things are. I'm still trying to figure some of it out."

"I'm going to be so behind."

"We'll catch you up." Hiccup had already looked into getting cable, but the price had been ridiculous; he'd settled for streaming and DVD rental. The library in town had a wide range of historical documentaries to get Astrid better acquainted with all that had happened in the past two hundred years. As if she could feel this thoughts, maybe she could, her eyes softened. He said, "And I'll be right here, beside you, the whole time. I won't let you get lost."

"You'd better not," she said sweetly. She laced her fingers with his.

Between the cicadas and nighttime chitters, Hiccup heard something else. It came from behind him, from the house.

This is how you replay me…

Hiccup looked behind him and in every window, but he didn't see anyone. He looked harder into the living room window; he might have seen a distortion, but it was hard to tell through the glass.

"Hiccup?" Astrid asked, her voice a fearful whisper. "Who was that?"

"I-I don't know," Hiccup said. He rarely let the paranormal get to him, but he wouldn't let Astrid know how creeped out he had been, too.

The oven timer beeped, and they retreated back inside. James joined them for dinner, over which Astrid quizzed them on history. She was particularly interested in the women's right movement.

After the pizza had been eaten, James changed the subject. "Astrid, I've been meaning to ask you, how did you know to return to your body?"

Astrid glanced down at her empty plate, brows knit together. "I'm not sure. I... I remember feeling something, a strange sort of sensation." She put her hands against her stomach. "It pulled me. I just followed."

"Ah." James nodded. "That was the body pulling the spirit back. It had been made for you, and your spirit knew it, your body knew it. That's why I wanted you to be the closest spirit. Any spirit could have felt that pull. You needed to be the first."

"Speaking of spirits," Hiccup said. "You've heard that voice? The creepy one."

James's gaze turned cold. "I have. It very well could be a nearby spirit that felt the pull, like Astrid, but Astrid got to the body first. This other spirit came, too, but now doesn't know where it at."

"It seems… angry," Hiccup said.

"If you felt a chance to return, and you missed it, I'm sure you'd be a bit peeved, too," James said.

"True," Hiccup agreed.

James relaxed. "It very well might wander home or, in the light of the new realization that it isn't where it should be, move on. But, I know you; you're a great voice with spirits, Hiccup. This spirit seems in need of help. You can help it, just like you've helped so many others. Pulling it in might have been a favor."

Hiccup didn't want to disagree. He would have liked a few days with Astrid first, before he started to go ghost hunting again. The angry spirits were the difficult ones. They'd rather shout than listen, especially if it was a male spirit. Men didn't want to talk feelings with other men.

After the few dishes had been washed, which Hiccup and Astrid washed together, they retreated upstairs. James went into the guest room. Together, Hiccup and Astrid stripped the dirty bedsheets from the bed and plopped them on top of the overflowing hamper. Hiccup promised they'd do laundry sometime the next day; she seemed keen to seen how the laundry-washer worked. Given her history with a washboard, he didn't blame her.

After washing faces and brushing teeth (Hiccup had found a spare toothbrush. Thank goodness for his mother's fretting over his dental hygiene.) they fell into the bed together. Astrid made no qualms about sleeping in the room that had once been her parents instead of her own. It wouldn't have mattered. He would have slept on the floor just to be beside her.

Their goodnight kiss turned into kisses, which turned more tender with each touch.

"You know, Hiccup," Astrid's voice turned as soft as velvet. "We did get married today, if only on paper."

And in blood, it would seem, since part of his blood had been used in the ritual.

"Hmm," he said against her lips.

"It's our wedding night."

His hand, which had been setting on her waist, slipped below the waistband of the pajama pants she wore.

"Are you sure?"

"Yes," she said, hand in his hair. "One hundred and thirty years sure."

Butterflies fluttered around his chest as they kissed; between kisses their clothes landed on the floor, piece by piece. With the shifting of the blanket, their own breaths and audible pleasure, they didn't hear the voice in the hall. Hiccup focused his attention on the women underneath him – his wife – and refused to divide that attention with anything. Even after he had finished, he knelt over her, relishing in the delight they had shared.

He couldn't ignore it, however, when the bitter, angry voice spoke. It sounded as thought the spirit shouted directly into Hiccup's ear:

You're just like your mother!

Hiccup collapsed and Astrid yanked the blanket over herself. The voice, now loud, sounded familiar;

"That's…" Astrid said, disbelieving. Her hands tightened on the blanket covering her bare chest. She swallowed. "My father?"

"But… if he had been haunting the house, wouldn't you have known?" Hiccup turned to her. Unless he'd been called by the ritual. Where had his spirit been before?

She answered in a shrill scream; the alarm clock on the bedside table threw toward her, its red numbers like a demon's eyes. The cord snapped and the alarm clock fell, dark-faced, to the floor with a clatter. The books on the shelves began to rattle.

"Get out," Hiccup said. He's seen this kind of activity. There was no stopping it. There was only surviving. "Now!"

Between the rattling books and crumping pages, they jumped out of bed and grabbed their clothes on the way to the door. As Hiccup fought to open in, for some force seemed to have glued it shut, Astrid quick pulled his shirt and pajama pants over her self, and fluffed out his shirt and pulled it down over his head. She had his pants ready for his to step into. He flung the door open at last and they ran into the hallway. Hiccup, realizing how naked his lower half was, quickly stepped into the pants Astrid held for him.

None too soon; James began to beat on the inside of the guest room door. It, too, had been glued shut. James shouted, "Hiccup! Astrid! What is going on out?"

Why had their door opened, then? Unless the spirit had wanted it.

"Poltergeist!" Hiccup shouted as he made for the stairs. Outside. They needed to get outside and away from her father's angry energy. It must have returned with the ritual – Hiccup saw no other way that he could have lingered in the house without Astrid or him or James knowing about it.

Hiccup made it to the stairs and had his foot on the first step. He turned around to look at Astrid, and he saw it: the manifestation. The apparition looked horrible, less like a person and more like a thick fog with a warped face. It looked somewhat like Randal, but the twisted, anger part of him. He leered at Astrid.

"Astrid, look out!"

Astrid turned and jumped at the same time. Hiccup stepped back into the hall so she would have room to avoid being touched by the manifestation. Her father's foggy appeared grew arms, then a neck, then a torso; it lunged at her. Its ghostly hands caught her by the arm.

She stood at the top of the stairs, and Hiccup only saw his too-long pajama pants tangled about her feet too late.

She slipped.

She fell.

"No!" Hiccup shouted his throat sore. He lunged at her, not minding the ghost he went through; he didn't care about it's feelings right now. His fingers closed around her wrist, but she'd already begun moving backward.

She tumbled backward down the stairs and landed at the bottom.

Hiccup's heart fell, shattered, and lay there in a million pieces. The cry that came from his throat, however, paled to the one the foggy manifestation let out. It clamored down the stairs, half-fog, half-ghost, and collapsed beside Astrid.

Hiccup, his feet refusing to work properly, held on to the banister and made his way down the steps. He felt like throwing himself down them, too.

"What have I done?" the apparition cried, over and over again. "What have I done? My baby girl…"

"You didn't kill her," Hiccup said to the spirit of Randal. Bleary white eyes looked up at him. Even though ghostly, he cried. The words caught in his throat like broken glass, piece of his heart, maybe. "She slipped. You tried to catch her. I saw you. You didn't push her. It was an accident. They…they happen."

Randal took these words in, nodding, crying all the while. "She…she didn't…"

"She didn't cheat on Eret," Hiccup said. "It was me she was seeing. I was like a ghost, to her."

Randal cried harder.

"You did what any father would have," Hiccup said, even thought he doubted what he said. "You wanted to protect her from a mistake, a huge mistake, and after finding out what your own wife had done, you had doubt about any woman. You feared Astrid would make the same mistake Ingrid did."

Randal nodded. "I didn't mean for this to happen."

"I know," Hiccup said. "I believe you. I saw."

Hiccup, refusing to look at Astrid, to take in whatever broken angle her neck had taken, or whatever other bones had broken, kept his attention on Randal. Randal, however, hadn't looked away from his daughter. When his eyes changed, when his brows rose, when his mouth twitched, Hiccup risked it. He looked down at Astrid.

She looked back.

Hiccup fell to his knees. "Astrid?"

"Everything hurts." She grimaced.

Slowly, Astrid sat up. She put a hand to her head where a cut had appeared. She touched her fingers to it and winced.

"Astrid?" Randal asked, his fear fading.

Astrid glanced at the apparition of her father. Confusion turned to acknowledgement. "I thought I heard you two talking. It wasn't a dream?"

"I guess not," Hiccup said. Piece by piece, his heart stitched back together. He quickly checked Astrid over. "Does anything feel broken?"

How would they take her to the hospital without identification? Without health insurance? Without a medical history?

Astrid wiggled each of her limbs. "No."

"No broken bones," Hiccup said. He looked to Randal, who looked beside himself with joy. "See? She's fine. Nothing to worry about."

"Astrid's fine," he repeated.

"I'm okay," Astrid said to him.

"I'm sorry," Randal said.

"It's okay, I forgive you," Astrid said, although her voice came out a bit strained. "You were doing what you thought was best. And… if none of that had happened," Her gaze shifted to Hiccup's.

He understood what she meant. She wouldn't have met him.

Randal's sobs turned joyful.

Hiccup recognized the soft glow that surrounded Randal's foggy apparition; it grew from somewhere within him, until it engulfed him. The soft light grew, dimmed, and vanished, and Randal was no longer there.

"Shit," James said from the top of the stairs. "You should write fiction, too, because no one is going to believe any of this."

"Speaking of fiction," Hiccup said, he turned to Astrid, "I worked on that romance we talked about."

"Are you two okay?" James asked.

Hiccup stood. His legs still felt a bit strangely sand-filled. He reached his hands down and helped Astrid to her feet, who then did another self-check up of her limbs.

"Good?" Hiccup asked.

"Yes," Astrid said. "I'll be a bit bruised tomorrow and sore, but I'm okay."

X

Since none of them could sleep after Randal's appearance, they reconvened in the living room with a glass of wine each. They spoke about the oddity of it all, of her father being called to the ritual, too.

"He carried guilt to his grave," Hiccup said. "He thought he killed his daughter, his only remaining child, and blamed himself. He never told anyone about it. Your mother declined quickly after your death and he probably blamed herself for it."

"I remember them sitting by the fire," Astrid said. "Father would be talking, but it was like Mother was there. She would stare at the fire without answering him. It was… sad to watch. Sometimes, I thought she could see or hear me, but I don't know. It feels so long ago."

"But they're at rest now," Hiccup said, picking up her hand. "She is with the children she lost and her husband."

"I'll be with them again, but not for a while," Astrid said.

"Not for a long while," Hiccup said.

Because none of them could sleep, even after the wine, they talked about a proper ending for Hiccup's book. Since they couldn't come out and say what exactly had happened, they needed a believable ending for the circumstances.

They decided, sometimes after midnight, that Astrid had indeed fallen and blamed her father; she had been restless because of it. She didn't remember falling or who had been there, and once she remembered, she became angry. However, after a counseling moment with Hiccup, she was able to move on and the house became quiet.

"In the fiction book," Hiccup said, starting to feel the drowsiness coming in now that dawn approached, "it will be much more exciting."

X

In the coming days, James's contacts came through. Astrid had been entered in the system as a immigrant from Norway, complete with passport, travel papers, and birth certificate. She had then met Hiccup through an online contact. They'd connected. They'd fallen in love at first sight like any sickeningly romantic love story. They'd eloped that summer and she, Astrid Haddock, now lived with him. Her new State ID card would expire in a few weeks and she would get a brand new, totally legal ID instead.

"And you're sure all of this is going to work out without a hitch?" Hiccup asked as James prepared to depart.

"I'm sure," James said. "Though, if it doesn't, I can smuggle you out of the country. I've got people close to the Canadian border."

"Where would we go?"

"I can find you a spot," he said. "It's easier to live under the radar when you're… living in certain places. Like me."

"Where do you live?" Hiccup asked.

James smiled. "It's a secret. I'd have to blindfold you the entire way. Inducing the flight."

Hiccup and Astrid watched him drive his rented car down the drive and out of sight.

"He's a bit strange," Astrid said. "But I like him."

"We can't send him a Christmas card though," Hiccup said as though it ruined the entire friendship. "We don't know where he lives."

"Can't you send one faster through the internet?"

"I can," Hiccup said. "But it doesn't have the same luster as the real cards that you can tape up over the doorway."

They wandered back into the house – their house. They had a book to write together, because Hiccup admitted that he didn't have experience writing romance. He would finish his nonfiction book about the house and send the completed draft to Heather. He would call her and Fishlegs for a weekend getaway. He would call his parents. He would, in time, introduce them all to his wife, but that was at least another day away.

Before that, he would take Astrid shopping for her own clothes and hair products. They would consume a historical documentary a day, and Astrid would come back from the library with five books, the maximum number allowed to a patron, and read while Hiccup wrote.

On a cool autumn day, Stoick and Valka would come to their son's home on his request and be delighted to find the charming young woman who'd moved in. Hiccup would hold off on the 'we also eloped' part of the talk until after dinner, to which his father beamed and hugged his son and daughter-in-law so tightly their ribs creaked.

X

That winter, their first winter together, Astrid and Hiccup woke up to a light snowfall. It had been snowing a while, and it covered the ground and bare tree limbs.

"Look at that," Astrid said, in a red sweater she'd picked out. "It's so beautiful."

Hiccup reached into his pocket and pulled out his phone. With a few touches of his forefinger, a charming guitar melody began to play. He set the phone on the mantel, under which a fire warmed the living room.

"Dance with me?" Hiccup asked, holding his hand out to her.

"Of course, kind sir," Astrid said, and she gracefully slipped her hand into his. They began to dance about the floor. "Oh, you've learned to lead."

"I had a great teacher," he said.

She laughed, a sound he'd never tire of.

And they dance, just like they'd danced nearly one hundred and thirty years before, and like they would in the many years to come.

The End