Ok, this idea bit me and had to be written down, and now it's brewing a potential sequel that I'm really excited about and…well, guard yourself.

Do you have your tissues? Do you have your open mind? If you answered yes to both of these questions, read on.

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Fifteen years ago, Astrid stopped yelling for long enough to try to kiss him and he flinched away. Fifteen years ago, what had always been strong and pure faltered. Fifteen years ago, their lives separated and it was for the better, it was what they both wanted.

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Astrid wakes up like every other morning, baby starting to sniff in the crib as her husband clamps well-muscled arms around her waist and tries to keep her from leaving the bed. She laughs and kisses his forehead, covered with undone black hair, kisses the blue lines of his tattoos. He reluctantly lets her go and she gets the baby, three months old and finally starting to look like her above that already familiar strong chin. He coos at her and latches onto her breast as she tucks his warm little body underneath her loose night tunic and shuffles to the kitchen.

Stormfly sticks her beak in the open window in greeting as Astrid cuts up yesterday's leftover bread and sets it on the table along with a dish of yak butter and a jar of apple preserves. Something feels different in the air today and she glances out of the window, repositioning the baby against her arm and looking for clouds, anything that would clue her into the strange texture of the air. It's a beautiful blue sky, but storms on Berk often don't give much warning.

She doesn't have to wake the other children, they come pattering out into the main room, six year old Rolf and three year old Ingrid, both sandy blonde and disheveled as they hug her legs in greeting. She bends down and they both kiss their little brother good morning before Eret helps little Ingrid into her chair and starts buttering her bread for her. Astrid is content leaning back against the counter and taking in the scene, Stormfly's early morning squawking comforting behind her.

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The Night Fury flies over Astrid's house a little before noon, followed by an unfamiliar purple dragon and she can't help but look this time, turning away from hanging up the wash to watch the newcomer's delicate indigo tail flutter in the wind behind it. It looks like Hiccup brought back a rider this time and she can't help but be curious, can't help but wonder what he found out there, who he found.

Her linens try to float away on the wind and she hustles to pin them to the drying line, relishing in Rolf and Ingrid's sparkling laughter from Stormfly's back as the Nadder gives them a careful ride around the lodge, wings held aloft for long, smooth hops.

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Eret gets back from the fishing boats early, slumped and tired on Skullcrusher's sloped shoulders and kisses Astrid hello, tipping her backwards with a laugh and ruffling their son's thick black hair, barely sticking out from the sling that holds him against Astrid's chest. The man gets distracted, lips lost against his wife's neck until the kids are giggling again and running out with their mother's drive, insisting daddy throws them in the air before anything else happens.

But tonight isn't the night for playing, and Eret remembers why he's home early, telling his wife that there's a meeting and a feast in town tonight to celebrate the chief's return. He doesn't need to hold Astrid's hand anymore when he talks about the chief, and she directs him towards clean, dry clothes with a wry grin that means she'll be watching him change.

They finally manage to get all the kids dressed and get decent themselves before piling onto two dragons and starting the slow, leisurely flight to the town center.

Astrid settles for the middle of the crowd, like she's done for the past decade, since fighting with the chief lost its luster, and Eret holds the older kids hands, chatting with one of the other fishermen while Hiccup says something to Gobber in the forge. She can't see much of the chief, aside from a few tufts of reddish hair poking above Gobber's hat, and she can't help but notice that it's starting to turn silver in places, much earlier than his father's turned. Stoick had that ruddy mane until his late forties, and Astrid still thinks it was the dragons that did him in.

For Hiccup it's probably one of the countless adventures she hasn't heard about.

The baby starts crying, and she pats Eret's shoulder, letting him know that she's leaving to let the little one nurse. He's been hungrier than the other two ever were, but it already seems like he's taking more after his father, little hands so strong it almost hurts her finger when he grips it.

Astrid is halfway out of the crowd when Hiccup starts talking, telling some story about the Southern Lands that makes the whole tribe laugh. She can hear blips of his voice through the cacophony, something about dragons and fights and failed treaties. Something about the purple dragon she noticed earlier, what must be the name of its rider.

Married.

She whips around, clutching her still crying baby against her chest and looking through the crowd in front of her at ridiculous, gray-haired Hiccup with his arm around a feisty looking twenty something red-head with a broad, confident grin.

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Her name is Isabella and she speaks Norse with a strange thick accent. She's vibrant and crazy, and her dragon can open a cask of strange, foreign wine with one flick of its glitzy blue talon. She touches Hiccup like she can't help it, small hands on his chest, his back, his arms, his hands. Weaving through his hair like she doesn't notice the silver.

Astrid forces herself to look away and raises another piece of mutton to Ingrid's mouth, giving her a stern face and gesturing to the little girl's half-full plate.

"Come on, sweetie, one more bite." The girl shakes her head and yawns, rubbing small, chubby fists over her eyes. "One more bite and you can be done." Ingrid glares at her mother, gray eyes narrow and familiar, refusing that last bandage on a wound. Refusing an early morning flight on a day off. She kisses her daughter's head as soon as she swallows the last bite of mutton and turns to curl up against her father's side. Eret pats her back and lifts her with one big hand, setting the girl on his lap.

Astrid looks back towards the front of the room, where Hiccup has his arm around Isabella, fingers tangled in waist length ruby tangles. She takes another sip from her tankard of deep plum wine and grimaces at the sweetness, a fruit she hasn't tasted that hasn't been missing from her life. Hiccup is red-faced and laughing and she looks away again, checking on Rolf, who's leaning against Eret's other side and nibbling on one last carrot. The baby has been asleep for a while, tucked tight to her chest, so unbearably warm and sweet.

"What's the matter, beautiful?" Eret leans over to whisper in her ear and Astrid smiles, leaning into the warm breath.

"Oh, nothing. Just…feeling a little cooped up." She simplifies, because telling him that she hates the wine would only make him fetch her some ale. And while it's wonderful that her husband is the kind of man who tries to fix the things she hates, sometimes she just wants to hate things. She takes another sip of wine, and it's no better, no less sweet and almost syrupy on her tongue.

"How about I get the older ones to bed and meet you at home?" He nuzzles the soft spot behind her ear and hinting that they'll finish what they started earlier when she helped him change. She smiles and pats his knee under the table before stopping to toy with Ingrid's little boot and making the sleepy little girl squirm and laugh.

"You are the best," she turns her head to kiss him, a hint of what's to come as he pulls away with that smirk, still deliciously smug somehow after ten years. She bites her lip and he leans in to kiss her and she wonders if they should start talking to the builders about adding onto the house. Again. "I'll be home in a bit, alright?"

"Can't wait," he grins and stands, holding Rolf's hand and easily hoisting Ingrid up on an arm. "Oh! And before I forget, do you think you can talk to the chief about naming the little man soon?" Astrid ruffles the baby's hair on impulse, combing her fingers through the fine black strands. "The baby is starting to lose its charm."

"Oh," she glances again towards the front of the room, towards Isabella and Hiccup, kissing in front of a raucously drunk crowd. "I don't think it's really the right time."

"You'd rather interrupt their honeymonth, then?" Astrid glowers at the table.

"I do owe him one."

She remembers ten years ago, hiding under the furs and laughing while her shirtless new husband answered the door to an awkward looking Hiccup, asking to borrow Stormfly for Nadder training. She hadn't really noticed him at the ceremony, so caught up in her and Eret's little world, but in that moment she realized that he'd seen her bedhead first and his was the first bed she slid into giggling.

That visit ruined a solid day of her otherwise glorious honeymonth, and she's tempted to reenact it with a shrieking, nameless baby in tow.

"I'd like to get him named sooner rather than later," he kisses her one last time before adjusting his grip on Ingrid and making his way to the door, reminding Rolf to hold his hand tightly through the drunken crowd.

"We're not naming him Eret Jr." Astrid shouts over her shoulder and hears half of her husband's laugh before it's entirely overtaken by the crowd.

She finishes the tankard of too sweet wine, sucking on her teeth and trying to dispel the taste. Someone offers her some more and she turns it down, drumming her fingers against the table and cringing at her uneven fingernails. She hasn't filed them in what must be weeks, and it jumps to the top of her agenda. After talking to the chief about naming.

They could have had Spitelout do it while he was gone, probably even Gobber, but Eret trusts Hiccup more with these things. They waited six months to name Ingrid for the same reason and it drove them absolutely insane.

But Hiccup looks so preoccupied, arms around Isabella, holding her against his chest and whispering in her ear. She's short enough that he has to stoop and Astrid idly wonders if the hunchback is aging him as much as the graying hair. She snorts and looks away, again, checking on her sleeping son and touching his perfect little nose with the tip of her finger. He really does look like his father except for that nose, upturned slightly and soft in his already strong-featured face. Her mother already says he's going to be a ladykiller, but Astrid hopes not. She hopes he has far bigger dreams.

When she looks up from his sleeping face, Hiccup has his tongue down Isabella's throat and they're saying what must be an unbelievably heartfelt goodbye half in Norse and half in some strange chirpy language Astrid doesn't recognize. The hall is starting to empty, and she assumes that the wine ran out. Isabella gives Hiccup one last kiss, laughing and whispering something in his ear that makes him flush before nearly dancing off with Phlegma, purple shimmery dragon fluttering at her heels. Hiccup grins after her for a second before running his hand back through his silvering hair and turning to look around the hall.

His eyes lock on Astrid and she freezes for a moment before waving and standing, cradling the baby close with a hand on the back of his head. Hiccup falters, eyes catching on the bundle like he absolutely forgot she'd have a baby. He probably did, and that makes it easier somehow, chief and citizen.

"Hey, Astrid, what's up?" He asks, still flushed with that ghost of a smile haunting his face as he weaves between the tables towards her, stopping on the other side of her long bench.

"Oh, nothing—" the pleasantries sting, fake and chirping, and she wishes she were at home, open and comfortable. "We need a naming ceremony for the little one, hopefully before the wedding, he's three months already." She rocks his sleeping form slightly, holding him close to her chest. "Oh, and congratulations by the way. On the wedding."

"Congratulations yourself," he grins, the plastic chiefly grin that she used to make fun of in another era. It hasn't changed, even though the rest of his face is different, windchapped and heavily freckled, silver streaks running through still boyish hair around his face. She doesn't think she's seen him this close since Ingrid was the resident baby. "Three months, huh?" He leans in a little closer, looking down at that tuft of black hair. She doesn't think she's ever seen him look at a baby so closely, and maybe Isabella really is the lucky one, settling Hiccup down.

"Do you want to hold him?" And it's almost an accidental offer, but her hands are carefully lifting the sleeping babe out of its sling and holding him in her arms with a gentle, practiced bounce.

"May I?" He holds his hands out and she carefully sets the baby in his arms, shushing him gently as he squirms in his sleep before curling into Hiccup's chest, still and quiet. "He's quite the sleeper."

"Already sleeping through the night," she's filled with motherly pride.

"He looks a lot like his father."

"Except for the nose," she points out too proudly and Hiccup nods.

"The nose is all you," he rocks the baby, a bit uneven, and she starts to feel strange, cold without the baby in his sling. "What are you thinking about names?"

"Eret, son of Eret, if you ask my husband," she laughs, "but that's not happening. I like Arvid, after my grandfather."

"Arvid Hofferson, I think we can handle that, huh big guy?" He coos to the baby, and all she can see is a little red-headed child latched onto his young wife. The kid will probably be adorable. "Uh, tomorrow morning, I have a meeting with the council," he steps around the end of the table to offer her the baby, obviously nervous to hand him anywhere. Astrid takes him back with a shush and tucks him back into his sling, cosy and comfortable with his warm weight against her front. "But if you and Eret come by around noon, I should be free."

"Thanks," she nods, backing up a step before edging forward around him and pausing to look over her shoulder. "And seriously, congratulations."

He smiles again, frozen at twenty beneath tired eyes and silvering hair.

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Arvid likes his name, if a three month old baby can like his name, and a week later he oversleeps for the first blissful time. It makes Eret late for the boat and he's dashing out the back door with his pants half on, Astrid laughing after his white rear in the sunlight as she retrieves the finally hungry baby from his crib and goes to wake the other kids.

She's finding something for breakfast while Rolf and Ingrid yawn and rub their eyes at the table when someone knocks at the door. She swears under her breath and tugs her sleep shift over Arvid's head, unwilling to tug the baby away from his breakfast and cause a tantrum before looking out the window.

Hiccup is at the door, hair more red than brown in the sunshine and she bites back a louder curse, bouncing Arvid slightly and peeking her head out of the window to talk to him.

"It's not really a good time, chief, what do you need?"

"Ok, when is a good time?"

"Probably not today," she tries to brush him off, but he cocks his head, hair shifting sideways and revealing a silver glimmer along the roots. He looks old, she probably looks old too. "Overslept." She simplifies, and from the way he looks away, it's too private, too much information.

It's still so easy to do that with him, it's the slip she never quite recovered. Anyone else in the village asks her something and she winds around the question, keeping her strong face to the wind. Hiccup gleans the truth from her without even trying, but she's done hating him for it. It made her miserable enough for those long five years she wrestled with herself.

"Not this afternoon or—"

"We're in the middle of breakfast, chief. Can I come into town later, or something? If this is really that important."

"I haven't eaten yet," he says it like an offer, like he's giving her something, breakfast with the chief. His eyes say otherwise, almost nervous even as he squints against the sun.

"Let—I'll go get dressed and be right back," she sighs, nearly stalking back to her bedroom and changing, staring wistfully at her armor for a moment before passing over it for a practical dress. She wore the armor the entire time Rolf was a baby, and it ended in far too many bonked heads to really be practical.

But right now, she could use the extra layer of protection.

Arvid is fussy, exactly why she didn't want to cut his late breakfast short and she burps him onto a rag on her shoulder as she opens the front door, waving Hiccup inside and turning to the two older kids at the table.

"Say hi to the chief," they both wave and Hiccup takes an awkward seat at the head of the table. She almost asks him to move, because that's her husband's seat and it looks too strange, but Arvid starts fussing harder, little fists clenching and unclenching in the fabric of her dress. "Oh, hey, you're alright," she coos to him, searching through the cupboards one-handed for something for breakfast.

"Someone isn't so happy this morning," Hiccup comments and when Astrid glances at him, he's waving at a shy Ingrid, who's hiding her face in her dress and peeking out from blonde bangs with one gray eye.

"He had his breakfast cut short," she bounces the baby against her hip and finding half a loaf of bread and a small basket of fish jerky. "Sorry, we don't have much, we're going to the market tomorrow." She offers the explanation as a pleasantry and retrieves the dish of yak butter, setting it in the middle of the table and setting about slicing the bread with a dagger someone left on the counter. It feels like Eret's, distinctive grip worn into the handle.

"Do you want me to hold him?" Hiccup offers as she struggles on the last slice, shushing the fussy baby and trying to keep the dagger sawing smoothly.

"It's fine." Again, with the pleasantries. Mostly, she doesn't want to deal with the shrieking upset baby that'll come out as soon as she hands him off, and she wishes she could just tell him that.

'Hiccup, you don't know what you're doing and he'll start wailing.'

Not Hiccup. Chief.

She's glad she stuck with the typical answer.

"Looks like you've got this down anyway."

It's too complimentary, reaching, and she can't quite restrain her scathing look. "No sarcasm, I'm just impressed. I can barely make breakfast two handed."

"Well, that's not something you have to worry about for that much longer."

She sits at the other end of the table and starts buttering two slices of bread, cutting them in half and setting them in front of the kids.

"Am I going to stop eating breakfast?" He deadpans and Rolf snickers, chewing on a nibble of crust.

"You're getting married, probably handing off the breakfast duties." He stares at the table for a moment before grabbing a slice of dry bread for himself. "What? Is she marrying you for your cooking skills?"

"Nothing like that," he shakes his head and gestures towards her. "It's just strange seeing you like this."

"Married? A mom?" She searches for clarification, wishing for that armor like nothing else. "It didn't exactly happen overnight, you know. It's been ten years in the making."

"Why don't you come to village meetings anymore?" She wonders what brought this on, why he's suddenly here asking her this.

"Is that why you urgently needed to have breakfast with me? To ask why I don't come to meetings?" She bounces Arvid, kissing his baby-smooth forehead and shushing him.

"I—with Isabella…I've been thinking a lot about what happened to us, and I don't want it to happen again," he glances at her and her kids, and her hearth.

"With Isabella."

"Exactly," he nods.

"We broke up, it happens," Astrid looks over at Rolf, who's listening a little too intently, already a little too bright for his own good. Ingrid seems absolutely captivated by Hiccup, smiling and snickering whenever he glances her way.

It's Ingrid the little flirt who's going to keep her up at night, isn't it?

"We…exploded."

"I can't do this right now," she glances again at Rolf, who sheepishly looks away from the conversation like he hasn't been eavesdropping. "You're welcome to finish your breakfast but—" Arvid's fussing kicks up a notch and she mutters a prayer under her breath, wishing for five minutes of peace to let the grumpy baby eat.

"How about Isabella watches the older kids for a few hours?" His face lights up when he says her name and Astrid bites back a retort about not needing a babysitter. "She's great with kids."

"This is going to take a few hours?"

"I'll fly them over on Toothless, they'll love it."

"Hiccup," she admonishes, and it strikes her that she can't remember the last time she said his name out loud. "I don't get why you think this is so necessary, we have nothing to talk about. It was years ago, we've both grown up."

"We—" he sighs, and Rolf watches him like a hawk, waiting for that ride on a Night Fury. The kid spends too much time with Fishlegs and the book of dragons. "You used to be my best friend."

"Is this really going to take hours?" Astrid repeats her question, thinking about the pile of laundry in the bedroom, the dozens of dirty cloth diapers piled in the tub of lye water out back.

"I just want to understand."

The curiosity is oddly welcome, unlike the rest of this situation.

"Are you sure your intended can handle these two?" She ruffles Rolf's hair as the boy starts to bounce excited in his seat.

"Absolutely."

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When Hiccup comes back after dropping her kids with Isabella, Astrid is outside of her house, daily batch of diapers hung to dry while Arvid lays on a soft blanket in the grass, small hands bracing against the ground while he lifts his head and mouths a few brightly stained wooden toys, covered in bite marks from Ingrid's teething. Stormfly rushes to greet Toothless, and the two nod like its old times.

That was the hardest part, telling Stormfly no. Of course the dragon still snuck off for a while to see her friend, and Astrid awoke to Toothless outside of her house a few times, but even that eventually petered to nothing. Skullcrusher is fun too, or at least annoying him is fun, and Stormfly isn't without company.

"What do you want to understand?" Astrid doesn't look at him, focused on nudging Arvid with the red cube he thought he lost, smiling when he snatches it from her and smacks it against the ground.

"He's already got quite the arm," Hiccup dodges the question, sitting down on the other side of the spread blanket. "And he's holding his head up."

"I sort of want to understand your sudden fascination with babies," Astrid laughs and shakes her head. "I distinctly remember Earwax asking you to hold her little girl, and you looked like you'd been hit over the head with a hammer."

"Marriage," he shrugs, staring down at Arvid as he gnaws on a green ball with slick pink gums.

"If there's something you want to talk about, just spit it out." She hates that she knows what he means by his tone, that she can still remember what Hiccup-brand trepidation sounds like, its identification ingrained too deeply in her brain to wash away.

"Why did you stop coming to town meetings?"

"It was better for the village," she reaches out to adjust the baby's diaper and tug him gently back towards the center of the blanket. "I was too angry with you and you wouldn't listen to anything I had to say, even if it was a good idea."

"Well then, how have we lasted this long without your great ideas?" He snarks, self-conscious and she rolls her eyes.

"You think I'd let anything fall apart? Snotlout relays the message."

"So it wasn't his idea for fish storage in that glacier?" He sits up straighter, some great mystery solved and Astrid rolls her eyes. "I knew that was a bit much coming from him."

"And Gobber, and Eret." She wonders if it sounds bad that Eret came last and amends herself. "But those are more our ideas than my ideas."

"I've been running a puppet government," he furrows his brow and straightens a corner of the blanket. She doesn't recognize his foot, it's a new model, impossibly sleeker, less moving parts, and she wonders if servicing the other one became a problem too far from Berk.

"What did you really want to talk about?" She's starting to feel uneasy with him here, ten years ago all over again before she learned to back off and fight her battles another day. Before Eret taught her.

"Where did we go wrong?"

"That's a bit of a loaded question, isn't it?" She glances over her shoulder towards the water, searching the horizon for a fishing boat and Skullcrusher resting on deck. "I don't even know if I remember, it was so long ago and we were so young."

"You were trying to help, but it felt like I couldn't breathe, like being chief was going to kill me."

"I knew you could do it," she shrugs. "Especially with everyone's help. The only problem is that you didn't want help."

"And you started yelling at me to ask for help," he accuses her and she rolls her eyes, fixing Arvid's tiny tunic.

"It's a little late to play the blame game, don't you think?" She waits before looking up at him and sighing. "I yelled, you yelled, I called you a coward and you said I had a stick up my ass. We were kids who had to be adults all of a sudden."

"It's that simple for you?" He asks, staring at the baby. Arvid totters on one hand and falls to his stomach, grunting and looking towards his mom with a bobbly too big head. She ruffles his head and offers him a wooden yellow block, which he promptly sticks in his mouth.

"Look, Hiccup," she sighs and falters, because what she's about to say doesn't feel true anymore, even if it is. "I'm thirty five, I'm married, I have kids, I—we were just such a long time ago, it was a different world, and—"

"You wonder if it was real, or if we were just caught up in some crazy, juvenile romance?" He fills in her thoughts perfectly, better than she would have and she swallows hard.

"Exactly."

"It would have been easy to marry you that summer," he winces at the thought and Astrid stares at Arvid's perfect little chubby arms. "But I didn't."

"No, you didn't. Can't we just accept that it's probably for the best?" She sounds a little too desperate, a little too emphatic and Arvid fusses, cuing on the pitch of her voice.

"But I don't understand why we had to scream at each other for five years."

"I still don't understand why you want to talk about this, Hiccup." She shakes her head and stands, fiddling with the half dry diapers and rearranging them to follow the sun. "Isabella isn't me, that's why you two are getting married." She bites her tongue and pauses, the moment too close and tight in her chest. "How did you two meet, anyway?"

In those five years of fighting, she pointedly never asked about his adventures, instead presenting him with a heap of viable documents at the dock and talking through them in measured tones that never quite disguised the fact that he made her want to yank her hair out. She never wanted to know everywhere he'd been, everything he'd seen. All the women he'd met.

It took her so long to get over him, and she resents her own inability to move on more than all those times they yelled. All those times they fell back into bed even when they were long through.

She knows now how hard those five years were on Eret, he already felt for her, he hated seeing her tear herself up. All that time she spent letting Hiccup fester, she could have been healing with Eret.

"I was down really far south and got into trouble with some pirates. This crazy cloud of red flew in and started giving it to them, and I wasn't anywhere near fluent in the language, but I could pick out a few choice swears," he smiles, "and these big guys were cowering, I learned later that it was her big brother and he was supposed to send the cute ones her way to scam."

"She scammed you?" Astrid sits back down and checking the baby's diaper, because of course he always makes another as soon as she's done with the laundry.

"She tried. I didn't have any money, but I offered to help her with a dragon problem in exchange for the rescue. Of course I still didn't know that the pirate was her brother. She took me up on the offer, that's how we found Aurora, her dragon, the sneaky thing had been breaking into her house." He smiles at the memory, tapping his foot on the ground. "I stayed there about a month and she informed me she was coming home with me. But of course 'home' and 'marriage' sound a whole lot alike, I proposed and…here we are."

"That's quite the story to tell your grandkids," she laughs and sits back down. Her story isn't as exciting, it's all long flights where she yelled at the wind and Eret listened, and a routine spar that turned into something more. Village meetings where he dragged her away by her wrist and held her against the wall until she calmed down and amped back up for an entirely different reason.

It's a story the grandkids probably can't hear until they're grown themselves.

"I never thought it'd happen to me, that's for sure," he's still grinning, like the wind is in his hair and he just leapt off of Toothless, and something in her chest twangs, unwilling to be forgotten.

"Me either." The conversation lulls and Astrid squints at the sky again, idly searching the horizon. "When is the wedding?"

"Six days now," he grins. "She's staying with Phlegma until then…hey, you two should get to know each other." She looks a little shocked at the idea, but Hiccup is unfazed. "Because I'd really like to be able to say we're friends again, Astrid. Maybe the actual puppet master can show herself instead of using Snotlout."

She punches his arm, it's a reflex that tingles all the way to her shoulder.

"Snotlout fit the glove better."

"No, Astrid, he didn't."

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