Welcome one and all to the fifth (and hopefully final) time rewriting this chapter.

Please. I need a beta. Help me.

If you're new here, welcome. If you were here when I first unleashed this story, I'm so sorry.

Every chapter will contain one third-person limited point-of-view switch between the two main characters. The first few chapters are awkwardly, painfully short because I got so tired of the exposition.

Obligatory Disclaimer That I'm Not Even Sure Really Means Anything: I don't own How To Train Your Dragon, and I don't own Tangled.

Chapter 1

It was kind of a shame that nobody but Astrid and her mother would ever see this place.

Astrid liked a clean home, even if she'd never admit it. It didn't take much effort to clean, with only the two of them there and so much - so much - time on her hands. And the sunlight flowing through the cracks added a lot to the room - and Astrid too. She was a sunny weather girl. She never felt quite as pleased with life as she did on days when clouds only dotted the sky and the sun was free in the sky. Freer than she'd ever thought she'd really be. Astrid let a grin escape her usually solemn face. Tomorrow was her birthday. And freedom was the only thing on her mind.

She glanced out the window, biting her lip as her eyebrows clenched above her eyes. If only she could get out there. She stepped to the window, perching her fists on the window frame. The golden brown stone was warm from sun exposure, and somehow the heat felt like it was flooding the lean muscles of her arms. Leaning over, she gazed at the land below... the only piece of outside she had ever seen. She wasn't really a romantic-minded person, but there it was, a fresh, inviting green. Mom sometimes graced her with a flower. Astrid always said thank you, and as tough as she wanted to present herself, she liked those flowers. Anything with that natural green was a magnet. She'd tried to duplicate it with her paints, but somehow the exact hue could never be replicated, and despite the hours of practice, she wasn't much of a painter. Mom made that pretty clear.

Astrid twisted, groaning happily as her back snapped with the turn, and looked around her home - her tower. She'd painted all sorts of things, all over the walls and ceiling. Astrid hung her fingers on a tiny knot in her hair. Mom said it was a blessing, but to Astrid, it only helped her as a healing power and a climbing rope. The rope made it easier to paint pretty much every inch of the place, and to just trapeze about the beams above her head. The healing aided her whenever she lost her footing. That happened less and less - Astrid was naturally agile, and she'd spent many hours balancing on the beams above to improve her grace. Mom thought climbing and balancing and twisting around was incredulously and indignantly unladylike - "Astrid, I can see straight up your dress!" - so Astrid had recently taken to such gymnastics only when Mom was out.

Which she was now. Astrid glanced out the window, towards the cave that served as an entrance to her little cove. Still no Mom. Astrid had questioned her about her doings - about any hint as to the outside world other than Mom's many horror stories and warnings - but Mom usually scolded Astrid harshly. What little information Astrid got came from the gifts her mother brought.

She twisted a bit more to see the little wooden clock above the window. It was already three in the afternoon. Mom had promised to be early today so they could spend more time together. Astrid had a plan, but at this point, she was getting too impatient to properly execute it. She perched on the windowsill, knees in a wide squat and toes curling on the stones. The sunlight warmed her dress and legs, and she sighed.

"I've cleaned, I've swept, I've polished, I've mopped, I've shined," she murmured to herself in a tortuously bored monotone. "I've read, I've painted, I've played guitar, I've knitted-" Astrid grimaced at that. "- I've had lunch, I've baked, I've sewn, I've made candles, I've played chess, I've climbed." She groaned at the ceiling. "I've read more, I've painted more, I've climbed more." Her gaze returned to the outside world. Despite her plethora of daily activities, she'd done this all before. The same things - every day. Nothing every changed.

Astrid wanted a challenge, an adventure - a chance to prove everything she already believed about herself. She could survive the horrors of the outside world. Better than survive - she could defeat them. She knew she could do it. Nobody would touch her hair. Thugs and ruffians would cower at her feet. The plague would halt in its tracks. Poison ivy would shrink into the ground. Quicksand would petrify itself in terror. If only she were allowed out there, she knew she would be fine. Her jaw clenched. She had to get out there.

Astrid couldn't spend all her days in this little corner, only hearing fragments of stories of the world beyond. She couldn't hide forever. She just- she just couldn't. That wasn't living. This cowering in a tower was not living. Being held back by fear and convention was not living. She didn't feel alive here. She needed to go.

Staring out the window at the great and dangerous world beyond, she grimaced in determination. "When will my life begin?"

If he closed his eyes hard enough, maybe they'd just disappear. And yes, Hiccup knew how stupid that sounded, but he was ready for an easy solution.

"Hiccup!" As usual, no easy solutions. Hiccup could hear Snot and his gang bellowing his name from a few yards away. He quickly and quietly advanced to the next branch of the tree he was hiding in. All the adventures he'd been in recently hadn't given him any grace, per se, but his coordination skills had definitely improved. Hiccup would be on the ground in a broken mess of arms and legs if not. He clutched at his leather satchel, refusing to let his mind yet again drift onto the important contents of the bag - and the reason he was being chased by three very strong, very brutal, and very furious thugs. Focus was key.

If only he could escape to the borders. Hiccup scowled and mentally scolded himself. He had one great advantage over these guys, and of course he stationed it so far away that it nearly became a hindrance for all the effort to reach it.

Hiccup glanced down and tensed to see Tuffnut Thorston at the foot of his hiding perch. The long-haired criminal was searching the bushes for Hiccup. "I'll get you, Hiccup," Tuffnut snarled. "That thing is rightfully ours, Pretty Boy."

"And we want it back," snapped an equally threatening low voice. Hiccup knew, from many run-ins with these particular adrenaline junkies, that the voice belonged to Tuffnut's twin sister, Ruffnut. They were the cronies of the somewhat notorious Snotlout Jorgenson, and they enjoyed any command to beat up whoever annoyed their boss. The Thorstons weren't necessarily evil. They'd just quickly figured out that beating people up and fighting without abiding by military rules only existed in one career path. When they weren't doing inconvenient things like trying to kill him, Hiccup liked them well enough.

The boy in the tree glanced at his satchel and, for the thousandth time, cursed its contents. He had to have it. It was an infuriating but true fact. Just imagining the huge trouble he'd be in if a few thugs managed to disappear with it in their grasp was making the hairs on his skin bristle. Why did it have to be so difficult to obtain and keep?

He looked around for another tree. He needed to escape these nutcases. Hiccup spotted a fairly sturdy-looking branch jutting out of a tree a few feet away from his current perch. The teen knew he wasn't athletic, but the fact that he was so lithe and skinny for his age allowed him to jumped farther than hefty people like Snotlout could. Sucking in a deep but silent gasp of air, Hiccup bent his knees. Focus, again, was ke-

"Hey, he's up there!" There was no time to plan. Hiccup launched himself into the next tree. He barely made it onto the thick wooden beam. Immediately, he picked out more branches, hopping from one to the other quickly as he could. He could hear the crashing footsteps and angry shouts of the terrible trio as they chased through the forest floor after him.

Hiccup knew this forest well enough. And even if Snot knew it too, nobody had any idea what was waiting for Hiccup at the borders of the kingdom. He could see it ahead, marked by a thin wooden fence somebody obviously only erected for aesthetic purposes. Though available sturdy branches became sparser and sparser, Hiccup was determined to escape. He stopped on a branch, took a deep breath, and let out a screeching, snarling roar. If his pursuers seemed surprised by his actions, they didn't stop to ponder their surprise. Hiccup tuned out their noise and listened. He grinned as low, burning growl responded, the kind of growl nobody noticed unless they were listening. And Hiccup was delighted to listen. Hiccup rushed ahead, chuckling confidently now. He would make it. These psychos, if he was lucky, would never see him again. Hiccup winced a bit at that thought. His luck had never helped him much in the past. Based on who Hiccup was as a person alone, he'd definitely most likely encounter them again. He clenched a hand around his satchel, felt for his precious cargo, and smiled. At least he had the crown. One step at a time.

He leaped onto the final branch, and grinned. He was now officially out of danger. Wrapping his arms and legs around an adjacent tree trunk, he shimmied up into the canopy. Switching over to a taller tree, he shoved a foot onto a small branch, gazing across the forest. A black blur soared toward him. Hiccup leaped off the tree and into the air. Within seconds, he landed with a hard thunk onto his best friend and only advantage.

"Hey Toothless," Hiccup said, scratching his cheerful dragon behind the ears. "Nice timing, as usual."

The obsidian-black dragon snorted, as if assuring Hiccup that his timing was nothing if not perfect. Hiccup rubbed Toothless' back and smiled. This – his perch atop his beloved dragon – was his favorite place in the world. This was where he belonged. Glancing around to check that nobody was noticing his huge scaly secret, he sighed happily.

"Alright, bud," Hiccup yelled over the wind whistling past them. "Let's find a place to rest, alright?"

The dragon purred in agreement. He jerked his large head to the slight left. Hiccup gazed forward to see a cluster of rocky mountains . . . with the tip of a tower pointing out from a valley between the rocky peaks.

Patting his dragon thankfully, Hiccup called, "Nice! We'll spend the night there too!" As his dragon turned towards the highlands, Hiccup briefly held the worry that somebody might live there. He immediately expelled the thought. To live in the middle of nowhere meant you had something to hide. And Hiccup knew that of everyone in this corner of earth, he was the only one with such colossal secrets.

Well. Everyone has to be wrong sometime, right?