Okay no listen I love Arvid so much. He’s a much more complex character than Eret in my head. Eret is so out of touch with his emotions but like when he feels them he acts on them. Arvid seems a little more calculating and he tries SO HARD and he’s a responsible boy who I just LOVE. Also Smitelout. I love her. The Ingrid/Smitelout drabble might be my favorite because she’s just an incredibly gruff character that is able to show and process emotions and I think that’s so rare.
Yesssss I get to talk about Arvid.
I think you’re right in a way, I wouldn’t call Eret III necessarily “complex”. I think his situation is continually complex and he has a lot coming at him all the time, and he’s really altruistic and empathetic by nature, so he’s constantly putting other people first in a way that kind of blurs his own internal conflict. Hell, his internal conflict is external a lot of the time due to the fact it often focuses on what path he wants to follow or what role model he wants to aspire to.
But Arvid…oh Arvid. It’s funny, because he grew up so in Eret’s shadow. Because Eret was Mom’s favorite, Eret was sheltered, and Eret needed more training to keep up with the rest of them. But more than that, Eret was smart. He’s dense occasionally, sure, but he was always a smart little shit. He was always figuring things out and learning too fast and Arvid grew up feeling so stupid and so bad about it and he deflected in all of the ways he knew how. He just…lied his ass off about being confident his whole entire life, and then he finds himself married and settled and…as it turns out, lying is a skill and no one suspects the big handsome bruiser to play them.
Like Arvid in Open Flames? I don’t think he’s told a single grain of truth, he’s like benevolently manipulative and it’s My Life now. It’s amazing. Big old puppet master who loves his friends and family and wants what’s best for them, but he’s also a bit inclined to decide what’s best for people whether they like it or not. I love him. He’s so good.
And yes!!! Smitelout. She’s…amazing, I love writing her and I’m so happy that it comes across that she’s so gruff but also emotive. She’s really only so gruff because she’s sensitive as hell, it’s a big old defense mechanism and Ingrid sees through it, especially when she’s going through constructing her own defense mechanisms. Ugh Smingrid. Ugggghghghh my lowkey favorite (or how lowkey considering the like 20k+ words of smut and relationship drama I wrote for them? Highkey. I can admit it. I’m big enough.)
Smingrid is AMAZING. We haven’t talked about Ingrid yet and like how? What a QUEEN. Their relationship feels so balanced in a way that I don’t understand? On the outside it seems like it shouldn’t work, but you think about it for a second and then you’re like.. they’re literally perfect for each other and they’re raising a SON together and that just makes me so happy. I think what you said about Arvid is so true and that’s why I like him and Aurelia together. Both are outcasts in their own way
INGRID. Ingrid. I.n.g.r.i.d. My daughter. Honestly, Ingrid hit me out of left field with everything. Like when she just showed up and was gay? Wasn’t expecting it. When she actually left? Wasn’t expecting it. When she came back hurting and fighting and hnnnnnngg. Smingrid. Smingrid is a carrot I dangled for myself when writing was slow going because you can’t actually remove the snotstrid from me it’s at my core ok? and it became like…a surprise favorite relationship. They’re so good together, it hurts me. I love them so much and now they have a baby and it makes me so happy, like, I want the best for them, my daughters. My girls.
But not forever because I’d die like...please keep talking to me about the boy? And the siblings? And the Fuse, my girl, and fifty one year old second chance Hiccstrid who stole my heart and just...that’s an open door, alright? Like, please keep it open? I know I need to write something else but damn, I can’t have a complete separation here. I can’t.
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The noise in the Mead Hall hits me like a physical weight after almost two months in the chief’s house and I pause in the doorway for a second, searching the crowd and maybe even waiting for a lull. For the crowd to pointedly look away like they all know something I don’t and confirm that the last year has been an elaborate dream during a coma from some unrelated head injury. At some level, it still makes more sense for me to have knocked myself out in that forest fire a year ago than it does for me to be at Arvid and Aurelia’s wedding feast with the Haddock crest on my pin. But the Hofferson sword he dug up this morning remains firmly planted in the center ceiling joist above me.
“I figured you might need this,” the chief appears out of the crowd beside me, holding a mug of what smells like mead towards my left and only unbandaged hand. The smell turns my stomach with its sickeningly sweet familiarity and I shake my head.
“Nothing hurts. Promise.” I try to show him by lifting my bandaged right arm as much as I can against the sling and the thick wool shirt and cape combination that Mom insisted I had to wear, but I don’t get too far. Stupid fancy clothes. Pouting got me out of some of the jewelry, although I’m still not sure how worth it that was, given how Ingrid was glaring at me the whole time from under her own pile of new clothes.
“No, I just--I mean, good, that’s good news, but I thought you might need it because your half-siblings just married each other.” He shrugs, wincing slightly like he’s not sure it’s something he should say, and it probably isn’t, but his daughter just married his wife’s son so I’m not judging the word vomit too much.
“That’s not the hardest thing I’ve made peace with lately.”
Maybe it’s temporary, but I can’t get annoyed at him the way I want or even the way that I used to. Maybe being stuck inside the last couple months with a rotating shift of family who all worked together to make sure I didn’t do anything myself or have any fun at all made the chief feel more like part of that family. In some strange, annoying, non-parental way, but part of it just the same.
Like Rolf keeps saying, it’s a documentation nightmare, and like with all documentation nightmares, I’m trying and succeeding at not getting too hung up on it.
“Are you sure?” He offers the mead again and if I’m not crazy, he’s swaying a little bit. “Might be your last wedding feast for a while without people pestering you with advice the whole time.” He raises an eyebrow at me.
“Whatever that means…” I laugh, brushing him off. As little I’ve been allowed out, it’s not really at the top of my freedom agenda to figure out whatever cryptic thing the chief wants to talk about.
“Well, are you going to see Fuse tonight?” This eyebrow wiggle is definitely drunk and it looks dumber against silver hair that it looks like he tried to comb. More likely Mom insisted on combing it, considering how many times today she threatened to trim mine. “Liquid courage in case you need to have any big conversations…”
I saw Fuse at the ceremony, but she was further back in the crowd. And I know she comes by the chief’s house almost every day, but seeing her will be different when she’s not taking care of me. Even though I haven’t needed that much care, because I’m fine and I’ve been fine for weeks.
“I spent enough of the last two months drunk, chief, I think I’ll sit this one out.”
“That makes one of us,” he sighs and the red shade of his face is sneaking past jubilant, heading quickly through tipsy and coming out somewhere in trashed drunk, “I avoided it for years, but it finally caught up to me.”
“What are you talking about?” I resist the urge to laugh at the way his head is bobbing slightly off center, even though it’s kind of my turn, given that everyone has repeated the greatest hits of my drunken sleep talking back to me for months now. But sometimes, a future chief is the bigger person.
Well, that and I’m hoping he says something ridiculous. I’m not chief yet.
“I have a married daughter,” he drinks from the mug he brought for me, “I’m old.”
“Is that how that works?” I snort, “I hate to break it to you, but I think you’ve been old for a while.”
“That’s what Astrid said,” he shakes his head, “guess I should just accept it as truth at this point.” He raises his mug in a sad sort of cheers and something over my shoulder catches his eye. Before I can check what it is, a familiar hand slides into mine.
“I almost didn’t recognize you,” Fuse squeezes my fingers and drops them and no matter how comfortably she’s been touching me, somehow it’s never enough.
It’s definitely not enough when I look at her and she’s smiling at me unguarded, her hair pulled back from her face with soft, pink-hued braids.
“Huh?”
“You know,” she tugs on the edge of my bear skin cape and bites her lip like she’s looking for the right words. “In actual clothes.”
“Oh,” I slide my arm around her waist, the ends of her hair tickling my wrist, and it’s still thrilling that she leans into me. “You should have seen me trying to get a shirt on over this,” I hold up my bandaged arm and the armpit of my crisp new shirt tugs at my skin where it’s not hanging quite straight. “It took me three tries. Ingrid was laughing so hard I thought she was going to pass out.”
“Maybe you need help out of it,” the chief says and I’d entirely forgotten he was standing there. I jump, reflexively pulling Fuse closer as she flushes, looking down at her feet. The blush adorably reaches her earlobes and stretches partially down her neck in a way I never get to see when her hair is in it’s usual messy braids and my chest tightens.
And of course, in parsing through that, I realize that the chief just has to make me sound like an idiot who can’t take care of myself when Fuse is around. I try to tell him to go away with my eyes but unfortunately, the last couple months have vastly depleted the potency of the Hofferson glare and he wasn’t ever that susceptible in the first place.
“I can get it off by myself,” I huff at him and he snorts. Fuse looks at me and blinks like Aurelia does when she’s waiting for me to catch up and I freeze.
Oh gods.
“No, no, I didn’t mean it like that,” my face feels like it could light the forge from a distance and he still looks so smug and drunk and oh gods, that even worse. “But you did, that’s...disgusting, for one--”
“Eret,” Fuse laughs, tips of her ears bright red as she pats me on the shoulder with a rare, unbandaged hand.
“It’s just,” I look up at the chief, “not funny. And none of your business. And I’m going to go find Arvid and Aurelia now so…” I try and tug Fuse with me but of course the chief has to keep talking.
“Wait, just a second, while you’re here there’s something I actually wanted to ask you about,” he looks at Fuse, patting his pockets and spilling mead down his arm, “I don’t have my notes right now, but there’s a cliff over on Bogsbreath island that looks like good granite for the sea wall that we talked about--”
“Sea wall?” I hate being out of the loop with everything that’s going on. I keep hearing snippets and seeing half finished drawings, but apparently a broken arm means my head is useless. “What sea wall?”
“With that volcano gone, waves are higher from that direction. Last week’s thunderstorm had them breaking about five feet below the hanger.” The chief is one of the only people who can talk to me about what happened without staring at my arm or my scars and I appreciate it even more when Fuse flinches, eyes darting to my sling as the corners of her mouth tilt down. I pull her closer to my side with the hand on her hip and she lets me, her shoulder curling under my arm. “I was thinking a kind of primitive sea wall a couple miles off of the coast might fix it without getting in the way of the thermal vent.” It’s the chief’s turn to be sheepish, but it’s different, because it’s about him being wrong not me being hurt, “dragons are still migrating towards it. Mostly old ones, and numbers are stable but--”
“It’s probably best we stay out of their way.” I’ve earned the right to be smug about it but the chief sighs at my tone anyway.
“But, as I was saying, we don’t really have the material available right now so…” He looks back at Fuse and she’s surprisingly silent, leaning into my side a little harder and staring flatly at him. “Ok, I’ll spell it out, I was wondering if you could try to break down this cliff I found on Bogsbreath island into usable material.”
“I…” Fuse exhales and shakes her head, oddly stiff, “a whole cliff? And granite? I…” She looks up at me, fully regrown eyebrows knitting together, “that might be a little...out of my abilities, Chief.”
“Fuse,” the chief chuckles, “it’s not like it’s an entire volcano.”
“No, I mean it.” Fuse shrugs and definitely doesn’t sound like she means it. Her voice is thin, like her usual firepower isn’t there to back it up, “I’m not sure how to take down a cliff. And Eret needs me here--”
“I’m fine.” I’m not really, I’m worried that there’s none of my favorite giddiness on her face at the prospect of taking down an entire cliff. “You should go.”
“I really don’t think I know how to do what you’re asking.” She shakes her head, shoulders stiff under my arm.
“You just blew up an island, I bet you can figure it out.”
“Really, Chief,” she shakes her head, her hair tickling the back of my hand, “I wouldn’t know where to start.”
That’s even more obviously a lie. And a lie she sounds sad about, like there’s something in her way she doesn’t think she can ask for help with.
“Do you need parts or something?” I look around the room, “is Smitelout giving you trouble? I’ll--”
“No,” she steps out from under my arm, “I just don’t know if I can.”
That’s honest. I look between her and the chief, who’s drunk enough he seems content to watch us talk with that weird smile on his face, like all his plans are working out.
“I’ll go scout it out with you.” Those are truly the magic words, or more likely, any words suggesting I do anything fun or more than ten feet off of the ground, because Mom chooses this moment to walk up next to the chief, leaning her head on his shoulder. Her mug of mead looks less than full and her face is almost as red as his is. “Hey, Mom,” I try to act casual, “great feast, right?”
“You look suspicious,” she smacks her lips and takes a drink, “what’s going on?”
“He wants to come scout a cliff with me,” Fuse crosses her arms, making eye contact with my mom, I’m assuming to avoid my betrayed expression. “That I’m supposed to blow up.”
“And who told you that you were supposed to blow it up?” Mom glares at the chief and he’s drunk enough to be brave enough to tap her chin with his knuckle in answer. She sighs, nostrils flaring and eyes sappy and fond and I look away because that’s still gross. “Hiccup...”
“I want to go, Mom.” I look back at Fuse and her eyes are oddly, pleadingly wide. “It’s been two months. Imagine what a pain in the ass I’ll be if you try to keep me locked up any longer.” I point at my arm, “these bandages? Coming off next week, allegedly, just try keeping me inside when I’ve got two arms at my disposal.”
“Locked up? Uh huh, I can see how shackled down you are right now.” She shakes her head and the chief grins at her again, all lovesick and gray-haired and irritating and I should have walked away when I had the chance.
“Doesn’t seem like he minds that much.”
“I’m right here,” I look at Fuse for backup, “I want to go with you.” I don’t think I’ve ever seen my mom drunk, but I hope she actually is as I weigh my next tactic. “I mean, I’m still the future chief, I’m pretty sure I can go without asking anyone, but I’d rather go with you.”
Fuse’s cheeks color a little more and I jut my lower lip out like worked when I was newly injured. I thought at some point, she’d realize how stupid it looks and stop falling for it, but that hasn’t happened yet. Hel, maybe she does know it’s stupid, but still likes it for some reason because she sighs, tucking her hair behind her ear and looking back at the chief and my mom.
“I really don’t think I can do it, but I’ll scout it out.”
“And I’ll go with you,” I nod, waiting for my mom to shut me down. She’s tired when she sighs and takes more of a gulp than a sip out of her drink.
“I know how trying to stop you works out.” There’s a strange moment of that terrifying female telepathy that I’ll never understand when she nods at Fuse.
Even with the look, it doesn’t feel like permission and I relax. After months being chief or at least partly in charge, going back to being someone who had to ask for water was more shocking than I could have anticipated. And this is just another piece of proof that things have changed and the changes are sticking. Mom can’t tell me not to do things. She can give advice and I should probably take it the majority of the time, but they aren’t orders anymore.
“In that case, I should go tell Stoick I’m taking my dragon back tomorrow,” I offer Fuse my hand and the escape from the chief’s weird attention that it implies and she takes it. She follows me towards the other end of the hall but more importantly, away from the chief and my mom before they can make any more gross faces at each other. Or comment anymore on Fuse and me. Especially that one. Especially the chief.
But I also need to talk to her, because Fuse not wanting to blow something up is unheard of and she has some reason she wouldn’t say in front of the chief. I pause in a slightly quieter bubble next to the line of ale casks against the wall and Fuse drops my hand to pick up a mug for herself. I can’t help but notice that her long pale fingers are uncharacteristically soot free and unbandaged and I feel bad that she’s spent so much time with me that she hasn’t had any in her workshed.
It’s silly, but I miss the soot. I like how her bandaged fingers leave streaks on me that I find later, like greasy little souvenirs.
“Do you want some?” She offers, voice brightly off kilter and I narrow my eyes, leaning back against the edge of the table.
“You’re trying to distract me.” I gesture at her and my eyes follow, lingering for a second on the deep green belt around her waist before flicking back to her face. “Why don’t you want to blow up that cliff?”
“The chief said it was granite,” she shrugs one shoulder, not quite holding eye contact.
“You love blowing up granite.”
“No,” she sighs, mouth twitching to the side slightly and I try not to smile at what a profoundly bad liar she is. She avoids me for her mug for a second before looking back at my face and shaking her head. “It’s my third favorite, maybe, but how did you know that?”
“I just knew you liked it, I didn’t know you had a definitive ranking.” I tease her and she blushes, always unsure if I’m insulting her until I smile. This is better than being so drunk it reoccurred to me that I was nearly naked every few minutes and sputtered about it all over again. Sometimes, I almost hate how much I remember more than I hate the long fuzzy periods that I can’t quite put together.
“I don’t,” she shrugs, a strand of shiny pink falling over her shoulder, “I should have said in the top five, but—”
“But what?” I reach out and grab her wrist, sloshing ale on the ground between us but pulling her in anyway. I don’t know why it’s cute that she has a ranking system or cuter that she’s defending it. I do know that it almost makes me more concerned that she’s so hesitant to blow something up, because that means something might really be wrong. “I’m sorry, I’m just going to need an actual, scientific reason to believe you can’t at least try to obliterate something.” My hand slides from her wrist to her shoulder and I kiss her forehead.
“Eret,” she sighs, almost chastising, and it makes me all too aware of my knee against hers and her shoulder blade that’s obvious against my palm without the vest I haven’t seen in weeks. And as overwhelming as the crowd was when I first walked in, now the background hum is only making it easier to focus on her, even if being this close makes it hard to focus on anything except the fact that she’d let me kiss her.
More than that, she’d kiss me back. Maybe I could use my fully clothed disguise to convince her that I’m not hurt and she’d keep kissing me instead of acting like I’m going to break.
“What?” I pull her closer and she freezes when her arm bumps against my sling, pulling back slightly. “It’s fine. It doesn’t hurt.”
“You wouldn’t tell me if it did.”
“Probably not,” I look down at my pale hand sticking out of the linen and wiggle my fingers, “but it doesn’t.”
She looks up at me through her eyelashes and if it weren’t for my brother appearing in my peripheral vision, I could almost pretend that we were somewhere more private.
“There you are!” He points at me, the new silver ring on his finger startlingly obvious in a way I wouldn’t have expected. I stand away from the table and Fuse shifts away from me, tucking her hair behind her ear like she can hide her red face behind her hand. “I’ve been looking for you everywhere!” He’s too loud and I almost expect everyone to be irritated at a Hofferson acting up, but the people who glance over at us laugh and shake their heads. “Thorston!”
Fuse opens her mouth to respond but doesn’t get the chance because Arvid hugs her, pinning her arms to her sides and lifting her a good foot off of the ground. She yelps, looking at me with adorably wide eyes and he squeezes her another second before setting her down and turning to me. He wobbles slightly and I raise my eyebrow.
“Are you drunk?” I ask and he shakes his head.
“I’m married.” He shows me his silver band. I recognize a ring of Wingspark’s scales inlaid in divots that are Smitelout’s obvious handiwork. It doesn’t look half bad, not that I’m going to tell her that. “Look at this, I’m completely married.”
“As opposed to partially?” I look at Fuse, who still seems a little startled, and pat her shoulder. “You’re actually drunk, aren’t you? I didn’t think that was possible.”
“You’re my favorite brother,” he grins and claps his hand on my shoulder hard enough that my teeth clack together. “Where’s Rolf? Fuck that guy, you’re my favorite.”
“He’s drunk,” Aurelia walks up next to Fuse and shakes her head, sighing with obvious fondness at my brother. Somehow, it’s weird that she doesn’t look any different than she did this morning, and it occurs to me that my younger sister is someone’s wife. “He’s so drunk.”
“I’ve never seen him drunk,” I laugh, “I didn’t think it was possible, honestly.”
“He’s a friendly drunk,” Fuse frowns, patchy red clinging high on her cheeks. I’d guess she’s used to being explosive and even after a couple of months defused -- ok, that’s funny-- she’s probably not used to bear hugs sweeping her off of her feet. I’m just glad she and Arvid have reached some kind of truce after a decade of stinkbombs and glaring at each other.
Arvid kisses Aurelia on the temple, picking her up with one arm and swinging her in a circle. She’s resigned to it but smacks his forearm after a second, signaling for him to set her down and he does, remarkably gently considering how hard he squeezed Fuse. Aurelia shakes her head at him and looks at her own ring with an almost calm smile.
“Apparently,” Aurelia sighs, “and he chose a great day to do it. Really,” she looks at Fuse for another of those confounding female moments. “I’m guessing he’ll fall right asleep tonight.”
“Maybe that’s a good thing,” I look him up and down, taking in the slow sway of his shoulders relative to his feet. Being the only drunk one is miserable, being the sober one while my drunk siblings make a fool of themselves isn’t as bad.
“It’s not.” Aurelia shakes her head and Fuse grabs my hand.
“Why not?” I try to intertwine our fingers but she seems more interested in steering me than actually holding hands. “Sleeping it off is usually a good tactic.”
“You wanted to find Stoick, didn’t you?” She tugs but I don’t move, looking between her and Aurelia. It feels like another secret and I narrow my eyes.
“Well, yeah, but I wasn’t done with the rare opportunity to make fun of Arvid while he’s drunk.”
“Hey,” Arvid frowns. “I’m not that drunk.”
“You’re drunk enough, husband,” Aurelia smiles through what seems like secret-associated irritation when she uses the title and I get a little stuck on the fact that Arvid is someone’s husband. Arvid has a wife. “Drunk enough that I don’t think that title will actually be official until you’re done nursing your hangover.”
“What?” I look at Fuse for clarification and her nostrils flare slightly as she tugs on my hand again. That’s the face she makes when she’s embarrassed for me, and I’m more familiar with it than I should be comfortable with, but I don’t see what I’m doing right now. If anyone should be embarrassed, it’s Aurelia, of course he’s her husband—“No!” I glare at her, my sling straining against the reflex to point at her, “no, don’t talk about…that—”
“It’s my wedding, it’s kind of a part of a wedding,” Aurelia rolls her eyes, apparently too irked with my drunk brother to be embarrassed, “the consummation is implied—”
“I’m your brother. He’s my brother,” I take my hand from Fuse’s to point at Arvid and he laughs, sharing a mushy, mutual expression that makes fun of me in a context I don’t want to think about. “You guys are so gross.”
“Gross?” Arvid snorts and Aurelia shakes her head at me before looking at Fuse.
“Good luck with him,” she scoffs, a tinge of the chief’s joking suggestion in her expression and I shake my head.
“I’m going to go find Stoick, who isn’t gross—”
“Because he’s nine?” She has to try and get in the last word and I scratch the back of my reddening neck where it’s chafed against the strap of my sling. Fuse links her elbow through mine and I let her tug me away this time, shouting over my shoulder.
“And congratulations, by the way, because at least one of us has manners!” I shake my head when Arvid laughs and look over at Fuse. “I didn’t need to think about that. I was doing so well not thinking about that.”
“I tried to interrupt,” she must see Bang’s tail slash above the crowd when I do because she changes direction towards it without me nudging her, “but you were determined.”
“I’m too stupid for you to protect, apparently,” I sigh, bumping my shoulder against hers and grinning when Bang spots me and warbles, shaking his wings and making Stoick laugh from where he’s perched on his back. “Hey bud,” I untangle my arm from Fuse’s to set my hand on Bang’s nose and he croons, tail whisking across the wood floor.
“Hi Fuse,” Stoick greets her before me and I can’t really blame him, especially when she seems so pleasantly surprised, her eyes lighting up even as her shoulders stiffen slightly. She still doesn’t quite know what to do with him and she waves, chewing on her bottom lip. “Hey Eret.”
“I’ve got some news, dude,” I lean on Bang’s head with my left hand, scratching behind a short frill on his neck. Mom hasn’t been letting him inside enough because she has some crazy belief that if Bang and I were left even momentarily in the same room, I’d suddenly be in the sky and far away from the chief’s stuffy house. She’s right, but it’s still not fair. “Do you want to hear the news? Oh hey, guess what, I’m telling you anyway. I’m cleared to fly,” I pat Bang’s head again, “so tomorrow morning, you’ve got to give me my dragon back.”
“No,” he whines, laying down across Bang’s back and hugging him, “who am I going to take to class?”
“It’s terror training,” I nudge his back, “you have your own terror—”
“But then I can’t fly there,” he sits up cross-legged, “you could just fly with Fuse and I could keep him one more day? Pretty please?” He asks Fuse more than me and she shrugs.
“He could, but I think he’s been missing Bang as much as he’s been missing flying.”
“Fine,” Stoick puts his biggest, greenest eyes on, “could you give me a ride to training then? Please? If Eret is taking Bang away?”
“Squirt, I already told you I’d take you to training,” Ingrid walks up behind me and when she doesn’t give me her usual punch in greeting I look and see her holding Rolf’s baby. My half-nephew, or whatever the term for that is. He’s been around the house a couple of times since I’ve been coherent enough to help Rolf flesh out a few pages in the dragon manual and it’s not as awkward as it could have been. Rolf even let the chief help, some, likely because he was constantly pre-occupied with the fact that Ingrid kept practically stealing his firstborn.
“I’m hurt,” I put my hand over my sling in the vague location of my heart, “squirt is supposed to be my nickname. You’re replacing me?”
“Don’t be such a baby,” she rolls her eyes, bouncing her nephew on her hip and cooing at him. He takes her metal hand in his pudgy, tiny one and starts gumming at it. “We’ve got enough of those around here.”
“Speaking of that, does Rolf know you have him?”
“What? Are you going to tattle on me to Rolf?” She laughs, “that would make your Uncle Eret a traitorous little twerp. Yes, it would.”
“Ingrid,” Stoick clambers off of Bang’s back and adjusts his stiff new clothes, standing in front of Ingrid and tugging on the baby’s sock. “Fuse can take me to training tomorrow, you don’t have to.”
“I didn’t actually say that,” Fuse looks at me a little panicked, like she’s not sure how to get out of it, “Eret and I are supposed to go scout something for the chief.”
“Mom’s letting you leave the island?” Ingrid raises her eyebrow at me, “are you sure that’s safe?”
“I’ll be with Fuse.”
“That didn’t protect you last time,” Ingrid doesn’t snap but it’s not gentle either and the baby hiccups around her metal finger, his little face crumpling like he might cry that easily. He looks like Rolf more than his wife, I think, and maybe I’m projecting but there’s something like Dad’s brow there above warm brown eyes.
“That’s not fair,” I sigh and Bang presses his face to my leg. Stoick gets bored with the lack of attention and runs off and Ingrid and Fuse stand tensely opposite each other for a minute.
They didn’t hit it off right away, or so I heard. I was mad when I first heard it, because Ingrid owes Fuse more than anyone except for me, because Fuse was the one who talked her down when I didn’t know where to start, but they came to some kind of an arrangement after a couple days. Or I think it was a couple days. I don’t remember much except it was a lot easier to be quiet when Fuse was holding my hand instead of a family member looking at me like I was going to break.
“It kind of is,” Fuse says simply and I shake my head at her.
“No, it’s not—”
“I’m not even bringing any bombs.” Her voice is as serious as the determined look in her eye as she looks between me and Ingrid so quickly I’m not sure who she’s trying to convince.
“Dad’s been out a few times,” I add, “he hasn’t seen any signs of trappers anywhere nearby.”
“You don’t have to convince me that I can’t change your mind,” Ingrid shakes her head, adjusting the baby’s weight against her hip, “that’s why I have a new squirt. He still thinks I’m cool enough that he listens to try and impress me.”
“I still think you’re cool,” I make some stupid face that makes the baby smile and tug on her fingers. I haven’t minded having him around. Maybe that’s because no one makes me hold him or change his diaper, and he always laughs at my funny faces. Not that it means much, he laughs at the chief too, but I like to pretend it’s nicer when it’s me.
“Really Hofferson?” Smitelout spills half a mug of ale on Bang’s back when she stomps over, pointing at Ingrid’s hand, “you’re letting the best contender for this year’s ugliest baby contest chew on that?”
Bang nips at her heel and I nudge him away with my foot, glaring at her.
“This is my nephew,” Ingrid rolls her eyes, taking her metal fingers out of his mouth and wiping them on her new dress. Mom made her dress acceptably too and I think she hates it as much as I do if the way she’s really rubbing that baby drool into the wool is any indication.
“Well,” Smitelout blushes and stutters, taking another gulp of her ale before continuing, “look at him, how could I have guessed that?”
“Oh my gods,” Ingrid cocks her hip, ignoring her nephew tugging on her loose hair as she turns on Smitelout. “You can’t walk around insulting people’s babies.”
“I knew it wasn’t your baby,” she rolls her eyes and Fuse raises her eyebrows at me in a way I read as her wanting us to make our exit.
“Ok, but you still shouldn’t really insult babies—”
“There you are,” Rolf steps nonchalantly over Bang’s tail and holds both his hands out, lifting his son under his armpits and cradling him comfortably with a glare at Ingrid. “You can’t just walk off with him.”
He sounds worried and that just reminds me that Rolf is a dad and Ingrid is an aunt and Arvid is a husband. I’d say I’m the only one lacking a new title but it hits me that it’s future chief and I really wish I’d been allowed into the public before this because all of these changes at once are overwhelming for all the right reasons and that’s a phenomenon I’m not used to at all.
I’m good at dealing with parallel lines of sadness, but tonight feels like so many happy strings weaving with the ends of the sad and towards a future I hope is better than the last year has been. And I know that making it better is more my responsibility than ever because my title carries a different kind of pressure than anyone else’s.
“Oh, it’s Rolf’s kid?” Smitelout snorts, “the ugly makes sense.”
“Always a pleasure,” Rolf sighs, his voice taking on a deep, bitter character like he thinks better of himself than to stoop to this level, “Jorgenson.”
“Yeah sure,” Smitelout waves him off.
“No, not yeah sure,” Ingrid doubles down on the argument with her hands empty, poking Smitelout in the shoulder, “that’s my nephew.”
“And that wasn’t enough to overwhelm the Rolf in his appearance, that’s all I’m saying…”
“Let’s go,” Fuse takes my elbow and scratches Bang with her other hand. He accepts it as a temporary goodbye, snuffling against her palm and crooning at me as we walk away from Ingrid and Smitelout’s escalating argument.
“At least they sound like they’re having fun,” I lean back on the table when she pauses to get herself another drink. I can’t tell if it’s affecting her at all, but then again, she hasn’t really had a chance to drink much without the next interruption.
“Who does?”
“I don’t know,” I shrug, “Ingrid and Smitelout in particular, but it seems like everyone is having fun.”
“Yeah,” she looks around and then back at me, the corner of her mouth twitching into half a smile. Her lower lip is damp and the shine makes it hard to look anywhere else, especially because the longer I’m out of the house, the less I feel like an invalid.
I know that the last few hundred times Fuse kissed me, it wasn’t strictly out of pity. She did want to. She wouldn’t have kissed me at all if she didn’t want to, but I can’t say that they all felt like kisses. A lot were trying to keep me grounded and more were in an attempt to keep breathing worth the pain while my ribs formed back into one piece, and I appreciate them, but they didn’t do anything to quell the constant heat in my chest whenever I’m around her.
And now I feel like I’m at a feast with Fuse and she looks beautiful in a clean, nervous way that I hardly ever get to see and my wrist tingles from where her hair has been tickling it all night. And no matter how close to me she’s been, she was never wearing a dress that makes it so obvious how well the curve of her hip fits in my hand.
“What?” She cocks her head at me and I shrug. “You’re staring.”
“You just look really pretty tonight.” Out of all the things I’m thinking, it’s the right thing to say out loud because she steps closer to me, resting her hand on my ribs on one of my fireworm scars. They’re still sensitive, not in a bad way, but I shiver slightly at the drag of clean wool against the edges of it.
“You too.” She says quietly, biting her lip, and I frown.
“Did you just call me pretty?”
She blushes, stuttering slightly like she’s worried I’m actually offended. I don’t think I am, but I’ve also never been called pretty before. Not that I’m drowning in praise about my appearance, but it still strikes me as weird. I’m not sure I want Fuse to think I’m pretty.
“I meant you look good tonight.”
“But you said pretty. I’m pretty?” I scratch my chin, “not that I don’t like a compliment but aren’t I a little...bearded to be pretty?”
“What would you prefer, then?” She sets her drink down and cups my jaw with her now free hand, fingernails scratching through my beard. I rest my hand on her hip and her fingers curl slightly against my ribs.
Maybe she meant that we should leave further. I’d be ok with that, I made my appearance.
“I don’t know. Handsome, maybe? Rugged?” Gods, I want my other hand back. Next time I almost die, I’m breaking my left arm. I feel like every time I touch Fuse, I’m getting inferior information. “Because you’re pretty, and if you’re pretty, I’m definitely not pretty.”
She kisses me, soft lips lingering a little longer than she usually lets them as she cups my jaw more firmly, her fingertips grazing my ear with a tickle that sends lightning down my spine. I follow her as far as I can when she pulls back, getting in one last peck before my arm gets in the way.
And I don’t want to be here, I’m sick of sharing Fuse with families and crowds. She’s finally looking at me like I might be durable enough to kiss again and I really want to convince her that she’s onto something there.
“When you said let’s go…”
“What do you mean?” She cocks her head and picks up her drink, her blush highlighting freckles across the bridge of her nose.
“I just…I don’t know, we could keep talking somewhere that my crazy family doesn’t keep appearing.”
She narrows her eyes at me, the tips of her ears going a warm, pale pink shade that almost matches her hair.
“What do you want to talk about?” Fuse is awkward and pretty and sweet when she asks questions she doesn’t know the answer to. It makes me want to hug her and again, this stupid sling is in the way of absolutely everything.
“Not much. I’d just like to be alone with you,” I shrug, stroking the line of her hipbone with my thumb and smiling when she bites her lip. Her house is empty, I bet.
“I figured you’d want to stay out as long as possible.”
“Eh, crowds are overrated.” I kiss her forehead again and kind of miss her hair’s usual acrid smell. I hope she does bring bombs tomorrow, I’m ready for some action and for her to be sooty again. “And it’s a lot, you know, no one let me out of the house and suddenly the whole village is here. I think I have a legitimate phobia that Mrs. Ack is going to spring up next and pinch my bicep.”
“The bandages should deter her,” Fuse looks at my sling again, frowning.
“It doesn’t hurt.” I remind her, rubbing the side of her waist and stepping back to lift my arm as high as the sling will allow. “Really. No pain.”
I’m not lying. Worse than that, I’m scared about how my arm is going to look and feel when I finally get it back. I tried not to care when the healers tightened the bandages but there’s that looming feeling that when it comes off I’m going to look scrawnier than I did a year ago, like the chief’s influence finally found a crack to manifest in.
She doubts me. Then she looks over my shoulder and sighs, her cheeks puffing out with a momentary roundness that makes me want to kiss them.
“My dad’s walking over here.”
I drop her hip and stand up straight, tugging at the seam of my shirt that isn’t quite right against my side. She shakes her hair behind her shoulders and takes another sip of her ale before raising it in a feeble toast.
“Just the adorable young couple I was looking to interrupt,” Fuse’s dad—and he feels like Fuse’s dad and not Tuffnut right now when I’m thinking so hard about how good her side feels under my hand—sizes me up like a dragon he doesn’t know is threatening yet or not. I stand up straight. The sling digs into the back of my neck and I swallow, fidgeting to shift it sideways.
“Dad,” Fuse glares at him, shifting half a step away from me and crossing her arms.
“Uh, good evening.” I hold out my left hand and he shakes it with is right, grinning like the awkwardness of the grip is a good thing and not like it’s making my heart drop. “Sir.”
“Pretty sweet feast,” he looks around and nods and then looks back at me, “a wedding feast, even.”
“Uh,” I look at Fuse, wondering if there’s some secret way to answer her dad and she shrugs, “yeah. It is.”
“You said you were looking for us,” Fuse prompts him and he looks at me another second before shrugging. He’s not hostile, like I guess I was scared of after seeing some fathers’ opinion of Arvid. If anything he kind of reminds me of the chief in that he’s happy to see us standing together. This is more of a vicious happiness, like he’s thriving on the awkward anxiety I can feel leaking out of my pores, but I’ll take it.
“Yeah.” He nods.
Especially because I keep thinking about how many times Fuse and I have napped in the same bed and I didn’t ask her dad’s permission and I don’t know how to do this. He’s staring right at me, does he know how much I want to kiss his daughter? Did he see us kissing a second ago? Does he know that I’ve been in her bedroom? And that she talked like she was planning to get me there again even after I well...was really happy to be there. Or parts of me were.
He’s staring at me. What if he can read my mind and I just gave away everything? I’m not really sure what to do with my hand. The sling is finally making a positive impact on my life because I only have one arm to flail around.
“Is there anything I can do for you? Like, do you need me to do anything or talk to the chief about anything or--I can weapon?” I cough, “I mean, I can make weapons. Theoretically,” I point at my sling, “when this comes off. If my arm still works.”
“You don’t know if your arm is still going to work?” He raises an eyebrow and looks more like Fuse than usual with the expression.
“I’m assuming it is.” I shrug, “hoping, really. I guess.”
“Hmm,” he strokes his chin and looks between Fuse and I again before laughing, reaching over and trying to ruffle her hair. “That was fun. Ok, that was really fun.”
“Not for me,” Fuse glares at him, straightening her hair.
“I just had to make you squirm a little bit,” he explains with another shrug, “it’s tradition. Or it is now, because that was hilarious, you look like you think I’m going to beat you up. Or hang you upside down off of some precarious perch. Which I’m not. Probably.” He narrows his eyes and I shake my head.
“No, uh, sir, I wouldn’t do anything to make you have to beat me up. Or...the other thing.”
“Sir? That’s funny, kid.” He pats me on the bad shoulder and I’m relieved when my arm doesn’t throb. “No, really though, if you weren’t good enough for my Fuseykins, you not only wouldn’t be standing here, you would have ceased to exist in solid form long before I ever got the chance to threaten you.”
“That’s not funny,” Fuse says with that vulnerable edge I can’t quite place and her dad scoffs.
“You think I’m funny, right Eret?”
I think that this is bizarre and uncomfortable, but in a very real way I want him to like me. I want him to like me the way that I wanted the village to like me when I was first trying to fill the chief’s shoes, but it’s more important because it’s about Fuse. If I’ve learned anything about romance, it’s that for everyone around me, it ends up being filled with hard choices, and I want to be the easy choice. I want to make things easier for her, finally, after so much time tangling her in my impossible problems.
“Yeah,” I nod, “I bet I looked really scared.”
“I like you,” he claims, pointing at me, “and I mean, I’m like the lowest possible bar here. You’ll have to talk to her brothers. And her cousins. She’s all of our little girl--”
“Stop,” Fuse cuts him off, voice hushed and almost nasal, like it’s half a whine. And that’s cute the way that all cracks in her calm exterior are and I try not to look like I’m thinking about how cute she is. “Just invite him for dinner like we talked about, this is all unnecessary.”
“But also fun,” he turns back to me, “tomorrow night?”
“I’ll be there.”
“Right, good answer,” he points at Fuse, “now I’ve got to talk to you about something, oh daughter of mine.”
“Can it wait?” She leans back into my side, glancing purposefully at the side of my face, “I’m a little busy.”
“Nope.”
“Dad, please.”
“It’ll only take a minute,” he scoffs at her, “and there’s a certain ambiance of the space right now that--”
“Fine,” she looks back at me and sighs before walking away with him, “I’ll see you later.”
“Or tomorrow morning. Either way.” I hope it’s later tonight, but from the way her dad puts his arm over her shoulders and starts telling her something about ‘The Island of Thorstonton’, I kind of doubt it.
Without Fuse, the room is instantly overwhelming and even though I see my siblings sitting together, I almost think about grabbing Bang and going home. Maybe I could even fly, considering Mom appears pretty busy with Rolf’s baby--her grandbaby, because she’s a grandmother now too-- and the chief and isn’t watching my every move. Then again, there’s something kind of exciting about my first flight in two months being off island with Fuse tomorrow. Waiting would make it more of an event, I guess.
I yawn, looking around until I see Gobber sitting in the corner, tapping his foot and looking bored. Or maybe me being bored makes him look bored, whatever. Either way, he gestures at the bench next to him when I walk over and I take a seat, leaning my good elbow on the table and resting my chin on my hand.
“It’s good to see you up and about.” He pats me on the back and I sigh.
“Oh trust me, I’ve been up and about for a while,” I shake my head in my family’s general direction, “it’s just that I haven’t been allowed out. It seems like everyone’s very sure I’ll spontaneously combust if I see the sunlight or an ounce of freedom.”
“Well, you did give it your best shot,” he looks at my arm, “how much longer are you stuck in that thing?”
“I get it off next week, thank Thor,” I wiggle my fingers, “I’m worrying what’s left under it at this point. I thought I was skinny before.”
“Well, if you need to help out at the forge to get back up to well...I was going to say strength, but you’re still you. I shouldn’t expect too much,” he laughs at his own joke and I roll my eyes.
“What a kind and generous offer, rife with opportunities to make fun of me. I’ll think about it,” I sigh, “I probably won’t have time though, I’m assuming, the chief needs someone to help him hold this place together.”
“Now that all the drama settled down around here, I’m sure there’s something else on its way. It’s never quiet for long.” He looks at me strangely and I refuse to acknowledge that he’s aged from the image of him I have in my head, the one who scared me into showing up on time every day and kept me honest with a steady hook hand.
“This is Berk when it’s quiet?” I look back out at the crowd, now more adult than child, the liquor flowing a little more freely. Arvid and Aurelia are kissing and a few rowdy voices usher them towards the door with suggestions I don’t want to think about. “I’m not sure it’s ever quiet.”
“You’re starting to get it, lad,” he uses my shoulder to stand up, “I should be getting to bed. Have to save some energy for the next wedding. Coming up soon, I’m assuming...” He laughs like that has something to do with me and pats my back.
“I have no idea, the chief hasn’t told me anything.” I shrug and he shakes his head at me before limping towards the door, peg thudding on the wood.
I hear him mutter something about me being clueless, and that’s something I’m glad hasn’t changed.
“I didn’t want to interrupt your date, but I wanted to say goodbye,” my dad nods at Gobber in passing before restraining himself from helping me up. I appreciate it more than he knows.
“Date?” I laugh, “my date with Gobber? I think it was going well.”
“You know what I mean,” he adjusts a sac over his shoulder and I frown.
“Wait, goodbye? You’re leaving now?” I knew he was leaving after the wedding, but I didn’t realize he meant the middle of the night.
“The tide’s going out soon and I’ll make better time out of the archipelago,” he glances at Arvid and Aurelia. She’s dragging him away from the mead, laughing, her feet slipping across the floor. “And I don’t think they want me in the house tonight any more than I want to be in the house tonight.”
“Gross,” I wince, “why does everyone have to keep reminding me that my siblings are going to...you know, tonight? Wait, don’t answer that, then we’d have to talk about it more and...no.” I shudder, shaking my head like I can rattle the thoughts out through my ears.
“Come here,” he pulls me into a hug, ignoring the sling and squeezing a little too hard. “Don’t grow up anymore while I’m gone, alright?” He looks older too, but in a different way than Gobber does. It’s a sturdy old, like an island that’s finally stopped shifting enough to be habitable. I wonder if he still loves Mom and then kind of hate myself for even thinking that. Of course he does, otherwise I don’t know how I could be so sure that he still loves me.
“How long do you think you’re going to be gone?” I pat his back and he stands back to look at me, like he’s taking a mental picture.
“A few weeks, maybe six. I’ve got supplies for six but we’ll see how it goes.”
“Maybe I can go with you next time,” I offer and I’m looking for acceptance more than permission. I want him to be happy at the thought of me going along with him.
“If you think the chief can handle Berk without you.” He weighs the option and smiles, “I wouldn’t mind the company.”
“Really?” I grin, “I’ll try and be back in fighting shape.”
“I can’t wait,” he ruffles my hair and it feels like as much as he wishes I were a little less grown up, he’s glad to have the offered backup.
“Can the tides wait a minute?” Mom’s voice is hesitant but not unkind as she approaches with Rolf’s son in her arms. The baby laughs and reaches two pudgy arms towards Dad, fingers wiggling in the air, “someone else needs to say goodbye.”
“There’s my big boy!” Dad takes the baby and holds him over his head for a second before hugging him and Mom’s eyes go distant as she watches. I wonder how much the baby looks like Rolf did and I feel like I’m getting a glimpse of what existed before I showed up and changed everything, for better or worse. “I couldn’t find him earlier, I thought he might already be asleep.”
“Ingrid had him,” Mom scoffs, “as always.”
“You’re just as bad,” I look at Dad and think Grandpa and another thing clicks into shape in preparation for whatever’s coming next. “Let me guess, Rolf doesn’t know where he is right now.”
“Rolf knows everything, you know that,” she shakes her head at me, “and I’m just enjoying having a baby around.”
Some things I’m not too sad about leaving behind and I can tell she shares that opinion from the way she looks between me and the baby with Rolf’s sandy hair and Dad’s eyebrows.
“You got everything?” The chief is a little more sober than he was earlier but he still leans on Mom’s shoulder, tickling the baby’s foot when Mom takes him back. Now Dad is the one looking lost and I hope he finds what he’s looking for. Maybe he can show me when he gets back because I’m still missing pieces.
They feel like my ribs though, painful and slow closing, but healing in time. It’s deciding which gaps I’d like to force back open, which ones are meant to be lessons and not scars.
“Everything’s packed up, I’m looking at six weeks on the outside.”
“Write when you can,” the chief instructs and it’s almost a friendly order, like the ones he gives Fuse. Transactional, like my dad is part of the chief’s sphere again instead of being a thorn jabbed into it.
“Eret said he might want to come with me next time,” Dad squeezes my shoulder and Mom looks between us before deferring to the chief with worry in her face where anger used to rest so easily.
“Depending on what you find, it wouldn’t be a bad idea to have a future chief of Berk investigating whatever’s going on.” He shrugs and Mom gives me a stern look.
“Provided that future chief of Berk is entirely healed.”
“Of course, Mom. I don’t have a deathwish.”
“No, you tried one of those and it didn’t stick.” The chief holds his hand out and Dad doesn’t hesitate before shaking it, his grip just a little too firm if the chief’s white knuckles mean anything. “Be careful out there.”
“Yeah,” Mom gives him a brief, awkward side hug with a babbling baby between them, “take care of yourself, alright?”
Bang chimes in with a croon from across the hall like he’s been listening this whole time and Stoick laughs, patting him on the head. Dad hugs me one more time before walking out of the hall and Fuse catches my eye from where she’s still sitting with her dad, asking me if I’m ok with a twitch of her eyebrow. I nod and she smiles at me before going back to listening to her Dad, pink hair glowing in the torchlight.
Mom goes to give an impatient Rolf his baby back and the chief lingers, pausing for a minute before resting his hand on my shoulder. I don’t shrug him off. It would be ruining the wrong moment and I don’t have time for that.
“You know, I don’t think you getting out there is a bad idea. I have missed your help these last couple months, but maybe it’s best for you to see what you’re dealing with before I retire.” He looks at me the way that Gobber did, like I make him feel younger or older and he’s not sure if he wants to narrow down which. “I’ll work on your mother.”
He looks the same he always has, but the absence of fury about it makes him seem smaller, more human. Maybe that’s what the last year really did to us, we’re all more human than when we started.
“I don’t think she’d stop me,” I shrug and look back at my family, the big, scrambled group of them, “until then, sticking around here isn’t so bad.”
“No, it’s really not.” He squeezes before letting go and he feels just as much a part of my picture as everyone else does.
This is Berk. It’s more than the cliffs and dragons and seas. It’s the people. The people in this room, my family and friends, the ones who pretend not to rely on me as much as I pretend not to rely on them. It’s the dragons. The dragons who came back even when they could have left. It’s the collision of the two, the place where my family came together again and again until finally, one of them was right.
Because we’re Vikings, and that means danger is implied and stubbornness can sometimes win over sense and logic. It means that fights only fizzle out when we stop picking them and that only happens when someone wins or a bigger enemy brings us together. And it won’t stay calm for long, it never does, but when proverbial flaming shit hits the fan next time, at least now I know we all have each other.
I...know this isn’t the ideal time to post this. But...it made me cry today, so, here we are. I’ll reblog as I deem necessary. This is not the end, actually, this is the straight up rock bottom, and it’ll get better from here, but it’s still so hard.
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Fuse
The North wall of the volcano splits vertically. Perfectly. Exactly how it’s supposed to.
Sheets of granite fall into the sea, which seems deeper than it was a minute ago, boiling with the force of lava pouring upwards from underneath. A wave surges outwards, barely dampened by the teeming sea dragons all fighting to get closer to the island.
Fuse’s ears ring. She wasn’t close enough to the blast for that, but they ring anyway.
The volcano is all lava and crumbled rock and she doesn’t see Eret anywhere. The spot where he landed doesn’t exist anymore, it bubbled away and he probably went with it.
Into the lava that went into the ocean that’s boiling with the newly opened thermal vent.
“Where is he?” Arvid shouts, panicked like he already knows the answer, his dragon crying out and tugging to fly lower. The island is so packed with dragons that they can’t see the ground, but Eret isn’t on the ground. Eret isn’t anywhere. “Do you see him anywhere?”
“No,” she shakes her head. She stares at the thermal vent but feels cold anyway, the wind from a few thousand sets of flurrying wings licking across her. Some of the dragons are flying away from the island. The ones still crawling all over it are mostly white, the sickest of them all.
The volcano is gone and so is Eret.
“Help me look for him!” Arvid yells, diving down through the swarm. A bright green gronckle runs into him and he ignores it, dodging and weaving around a couple of Hobblegrunts that look downright young.
They aren’t going to find him. There’s nothing to find.
She follows anyway, slower, circling the island below the thinning swarm, staring at the ragged edges of the island. The blast was perfect. A whispering death that’s entirely covered in chalky scales slithers into the sea.
Seventeen silent laps of the island later, it’s almost empty, a few fireworms skittering over the volcanic rock. It’d be the right kind of rock for stink bomb substrate. Thinking of bombs makes Fuse nauseous and Hotgut lands with a heavy thump on the edge of the rock. Fuse climbs off of her and pats her head, her hand still clammy even against warm dragon scales.
“Eret!” Arvid lands, leaping off of Wingspark and cupping his hands to his mouth. “Eret!” He turns to her, “do you see Bang?”
“No.” She crosses her arms, chest feeling oddly hollow. It’s like she’s a drum and her heart is rattling around inside her, bruising her lungs but making noise that she feels but can’t make come out of her mouth. Her nose is numb like the weather’s colder than it is and this would have been worse in winter. It would have worked differently in the winter. The blast couldn’t have gone if all that lava had solidified.
That was the only way this could have gone. Eret didn’t have to be the one to jump.
“Little brother!” Arvid sobs like he’s the one boiling in a thermal vent. “This is when you choose to shut your giant mouth?” He picks up a boulder and chucks it with a frustrated grunt and it tumbles off what’s left of the cliff and into the sea. “Eret!” He calls again.
He’s crying. Fuse blinks, eyes dry and prickly.
“He’s gone,” she croaks, her voice coming out almost dusty. Like she already forgot how to use it because Eret isn’t going to hear it anymore.
“He’s probably just hurt somewhere,” Arvid shakes his head, “we’ve just got to find him—”
“Where he was standing—it’s gone. He’s gone. He was too close to the edge.” She doesn’t recognize her own tone above her still ringing ears. Her nose is numb and her teeth start to chatter. It’s not cold and nothing makes sense. Nothing except for the fact that Eret’s gone and she handed him a knife. That she can still feel the imprint of his touch on her shaking hand.
She swallows even though her mouth is dry and her eyes are dry and she feels preserved. Like someone is freezing her so that she doesn’t go bad before she’s needed again. Fuse jerky ready for a long period of hibernation.
“He jumped where you told him to,” Arvid points at her, furious. Still crying. Shaking with a huge feeling she doesn’t have room for next to all this empty, cold numb. She can’t bring herself to care.
“I didn’t want him to.”
“He still did it with your bomb—”
“Yeah.” She gestures at the ruins of the volcano, “and it worked. And the dragons flew away.” She starts hiccupping. Or maybe it’s shaking. She’s not entirely sure and her eyes are so dry that the sun looks too bright. Her knees wobble and Hotgut steps up next to her, offering her head to lean on. “And he’s gone.”
“Shit,” Arvid deflates, “you don’t look so good.”
“He’s gone,” she repeats in that tired voice that doesn’t sound like her. The island spins, the ragged shore blurring against blue water. No more dragons are thrashing, the sea is almost calm. The island is calm now. It’s not a bad place, it’s not its fault.
“Hey, Thorston,” Arvid walks up to her, shaking her shoulders with hands that might as well weigh as much as the baffle. The baffle that’s gone too. Not that it matters, it did its job. “Look at me.”
“He’s just…gone.” She stumbles even though she’s standing still and Arvid catches her. He hugs her and it’s more of a bandage than anything as he starts crying, chest shaking and making the rattle in hers louder and worse. She should comfort him. She doesn’t know how.
“Stubborn Asshole,” he lets her go, wiping his forehead, “always had to be the fucking hero.”
Had. Like in the past. Fuse’s stomach lurches again.
“The chief’s going to be here soon.” She doesn’t look at the water because it’s still spinning. Only her feet seem still. “We’re going to have to tell him. We’re going to have to tell everyone.” She doesn’t say that they’re going to have to live with it because she’s not really sure how she’s going to.
Aurelia
The dragons come all at once. It looks like a cloud, for a moment, when the wave of them first comes over the horizon. Aurelia doesn’t remember being this happy to see dragons, ever, but something feels right about Nadders crowding the feeding stations, grayish scales flaking off to reveal new, shiny ones underneath.
“Get inside,” her mom calls from behind her.
“Aren’t you seeing this?” Aurelia gestures at a trio of young monstrous nightmares soaring up above the house. One lands on the roof and Stormfly squawks, scaring it off. “The dragons are back.”
“Hiccup did it?” her mom appears in the doorway, pushing her hair behind her ear and staring at the dragons like she’s looking for a Night Fury.
“Or Eret was right.”
“You can’t know that,” she shakes her head, “your dad has an alpha dragon, that’s more likely to work than—”
“Whatever.” Aurelia scoffs and walks back inside, avoiding a swarm of terrors eagerly drinking from the watering station. They’re shedding too, and small. Most of the dragons look young, or at least they do in her narrow understanding of dragon biology. There aren’t many big ones, but it’s still not exactly her crowd.
“Hey,” her mom steps back inside, “we’ll talk when everyone gets back, alright? But I have to ask now, did you…coach Eret or anything in speaking against your dad that way?”
“What?” Aurelia scoffs, “no—this isn’t about being chief, it’s about helping the dragons. And it looks like it worked so…”
“We’ll talk when everyone gets back, you don’t know what worked.” She shakes her head and looks tired, “and I do know you tried to stall your chief’s plan—”
“My dad’s plan.”
“It’s both, you don’t get to pick.”
Aurelia knows what that means. It means that a bunch of kids spoke out of turn and the real adults are going to have to remind them that they’re kids. It means rewriting the past few months. It means she can get married, apparently, but nothing about that says anyone is going to listen to her yet. She’s shocked it extends to Eret too, honestly, after he did such a decent job basically leading the whole village, but the lack of favoritism in the negativity is refreshing.
The dragons are louder than she remembers, their wingbeats and squawks and the way they scramble across the roof. Aurelia doesn’t know how she picks out Wingspark’s cry in all the noise, but she does, and she knows that it’s not a happy cry.
Eret offered for Arvid to stay back. It could be dangerous out there, after what happened to Ingrid, and after the last year, Arvid wouldn’t let Eret do the dangerous thing. It can’t happen like this, not now, not when they’re so close to everything they’ve talked about.
“Oh no,” she runs back outside, expecting Arvid to be hurt, or even worse Wingspark to be alone, but Arvid looks fine, if pale. “What is it? What’s wrong?”
“How’d you know something’s wrong?” He jumps down off of Wing’s back and pulls her into an almost bruisingly tight hug. He smells like smoke and anxiety and she pushes on his chest until she can see his face.
“Wing sounded sad, what happened? Where is everyone else?” She looks around, “did my dad catch up to Eret or something?”
Arvid sighs and takes a second to make eye contact and when he does he’s guilty. Guilty like he was when they went too far and realized they’d stuffed all their blame in exactly the wrong direction. He cups her cheek in his clammy hand and shakes his head.
“What’s that mean?” Her eyes prickle because her brain is going faster than it will let her accept. “Where’s Fuse? Where’s Eret?”
“Fuse is riding back on the boat with her dad and the chief,” he sighs, “Eret is…he’s…”
“You’re back? Where’s Eret?” Her mom runs outside and freezes.
“Mom, I…” He stumbles over the title and she’s clearly his mom right now, not Aurelia’s, because he’s biting back tears. “I’m sorry, I didn’t see what he was doing, I tried to find him but—”
“Arvid, where is he?” She whistles and Stormfly glides down from the roof, landing neatly beside her. “I’ll go get him, just tell me where he is—”
“Oh no,” Aurelia’s heart drops and her knees tremble as she shakes her head. “No, that’s not possible.”
“He didn’t make it out,” Arvid shakes his head and swallows hard.
The dam breaks and Aurelia doesn’t recognize the sound coming out of her throat or the fact that it makes her more upset, more heavy. More confused.
He was just here. He was just flying too fast and making a fool of himself in front of everyone. He was just making her so proud and embarrassed and tired, because she thought she talked fast. She presses her face into Arvid’s chest and he cradles the back of her head, sobbing quietly himself. Arvid doesn’t cry. If Arvid’s crying, it’s real.
Her mom left her, but her mom wanted to. Eret didn’t want this. He wanted things to be better. That’s all they wanted.
“What are you talking about?” Eret’s Mom asks, her voice trembling, “he didn’t make it out of where? Where is he, Arvid?”
“He’s gone, Mom,” Arvid sobs. He’s shaking. Aurelia’s shaking. The world is shaking.
“That…no, it—Hiccup will bring him back. Hiccup will find him, it’ll be ok.” She’s crying too though, shallow little sniffs that Aurelia can barely hear.
Arvid shakes his head and holds Aurelia closer, stooping down to cry into her hair. She doesn’t know what to say. Hel, she doesn’t know what not to say. Her mind is as silent as the forests were yesterday.
Hiccup
“Why isn’t anyone helping me?” Hiccup jumps off of Toothless as soon as he lands on the lead ship, pointing up at empty skies. The dragons left, thousands of them passing overhead when they were about three quarters of the way to the island. “We need eyes in the sky, now!” He uses what’s left of his biggest voice and Snotlout shakes his head.
“We need to think about getting back.”
“What in Thor’s name are you talking about?” Hiccup clears his throat so that other boats hear him, “we need to start sweeping the island, I’ll start in the northern caves but let’s break it up into sections—”
“That won’t help.” Fuse cuts him off from where she’s sitting with her gronckle, paler than he’s ever seen anyone and wrapped in her dad’s outer fur. “He’s gone.” She stares at her lap, back stiff and straight.
“I’m going to get him back,” Hiccup tells her, voice starting to shake even though he believes it. He has to. This isn’t how this ends. There has to be another way for this to end.
“He’s gone,” she shakes her head.
“If everyone would just help me, we’ll find him and get him back!” Hiccup isn’t sure when he decides to yell it, but the last word tears out of his throat like it’s reopening an old wound he’d forgotten about.
“No, there’s nothing to find, he’s gone.” Fuse’s voice is smaller but no less flat and the fur around her shoulders starts to fall off until Tuffnut sits down beside her, readjusting it and putting his arm over her shoulders.
“Snotlout might be right, Hiccup,” Fishlegs steps forward, wringing his hands together and looking at Ruffnut for what looks like encouragement. “Those dragons that passed over us looked like they were headed towards Berk—”
“I know that!” Hiccup snaps, because Eret was right, at least some of it was right. And he didn’t listen. And now he has to bring him back, that’s how these things go. He has to get his son back. “It’s Berk, it’ll be happy to have its dragons back, we need to be here, now—”
“Hiccup,” Fishlegs tries again and Ruffnut puts her hand on his shoulder, “they could still be sick. They could need us.”
“I don’t care about the dragons right now,” Hiccup stares daggers into everyone who’s just…standing. They’re all just standing. Shoulders slumped and dragons sad, their heads hung low. And it’s quiet except for the waves lapping at the sides of the boat. Hiccup’s words echo in his head and off the sails and Toothless nudges his hand as if accepting a wordless apology. “I need…I need to find my son.”
“He’s gone,” Fuse whispers, her gronckle trying to lick her face as she bats it away with a limp arm, knocking the fur off her shoulders again.
“Hiccup,” Tuffnut puts his fur back around his daughter’s shoulders, “at least some of us need to get back.”
“Fine, take half the ships.” Hiccup looks over his shoulder at the island, Bang splashing through the surf in a frantic lap. At first he thought Bang could help him, but he’s distraught, crying out and flailing briefly through the air before diving back into the sea. “I’m staying.”
“We’ve been here for hours, Hiccup,” Snotlout’s belligerent tone fades enough to make Hiccup nauseous at whatever he’s about to say, “don’t you think we would have found something by now?”
“There isn’t anything,” Fuse shakes her head, “the vent opened up just like we said it would. It’s all gone.”
“We did find something,” Tuffnut stands up, “my daughter who needs to get home. Ruff, come on.”
A couple of other people move towards their dragons and a ship at the back of the fleet starts turning around. Eret knows these people, he’s been chief to these people. And they’re all so quick to leave. It’s only been a couple of hours, he’s on that island, somewhere. It doesn’t end like this, it can’t.
“I need a ship to get him home if he’s hurt,” Hiccup clears his throat and tries to give an order, but they’re all starting to sound like pleas. “And I need enough people to get it back fast—”
“Hiccup,” Gobber takes a slow step forward between Snotlout and Fishlegs, his limp more obvious than Hiccup has ever seen it. “Don’t make me say it.”
“How can you leave? You know him even better than I do.” Hiccup doesn’t know where to aim the flare of desperate anger at seeing dragons take off of ships as more and more peel away from the back of the fleet and head towards home.
“I know him enough to know…he’s not you.” Gobber sighs and he looks old and sad and Hiccup shakes his head.
“No, he’s—I’ve got to find him. I’ve got to fix this—”
“The village needs you,” Gobber swallows, “Astrid’s going to need you.”
“Astrid needs me to bring our son back!” Hiccup shouts, voice cracking, a tear leaking from the corner of his eye. Snotlout looks away. Fuse is muttering something under her breath while her dad kneels in front of her, holding her hands.
“She’s going to need you more than ever, chief.”
The title is a slap and terse reminder that he can’t be Hiccup right now, he can’t be a father. He can’t think about Eret, the boy, his son, it has to be Eret, future chief. He doesn’t grieve for the latter at all, but looking at Bang frantically splashing by the shore, the grief for the former hits like a Warhammer to the chest.
He’d prefer a Night Fury blast, honestly, and he’s jealous of his dad’s choices all over again.
“Toothless,” his voice shakes and he wipes another tear before it falls. He can cry later. “Get Bang to come over here.”
Toothless croons and the spines along his head glow weak blue for a moment and Bang pauses, turning towards the ship and swimming forward with a couple splashing wingbeats. He croons louder, like a scream, like the sound Hiccup’s heart is making when he thinks about going home empty handed. He doesn’t want to imagine Astrid’s face when he tells her, but he can’t think of anything else.
Bang stops splashing and lets out a weak blast, rocking the boat slightly and blowing it back towards Berk with a burst of wind to the sails. Toothless’s head stops glowing, immediately, and he looks up at Hiccup with big green eyes. Hiccup wishes, for the first time, that he couldn’t read Toothless quite so well.
“He wants to stay,” Hiccup wipes his eye with the back of his hand. He’s going to fly back, maybe it’ll dry him out enough to talk to Astrid. “Bang wants to stay.”
“Toothless can’t make him come?” Snotlout asks and Hiccup barely bites back a sob.
“Won’t.”
And it’s quiet. And no one is going to argue with him, now no one is going to be better and be so brave and stubborn and stupid that an island bends to his will and tens of thousands of dragons follow the course he laid out for them.
“I’ll fly back, ships can follow.” He avoids looking at anyone else before taking off, tears biting into his cheeks as he urges Toothless too fast, hoping the rushing wind can make him think of anything else.
Astrid
“They should be back by now,” Ingrid paces back and forth in front of the Haddock fireplace, arms crossed and twitching.
“They’ll be back soon,” Astrid rubs her temple, trying to focus on fixing the shirt in front of her. She doesn’t know why Eret can’t go a day without destroying some item of clothing, Stoick does better than he does.
Aurelia sobs upstairs and Astrid pricks her finger, swearing and setting down the needle entirely.
“The island isn’t that far away, Mom.” Ingrid tosses another log on the fire, just looking for something to do, and Eret sighs a pointed sigh at her.
It’s absurd to be in the same room with him like this. At the Haddock table, in Hiccup’s house, Hiccup’s ring around her finger. She wouldn’t say that they’re getting along, it’s more like they’re ignoring all communication aside from the necessary and after Ingrid got hurt, they agreed that the necessary must include their children.
Eret included.
Hiccup will bring him back. If he’s hurt, they’ll figure it out. Arvid shouldn’t have scared Aurelia, but he seemed sure enough that Astrid thought he could use his father. She was shocked, initially, that he wasn’t on the ships with everyone else, but it makes sense, he’s more ostracized than ever without his attachment to her.
“The pacing isn’t helping anything.” Eret tells Ingrid gently and she scowls at him.
“It’s not hurting anyone either.” She looks at the staircase when Aurelia sobs again and her face goes pale, “what all did Arvid say again?”
She looks worried and it makes Astrid’s stomach churn with the horrible shadowy feeling that something about Arvid’s account might be true. But even if it is, Hiccup will find Eret. Hiccup has pulled people out of worse situations than this and more than that, Hiccup has been pulled out of worse situations than this. This wasn’t a bewilderbeast or a red death, this was just an island and Eret’s strong. Too strong. Strong enough to take the whole world on his shoulders and fight when someone tries to take it back.
“Hiccup will bring your brother back, alright?” Astrid doesn’t know how many more times she can say that today.
Eret catches onto her stress, the infuriating way that he always has, and she sees his hand twitch towards hers on the table top, twenty five years of habits dying a slow, brutal death. She hardens her expression and hopes he can’t see through this one and his hand on the table curls into a loose fist.
“The chief always has a miracle up his sleeve.”
“It’s not a miracle,” Astrid fights to keep her voice level as the crying upstairs slows, a raw pained sound pulsing with her measured heartbeat, “Arvid doesn’t know what he saw.”
“What did he say he saw?” Ingrid asks.
“Don’t worry about it.” Astrid can’t say it without thinking about Arvid’s face, how sure he was, how impossible it all is, “we’ll get the whole story when—”
“Hiccup gets back, we get it.” Ingrid kicks one of Stoick’s blocks with enough force that it flies across the room and plinks off of the window.
“Hey—”
The door swings open, creaking and letting in two streams of early evening sunlight on either side of Hiccup. Astrid can’t see his face, but she can hear his steps, heavy, defeated footfalls that don’t make any sense. She stands up as he shuts the door behind him and his red-rimmed eyes meet hers.
“Where is he?” Ingrid runs up to Hiccup first and he shakes his head at her. “What’s that mean? Where’s my brother?”
“Astrid,” he gently pushes Ingrid out of the way so that he can see Astrid clearly and his eyes aren’t red from flying. They’re red from crying. “I…”
“Is he at the healers?” Astrid’s mouth goes dry as she says it, “do I need to go be with him? Is it—”
“Answer her,” Ingrid shoves on Hiccup’s shoulder, not hard enough to make him stumble, and she starts crying, the sound weaving with the crying upstairs and echoing off of the wall. “Why aren’t you answering her?”
“Ingrid,” Eret stands up and hugs her and she shoves at his arm.
“Why aren’t you answering us? Where’s my brother?”
“We…” Hiccup swallows and sniffs and his voice catches on a knot in his throat, “I couldn’t find him.”
“You couldn’t find him?” Astrid repeats the answer. The idea that this is where Hiccup failed, that this was the unanswerable question, doesn’t have a place in reality. “Did he run away? Or…”
“No,” Hiccup looks at the floor between them and Ingrid’s crying dries up to defiant little sniffs, “Bang was there. He was—he wouldn’t come back with us. I—he…”
“He’s dead?” Eret asks, a careful tenderness in his voice that she couldn’t ever match. Not that she needed to, he always had it covered, and it does to Hiccup what it used to do to their children. It brings him back to the moment and he wipes his face, jaw set forward.
“We couldn’t find him today, but I’m going back tomorrow, Astrid. Hel, I’ll leave now, I’ll get Toothless some food and—”
“He is dead, isn’t he?” Astrid cuts across his frantic hope, because he’s cushioning himself, she can see it in wide, teary green eyes that won’t quite focus on her face.
“No one has seen him since the blast and—” Hiccup’s arms flop to his sides and he looks smaller than usual, like he lost another part of himself, and Astrid’s knees start to shake. She forces them steady. “And the volcano was erupting into the sea and—”
“Eret’s dead,” she whispers, voice shaking out of her control. She tries to swallow it and tears well up in her eyes, hot enough to burn as she struggles to keep them open. Through the teary film, Hiccup looks too similar, like he’s from a reality where Eret got to grow old or Hel, even just grow up, and she cries out because there’s not enough room inside of her for all of this.
“I’m sorry, Astrid.” Hiccup’s arms wrap around her, too tight, like he’s trying to hold her together and she doesn’t think that’s possible. “I’m so sorry. It’s—it’s because of me, I should have listened to him. It’s my fault.”
That drags another harsh sob out of her throat and she buries her face in his neck, inhaling sea spray and leather and trying to breathe. It feels like she’s suffocating, like the air in the room is fleeing from her and Eret was dead hours ago, wasn’t he? Midgard has been without him for hours and she didn’t know. She didn’t listen.
“It is your fault,” Ingrid shouts, “you said no one else would get hurt. You said you’d protect us—”
“Ingrid,” Eret—the only Eret, now—herds her towards the door, “come on—”
“You said you’d make sure no one else got hurt. That’s why I told you everything,” she barks out a single, violent cry, “and now Eret’s dead. It’s my fault. Fuck, it’s my fault—”
“It’s all our faults,” Aurelia’s voice appears at the bottom of the stairs and Astrid manages to look up at her. Her face is puffy and Arvid’s standing behind her, hand on her shoulder. “More than that, it’s his. It’s his own damn fault. Dumb, stubborn—” She inhales a sob and her shoulders shake, “I—he made his choice and our dragons are back and I still don’t think I can ever forgive him for it. I…”
She doesn’t know what to say. There’s a space that Eret would have—should have—filled and it hangs heavy in the miserable air.
This is one of the last 3 chapters of this like...what I told myself I had to do to call it finished. I edited through the rest again today and like...I’ve worked up to the next week for like three years. And this is totally going to get buried by rtte but I’m not really operating on the idea that those two things have the same people paying attention to them so I’m keeping as close to on schedule as I can anyway. (This didn’t feel like a valentines chapter so I gave it an extra day)
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It’s too early to be awake after a long, mostly sleepless night when someone knocks at the door. Or at least I think it’s someone, because it sounds more like a hollow metal ball than it does a hand. I wait a moment for someone else to deal with it but Mom doesn’t appear and Aurelia doesn’t come bounding down the stairs so I wrap my blanket around my shoulders and trudge over there, not bothering to put away my glare as I open it.
It’s Ingrid with what looks like breakfast that she mercifully didn’t cook and I reach out and grab a roll, biting into it and miming shutting the door in her face.
She reaches out and stops the door with her bad hand, that metallic sound ringing out again, and my eyes widen when I actually look at her fingers.
There are three metal fingers where yesterday there was blank space, a leather holster covering half her hand and attaching to a latch around her wrist. Another leather strap is around the base of her thumb and when she moves her hand away from the door, I can see that each finger has two carefully wrought, ratcheting joints.
“Let me see that—”
“Good morning to you too,” she pushes past me, stepping on my dragging blanket with a muddy boot and setting food on the table like she owns the place, even though I don’t think she’s ever been here. “Did you sleep out here?” She pats Bang’s head with her good hand—I mean her flesh and bone hand, and wrinkles her nose at the rumpled blankets on the floor.
“Bang won’t fit in the upstairs bedrooms.” I shut the door, “and can you please show me that?”
“What?” She holds her hand in front of her, reaching up and bending the fingers with her other hand. They hold whatever angle she puts them at and she grins, a shadow of her old confidence in it. “You have to be more specific.”
“Your hand, obviously.” I shove the rest of the roll in my mouth when she holds it out in my direction, dropping the blanket to hold it in both my hands.
“I brought you breakfast to be nice, you could at least chew it.”
“Where’d you get this?” I turn her hand over in mine, looking at the way the leather strap crosses her palm, holding the three metal fingers carefully in place over what’s left of her own. The clasp around her wrist is freshly oiled, the gronckle iron pounded thin and pulled smooth to make it lay flat against the strap. It’s stitched into place with what looks like sealskin thread, so that it won’t go slack when it gets wet and the fingers move smoothly with tactile little clicks.
“Smitelout made it,” she scoffs, “charged me about half my savings for it but hey, I’m not going anywhere else to spend those now so…”
“Smitelout made this?”
“Yeah, she said my axe was wrong for lefty wielding and it’d be a pain in the ass to change it so—”
“So she made you a hand?” I let go of it and she takes it back slowly, staring at it the whole time with a weird, almost content look on her face. “That’s a lot harder than switching a balance on an axe.”
“She did say that the next time she kicked my ass, she wanted me to be at my best so I couldn’t use this as an excuse,” Ingrid plops down into my normal chair, kicking her feet up on the chief’s table and picking up a piece of bread. “As if. But whatever her motives, I mean…I can swing an axe again. It’s a little slippery on the down stroke but maybe if I wore a leather glove or something…”
“That’s…that’s great.” I don’t know what else to say so I sit down across from her and pick up more food. “Does Arvid know you’re here?”
“Nah, he’s still asleep.”
“Well he’s off watch duty for the foreseeable future,” I take a bite and she rolls her eyes.
“Aren’t you the one who left me alone at the Ingermans’ last night so you could go make out with your girlfriend?” She wiggles her eyebrows at me and I blush. “And I don’t need someone to watch me, squirt, I’m fine—”
“You’re not fine.”
“I’m close enough,” she nods, like she’s telling herself more than me. “Closer now.”
“Did you and Spitleaf work things out last night?” I ask, because she really does seem better. Not good, not even normal, but better, and I know Spit was always good for her.
“We talked. Kind of.” She shrugs, “I don’t think it’s something that can be worked out and I told her that and she seemed to understand even if she wasn’t happy about it. I just—I’m busy, right now, with getting back into fighting shape and keeping you and Arvid from making fools of yourselves. Oh, and keeping Dad company. I’ve got a lot on my plate, I need to focus on that.”
“So, you’re not together anymore?”
“There really is no keeping you from making a fool of yourself, is there?” She says a little more sharply than I think she intends to.
“I’d say that’s largely true.”
“Does that mean you embarrassed yourself in front of Fuse?” She grins, “tell me everything.”
“What? No,” I huff, “I’m not telling you—did you do this with Arvid? Ask him all the sordid details—”
“No,” she snorts, “he’d just lie and give way too much information, frankly.”
“So then why ask me?”
“Because that’s not the face of a little brother with gross things to tell me,” she points at me with one neatly extended metal finger.
“Oh, shut up.”
“Stoick incoming!” Aurelia calls down the stairs seconds before Stoick sprints down them, tiny bare feet smacking the floor as he runs around the table to shout ‘good morning’ at Bang and nearly crashes into my chair, catching himself on my shoulder. He frowns at Ingrid.
“You must be Mom’s other kid.”
“Ingrid Hofferson,” she holds out her hand, her right hand, all the fingers extended, “nice to meet you.”
“Whoa!” He doesn’t shake her hand, grabbing her fingers instead and pulling hard enough that I reach out to stop him.
“Gentle, bud.”
“Sorry,” he grins, like he knows he’s cute enough to get away with it and honestly, he is, “cool hand!”
“Thanks, it’s new.”
“Mine aren’t,” he holds up his hands for her to see and Aurelia finally makes her way downstairs, braiding her hair over her shoulder.
“She’s not even my real sister and she brings me food,” Aurelia looks at me pointedly as she grabs breakfast and sits down. I huff, combing through my hair with my fingers and trying to reclaim the tie tangled in it.
“You didn’t ask me for food.”
“I didn’t have to ask Ingrid for food.”
“You got off of the wrong side of the dragon this morning,” I roll my eyes and Stoick finally drops Ingrid’s hand, satisfied that he knows how it works enough to leave it alone.
“She doesn’t have a dragon,” he reminds me, rolling his eyes with far too much intention for someone that young.
“Just a saying, bud.”
“Did you know that Eret looked exactly like you at your age?” Ingrid leans down a little bit to talk to Stoick and I wish again that she’d been here to help me when I was first getting used to him, “he burned down the forge though, you haven’t done anything like that, right?”
“No,” he shakes his head, “Mom would be so mad.”
“She was,” Ingrid nods. “You didn’t get to ride Bang for what? A week.”
“She said I wasn’t supposed to.” I wonder if I’m being a horrible role model when I look and Stoick and continue, “I did it anyway.”
“I always knew I was the good kid,” Stoick sighs and shakes his head at me and Ingrid laughs. Even Aurelia snorts at that one, even though I know it’s not quite a joke to her. “Can I play with Bang?”
“Of course, dude.” I almost regret saying it because as soon as he runs away and starts whispering secrets to a dragon on the other side of the room, both my sisters look at me like it’s a little disappointing how little I’ve embarrassed myself today.
I’d like to think that last night is enough for this lifetime but mostly I’d like to not think of last night in front of anyone, including myself, honestly.
Well, the bad parts of last night. And even the bad parts weren’t bad, per say, they were just uncomfortable because I was out of control and Fuse noticed and made me think about things I haven’t in a long time. And even then it was different, it was…incestuous, yes, but otherwise innocent. I didn’t want to be like Arvid, not really, I wanted it to be some romance from the stuffy section of Fishlegs’ library. And it’s not that I’d be opposed to a little more romance with Fuse, that’s not what I was so enthusiastic about last night.
I try not to think about her saying she was flattered or her shoving me back onto her bed like she really wanted me there. Last night, I had enough trouble holding back the idea of what might have happened if I’d stayed. I’m not sure how I feel about it and I don’t want to have that revelation with both my sisters staring at me like they’d love someone to advise.
Surprisingly, Aurelia cracks first, and just in time too because I can feel Ingrid reading my mind.
“I think Arvid is mad at me, has he said anything to you?” She asks me but Ingrid by extension, hesitant for a second like she’s not sure she can.
“He doesn’t have conversations with me that don’t start with asking if I’m ok,” Ingrid shrugs, “but he hasn’t seemed mad.”
“He doesn’t talk to me unless he wants a brawl,” I laugh before remembering yesterday, like that important embarrassment just got buried under the chronological next until this moment.
The good news is, I’m not blurting this one out because the only thing worse than my brother marrying my sister is being the one to ask her for him.
“He hasn’t said anything to you?” She asks again, nose twitching like she smells something suspicious and I shrug.
“He asked me if Ingrid is ok.”
“If no one asks me that ever again it’ll be too soon,” she huffs, kicking her feet back up on the table and freezing when Mom walks out of the bedroom and sees her.
“Feet.”
“Sorry.”
“What brings you up here?” Mom walks up to her and hugs her even as Ingrid makes a show of rolling her eyes. She notices Ingrid’s hand and looks at me but I just shrug, because I don’t know how to silently communicate that Smitelout has been hiding both her talent and smidgen of compassion remarkably well for someone who’s so loud and annoying all the time.
“I brought breakfast,” she gestures at the basket on the table, “and I wanted to see how last night went because Eret left the Ingermans’ to hang out with his girlfriend.”
“Fuse Thorston?” Mom turns that disappointed in dating look I’ve only ever seen her give Arvid on me for the first time in my life and it practically stings. “She’s your girlfriend now?”
“She’s not my girlfriend.” I shrug, and it’s true, because we haven’t said anything like that and she doesn’t want to get married. I just occasionally kiss her in her room on her bed and feel really…happy about it. That’s all.
And, you know, I’m currently trying really hard not to remember how her hip felt under my hand or how good she smells.
Not that I’m going to tell my mother that.
This is the first thing I’ve ever had that I really can’t tell Mom, isn’t it?
“Maybe not in so many words, but he does realize that she is in fact a girl.” Aurelia isn’t upset enough about Arvid not to join in.
“I’d wager that he might even think she’s pretty.” Ingrid pokes me irrationally hard in the arm with one of her metal fingers and that’s probably why Smitelout did it, to torture me from yet another angle.
“Well, maybe he should think about making decisions based on pretty,” Mom gives me that look again.
“Who’s pretty?” The chief walks out of the bedroom and Ingrid blinks at him for a second, alarmed like she never is. I realize it’s the first time she’s seen it, Mom and the chief so casually together like it’s not completely absurd after a lifetime of Mom and Dad. The chief puts his hand on Mom’s back and reaches for some bread. “Good morning, Ingrid.”
“Uh, hey Chief.”
“So, who’s pretty?” He kisses Mom on the cheek like that much is obvious, and I look and Ingrid and shrug. She’s a little pale and I don’t blame her, honestly.
“Fuse Thorston is, in Eret’s humble opinion,” Aurelia looks at me, daring me to argue with her and I know that’s a trap.
“I told him to think twice about decisions made on pretty.” Mom looks at the chief like she wants his support in whatever her problem is with talking about Fuse and the chief gives her a look that makes me feel surprisingly vindicated.
“I’m not sure that’s great advice, Astrid.”
“I’m just saying—”
“I get what you’re saying, Mom.” I leave it at that, because I do, because I’ve made decisions based on pretty and that led to following Aurelia around like a lost fireworm.
“You’re being respectful, right?” The chief narrows his eyes at me and it’s almost authentically stern. I laugh. “No, really, Fuse is a great girl—”
“You’re being serious?” I laugh again, waiting for him to stop and say he’s just joking with me or something. Because that’s another face that Arvid got, the ‘am I going to have to clean up your romantic mess’ face. I always got the go-get-‘em face with the bald implication that I would fail. This is a better new face. “You think I’ve got enough of a chance to be disrespectful?”
“She’s a good kid.” He reiterates.
“I know, chief. I’m not—I’m being respectful. Or whatever.” Or at least most of me is.
I did leave last night. I stopped as soon as it went further than I expected it to. She was the one following me out and talking about stuff and things and making me blush. And putting things in my head that probably should have already been there, but now that they’re new, they’re a lot harder to avoid.
“Glad to hear it.” He nods, still fatherly but a little less annoying than usual. “Also, get dressed, there’s a report of a Thunderdrum attacking some boats up north, we should go before it moves on.”
“Now?” I frown, “I’m not done eating yet.”
“Bring it with you.”
What the chief didn’t tell me at home is that the Thunderdrum was described as covered in flaky, white scales and that it’s nearly half a day’s flight north. The chief and I spend the better part of three days cruising around at low altitude looking for it. I have to physically bite my tongue a few times to keep from telling him we should go East, towards the sick dragon island, but having him on my side won’t help us now anyway so I don’t bother. That and it feels like laying out breadcrumbs for him to come find the plan we’ve managed to keep underground for this long.
“It might be about time to give up,” he shouts over the cold wind on our way back to Berk mid-afternoon on our third full day of searching. “It must have moved on from here, if it attacks any more ships, we’ll hear about it.”
“Thunderdrums don’t attack for no reason, it must have felt threatened.”
“Or it was old and sick,” the chief lets that hang for a minute and I look at him. He’s staring pointedly ahead. “Sea’s looking pretty empty these days.”
“I know that,” I pat Bang’s head urging him faster to keep up with Toothless’s easy gliding, “so are the forests.”
“I wonder if it’s some sort of disease,” the chief slows down and he’s still not looking at me, more thinking out loud and hoping I’d rather have answers than fight with him. Maybe I’d feel different if I didn’t think I already had the answers, but I’d rather get home than fight. “If it is, there has to be a cure.”
“What if they’re just dying?”
“Or going somewhere else,” he looks East like he’s been thinking about it this whole time, “maybe someone needs to bring them back.”
“If they want to leave, I don’t see how bringing them back could help anything.” It’s true but it feels like diversion too, because we’re so close and the problem should solve itself. I’ve got to believe it will, because otherwise, I don’t know what I’m going to do. All I know is that it feels wrong out here without dragons, too quiet, too still. Like I’m existing after the end of something.
“I don’t know,” the chief shakes his head and looks at me, a nostalgic smile pulling at the corner of his mouth and making him look older than he usually does, “maybe it’s because it’s a Thunderdrum. I always kind of look for my dad’s, I guess.”
“Could they really live that long?” I pat Bang’s head again and he warbles like he’s offended at the suggestion.
“I’ve seen them so big that there’s no way they could fly anymore. We know they become mostly aquatic after fifty years or so but…I don’t know. I hope so.” He sighs, “maybe I just like thinking parts of him are still out there.”
I get the feeling he’s talking about me. The comparison gets heavier every time I hear it and I clear my throat.
“How—how did he die?” The question falls out, clumsy, too loud over the dragon-less waves, “I know it was—you know, Toothless, and you told me when, I just—”
“Toothless was under the control of an alpha. My dad jumped between us,” he looks down at his hands, “we glamorize it for the plaque but…it was what it was.”
“He saved you,” I nod, thinking that through. It’s an instinct I understand better after Ingrid. Not that I didn’t understand it before, but there was always an element of heroism to it. I understood being the hero, taking the brunt, but always with something on the other side.
Spitleaf didn’t stay and Ingrid’s forever damaged for it. I would have stepped in front of that axe in an instant, but she wouldn’t have wanted me to.
Maybe sometimes, leading is making the hard choices for everyone else, but most of the time, it’s making the hardest one for yourself.
“He didn’t think twice.” The chief looks at me strangely for another second before clicking at Toothless. “Come on, let’s get home, I’m about numb from being in the saddle two days straight. I’m finally getting old, I guess.”
“I think that started a long time ago,” I joke because I don’t know what else to say and he laughs because I get the feeling he needed a joke.
In a way, the last couple days have been a slice of what was normal for so many months. Sure, I didn’t drop all chiefly duties while helping get Ingrid re-settled, but I can’t say they were an all day, every day activity anymore either. And even though it’s not as much work as when I was doing it alone, I’m itching for a break. Not that I even know what I break is these days. I don’t know what I even used to do when I had all that free time.
The good news is that the blasts of cold, salty air keep me from thinking too hard about Fuse, at least while we’re actively flying. The rest of the time, at home, Aurelia talks my ear off about how Arvid is acting strange and I help her hack through a few of the more difficult treaties she’s working on. It all has the feeling of filling time when I should be doing something else, something important. The next day, I take the first chunk of freedom I can get when the chief asks me to check in on the second round of dam repairs while he has a secret meeting that I largely suspect is with Arvid himself.
The dam looks like it’ll hold this time and it better because the next thing the chief wants to try is bracing it with a metal substructure, and that might lead someone to discover just how low the store of scrap iron is at the moment. Smitelout’s doing a decent job of hiding the lack of pile but if anyone really went looking for it they’d notice. Most of it is finally shaped into shells that Fuse should be filling and…
Fuse. There she is.
Thinking about her makes my hands itch. And my chest feels tight. And I think about her hair and her room and the way she kissed me with so much intent, like she’d been thinking about it even more than I had. How she didn’t get mad at me when she had every right to and how it felt like the edge of something new but in a good way this time. A way that makes all the nervous energy swirling around my head at the thought of her feel more like a promise. Like something resembling intent.
I almost wonder what I could get away with, but it’s different, it’s more wondering what would happen if I didn’t stop her. If she got to kiss me in private all that she wanted to.
Now, I might be a bit dense and damaged in this department, but I also grew up with Arvid as my older brother. And somehow, I can’t stop thinking about the brushed red patch on Fuse’s neck from my stubble and the way she kept running her fingers through my hair and it would almost be easier if she’d been offended. Hel, if she’d been anything but flattered. Because I’m a bit flattered that she let me that close to her. I’d kind of like to flatter her more.
Bang and I get to the edge of the village and I should go back to the chief’s house to hear the news about Arvid and Aurelia and figure out what he wants me to do next. That would be the right thing to do, but it’s hard with all these half thoughts about Fuse in my head, and I think about heading to her house to see if she’s there. Maybe no one else would be.
And like all of the other women in my life, Fuse must read my mind, because as soon as I land she appears out of seemingly nowhere, running up to me and grabbing my arm. She yanks hard enough to pull me off of Bang and I stumble a couple of steps to catch my balance.
“Nice to see you too.”
“I have to talk to you.”
“Yeah?” I can’t stop the dopey grin spreading across my face even though I know it can’t possibly do anything good for me in this situation.
“It’s serious,” she starts dragging me towards her workshop. “Come on.”
“Ok,” I catch up to walk beside her and she drops my arm, chewing on her bottom lip. “What’s wrong? Are you ok?”
“Why wouldn’t I be ok?”
“Because you look upset—”
“Keep your voice down,” she looks around like she’s checking if anyone heard, remaining mostly silent until we get to her workshop. She lights the lone candle on the counter inside and shuts the door behind us, ignoring Bang’s pathetic croon at being out of my sight for even a minute. “I talked to Spitleaf last night—”
“Is she ok? I know Ingrid broke up with her—”
“Why would I talk to her about that?” She shakes her head, “I was asking her about the dragons because she’s been way further out than either of us and apparently there aren’t any left on the mainland. Like, at all. And that’s why she and Ingrid got attacked, dragon leather’s selling for its weight in gold.”
“Dragon leather? That’s barbaric.”
“It’s disgusting,” she shakes her head, “and it’s worse, they flew past the island on the way back and what she described? There must be twice as many dragons there now, and she said she didn’t see any babies but some of them weren’t old.”
“So, it’s spreading.”
“It’s spreading and—and I don’t…” She looks at me, hands limp at her sides and I lean back against the counter. She rarely looks helpless and her eyes feel like a physical weight adding to the looming one on my shoulders.
“And people are going after dragons now. So that means…” I wave my hand at where Bang is surely crouched outside the door, “places with dragons are in danger too. And people with dragons.”
“That’s what it sounds like.”
And I can’t help but think about her encountering people like the ones who hurt Ingrid. I should have protected Ingrid in the first place, that’s what chiefs are supposed to do. I’m not going to let the same thing happen to Fuse just because she’s out on some dangerous adventure I prompted her into. Maybe she doesn’t even need to be there, maybe I can help the dragons and know that she’s safe.
“Is there a way to do this with less people?” I try and wrap my head around the whole of what Fuse just told me, of the fact that even leaving Berk with a dragon right now could be seen as an invitation for trouble. The fact that what happened to Ingrid isn’t an isolated incident and that it could happen again, so easily.
“Like less people in the air? Because I think I need everyone helping me build if it’s—if we need to rush it this much. Because if hunters are hurting the dragons, we have to get them out of there.” She looks at me more rigidly than she has in a while and I realize she’s pushing the timeline herself without asking me. That’s a relief, honestly, because I don’t want to ask for more from her when she’s already doing so much.
“Agreed. But what do you thing? Could we do it with less people flying out there.” I look at her face, slanted with shadows from the flickering candle. It makes her looks softer and that makes me feel more determined. “Like, could it be staged in phases from a single dragon?”
“It’s too heavy for a single dragon, let alone a dragon with two riders.”
“What about a Thunderdrum with one rider?” I regret getting there so quickly as soon as I do, because her brow crumples and her nostrils flare and I don’t think I’ve ever seen that brutally irritated face directed at me. She looks me up and down like she doesn’t quite recognize me and maybe it’s closer to fury than annoyance.
“You can’t do this alone.” It’s an insult, not a plea to come along, and I realize I made a mistake with a significant potential to be fatal to people she doesn’t like as much as me. I inadvertently stepped between her and her bombs. “You don’t know how to prep the charges, you don’t know—”
And if me standing my ground here keeps her safe from some crazy dragon hunting barbarians off island, well, this is my soon to be vaporized rock to die on. Fuse is quite the blast to jump in front of but I’m not letting anyone else get hurt.
“You could teach me. I could learn, it could be fun—”
“No.”
“Fuse—”
“No, I’m going, and if you won’t help, I’ll find someone who will.” She crosses her arms and looks past me, eyes flicking briefly to my face like she’s assessing the impact of her words.
It’s not small. It stings like a burn, a burn I don’t want to ice because I want to use the pain to remember not to touch that again. She’s the one person I’ve managed to keep on or near my side through all of this and to think that I’m messing that up now, so close to the end when everything’s only getting more dangerous and difficult. I bite back a bitter surge of exhaustion and sadness and pride that makes me want to tell her to go ahead and try. But it’s Fuse, and she’d take me at face value, and that means I have to make my face value higher. It has to say what I’ll always want to say and not what I want to say now, when I’m scared of how different it’s going to be out there when we leave.
It might be loud with barbarians instead of quiet without dragons and again, I don’t know how I’m handling all this change.
“You just said it yourself,” I look at my feet, boots muddy from examining the dam and then being dragged to her shed. Maybe I can only have one person with me at a time and now that Arvid’s finding some resolution to his slow swing back to my side, I have to scare Fuse off. “Just having a dragon is looking for trouble—”
“And if it finds us,” she picks up a clay jar from a shelf above her workbench and shakes it at me, not quite threatening but enough to make me worry if she’ll still even like me after all of this.
“What if it’s not enough?”
“I have dozens of those.”
“What if those aren’t enough?” I snap, “we don’t know what we’re going into and I can’t—I can’t stand the thought of something happening to you, alright?” I throw my hands up and sigh, “ever since I thought of it, I can’t stop. Just—me not being able to do anything about it and…”
“You’re trying to protect me?” She cocks her head, hair shining in the sunset light leaking around the door. The candle makes it bright enough not to trip over her but not much more than that and it makes it feel later, like we’re existing in the twilight of this big plan more than we are in today. “I don’t need you to.”
“Neither did Ingrid, until she did. Neither did anyone until…until every decision I made started to impact all of them.”
“You can’t decide anything for me,” she’s quiet like she’s trying to comfort me and I try to feel that. I try to feel the strength that’s always made her someone I could lean on when no one else was standing up straight. She’s the one tree in the forest still standing after a microburst or a timberjack tantrum and I try to let myself believe it.
“I just…I don’t want you to do anything stupid for me that gets you hurt.” I gesture at her, at the way she’s standing, Hel, the way she’s just existing there. Calm and furious and controlled, beautiful and dirt smudged, uneven braids and tangled hair. “I’m not worth that.”
“That’s not your decision to make either.” The corner of her mouth twitches and I want to wipe the smudge of soot off of her chin. I want the dragons to come back, I want none of it to be real and more, I want it not to sit so squarely on me. “Plus, it’s for the dragons. It’s only for you in a secondary way.” That’s almost a joke and I get that she’s trying to cheer me up on my level, even if it’s hard for her. I almost ask to go blow something up but she continues. “Who protects you? If you’re so cut up protecting everyone else, who’s protecting you?”
I shrug, “I don’t know, some chiefly aura that’s kept the chief alive all these years?”
“He’s missing his leg.”
“Yeah, but he survived.” I sigh, “and given he’s still alive even with all this messing with my family of all people, I’m just hoping it’s strong enough to be genetic.”
“That’s stupid.”
“Yeah, but it’s what I’ve got.” Part of me wants to ask her to protect me, but she’s right, I can’t decide anything for her. She can’t decide anything for me either though and that means she can’t stop me from doing everything in my power to keep her as safe as possible. To keep everyone as safe as possible.
“You still think it’s right for the dragons, right?”
“I think if it’s not, it won’t matter. I think they’re going there to die and whether they want to do it under or on the island, it’s happening.”
“And if doing this could make it better for them—”
“We do it. Obviously.” I look at my feet, “I think it’s time to tell the chief though. Not about the dragons or any of this,” I gesture around her workshop, “but…but if people are hunting dragons and they’re the people that hurt Ingrid…”
“We need to be ready for that too.” She nods, “especially because we have an alpha here, dragons should stick around longer than anywhere else.”
“Huh,” I nod, “I always forget about that.” I look back up at her and sigh, “start working on how to do this with three. Arvid might want to stay back if it’s this dangerous, or Aurelia might want him to. I don’t necessarily hate the idea of that anyway.”
“You, me, and Smitelout?” She doesn’t put any special emphasis on herself and she’s almost daring me to bring it up again.
“Yeah, and…and I should set up the interior charge, the one in the volcano on that lip?” I ask to make sure she understands and she looks like she’s going to fight for a second but seems to abandon that idea. She sighs and almost cautiously rests her hand on my cheek, like I’m the thing in this shed most likely to blow up if handled improperly.
“Ok, I’m not sure there’s room for two of us down there anyway and I can’t lift the baffle as well by myself.”
“You stay in the air, over the water, and hit the lava flows.”
“I don’t need you to protect me,” she says again, gentler this time, “you don’t have to.”
“Maybe that’s why I want to,” I lean my face against her hand, trying to find the right words, “because…because it feels like the only thing I can’t mess up.”
“There’s a lot you can’t mess up,” she leans onto tip toes and kisses me on the other cheek, “not that you haven’t tried.” She doesn’t object when I wrap my arms around her waist and pull her in to a hug, my chin fitting almost too neatly over her shoulder.
“I’ve got to go talk to the chief, don’t I?”
“Yeah,” her breath is warm even through the shoulder of my shirt and I must smell like salt and murky dam water but she doesn’t seem to care. I squeeze tighter before I have to let go and feel her heartbeat against my chest. “And I’ve got to start packing up everything.” She sighs and pulls out of the hug, slowly, like she doesn’t really want to. “That’s my least favorite part. I build all these bombs and it looks like so many until they fit into a few saddle bags.” She taps my chest with the back of her hand and takes a step back, “three people, right?”
“Three people.” I’m suddenly tired, just thinking about what I’m about to have to do, and I push away from the counter, finding a tired smile for her. “Next time when you come find me, it should be good news, ok? You’ve got to at least alternate or it really starts to wear a guy down.”
“Good news,” she nods, “I’ll try and remember that.”
“Ok, I’ll let you know how it goes.” I kiss her on the forehead again and it almost feels like habit, like the good kind of habit that I want to keep. “I’d say wish me luck but—”
“You don’t need it.” She nods at me and I get the impression that’s a nicer version of her saying I don’t have it but well, that’s the last thing I need to remember right now.
So this is so late that it’s early because I needed to add the whole giant scene that’s most of it because I was missing some fuse/feret/smitelout/smingrid/arvid development as I read through. So it’s like 8000 words. I’m not even going to apologize.
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Ingrid doesn’t cry when Gobber sees her hand. She unwraps the bandage herself and holds it out, more annoyed than anything, and like I expected, he declares it clean and healing. I give Gobber a ride to the chief’s house but come back afterwards, feeling like I need to check on her because bringing Gobber in was my idea in the first place and after this morning, I’m not really sure what might set her off. When I get back, she’s asleep in the chair in front of the fire where she’s slept every night since getting home and I cross the room, thinking about taking her boots off for her but well…that’s the kind of thing she might react badly to, isn’t it?
I build up the fire and look at Arvid’s cracked opened door down the hallway. He’s snoring but he’s here and I can leave and go get some actual rest but I feel bad.
Arvid doesn’t know the truth. Dad doesn’t even know the truth and what if she gets upset again? What if it’s as bad as earlier or the other day?
I sit down at the table and rest my head on my hands, trying and failing not to think too hard about it. It’s Ingrid. She was never affected by anything, let alone a week later.
And I can’t help think about all of us, about how it was safe enough off island for the chief to be gone for months at a time and nothing like this ever happened to him. And yeah, he had a night fury but…it’s Ingrid. Ingrid who never lost a fight, Ingrid who was strong and with someone and had a dragon too. What if it’s not just the dragons leaving Berk, what if the whole world is changing? What if I’ve been looking at one tiny part of a whole big problem?
Or what if it was just random?
That’s almost worse, because well…I’ve always dreamed of leaving, in some way. Not often, not for forever, but there’s a whole world I’ve never seen out there and never before now has that fact felt threatening. It makes me think about Fuse, going to neighboring islands for supplies and just…being a fixture there even though it could be dangerous. And Fuse isn’t someone I’ve ever felt I had to protect, maybe from my own idiocy, but neither was Ingrid.
If this can happen to Ingrid, it feels like it can happen to anyone anytime and that’s terrifying.
If the dragons are sick, does that mean people are turning on each other everywhere? When there’s no monster in the woods does something have to replace it?
And that makes me want to go out there and fight it, it makes me want to push back. And that’s scary too because well…when Arvid fought me, I fought back. That was the last time I made a decision like this, really maybe the only time because yes, I’m a Viking, my childhood was skirmishes and bloody noses and hiding torn clothes from Mom but none of those people actually wanted to hurt me in any real way. Arvid did, for a while, because like me he thought that if I hurt he might hurt a little less, but even then he was my brother. He’s tough but—
Well, he’d never cut off half my hand.
For the first time, going out there, beyond the extension of Berk’s reach feels truly dangerous. Flying out there with a bunch of bombs like I know what I’m going to find when I haven’t been to the dragon island in months feels dangerous. Like it could fail. Like someone could get hurt.
The door opens and Dad walks in, pausing when he sees me. I nod at him and look back at the table, thoughts jumbled but still very much there and very much depressing.
“Are you staying here?” He asks and I almost don’t look up, because it seems more likely that I’m finally snapping and imagining things. “Arvid said he was taking a shift.”
“He is.” I look around, trying to find something to focus on other than him and the weight of the stretching silence. “I’m just…here.”
“Do you not trust him?” Dad asks me like he actually wants to hear an answer and I shake my head.
“I trust him fine. There are what? Three dragons in the barn, Bang’s…” I gesture to him where he’s snoring gently in front of the fire. “Nothing’s going to happen to her, I know that.”
“You look tired.” He looks at his old chair like he’s thinking about sitting down but I don’t hold my breath.
“You care?”
“Odin,” he looks old and sad and I miss him like it should be impossible to miss someone right in front of you. I miss him calming me down and building me up and being there, steady the way the chief isn’t, the way the chief could never be. “Of course I care.”
“Of course.” I mimic, tone hollow, and he sits down, the chair dragging loud across the floor. Ingrid shifts in her sleep, curling further into the pile of blankets on top of her and I’m not sure where to look. Dad’s looking at me like he used to when I was doing something he didn’t understand. Something that wasn’t part of him or Mom or the part of the chief he accepted as necessary.
“It’s been good having you here. It almost feels normal again.” He doesn’t sound like he’s lying and I hate that I know what his lies sound like. That my definition of normal is shattered while other people’s still exist.
But I can’t help but hear that maybe in some way, I’m still a part of his normal.
“Normal but without Mom.” It comes out at the same time as I’m thinking it and I remind myself of Arvid earlier, poking old wounds just to check that the conflict is dead.
“Maybe it was always without her.” He’s the sad kind of resigned that I can’t get to. He and Arvid and even Ingrid can let things go, they can give up without falling apart. They don’t drive themselves insane for months, pecking at the same problem even if they know they can’t get anywhere.
“That’s not true,” I shake my head and look up at him, feeling my placid mask start to slip. I want to talk to him, I want this to feel final the way that everything else is starting to and I want it to be somewhere else when it does. “She was here every day. If anyone was half-hearted about it, I’d have to put that on Rolf.”
“You’re not wrong about that,” Dad rolls his eyes, “now that he’s heard a council seat might be empty soon, he’ll barely talk to me, let alone in public.”
“I’ll keep him in line,” I mime punching my palm, “the council pretty much follows me around all the time and asks me to make their decisions for them so…”
“The chief thinks you’re doing a good job.” Dad passes on the compliment like a package he didn’t necessarily want to deliver but got roped into it and it makes me feel strange because I shouldn’t care but I do. “He told me. You’re about the only thing he can talk about without me wanting to throttle him.”
“I’m the new ‘how’s the weather’?” I weigh that for a second before shrugging, “that’s kind of a compliment, I guess.”
“Do you want to talk about it?”
“About the weather?” I think of Fuse as I say it and that makes this even weirder because he doesn’t know and he always knew everything about me.
“About whatever has you sitting in the dark and staring into space.”
“You aren’t really someone I talk to about stuff like that anymore.” I don’t say it to hurt anyone but his face falls.
“And that’s my fault.”
“I haven’t been the most exemplary son this year either.” I look at my hands, “if, you know, for the record, you still think of me that way after—”
“Of course I do.”
“Of course.” I repeat, nodding to myself and trying to count all the things I should have known but didn’t over the years. “If…can it be a secret?”
“That’s not what I like to hear.”
“I mean—it’s Ingrid’s secret.” I bite my lip, betrayal foreign and acrid in my throat, “and if you keep a secret like that from Mom it’s not like it’s in the way of your marriage or anything, right? Ha, that’s not funny. None of this is funny. I—I’m sorry.”
“No, I’m glad to know you aren’t quite as grown up as you were pretending to be.” He looks at me with some of that old, confused fondness I never quite understood. “And if it’s Ingrid’s secret, she should tell me herself.”
“She’s not going to.” I sigh and rub my eyes with my knuckles, pressing until my vision goes fuzzy like out of the snow some perfect clarity as to what I should do will appear. But that’s never how it works, it’s all just…binary decisions that don’t line up with right and wrong or smart and dumb and somehow, I’m supposed to know better. “It’s just…it’s something that could hurt her, and I’m worried it’s something that could hurt someone else and—and it’s…if we’re going to help her, she needs us to know even if she doesn’t know that.”
“I can’t tell you what to do.”
I snort, “a year ago, that would have been pretty much my favorite phrase in the whole world. I—growing up sucks.”
He laughs and shrugs like he doesn’t have anything to say and I missed that. I missed his patience, the way he’d wait until I wound myself down before trying to get through to me instead of winding myself up until I end up dizzy but somewhere in the vicinity of the right answer. I wonder if Mom misses it too.
“I—she’s lying.” I start, pausing and waiting for a reaction.
“Ingrid’s lying about something?”
“About how she got hurt. It wasn’t an accident. She and Spitleaf got attacked by some obviously sadistic and horrible excuses for human beings and she…didn’t win, which, I don’t even want to think about who she was fighting.”
“She knew it was dangerous when she left, we’ve always told her how dangerous it is.”
“But she’s lying about it, Dad, she’s lying about it and crying and—she told Spitleaf to give her space and she—when she saw her earlier, she hid and I stepped in front of her and for a second I swear she saw someone else and…Spitleaf had to leave her? To save the dragon she had to leave and come back and…” I trail off, and swallow, “she’s not ok. It’s more than her hand, she’s not ok and no one knows why except me.”
“It’s not going to get better overnight.” He’s pale and his hair is grayer than it was at Snoggletog and I steel myself reflexively before he continues. “It was years before I didn’t see Drago Bludvist in crowds, before I really accepted that he was dead—”
“At least he was dead! At least you knew that! The people who did that to Ingrid are still out there and no one’s going to do anything about it unless they know which—”
“Is this about helping your sister or is it about getting revenge?”
“Both!” I cross my arms and sit back, “I don’t know. It’s not revenge if they deserve it.”
“That’s not how revenge works. It’s revenge if it’s about yourself.”
“Maybe it is,” it sounds selfish and I hate how he makes me admit that to myself. “Maybe I’m supposed to be chief or something, I’m sure working enough for it, but—but I’m still not making anything better. I’m not protecting anyone, I—Ingrid isn’t the first or last person to go out there and now they’re all my people too.”
“It was always dangerous.”
“Yeah, but I never saw it like this.” I look over at Ingrid again and think about her flying away, excited if weighed down by her stupid little brother tagging along. “I could have been with them. I was but I left, and if I’d been there, I could have done something. She wouldn’t have been left behind, I—It’s my fault. Oh my gods, it’s my fault.” I sag down in the chair, “if I’d been there—”
“You have no way of knowing what would have happened if you’d been there.”
“Not this—”
“You can’t blame yourself for everything.”
“You say that,” I shake my head and look at her, “you say that, but it always comes back to me.”
“Well, Eret,” he says my name like it’s significant, like he’s claiming me again like he did when I was born and I think about Gobber telling me about my mopey third like it had something to do with my Dad. And maybe it does, but maybe moping is just another word for thinking about the dark angles, the sad angles, the regrettable things I can’t change but should still recognize. “You can’t choose your family, and you happen to have one that always ends up at the center of everything.”
“I’m not sure about that either,” I blink, more earnestly, calmly tired than I’ve felt since Ingrid came home, “I think I’ve spent about a year choosing my dad.”
He doesn’t say anything and I clear my throat.
“You, just to be clear.”
“I missed you,” he points at the door, “and I hope you keep coming around, but right now, you should go sleep in your own bed and stop thinking about chasing anyone down.”
“I thought you couldn’t tell me what to do.” I yawn and stretch my arms over my head.
“I’m your dad, let me pretend.”
00000
When Fuse asks me to help her build some bombs, I’d be lying if I said I didn’t show up early on purpose. I’d be lying even more if I said I wasn’t disappointed when she’s already sitting between Aurelia and Smitelout in her shed, all three of them loading jars and shells and muttering to each other. I was hoping we could have a few minutes without everyone needing something from me, but she’s happy to see me anyway, smiling briefly over her shoulder before turning back to whatever she’s doing.
“Then you tie the top off with the oil slicked cord…triple knot…” she demonstrates, bandaged fingers knotting quickly and when she wipes her forehead she leaves a deep blue streak along her eyebrow.
I pause in the doorway, staring for a minute and trying to decide how this isn’t weird even though I feel weird about it. Only Aurelia knows about me and Fuse, I guess, Smitelout’s just guessing. Well, Fuse knows, and I’m not even sure what she knows. She knows we went on half a date until everyone interrupted us and I haven’t seen her since, because between the chief keeps still assigning me things and watching Ingrid, I’ve been a bit busy.
“Are you going to help?” Smitelout huffs, struggling with a second attempt to tie the knot that Fuse got easily the first time. “Your girlfriend needs someone else to boss around.”
“You don’t have to help,” Fuse is measured like whatever she’s touching is extremely explosive and like Smitelout calling her my girlfriend doesn’t make her heart jump, “Arvid should be here soon to help you pack some of these into bundles…” She puffs a lock of hair out of her face and ties another careful knot in the twine before pushing the jar away from her.
Then she smiles at me again and my face heats up.
“Hi.” Why did I say that? She knows I’m here, I don’t need to say hi for no reason.
Aurelia rolls her eyes at me and this is so much harder when other people are around. Especially people who have so much vested interest in making fun of me. All I need is for Ingrid to show up and they can go around in a circle pointing out the goofiest things about me until Fuse decides that letting me use the ‘date’ word was a mistake.
“Hey,” she points at the tall shelf on the wall of her shed behind her. “Can you hand me that green jar?”
“Oh? Yeah, sure.” I should probably use the stool she has leaning against the back corner but it’s easier to jump, grabbing the jar and turning to give it to her. She frowns at me.
“This is a stabilizer,” she takes it, her fingers brushing against mine and making me feel even redder than I already did. “Which is lucky because if it hadn’t been, you would have just blown the roof off.”
“Nice going, Twerp.” Smitelout snorts, tying a knot so messy even I know it’s wrong and pushing her jar away from herself.
“Nothing happened,” Fuse gives Smitelout an almost dirty look and opens the green jar. I’m still standing behind her and it’s a view I’m not used to, the pale back of her neck under her tied up hair and the tense line of her shoulders. She’s focused, because she doesn’t have time to say anything else, muttering under her breath as she counts spoonfuls of bright yellow powder.
“That reeks,” Smitelout comments, ever useful, and Fuse’s shoulders tense up further.
I don’t think I’ve ever seen her stressed but it strikes me that this is what it would look like. I look around at the dozens of mostly assembled bombs strewn across her work space and feel bad that I haven’t been helping more. I know I’m busy but I didn’t intend to put this all on her. At least Aurelia seems competent, working without instruction and stacking another sealed jar against the wall.
“Maybe if you didn’t have to comment so much, you’d be keeping up,” Aurelia gestures at her pile of completed jars and Smitelout frowns.
“It’s not my fault you skinny fingered twerps tie faster knots than me.”
“…ten, eleven…” Fuse counts louder, like their bickering made her lose her place, and her hair smells like smoke and I don’t know why I’m still standing here right behind her. It’s probably creepy. I feel kind of creepy. Maybe I only feel creepy because I want to touch her and while I don’t think she’d say no, Aurelia and Smitelout are here and that makes it different.
Aurelia looks over her shoulder like she can hear my internal panic and raises an eyebrow. I shrug. She shakes her head like she’s embarrassed for me and Fuse sets down her spoon, pulling a spool of coated string towards her and measuring it around a couple of fingers, the twine digging into the bandage around her middle finger and leaving a gray smear across the clean fabric.
“What else do we need to get done today?” Smitelout leans back in her chair, kicking her feet up on the workbench. “Believe it or not, I actually have plans elsewhere so…”
“Leave whenever,” Aurelia reaches for another jar and starts filling it, “I bet we figure it out without you.”
Her animosity towards Smitelout seems a little more cutting than anyone else’s and I know at some level, it’s more about someone infringing on the original group than it is on the inevitable personality conflict at hand.
“Hey, I’m here to help—” Smitelout insists.
“So. Help.” Fuse halfway snaps, unraveling the twine from her hand and starting again. My hands kind of hover in front of me, still debating on touching her, and Aureila gives me one more unimpressed look that pushes me over that awkward edge. I take a step forward and put my hands on her shoulders and she relaxes slightly, rolling her head from side to side and spooling the twine a little faster.
She’s cool to the touch, which seems strange because of how warm touching her makes me feel, and I tentatively rub the knotted muscle at the base of her neck with my thumb. She relaxes even further and snips off the twine, pulling the loaded jars into a circle and wrapping it around all of them to tie it off. Aurelia finishes the one that she’s working on and Fuse sets it in the middle, tightening the twine around the outside to hold everything in place.
“What can I do?” I lean forward to look down at her face over the top of her head and she blushes slightly, shrugging under my hands.
“You’re good there, but Smitelout, if you could start taking the finished shells outside and sorting them by size?”
“Can’t Eret do that?” Smitelout whines, “it’s not really skilled labor.”
“Eret’s busy,” Fuse sighs, leaning back into my hands slightly. I rub the back of her neck a little more firmly and she hums, a content little sound that I can feel in her shoulders.
“Sheesh, get a room,” Smitelout stands up and pushes past me and Fuse’s head bumps back into my chest.
“Sorry,” I take a step back but my hands feel like they’re glued to her shoulders. And she’s not shrugging me off, so I start rubbing again, working outwards along the stiff muscle between her shoulder and neck.
“Why are you sorry?” She goes back to working, braiding some twine into a thicker cable. “My neck’s been killing me.”
“Because he’s an idiot.” Aurelia stands up and looks down the hill, “isn’t Arvid supposed to be here by now?”
“I told him to come at the same time as Eret,” she threads the thicker cable through slits in the leather on top of the jars.
“I was early,” I admit and Fuse pauses.
“Oh, that makes sense, I thought we’d have more done by the time you got here.”
“Still, Arvid’s not usually late,” Aurelia wipes her hands off on her skirt. “I’m just going to check down the hill.” And then she leaves and Fuse and I are almost alone. Almost because Smitelout is outside, sorting bombs and of course she has to make some comment about how lazy Aurelia is as she walks by. But aside from that, we’re alone.
“You don’t have to keep doing that,” she looks over at my hand on her shoulder, “Smitelout isn’t interrupting me every few seconds, I’m not that tense anymore.”
“Oh, I don’t mind.” I stop anyway, because maybe it’s weird and now it definitely feels weird. Maybe she thinks it’s weird. “Unless you mind. Then I mind.”
“I don’t mind,” she grins, “like I said, my neck was killing me. Sit,” she pulls Aurelia’s stool back out with her foot, “I need steady hands for this part anyway.”
She leans down, threading the cable through the last lid and tying it off with a tight knot. There’s a smudge of something blue on her chin and her teeth dig into her lower lip as she tucks the knot carefully into the tight groove between two of the jars. A piece of hair slips out from behind her ear and she puffs it out of her face, adjusting one more thing and sitting up to wipe her hands on her knees.
“What’s this for?” I point at whatever she just finished and she smiles a smaller version of the smile she saves for when something very large is on fire.
“I’m going to tar coat it and mount it to the baffle charge, it should heat the shell more evenly and cause a hotter, more front facing blast.” She tucks her hair back behind her ear and leaves a sooty streak across her cheek. And she’s still smiling that half-crazy smile and we’re the most alone that we’ve been since the night Ingrid came back.
“Cool.”
“I wish we had time to test it first, but it’d take another month to get this many supplies again, so I think at this point we’re better off just going for it,” she picks up a writing stick on the counter and makes a couple notes on a wrinkled piece of paper. “Maybe even amp up the charge in the main shell, that couldn’t hurt anything.” She laughs to herself, “or it could hurt a lot. It is an island, after all.”
“Remind me not to piss you off,” I laugh and she narrows her eyes, still smiling. Joking with me in a way that makes my skin feel too tight because it can’t be real. Out of everything that’s happened this last year, somehow Fuse looking at me like that is the most unbelievable. Also, the best. Not that it’s competing with a bunch of sunshine and dragon kisses, but still.
“Was that ever the plan?” She stands and offers me her hand.
“Oh yeah,” I let her help me up and wiggle my other hand at her, “I was just going to lull you into a false sense of security with my magic fingers and then just…piss you off. I hadn’t worked out how yet.”
“Magic fingers?” She raises a half-singed eyebrow and her cheeks flush slightly. “That’s bold.”
“Are you minimizing my shoulder rubbing skills?” I step closer and it’s the first time this has felt easy. Hel, it’s the first time I’ve managed to joke with her since realizing that looking at her made my heart beat in my throat.
“Not exactly,” she turns redder and coughs and she’s still holding my hand from helping me up and it makes me want to pull her in closer.
“Are you two going to fucking help me?” Smitelout sticks her head through the doorway. “Or are you just going to stand in the dark and hold hands.”
I almost blurt out that I’m going to stand in the dark and hold hands but Fuse drops mine, cheeks still pink as she peeks around me to look at the piles outside.
“Is everything sorted?”
“Go see for yourself.”
Fuse doesn’t get a step closer to the door before Aurelia reappears, dodging around Smitelout and nearly running into me.
“We’ve got to get everything back inside. Now.” She starts shoving things across the workbench to make room. One of the jars smacks the wall a little too hard and starts smoking and Fuse steps between her and the bench.
“What’s going on?”
“Arvid’s coming.” Aurelia is out of breath like she just sprinted up the hill, “and Ingrid is with him.”
“What?” I look at Fuse but she’s already looking at me, like she’s waiting for my reaction.
“Ingrid’s coming,” Aurelia repeats, dodging past Smitelout to grab an armful of loaded shells and carrying them inside.
“Did you have to mess up my piles?” Smitelout whines, “really?”
“What do you want to do?” Fuse asks me and of course the split-second decision in on me, again, and I knew I should have picked the stand in the dark and hold hands option.
“Fuck, we have to hide everything.” I follow Aurelia outside and start grabbing shells, handing them to Fuse over my shoulder while Smitelout continues to complain about her piles. “Ingrid can’t know, she’s got enough going on without thinking about dragons.”
“So I literally sorted all of that for no reason?” Smitelout, against all reasonable odds, starts helping, handing larger shells off to Aurelia, who stashes them under Fuse’s workbench.
“Yes,” Fuse and Aurelia snap in unison and we’re just cramming the baffle into the shed when Arvid’s head crests the hill. He’s walking backwards in front of Ingrid, trying to block her view and maybe some of that old ability to reach each other’s minds is back because as soon as we shove the door shut, he turns around.
“You’re late,” Aurelia says, too loud and out of breath, walking up to hug him and whisper something in the direction of his ear. He shrugs and looks frustrated.
“He was being suspicious,” Ingrid tucks her bandaged hand in the pocket of a jacket I think is Dad’s and steps up closer to Fuse’s shed. “Outhouse?”
“Workshop,” Fuse lunges to shut the door tighter when it tries to creak open under the weight of the baffle rocking against it.
“Can I see?” Ingrid reaches for the handle and I step in front of her.
“Nope,” I shake my head and look at Fuse for an idea, “I…spilled something. Because I’m so clumsy.”
“Yeah,” Fuse nods, “and it may or may not explode.”
“So better safe than sorry,” I clear my throat, “which is my idea because that’s a sentence a Thorston has never said.” I punch her in the arm because it feels casual but it must be harder than I intended because she rubs the spot, elbowing the door shut one last time and stepping away from it.
“And I thought Arvid was acting weird,” Ingrid frowns.
“If he was acting so weird, why did you want to go with him?”
“Because he told me no,” she shrugs. Smitelout barks out a laugh and Ingrid looks at her like she’s the craziest of all of us. “What are you guys doing, really?”
“Nothing.” I lie, badly. Aurelia glares at me and I shrug, urging her to come up with something better.
“That’s convincing.”
“We’re having…a double date,” Aurelia gets out, grabbing Arvid’s hand like that sells it. Ingrid narrows her eyes at me and I loop my arm over Fuse’s shoulders, pulling her into my side. She fits there better than I remember and I hope she doesn’t mind, because it’s going to be hard to let her go.
“Isn’t that weird?” Ingrid looks between Arvid and me and I shrug, my arm sliding down to Fuse’s mid-back. That lines my hand up with her waist, which makes her feel even closer, and she doesn’t shove me off.
“Why would it be weird?” Aurelia bumps her shoulder against Arvid’s side, smile stiff and unmoving on her face.
“It just seems like there’s a lot of…siblings for a double date.”
“That makes it better,” I nod, “sibling bonding and a date. Two dragons, one stone. I’m a busy guy.”
Arvid laughs he expected everyone else to, but he’s the only one, and he cuts it off as quickly as possible. Ingrid crosses her arms, looking between us like she’s not buying this in the slightest.
“Why’s Smitelout here?”
“They invited me,” Smitelout shrugs, “well, actually my date cancelled—I mean, I totally had a date. That I ditched. I did the ditching.”
“To hang out with my little brothers on their double date?” Ingrid raises an eyebrow and Smitelout scoffs.
“Yeah. Keep up.”
“What was the plan for this double date?” Ingrid looks at me and Fuse in particular and I lean my head against hers.
“A…bonfire.” Fuse bounces slightly when she thinks of it, and it’s adorable, and I almost forget that this is a lie for a second because that sounds like fun. It’s definitely nowhere near dark and it’s not cold either, but still. And it’s a distraction, and it sounds like something that we might actually do. You know, if Arvid and I were even on the kind of speaking terms where we’d ever consider a double date.
Fuck, if Arvid and I having nothing to talk about is what messes this up I’m going to have to attempt to kick his ass again. I give him a stony, don’t-blow-this-for-us look and he looks down at his feet like if he’s not willing to have my back, he’s at least not going to get in my way.
“Which is why we needed stuff from the workshop, to start it,” Aurelia explains, “but then Eret was clumsy and spilled it and now we’re here.”
“Guilty.” I nod.
“I’ve got flints though,” Fuse pulls some out of her pocket and her knuckles glance across my hip as she tosses them in the air so they spark and then catches them. And she’s cool and she has to show it now and I can’t believe she likes me. And our last date was a mess that I didn’t even mean to be a date and our second date is now a lie and both my sisters are here and I can just feel that I’m messing this all up.
“The clumsiness is redeemable.” Aurelia squeezes Arvid’s hand and tugs him, “the firepit is over here, right?”
“Yep,” Fuse leans against me a little harder for a second before pulling away and walking a little too fast, like she only does towards fire. Ingrid falls into step next to me and elbows me in the arm, always too hard.
“I was just trying to get out of the house, if Arvid had just told me this was a date I wouldn’t have followed him.” She looks genuinely apologetic and I can’t help my eyes flicking to the hand still tucked in her pocket. I sigh.
“Well, since Smitelout already crashed, we might as well back the title back from date to a more generic group activity.” I scratch the back of my head and she looks at me for a second with narrowed eyes.
“You couldn’t put on a not wrinkled shirt for a date?” She tugs at my sleeve with her good hand and I bat it away.
“You know what? No, you’re uninvited if this is a game of tease Eret in his unnatural habitat.” I glance up at Fuse to see if she heard any of that but she’s helping Aurelia stack a pyramid of kindling into the center of a well-used fire circle, rimmed by flat rocks.
“You don’t let me have any fun,” she sits down on one of the three logs around the fire pit and Smitelout freezes.
“I was going to sit there,” she points at Ingrid who rolls her eyes and scoots over from the center of the log.
“I bet there’s still room given it’s about ten feet long.”
“Fine,” Smitelout huffs and sits down hard enough to rock the log slightly, “just don’t make me sit next to any of those twerps, I don’t want to catch the lame.”
“I’m not,” Ingrid looks at her good hand, nibbling on her nail and watching Fuse strike her flint next to a handful of dried grass and push it under the kindling when it catches. I move towards one of the other logs but Arvid is doing the same and he freezes, pointing at it.
“Do you want—”
“I’m fine with either—”
“You can have this one, it’s fine,” he backs off and I almost wish he’d fight me for it. Or act like he knows me, at all. Like we could be on the same side here too, when we’re both hiding the same thing from the same person.
“Thanks,” I sit down instead of arguing about it and Fuse feeds the fire a couple of dry logs before sitting next to me. Close next to me, close enough that the length of her thigh is pressed against mine and there’s not really room for my shoulder until I wrap my arm around her, hand on the log beside her other hip.
Aurelia sits between Arvid and Ingrid, holding his hand but looking purposefully at me like I’m supposed to start talking. I don’t know why she’s putting it on me, I don’t know how to be on a date, let alone a double date. I can barely hear myself think when Fuse shifts and her shoulder presses into my chest and reminds me how close she is and her hair is still pulled back so I can see her face better than usual. And she smells like wood smoke and girl and my whole side is starting to feel too warm and I don’t think I have anything to say that wouldn’t be mortally embarrassing, especially with the way Ingrid is looking between me and Arvid.
“Are they going to talk or do people not do that on dates anymore?” Ingrid jokes with Smitelout and her eyes widen.
“Normally I can’t get them to shut up,” she coughs out, too loud, and Ingrid raises an eyebrow.
“Maybe we don’t have anything to talk about,” Arvid mumbles, glancing up at me like it’s meant to be an insult and that makes me want to laugh. Even more so when Aurelia elbows him and he sighs. “I’m just saying, it’s not like Thorston and I ever had anything in common.”
“We had dragon training together for eight years.” Fuse reminds him. “Didn’t you call me your sworn enemy or something?”
“That was dumb kid stuff.” Arvid shrugs and looks at Aurelia for help.
“Yeah, I guess you moved on to a new sworn enemy,” Fuse laughs like it’s a joke and sets her hand on my knee and I don’t know how she says stuff like that or touches me so easily or how I’m not on fire being so close to her for this long.
“Thinly veiled threats are not a normal date activity, guys,” Ingrid shakes her head and leans forward, chin on her good hand.
“It’s not a threat,” Aurelia sighs and shakes her head at Arvid in a way that manages to be fond and irritated all at once. “I think they’re bonding.”
“Yeah, it wasn’t all bad,” Fuse shrugs, drumming her fingers on my knee, “I perfected my stink bomb recipe years earlier than I would have otherwise.”
“You should name it after me,” Arvid suggests and Fuse cocks her head. “You know, for my pain and suffering.”
“It never hurt you,” she shrugs, “but I’ll think about it.”
It’s petty, but I don’t like that I’m on a fake date and Fuse is looking at Arvid instead of me. After trying to get a couple hours alone in the mead hall and then this, I don’t think group dates are my thing. I think I’d rather have her full attention, my eyes flick to her hand on my knee and I remember what that might imply and my heart jumps in my chest.
“That’s not fair,” I say and she turns her head to frown at me. And again, if all of these people weren’t here, I could kiss her, and it’s worse that they’re my family. Well, except Smitelout. Second cousins or whatever doesn’t count. “I want an explosive named after me.”
“I’ll name one of the new ones after you.” She offers, wrinkling her nose. And I don’t think it’s normal to get the impulse to kiss someone’s nose, but I want to kiss hers and I’m never consenting to another double date again, even a fake one. “Not a stinkbomb, that’s not a comparison I’d like to make.”
“You haven’t smelled his socks,” Aurelia interrupts and Ingrid laughs.
“I said no commentary.” I point between the two of them, “especially because it’s not fair because no one is picking on Arvid.”
“Thorston picked on me.” He points out, actually managing eye contact and Aurelia nods in agreement.
“When you were nine.” I adjust my seat slightly and Fuse doesn’t seem to mind when my hand rests against her hip. If anything she leans closer to me, the knot of her hair pressing into my shoulder.
“I hold a grudge.” He shrugs and it’s half a joke and I half want to laugh at it but I still feel like that’s going to pull me into another brawl I don’t want to have.
“It’s like watching a yak learn to fly,” Ingrid rolls her eyes and looks at Smitelout for back up. It makes sense that somehow they ended up paired up here, because they’re both older and everyone else is coupled off, but it still doesn’t make sense to look at. Maybe it’s because I can’t believe that Fuse is choosing to be this close to me or because seeing Arvid look so normal with Aurelia still doesn’t make sense. “I was never this stupid, right? Someone would have told me?”
“I did,” Smitelout inflates slightly, “still do. Because you are.”
“Oh my gods,” Ingrid rolls her eyes, “I almost forgot who I was talking to for a second.”
“Fire’s getting low,” Fuse uses my knee to stand up and I’m instantly cold without her under my arm. She grabs a log off of the stack behind Arvid and tosses it on the fire, wiping away some ash that lands on her arm and leaving a gray streak on the back of her hand. Her sleeves are pushed up and she’s not wearing her vest and I realize she’s been leaving it off a lot lately. Like she’s actually making that effort to occasionally not be around explosives.
And that just makes me think of being alone in the forge with her and my face heats up. I lean forward to try and blame it on the fire but it feels different when she sits back down next to me, I’m too aware of her hipbone against mine and I jump when she puts her hand on my back.
“Sorry,” she tries to pull it off and I shake my head.
“No, it’s fine, I’m just jumpy.”
“Why?” She looks self-conscious, briefly, eyebrows furrowed, and I hate it.
“Because three of my siblings are here and I don’t think group dates are my thing,” I blurt out and Arvid meets my eyes across the fire. He nods in agreement and Aurelia looks slightly miffed at me.
“I thought it would be fun,” she lies better than the rest of us seem to be able to, “I won’t suggest it again.”
Meaning, next time she’ll just let me bumble through the lie alone. She doesn’t know what a bad idea that is, last time that happened I spilled the secret to Smitelout.
“Plus it’s not a group date,” Smitelout holds her hands out to Ingrid like she’s trying to pacify her, “not that—”
“Yeah, I know we’re not on a date,” Ingrid shakes her head, “you don’t have to clarify that.”
Fuse’s hand starts moving on my back, not really rubbing, just sort of tracing the line of my spine and it makes the hair on the back of my neck stand up. It feels better than it probably should, relaxing in a way that’s going to make me say something else stupid.
“I was just going to say that twerp commentary is more fun than a random bonfire when it’s not even dark yet,” Smitelout tosses a chip of wood into the fire and Fuse tenses like she doesn’t want anyone else feeding her fire. It’s cute that she’s possessive of the fire. It’s weird that she’s still feeling my back, because I don’t see how it could still be interesting to her, but I guess I didn’t get bored rubbing her shoulders. Not that it’s the same thing, because glancing sideways at her profile and the way her sharp blue eyes are taking in the interaction, I’m hit with another wave of disbelief that she likes me, of all people.
“Yeah, kind of a weird choice of activity, guys,” Ingrid agrees, just for the sake of teasing me, I’m sure, “maybe Smitelout shouldn’t have ditched her date.”
“I’m playing hard to get,” Smitelout looks at Ingrid like she’s stupid.
“Isn’t that self-defeating when you’re also playing hard to want?” Ingrid snorts at her own joke and Smitelout tosses her braid over her shoulder.
“You know, your axe is in pretty rough shape, I might not have time to get it fixed before Thawfest this year…” Smitelout sighs like this is deeply tragic for her and I tense when Ingrid glances down at her bad hand. I know she said it’s just Smitelout but still. No one gets to mention it.
I can tell Arvid agrees with the sentiment from the way he gently disentangles his hand from Aurelia’s and glances at me.
“Right. Thawfest,” Ingrid deflates as she pulls her hand out of her pocket, “it might just be your year, Lout.”
“Yeah, no, I don’t want to win like a loser,” Smitelout scoffs, “I don’t care if you borrow the twerp’s axe, it’s not a win if you don’t lose, fair and square.”
Ingrid stares at her for a second before nodding, “it’s almost like you’ve been hiding an honorable streak this whole time.”
“Don’t tell my dad,” Smitelout snorts and looks around at the rest of us and our collective expression that she just grew a second head. “What? Thorston’s the one with something on her face.”
“Not again,” Fuse mutters, taking her hand from my back and wiping her cheek. It just leaves a new black streak on top of the old one and I don’t think before reaching up and wiping at it with my thumb. That just smears it around and I laugh.
“And I just made it worse.”
“Really?” She looks embarrassed and that’s another reason to punch Smitelout.
“Here,” I take my black smeared thumb and wipe it on my cheek, “now we match.”
“We should go see if my shed blew up or not,” she almost deadpans, color rising high in her cheeks, “I think I know how to clean up what you spilled.”
And of course she’s brilliant, that’s a way out of this disaster of a fake group date. Maybe we can even hide the bombs better while we’re at it.
“Yeah, sure,” I stand up and offer her my hand, “my clumsiness in the first place. Yak butter fingers, am I right?” I show the hand she’s not holding to the group like they’ll take it as an explanation.
“Oh shit,” Fuse curses under her breath and drops my hand and I’m sure I said something wrong until she waves up the hill. “Hi dad, what are you doing?”
“I heard teenage merriment and thought the firepit must be haunted,” Tuffnut walks up to the firepit and puts his hands on his hips, “because there’s no way that my lifelong dream of my daughter having friends over is finally coming true.”
“Dad,” Fuse flushes up to her hairline, crossing her arms, “Darren has friends over all the time.”
“Which makes it less of an occasion,” Tuffnut looks at me in particular and it hits me, specifically, for the first time that he’s her father. Before I guess I haven’t thought about it except in the context of avoiding repeating the Aurelia situation, but now I’m just picturing every angry father figure I’ve ever seen glaring at Arvid. “And a part time Acting Chief in attendance, this is quite the high brow chill sesh.”
“Oh my gods, Dad, don’t say that.” Fuse hides her face in her hands, “I’ll be in later, alright?”
“Now I just feel like you’re trying to get rid of me,” Tuffnut—or is it Mr. Thorston? Am I suddenly supposed to call him Mr. Thorston because I’m hoping to kiss his daughter again sometime soon? Oh Gods, I shouldn’t think that now—sits down between Ingrid and Smitelout and claps Ingrid on the shoulder. “I haven’t seen you since you got back, glad we get this chance to hang.”
“I am trying to get rid of you,” Fuse looks at me apologetically and I’m as disappointed as she must have been when Gobber interrupted us the other night.
“No, I think we want to chill with your dad,” Smitelout laughs and Ingrid nods along.
“I don’t remember the last time we hanged. Hung?” Ingrid looks at Tuffnut and cocks her head. “What is the past tense of to hang?”
“Who cares?” Tuffnut shrugs and Fuse’s nostrils flare, cutely, and that’s another thought I shouldn’t have when her dad is here. “I’m a cool dad, grammar is lame.”
“Dad, why’d you come out here?”
“Dinner’s almost ready.”
“Ok, let’s go inside then,” she gives me one last sad look and walks behind her dad to grab his arm and tug. He falls backwards off of the log and Ingrid shoves his feet to the side, laughing. “I’ll see you,” she says to me in particular and I wave, trying not to look as miffed as I feel about it. She looks disappointed enough for the both of us.
“Well, this has been lame,” Smitelout stands up next, rubbing her hands together, “I better go get to salvaging that axe. Assuming you’re still ready to pay for it.”
“Like I said, I think I lucked into chief money,” Ingrid stands up and loops her good arm through mine, “but take your time. I don’t want you questioning your craftsmanship when I still kick your ass. Come on, Fuse will still be there tomorrow. I’m hungry too,” Ingrid starts dragging me back down the hill towards the old Hofferson house and I’m surprised when Arvid and Aurelia follow.
“Remind me to never have friends over,” Aurelia shudders, “it’s bad enough when my dad tries to be cool to get Eret to like him.”
Arvid falls into step beside me and watches me look back at the Thorston house twice before it’s out of view.
“Do you think he wants to beat me up?” I ask him, because he’s the authority on this that I’ve wanted this whole time. He’s silent for a second and I think he’s not going to answer but then he shrugs.
Why. They just keep...doing this. Smut incoming tonight after I get home, still haven’t decided how I’m going to post it but whatever. I can’t sit on it anymore. I’m so tired. I need to write an epilogue and smingrid won’t let me. I hate them.
Eret offers to fix Ingrid’s hand about three days after he wakes up, the kind of cavalier offer for help he keeps throwing out there to remind himself that he’s not in bed forever. It should be cheapened by the fact that he’s drunk and his head is on a sleeping Fuse’s lap, but Ingrid can’t help but be offended. Smitelout made her this hand and now she has to fix it, clearly.
But that means Ingrid going to the forge and asking her to and that’s not something she wants to do.
It’s not her problem that Smitelout suddenly likes her. That’s not something she has to deal with. She doesn’t have room for it and even if she did, she’s not sure why she should care. It’s Smitelout. Smitelout who has thrown a million petty little tantrums about losing to her. Smitelout who threatened to spread rumors about Eret’s real dad.
Smitelout who treats Ingrid like she did before she left. Smitelout who makes Ingrid a new hand without even being asked.
Ingrid still appreciates it even if it’s bent now. She didn’t bend on purpose or anything, it honestly surprised her when the healer was trying to set Eret’s arm and he resisted with that much force. And her fingers fit well enough that she just didn’t think about it, she braced him as well as she could and noticed after that they were bent out of shape.
She lives with it for a while. It’s hard to hold her axe but no one points it out until Aurelia is watching her attempt to hit the target in the chief’s front yard. The first two throws clip the side but the third misses entirely and Aurelia narrows those chiefly but less irritating eyes and pauses, bag of tightly rolled scrolls on her hip.
“What?” Ingrid collects her axe, holstering it and adjusting her fingers back to neutral. They still ratchet but not as well, the bend in the first digit making everything in them harder to move.
“Nothing,” Aurelia shifts the weight of the scrolls onto her slim hip and when she cocks her eyebrow, she looks so much like Eret a year ago that Ingrid can’t help but feel like she should listen. “Just that’s not really Hofferson aim.”
“I just lost half my hand, what do you want me to do?”
“I don’t know,” Aurelia shrugs, “it seems like the new one was working out for you pretty well before it got bent.”
“It’s a grip thing,” Ingrid clears her throat and she knows that a glare won’t help her. Aurelia wouldn’t be so comfortable with the rest of the family if glaring did anything.
“You know, I’m sure Smitelout could fix those.”
“What?” Ingrid hides her fingers behind her and Aurelia shrugs.
“She made them, I bet she could fix them.”
Aurelia was there. She heard all of that. Not that it should matter, because Ingrid doesn’t care, but it makes her feel like she needs to try. Like this stupid situation is something she needs to fix, like all the others were. A Jorgenson telling a Hofferson something like that with no answer is reason for issue.
Or it was, back in the world before Eret was next in line for chief. Ingrid isn’t quite sure how all of that works but she’s sure, at some level, that it’s ultimately in her favor.
“Like I have money for that,” Ingrid rolls her eyes and Aurelia contests Eret’s best deadpan with far less effort.
“Right. That’s the problem. It’s not that you don’t want to talk to her.”
“Why wouldn’t I want to talk to her?” Ingrid reaches for her axe to make an argument ending perfect yak’s eye before realizing it’s not guaranteed anymore and pausing.
“I don’t know,” Aurelia shrugs, “I’m just thinking about how many weapons you have that need sharpening occasionally. And if Eret isn’t working in the forge anymore, are you planning to leave Berk to get that done—”
“No,” Ingrid scowls. “You were there, do you think I could just walk in and ask Smitelout to do something for me?”
Ingrid hates the idea that she could. That Smitelout might do it just because she likes her, and that’s fake too. If Smitelout really does like girls and she hasn’t minced words before so why would she start now? And that means that Ingrid is the only option Smitelout has ever known, aside from Spitleaf. And Spitleaf never had the same problems that Ingrid did with the forceful proposals. Her face isn’t so loud and people aren’t so presumptive.
“I don’t know,” Aurelia shrugs and for a moment, Ingrid sees how pretty she is and how firmly she guards it. It makes Ingrid jealous, suddenly, because her looks are still causing problems for her and she doesn’t know how to stop them. But with Aurelia, it’s all words and no bite and somehow it works. “Have you tried?”
“My hand is fine,” Ingrid lies and Aurelia knows it just how Eret always used to. It’s irritating, she really didn’t need another Eret running around, especially one who seems to need less advice.
“Yeah, I can see that.” She rolls her eyes and Ingrid tries not to seethe.
Before her fingers bent, they were almost as good as the real thing as far as her axe was concerned. A good solid throw was a single ratchet and it happened perfectly halfway through the swing, just in time for the axe to release at the right angle. It felt alright if not perfect and that’s all she can ask for. Except she didn’t ask for it, Smitelout just decided to give it to her.
It was nice before Ingrid learned why. It kind of felt like maybe they could be friends or at least consistent rivals, the way they used to be. But now she knows that Smitelout wants something from her.
“It’s just bent.” Ingrid ratchets her fingers, acting like it’s not difficult and Aurelia blinks.
“Just a suggestion,” she rolls her eyes before starting down the hill without finishing the argument, like she knows she won without dealing the final blow, and Ingrid can’t say she’s currently overjoyed with having a new sister.
She knew it was an inevitability, what with having so many brothers, and Rolf’s wife is great but also more attached to Spitleaf than Ingrid wants to be. And it’s complicated, like everything is. But mostly, Aurelia is annoying and pushing her when she doesn’t want to be pushed. And that’s new too, she’s never had pressure feel so oppressive. It always felt like something to push back against, people who doubted her were just waiting to be proven wrong.
Now everything is a little more daunting and she’s lost her taste for being daunted.
What if Smitelout says no? Does she suddenly have to leave the island to get anything sharpened?
That scares her. She’s not doing that. Fuck that.
“Ugh, fine,” she stalks down the hill after Aurelia, turning before she sees the long red braid and almost jogging towards the forge, because might as well get this over with. It’s not like she’s going to fly off island to get her axe sharpened, that’s a fair point, she has to work this out at some level or she’ll be defenseless.
The forge is quiet and Smitelout is pounding away at some red hot hunk of metal on the other side of the window. Ingrid doesn’t let herself pause, she doesn’t let herself feel fourteen and confused and lonely and see Smitelout as safe, because at least she’s predictable. She doesn’t let herself see Smitelout’s arms, sweat slicked and intentional, or her hands, comfortable around her hammer.
She doesn’t take the hammer as a potential weapon and she doesn’t think of a thousand ways to stop an attack. She definitely doesn’t notice the way that Smitelout’s concentration looks more like avoidance, like she knew Ingrid was coming and didn’t want her to.
“Hey,” Ingrid starts, trying to be neutral and Smitelout fumbles and drops her hammer on the floor. It’d be funny if Smitelout didn’t like her.
“What?”
“Nothing,” Ingrid tosses her braid over her shoulder, “just wanted to ask if you could fix my fingers but if you’re busy…”
“What needs fixed?” Smitelout doesn’t make eye contact but she moves purposefully, wiping off the counter with a wet, smudged rag.
“They got bent.” Ingrid avoids the eye contact that Smitelout attempts to make.
“So explanatory,” Smitelout rolls her eyes, “I need to see the actual damage to fix it.”
“Here.” Ingrid unstraps her fingers and throws them on the counter, wincing at the thunk of gronckle iron on wood. She didn’t mean to hurt them more. Hel, she didn’t mean to hurt them in the first place.
Smitelout picks it up, ratchets the joints that she made and sighs.
“What’d you do to it?” She glares, heavy eyebrows low over those hostile blue eyes. That look has always pissed Ingrid off and that’s no different now, except for the fact that she’s still preoccupied with the fact that Smitelout likes her.
Why?
She knows why, rationally. It’s always because she looks how she does. It’s because she’s this perfect Viking wife. Except Smitelout can’t be concerned about her line or the heirs Ingrid would make and there’s no carrot of redeeming the Hoffersons through marriage to dangle in front of her. Smitelout can’t have thought that admitting it like that would go well. But she still did it and it doesn’t make sense and Ingrid has no room right now for things that don’t make sense.
“I held Eret down while the healers were setting his arm,” Ingrid shrugs, “he’s stronger than he looks. Don’t tell him, because I can’t take his ego getting bigger than it is but…” She trails off. Smitelout looks between her and her fingers, frowning.
“Why would I tell him?” Smitelout picks up the fingers, quickly diassembling the rivets that hold leather to metal and moving it to her anvil, like she’s actually going to fix it.
“I don’t know,” Ingrid crosses her arms, her bad hand folded under her good arm so that no one looks at it. Smitelout doesn’t even try and that’s worse. “You might think it’s funny that he can gloat, or something.”
“He’s pretty hurt, isn’t he?” Smitelout starts taking apart the fingers, treating each part with delicate care that makes Ingrid feel not only guilty but ungrateful. “Yeah.”
“Is he…” Smitelout looks up at her and then back down, sorting the parts of her fingers into two piles, presumably damaged and undamaged. Not that Ingrid cares. She just wants them fixed. “Is he going to be ok? Or…”
“He’s going to be fine.” Ingrid sighs and she doesn’t remember the fight leaking out of her this quickly. The longer she tries to work this out, the less tainted the gift seems. Smitelout started in on insulting her the second her feet touched Berkian soil. Hel, she charged Ingrid for the hand in the first place. “Scarred up, but fine.”
“He looked pretty fucked up.”
“Yeah.” Ingrid leans her elbow on the window and looks across the square.
Smitelout rustles with the parts on the counter for a second before pausing, her voice rising in pitch and volume when she does speak again.
“Is it because of what I said?” She squawks, kind of like a baby terror and Ingrid looks at her slowly, cocking her head.
“What?”
“Are you acting weird because of what I said?” She clears her throat, slumping her shoulders forward and looking anywhere but at Ingrid. “About the liking you, or whatever. Is that why you’re being weird?”
“I’m not being weird.”
“You’re kind of being weird,” Smitelout snorts.
“I’m not.”
“You—”
“It wasn’t the time to do that,” Ingrid snaps, slamming her good hand on the counter like punctuation. Smitelout doesn’t flinch. “I don’t care that you like me. I’m just here to get my hand fixed—”
“After you broke it.”
“After I bent it.”
“It’s pretty fucked up,” Smitelout holds up one of the finger joint pieces, running her finger along the pale seam where the metal bent. “Like, this used to be flat.”
“I told you, Eret’s stronger than he looks.”
“So are you,” she scoffs, “this took a lot of force from both ends. I can fix it, but it’s going to take a couple of days, I might have to re-forge a couple of parts.”
Ingrid doesn’t feel strong, not anymore, and the sideways remark resonates as a compliment in a way she doesn’t like. It feels like it might matter more because Smitelout likes her, and that’s absurd, because she really doesn’t care.
“How much?” Ingrid tries to bluff and Smitelout hems and haws, inspecting a couple more pieces with squinted eyes. Her face is sharper than it was when Ingrid left. Not lighter, but more purposeful. It’s not a face that can hide things and more importantly, Smitelout has never been tactful. Hel, any bartering she’s planning to try is already undermined by the way that she’s blushing. Ingrid wouldn’t have taken her for someone who blushes, honestly, she never seemed to get embarrassed about anything else. And in Ingrid’s mind, at least, throwing a tantrum about losing Thawfest is a lot more embarrassing than liking someone.
Ingrid catches herself staring and looks away. Smitelout doesn’t comment, for some reason, even though she’s never let Ingrid get away with anything, ever. She’s the one acting weird.
“I’ve got some scrap from making…the bombs,” Smitelout stutters through it, “it’s not good metal but this is just a draft, obviously, if you and Eret can fuck it up this bad. I’ll do it for free with shit materials but you’ll have to pay for the next try.”
“Fine.”
“Really?” Smitelout’s voice cracks again and Ingrid tries not to care that she’s nervous. Even so, it’s a weird thrill to make someone nervous even with her hand off and taken expertly apart in front of her. It makes Ingrid feel significant in a way she’s been missing ever since Haddocks started talking over her all the time. “I mean, it’s a deal, you should take it.”
“I already did,” Ingrid stands up, debating for a moment before leaving her bad hand out of her pocket, “that’s fair. When can I pick it up?”
“I’ll let you know,” Smitelout shrugs, “depends on how busy I get, it’s been pretty busy with kid saddles since the dragons came back. But I’ll get to it as soon as I can.”
“Don’t rush it for me,” Ingrid clears her throat. “I just mean—”
“I’m not going to make it weird,” she tosses the pile of good parts into a leather bag and sets it on the shelf beneath the counter. “I get it, I—”
“Ok.” Ingrid shrugs.
“Ok what?”
“You don’t get it,” she bites her lip and sighs, “but you won’t make it weird. That’s good, considering this is the only forge on Berk.” That’s too harsh and Ingrid sighs, “I don’t know what weird is. Everything is weird. I came back to a different Thor-damned island. You overcharging me for repairs is about the only thing that feels normal.”
Smitelout is quiet for a moment and it’s almost comfortable.
“This one’s free, Hofferson, in what world am I overcharging you? You’re just looking for something to complain about.”
Ingrid can’t quantify her relief and she doesn’t try, standing away from the counter and shaking her head at a very red Smitelout.
“Let me know when I can pick up the hand.”
“Fine,” Smitelout huffs, “don’t expect me to rush on it or anything though. It’s a free job—”
“I get it,” Ingrid takes a couple of backwards steps, heels dragging across hard packed dirt, “you know where to find me.”
“Fine, give me more work, now I have to come get you when it’s done,” Smitelout rolls her eyes even though she basically volunteered for it and if she’s putting on a show to make Ingrid feel better, it’s not exactly failing.
“I’ll come pick it up, you just have to let me know when.”
“Whatever,” Smitelout shrugs, picking her hammer up off of the floor and twirling it absentmindedly. “Are we done here?”
“Sure.” Ingrid rolls her eyes, “I’ll get out of your hair.”
Smitelout waves her off and Ingrid pauses another second before turning back towards the chief’s house. She’s not entirely sure what just happened. Smitelout likes her, it’s obvious and she didn’t take it back, but she didn’t shove it forward either. She didn’t expect Ingrid to do anything about it, at least. Maybe that’s ok, maybe it can just exist and Ingrid doesn’t have to do anything about it right now. Maybe it can just hold steady for a while and Ingrid will deal with it when she’s ready to.
For the first time, everyone’s constant advice that she doesn’t have to take everything on at once makes sense. This can wait.
