Chapter Text
Staying with Hiccup and his father for a week was…interesting, to say the least. Breakfast every morning was rather awkward, with neither of them knowing what to say, and me sitting there in the middle, glancing between them like I was watching a tennis match. Dinner hadn’t been much better.
So when Halla arrived one morning to remove my stitches and say that her house was finished, I was relieved. Not that I hadn’t enjoyed spending time with Hiccup, I had. After the first night of my stay, when I’d inserted my foot into my mouth, it did end up being like a sleepover. We’d just talk until we fell asleep, or rather, when he fell asleep. Unlike Hiccup, I was not used to loud snoring and did not get used to it in a week.
I was also relieved to get the stitches out, so I didn’t have to worry about pulling them all the time. That, and no matter how much padding the crutch had, after using it so much, my armpit was sore. And it got me away from another awkward breakfast. Taking them out was uncomfortable, and once she was done, she wrapped a thin bandage around my calf.
“Thanks, Halla,” I said, lowering my leg over the side of the Hiccup’s bed, which we had sat on so that Halla could remove the stitches. Hiccup and his father were downstairs finishing up breakfast.
Halla smiled as she stood from the bed. “Now, my house is done and I’ve got something to show you.”
With that, we headed downstairs, where breakfast was being cleaned up.
“Thanks for letting me stay here,” I said as I reached the base of the stairs.
Stoick’s beard twitched. “We were glad to have you.”
“Anyway, I’m off to show her the house,” Halla announced, pushing me toward the door. The massive red beard twitched again. Yeah, he was definitely smiling under there.
“I’ll see you later, Hiccup,” I said as I headed out the door, glancing back and waving at him.
He smiled. “I’ll be at the forge."
We took it slow back to Halla’s since my foot had to get used to supporting all my weight again, and it felt a bit odd to do so after so long of trying to keep weight off of it so as not to do anything to pull the stitches.
Approaching the house, it looked pretty much the same, but something was different. Something that I couldn’t put my finger on until we stepped inside. The main room downstairs seemed to be longer than it used to be. There was another table now beside the fire in the center, and more shelves along the walls. The bed was in the same place, and I turned to head to it, but Halla put a hand on my shoulder to stop me. I glanced back at her.
She shook her head, smiling. “Come with me.”
She removed her hand and headed for the stairs. Upstairs was a place I had never been to before. There was a hallway and two doors; one near the front and another toward the rear of the house. She led me toward the one at the rear and opened the door, waiting for me to go in first.
It wasn’t the biggest room in the world, but it was able to fit a bed, which had a chest sitting at the end of it, as well as a desk under a small window that was currently open and letting in the morning light. A bedroom.
She was giving me my own room.
I slowly turned around to look at Halla, where she stood in the doorway, smiling. “I’ve been considering adding another room to the house for some time now, for storage purposes. Finally decided to go ahead with it, but for a different reason.”
She paused, watching me. She blinked and looked toward the chest at the end of the bed. “The chest has my old things in it for you to use since they fit you rather well.”
Halla returned her gaze to me just in time for me to wrap my arms around her in a hug. She seemed startled for a moment, but then wrapped her arms around me and hugged me gently. I hadn’t been hugged since coming to Berk.
“Thank you,” I whispered.
I could hear the smile in her voice. “You’re welcome, Kendra.”
It was a couple of days later when I was sitting with Hiccup eating dinner, and someone walked over to where we sat on our own. Hiccup’s eyes widened slightly. “A-Astrid. Hi, Astrid. Hi.”
She stopped at the end of the table and looked over at him for a moment with a raised eyebrow. Hiccup turned red and went back to eating his dinner. Astrid then turned her attention to me, her expression neutral. “Your leg finally better?”
“Um, yes,” I replied.
“Good. We start training in the morning. Meet me at the base of the stairs to the Hall just after sunrise.”
She then turned and left before I could even say anything, catching up with two adults who waited for her by the doors of the Hall. They stepped out into the night together.
To be honest, I had forgotten about the training. It seemed like so long ago that Stoick and Halla had talked about it after I had been injured by the boar.
“Okay,” I said slowly, turning my attention back to my dinner. “Apparently, I start training in the morning.”
“You forgot about it, didn’t you?” Hiccup asked before taking a bite from his piece of fish.
“Yup,” I said with a slight smile before taking a bit of my dinner. “The last I heard of it was just after we got back to the house once the storm was over. So yeah, I forgot. So sue me.”
“Sue who? Who’s Sue?” Hiccup asked, looking confused.
“Never mind,” I replied, waving it off. “Just an expression from home. Not really sure how to explain it so it would make sense. Anyway, I’m guessing the only reason you remembered the training is because of who is going to be training me?”
Hiccup didn’t look up from his dinner but shrugged slightly. “It’s not the only reason I remembered.”
“Right,” I said slowly, fighting down a smile.
Hiccup rolled his eyes, fighting down his smile as he ate.
“You’re late,” she said, sitting in the grass beside the steps leading up to the Great Hall.
“Sorry,” I replied.
Astrid said nothing, just got up from where she had been sitting on the grass. Her axe was nowhere in sight. Actually, she didn’t seem to have any weapons on her at all.
“I thought you were training me in weapons?” I asked.
“I am,” she said. “But you are going to train the way I do, and I start every day with a run around the village. Then I work with my axe. But I’ll be showing you how to use different weapons, not just a dagger, so you can know how to use them.”
I nodded. Okay, that made sense. No need to mess up her own training routine completely just to train me.
“Try to keep up,” she said before taking off down the path I had just come up. I sighed and began to follow her.
She wasn’t flat-out running, but she wasn’t going all that slow either. At first, I was able to keep up with her, but after about five minutes, I started to get further and further behind. My feet hurt in the boots, and I could hear my blood pounding in my ears.
It had been a year since I’d had to run like this in P.E., since it had been almost a year since I had graduated high school when I had found myself in Berk, and I was feeling it. This kind of pace had not been this hard back in school. But it was now.
We ran all the way down to the docks before turning to head back up, and the incline back up was even harder, and I fell further behind Astrid. By the time I caught up with her standing outside of a house that must have been hers, she’d been waiting for a couple of minutes.
I put my hands on my knees when I stopped before her, panting heavily. She was breathing harder than normal, but not nearly as hard as I was. My hair fell around my face, pieces of it sticking to my sweaty forehead. Apparently, the braid I’d put it in had fallen out, not that it had been the best job in the world. I hadn’t braided my hair since middle school, and while it was fine when I was helping Halla, it apparently didn’t hold up well to running.
I heard Astrid sigh before seeing her head inside the house out of the corner of my eye. At least, she had waited outside until I caught up; otherwise, I probably would have gotten lost in the village. Again. And I’d be able to keep up with her once I got back into the routine of running.
When she came back out, I straightened. She carried her axe in her right hand, and a dagger was at her hip. She held her left hand out to me. “Here.”
I looked down at her hand to see that it held a cord that I could use to put my hair back up, since the one I had been wearing was gone, and who knows where it had fallen. I took it from her and started to braid my hair.
I paused when I spotted her watching me with raised eyebrows. “What?”
“That’s how you braid your hair?” she asked.
I nodded. “Yeah.”
“No wonder it fell out,” she said, leaning her axe against the house and coming around to stand behind me. “Here. I’ll show you.”
I could feel her hands working out the mess that I’d called a braid before redoing it properly, and she told me exactly what she was doing as she was doing so that I could do it myself in the future. Hopefully. I’d try to replicate her results at least.
She stepped away when she was done, and I ran my hand along the braid she had made. Neat and clean, and the cord was tied nice and tight at the end between my shoulder blades. So that was how it was supposed to feel. I gave her a small smile. “Thanks.”
Astrid returned it as she picked up her axe. “Let’s go.”
Astrid led the way again, with me following, though this time walking, so I wasn’t a mile behind her but a few steps. More people were out and about the village now, starting their days. Of course, a good number of them glared at me as I followed Astrid. Not as many as it used to be since I had been here several months, but I still got the looks rather often. I mostly just ignored them, but as we walked by, Astrid didn’t ignore the looks. She noticed the glares, and to my surprise, glared right back at those we passed.
“Why did you do that?” I asked as we left the village and headed for the tree line. “Why did you glare back at them?”
She glanced back at me. “You’re no spy. If you were, Halla would have known in two seconds.”
“And instead, she took me in.” Back at that meeting in the Hall, Halla had been the one to stand up for me. Well, her and the Elder.
“My family, we trust her judgment. We respect our chief’s judgment. And Gothi’s. So if they say you’re not a spy, then you’re not.”
That reminded me. “Are you related to the Elder?”
Astrid stopped walking and turned around to face me, looking slightly surprised.
“Your eyes,” I added. “They remind me of hers.”
After a moment, she smiled. “She’s my great aunt. My grandmother’s older sister.”
I smiled. Astrid then turned around, and we continued on into the forest. We stopped in a small clearing where the trees had scars from being hit with an axe numerous times over the years.
Astrid pulled the dagger from her waist and flipped it, holding the hilt toward me. I took it in my right hand. Immediately, she had to correct how I was holding it.
“Okay, now see the marks on that tree?” She pointed to the one that had rather fresh scars from an axe about twenty feet away. I nodded. “You’re going to be aiming for that mark.”
I took a deep breath and threw the dagger. It flew through the air and clattered to the ground ten feet away from the tree and way to the left of it. I wasn’t expecting to hit it, but I wasn’t expecting to do that badly either. And that was only with a dagger. How bad would it be if she had asked me to throw the axe?
“Looks like the first day of training went well.”
“Shut up.” I glared at Hiccup and then winced as I sat down on a stool in the forge that afternoon.
My entire body ached. After showing me how to correctly throw the dagger and spending a while on getting my form right, I tried the axe. It had only gone about five feet before falling to the ground. I just wasn’t strong enough to throw a weapon that heavy that far. Then we started hand-to-hand combat. My bruises had bruises.
“Was it that bad?” he asked as he started sharpening a sword.
I shook my head. “Not really. Mostly, I just didn’t realize how out of shape I was. Though hand-to-hand combat…yeah, she completely kicked my ass.”
“Don’t worry, lass. It’ll get easier for you in time,” Gobber called from where he was pounding on the anvil.
I smiled over at the blacksmith. “I’m just going to be in pain until that time comes.”
“So what all is she teaching you?” Hiccup asked, glancing up from the grindstone.
“All sorts of weapons. I don’t remember all the names that she listed off. Though I need to build up my strength first. The knife went okay when I threw it at a tree. The axe.” I paused, thinking back to how far it had gone. “Maybe five feet? Not even close to the tree, that’s for sure. She mentioned doing some sparing once I’m further along. And not on the ground every five seconds in hand-to-hand training.”
Hiccup hummed and continued to sharpen the sword.
“How far can you throw one?” I asked.
He didn’t lift his gaze from the sword.
Gobber let out a short laugh. “Throw it? He can barely pick one up.”
I looked over at Hiccup. His gaze was still on the sword, though his expression was downcast. “Hey, you still got that growth spurt coming, remember? I’m sure after that you’ll be able to not just lift one, but throw one pretty damn well.”
He just glanced up at me with a small grin before going back to sharpening the sword.
“Late again.”
“It’s been three days. I’m not used to waking up at this time yet,” I replied as she stood up from where she had been sitting and waiting on the stairs since Berk had been covered by a fresh layer of snow during the night. “And we’re still going to train in this weather?”
She looked at me with raised eyebrows as though she couldn’t believe I’d just asked that. “This is Berk. We get snow nine months out of the year, so yes, we’re still training. Get used to it.”
Then she was off running through the village. I groaned and started after her. “I slip and fall, I blame you!”
“Go right ahead,” she called back to me, not glancing back or slowing her pace.
This time, I trailed much further behind her as we ran, and within a couple of minutes, my chest was heaving and my legs felt as though they were about to fall off. I soon felt like pulling off the extra coat that I had pulled out of the trunk to wear that morning after seeing the fresh layer of snow on the ground.
Which was exactly what I did when we stopped out front of her house. I pulled it off and dropped it on the ground, bending over as I tried to catch my breath. The snow had made it a little more difficult, and I had lost count of how many times I thought I was about to slip and fall right on my face. I missed tennis shoes.
She let me catch my breath as she went inside to grab her axe and dagger, then we were off toward the forest to train. We didn’t talk much, and I stumbled a few times due to the snow, but soon the tree line came into view. And a voice yelling our names behind us. We stopped just before the trees and turned to see who was yelling. After a moment, Hiccup came into view. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Astrid start to frown.
I met him halfway and could hear Astrid’s footsteps behind me as she followed. He stumbled as he reached us, and I grabbed his arm to keep him from falling. “What’s going on?”
“Halla…Halla needs you. Needs your help,” he said, trying to catch his breath. He then looked over my shoulder at Astrid. “It’s Gothi. I guess she went to see Halla this morning and…”
He was interrupted by Astrid pushing past us, running back toward the village. Hiccup and I glanced at each other before running after her.