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maedarakat · 4 years

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29th Oct: Fulfilled // “Everything will fall into place.”

Hiccup leaves, for real this time - unable to live without dragons or with his new responsibilities. Astrid is left to pick up the pieces, but some things were never broken.

——

It had been a bad fight.

Or at least, a bad one by Astrid’s standards.

Astrid looked away from the still swinging open door, leading out into the dark wet gloom where Hiccup had stormed away - this time presumably for good.

She could hear Nuffink crying upstairs and Zephyr trying to shush him, all of five years old and trying to mother him.

Zephyr was good at it; Nuffink was hiccoughing, but starting to calm down.

Astrid bent to sweep up a broken plate and now handle-less mug from beneath a chair - a casualty of the fight. Hiccup hadn’t thrown anything, but he’d swept everything off the table in a fit of anger.

She threw the crockery into the trash and went to close the door after it became painfully apparent that he wasn’t going to walk back in and hold her and kiss her and apologize.

The fight had been about dragons.

He had wanted to take another trip to see Toothless, after the first time had gone so well, but it was cold and Nuffink had only just gotten over his fever last week.

Astrid was not by nature a worrier. Call her crazy, but even if Nuffink hadn’t been sick, she wasn’t a fan of sailing a boat up to a giant hole in the ocean frequented by dragons.

There was no guarantee Toothless would always be there waiting whenever Hiccup wanted to visit. Next time it could be a Slitherwing, or Deathsong, or even a Whispering Death sunning itself on those rocks.

Taking risks was fine when it had just been Hiccup and Astrid in their youth, but not when the safety of their kids was on the line.

Astrid looked around the house. It was cold, dark - candles and hearth extinguished by the door letting the wind inside.

Outside, Tuff’s storm-song was jangling and chiming away, softening the fearsome edge of the howling wind.

She made up her mind and picked up Nuffink and Zephyr’s coats, going upstairs to find them.

Astrid found her arms immediately full as soon as she appeared above the second floor to their room.

“Mom! Are the trolls coming now that Dad’s gone?” Nuffink asked, eyes wide and dancing with tears.

“No, there aren’t any trolls coming,” Astrid assured him, smoothing back his hair. Zephyr said nothing, not even refuting her brother’s fears, just wearily pressing her forehead against Astrid’s other shoulder. She’d grown up hearing these fights and to her it was just one more bad night. Astrid’s gut wrenched. Zephyr was only five and already worn down from it.

“Just to be sure there’s no trolls, we’re going to go to stay at Aunt Ruff and Uncle Fishleg’s tonight.” Astrid started the process of bundling them into their fur coats.

“Really?!”

“Can Uncle Fishlegs read to us?” Zephyr immediately wanted to know.

“I’m sure if you use those big green eyes on him he can find the time,” Astrid chuckled.

“Can we stop by Tuff’s house first? I wanna check on the babies,” Nuffink pleaded.

Astrid chuckled. By babies, Nuffink meant Chicken’s new brood of chicks. Tuff was an honorary uncle as well, but he’d told the kids to just call him Tuff. The honorific of ‘uncle’ made him feel old.

Choice of honorifics aside, he was still every bit a family member to both of them - and if Nuffink hadn’t already won his heart the day he was born, he certainly had Tuff wrapped around his little finger the day he’d been found in the coop, holding Chicken in his lap and singing a made-up song for her.

Tuffnut had taken his new role as ‘Inventenator’ seriously - making odd things that wavered between barely functional and eccentrically attractive. The storm-songwas one of those things.

It had been a housewarming gift, and after five years, Astrid had yet to take it down.

“The babies are probably nice and warm under Chicken’s fluff. It would be a shame to wake them - Tuff says chickens don’t like the dark. We can see them in the morning, okay?”

Nuffink nodded and both kids took her hands once they got outside.

It wasn’t long to the Thorston-Ingerman house, and there was a light on, meaning they were probably up still.

Ruffnut answered the door, took one look at Astrid’s face, and yelled over her shoulder for Fishlegs to get some pallets made up. “Come in. There’s cream potato soup and bread knots left over.” She ushered them inside, becoming a whirlwind of sharp efficiency, taking the coats off the kids and throwing the wet furs on a chair by the fire and almost aggressively tucking them under a down blanket on the couch.

It wasn’t until they had soup, bread and a captive Fishlegs armed with several storybooks that she grabbed Astrid by the hand and yanked her into the kitchen.

“Okay,” she said, sitting Astrid down at the table and pouring some mead for them both. “Spill. What did Hiccup do this time?”

“He’s gone,” Astrid said simply, and took a gulp of mead, more to warm her guts than to steady her nerves. She was numb to it by now - to the thought of him not coming back.

“Gone as in coming back in a week with a sheepish look or should we start calling you Chief Hofferson?” Ruff asked bluntly.

“I don’t know,” she answered honestly. “It was bad enough not to want stay in the house in case he did come back.”

“Huh. Well, it’s nice to see you making moves to do what’s best for you and the niblings. Not that I don’t enjoy our frequent ‘how Ruffnut dodged an arrow’ talks.”

Astrid snorted, actually laughing. Ruff had never tried to hide her desire to marry Hiccup in their younger days, but the infatuation had turned into mock-bitterness and finally seemed to have worn off altogether.

Ruff complained about Fishlegs from time to time, but she was altogether happy with her husband. Presumably, Fishlegs was in charge of managing the money and sales from their livestock business - primarily boar breeding and dyed wool from the sheep they’d inherited, but in truth it was Ruff who balanced the books and interviewed the employees and cut deals with merchants and buyers at the Northern Markets.

By rumor alone, she had painted a fearsome reputation for Mr. Ingerman being an absolute stickler for high numbers with an irate temperament, so people tended to prefer to deal with his wife, who was ‘much more lenient with numbers, and quite a bit friendlier’. Astrid had seen her work, and apparently none of these people had ever met the cream-puff that was Fishlegs or they would have realized that Ruffnut was the true shark in the shallows.

“You can stay here as long as you need to. Tuffnut will be over for breakfast and he’ll bring eggs. I keep telling him that’s what he should be focusing on - eggs and selling chicks, but he just wants to do his art thing.” She shrugged and took a fraught from her own mug. “He’s going to make troll dolls next, for the Snoggletogg season, he tells me. They have dyed wool for hair that sticks straight up - not even normal colors, mind you - like purple and green and blue. I gave him a bunch of wool that had off-color splotching because I thought he’d stuff pillows with it or something, but he’s making these ugly things instead. I’ve seen a couple prototypes, they are so ugly and yet ... disturbingly cute. If he’s not careful I think real trolls might come down from the mountains and kick his ass for ruining their reputation.”

Astrid was half zoning out - Ruffnut’s voice was oddly pleasant to listen to when she just monologued, and the topic was an interesting one. She wondered if Tuff was in bed right now, one leg dangling bravely over the side from beneath the covers, the oversized tunics he kept ‘borrowing’ from Fishleg’s sliding off one shoulder - exposing skin up to his collarbone.

She licked her suddenly dry lips and took a swig of mead.

“Yeah, we’re going over to his place in the morning. Nuffink wants to see the chicks, and I think the kids could use the distraction.”

Ruff gave her a knowing look. “I’m thinking youcan use a distraction.”

Astrid gaped. “A little too soon to be making that suggestion, don’t you think?!” Her face was turning red - betraying how close to the mark Ruff had just hit. She hated blushing, as a concept. It was unfair and Loki was absolutely responsible for creating it.

“I was just talking about visiting,” she shrugged nonchalantly, “Gee, Astrid, what did you think I meant?”

She looked for something to throw in Ruff’s face, and settled for an embroidered potholder on the counter. Ruff cackled as it bounced harmlessly off her head.

“I’m just kidding, relax! He’d probably be happy to have you and the kids over. It’ll be good for him to have something other than ugly art sculptures and Chicken to talk to. His place needs a woman’s touch.”

“Would you stop-“

“What? I didn’t say the woman was you, did I?” Ruff’s eyes were twinkling with mischief and there were no more potholders within arm’s reach.

Astrid snorted and finished her mead, having no rebuttal.

She slept fitfully in the spare bedroom that night.

By comparison, Zephyr and Nuffink slept like logs, one on each side of her. She hadn’t wanted them to wake up alone and scared, not even in a house they’d been in before.

The next morning, Ruffnut woke them up by usual Thorston methods - namely sticking her head into the room and shrieking.

“FLAPJACKS! Come get ‘me while they’re hot!”

It was like a message for homing pigeons - Astrid sincerely doubted the kids were fully awake before bolting upright and racing each other down to the kitchen. Astrid grumbled and tried to unkink her bangs as she rolled out of bed and headed downstairs.

Tuff was at the table, dressed in his work rags - a smear of blue and green across the bridge of his nose. It was adorable, she thought, and she abruptly missed the last step and all but tumbled into the kitchen.

Ruff gave her a sly look but she ignored it. Zephyr was telling Tuff about the latest trap she’d set for trolls and how many things besides trolls it had caught - including a sow, a sheep, a yak, and a very disgruntled farmer who had come to look for his missing livestock.

He looked over her rudimentary drawing of the trap, giving her praise and pointing out that he liked her drawings of dead trolls impaled on spikes.

“Hey, your mom used to draw stuff like this all the time. She set up some of the best deadly traps on the Edge,” Tuff was saying.

Astrid joined the table, sitting beside Nuffink who was blissfully shoveling pancakes in his face. “To be fair, Tuff, you had some pretty amazing traps yourself.”

“Eh, well ...” Tuff shrugged and Zephyr looked at him and then her mother.

“You guys set traps? What were they for? Did they work?”

“You never told her about that time we were stuck together fighting off dragon hunters?” Tuff asked her, surprised.

Astrid grinned at the memories. “No, I guess not. That was so long ago -“

“Tell me!” Zephyr demanded and Nuffink, who had cleared his plate, joined in.

“Yeah, we wanna hear about mum and you versus the bad guys! Did you get to ride Stormfly? Did you use grandma’s axe?”

“Whoa there, little Nuffy, we’ll tell you everything,” Tuff promised him. They stared at him expectantly. “Oh. You mean right now.”

Astrid chuckled. The kids could be a demanding audience but she knew Tuff loved it. “Well, it started when Hiccup, Fishlegs and Snotlout had to go off on a rescue, leaving the Twins and me alone on our island base. These Hunters were after an artifact we were guarding, called the Dragon Eye. They snuck onto our island and kidnapped Ruffnut.”

Zephyr and Nuffink gasped and stared at Ruffnut. “You were kidnapped?!”

Ruff snorted, though inwardly preening at their concern. “More than once, kiddos. And trust me, they regretted it.”

Astrid never knew why she hadn’t told them this story before. Well, she did know - it was because Hiccup had been the storyteller. His adventures had repeatedly held them captivated, and she’d never noticed that the others’ stories, or even their role in his, had slowly faded in importance.

He hadn’t even told them stories of Stoick’s deeds, for Thor’s sake.

It all made her angry but she shelved it, because this wasn’t a fight they would have.

Besides, it was more fun to focus on this story and judging by their shining eyes, they were loving Astrid’s descriptions of the traps Tuff had set for the Hunters.

Rolling logs held back by Nadder spikes. Monstrous Nightmare gel-covered ropes set aflame. Dummies filled with Zippleback gas, ignited by the enemies flaming arrows. Scarecrows of the riders to make them believe they were facing more than just the two of them.

Astrid had taken over the story but Tuff didn’t seem to mind. He ate his breakfast and interjecting only to make sure she wasn’t leaving out her own endeavors - like setting a flock of Night Terrors after the hunters, or fighting one on one with a Berserker. (“He became our friend later on, but he certainly wasn’t at the time,” Astrid was sure to mention, and part of her achingly wondered how Dagur and Heather were.)

The story was well-received, to say the least - the only drawback was that now Zephyr wanted a ballista on the roof of their house.

“But you had one!” she wailed and Astrid wanted to hug her. She remembered taking the same tone at Zephyr’s age, regarding her mother’s axe.

“We haven’t faced any threats yet, but we’ll talk about it when you’re older. Your traps are deadly enough.”

“If it’s any consolation,” Tuff said, conspiratorially, “I still have an arrow launcher in my basement.”

“Please,” Ruff snorted. “It’s not like there’s anything to attack around here. You’d probably just tie paint bombs to the arrows, shoot random colors at people’s houses, and call it art.”

There were delighted gasps from Tuff, Zephyr, and Nuffink, and she immediately realized her mistake. “Whoops,” Ruff shrugged, shooting Astrid an apologetic glance.

Astrid burst out laughing, surprising herself. Some part of her felt guilty, like her heart was supposed to be torn out, but all she could manage to feel about the subject besides numbness was an odd and terrible relief.

Living in the moment right now was decidedly more fun.

Three faces were staring at her, begging permission, and she gave in.

“Well, no harm in going over to look,” Astrid shrugged.

“No yellow!” Ruff called after them all, sounding a little panicked. “I can’t stand yellow - and absolutely no purple either! You hear me, bro?!”

Astrid didn’t know what was funnier - Ruff’s total resignation to the idea that her house would definitely be getting splattered first, or her yelling at him to not to pelt the house with her favorite colors.

Right now her kids were happy - thrilled and giggling - and not crippled by fear or anxiety or having to comfort one another while she and Hiccup fought. That was worth possibly having to do a little cleanup later.

She shot Tuffnut a fond look and found to her surprise that he was already smiling back at her.

#tuffnut #astrid #tuffstrid #httyd rarepair week

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