Astrid woke up smothered in at least two thick, wooly blankets that weren't appropriate for the lightly chilled season of autumn. But as she lied there, eyes blinking up at her ceiling and her loose hair spilling around her like waves, all she could feel was the cold. It was almost like she was surrounded by ice, all the way from the tips of her fingers to her toes.

She sat up and rubbed a hand up and down her arm, feeling goosebumps as she raised up her knees and rested her head on them. She shivered in the warmth of the room, trying so desperately to curl up in herself and give her some type of heat and failing miserably.

"Astrid?"

The young viking rubbed tiredly at her exhausted eyes before swinging her feet over the side of the bed and grimacing when she ran a hand through her greasier than normal hair. She tossed a piece of it over her shoulder, realizing that it'd been a few days since she took a bath, even though she trained and worked so hard the past week that the amount of sweat would normally force her to bathe near daily.

"There you are, lass," Astrid's mother spoke gently, maternal love shining on her face as she laid a hand on her daughter's face and gently stroked a thumb under her eyes. Ingrid frowned at the bags upon Astrid's face, and she said, "you've been overdoing it, dear. Have you been sleeping?"

"Yes," Astrid lied, the falsehood falling off of her tongue faster than she could stop it. She didn't bother to fix it with the truth, and instead, smiled thinly at her mother and asked, "is the tub free?"

Ingrid didn't look satisfied with her answer but pulled back nonetheless. "Aye, your father just cleaned it."

Astrid nodded, pushed past Ingrid gently, and began to stroll down to the kitchen where the tub was with firm steps.

"Astrid."

The teenager stopped at the call of her name, and she looked over her shoulder to see Ingrid standing outside her half-opened bedroom door with a heartbroken look on her face. Astrid swallowed when her mother walked forward and leaned down to press a kiss to Astrid's forehead, just like she used to when she was still just a child and got the flu or lost her favorite toy axe.

"Take it easy, lass," Ingrid muttered against her daughter's skin, her large hand smoothing down Astrid's hair and then dropping loosely into the air. "Please, you worry your father and me."

For a moment, Astrid leaned into her mother's kiss, her heart pounding loudly and the smallest amount of warmth filtering through where Ingrid touched her. But it faded away as quickly as it had come, and soon, Astrid felt as cold as ever, her nightgown feeling like nothing more than air and almost as if she was stark naked out in winter.

Astrid pulled back, tried to smile at her mother, and then went downstairs to take a bath.

The water was cold, but she didn't care, because against her icy skin it felt like fire. She was quick in scrubbing her hair and cleaning her body, and soon she was dried and dressed and braiding her hair with quick and nimble fingers.

"Eat something," Ingrid urged, beckoning her to the table and pushing a bowl of soup and some bread to her.

The bread was freshly baked and the soup still steaming - Astrid knew that her mother was one of the best cooks in the village, sometimes even asked to cook in the Great Hall for her stupendous dishes. Astrid could remember how months before she'd been so eager to eat whatever Ingrid cooked, convinced it was the best thing in the world, grinning as her parents kept feeding her more and more so she was at her best strength while in dragon training.

Yet when Astrid took the warm bread and took a bite, it was almost like ash, her taste buds rejecting the food and the soup even more disgusting, the taste resembling more like water than anything.

She finished quickly, pushed the empty bowl back, and grabbed her axe beside the door before fastening it to her back.

Just as she reached for the door, she heard Ingrid sigh, and say, "will you come home early today? You've been so different ever since that boy's been gone, Astrid. Take a break."

For a moment, Astrid didn't say anything. Then without another look back, she grasped the handle, swung open the door, and said, "I have so much work to do."

Indeed, she had a lot of work to do. Astrid immediately headed to the forest first, and after getting in deep enough, she began throwing and hacking her axe at the trees, gritting her teeth and getting more frustrated with every gash that littered the wood.

It was here in this forest that she felt most herself again. It's been a week, only a week, and already she was falling apart faster than the crazy inventions that Hiccup -

Gods. Gods, her mother was right. Of course her mother was right, and Astrid knew it. All of this, her excessive working, it was all tied to that boy. She wanted to be furious at him, to curse him for making her feel like there was a bottomless pit in her stomach and the warmth all sapped out of her. But she couldn't, because he was gone, gone, gone -

With every mental repeat of the word, she swung her axe, splinters flinging around her and flying into her hair and onto her clothes. She couldn't care less. Hel, she couldn't even be mad - not at the debris, but the fact that despite her grievances and complaints and everything, she still couldn't force herself to be angry with Hiccup. He'd been a nuisance, a pest, but dammit he didn't deserve to be outcasted like that!

Not when he'd been so kind, and quiet, and left his father more shattered than glass. Like it or not, the boy had been future chief, and Astrid had secretly been eager to see him grow up and become a proper viking. She'd been ready to lay down her life for him and swear her loyalty to her, but now she couldn't, because he was out there and probably already dead.

She should have tried harder, she realized. She should have pressed more, pressured him to train with her, force him to follow her into the woods so they could talk and spar and for her to shape him faster into a man that she would be proud to call her chief. He'd been her responsibility! Ever since she had caught sight of the sniveling little boy when they were mere five-year-olds, she had vowed to begrudgingly look out for him, especially since she knew he was so fragile and Stoick was so not.

She'd failed Stoick. She'd failed Hiccup.

And now, here she was, sweating profusely yet feeling colder than ever, her village slowly falling apart because of an absent and distant chief, and, as much as she hated to admit it, she was falling apart. She missed him. Godsdammit, she missed the little idiot, who she had been so carefully looking after and taking care of. All those times she stopped Snotloud and the twins from bothering him, the hints she kept dropping for him to toughen him up, they were memories that made her throat close up because he could die out there.

He'd been the first friend she ever made and the first friend she ever broke, but there'd been something special about him that no one, even her, seemed to realize. Berk was quieter now, devoid of accidental explosions or shouts of apologies ringing right after. There was no booming laughter as Hiccup told his jokes and everyone reluctantly listened, there was no anything.

Astrid strapped her axe to her back, observed the mutilated trees, and marched out of the forest to head to Gobber's forge.

The familiar sounds of metal clanging and a stifling heat greeted her when she slid into the building and began to take off her shoulder armor and dropped her axe into a corner.

"Mornin'," Gobber greeted, but his voice was sullen, his face focused on the sword in front of him and his hammer banging on it rhythmically. Sparks and embers flew around him, but they only served to bring even more light on the sad look he had along with the dark bags under his eyes. Seems Astrid wasn't the only one who couldn't sleep these days.

Astrid made some sort of noise for a hello before she walked over and took an apron from a hook on the wall. She tried her best to ignore the smaller brown one right next to hers - she could practically see Hiccup running around in that little apron of his, sharpening her axe and babbling incoherently while she tried to not let her endearment show through her expression. But now, it was untouched, and the last person who had tried was nearly decapitated by Gobber.

Astrid tied her apron around her waist and immediately set to work. She weighed metals and carefully wrote down specific numbers, taking care to make sure it was all neat and legible. She tried hard not to look at the other pages of the journal, the loopy handwriting she recognized as Hiccup's almost taunting her and making her unwillingly remember how fast he could write yet still be precise with his words.

It had been a surprise to almost everyone save her when Astrid volunteered to help Gobber out at the forge. Almost everyone had been against it, claiming that she should focus on her future as a warrior and that she was already too busy as it is. But that was why she asked - she needed to be busy.

All those nights spent in bed, tossing and turning, unable to fall asleep were all because she was alone with nothing but her thoughts. Sitting here in the forge made her think, it gave her brain and her hands to do something and be hard enough that she didn't wander into the guilt and what ifs of Hiccup's disappearance.

She could still remember the rage and jealousy she had felt when he had been declared as the one to kill the Monstrous Nightmare, but now, she wished she could go back in time, clobber herself, and warn her to make sure Hiccup stayed. Because that was the last memory anyone had of Hiccup - someone who was gifted the honor of such a prestigious task and ran away because of his cowardice.

But to Astrid? It only served to remind her of the haunted look in his eyes, the terror he had when Gothi declared him the triumphant.

Astrid could feel the guilt curl in her stomach now, the envy long gone and instead replaced by her endless beratement of herself. She should have trained harder, she should have beat Hiccup, she should have tried better to protect him and keep him from being shoved into something he clearly had not been ready for. Countless times she asked herself if she had run a little faster, swung a little harder, or reached out a little better, then maybe Hiccup wouldn't have run away and be labeled as Hiccup the Coward.

He was a coward, fine. Astrid didn't care. All she wanted was for him to be back home, safe and sound, out of reach of the dangers beyond Berk's island. How would he survive on his own? He was so small, so skinny that Astrid had often made remarks about it in order to subtly nudge him to eat more. He had no motor skills whatsoever, and she feared that his clumsy self would get him killed faster than a Night Fury flies.

She spent the next few hours like that, from noon to dusk as always, her arms moving like clockwork and the only noise being Gobber's constant hammering and the small sounds of her writing down in the journal with her charcoal pen.

Every now and then a viking would come in and try to make small talk with either of them, but Gobber always answered with short one-word answers while Astrid refused to talk altogether. Eventually, that person would leave, but not before shooting them both pitiful looks.

Astrid wished she had enough anger to try and throw her axe at them, but she never did, because she feared that pulling away for even a second would take her away from one of the small connections she had with Hiccup. She didn't have a brain like his, no one did, and not even Gobber could make sense of the piles of drawings and diagrams he left behind in his little work space at the back of the forge. But what Astrid could do was write, weigh these metals, and put on an apron.

It was small, but it was enough, and by the time she slipped off her apron and put it back on the hook, she had a small smile on her face while waving goodbye to Gobber.

She had one more stop before going back home, but before she did, she stopped by the Great Hall and swiped a few loaves of bread while avoiding eye contact with the other teens. She let her feet lead her to the largest house in the village that sat higher than any other building.

Astrid rapped the door with her knuckles twice, and after a long moment, there was a grunt of acknowledgement.

Stoick the Vast sat in front of his fireplace and looked up when Astrid shut the door behind her. He offered her a small smile, one she returned, before she placed a piece of bread in his hand and curled his fingers around it. She knew that he hadn't been eating that well - there was a certain gauntness on his face despite the fact that he hadn't lost any weight.

Astrid settled herself beside her chief and hugged her knees to her chest while she took smile bites of her own bread. The fire was roaring and proud, but no matter how close she got and how smaller she made herself, she didn't feel any warmer than she did that morning. It was the same with the forge - she'd been in a place that was meant to be hot, almost overwhelmingly so, and she had indeed sweat greatly, but the heat of her face didn't at all help the cold that made her smiles wane and her guilt greater.

"How are ye doin', lass?"

Stoick's voice was grave and low, rumbling from his chest as he finally lifted the bread to his lips and took a hefty bite.

Astrid cleared her throat, rubbed her hands together in hopes of heating them up, and said, "I'm doing alright, sir."

It was a lie and they both knew it, but it was also a lie that they both shared and understood. So they sat there, the crackling of the fire and each other being their only company for each other.

Astrid shivered, hands huddled close to her, and she couldn't scoot closer to the fire without getting burned. She was just so damn chilly, and the worst part was that she never used to feel like this. She couldn't ever remember this, the cold that had somehow seeped into his bones, never relenting or giving her a break. The only time she could recall that let her actually feel something was when her mother kissed her, but that was it.

"He loved the bread from the Great Hall," Stoick suddenly said, and Astrid looked up to see the great viking sagging in his seat like he was nothing more than a pile of something limp and sad. His voice was rough, and in that moment, Astrid knew that he, just like her, wanted the little fishbone to return more than anything. "Always grabbed too many. How he could eat that much and not shoot up like a weed, I don't know."

"Yeah," Astrid whispered, remembering how Hiccup always disregarded the fish or the meat and instead heading straight for the loaves of bread. He always took more than she thought he would need for himself, and assumed that he had been either sharing them with his father or simply feeding them to the sheep. Evidently not, and the idea of Hiccup stuffing bread in her mouth piece after piece was enough for a spontaneous smile to appear on her face.

"You sure you alright, dear?"

"Huh?"

"You've been shiverin' something strong for a while."

"Oh," Astrid whispered, drawing her shoulders in and staring at the fire in front of her. It was hard to explain, as things always were these days. It wasn't something that she could ever truly describe, but it was like an ache, like the cold went far beyond her skin and instead touched the deepest parts of her soul. She just hurt all over, but it wasn't physical, yet it was.

Again, she wished she could blame Hiccup. She remembered how warm he had made her feel - warm when he was being especially endearing, like if he was babbling his head off or taking care of the sheep with a small smile on his face. Warmer when he sharpened her axe and then gave it back to her with a shy smile, wishing her luck with her training and saying she was the best out of all of them. Red hot when he was being annoying, destroying watch towers and beating her in dragon training, but far better than the numbness that seeped into her bones now.

There were so many things she wanted to say at that moment. Her grief of letting him be driven into the ground so hard, her anger at him for running away, her anger at herself for letting him think he could run away in the first place. But this was Stoick, her chief, the one she would always fight and stand for despite how broken he was now. She couldn't speak of Hiccup, at least not now, not when for once they had reached peace and were eating bread together.

So instead, she pulled as confident of a smile as she could on her lips, and said, "it's nothing, sir."

She rubbed at her hands, her fingertips icy and her soul even icier.

"I'm just cold."

XxXxXxXxXxX

Astrid isn't in love with Hiccup, but she does care for him greatly. Like Stoick, she had a very poor way of showing it, and as a result, she hurt Hiccup more than she did help him.

Originally I wasn't going to add hiccstrid too much but I ended up using Astrid as my person for Berk's pov. So I guess the hiccstrid is having a bigger role than planned.

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