Chapter 1: New Year's Eve 2009-2012

January 1st, 2010

Astrid didn't really party the way some of her peers did. She didn't sneak out or come up with poor excuses to get wasted with other teens after managing to get her hands on booze through older siblings. That wasn't like her. But that didn't mean she didn't seize opportunities, nor didn't know how to have a good time. So when her friends from kickboxing had asked her to join them in the inner city, she'd shot every piece of ammunition she had at her parents to convince them that at sixteen, she was responsible enough to stay out past midnight. She was basically an adult, after all. And after she'd promised that she wouldn't do anything stupid, let alone illegal, they'd let her go.

Luckily, you didn't have to break the law to have a good time on New Year's Eve in Berk. The large annual winter market in the town's central square stayed around until after New Year's, serving all kinds of food and beverages at its stalls. She'd spent most of that night at the ice rink, but had gathered with her friends at the riverside just before midnight, joining in on the countdown and watching the fireworks when the clock hit midnight, announcing the arrival of the new decade.

Now, she was hopping from one feet onto the other, waiting at one of the stalls and trying to stay warm in the trademark Berkian cold. The line had been killing and she cursed herself for not going further into the city and trying her luck there. But her worries were forgotten when she accepted the two mugs of hot chocolate into her freezing hands.

She turned around, looking through the crowd in an attempt to figure out where Heather was. Her friend had run into her brother and there was no telling what Dagur might be up to... But his red hair and tattooed face did stand out from the crowd.

She squeezed herself through the masses, cradling the mugs to her chest, alternating between craning her neck and standing up on her toes. Finally, after starting to wonder whether she was even going the right way at all and looking behind her, she saw a familiar arm wave at her. She instantly turned around, heading the other way.

Her foot landed on something hard, making her stumble and bump into someone, all after only taking one step.

"Sorry!" a nasal voice yelped.

She was too stunned to reply as hot chocolate spilt over her chest, dripping down and soaking her coat, the heat making her instinctively jump backwards. "Fuck!"

"Oh Gods, I'm so sorry!"

She looked up - no, down - at the culprit. A skinny boy, about her age. His green - really green, Holy Thor - eyes were blown wide with shock and he was fidgeting with his hands, seemingly unsure of whether he should put them to use or whether that would bring about the impending apocalyptic events of 2012 two years too early. It was endearing, and while she normally would have had to suppress the urge to punch her assailant straight in the jaw, she found she simply couldn't. Because there was something in his look, so innocent, so sincere, that simply calmed her down.

"It's okay," she told him, looking down at the brown stain on her coat. Luckily, it didn't feel like it had reached her sweater underneath.

"No, it's totally my fault, I should have looked, I -" he mumbled, looking helpless as he rubbed the back of his head, messing up his auburn hair. "I was distracted, and I'm just so, so stupid, I don't know how -"

"It's okay, really," she repeated, slightly patting herself. "It's a way to stay warm, I suppose."

"It's not, I completely ruined your coat." He reached out towards her, but then retracted his hands, gesturing himself up and down. "Do you want mine, or?"

"No, it's fine, really," she insisted, following his gaze downward and finally realising what had made her trip. "I stepped on your foot, after all."

The guy looked down again, his two eyebrows shooting up. "You did?"

"I mean it was strangely hard, but..." she mumbled.

"Oh..." he grinned awkwardly. "That must be me." He leaned forward and grabbed his left foot, lifting it up and pulling up his pant leg... To reveal a piece of metal.

His lips curled into a lopsided smile. "Fake foot."

"Oh my Thor," she gasped. "How...?" She didn't know why she was asking - he was a complete stranger. But a part of her wanted to know.

"Accident," he shrugged. "Happened this year, so I'm still getting used to it. Or I suppose it's last year now, since it's after midnight. Hurray!"

She wanted to laugh, to shake her head at him, felt the corners of her lips twitching upwards, but realised in time that it would be hugely inappropriate.

"I'm so sorry," was all she could come up with instead.

"Eh," he casually said, his shoulders moving more than any normal person's ever would. "It happens. And I thought I was the one doing the apologising here."

"My jacket's not expensive, don't worry," she reassured him. She preferred practicality above anything else and this coat was exactly that. "I'm sure it'll come right out. And I'm not nearly insecure enough to let it ruin my night." She gave him a cocky smile. "I'll punch anyone who dares to try."

"So I simply got lucky?" the guy tried.

"So far, yes," she teased.

The guy pretended to gulp and look panicked before his expression relaxed into a smile. "At least let me pay for the dry cleaner." He fumbled with his own jacket, seemingly looking for something. "If I can find my wallet, that is."

"It's fine, my mom probably knows how to wash it out herself," she tried again, but he kept patting himself down. "You didn't get robbed, right?"

"Oh, no, the odds of that are rather low. My dad's a cop," he explained, laughing awkwardly. "He makes sure I'm one hundred percent pickpocket-proof before even thinking of leaving the house. Which has this -" He gestured at himself. "As the very charming result."

"Then perhaps you should leave it that way," she suggested.

"Yeah, that's probably..." He mulled for a moment, biting his lip and reaching into the back pocket of his jeans but coming up with nothing. "Yeah - I think you're right. Sorry, again."

"Let it go," she told him, finding herself smiling again. She gestured with the two mugs in her hand. "It's just hot chocolate."

"Is there even anything left?"

She peered into the mugs and shrugged. "Enough for one, at least."

"Then let me pay for new ones."

She pulled up an eyebrow. "And watch you go through your whole wallet-searching routine again? Charming offer, but no, thank you." He looked slightly offended, to which she decided to press the other mug into his hands. "Here, take it."

He took it from her only because she forced him to, sputtering. "I can't -"

"I'll just give this one to my friend." She gestured at the brown stain on her clothes. "I think I've had enough for tonight."

"Again, I'm sorry -"

"Again, it's okay."

"Are you really sure?" the guy tried again, looking pensive.

"I am," she nodded. "Sounds like you had a shitty 2009, with your leg and all. A shitty decade, for all I know. I just want to make sure this one starts out better."

He looked like he wanted to speak up again, but she held up her hand. "I'm not letting you give it back!"

She backed away after properly looking over her shoulder this time. "Enjoy your night!"

He just stood there, flabbergasted. "You too..."

With that, she disappeared back into the crowd, finally making her way back to Heather, a smile on her face she hadn't even realised was there until her best friend asked what had made her so cheery.

But she waved it off.

It was something she didn't really think she could explain.

December 31st, 2010

Hiccup was oddly reminded of a donkey on this year's New Year's Eve. Most importantly, the saying that even donkeys didn't hit their toe on the same stone twice in a row. Yet somehow, he had managed to let Snotlout convince him to go with him to the inner city of Berk again.

He didn't really know what kind of animal that made him, but he figured it didn't speak in his favour. Perhaps something without a brain. A jellyfish, maybe, just waiting to be inevitably washed up on a beach, then stepped on by a tourist, which would prompt the tourist's friends to pee on their leg. After a heated debate on whether urine did or did not actually help against jellyfish stings, a question no one really knew the answer too.

Or he could, for once, make life easy for the rest of the world and simply settle for being a sea cucumber. Those seemed rather cool. And he could, in Hiccup fashion, enlighten other sea creatures on how he was, in fact, not a green-tinted, edible vegetable, unlike his land-born brethren.

But his father worked on New Year's Eve anyways and he didn't really have anything better to do. So instead of chilling on the ocean floor, he was semi-freezing and sensing his impending demise as he stepped onto the white, slippery field of doom that was known as Berk's Winter Wonderland ice skating rink.

He didn't get what people thought was so fun about literally venturing onto thin ice. He never had. And that hadn't really changed now that he had only one properly functioning foot.

It would be fine, Snotlout had said. He had had the prosthetic for over a year by now, and, as his cousin put it so delicately, 'he already tripped over his own feet way less often than when he still had two of them'. So certainly, he could do this.

Hiccup had told Snot, Fishlegs and the twins to go ahead so he wouldn't embarrass himself too heavily. Fishlegs hovered nevertheless, but did bring up the courtesy to look away.

He carefully put his good foot on the ice, only slipping slightly, and held himself up on the wooden banister. Slowly, he let his second skate join the first, putting the iron down and trying to adjust to the weird sensation of his prosthetic sliding underneath him. But he didn't fall. That was something.

"Are you okay, Hiccup?" he heard Fishlegs ask.

He didn't dare to look up, keeping his eyes firmly fixated on his skates. "Okay would be a big word... But it could be worse."

"Just take it slow," Fishlegs told him, almost sounding more nervous than Hiccup himself felt.

Only for Fish's tender words to be immediately diminished by Snotlout skating by at high speed. "Come on, cuz, move!"

Hiccup shook his head and scowled, but forced himself to move anyways, pushing his right skate off the ice and letting the other glide along, while still holding on to the banister as if it was the only thing between him and utter humiliation.

It probably was. He could already hear Non Je Ne Regrette Rien play in the back of his head, announcing the inevitable fall of this story's tragic but not quite Leonardo DiCaprio-like protagonist the way it had in Inception.

He bet Leo knew how to ice-skate. Not that that would have helped him in Titanic, like a bigger floating door would have. But then again, Leo could do it all with two legs. And stuntmen.

Fuck, he'd love to have a stuntman right now.

And he wouldn't say no to having sex in a car with 1997 Kate Winslet either.

He slowly shuffled forward, letting his left skate slide calmly while his right did all the work. Surprisingly, it didn't go as badly as he'd expected it to. He dared to go further, letting go of the banister, daring to put some pressure on his left leg and start the motion from there.

The Gods struck him down for his hubris as soon as he tried, leaving him scrambling for his wooden saviour as he nearly fell face first onto the ice.

He pulled himself back up, leaning on the banister and looking out, pretending not to hear Fishlegs call out to him in concern. It was already dark, Berk's square lit by Christmas lights along with all the stalls and shops that feasted on holiday tourists. It was busy, this day belonging to the Berkians themselves above all, but he didn't pick out any familiar faces in the crowd.

Until he saw her.

He had mostly repressed the memory of the first person he'd met in the new decade, given that he'd immediately embarrassed himself by causing her to spill hot chocolate all over her coat. Just some Hiccup Haddock smoothness, right there.

But there she was, in the crowd. Her blond hair braided over her shoulder, a smile on her face as she talked to her friends. She was wearing a different jacket this year, a dark blue one that somehow suited her even better. He hoped that hadn't been his fault, that he hadn't completely ruined the red coat she'd worn the year before. But he was too self-conscious to go up to her and ask. Especially because moving at all on the death traps bound to his fake and real foot could only lead to disaster.

She probably didn't want to talk to him anyways. From the way she looked, the way she acted, the way she smiled he could make out that he was way below her on the notorious teen social ladder. She was undoubtedly popular. He was all too happy in his nerd corner. It'd never work.

Not that he believed in the strict segregation the way High School Musical portrayed it, but some people simply didn't match. It was better to, as the Wildcats put it so pointedly, 'stick to the status quo'.

And then her eyes met his.

She looked surprised to see him - Berk was at least a middle-sized town, after all, what were the odds? They hadn't seen each other since his clumsiness had miraculously resulted into a free mug of hot chocolate.

But once she seemed to have recovered from that shock - he hadn't, he was gaping, desperately willing his brain to update to Windows 7 instead of clinging to Vista and claiming that particular piece of garbage wasn't Microsoft's biggest mistake of the last decade - her lips relaxed into a soft smile that made his heart jump.

He glanced down at his skates, hoping she'd understand why he looked even more helpless than the last and only time they'd met. He hauled himself up further, trying to stand up straight - his growth spurt was finally setting in - and retain some of his dignity.

Her smile widened, like she'd understood, and she gave him two genuine thumbs up before turning back to her friends and disappearing into the crowd.

She'd gone as soon as she'd came. But he found himself grinning nevertheless, feeling more encouraged than he had all evening.

Perhaps ice skating wasn't that bad after all.

January 1st, 2012

This was the year. Or so Astrid had been told. Supposedly "the most amazing New Year's yet!".

She didn't think holding Heather's hair back as she threw up quite qualified as that, but at least her best friend had seemed to be having a good time. Right up until the moment she'd turned green and had rushed to the club's bathroom with Astrid running after her.

Astrid hadn't seen the appeal of turning eighteen and being allowed to drink herself. She had enough going on, tournaments to attend in January, a brain to spare for the university she was trying to get into. But she was nothing if not supportive, and she loved her friends more than herself. At least, that was the mantra she silently repeated in her head as Heather hurled into the toilet yet again.

She got her phone from her pocket, sliding the screen up to reveal the keyboard - it was simply quicker and way more convenient than typing on a touchscreen - and searched for Dagur's number. He would undoubtedly go berserk in his own way - he'd given them the 'big brother talk' before they'd headed into the city - but she'd rather deal with him than with Heather's parents. Especially Mr. Oswaldsson wouldn't be too... agreeable.

"Hello!?" Dagur shouted from the other side of the line, hardly audible above the beat of Party Rock Anthem in the background.

"Hey, Dagur, it's me!" she yelled back before realising there was no need to, cringing when her voice echoed through the stalls. Heather simply groaned.

"'Sup, Hofferson?"

"I need to get Heather home," she told him. "We got here by bike, but that could take ages, so I figured that, perhaps, you could take her on your scooter..."

"She's wasted, isn't she?" Dagur's obvious disappointment was ironically punctuated by LMFAO insisting that party rock was in the house tonight, and that everybody should just have a good time.

Heather shook her head at her, part of her black braid unceremoniously sticking to her face, but Astrid didn't think her capable of making any decisions right now. "Yep."

"On my way. Where are you?"

"Not So Silent Sven's Party Hut."

Dagur hung up immediately, leaving Astrid to haul Heather up onto her shoulder while her friend insisted she was fine and could walk by herself, only to immediately demonstrate the opposite. They struggled until they reached the door, somehow managing to get their coats before escaping onto the streets, the Berkian winter air pleasant after the suffocating heat of the club.

They hung outside for a bit, waiting for Heather to sober up, but eventually stumbled further towards the main road, hoping to catch Dagur on his way. They had to dodge a lot of party goers who could hold their liquor better, along with teens who had fallen into the same pitfall Heather had. She felt a particular amount of sympathy for the dark-haired guy they passed, who was patting his skinny brunette friend on his back while he hurled the contents of his stomach into the snow, the sound alone enough to make Heather gulp again.

When they passed them, the sick fellow looked up at her, their eyes meeting.

Astrid had only seen that combination of awkwardness and Oh my Thor what am I doing twice before.

She waved at Fake Foot Guy, shooting him the kindest smile she could muster up without bursting into giggles.

January 1st, 2013

2012 had been a good year for Hiccup. Somehow, he hadn't brought about the end of the world the Mayas had prophesied would come to pass. Even though he, the twins, Snotlout and Fishlegs had been convinced that if anyone would be able to cause an accident of global scale, it was Hiccup. Yet he had managed to enter university, where, as his father put it, his destructive tendencies were finally channelled into a proper education to become an engineer.

Living away from home wasn't abysmal either. If he was being honest, the train connection from Berk to university wasn't so bad that he had necessarily had to move out, but he figured it'd be good for him. It had certainly taught him a lot of things. How to open a can of pineapple slices without a can opener. How to separate white and coloured laundry. How to avoid salmonella. How to handle suddenly being six feet tall. How to cover up shaving cuts. And how to say no to more alcohol than he could handle.

It was the reason he wasn't in the same condition he was last year and that it felt good to be back in Berk to celebrate New Year's. Because he knew he wouldn't embarrass himself. Or at least, not by vomiting into the snow.

Of course Hot Chocolate Girl had walked by on his lowest point of the night.

Part of him wondered if she was perhaps some kind of spirit, there to feed on his awkwardness and the chaos he left in his wake. Then again, he'd only seen her three times, and his disaster-track record was much better than that. Three was a rookie number.

By the time it was 2 AM and Tuffnut dragged them into a club that he swore was even more awesome than the previous one, Hiccup had started to believe he might not see her on New Year's Eve for the first time this decade. He didn't know why he wanted to see her - he had no idea who she was, after all, didn't even have a clue about her name. But he remembered her smile, her bright blue eyes, the way her blond hair framed her face perfectly...

The exact same features as those of the girl he suddenly spotted on the dance floor, grinding up against a tall, handsome dark-haired stranger he didn't recognise. She was wearing a dress that remained blue in the club's lighting and fit her figure beautifully. It was the first time he properly saw her without a coat on, and he was struck by just how gorgeous she was. He'd had an idea, but it clearly hadn't been completely accurate.

She might be the most stunning woman he'd ever seen. Even in her current state, her hair messed up, her eyes glazed over, muddled by alcohol as they miraculously met his. He didn't know if she recognised him. She didn't seem to. But he couldn't look away.

Not even when she turned around to the stranger behind her, wrapping her arms around his neck and drawing him down into a kiss, the two of them making out as if no one was watching them. And he probably shouldn't be. He wanted to simply think 'good for her', to be happy that she was having a good time. But instead, he found his heart stinging with something unfamiliar. A kind of hurt he couldn't quite place.

He didn't mind when Ruffnut hooked her arm into his and pulled him back outside, remarking that Tuffnut had horrible taste and that they were going somewhere else. And even though he didn't do anything particularly stupid the rest of the night, he couldn't help but feel like somewhere, deep down, he was a bit of a fool.

He just couldn't pinpoint why.

A/N: I hope you guys enjoyed the first chapter! I hope the second one will come soon. I plan for there to be 3, all the way up until we reach New Year's Eve 2019...

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