Author's Note: Hey, it's been a while! Thanks for all the faves and reviews, it really means a lot to me! Here's another one-shot, quite a bit different from my other ones and has a lot of OOC!Astrid, but hopefully you like my take on her childhood and burning need to kill dragons and be the best Viking. Takes place when Hiccup tries to run away before he has to kill the dragon and Astrid finds him.

Rating: T

Warning: OOCness, insane!Astrid, AU, implied character deaths, angst

Summary: In this life, she is not just a Viking.

In this life, she is not just a Viking.

It isn't in her nature to be a coward, to hide in the shadows when all she wants to do is demand answers and get them because she always does. It also isn't in her nature just watch, because she likes fighting and dominating and taking and killing–

But.

Patience is an old friend lurking the shadows of her mind, a stranger to her village and a calming addiction she takes deep lungfuls of now to settle her restless fingers, twirling the battle-worn axe in her grasp as delicately as callused, blood thirsty hands could while she waits in cold silence with her thoughts swimming in sick lullabies.

Soon, something murmured sweetly, soon.

And finally.

Hiccup – scrawny, useless, troublesome Hiccup – tumbles from behind boulders and trees with the grace of an awkward duckling, and Astrid is not surprised at the morbid thought of how easy it would be to break its neck as something too weak to be betrayal and too close to madness crawls under her skin and bubbles in her throat.

She is not a girl, she is not a child, she is a Viking – and what else something cackles hysterically, whispering torturous sweet nothings in her hair and humming it beneath her skin, but it too is an acquaintance she does not dismiss right away, maybe not ever – and she knows what she must do, had known since her father didn't come back all those years ago and she was left to be raised by the bloody shield he wore to battle instead. Mother never understood until she understood too well as light hair like spun gold and woven silk was the last thing she saw until she finally slept, and slept, and slept, leaving her sweet daughter with too much potential and not enough – not enough what exactly?

And suddenly she is back to the now, not the then when I'm sorry for your loss and it's such a tragedy and your parents were great Vikings and they don't know they don't know they don't know ruled her world, because now there is the crack of dry wood as something that sounds like her choked screams slithers closer to where the awkward, fragile duckling stood.

Acid green eyes peer into the darkness, and she bites back a hiss because dragon, kill it, fire, blood, dragon, dragon, dragon–

Hiccup smiles, reprimanding words caught between pearls of laughter, and Astrid thinks if she could string those wonderful sounds together with his teeth in between each note of joy she could wear it around her waist as a beautifully tragic trophy instead of hanging his head on her wall.

After all, he is a Viking's son but not a Viking and never would be – one less nuisance in the village holding her back, one less dragon in her nightmares breathing fire into her dreams. When its claws decorate her room and his belt hangs in her closet, she can carve one more scar into her body and once less from her mind, and only when they all lay at her feet, broken and begging and hers and yes, only then will she breathe in the ash and flames in euphoric glee because there is no other way, Hiccup, can't you see, no other happiness.

As he ascends the skies, riding freedom cloaked in black scales to places she would never go and things she could never see, with every beat of great ebony wings, something inside her snaps like the crack of a whip in the fragile silence and it laughs.

Later, they find him.

Much later, they find it.

And as they mourn and mourn and mourn, she twirls the small dagger caught between callused fingers and something dark purrs in content at the insanity reflected in her eyes.

It is only the beginning.

Author's Note: Hope you guys liked insane!Astrid. It was fun writing her like this, haha.

And for those of you who don't completely understand what's happening in the oneshot, it's basically Astrid hiding her madness (or using it to fuel her viking training) from childhood (yes, it is implied she killed her mother when her mom found out) and ends up killing Hiccup (that's Hiccups dagger at the end) and Toothless before they can leave. She hates and wants to dominate and destroy anything involving dragons, and yeah. Or something. I'm not even completely sure. Creepy oneshot.