Author's Note: Almost time to get this duo on the road!

Chapter 4

For a spark of a second, a thought out of the darker corners of Astrid's mind asked her if this would be the last time she ever saw her mother again. Astrid quelled this thought almost before the final word could materialize, and she continued smiling and waving as her mother disappeared into the passageway leading out of the cove. Her mother would return to find Astrid comfortably curled up in a sunny alcove of the tower. Her mother would never suspect anything.

Astrid rolled her shoulders and pivoted. There loomed the wardrobe, a now ominous presence in the room. She'd tried to inconspicuously hover around it while Mother was bustling about to gather supplies for her trip. The last thing Astrid had wanted was a sudden discovery of the man behind the gnarled wooden doors. Astrid's lips twitched into a smirk. He had always been her ticket out. Now he'd just function in a different way. Moving to the kitchenette, Astrid curled her fingers around the frying pan. If he had woken up in the cupboard, she would need a weapon. Slightly crouched, she slowly moved forward, holding the frying pan aloft. Her ears strained for any noise that might hint the man had awoken.

She paused, rigid. Then she leapt at the doors, swinging them open, frying pan raised-

He was still passed out. His body, formerly slumped against the doors, toppled to the floor. Astrid winced as his head hit the floor with an undoubtedly painful thud.

"I must have hit him harder than I thought." Eyes scanning the room, she swung her foot out to slide a simple chair to the center of the room. Her mind filled in the smaller details of her grand scheme as she dragged him into the chair and wound her hair tightly around his torso, arms, and legs. The adrenaline had been electrifying her so much when she had dragged him to the wardrobe that she hadn't noticed certain details about him. Like his smell. It was intriguing now – not clean, not dank, not concocted by some potions master, but wholly unique and unfamiliar. She quickly redirected her mind to scan the room for more ideas. Her eyes twitched back to him. Packing now, while he was still unconscious, would save her time later. She began scurrying about the room, chest warm as she recognized the irony of having packed her mother for another trip only minutes beforehand.

Food. Hairbrush. Washcloth. Miniature star map crafted for just this purpose. Sewing supplies in case she needed stitches. Wineskin to fill with water. Kindling for fire. A small knife. A notebook and pen. She was about to tie her satchel closed when her head drifted up in thought, only for her eyes to find the blue dress, still hung atop the mirror.

A change of clothes, her rational side insisted.

But Astrid would be fooling herself if she tried to deny that she wanted to wear it when she saw the floating lights up close for the first time.

She knotted the satchel's strings securely, shoved the bag to sit below the window, and straightened. Her hands wound her hair around the handle of the frying pan, and she tossed a loop around a beam to pull herself up into the shadowy beams of the tower.

It was time to wake the thug.

Hiccup had anticipated that he would be pretending to wake up in a slow, gradual, peaceful manner.

Instead, he was soundly thwacked on the head with that awful frying pan.

He was by no means a talented actor, so his attempt at pretending to wake up slowly would not have been convincing – and yelping and straightening up because of aforementioned frying pan was far more convincing – but he would still brood about it later anyway.

"Ow!" He shook his head in an attempt to chase away the pain, and he wondered if two hits to the head in one day would cause any permanent damage. "Okay, enough with the frying pans already!"

After allowing himself a moment to overcome the throbbing in his skull, he pried his eyes open and scanned the room. He already knew people lived here, so seeing the furniture and decoration didn't surprise him. Neither did the impeccable organization and neatness. If the mysterious younger person he had heard earlier never left this tower, she probably had enough time to clean.

He didn't see her, though. The room was draped in shadows dark enough to obscure a whole person in their folds. Stripes and patches of lights gleamed in from partially opened windows, giving him enough light to see what he'd already guessed – he was tied to a chair.

Then he looked down at exactly with what he was tied down.

"Is.. is this hair?"

It was long, blond, and seemingly endless hair that wound around his chest and limbs. The stream of golden yellow tresses ebbed off into the darkness, where he could only guess the mystery girl was standing and watching him.

"Who are you, and why are you here?"

He cracked his neck looking around wildly and then hissed in annoyance at the new pain. "Huh?" He was ever the articulate sage.

From wherever she was, she spat out each word. "Who are you? Why are you here?"

Sarcasm took over completely. Hiccup rolled his eyes and shrugged as much as he could. "Oh, you think I'm going to pay for a room at an inn? In this economy?" He never realized how much his hands moved when he spoke until his hands were tied to a chair. "It's basically highway robbery!"

The figure tensed at robbery and lifted an object that for some insane reason seemed to resemble a frying pan. "Who is your source? Who told you about me?"

Hiccup gritted his teeth, eyebrows furrowing. "Oh, I know who you are? That's news to me!" He gathered the few brain cells he had left from two hits to the head. "Anyway, doesn't seem like a fair exchange of information."

Silence. Then – "Excuse me?"

Hiccup shrugged. "I'll answer your questions if you answer my questions."

Her voice hardened, and she snapped, "You aren't in a good position for bargaining."

Hiccup smirked. "That's never stopped me before."

She growled in frustration. Hiccup decided to toss her an olive branch – well, a form of one. "My name is Hiccup. There, your first question answered."

"Hiccup?" She actually snorted. "I asked for your name. If you're trying to lie your way out, that's a pretty poor one."

"Ouch. Are you trying to say I have a bad name?" Hiccup raised his eyebrows. "That almost hurts more than the frying pan." The mystery girl sucked in a breath sharply to reply, but Hiccup continued: "If I was trying to lie to you, don't you think I would have picked a more convincing name? Samuel? Eugene? Henry?"

"Maybe you think I'm an idiot."

"You're holding me captive. Clearly you're smart enough to get that far." Hiccup swung his head around dramatically to look into the darkness. "Come on, it's my turn to ask a question."

"I never agreed to-"

"Or I'll forfeit my question this round, and you can just step into the light so I can see who I'm dealing with."

He waited. He was making one risky gamble after another – but that was always his modus operandi anyway.

There was a thud in the darkness, on the floor a few feet in front of him. He squinted as a figure slowly stepped out of the shadows and across the line pinning darkness against sunlight.

She was about his height and age, pale skinned, of a solid and square but still somewhat slender build, with a patched brown dress. And she was most definitely the source of the hair. She yanked at a coil of the blond mass, and the end of her tresses, tied to the frying pan, came swinging down to deposit the metal monstrosity in her thin fingers. Hiccup winced, but his mind was working hard.

To buy himself some time, he said what had been burning his tongue for the past minutes "Looks like I've really gotten myself into a hairy situation."

Her thin lips parted slightly, and her eyes shifted from wide and surprised to thin and annoyed. "You have got to be kidding."

Hiccup twisted his lips at her and gave a brief lift of his eyebrows. "Exactly."

She groaned.

Hiccup scanned the floor. He saw coils and curls and rivers and twirls of hair, but he did not see his satchel or any of its contents. She definitely had it, and she had hidden it. Maybe he could find it, but not tied up and not with the Lady of the Hair Fountain hovering over him and swinging her stupid frying pan.

"Let me guess – and I'm sorry to end the questions game – you want to make a deal."

She straightened to her full height, not much in comparison to his own towering length, and the tips of her lips dropped into a tight frown. "I don't trust you."

Hiccup flipped his palms up and pointedly glanced down at them as he replied, "Well, I'm not too much of a threat right now."

Her chest pushed forward and she grinned. "No, no you're not." Letting her frying pan hang limp from her hand, she crossed her arms and stared him down. "How important is your satchel?"

"Important enough that I'm willing to help you… with some task or another." He wasn't going to reveal he'd heard her conversation with her mother. He knew exactly what she wanted. "If you're looking for protection-" Hiccup jerked his head at her frying pan. "-I'd say you're doing a pretty-bang up job all by yourself."

Another smile. Maybe if he kept complimenting her violent nature he'd get to watch her smile mo- stop it. She arched her back and replied, "You're right. In defense, I'm more than capable. As much as it pains me to admit it-" Astrid twisted her lips into a slight grimace "-I need directions. I need a guide for an excursion." She began to slowly circle around him, her bare feet almost silent as they gracefully curled onto the floor. "Two days round trip, at absolute maximum."

Hiccup had just enough wiggle room to twist his palms upward. "Where?"

"Wherever is best to see the floating lights tomorrow night."

Now their conversation had arrived at the one perplexing detail he'd heard from his time in the wardrobe. "The… floating lights?"

She frowned, eyebrows knitted together. "They're golden-yellow, they all float up at around the same time in the same part of the sky, they only appear once a year-"

"Oh, the lanterns!" Hiccup bit his bottom lip and nodded in mock-pensiveness. The girl had sucked in a soft and small but noticeable breath at his naming of the phenomenon. "I can do that."

"You lead me there and back, completely safe, in the allotted time, I will give you back your satchel, and you will leave here and forget that this ever happened."

"Right, because I'll always want to stop by and visit the girl who gave me probably permanent brain damage."

She started towards him, a full snarl on her lips, and Hiccup jumped, any kind of adrenaline-pumped bravado toppling to the floor. His penchant for sarcasm aside, she was absolutely threatening. He wondered how many guys she'd beaten down with that frying pan. He wondered how many guys she'd killed with that frying pan. Threatening women always triumphed over him. They also almost always turned him on, but that was a completely different problem.

He swallowed. "You have a deal. Do I… get a name?"

The girl's whole face twisted in confusion. "You want a new name?" His poor battered brain had finally processed her, and every nerve was sparking. She was gorgeous, capable, intelligent, and athletic. Hiccup had so many weaknesses, but that particular combination was his most shameful one.

He laughed nervously, inwardly cursing the now overpowering weakness. The Thorston twins had christened him a beta male once, and he hated that he saw their point. Only in a battle of wits was he at his best, and even then he never survived long. "N-no, I… I just want to know what your name is."

Her lips thinned into a hard line. "Astrid."

Hiccup sucked in a breath to swell his chest. "Well, Astrid, a deal's a deal." His beloved sarcasm, his treasured defense mechanism, shot back to the surface. "Although getting anywhere while I'm tied up in your hair might be a bit of a challenge."