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The moon is low in the sky but it's still dark, Devastating Winter at its peak. The first that the six of them are spending on The Edge, rather than at home.
"Six less mouths to feed…" Stoick had mumbled, after reluctantly allowing them to go. Not that six made much difference these days. Since the end of the war with dragons, everyone and their parents were having more children, and those children were surviving the winters in numbers never before seen. Only Gothi could remember times of such abundance. Regardless, it's risky at best to be so far from the mainland in this weather. The North Sea hasn't frozen but ice patches litter the coast around The Edge, and the ponds have been frozen for a few days.
Currently, the Riders are preserving the last of the fish harvest– Hiccup's salt-cured the fish and Fishlegs had turned the berries and fruit littered across the outpost into preserve and wine. The bulk of the food is in Fishlegs' hut but the ice being cleaned and melted back to water is with Hiccup. Food preservation was a surprising talent of his– The Chief's family asked for little even if Berk didn't believe in permitting them the gross excesses of neighbouring kingdoms, and he certainly had the sneak to pop into the stores for some candies, the way many of them had and did.
But outside of Fishlegs' skill in cleaning and cooking, preservation and allocation was Hiccup's job. Astrid (banned from the process for her tendency to drop fish onto the floor and accidentally introduce meat juices into the fruit preserve jars) had spent much of her time on The Edge this time (outside of flying and preparing the dragons for the winter) making inane conversation with Hiccup, the motions of dragon grooming and food preparation backdrop to such chats as "What is the ideal length of a Maces and Talons game?" (3 hours) or "How many Snotlouts would it take to match Hookfang's weight?" (about seven). Rather than the monotonous, dread-laden preparations back on Berk, on The Edge it's been almost fun. She, Ruff and Tuff even managed to get Snot and Fishlegs to admit their feelings (with Hiccup prefunctorily saying he couldn't get involved as a leader, but then manufacturing all the situations they needed for the two of them, including partnering with Alvin once to fake an Outcasts' ""attack"") without many misunderstandings or heartbreaks involved.
Still, even with the fun, Hiccup's carried an undercurrent of anxiety, to the point that he's been skimping on flying with Toothless to make sure the food and firewood is stocked and in good condition. They have quite literally double the food and firewood they could need as a crew of six humans and six dragons (Sharpshot has decided to make The Edge his nesting ground and who are they to stop it?) but Hiccup has been tallying obsessively, making sure everyone (including the dragons) can identify mold on fish, berry, preserve, wood and even leather rot.
Astrid's pretty sure this left the territory of "Leaderly duties" when he taught Stormfly how to clean her teeth to salt cure fish to human standards in the event that all of them lost their limbs to frostbite. So it is perhaps time to stage an intervention.
"Hiccup." She calls out into Fishlegs' storage room. Sure enough, Hiccup is here, using a wooden spoon to hit against one of the pots boiling water. He doesn't turn to look at her at all.
"Hiccup?" Astrid tries again. Nothing. Ugh, desperate measures. She tries to sneak up on him, possibly to put her hands on his eyes, but before she can he flinches, brandishing the spoon like a knife.
Just as suddenly he remembers himself, forcing his hands to rest on his waist, then one on his cane, wide-eyed. This is around the time Astrid's thoughts catch up with her, and she lowers the hands she would have put over her boyfriend's eyes. (…boyfriend, interesting. She doesn't call him such things even in her mind, but, well, it is correct, right?)
"Hiccup." One more time, and Hiccup remembers to breathe. It speaks to the years they've been together and the years Hiccup has spent working on his self-image that he doesn't immediately dissolve into apology.
"Astrid. You… sorry, you spooked me." Hiccup turns down the fire and covers the water pot once more. A layer of condensation forms almost immediately. Still, he plays with the spoon still in his hands, the way he does with anything from his tunic to Toothless' spines when he can't figure out what to do with his hands. He leans on his cane to a more comfortable standing pose. Astrid rolls her eyes and grins best she can.
"No shot, Hiccup. Come on, we have so much food we'll be eating preserves into the summer solstice. You can take a break right now." She doesn't expect Hiccup to freeze again.
"No, Astrid. I… I think we need more food than this. There's so many of us, and if someone gets sick they'll need more to eat, and what if worms get into the stores? Or–""Babe! What's gotten into you! There's enough food for a good chunk of Mainland Berk and The Edge doesn't have any of those pests!" Astrid can hear herself getting wound up, feel this conversation going nowhere except fumes they don't talk about later. She forces herself to calm down and give Hiccup a more focuses question. "What's got you thinking we need so much more? Worst comes to worst, the dragons can hunt, too."
This is finally what seems to get through to Hiccup, though he doesn't relax any. Instead, he looks… ashamed of himself.
"It's a long story. And makes me look really, really stupid."
"Nothing you could say would make you look stupid."
"You're not sure about that." Astrid lets herself giggle at Hiccup's half-smile.
"I'm not, but I won't think less of you no matter how stupid you look. That help?" Hiccup smiles all the way, then, though it's quickly replaced by the fog of memory.
"Er… d'you remember the winter when we were seven?" Astrid flinches in her mind. It was a particularly rough Devastating Winter– the last one to kill their ranks, going from thirteen children to six in the miniscule time between the autumn harvest and Hiccup's eighth birthday. She had whiled the time away with her parents, daylong games of Maces and Talons and making up songs by the fire. She was strong all her life, but particularly blessed with a low likelihood for sickness. She didn't remember if Hiccup had been sick or not, and all of a sudden she doesn't like where this is going.
Hiccup doesn't either, like he knows what she's thinking. "Yeah, so, uh, I got sick. Just after Snoggletog. Dad couldn't be of much help, y'know, Chief stuff. Had to brave the blizzards every day to check on everyone. If he passed on any of my sickness I'd kill the remaining six of us by accident. He stayed at Gobber's and I handled the house." Astrid recoils, this time physically. An ill seven-year-old Hiccup, already sickly, and then alone on top of it? Surely Gobber could have taken on some of the burden for Chief to stay home with his son?
"You… handled the house."
"I mean, I could. It's not like Valka was there, so someone had to do all the things another member of the house would." Sure, fair, Astrid can pull her weight in the home even with the things she's expressly barred from, but seven and sick? Hiccup pauses for a moment, but Astrid stays silent.
He looks away, back to the stores of preserves when he speaks again, like he's comforting himself with the sight. "But, y'know. I was seven. We had enough food for me at least, Dad's stores had been moved to Gobber's. But I was dizzy and pukeish and any number of accidents can and did happen. Basically, I ran out of usable food." Astrid's heart stops.
"Stupid of me, really. Could have gone to anyone else, maybe Gills could have made it– she seemed to be pulling through by the end–"
"Hiccup, shut up. You can't think that. You can't." Astrid can't breathe, can't even consider that there is a world where Hiccup thinks his isolation during his illness is the reason for the deaths of their cohort. Not when he was seven, and pulling through illnesses through quite literally sheer luck, because even by then very few people were attached enough to go out of their way to save his life. Hiccup squeezes his eyes shut, reopens them. Astrid wonders what he sees in the reflection of the jars. Her vision for nearby things isn't as good as it was.
"Yeah. Gods, uh, sorry. I don't, usually. It's just the time of year. I threw myself into helping prepare for the next one, and, I don't know… this is the first year I've led you all through a Devastating Winter without Berk's backup. I can't let even an accident allow anyone to die– us or the dragons." Hiccup perks up, not happily, but a little. "I should send a letter to your mother, to thank her. She was on preservation duty the year after and taught me everything… the only one who wanted to deal with me, anyway." If Astrid could travel back in time and tell herself as a girl anything other than that her family honour wasn't her sole burden, it would probably be to pay attention to Hiccup. Her mother kept trying to bring up his good qualities, his commitment, even as Astrid blew it off to finding a way to… marry up, as far up as Hiccup Haddock could ever be. Despite her mother's incredible disinterest in such things, something as Un-Berkian as that. The Hoffersons were rare in their tolerance for him, rarer still in how Mother took a shining to little Hiccup, maybe the only person who never had to change how she saw him on all of Berk.
Hiccup has started ambling about the room to find pen and paper, slightly distracted in the way he gets when he gets those ideas he has to do right in that moment, lest he forget. Maybe this is him trying to shake the memories away.
"You know Mother was happy to. And that she'd want you to call her Mother as well." It's not as if Valka really acts as one even now. A better Chieftess than mother, at the least her return has alleviated the pressure on Hiccup to succeed his parents for some time yet– maybe her best gift to him so far.
Astrid remembers with an internal wince the night after their betrothal, when they attempted to make love as is typical a decade into such a partnership, and quit after several minutes of discomfort to go fly together instead. Valka had asked her the day before ("Chieftess to Chieftess") whether she didn't think it was time for marriage, heirs, even. That whether she knew that she could go right back to being a Rider if the gods thought her calling sjould allow her to do so. Hiccup getting so upset at his mother for saying that to her, when she told him, that they didn't speak for weeks, because before anything else, he had her back.
"And…" Astrid feels at some loss for words. She doesn't soothe, Hiccup has always been the more nurturing arm of their partnership. Perhaps if Hiccup hadn't had the accidents he did in seven-year-old delirium, Gills or even Fjerda would be alive. Perhaps not. Hiccup is too loyal, to loving of his father to accept that perhaps he should not have been alone, or left hungry like he so clearly left out for the rest of his illness at least, by his own father. That beyond being the Chief, Stoick had a responsibility to his own heir, to at least have someone care for him when he could not. One day, Hiccup will take the chieftaincy, out of love if not duty. Astrid will succumb to pregnancy at least once, for nothing but love for Berk. Unless they find some way to dodge those realities, bend fate once more, those are the hands they are dealt, and they are not all bad.
"And?" Hiccup doesn't look as frightened, anymore.
"Even if, somehow, something went wrong. We would figure it out. You are not seven, ill and alone. You are twenty five, accompanied by five humans and six dragons, many of the latter being impervious to this weather. Should something happen, somehow, because we will be finishing these off well into summer, we would have your back. That's what The Riders do. You've always had our back, and we will have yours."
Finally, the tension in Hiccup's shoulders breaks. His parents has never understood this about her, about them– that her accounting for the worst case is what brings him peace. That someone else has gone down the path of every worst outcome with him and found a solution his mind, clouded with stress, currently can not. That they share or trade places as the head of the pair even if their roles as heart and drive remain constant.
Hiccup smiles, inkpot in hand and materials on the outside table.
"Yeah. Yeah, you're right. You always are, milady." Astrid chuckles softly.
"That I am. Let Fishlegs do the final assessment, you take the evening off with me. There's only so many days left before the six of us can't fly.'