Fireworks

Hiccup had been searching for a way to cheer up Astrid for the past four hours and had come up with an absolutely incredible nothing.

When he had seen the crestfallen look on her face as her father waved good-bye from his retreating ship to the Dragon's Nest, Hiccup had known that he had to fix it. He wasn't entirely sure how yet, but he would.

Since her father's departure, she had been in a considerably moody snit, tossing her axe at unsuspecting barrels and driving a fist into Snotlout's face whenever he so much as uttered a syllable. Hiccup, like nearly everyone else in the village, had known to give her a wide berth.

That had been yesterday. He hadn't seen her smile in a day, and he knew that he had to be the one to bring it back. True, he wasn't the best equipped for such a monumental task, but by Odin's beard itself, he was certainly going to try.

He had been combing the woods all day for some sort of acceptable gift for her. A bouquet of wildflowers? No. Astrid hated flowers. She scowled at the sight of them. Said they weren't Viking-ly. Perhaps he could carve her a figurine out of redwood bark? No, no, that wouldn't work at all; Astrid wasn't to be trusted with fragile things. (That was one thing they had in common.)

He considered the possibility of writing her a poem, but then he remembered that Astrid vomited at the mere mention of poetry; making her a new axe was a viable option, but he had wanted to save such a thing for a special occasion, like maybe when he married her. (It was easy to have such big dreams, being only thirteen.)

A sharp gust of the autumn wind swept down through the trees and slammed into his back, slicing easily through his wool tunic, and he shivered. As much as he wanted to continue wandering the woods, he knew it was high time he headed home. Night fell swiftly in the fall, and he didn't want to be caught out in the forest when it did.

The hike back to Berk was tough and tiring, as the wind was blowing against him and it was getting dark. The sole thing on his mind was he trudged up the hill to his house was getting a fire started.

Ordinarily, there would already be one waiting for him, but Stoick had headed out on the voyage as well, leaving Hiccup to tend to himself. He was a big lad now, Stoick had said. He could handle things like that.

Hiccup pulled open the mighty wooden door and had just enough time to slip in before the gusts slammed it shut. He stood still against the door for a moment, listening to his breath fill the dim emptiness.

"Dad, I'm home!" he called out, raising his arms enthusiastically. "Did you miss me?"

Only the silence answered him, and his hands dropped back to his sides as he sighed and murmured, "Nope. Guess not."

He began the task of making dinner for himself and starting a fire, a chore he was used to. Sometimes the loneliness was a blessing; other times he could hardly stand it. He couldn't decide which he felt at the moment.

As he worked, he ignored the note written in his father's scratchy handwriting that laid on the table. He never bothered to look at them anymore. They never meant anything.

Son—
Take care of yourself while I'm gone and don't break anything.
There is a bundle of new wood by the fireplace. Do not use it. Use the logs from the usual pile.
If I don't make it back, both you and Gobber know the proper ceremonies for initiating Snotlout as the new Chief.
I'll be thinking of you.
—Stoick

Without glancing at the words for a second, Hiccup snatched the paper off the table and crumpled it up, tossing it into the fireplace with the kindling. His eyes fell on the neatly wrapped bundle of dry gray logs leaning against one brick side of the fireplace and he smiled to himself.

"Wow, a whole bundle of fresh wood. I'm glad you care, Dad."

He unraveled the twine and heaved three logs into the fireplace on top of the kindling, taking the two pieces of flint from their tray on the mantle and slicing them together a few times. At last, a spark lit the kindling and a soft flame spread out in the fireplace, warming him immediately.

He turned and crawled into his father's enormous, fur-covered chair, curling up in it, looking inordinately small as he wrapped his arms around his bony knees.

He noticed, absentmindedly at first, that one of the logs had started to burn a vivid green.

He blinked, stared, and blinked again. The two other logs were taking on flames of the red and blue variety. He continued to watch in dumbfounded astonishment as one of the logs promptly exploded. A noisy burst of bright green sparks appeared, then another, and another, and then the other two logs joined in, and soon the combustions of color were firing off in every direction.

Hiccup yelped and leaped for cover behind the chair, putting his hands over his ears as the walls of the room were flooded with shade after bold shade of flames. It was beautiful and fantastic and terrifying, and when it finally died down, Hiccup cautiously crept back out into the open and only one thing crossed his mind: something so like Astrid could not be wasted.

"Perfect."

–

"Astrid!"

Hiccup supposed in retrospect that he shouldn't have snuck up on the blonde, as he suddenly found himself pinned on his back into the grass, the blade of an axe pressing into his poorly developed Adam's apple. Astrid's gold hair fell so close to his face that it tickled.

Her bloodthirsty expression momentarily gave way to a softer one, but it only lasted for a second before morphing into her usual annoyed frown.

"Oh, it's you." She sounded extremely unimpressed. "Don't sneak up on me like that." As she clambered off of him, her eyes flashed threateningly in his direction, practically knocking the wind out of him. "Next time you might not be so lucky."

"Astrid," he heard himself say, still lying on the ground. "Astrid. Yep. Astrid. No sneaking up! Got it. Aye, aye. Listen, I just wanted to say – that is I wanted to ask you? – if maybe—"

"Are you going to stand there blathering all day, or what?" Astrid snapped.

"Blathering!" he blurted out, bouncing to his feet with a finger in the air. "No, no, not at all! I mean, I was just, um, Astrid; I wanted to—"

"Hiccup." He had never heard anyone groan so loudly. Astrid's head dropped back over her shoulders and she glowered at the sky instead of him. "In the name of all that is holy, what do you want?"

"You!" he yelped without thinking. He could tell this was entirely the wrong answer as she started to advance on him with increasing murderousness. "I mean, no, wait; I don't want you at all!" Apparently this was even worse, as evidenced by the axe that had returned to his throat. He closed his eyes tightly, awaiting what he was sure would be death, and squeaked, "Gaaahhh no I mean, I just wanted to show you something tonight at Raven Point so please be there and don't kill me because I like being alive and—!"

"Oh, shut up." The axe was off of his jugular now. He felt a bit faint from relief and toppled down onto his rump, gaping up at her. She raised her eyebrow, slinging the weapon over her shoulder. The sun was right behind her head. She looked like a goddess. A very frightening goddess. "Yeah, sure; I'll see you there. Can't promise the part about not killing you, though."

She gave him one more ferocious squint before stomping away, her braid bouncing angrily behind her. Hiccup watched her go and smiled a little.

–

The night was freezing and Hiccup was certain that there would be frost that morning. As he waited for Astrid, he couldn't help but think of his father.

When he'd been younger, he admitted that he had hungered to join Stoick on his voyages, and always felt a bit put-out when he was told that he couldn't. While the other children found consolation in their mothers when their fathers departed, Hiccup sat curled in Stoick's chair and cared for himself, learning to enjoy the loneliness.

Tonight, he wondered if his father would be proud of him, courting Astrid and all that. When he'd first made his affection for her apparent, Stoick had seemed a bit hesitant to encourage him, as though afraid that he would not succeed in his pursuit. For that reason, Hiccup knew he absolutely had to prove him wrong. Whether Astrid would let him was a different matter entirely.

Hiccup exhaled and his breath clouded in front of him, dissipating out into the night. He felt stupid standing on the edge of the cliff with the cumbersome contraption he'd built for the occasion. The more he'd thought about it over the course of the day, the less likely it seemed that Astrid would show up at all. She may have just been humoring him. People had been known to do that.

He heard a twig crack behind him and jumped, whirling around to find the source of the sound. The silhouette of Astrid was sharp in the darkness; her hair seemed almost white as the moonlight shifted through it. She seemed a bit unbalanced aesthetically – it took Hiccup a moment to realize it, but she did not have her axe, or any weapon of the like. It threw him off in the most lovely way possible.

She spotted him and made her way toward him with a certain degree of surreptitiousness. He couldn't blame her. He wouldn't want to be seen with himself on some coastal clifftop at night.

She came to a halt beside him, her head bowed, her arms folded defiantly. She stared at the ground as she rocked back and forth on her heels, running her hands along her forearms. She let loose a shiver.

Hiccup stared at her.

"Are you cold?" he asked.

"No," she snarled back with a rather intimidating amount of forcefulness.

"U-Um," Hiccup gulped, "if you'd... you know... like to borrow my vest, you can—"

"I don't need to borrow anything; I'm fine," she snapped. "What'd you make me come out here for anyway, Hiccup Haddock? I have so many better things to do than sit here and listen to you stammer."

"I didn't make you come anywhere; you could've just skipped out." She didn't answer and Hiccup smiled subtly in triumph. "Anyway, as for the... why I asked you to come here part..." He cleared his throat. "I just thought that... y'know... with your dad gone and all—"

By the way she stiffened beside him and began to radiate a hot aura of fury, Hiccup knew he'd picked the wrong thing to bring up.

"I mean, that is..." He scrambled to make up for his error. "I just wanted to d-do something nice for you. I kinda figured this out a couple of days ago by accident and it reminded me of something you'd like, and..."

"Figured what out?" she asked, and there was a faint tinge in her voice of genuine curiosity. Hiccup grinned. That was his cue.

"Well," he breathed, and he turned to the catapult, using the flint to light the first log before taking the controls, "watch."

He pulled the wooden lever and the log was jettisoned high into the air. He prayed that he had calculated the time before combustion correctly.

As the log ascended, a trail of green flames followed it. Astrid squinted up at it. Just as it seemed that it reached the zenith of its trajectory, there was a crackling noise and it burst into a shower of green sparks.

Hiccup turned expectantly to Astrid, and saw that her face was finally turned to the moonlight and he could see it properly. The nacreous white craters and drifting green sparks reflected vividly in her blue eyes. Her mouth was agape with bewilderment. She had stopped shivering; her hands were off her arms.

He heard a word come from her, and it was the finest word he had ever heard: "again."

He obliged her, and this time the sparks were yellow; he fired off another two and they were blue and turquoise. The entire time, he could not bring himself to take his eyes off of Astrid, off of the dazzling smile on her face, off of the way she seemed to look like a divinity at the end of a rainbow as the colors lit up her cheeks, in hues of wildflowers and silk. Her shrieks of delight echoed off the treetops, and her eyes were so wide and radiant that he swore they could swallow the moon and still outshine it.

He kept shooting out logs until there weren't any left, until the traces left in the sky were so bountiful that he could not see the stars. He couldn't feel his arms, but he didn't care. He fell back onto the grass, spread-eagled and immensely proud of himself, and stared up into the sky, sighing blissfully as the breeze skirted across his forehead.

After a moment, he sensed another form lying down beside him. He rolled his head over and saw Astrid, gazing in the same direction as he, her hair feathered out around her like an ocean.

"That was..." she whispered, straining to think of an adequate word. "Amazing." She turned her head to look him in the eye and he felt free. "You're amazing."

He couldn't help but grin at her a little goofily, and she smiled back, an expression he would not see for a long time to come. Another shudder rippled through her and she hissed through her chattering teeth. Without a word, Hiccup pulled his thick fur vest off of his shoulders and draped it over her.

She frowned at him, perplexed, and he knew she didn't know what to make of it, but he hoped she'd resign to her confusion and let the vest lie there and warm her. She did. He'd never get that vest back.

–

Stoick had sworn that he and his crew were lost at sea forever when suddenly, out of the fog, bursts of impossible color lit up their way, and there was Berk, just ahead of them, faintly illuminated by blues and greens.

"Damn," he moaned, not much caring that his son's error had saved his life. "My logs."

"Don' worry." He felt a metal arm clap him on the back and winced. "I'm sure you can get plenty more b'fore Hiccup's birthday bonfire. Next time, don't put 'em in his sight. He's compelled to break everything within reach, yeh know."

"Yes, Gobber," Stoick grumbled as he steered the ship toward home. "I know."