Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

The plan is quite simple, as far as plans go.

Stoick gathers them all in the war room the night before to go over everything one last time, Astrid and Snotlout and Fishlegs and the twins, Gobber and Eret and Spitelout and the rest of the council.

The facts are these: Drago doesn’t know Berk has been training with dragons for years. Drago only knows of five of Berk’s riders– Astrid and the rest of her team.

Drago thinks they’re enough of a threat to have sent assassins to eliminate them. And while the attempts on their lives failed, they did spur Berk into action– action that goes further than winning the odd battle or two against Drago’s hunters.

“We’re going to take the bastard down,” Stoick promises, pressing his fist down onto the table, where Eret’s meticulously drawn up maps of Drago’s base and surrounding area are laid out. “We’ve got four teams of five riders ready. And once we attack, Astrid, you and your team will join us in the air, making it five. It’ll be completely unexpected– Drago will have his guard lowered, in fact; having your team captured, he’ll feel safe in his belief that Berk can no longer pose a threat. All you have to do is sit, wait, and keep yourselves alive.”

“Till noon of the third day,” Astrid confirms, laying her hand on the table as well, palm flat. “And then Drago’s ours. We won’t let you down, chief.”

“I know,” Stoick nods. He looks out to the rest of the gathered group, containing the leaders of the four other teams of riders. “And neither will we.” He looks back to Astrid. “Eret will lead you to the base,” he says, pausing for a confirming grunt from the man in question, “you’ll pretend to break in, you’ll get caught, and that’s all there is to it.”

“I’ll stick around for the first two days,” Eret says. “Make sure your dragons are kept in the right places and that Drago is appeased. Then I’ll join Berk in the attack.”

Gobber, from Stoick's other side, grins. “Sounds to me like the best plan I’ve heard in years,” he says and claps Stoick and Spitelout, the two nearest to him, on their backs. “Really, what could go wrong?”

“Absolutely nothing,” agrees Stoick, and the people gathered take the conclusion as what it is and dismiss themselves, most to get a good night’s sleep. Stoick doesn’t move, and therefore neither does Astrid, and therefore neither does the rest of her team, until they are the only six left in the room. Stoick sighs, then, deep and heavy.

“A lot can go wrong,” he tells them, and Astrid nods, thinning her lips. Stoick sighs again, and looks at them. “Listen. I know I said Berk has your back– and we do. But I also trust you five to be able to handle yourselves if the situation goes awry. Berk has nowhere near the manpower and dragonpower that Drago does, and this may very well be our only chance at taking him down. We will be focusing all forces on him, you understand?”

“Of course,” Astrid says. “Taking Drago down is the priority. I think I speak for us all when I say that we aren’t expecting a rescue, we’re expecting a signal; a diversion at most. We’ll handle ourselves from there, even if you can’t spare a rider to free us or our dragons.”

“Good,” Stoick says. “Good.” He pauses, and for a moment Astrid thinks there’s something else he wants to say, but another second has him simply inclining his head to them, and they do the same to him, wishing each other a restful sleep and luck the following day.

That night, Astrid and the rest of her team sleep together in the banquet hall, with their dragons enveloping them like they’ve done dozens of times before, during missions and battles and training.

A lot can go wrong, and we won’t let you down, and keep yourselves alive rings through Astrid’s head all night, and as she looks at her fitfully sleeping teammates, she knows, deep in her gut, that they can’t fail.

Drago is an enemy they can’t afford to lose to.

And they’re ready.

The next morning dawns early, not that it takes any of them by surprise– they were all awake hours earlier than they needed to be. They all troop down to the docks where Eret is waiting. Though they don’t need to– the fact that they’re leaving on dragons renders the docks moot, but it’s the principle of the thing. For centuries Berkians left for war via the docks, and so they still are now.

Their departure is quiet, and so is most of the flight. Even the twins are noticeably subdued, though that might also be lack of sleep. The sun rises quick, the air is cold and numbing, and it feels like no time at all before they’re angling down, and Eret is leading them to the pass through which they’ll sneak in, and then they’re in the base and making the biggest, most believable and yet least damaging ruckus they can.

Astrid forces herself not to lose control as Drago’s men capture Stormfly, pinning her dragon down to the ground and winding ropes and nets around her. Her heart breaks a little as she stays where she is, crying out and straining against the men holding her, and keeps herself from prying her axe from their fingers and killing everyone in the vicinity who dared lay a finger on her dragon.

From her peripheral, she can see the rest of her riders wearing the same heartbreak on their faces, each one hidden by various degrees, but Astrid knows her friends well, and she can tell easily.

And then they’re led down halls and through rooms they expect, ones they’ve seen drawn in Eret’s hand weeks prior. Some turns are unexpected, and they end up a bit away from where Eret said they’d be placed, but since it was all mostly educated guesswork on his end anyway, they memorize the halls, and don’t put up too much of a fight as they’re shoved through doorways and around twists and turns.

The last thing they want now is to accidentally escape.

They’re finally shoved into a long hall that has cells big enough for a full grown Nadder with floor-to-ceiling bars all the way down the left side, all of which are empty, and smaller cages stacked atop each other haphazardly along the right wall. Most of these are full– too full, Astrid sees with a churning gut as they’re led past them. Baby dragons, mostly– there’s a few cages filled with hatchling Monstrous Nightmares, a few Nadders here and there, Gronckles and Raincutters and Astrid thinks she even catches a glimpse of one or two Typhoomerangs.

They all look thin, weak, and scared.

The soldiers stop them at a seemingly random cell in the middle of the hall. It makes sense, and Astrid didn’t expect anything different– this way, they’re harder to find by someone trying to break them out; not at either end of the hall but in the middle. That and, if they break themselves out, the guards that will probably be stationed at either end can see them immediately, and take them out from a distance.

Astrid sighs through her nose, and reminds herself that they’re only here for three days.

They’re shoved unceremoniously, one by one, into the cell. They’re left unbound, but the shackles attached to the back wall make it clear what’s to happen if they misbehave. There’s a foul smelling bucket in the far right corner that Tuffnut immediately sniffs and gags at that’s to be their toilet, and not much else. The three walls that don’t open to the hall are wood, hard and strong, and when Astrid turns to inspect the barred wall of the cage, those are strong too, made of a metal she’s sure she’s never seen before, but caught whiffs of years ago when they were at war with Dagur. Dragon proof metal.

The bars are rooted into the floor as well as they are into the ceiling; Astrid finds no weak points when she climbs up to the top to test them. They’re set just far enough apart that she can stick her arm though, up to her elbow, and not much else.

The cell door, when she rattles it, barely moves at all.

She sighs again, and draws away from the bars, satisfied with her inspection of the cell. Her team seems to have done their own examinations as well; Fishlegs has found a corner to sit down in, Snotlout is still kicking at one of the bars, Ruff and Tuff are inspecting a knot in the wood in one of the walls, squinting at it this way and that, for whatever reason. Astrid leaves them all be.

Across from them, the dragons in the cages lay about, mostly quiet, chattering a bit every now and then. They’re all obviously weak from lack of food and exercise, and the cages smell foul, clearly not cleaned daily. And they’re packed fit to burst– one of them– the one Snotlout is currently glaring at– has, Astrid thinks, at least ten baby Monstrous Nightmares in it.

A few of the dragons gaze at her and her team with halfhearted interest. Most of them ignore them.

Astrid grits her teeth against the low, burning anger that starts simmering in her gut, and steps away from the bars of the cell, putting her back against the wooden wall adjacent to the bars and sliding down to sit on the ground.

Eret had spoken about the mindless cruelty of Drago’s base and soldiers, but there’s nothing like seeing it in front of her to make it really, really sink in. She’d wanted to empathize, but she doesn’t think she understood.

She does now.

She leans her head back until it hits the wall behind her, and blinks up at the ceiling.

It’s going to be a long three days.

“Hmm,” Ruffnut says a few hours later, absolutely out of the blue, “that’s not a dragon, I don’t think,” and Astrid looks over at her just in time to see her elbow Tuffnut, who’d fallen asleep on her shoulder, in the ribs.

“Ow!” He wakes up. “Thor’s fucking balls in a dragon trap,” he slurs, before shaking his head. “What do you want?”

He turns to glare at Ruffnut, who just raises an expectant eyebrow at him. Astrid sees Fishlegs shift, opening one eye to look at the pair. Snotlout, directly opposite from Astrid and mimicking her position, back against the wooden wall, shoulder leaned sideways against the bars, ignores them all, picking idly at a splinter in the floor and glaring out to the side into the hall.

Tuffnut looks at his sister for another second, and Astrid half expects him to start a fight with her that she’ll feel obliged to break up, but then he turns his head away, and his gaze travels over and across the cell, past Astrid and to the stacks of cages across from them. “Huh,” he then says. “No, it most definitely isn’t.”

Astrid sighs through her nose. “What,” she says, her tone flat, already annoyed.

Norns. Three days of this.

Keeping themselves alive might become a problem after all, but not for the reasons they’d originally expected.

Ruffnut, heedless of Astrid’s rapidly thinning patience, shrugs at her and points, past Astrid and out into the hall. Astrid’s head turns to see what it is the twins are looking at with such identical expressions of horrified fascination, and for a moment she doesn’t see anything, just stacks of cages with dead or dying dragons.

Then her gaze falls on one particular cage, one that’s on the floor and doesn’t have any others stacked on top of it, and is on the bigger side of the range of cage sizes in the hall, but, more importantly, she sees what’s in it, and–

“Oh, Odin,” she breathes, turning to better peer out between her own cell bars.

Because the twins are right. They’re awfully, terribly right. It’s not a dragon, crouched low and watching them with wide, green eyes, even though the cage– the cage is most definitely a dragon cage– Astrid glances to the left of it where there’s another stack, the bottommost cage identical to this one, and it’s holding three Terrible Terrors, who barely have space to move around each other.

But it’s most definitely a human being, in this one.

The cage he’s in– she’s pretty sure it’s a guy from the short, dark hair and thin, lean body she can see, although most of him is hidden in shadow– is not made to hold a person. If Astrid were to stand up– she doesn’t, because she doesn’t want to put it in such visible perspective, but if she were to– it would barely come up to higher than her knee. She remembers glancing at this cage hours ago when they’d just gotten locked up, and she thought it’d been empty, but she realizes now he must’ve been turned around and curled up in the shadow.

And, also, she’d been standing, so the ceiling of the cage didn’t allow her to see much into it. Because it’s just that low.

Now that she’s sitting–

Their eyes meet. She almost flinches back as they do, because– gods, the sheer inhumanity of it– there’s a muzzle, similar to what she’s seen on dragons but obviously altered to fit a person, covering the lower part of his face, to the point that she can barely see any of his face below his eyes between the dirty leather straps and clasps.

The rest of him isn’t much better. The Terrible Terror cage he’s in is four, maybe four and a half feet long from what Astrid can tell, and even less along the width. It forces him to be constantly curled in on himself, and the low ceiling forces him low to the ground. Crouched right now as he is, on his hands and knees, his hair already brushes the metal at the top– there’s no way for him to even sit up.

Honestly, what the fuck.

“What,” Snotlout breathes almost subconsciously, and Astrid takes the excuse to tear her eyes away from the revolting sight. Although it’d only been a few seconds, it was most definitely more than enough for her to get the image burned into her retinas. This is shit she’s going to see in her nightmares, she doesn’t doubt.

Snotlout, at some point, had stopped ignoring them all apparently, and was now staring at the cage, his expression a mix of repulsion and horror– probably echoing Astrid’s own, she realizes belatedly.

Fishlegs makes a noise, then, something between a gag and a choke, that tells Astrid he’s also spotted the– the prisoner, Astrid feels pretty safe assuming. He rises, crossing the distance to kneel next to Astrid at the bars of their cell, and wraps his fingers around one of the bars, gazing open mouthed at the guy in the cage. The guy stares back at them, not open mouthed, because he can’t, but Astrid thinks his eyes are open wide enough to compensate. His gaze flicks from Astrid, to Fishlegs, to the twins still against the back wall, to Snotlout, like he’s just as surprised to see them as they are him. He studies their faces like he’s looking for– something. Astrid feels, for a second, like she’s on display, which is absurd, because he’s the one in a literal cage. There’s an edge of cold, guarded scrutiny in his gaze and she feels like she’s been appraised, and found lacking.

She brushes the feeling off, just as Fishlegs seems to find his voice again. “We,” he says, “can we…” and he trails off, opening and closing his mouth weakly. The guy just shakes his head at him sadly, cautiously, like he knows what Fishlegs was trying to say. His gaze is sharp and guarded, the confusion quickly replaced by, Astrid thinks, unease, but it’s hard to tell.

Can we help, Astrid knows Fishlegs wanted to say, as well, and Thor, they really can’t at all, can they.

Yet. They can’t yet, she reminds herself. Three days. And then Berk will come.

“Who are you,” blurts Snotlout, then, and Astrid and Fishlegs turn to look at him incredulously, in sync, because maybe Snotlout doesn’t have much tact at the best of times, but this is just embarrassing, honestly. The guy, when Astrid chances a glance back at him, is looking at Snotlout with the most deadpan expression Astrid thinks she’s ever seen on any face, human or dragon, which is honestly incredible, seeing as they can only actually see his eyes and not much else, and it strikes something so nostalgic in her that for a moment she’s breathless with it. Then it’s gone, as soon as it came, and she isn’t able to catch the memory attached to it, if there even was one.

Snotlout grumbles something under his breath, and sits back against the wall. He still watches the cage across from them from his peripheral, though, Astrid can tell.

Her attention is brought back to said cage when the guy drops his gaze from Snotlout and shifts. During their whole– the past few minutes, he’d been crouched like he’d been in the middle of shifting positions, and had seen them and promptly froze. Which, Astrid reflects, could definitely have been what happened, especially if he was asleep or unconscious when they were brought in.

Now he moves again, slowly and painstakingly, and gods, his muscles must be so cramped– there’s literally no room for him to stretch any part of himself, basically– and Astrid sympathizes, but if it’s painful his face doesn’t betray any of it. He lies down on his side, his back against the side next to the Terrible Terrors, head cushioned in a supremely uncomfortable looking way on his fist. He maneuvers his legs up to his stomach, stretching the left one out straight for a few seconds– and Astrid’s mind blanks for a moment, because that should be physically impossible in a cage that small, but then her brain catches up with her eyes and she realizes that it is possible, because he’s missing the lower part of his left leg, from just below his knee and down.

So, scratch that. He can stretch inside the cage– he can stretch his amputated leg, and maybe his arms if he lies down in the right position, and maybe his neck if he lifts himself up a bit.

Norns. Astrid feels sick. What in all Hel did this guy do for Drago to do– this to him? Astrid has never seen this level of dehumanization in any of the conflicts she’s been in. None of them have. And they’ve been in a few.

It’s horrific.

Fishlegs sits back on his heels. He looks devastated. He’s the most outwardly empathetic of them all, and Astrid reaches out, placing a comforting hand on his arm. He gives her a weak, grateful, thin lipped smile, which she returns with a grimace of her own. He then looks back across the hall to the cage, where the prisoner is still half heartedly watching them.

“I’m sorry,” Fishlegs offers weakly, and the guy across from them rolls his eyes again, a trapped, frustrated air around the motion. He goes to turn away from them, trying to make himself comfortable on his side, the top of his head almost pressing against the cage wall closest to Astrid and Fishlegs. And–

“Wait– wait,” Astrid says, and the guy stops his movement, green eyes coming to stare at her from under long lashes, clearly annoyed. She bites her lip.

“Uh,” Astrid starts again, eloquently, and lowers her voice. “Can you see down the hall?” she asks. Because he could, actually, help them in this way. She’s tried, and she can’t get her head at a good enough angle against the bars of their cell to see to either end of the hall. She knows there’s at least someone stationed at either end– maybe. She can hear quiet shifting every now and then, but she has no idea how many at either end, and the more information they have, the faster they’ll be able to break out when Berk comes.

He tilts his head at her; not necessarily a nod, but she plows forward anyway, keeping her voice low, “just– can you see how many guards there are at each end?” she asks, and when all he does is blink at her tiredly, she adds, “please?”

He sighs– or at least, Astrid can see his shoulders move as if he does– and after a moment of deliberation nods at her vaguely, and drags himself forward a few inches, pressing his face against the cage wall and looking one way down the hall, then the other. The Terrible Terror cage he’s in sticks out from the rest of the cages just far enough, Astrid thinks, that he should be able to see all the way to the door at both ends. The cage, in fact, looks like it's just been dropped there, or was recently moved; it isn’t stacked right against the wall like all the others, instead it’s a few inches away and at an angle.

She hopes it’s because the guy in it hasn’t been here for very long. Knows, from the layers of dirt, blood, and bruises in different stages of healing visible along his arms, that that’s very much not why.

He’s blinking back at her again, suddenly, and she shoves the thoughts away for the moment. He makes sure she’s paying attention, and then points down to the left end of the hall and holds up one finger, and then to the right– one finger again. Astrid draws back a little, frowning.

“One at each end?” She clarifies, just in case she understood wrong, and the guy nods. She frowns harder, and looks to Fishlegs, who is, she thinks, the only one still paying attention to what’s going on. Snotlout is turned away again. She can hear one of the twins snoring.

Fishlegs frowns back at her, looking equally confused. “Why,” she starts, turns back to their fellow prisoner, “that– that doesn’t make sense. Why is Drago’s security so lax? We’re his biggest threat–”

She’s interrupted by a sound from the prisoner– the first sound she’s heard him make, really– and she thinks it could be a laugh, if he could open his mouth. As it is, it sounds more like a cough, muffled and choked off, like he’d tried to swallow it down before it could be heard.

He blinks at her, and she can not for the life of her decipher what the hell he’s looking at her with. Amusement? Pity? Disdain?

None of those really make sense.

After a few moments of her staring at him, the glint she couldn’t interpret drops from his eyes, and he just looks tired, hungry, and guarded again. He lifts one shoulder, as if to say why would I lie? Or maybe it’s how should I know, or go fuck yourself, I don’t really care.

And, well, Astrid really can’t fact check it, so she nods in thanks– though it’s lost on him, as he’s already laid back down in his previous position against the side of his cage and closed his eyes, sending a pretty strong “fuck off now, please” signal.

She sighs quietly, and sits back against the wall, chewing her lip. Fishlegs doesn’t look at her, staring down at the dusty floor in front of him, brows drawn together in thought.

Three days, she reminds herself for what already feels like the hundredth time. Three days.

And then this all ends. They’ll put an end to it.

The thought doesn’t make her chest any less tighter, and for a second, she doubts their capabilities, her mind flashing back to the edge of cold scrutiny she’d seen in the sharp green gaze of the caged prisoner as he’d studied them. She shivers involuntarily, feeling stripped bare to the bone again, and clenches her fists where her arms are wrapped loosely around her stomach, welcoming the bite of her nails into her palms.

They’re capable, she reassures herself. Very capable. And– yes, she allows, maybe this level of cruelty, this blatant show of power, is something they haven’t really gone up against before, but– they’ll have the rest of Berk at their backs, when the time comes.

And they’ll triumph, like they always do. And they’ll be fine.

She glances sideways through the bars, at the prisoner in the cage. Her resolve hardens.

In three days, she’s taking Drago fucking down.

An hour or so later, Astrid hears the door at the right end of the hall open, and footsteps troop through. They grow louder as they approach, and the prisoner across from them picks his head up at the sounds, blinking in the direction of the noise. The footsteps get closer still, and he jerks back, retreating as much as he can to the furthest wall of his cage, hidden in the shadows so that even Astrid, when she glances over, can barely see him.

His precautions are unneeded, though, because when the three soldiers reach their respective confines they turn only to the rider’s cell. One of them unceremoniously dumps a tray piled with food just outside their cell that is, Astrid can only assume, meant for them to divide amongst themselves however they see fit, and a wooden pitcher of water. The soldier then straightens back up, and steps back to join the other two. After a moment, Snotlout, who is the closest to the meager offerings, moves to drag it all awkwardly through the bars and into their cell.

“Set it all outside when you’re done,” the man who dropped the food off says, then, and without another word, the three turn and leave the way they came.

The guy in the cage is completely ignored. There’s a brief, muttered conversation at the end of the hall, before the door closes again.

Snotlout glances at the rest of them, takes some food off the top of the tray, and wordlessly pushes the rest of it towards them.

The guy across from them stays low in the back of his cage for a while, until they’re done eating and Snotlout has pushed the empty tray and pitcher back out into the hallway. The guard from the slightly closer end of the hall comes over to pick them up, and it’s only after he’s retreated that the other prisoner shifts, laying down in his previous position, which Astrid can only classify as “as stretched out as he can possibly be”.

He doesn’t make eye contact with any of them, and Astrid closes her eyes, swallowing back a sigh.

By the dawn of the second day, the routine becomes pretty clear.

They’re given food twice a day. In the morning, they’re given a new bucket. The guards don’t actually open the cell doors; everything is designed to be thin enough to slide between the floor-to-ceiling bars. They barely even come close enough for Astrid to grab, leaving their food on the other side of the cell for the riders to pick up and drag through, and even if she could grab them, it’s always a group of three that come, one handing them things, two standing back to watch.

They’re paranoid, and for good reason. These all would’ve been needed measures, if the riders were actually trying to escape. As it is, Astrid has no worries about them getting out once Berk launches its attack; in the confusion and chaos they’re bound to get some sort of out.

It’s between their two meals on the second day that something changes. A little past noon, if Astrid’s internal clock is correct (it is), a door at the other end of the hall opens, and footsteps start tromping down towards them. As per usual, the poor sod in the cage draws back, pressing himself as much as he can against the bars at the back of his cage. Astrid shares a glance with her team– she can see they’re all thinking the same thing.

Drago must want an audience with them.

They were hoping this wouldn’t happen in the short time they were to spend captured. This is where the “keep yourselves alive” part comes into play. Astrid stands up straight, stance defensive, and hears her riders follow suit behind her.

The guards come into view. It’s not the same three that have been bringing them food, Astrid can tell.

And then the guards ignore them completely, turning to crowd around the cage with the human fucking being in it.

Astrid stutters, blinking. She can hear Fishlegs shift uncertainly behind her. She takes a step forward, watching the guards.

One of them kicks the cage. Its sides rattle, loudly, and the guy inside flinches and cringes away from the noise.

“Norns,” one of the guards mutters, crouching a little to peer into the cage, “why doesn’t Drago just kill him already? He’s obviously not getting what he wants from him–”

“I think it’s just the principle of the thing, at this point, honestly,” says another, putting an arm up to lean against the wall above the cage.

“Eh,” mumbles the third through a mouthful of some sort of sandwich. Astrid can smell it from where she is, and she can already tell it's way better than the shit they’ve been getting. “Who knows, maybe one day he’ll crack. And anyway, this is more fun–” he grins, and the guard leaning against the wall rolls her eyes like she knows what’s coming. He lowers the last bit of his sandwich so that the guy in the cage has a clear view of it, crouches down a little himself. He waggles it mockingly. “Look at this,” he laughs, and it’s unclear who he’s talking to, his coworkers or the prisoner, and then, “you want some? Do ya? I bet you do,” he says, and laughs again.

Astrid can just see the prisoner’s eyes from her angle, gleaming a little, barely, from the bit of daylight coming down the hall and the torch one of the guards is carrying. And– Thor, anybody could tell that, yes, he wants it. He even draws forward a little, the action barely noticeable and probably involuntary before he catches himself and, with what looks like a tremendous amount of will, stays where he is.

“Gods, Njal, stop playing with the fucking runt, you do this every time,” says the guard who’s been leaning against the wall next to the stacks of dragon cages. She pushes off it, and kicks the cage again, just for fucking fun from the looks of it, and the guy inside jerks away. “At least come up with something new one of these days, I’m literally begging you.” She sighs. “All right, let’s go,” she says, and kicks the cage one last time, this time lifting it up with her toe as she does so, so the second guard can shove their foot under it and tip it onto its side, which has wheels that Astrid hadn’t noticed until now. The guy inside curls up into a ball as he’s thrown onto his back, one arm wrapped around his head and the other clutching the knee of his amputated leg, so he doesn’t hit either of them, Astrid assumes, and the familiarity that he does it with makes Astrid sick to her stomach.

She swallows down the bile, watching as two of the guards grab a side of the cage each and wheel it back down the way they’d come, and as Njal shakes his head, sighs, and eats the last of his sandwich before following after them. The door at the end of the hall closes, and they’re left in silence.

“Who…?” she hears from behind her, and turns to see Fishlegs looking down the hall. He looks as perturbed as Astrid feels. “Thor, who is that?” he echoes Snotlout’s poorly delivered question, shaking his head.

Astrid shrugs at him, helpless. None of them had discussed– well, any of it, really, mainly because asking him would be a bit useless, and talking about him in front of him seemed fucked up enough that none of them did it.

But now…

“I don’t know,” Astrid says, subdued. “Whoever he is, Drago wants him for something. And he’s obviously been here a while longer than us. I just…”

Astrid bites her tongue. The silence hangs for a heavy few moments.

“Who could Drago hate that much?” Asks Ruffnut, and it’s the exact question Astrid had been avoiding.

Because up until now, they’d been sure that they were Drago’s biggest enemy. The ones that caused him the most problems, the ones he wanted wiped out above all else.

She turns away from them, unable to answer the question, and no one else seems willing to take a shot at it either. Snotlout catches her eye, face uncharacteristically downcast.

What the fuck, he mouths at her, and she can’t help but agree.

It’s hours later that the cage is brought back by the same three guards, shortly after they get their second meal of the day.

The guy inside it is bruised, bloody, and very much unconscious.

Ruffnut and Tuffnut stay slumped together in their corner, glancing at the guy every now and then. Fishlegs studiously averts his gaze, looking disgusted and sick. Snotlout sits for a while, staring hard, his brows drawn together in a slight frown.

They all know better than to skimp on any of the food they get, but even still, Astrid can tell none of her riders have much of an appetite.

She forces herself to swallow everything down, and tells herself that it’s only another night and a few short hours before they get out of here, and decimate the entire base until there’s nothing left.

Drago, cruel tyrant that he is, won’t be able to inflict pain for much longer. They’re going to make sure of it.

And then, finally, the third day comes.

They wait. They’re ready. They can end this, today.

The morning is quiet. That’s okay, they planned the attack for midday.

Noon passes without incident. That’s… also okay. They don’t know what’s going on outside, there’s plenty of reasons for the rest of Berk to be late.

Evening comes. Evening goes.

And so does the rest of the third day. The fourth dawns, and they’re still in the cell. The base is still intact. The dragons around them still churr and claw sadly, caged. Berk didn’t come.

“Fuck,” says Snotlout emphatically, and tries very hard to put his fist through the wall. Astrid can’t help but agree.

Because Berk didn’t come. Berk didn’t come, for whatever reason, and she hopes and prays with all her might that it’s not because Drago got wind of their plan. That Berk isn’t burnt to the ground, or speared through with ice. That maybe they’ll still come.

“Maybe they’ll come today,” says Fishlegs, echoing her thoughts, the hope in his voice half-forced in the way that he does.

“Maybe we mis-counted,” says Tuffnut, throwing a small rock at Ruffnut’s head.

“We didn’t mis-count,” says Astrid, indulging them for the sole reason that it’s a better outlet for her anxiety than pulling a Snotlout and punching the wall. She might still do that later, though.

“Ow!” Tuffnut yelps, then, because Ruffnut had, predictably, snatched the rock off the floor and chucked it at her brother with a lot more force than strictly necessary. Astrid turns away from them, facing the bars, and chews her lip.

This is, objectively, bad.

“Are we waiting,” Fishlegs starts, “or getting out of here ourselves?”

There’s silence. She turns back to find them all looking to her, sans Snotlout, whose gaze is somewhere out in the hall behind her.

“We wait another day,” she decides. “Today and tomorrow. If they do still come, we’ll have a way bigger chance of actually completing what we came here to do. This isn’t a plan we can try twice, exactly.”

“And then?” Fishlegs prompts.

“And then we burn this place to the fucking ground,” Snotlout all but growls, and Astrid looks at him to see his gaze boring a hole into the wall across from them, stacked with cages, about level with the cage holding the ten baby Nightmares.

One of them is dead, now.

We’ll have to get out of here first, though, Astrid thinks but doesn’t say, because it would not be constructive right this moment. Instead, “yeah,” she agrees, “that,” and the twins grin maniacally at her, probably due to her support of a plan involving mass destruction.

She resists the urge to sigh. She lets her back hit the wall adjacent to the bars and slides down to join the rest of her team on the floor. Unbidden, she finds her head turning, her eyes seeking out the cage she is now level with. Green eyes stare back at her from the shadows, blinking slowly. They look sad. Give up, they seem to say. You’re not getting out of here. Look at me, look at me. You’ll end up just like me.

She knows it’s her imagination. She turns her head away anyway.

The fourth day comes and goes. So does, to her resigned, mounting horror, the fifth. Nothing changes. They still get food twice a day. The prisoner in the cage gets collected for a few hours each day, brought back more often than not unconscious and with new injuries. Drago doesn’t send for them.

It is now the sixth day, and there’s been no sign of Berk. Or Eret. Or anything.

“Maybe we should wait another day,” Fishlegs suggests.

“Absolutely not,” Snotlout grits out at the same time as Astrid sighs and says “no.”

“We can’t,” she says. “Look, we should at least start planning,” she continues. “We’re probably not gonna be able to escape today anyway, unless one of you already has a feasible plan. This is going to be harder than it’s been before. But sitting here doing nothing but waiting will be the death of us.”

“It’ll be fine, Astrid,” Snotlout turns to her. “It’ll be easy. We just wait until they come get us to take us to Drago, and that’s when we strike. We’ve done it before, we can do it again.”

“Uh, no, that won’t work this time, dipshit,” pipes up Ruffnut from her corner.

Snotlout blinks at her. “Why the fuck not?”

“Two reasons,” Tuffnut tells him. He holds up two fingers. “One–”

“–Shit like that only works with idiots like Alvin and Dagur, who either didn’t have the brains or resources to really hold us,” Ruffnut interjects.

“Drago, on the other hand, can,” Tuffnut concludes.

Snotlout rolls his eyes at them. “Whatever. What’s the second reason?”

“Drago won’t send for us,” Ruffnut tells him, and sits back against the wall like she’s done with the conversation.

Astrid frowns. “What?” she asks, at the same time as Snotlout splutters, again, “why the fuck not?”

Tuffnut looks at them both like they’re stupid. “Uh, because we’re bait, nothing more, nothing less.”

“Duh,” his sister agrees.

Astrid blinks at them.

Ruffnut mutters something under her breath that sounds a lot like can’t believe we really have to spell it the fuck out, and Tuffnut sighs and rolls his eyes.

“He’s turned our plan against us,” he says. “I don’t know why Berk hasn’t come– maybe because they’ve realized. But Drago wants Berk to come. He probably wants to get rid of all of us in one swoop, just like we’d planned with him. And we’re the bait.”

“He doesn’t really care about us past that,” Ruffnut continues. “That’s why–”

“–he’s done nothing with us,” Astrid nods. “Thor. Fuck.”

Because they’re right. Of course they’re right. They have to be. It explains too much.

And if Drago really does know their plan, then of course they haven’t seen Eret. Because Eret is either dead, then, or got out alive and is hopefully far far away, or safe on Berk. She can see the rest of them come to the same conclusion.

“So we’re on our own,” concludes Fishlegs, sounding depressed.

“And, objectively, even less important than the guy in the Terror cage, who Drago at least tortures,” Snotlout groans, throwing his head back, and he sounds depressed about that, because of course he does.

As if on cue, Astrid hears voices, and the door at the end of the hall opens. There’s shuffling in the cage across them as the guy tries futilely to press himself back against the other side of it, and then the three guards– same as the last two times, as far as Astrid can tell– are there, and the cage is kicked, tipped, and rolled back the way they'd come.

“Yeah, well,” Tuffnut says, and for once his voice is low and anxious, not that Astrid prefers it that way, “maybe that’s not necessarily the worst thing in the world.”

Hours later, when the cage is brought back and dropped unceremoniously back into its usual spot, the guy inside it beaten, bloody, and unconscious, Astrid– selfishly, pathetically– can’t help but agree.

Planning goes about as well as it can.

The riders work well as a team together. They really do. If they didn’t, they never would’ve defeated the Outcasts, or Dagur.

Well. They never really defeated Dagur. He eventually just kinda… went away, and they never figured out why, and they never touched it again. But still, they stood their ground against both, and they did so pretty well.

But this… tensions are running high and desperation and despondency are seeping into the cell and its occupants, slowly and steadily, as plan after plan gets discarded.

It’s two days later, during one of their aimless brainstorming sessions that only happen when they’re all awake, that one of the dragons on the other side of the hall starts up an annoying, persistent, quiet knocking.

“If… okay, okay, start over,” Astrid sighs. She’s slowly pacing the length of the cell. Fishlegs is slumped against the wall opposite the bars, Snotlout is standing leaned against the bars of the cell, Ruff and Tuff are sitting against opposite walls of the cell, glaring at each other because they had some fight or other. Knock knock knock knock, goes a dragon across from them. She doesn’t look to find out which one.

“If… our dragons are alive, we know that. And we know where they are. Unless Drago moved them, in which case we’re fucked, but… Eret said that Drago doesn’t know that Eret knew where the dragons would be, so…”

She ignores the voice that tells her that Drago also wasn’t supposed to know that they weren’t Berk’s only dragon riders. Their dragons will be there. They have to be.

And that’s pretty much all they have. Get out, get to their dragons, fly the fuck away. Which, the latter two thirds of their plan– that’s doable, they’re confident in that. They know their way around the base well enough, from the maps Eret drew up. Those, at least, were accurate. They can free their dragons and get them all out. It’s getting themselves out that they’ve been stuck on.

“Yeah, yeah, our dragons are fine,” Snotlout says, and Astrid represses a wince at the forced confidence she hears lacing his tone. “We just need to get to them.”

Knock knock knock, comes from one of the cages across the hall. Astrid continues to ignore it. “Maybe when they bring us food next–”

“They never come close enough for us to do anything,” Snotlout snaps, and she shoots him a look. He turns away, pacing towards the other wall to lean next to Fishlegs.

Knock knock knock, comes the knocking behind her, knock knock knock knock knock.

“We could fake an injury,” Fishlegs suggests.

“Why fake? That’s no fun, ‘Legs, come on,” Tuffnut hedges, and Ruffnut cracks her knuckles, grinning. Astrid shakes her head.

“Guys,” she stops them before they actually act on the idea. “Look across,” she gestures to the cages of half-dead dragons on the other side. “They won’t care. Especially if we really are bait. There’s five of us, which means a few of us are expendable. And besides, if Drago really is waiting for Berk to come, don’t you think sending them a finger or two would speed that up? If one of you idiots starts dying, they’ll probably just finish the job.”

“Yeah, and that’s when we–”

“From a distance,” Astrid finishes, and Tuffnut goes quiet.

“It’s okay,” Astrid sighs, “it was worth a shot.”

They’re all silent. Knock knock knock knock, persists the stupid dragon behind her, and she grits her teeth against the sound. It’s getting louder, gradually, and more insistent, she thinks, but at this point if it gets any louder than it is now it might get the attention of the guards at either end of the hall.

But by Odin it’s annoying. She can’t fucking think.

“Astrid,” says Ruffnut.

“What?” Astrid snaps without meaning to. Knock knock knock knock knock–

“Look,” Ruffnut tells her, pointing behind her. Astrid turns, teeth practically bared, and searches the wall of cages for the source of that fucking noise, and– oh.

Oh.

It wasn’t a dragon. Gods, she’s fucking stupid. The knocking wasn’t a dragon. She steps closer to the bars of their cell and drops to her knees so that she can actually see the guy.

Their eyes meet. The knocking stops, his knuckles stilling against the metal side of his cage. He looks relieved that she’s finally paying attention to him.

“What,” she says again, quieter this time, tamping down on the desperation she feels creeping up her spine.

He moves, slow and lethargic, obviously pained and cramped, repositioning himself inside the cage so that his head is nearest to the hall. He presses his face as much as he can against the side of the cage, looking, very obviously for Astrid’s benefit, to one side, down the hall, then turning and looking the other way, just like he’d done when Astrid had asked him to check how many guards there were on their very first day.

He then looks back at her. Points down the hall one way, and holds up one finger. One guard. Points the other way, holds up one finger again. A guard at each end.

“Okay,” Astrid says. “We already knew that. You’ve told us.”

He rolls his eyes. Something about the action hits– something, in Astrid's chest. Something familiar, some memory or other. She pushes it away. “So?” She says.

He holds up a hand, like he’s gonna gesture again, then puts it back down. He turns his face away, his hand coming up to his head, probably trying to loosen the muzzle, but Astrid can’t see very well at the angle he’s turned at. Whatever it is he fails at it, and faces them again with frustrated eyes. After a moment, he sighs through his nose, points at himself, taps the side of his head, and then holds his hand up, palm facing them.

Astrid frowns, tilting her head. He keeps his hand up, palm out.

After a moment– “Wait?” Fishlegs guesses.

The guy nods. Points at them, points at himself again, holds up the hand.

“We all wait,” Tuffnut deciphers.

Astrid turns, to see most of her team blinking over at her.

“Okay,” Astrid sighs, suddenly very tired, and slumps back against the wall. “We wait.”

So they wait.

Whatever they’re waiting for, it takes hours. Long enough that the riders are brought food again, and Astrid tries not to feel bad about eating in front of the guy in the cage. He must be hungry– they’ve never seen him get food or water, but she assumes that he’s given both whenever they take him away to beat on him for… whatever reason. Because he’s apparently more important than them, to Drago at least. She wonders who he is, and what he’s done.

Norns, she wants out of here.

But it’s been a while since they’ve come for him, and he’s looking weak and listless. Although all he ever really did in the past week that they’ve been here is lay, on his side or his back or his stomach, because the cage he’s in is too small for him to sit up in. He’s on his side now, looking out into the hall, his gaze vacant. If it weren’t for the weak, barely visible rise and fall of his chest, Astrid would’ve been concerned that he’d died.

At some point, the dragons in the cages start chattering quietly, like they’re having some sort of meeting, and during this the guy looks a little more animated, at least– he turns his back to Astrid and the rest of the riders while the dragons chatter quietly, quieting down even further when one of the guards comes down the hall to kick at the cages– including the one with the very human person in it, which sets Astrid on an edge because, well, there’s literally no reason to do that– and the dragons stay mostly quiet after that, but for some reason Astrid gets the sense that they were done with whatever it is they were doing anyway. A few minutes after the guard goes back to his post, the guy in the cage rolls back onto his other side, resuming his empty, glassy-eyed stare into the hall.

Still, it’s a few hours after they’ve eaten their second meal of the day that anything happens.

It’s quiet at first– she hears movement at one end of the hall. Shuffling, then faint footsteps, the door opening and closing. Then silence again. Except for–

Knock knock knock knock knock–

She looks across the hall. The guy in the cage is staring at her, gaze intent. He points down to the end of the hall, to the side the movement had come from. Holds up one finger. Slowly puts it down, his hand forming an O.

Zero.

Snotlout, behind her, stands.

She’s grabbed the bars again, without realizing. She can feel her eyes widen. Green eyes look back at her. They squint, and it takes her a moment to realize he’s grinning, the lower part of his face hidden by the muzzle, and the absurdity of it is the only thought she has before the guy throws himself, as much as he can with the limited space and movement he’s provided, against the opposite side of his cage.

The sound is… quite loud.

“Thor on a fucking seashocker–” She hears from behind her, probably from Tuffnut, but her attention is brought back to across the hall when the guy picks himself up and throws himself again, with more force, the cage rattling, sliding a little. Then he picks himself up and does it again, and again, and then the cage tips–

And a foot placed on top of it brings it back down, hard. The metal sides of it rattle with a dreadful finality. It’s the remaining guard from the other end of the hall, obviously there to investigate the noise, and Astrid’s stomach sinks, because what the fuck are they gonna do now, what was even the plan to begin with–

But when she looks, the guy is still grinning.

And then, in an incredible feat of flexibility and pain tolerance, he presses himself against the side of the cage closest to the loudly annoyed guard, reaches both arms through the bars of the cage, grabs the guard’s leg– the only leg currently on the floor, as the other one is still atop the cage– and pulls.

The guard goes down with a yelp, onto his back, hard. His head hits the floor– and it’s close enough to Astrid that she can tell he isn’t knocked out, but very concussed, and shit, that means he can still yell for help, and she throws herself against the bars of their cell, scrabbling, trying to– she doesn’t know– but all she can reach is his helmet, which she snags off his head. She lets it go, trying not to cry out in despair, because one shout from this guard and everything is over–

But she doesn’t have to.

Because in that moment, as one, the dragons in the cages stacked directly across from them– and consequently, towering almost right above the guard groaning on the ground– start throwing themselves against the bars of their cages, and not, Astrid thinks, awed, in a manic attempt to free themselves, spooked by the commotion, but in exactly the same way the guy had been doing, like they’re in on his plan. They throw themselves, hard, then again, then again, and it’s only a few seconds until the topmost cage starts to tip–

And this time, no foot comes down on it to stop it.

The cage that tips has two Nadder hatchlings, stacked up high, nearer to the ceiling than it is to the ground. Astrid watches it tip, and fall, and she can tell where the trajectory of it is taking it before it hits.

And hit it does. Its very hard, very metal corner comes down directly onto the guard's forehead. Unprotected forehead, Astrid realizes, because the helmet he’d been wearing is now lying, discarded, near her hand, pulled off in her frenzy to shut him up.

It hits hard, and there’s blood, and the guard stops moving.

The dragons in the cages immediately quiet. It’s silent, for a few breathless moments. Then–

“Holy,” whispers Tuffnut from behind her.

“Shit,” finishes Ruffnut, from beside her.

Astrid turns around. Ruffnut is on her knees beside Astrid. Tuffnut, Snotlout, and Fishlegs are all standing, jaws in various stages of dropped. She looks back to the hall, first to the unconscious, probably soon to be dead guard on the ground, next to which the Nadder cage lies on its side, the two dragons squawking at her quietly. Then at the ingenious idiot who somehow organized the whole thing.

The ingenious idiot in question has stretched himself out as much as he can, both arms threaded through the bars of the cage and pushing at the guard. His arms are bloody, the rough metal of the cage having torn at the skin, but he doesn’t seem to notice. His eyes are wide when Astrid meets them– not with panic, but with urgency. He’s pushing at the guard, Astrid realizes, trying to get him closer to them.

She has barely a second between realizing this, and getting shoved unceremoniously out of the way by Tuffnut with a sharp “move, our arms are longer than yours,” and she backs up, standing to join Fishlegs and Snotlout, watching the twins press themselves against the bars and scrabble at the guard’s face as the guy in the cage pushes and shoves. Ruffnut manages to get her fingers hooked under the man’s jaw, and Tuffnut gets his hand in the guy's mouth, and they pull, dragging the guard closer, getting better and better handholds as they maneuver him sideways.

“Holy shit,” Tuffnut says, “holy shit, holy shit I got them, I got them,” and he tugs the ring of keys off the guard, starts picking through them. “It’s this one, right,” he asks Ruffnut.

“Yeah,” she confirms, and snatches the keys from him, standing and threading her arm through the bars. It takes her a few tries to find the key hole, and then the key is in and she twists, and Astrid can hear the mechanism unlock, and–

The door opens.

Snotlout is the first to shove his way out of the cell, shoving past Astrid, Ruff and Tuff and stomping unceremoniously and probably harder than necessary onto the guard’s face as he goes. He crosses the hall and pulls the cage with the baby Monstrous Nightmares off its stack.

“Give me the keys,” he says.

“Snotlout,” Astrid says, her anxiety spiking as she realizes this isn’t going to go over well, and that they’re on a timer. Have been on a timer since the first guard left. “Snotlout, we have to get out of here, we don’t have time to free all the dragons. We–”

“Astrid!” Snotlout all but yells. He turns to Ruffnut. “Give me the keys.”

Ruffnut steps out of the cell. She looks back at Astrid. She looks at Snotlout. She looks down at the guy in the cage, face pressed against the bars again and craning to see them all.

And then the door at the other end of the hall opens. They all freeze. Astrid can’t see him yet– she assumes it’s the first guard, returned from whatever piss break he’d been taking– from where she is still in the cell, but she can hear the moment he sees his unconscious coworker, the knocked over Nadder cage, and Snotlout and Ruffnut out of the cell, holding a cage of dragons and the ring of keys, respectively. There’s a moment of silence, weighted and hanging, during which all Astrid can think of is oh, shit, here we fucking go, and then all five of the riders and the guard at the end of the hall move.

The guard shouts for help out into the hall, and Snotlout, Nightmare cage still in hand, yells, in pure fucking rage, and sprints down the hall at the guard, probably to bash him over the head with the cage, Astrid assumes. Ruffnut throws the cell door as wide open as it can go, shoving the unconscious guard over while she does so and Astrid, Tuffnut and Fishlegs all scramble out of it.

And then there’s more soldiers pouring into the hall on Snotlout's end, and she follows his example and relieves the unconscious guard at her feet of his sword– she would’ve preferred an axe, but she’s good with either– and charges down the hall, the rest of the riders at her heels.

She’s only there for a bit– just long enough to run a few people through, maim a couple others, and ensure that all her riders are armed and none of them are too outnumbered. Then she takes the keyring from Ruff and runs back down the way she’d come, skidding to a panting halt in front of the cage. The guy flinches back as she stops, and when she leans down a bit to see him better, he looks wary, and almost– surprised.

That they came back for him? What the fuck? Of course they would, how fucked up would that be if they didn’t?

Then again, she realizes belatedly– they don’t know each other. He knows nothing about them, and they even less about him. It’s irrelevant. She pushes the thoughts from her mind.

“How do we get you out?” She asks him breathlessly. She thrusts out the keys. “Is one of these the right one?”

His eyes are wide as he looks at her, and her stomach sinks as all he does is shrug helplessly. She sees resignation settle into the depths of his gaze, turning quickly into determination, and he shakes his head, making a shooing motion at her.

Go, he’s saying. Leave me.

“What– no!” Astrid all but shrieks. He shakes his head again. Go, his eyes say, pleading. Pleading and angry and scared and resigned.

Fuck.

He leans forward to look up at her better, his fingers gripping the bars of his cage. Cage. She’s not leaving him in a cage. She can’t leave a human being muzzled, and in a cage so small he can’t even sit up in it, especially since they would definitely still be trapped in their cell, throwing out useless idea to escape after useless idea to escape if it hadn’t been for him, and his stupid, crazy, fiendishly clever plan.

“No,” she says again, and turns around. “Ruff! Tuff!” she calls over her shoulder, and within moments the twins have extricated themselves from whoever it had been that they’d been fighting and are standing beside her, panting, eyes gleaming. She allows herself a brief smile.

“You two can pick locks,” she then says. She gestures to the cage at her feet. “Get him out.”

Without a word, Ruffnut drops to the ground, squinting at the lock, and Tuffnut turns and rips the helmet off one of the unconscious or dead guards behind them, snagging some clips out of her hair. He turns and thrusts them at his sister, who by then had finished inspecting the lock, and she sets to work on picking it while Tuffnut throws himself with a yell onto the back of the nearest enemy. Astrid looks down at the guy in the cage, who she can barely see now that she’s standing up, so she crouches back down next to Ruffnut so that she’s (almost) eye level with him.

He’s looking at Ruffnut’s hands, fiddling with the lock, but his eyes meet Astrid’s when she looks at him, and he shakes his head again, looking bitter and lost. She doesn’t really know what to say to him– everything that comes to mind sounds stupid, but she still opens her mouth, her tone sincere as she tells him– “we’re not leaving you. You’re coming with us, and we’re all getting out of here.”

She feels almost as if she’s talking to a spooked animal. A caged animal. It’s certainly what Drago’s made him into, anyway, caged and muzzled and beaten and starved.

We burn this place to the fucking ground, Snotlout’s words echo in her mind.

She will. Oh, Norns, she will.

It’s another tense fifteen or so seconds of Ruffnut picking at the lock, but finally it clicks, and the cage door opens, and the guy’s eyes go wide in disbelief.

“Thank Thor,” Astrid says, and waits until he’s scrambled out, movements slow and very obviously pained but still fueled by a desperate intensity, coming to kneel between her and Ruffnut. He’s in pretty bad shape, if the bruises, burns and lacerations she can see littering his face and arms continue on to the rest of his body. Which she’s sure they do. He’s obviously under-fed, and weak from having been trapped in there for Norns know how long. But general health and wellness can come later. Escape comes first. She breathes out the air she’d been unconsciously holding and asks, “Can you walk?”

He turns to look at her, and his gaze she can only describe as flabbergasted, at her stupidity. He shakes his head.

“You…” she says, and then she looks down, and oh.

Right.

He’s missing half his leg.

She’d honestly… forgotten about that.

She swallows down the embarrassment. “Right. Shit. Sorry,” she says, and that’s all she has time for because then Fishlegs is beside her, grabbing her shoulder.

“Astrid, Astrid,” he pants, “we have to go. There’s gonna be more coming, probably with dragons, come on,” and he pulls her up with him.

She looks down the hall. It’s littered with bodies. There are small dragons crawling over them, flapping down the hall, generally escaping– Snotlout must’ve figured out a way to open all the cages anyway. Hacked them open, by the looks of it.

“Okay, okay,” she points at the guy still on the ground, wincing as he tries to move. “We’re taking him with us.”

Fishlegs shrugs like that was obvious and bends down, easily swinging the guy over his shoulder with a wince and a muttered apology. The guy, to his credit, merely groans in the back of his throat, pained, eyes squeezing shut and fists clenching.

“This way,” Tuffnut calls from the end of the hall that isn’t littered with bodies, and Snotlout, as he passes her, hands her an axe, picking up a sword for himself, and Fishlegs and Ruffnut follow the two, Astrid bringing up the rear. She looks back at the hall. It’s a mess, blood and people and broken cages lying everywhere, dents in the wooden walls and metal bars, a dead dragon here and there that didn’t make it. Something chuffs at her feet. It’s the Nadder cage, the one with the two babies who bashed the first guard’s head in. It was missed in the commotion, and they’re still trapped.

Without a second thought, she brings the axe down on the side with the lock.

It breaks clean off, and they spill out of the opening, chirping excitedly.

They make it to their dragons. Their dragons, who are still there– not in the exact place they’d been expecting, but they still find them, mowing their way mercilessly through any resistance they meet along the way.

“Stormfly,” she gasps as she finally sees her dragon. She feels– dangerously, because as close as they are, they aren’t out yet– all the tension melt from her body as she lays eyes on her best friend. Stormfly squawks in greeting, at least as well as she can through the ropes binding her beak, and then they’re cut away as Astrid and her borrowed axe reach her.

She has time enough to give Stormfly a single caress down her beak, and then Fishlegs is behind her, lowering something to the ground. Not something– someone. Drago’s ex-prisoner, that they’d rescued. That had rescued them.

“Here,” Fishlegs tells her, breathless, as Astrid turns to him and he takes a moment to make sure the guy won’t fall over without him. “He’ll probably be better off flying with you and Stormfly for now,” he says and she nods, and he turns and without another word all but launches himself across the distance to Meatlug, who Snotlout has mostly freed from her own confines.

Astrid breathes out a sigh, near trembling with adrenaline and anticipation and exhaustion, and turns towards the guy.

The guy, who is looking at them and their dragons with wide, sharp, disbelieving eyes. She thinks if he weren’t muzzled, his jaw would be quite dropped. Which– yeah, that makes sense, she guesses. As natural as it is to them now, just a few short years ago they’d still been at war with the dragons.

So she smiles at him, and reaches out a hand to steady him that he just barely doesn’t flinch away from, because he isn’t looking very good, balancing on his one leg, body still slightly scrunched as if remembering the close confines of the cage, and she tells him, “it’s okay, they won’t hurt you if you don’t hurt them.”

And he looks at her for a moment, blinking, before his eyes squint again in that way that she’s come to learn means he’s smiling under that horrible muzzle, and she has the sudden urge to cut it off, but there’s still shouting behind them, and explosions from the few of the larger dragons that they set free as they were looking for their own– namely the three Zipplebacks– so she tells herself they’ll get it off later, when they’re safe.

But he smiles back at her, if a little hysterically, and nods, as if to say I know, so she wastes absolutely zero time helping him up onto Stormfly’s back. By the time she slides on herself, the rest of her team is hovering above them, and she doesn’t even need to give Stormfly a nudge– as soon as she’s seated, the dragon takes off, shooting into the sky, and Astrid laughs, breathless, free once again, blinking tears out of her eyes from the sudden wind.

The base beneath them– or at least the part they just vacated– is burning, there are dragons flying off in all directions, there’s shouting and confusion and she laughs again in the face of it all. Stormfly spirals higher and higher and higher, almost too high, before she evens out, and everything below them is obscured by the cloud cover, but she can see Snotlout on Hookfang below her, and Fishlegs and Meatlug behind her, and the twins are whooping and hollering on Barf and Belch somewhere just below the layer of clouds, probably watching the destruction down on the ground.

And she thinks– she thinks–

That Drago is a formidable enemy, and maybe one of the most horrid she’s ever seen. She thinks– yes, they underestimated him, their mission failed, but most important–

So did Drago’s. Because Berk didn’t take the bait, and Astrid and her team are free, and a large part of his base is burning to the fucking ground, and in front of her is someone who Drago needed, thought important enough to spend days torturing.

They’re free, and they’ll make it back to Berk, and they’ll go from there.

It’s a good enough step forward, she decides. A step towards burning Drago’s entire empire to the fucking ground.

They don’t fly for very long– their dragons tire quickly from being cramped and under-fed the past eight days, and after about an hour Astrid calls out to angle down, flying below the cloud cover, searching for a sea stack or shore to alight on for a few hours. She as well is feeling the effects of their prolonged imprisonment, now that the adrenaline has faded her stomach aches with a dull, painful hunger, there’s a headache creeping up the back of her skull from the stress, dehydration and overall sleeplessness of the past few days, and she feels like she might maybe pass out, in the near future.

Drago’s ex-prisoner certainly is– he stayed upright, more or less, on Stormfly’s back for maybe the first twenty minutes of their flight, but after one too many near falls– he’d lose consciousness for a second and slip sideways, Astrid would catch him, and he’d jerk awake– he’d slunk down and forward, laying his head just behind Stormfly’s crest, closed his eyes, and was out, Astrid could tell, in barely a heartbeat.

Which is something she’s been wondering about. Because– he knows how to fly Stormfly, she can tell. Or, at least– he’s been on dragonback before, that much is undeniable. For one, he didn’t lose his head screaming when Stormfly took off for the sky hours ago, and while that could be chalked up to the muzzle still clamping his jaw shut, his movements had mimicked Astrid’s, and he was sitting in front of her. He intuitively leaned forward when he needed to, back when had to, and held himself in general as if he was sitting somewhere familiar and not, say, on the back of a flying dragon.

Who could Drago hate that much, Ruffnut’s words echo in Astrid’s head, and she suddenly has her answer.

A dragon rider. A friend to dragons. Someone who fights for them and knows them as well, if not better, than Berk does.

Someone who, she thinks as she shifts on Stormfly’s back, is completely comfortable sleeping on the back of a flying dragon.

Someone who, she thinks as Stormfly angles down at Astrid’s behest, and the rest of the riders follow, and the guy blinks his eyes open and sits up again, looking more calm and in his element than Astrid has seen… well, ever, doesn’t even startle at waking up to find himself thousands of feet up in the air, speeding over open water.

Astrid’s thoughts are interrupted by a yell from the twins, and she looks to the side to see them pointing at a large enough seastack rising up beside a smallish island. Astrid nods at them in thanks, and doesn’t even need to point Stormfly in the right direction, her dragon picking up speed and flapping towards it on her own, invigorated by the visible promise of rest.

The ground speeds towards them, and the guy in front of her doesn’t startle or jerk as they land, but moves like Astrid and the rest of the riders do, again seemingly without a second thought, and Astrid’s belief that this is indeed an ally is reinforced.

And– Norns, this is– the thought is exhilarating. Another dragon rider, not from Berk? That means– it could mean, at least, that there are other islands where people and dragons live in harmony. And if there are, then that means allies– something that, now that their first attempt to take Drago down failed, they will definitely need.

Astrid is so lost in the thrill of the concept that she barely notices the guy in front of her slip off Stormfly– intentionally, this time– and to the ground, mere seconds after Stormfly has landed. Astrid watches him drop to his knees as his one leg doesn’t hold him, and she waits for Stormfly to crouch a little before dismounting as well, because her legs feel shaky and her hands feel shaky and her vision swims a bit, until she shakes her head to stabilize it.

By the time she’s dismounted, so have all the riders, and the guy they rescued– well, mutually– is leaning down, forehead almost touching the ground, fingers digging into the rocky dirt, pulling themselves through the sparse grass. His shoulders are shaking, and for a second Astrid thinks he’s crying, but then he lifts his head and his eyes hold pure, unadulterated relief.

“Here,” Astrid says, and hefts the axe she’d brought with her. “I can–” she motions at her face, and he seems to get what she means, because he sits up, inclining the side of his face to her in, Astrid thinks, an incredible show of trust. He only flinches a little when she brings the axe to his skin, crouching beside him, and wishes briefly that they had a knife as she works the blade awkwardly under the leather strap of the muzzle that goes around his head. She angles it, and it takes a few seconds, but finally it comes apart under the blade, and the guy jerks his head away from her as his hands scrabble at the rest of it, tearing it off his face and throwing it behind him, where it flies off the edge of the sea stack and down into the waves below.

Astrid sits back, watching him subtly as he opens his mouth, working his jaw, and breathes in deep through cracked, parted lips, and then again, and again. He bares his teeth, and stretches his mouth, and shakes his head, and Astrid allows herself a brief smile, sighing quietly, before she stands and turns to take stock of the rest of her team.

“Is everyone alright?” she asks, briefly glancing over the twins, Fishlegs, and Snotlout. The latter two are standing, the twins are splayed out face down on the ground, and their dragons are free on the grass behind them. Something in her chest loosens.

And then– “N-no,” Snotlout says, his voice wavering, and Astrid turns to him in confusion. He’s taken two steps forward, but as she turns to look he takes one back, and hovers. “No, no,” he says, and stays where he is, visibly thrumming with– Astrid doesn’t know. She’s never seen that expression on Snotlout’s face, the sheer panic, desperation, fear.

He’s looking at Drago’s ex-prisoner on the ground– who’s looking back at him, his face clearly pained, and not, Astrid thinks, because of his injuries. He doesn’t say anything, chest heaving, but he looks at Snotlout with wide, tense, desperate eyes– the same eyes, Astrid thinks, that he looked at them with the first time he saw them. He opens and closes his mouth a few times, swallowing, probably getting used to having the muzzle completely off.

“What the fuck,” Snotlout’s voice breaks, his face crumpling, “fucking Hel.”

“Snotlout,” Fishlegs speaks, taking a step towards the rider. He looks from Snotlout to the guy, back to Snotlout. His voice is gentle and confused, obviously trying to calm whatever crisis it is that Snotlout’s experiencing. “Snotlout, what…”

Snotlout breathes out, harsh. It almost sounds like a sob, but Astrid’s only ever heard him cry once, years and years ago, so she isn’t sure. Snotlout raises a shaking hand, points at the guy, like they all weren’t sure what it was he was having a crisis about.

They just don’t know why.

Snotlout answers that question almost immediately.

“That’s Hiccup,” Snotlout grates out, still pointing, sounding like the words are physically paining him as he practically coughs them up.

“No,” Astrid hears Tuffnut say, firm. Then, slightly less sure, “no,” and he looks to his sister, asking her, “our– our Hiccup?”, and then Astrid isn’t paying attention to anything else anymore because, because what the fuck–

Snotlout is still standing and staring. Fishlegs is gaping at– at not Hiccup. Astrid is–

“It’s not,” Astrid says, quietly, shaking her head. She doesn’t know who she’s saying it to. She turns, slowly, to look at him. Hurt, shaking slightly, thin, missing a leg.

Drago’s ex-prisoner.

Comfortable with dragons.

Six years older.

Who could Drago hate that much?

Hiccup.

“Thor–” she gasps, and stumbles to the side as her legs almost give out beneath her, but Stormfly is there to steady her. “Thor, no,” she breathes, because–

They don’t talk about Hiccup. Berk, that is. He went from Berk’s runt to Berk’s pride in the span of a few months, and then he disappeared. Stoick, frenzied, had searched for at least a year.

And then they had a funeral, and let him go.

And they didn’t talk about Hiccup.

But now they were, because, because–

The resemblance is there, now that she looks. Really there, and it’s no wonder Snotlout recognized him; being cousins, they’d spent more time together when they were kids, only really growing apart going into their teenage years. But– even Astrid can see it.

The eyes, the hair. The line of his nose and jaw, though it’s masked a little with dirt, blood, and indents where the muzzle had bit into his skin.

No, she thinks. No, no, oh, Gods.

“Hiccup?” she asks, startling herself, and he– Hiccup, drags his gaze away from Snotlout and onto her, and she feels that familiarity she’d felt in the cell again, and she knows–

Hiccup looks at them all. He opens his mouth. And he says, voice hoarse and broken and so strikingly familiar–

“We have to go back for my dragon.”