Astrid Hofferson x Male Reader

Chapter 9

Dragon Mountain

(A keel grinds against the shore line pebbles as a listing, battered ship is pushed into the still iceberg-filled lagoon)

Gobber: May the Valkyries welcome you, and lead you through Odin's great battlefield. May they sing your name with love and fury, so that we might hear it rise from the heights of Valhalla... and know that you've taken your rightful place at the table of kings.

(Bows and pitch-dipped arrows are gathered from the battlefield. Gobber hands two sets to Y/n and Hiccup, meeting their eyes with sympathetic glance)

Gobber: For a great man has fallen. Awarrior. A chieftain. A father. A friend.

(Hiccup and Y/n dip their arrowheads in a smoldering chunk of wreckage, igniting the pitch that coats the tips. They release their arrows, which sail through the air and land on the deck of the ship, where Stoick is laid out on a pyre, covered by a sail, his axe upon his chest. The others follow Y/n and Hiccup's lead. They draw back in unison and loose their arrows, filling the sky with crisscrossing, flaming streaks. They arc over the lagoon and set the ship alight. Y/n and Hiccup are fighting back emotion and losing the battle)

Y/n: I'm sorry, Dad.

(He eyes the engulfed ship)

Y/n: I'm not the chief that you wanted me to be. And we're not the peacekeepers I thought we were. I don't know...

(Valka watches them, her heart breaking. She steps forward)

Valka: Hiccup, you came early into this world. You were such a wee thing. So frail, so fragile. I feared you wouldn't make it.

(Hiccup lowers his eyes, but Valka lifts his chin)

Valka: But your father... he never doubted, neither of you. He always said you both would become the strongest of them all. And he was right. Y/n, you have the heart of a chief and the soul of a dragon. Only you two can bring our worlds together. That is who you are.

(Y/n and Hiccup meet her bolstering stare. Y/n turns to the ship and watches it in silence, silhouetted in its glow)

Y/n: I was so afraid of becoming my dad. Mostly because I thought I never could be like him. How do you become someone that great? That brave? That selfless...? I guess you can only try.

(Y/n takes a deep breath and turns around and looks at the others with a determined look)

Y/n: A chief protects his own. We're going back.

Tuffnut: Uh, with what?

Ruffnut: He took all the dragons.

(Y/n and Hiccup look at each other and smile)

Hiccup: Not all of them.

-----Time Skip-----

(Whoosh! Whoosh! Whoosh! Juveniles blur past, like flying raptors, zigzagging wildly. Riding bareback, Y/n, Hiccup & Co. hurtle through the narrow ice channels, created by massive splits in the iceberg shelves)

Ruffnut: Fly straight!

Fishlegs: I don't want to die!

Tuffnut: We can't fly these things!

Fishlegs: Yeah, no kidding!

(Fishlegs barrels into a snow bank, sending several chunks right into Eret's face as rides inverted and hollering)

Astrid: But won't that Bewilderbeast just take control of these guys, too?

Y/n: They're babies. They don't listen to anyone!