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A good mother, Valka thought to herself, would never feel so resentful towards her child.
But in the quiet moments, in between the chaos of sheltering an entire village’s worth of displaced Vikings and finding space for an entire flock of new dragons and tending to the numerous wounded, Valka found that she couldn’t help herself. To their credit, Hiccup and Astrid did their best not to show their affection so plainly in front of the still-hurting, still-mourning Berk, Valka included, but there was inevitably the occasional peck on the cheek or tucking back of the hair. And Valka, for all that she tried, could not stop the bitter vice from winching a notch tighter in her chest each time she saw it.
She reprimanded herself daily that there was no sense in her bitterness. Her son had someone who loved him as fiercely as he loved her - what was there to mope about? She saw their partnership and cherished it too, the way they took each other’s best qualities and amplified them, shining brighter into the world.
And for that partner of her son’s to be Astrid! What more could a parent wish for? Strong but loving, warm but determined, unafraid to stand up to Hiccup or to lift him up. If anything, Valka thought, she should be over the moon with joy to return after twenty years and find that her son had somehow done what she could not for the isle of Berk and found companionship in not only a dragon but such a striking, wonderful woman.
But every time she saw the youth in their eyes as they convened, voices low and heads bowed in seriousness while they discussed the progress in repairing the village, every time she watched their hair brush as they leaned towards each other in talking, every time she glimpsed the squeeze of their hands as they pulled away to oversee their individual roles in the rebuilding of Berk, Valka could only do so much to keep the envy and grief from rising to the surface. She thought of the same way she used to lean in, feigning privacy but really just wanting an excuse to be nearer to the warmth of that broad chest. How that tall frame always sloped above her, never looming, but just enough to shelter her. How those broad palms were always the first to push her, guide her forward when she faltered or was uncertain; how those eyes never strayed from her face whenever she spoke.
She had spent so, so many desperate, amazing years on her own, beyond the reach of humanity. She had worked so hard to banish all thought of Stoick and the tiniest Hiccup as far from her mind as possible - they existed in a world she could not take part in, and she thought she had made her peace with it.
But when the Night Fury first cast its unmistakable shadow over her little patch of the sky, bringing her boy back through a door she had long thought shut, locked, barricaded, she could barely remember the touch of the man she had buried beneath even her wildest wishes and fears. Not until Hiccup, her boy-turned-young man, had inadvertently drawn Stoick right to her had she even entertained the idea of ever seeing her beloved again. And Stoick, being Stoick, dispelled in eleven words twenty years’ worth of guilt and excuses and despair. Could she blame herself for allowing the briefest flittering of hope? That Stoick before her in that moment was still the same, and yet also wholly new. Perhaps, she had thought for those few blissful hours, that the long and difficult path she had set down upon so very long ago was finally arcing towards a home she had nearly forgotten she dreamt of. Just one afternoon to see his face, aged by the duties of chiefdom and yet still twinkling and young in his eyes - and then that future was snatched from her too.
How could she justify all the years she had chosen to spend away, if she had known that they could have enjoyed such bliss all along? But how could she ever wish away the time she had spent with Cloudjumper, the late Bewilderbeast…all that she had learned?
Her regrets bled into grief, and then precipitated right back into regret again.
But in spite of this hardship, Valka was, at heart, a Viking. And she, like her son, had her duties to attend to, and a new life - or rather, the old one turned new - to sort out. The villagers were wary of her, and she couldn’t entirely blame them for it. They were perhaps now accustomed to living with dragons, but not a ghost; two decades was a long time to be dead, transformed into little more than memory or myth. She had old friends to re-befriend, injured dragons to care for, and the construction of new stables to consult on. There was little time to even think of - much less ruminate upon - the raw soreness in her chest or the deep ache sunken into her very spine. Valka was no stranger to having the lives of so many others in her care - a once-chieftess, mother, and lone guardian of the Bewilderbeast’s sanctuary. Her focus was on the pain suffered by her tribe, be it human or dragon, and so it was easy to tuck away her own sufferings.
It was only at night, lying alone in the guest accommodations of the place she called home twenty years prior, that Valka dreamt of past and imagined future, all rolled together in a thread of fate that ran parallel to the world she lived. Stoick, alive and well, beside her in this new Berk. Stoick, just a teenager himself, nervously asking her father for permission to court her. Stoick, presiding over Hiccup’s official inauguration. Stoick, a mixture of pride and concern etched deep into his young face after her difficult, early labor, cradling frail little Hiccup so gently in his enormous arms. She awoke every morning before dawn, before even Hiccup, and sometimes could not help but crawl into the bed she could not stand to lie in at night, if only to wrap herself in the furs of her old marriage bed and breathe in the ever-fading scent of a husband wrongfully taken from her twice.
With all the bustle and surrounded by effectively strangers, Valka thought only Cloudjumper had noticed her anguish. Hiccup was now a fledgling Chief, and one juggling his own grief alongside his vision for the village, too. He needed her to lean on, as she needed him, but he was barely getting enough sleep as is. And though sometimes, late at night, they sat together around the old hearth, weathering together the massive absence in the room, she could never expect or ask him to grasp the quiet storm within her.
So she was completely blindsided when one wet afternoon, all construction paused due to the thunder, she heard footsteps in the grass behind her as she stood on a bluff overlooking the turbulent sea. She had thought herself the only person who knew of this little nook under a rocky ledge high above Berk, but perhaps not.
Cloudjumper turned first, broadcasting a greeting that was returned by the characteristic squawk of a Nadder. Valka knew in an instant which Nadder it was, but before she could draw herself up, smooth her exhausted face over with her motherly expression, a quiet voice interrupted her.
“Several years back, when Stoick ran off to try and raid the nest, Hiccup took on a Red Death by himself - just him and Toothless.”
Eyes still cast out to the horizon, Valka nodded absently. Hiccup had told her of how he had finally changed Stoick’s mind. He had not told her of all the details - probably afraid to worry her - but she knew he had lost his leg in that battle.
“When the fireball cleared and we went searching for the two of them amidst the wreckage and haze, I couldn’t hear anything but the pounding of my own blood in my ears. And when we came upon Toothless lying there, weak and barely conscious, saddle empty, I couldn’t hear anything at all - there was only this terrible weight, suddenly drowning me where I stood. I couldn’t move, couldn’t breathe.”
Slim fingers lightly grasped Valka’s. “Hiccup and I…at that time, we had only ever had one day truly alone together - the day that I found out about Toothless, and the first time I flew. And yet, standing there, looking at the spot on Toothless’ back where I knew he should have been, I was already destroyed by the idea of living without him. Because in that moment, I already knew - Hiccup was it for me. He was to be the one flying beside me for the rest of my life.”
Valka looked down at the grip holding her, not trusting herself to speak, but could feel the sorrow welling in her eyes, blurring the young hands taking hers.
Astrid drew Valka’s hands towards her, searching for her eyes as Valka turned to face her. “I have never forgotten how that one moment felt,” Astrid said softly. “And Stoick…Stoick you lost not once, but twice.”
Lost, found, and then immediately lost again, Valka thought to herself. Or did she say it out loud? Either way, Astrid seemed to hear it, because she shifted forward, and then Valka was wrapped in the younger, shorter woman’s embrace, tears coming fast and without hesitation.
Berk had survived seven generations of torrential floods, bitter blizzards, and pelting hail. It had survived raids by humans and dragons alike. It had even withstood a relocation with Grimmel himself breathing down their backs. But Valka could never remember a time when Berk had to endure such silence.
Even in her memory, long before the dragons came to Berk, it had been busy enough with just its human (and ovine) residents, loud with the throaty yells of the Vikings and clambering noise of village life. There was always someone laughing, another two brawling, and at least three sheep bleating. And after six years of life with the dragons - one of which Valka herself experienced - the constant whooshing wing beats, fish-crunching teeth, and talons scraping along rooftops were like the heartbeat of Berk itself.
Now that dragons were gone, there was nothing to fill the space but the howl of the wind.
The morning after the Great Farewell, as the villagers had come to call it, Valka woke up truly alone for the first time in twenty years. From the moment he had carried her off into the night, Cloudjumper had been the one constant throughout the triumphs and losses. He had sheltered her, taught her, stood by her, and together they had faced Dragon Hunters, Drago, Grimmel - the joy and sorrow of reuniting and then losing once again her beloved Stoick. She reached out, only half awake, searching for Cloudjumper’s folded forewing with her hands as she had every dawn for innumerable days, and closed her fingers around only the air.
She had dedicated half her life to the dragons, and especially Cloudjumper. The Valka of Old Berk had been replaced by the Valka of the Bewilderbeast’s domain, and only so recently had she begun to contemplate the prospect of being able to be both together.
Now, she was neither.
Of course, she was not the only person feeling the depth of the loss. Valka saw it in the faces of the villagers walking by with their necks craned, eyes still searching skywards. She saw it in the heavy sighs of those building new homes as they climbed ladders for the first time in six years. Most of all, she saw it in the eyes of the children, some of whom had never known this strange world devoid of their family’s cherished reptilian member (or members).
Valka saw it in the way Hiccup now looked at his left leg, as though it were incomplete without the attachment linking it to Toothless’ prosthetic tail fluke. He would look down and frown, a gesture most attributed to the young Chief being deep in thought as he pondered the solution for some new problem whilst staring at the ground. But Valka knew better. Hiccup looked not at the earth but at where metal should have met metal and where a black paw should have rested next to him. He looked for the partner who had helped forge him into chiefdom, but who was no longer there to see him through it.
But regardless, there were moments of levity, and milestones to celebrate. A new Great Hall was finally constructed. The first shearing on the soil of New Berk came and went. And of course, Valka’s once tiny, helpless son married the fiercest Viking upon the mortal earth.
Valka may no longer have been either chieftess or lone guardian of the dragons, but at last, she could be the one thing she had never been afforded before - Hiccup’s mother. She clung to this new version of herself as frost clung to Berk’s shores, anchoring herself to this difficult new reality the village faced together. And so standing by a weeping Gobber, Valka watched as Hiccup took Astrid’s hands.
There was no longer the bite of envy in her heart, as her own loss had aged and faded. There was only a moment of wistfulness as she looked up at the half-completed statue of Stoick, pleading with Odin to let it be that he, too, was bearing witness to this from Valhalla.
And as the new Chief and Chieftess of Berk leaned upon each other to navigate this strange new dragon-less world, Valka thought that for the first time in so long, she was home.
The second series of long years without Stoick by her side were harder than the first, Valka thought.
The first set she had endured partly by throwing herself into her work, and partly because she had believed that she and Stoick could not be. They were too different, and she caused too much friction and tension in the village and in her home. She was the odd one, the stranger, and so it was best for everyone, Stoick included, if she were simply gone.
But this second stretch was more painful to bear because the one afternoon of punctuation between it and the preceding twenty years had proven her wrong. She and Stoick, even decades later, were still a team, and yet they had both grown immensely. There was a life they could forge again. And so each time she saw a birthday come and go, Hiccup sprout another inch or grow a new patch of beard, she wished for Stoick to see it so intensely that her whole body ached.
Astrid’s first pregnancy, at least, gave her something to do. Astrid’s mother was on hand to help as well, but apparently, the legendary prowess of Valka’s healing hands was still well known despite her long absence from the village. Gothi was unparalleled in most such matters, but from the time she was barely of child-bearing age herself, Valka had delivered the majority of Berk’s babies. Valka, then, could throw herself into preparations for the new arrival, as much as it pained her to think of how elated Stoick would have been to hold his first grandchild.
Zephyr took after her grandfather - fiery hair, hot-tempered, and those telltale Haddock green eyes, open already when she laid the ferocious newborn in an exhausted Astrid’s arms, Hiccup practically draped over her in his concern. The baby nursed exceptionally well and grew fast, although she fussed in the night. Hiccup, of course, insisted on tending to every nighttime cry he heard, but Valka finally convinced him after several weeks that he would be unable to fulfill his duties as Chief if he didn’t get some sleep. Astrid, exhausted, needed the rest as well, seeing as she kept up with her Chieftess duties, especially when Hiccup was away on diplomatic matters.
But Valka cherished those groggy hours of the morning with her little granddaughter. She slept when Zephyr slept, and woke when she woke. Let Hiccup and Astrid sleep, she thought - those quiet dark hours during which Valka sat up alone with Zephyr, rocking in the chair Stoick had built her as a wedding gift, were as cold spring water flowing over a dragonfire burn.
There was no sound in this mortal world sweeter than her little breeze’s giggle, and for the first time in a long, long time, Valka felt whole. And chasing after the rambunctious girl as she toddled off to get into trouble who-knows-how, Valka thought she could hear Stoick laughing heartily from Valhalla in tandem.