Chapter Text
“Happy Snoggletog!” Stoick’s voice reverberates through the Great Hall, and shouts of excitement go up all around.
“Happy Snoggletog,” Hiccup says, his emerald eyes glistening. He flicks his hand up, and with a matching smirk, Valimara high-fives him, their fingers intertwining and swinging between the duo, Toothless chortling happily. Valka’s hands touch their shoulders, holding them close as she smiles, too, the levity going up all around, even if Snoggletog is crazy and wild for Vikings.
The one longest night of the year, after which the warmth slowly starts to seep back into the world, but mostly, the longest night – Val’s favorite time of the year.
Even if people have to carefully keep relighting torches on every corner of the village, even if some idiots literally carry torches strapped to their helmets. Snotlout did it last year and set his own hair on fire. The level of screaming was awesome.
“Mom, I wanna do the torch thing,” Val says, tilting her head back to look upside-down at her mother’s smiling face.
Valka laughs in response, patting her cheek, fingers gentle on her jaw. “I know you do, sweetheart, but maybe wait for another year? You could burn your hair.”
“I don’t wanna burn my hair. But I will get to do that sometime, I swearrrr.”
Valka’s laugh is high and free. “I’m sure you will.”
And then they’re being washed away with the chaos, sprinting out into the snow-covered streets and Val is laughing, grabbing her brother’s hand and pulling him off. “I’ve got the perfect idea,” she says chipperly, “Let’s build a snow-dragon, right off Toothless, and to size, too!”
Hiccup laughs, wild and free. “Sure. But that’s a lot of snow, and we need a really big area.”
“C’mon. I’ve got an idea.”
“I think you’re making his legs too big,” Hiccup is complaining a few minutes later as the duo paw at the snow.
“How else do we make his head not fall off?”
Toothless chortles deeply.
“His head’s not gonna fall off!” Hiccup protests with a giggle. “See, we’ll just build him sitting, like this…”
Toothless snickers and swipes up a large ball of snow of his own, front paws stroking across the thing into some sort of… three-legged monster? Oh wait, he’s still working.
Val turns back to the Toothless design and shapes out one of his sides. “I want to do his tail!”
“Sure,” Hiccup chirps, “I’m doing his face. Whoa, Night Fury ears are really hard to carve into snow. You hear that, bud?”
Toothless looks back and snickers. He tries to make hair into the snowman he’s making by patting it on the head with his entire paw, and the whole head crumbles off, leaving him blinking in confusion.
Hiccup breaks into light laughter. “Hey, let me help out Toothless here,” he decides and stands up.
Valimara laughs and takes back to patting out her side of Toothless. It’s too soft to get the scale look properly, but she might even try that out when the general sculpting is done. She works out most of the body, digs a lot of show out with a shovel, and even Toothless pitches in to help, digging his claws down into the ground alongside the area Hiccup and Val point him too, until they have a partly dug in and partly stacked enough area that the Snow-Toothless is perfectly sized.
Hiccup had to shape him with his head on his paws after a few tries otherwise, or his head will, actually, fall right off, and that would be vastly disturbing.
She shapes out the back of his tail, and sits back.
“Done!”
“Uh, Toothless has both sides of a taal?”
Val shrugs. “Sure. He should have ‘em, right?”
“Sure. But if he did, he wouldn’t be with us, right?” Her brother scratches under the dragon’s chin, making him coo softly and blissfully, eyes sliding shut.
The lights are starting to go up around Berk. Valimara picks herself up, circling back to see Toothelss’s attempted and very real snow carving of his siblings.
And – “Whoa,” she breathes, breathless and wide-eyed with awe and instant adoration. “Toothless, your drawing skills are great!”
Her dragon brother coos happily, licking her face and igniting another bout of laughter.
“Tooth, nooo! I’m just stuck in my greatest clothes and –” Val gives up, still snickering, and just lets him lick. “Ohhh, fine. Guess there’s no better way of celebrating your favorite holiday than being covered with your brother’s drool, huh?”
“Okay, eew.” Hiccup shudders, but he’s grinning, and Toothless jumps around to slobber him too, tail swinging close enough he nearly hits the snow sculptures they just so intricately finished building up.
When she gets back up, smearing the worst of the Toothless drool from her face, the figures stand in front of them. her and Hiccup sitting at his side. Hiccup’s got an arm over her, and he’s missing half his fingers in the shape of a giant flap, but she appreciates the efforts. For a Night Fury with humungous claws, shaping’s pretty difficult to do.
Snow-Hiccup’s vest hangs weirdly in front of him in a way that makes him look twice the width, but hey, it’s keeping him upright.
“I’m not that fat,” Hiccup says.
Toothless shrugs.
“Whoaa, I wish I had that much hair,” Val whines, stretching. “I actually wish I could be this statue, all cold and squishy.”
“I kinda like you better the way you are,” Hiccup tells her, head tilted her way, “But, whoa, Toothless, this is cool. You did this amazing.”
The dragon coos back, bumping his snout into his human-brother’s head.
“Hey, wait!” Hiccup squints. “Where’s my left leg?”
Toothless, grinning ear to ear, shrugs.
Hiccup huffs. “Oh, never mind, I’m sure I could do without it, anyway.”
Valimara stretches, cracking her knuckles. “You guys don’t mind, I’m gonna do a pointless sketch of this. I am absolutely going to scribble this down, forever and for allll time!”
And there they stand in front of the make-shift snow-family, giggling as the lanterns start lighting up to span the darkest of Berk’s nights, flickering flames spiderwebbing their way across the village and the familiar yell of Viking cheers start to fill the air.
Party time.
But reality is something new.
“I don’t know how to get back up. I don’t know how to –” Her yell of gutted frustration trails off unsaid, unheard to the world. Live without you, her mind whispers as her heart breaks. Words are nothing more than pained echoes that will never be felt or responded or silenced.
Valimara buries his face in her pillows again. Alone.
Snoggletog. One of the times that’s all which keeps Berk together with the knowledge that they’re a tribe, and everyone has families, and in the end, are one. One family. One system, that relies and depends and lives on each other.
But none of it matters today, not as the candle burns next to her, the only light in their house, because… Hicctooth are gone.
Toothless says he loves you, too.
“What if he flies away and never thinks about me again?”
Words that don’t quite say the feel in her heart, the emptiness inside – the question she should have asked that day was, what if you both fly away and never think about me again.
Her fist pounds the bedding, but quilts do nothing to give pain, just absorbing and absorbing, and it’s just her screaming into oblivion in the emptiness of a house that was once so full of life and love. It’s always been hard, but. But today, Hiccup and Toothless left. They flew away. They left.
The one day they should’ve been together, the one night that’s all love and family in every Viking tribe, is the night where she has nothing. The night that she spends alone.
Hiccup and Toothless have been here since she was born. How can they just leave?
They promised they would do everything with her forever. They promised.
“We’re all with each other – forever.”
“How could they leave me, what did I do? Why did you lie?”
Valimara knew something was wrong. She should’ve pressed, should’ve tried harder to make her brother let her help, both of her brothers, and she at least should’ve had a warning that their last hug would be their last, could’ve ingrained it into her head to forever memory so it’s something that never fades or drifts away, should have – but Hiccup ran away and – and she has no idea what to do.
Who is she, without her brothers? Without her family, without love, when it’s Val standing alone against the world?
It’s freedom or death – no, it’s Hiccup’s happy in a life without her, or she’s happy in a life with him.
That bitterness and rage burn fiercer than any fire. The pain that guts through her chest, sinking deeper than any blade and will never heal.
She loved them. Really. She did. And somewhere beneath the layers and layers of smothering hurt, she knows she still does. Somewhere. Somehow. Love is a flame that never dies.
But it’s something that can be twisted, it’s still something that can burn.
She lifts her head, through a tear-streaked face sees the sketch she made of their snow-selves, even if half the ink was washed away by the snow that fell and smeared it. She can still see the outline, half of Toothless’s smirk, half of her brother’s face.
Outlines.
And smothers a sob by biting her hand.
She’s tired of crying, but the tears don’t quit falling.
Valimara pushes that aside, flipping her once drenched and now badly sticking and torn notebook to the side, sitting up, and her eyes land on the last note she has of her brothers, and sags again.
That’s it, she can never get out of bed, not without seeing that, the words she nearly ingrained into her memory with unerasable ink.
Val’s fingers curl over the pages’ corner, she could skim and re-skim and repeat it with her eyes shut, and ignites a flurry of renewed and refelt fury.
Valimara crumples the thing in a fit of endless rage.
She wants to burn it. To tear the thing to shreds just to vent her rage, but it’s the last she has of Hiccup, and when it’s gone, she’ll have no note of his love, pretending it was even real, pretending that it’s even possible to exist without the two creatures who made Valimara who she is.
Who gave her strength to keep fighting? What is she even fighting for? How does she know right from wrong without her brothers to guide her there?
“You’re probably better off without me.”
Yeah. Sure. Way to make her not his problem anymore.
She throws the paper before the candle looks too tempting, buries herself in her pillows again and sobs.
Toothless says he loves you, too.
Her breathing hitches endlessly and she grits her teeth, looking away from the empty beds across the room where two muttonheads should be and never will.
Toothless –
No.
Was she that awful, that they just had to leave?! That tiring?
She tries to stop thinking. But even with a blank mind and the feel of her pillow’s fabric on her face, she thinks of her brothers, can still feel the empty hole in her heart.
Val dozes, jumping awake when the door bangs downstairs. Yeah, and Stoick’ll be made she missed out on her spot in the hall. Add exhaustion to exhaustion.
“Let me talk to her.” She hears her mother’s voice, soft enough just like her brother, and she grits her teeth again. That love isn’t real.
Maybe love just isn’t real. Maybe she’s the only one in the world that feels it and she wishes she didn’t.
Valka climbs the stairs. She hears her mother’s approaching footsteps, light and gentle, and with Val thrown halfway across her bed, it’s obvious she’s awake.
Valka sits beside her, a soft hand rubbing her back. “Do you want something to eat?”
Valimara stares blankly ahead of herself despite her mother’s legitimate question, one eye opening to see her dress. “No.” She’s exhausted. Like whatever shoved into her chest and tore her heart out all messy and bloody ripped her will to move, too.
“Val, it’s been days.”
“No,” she answers, and the age-old fire burns right back up. But it’s Snoggletog, the day where family is together and happy.
“Val.”
She says it the way Hiccup did, when she’s being exhausting and stupid and needs to give up a fight she knows she’s losing and is too stubborn too. There’s a clank, and her mother’s hand doesn’t move.
Valimara grits her teeth in frustration, tears re-filling her already burning eyes. They hurt. Crying hurts. Her face feels half raw. It’s been days – she’s been crying for days? Pretty much. And why does Valka have to say her name like it solve something? It doesn’t solve anything. “You should’ve stopped them,” she accuses.
Valka’s sigh is as tired and broken as Val’s own, because her mother just lost both her sons in one day, she’s hurt and Valimara isn’t the only one in the family who’s hurt. “If Toothless had stayed, he would’ve been hurt. Hiccup was just trying to protect him.”
Logic. Reasoning, because Valka’s accepted her sons are out in the wild unknown. “They could have told me! We could’ve figured something out,” Her voice cracks off, broken and raw. “I wouldn’t be alone. They didn’t have to ditch me!”
Her mother’s fingers comb through her hair at a failed effort to calm when she cries again. “Come down. For me?” Valka asks softly, “You don’t even have to eat, but the holiday is hard for your father and I, too.”
She knows.
And her parents are all she has left in the world.
And she’s all they have left.
Valimara sits up, and tiredly lets herself be drawn against her mother’s chest, soaking in the little warmth she gets and knows it’ll be gone soon, too.
“Come,” Valka coaxes gently, and when she looks, her mother’s face has the same wet tear trails as her own.
Valimara gets up, for them if nothing else.
Looking over at Hiccup’s side of the room just isn’t something they do anymore, too well-practiced at ignoring and trying to pretend it’s not there, that it’s not empty anymore. It’s something she’ll have to practice never to look at, not to look beyond the floor every time she’s in the room that’s now entirely her own.
The fire is going. Stoick is setting the thing, because Toothless’s shadowy form is standing in the firelight, already having lit the fire and now basking in it with glee.
The house is haunting. Shadows are everywhere, Toothless stood there a month ago and licked her, Hiccup always sat at that spot of the table, that was her swing-chair when she was bored and she was playing with Toothless. Valimara doesn’t think she could be the only one who’s breaking. Her brother’s left. Just, up and walked out.
Her parents sit side-by-side at the table, but she sits alone, and someone nearly set out a fourth bowl that she would’ve gladly taken if Hiccup weren’t eating on any other day. Now, she leans against her left hand and stirs boredly with her right, watching the little ripples in her bowl, something she’d normally eat with glee.
Snoggletog has never been more miserable.
Even the days her and Hiccup were hiding out from the rest of Berk, even the days Stoick was angry at someone or in a bad mood, even the days her mother disappeared for hours into the woods without a word – it was nothing like this.
Because for all that they fought, the Haddock family was still a family.
They still had each other.
Hicctooth could be dead, even if Valka did something to find them. Even if Stoick did – if anyone did.
She’s got a good excuse to sleep in long, but staying in her room is gonna be really, really boring and she’d go over to the forge to work some of her rage off, but she can’t do that either when Snoggletog is running. The sooner this night of nightmares is over, the better for the whole world – okay, really just for her. But still, better.
“Well,” her father says, finally catching onto all the quiet, motionless faces. “It’s gift time!”
“Guess I know where Hiccy got his faking,” she whispers to her mom as Stoick gets up from the table and heads to the back of the house.
Valka smiles back and shrugs.
But, honest, Stoick’s fake cheer is so bad, like all of them don’t have obviously tearstained faces. Even him. And Valimara cannot count a single time she’s seen Stoick the Vast resort to tears. Real Vikings don’t cry, but Stoick cares about his kids enough to not care about that, apparently. A month ago, she wouldn’t have believed it. Right now, she thinks she sees a side of her father that never existed.
Stoick returns with a helmet, duplicate of his own, just smaller and with significantly more reasonably sized horns for a human head. “This was meant to be Hiccup’s,” he says, voice shaking a little at the edges as he extends the glistening object. “But I guess he won’t be needing it.”
Hiccup’s.
If he’d stayed, her brother would’ve become a true Viking. Just like she told him.
She saw him with the helmet. The one he never really wore. Just once, when he went to stand in front of Berk and try to show them the truth and failed.
This is what Hiccup wanted him to do. Treat her like him. Pretend she can fill his place. A nightmare she should’ve seen but will never wake from. “It should be his.”
“I know, Val.”
She doesn’t want it. But it’s her dad’s gift to her, and he’s hurting too. He’s worried about Berk, no doubt, because even Stoick the Vast must know that Hiccup would make a better chief anywhere than the chaos fire that is Valimara Haddock. But she’s his only child now, and she has to take the role and he’ll try to prepare her for it, because he cares about Berk more than anything in the world.
Even her.
If it’s what he needs, some sort of stability and certainty, Val needs that too, so she understands, and with shaking hands, she takes the helmet from her father. “It matches yours,” she murmurs, turning it over, fingers tracing the horns. The rungs and grooves, all the same. Gobber’s handiwork, but my, it must’ve been detailed. The craftsmanship wasn’t rushed, and the designs are spot-on perfect.
Basically, wow.
“It was meant to be worn by the future Chief,” he answers tiredly, “I always thought it would be Hiccup. But you, my daughter, don’t disappoint. We never could’ve taken out the Red Death if it weren’t for you.”
Val cradles the thing in her hands by its horns. A heavy weight, a bit big, but she’ll grow into it. She always thought, when she got her own helmet, it’d be gold or something crazy, and different and maybe… right alongside Hiccy.
Hiccy, who’s gone.
Valimara inhales a deep, shuddering breath. Another question burns in her mind, something she’s almost terrified to ask, but it’s a question she has to know, something that still means the world for all it shouldn’t matter. “What would you have done?” she asks, “If they hadn’t left? About Toothless, keep him grounded?”
“Aye.” Stoick sighs. “To tell you the truth, I don’t know. I may have. But I saw their joy in flying, and forbidding it is the hardest thing I’ve ever done.”
She looks away, nodding, understanding, because she had felt the same. She and Stoick fight a lot, sure, both with fiery tempers, but after tonight, she can never doubt his love for her. And she takes after him. Too much.
“Everyone keeps expecting me to be Hiccup,” she murmurs, firelight glinting and dancing off the helm’s curves, “Like he’s gone, so I’m just – supposed to fill his place. But I can’t. I can be his shadow, but I can’t be him. The last thing he told me was to figure out who I was, but I don’t even know what that means.”
Stoick’s arms wrap around her, and it’s not abnormal exactly that they hug, but it feels abnormal that it’s real and sincere and Valimara latches onto him as desperately as she can, pretending the last many arguments they’ve had since never happened. He is her dad, and he does love her and Hiccup and Toothless both, even if things are so, so complicated.
He can’t put them first. Hiccup put Toothless first, Stoick puts Berk first. Valka put Hiccup first.
No one has put Val first in her life.
That’s okay, though. She’s a fighter. And fighting for her brothers is what’s made her who she is, except… her brothers aren’t here.
No one is.
And she doesn’t know how to fight without them. How to live or love or breathe.
“And this makes what I got for you a little less special,” Stoick says, turning back to the table to lift another little object.
A knife.
Val-style, fancy and jeweled. She oohs with glee and takes the blade, the first hint of joy and excitement bubbling over constant depression. Knives are amazing. “Wow. Oh, I gotta thank Gobber for this. Thanks, dad. This is glorious!”
It is, really. It’s the first time she’s smiled in a month.
And then realizes actually, she hasn’t made gifts for anybody. “Uh. I – I should get. Something. Too. I kind of just forgot. So. Late Snoggletog gifts for everybody?”
“Take your time,” her mother promises with a gentle shoulder squeeze, “It’s been a lot for all of us.”
Turns out, Valka got her… some notebook stuff. Very Hiccupy.
She didn’t get new clothes. Or anything new for Val that wasn’t Hiccup’s first. It’s almost ridiculous how relieved she is, that she can cling to the last of what was once Hiccup’s for just a little longer. Her mom knew that. Of course, she did. Her parents really are the only things that make her continual existence semi-bearable.
Valimara’s gone upstairs to get her new things settled when she sees the last year drawing of Snoggletog, wonders if she should’ve been in the Great Hall with her parents, and sighs. Nope. Should’ve, but she takes after Hiccup, yeah?
Like brother, like sister.
Someone yells, but the yelling rolls with the wild Viking party cheers as Snoggletog carries to its glee, and Hiccup yells “watch out!” abruptly, tackling her aside.
Iron whirls, and snow crunches, Something cold dumps over her coat, drawing yelps. Valimara gets up, shaking herself and grumpy. Behind her, the snow sculpture of her family is in shambles. An axe handle sticks up from the center, imbedded in the ground.
Astrid comes forward trapping through the snows, blonde hair swinging, grabbing her weapon by the handle.
“You threw your axe at us?” Hiccup asks, voice hitching. Toothless snarls, baring his teeth and stepping in front of them both.
“What is wrong with you?!” Valimara yells at her furiously.
“Someone should’ve axed your pet up a long time ago,” Astrid says, spinning her axe and dusting the snow off, like snow from a dragon-sculpture is too gross for her to carry. “All a dragon’s gonna do is take everything you love.”
She walks away.
“Don’t you dare talk about Toothless like that!” Valimara yells, jumping to her feet, “I love Toothless! He wouldn’t take himself anywhere.”
Val looks across the room to Toothless’s empty bed and squeezes her eyes shut.
“All a dragon’s gonna do is take everything you love.”
He did.
The sun rises, and Val stays in her room.