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The falling snow was slow and heavy, like a fluffy down that clung to everything in sight, ultimately turning New Berk’s lush forests into wonderlands of ice and feathery cold. The waterfalls had yet to freeze but Valka could feel the encroaching winter slicing through the air.
It would be their first winter on new land, their first winter with the dragons holed up in the Hidden World under the sea. Toothless had seemed to disagree with his brother's decision to let all dragons go, as there was too much blood and too much love spilled between the Vikings and their dragons for them all to abandon each other.
So they travelled, migrated, between spaces and it seemed winter was for the rookery.
Goodbye dragons, for now.
She shivered as she stepped into the night, a flurry of fluffy snow hitting her fire-warmed face. The hour was late and while his lover was content to slink to bed, Hiccup’s mother was far too interested in the whereabouts of her son.
Hiccup had disappeared into the snow hours ago when the sun still beat back the chill of the day, but now with the colder hours approaching, she was worried.
The stars and moon bore dim light into the island despite the heavy clouds, the sky breaking through as if by magic. She debated, then, taking a few moments to admire it, but a mother’s concern shook her by the shoulders until the impulse vanished and she took to wandering the mostly barren village.
The Longhouse's fire was still burning and she was tempted to look there first, but if she were chief trying to have a moment of peace, she surely wouldn't go to the one place made for hearing others complain.
Nearby then, Valka wagered, and after a few moments of searching, nearby Hiccup was found.
Up on the hillside over the Longhouse, watching his land like an overbearing dragon sat the chief himself. The woman tucked her furs around her tighter; the air was colder up high and while the three bottles nestled within mounds of snow seemed to explain how her son was weathering the freeze, she didn't have the luxury of a stiff drink before her adventure.
"You've been gone all day..." Her voice was soft as she approached, careful not to startle him.
"Mom." Hiccup didn't turn when she came to settle on the log beside him, but his word was greeting enough, not nearly as slurred as she expected which further proved her words.
"What are you doing out here, it's very cold, and late. Astrid already went to bed, I'm afraid." Valka glanced at the boy, the man, whose gaze had yet to break from surveying the village below.
His face gave nothing away, aside from the drunken flush on his cheeks, but his hands spun something between them that she couldn't quite see in the dim light.
He weighed her words, or it looked to be so, for a moment before revealing what rested in the warmth of his palm. Holding it up against the moonlight felt both grand and lacklustre—it was a Maces and Talons piece. She knew that much already, but which piece she couldn’t say.
"I'm here for this,” He said simply, as if that and the game piece explained it all. Maybe it would have to anyone else, but Valka could only watch her boy silently.
After another stretch of silence, he spoke again, thoughtfully examining the piece in the light, "I don't think I've ever told you..."
"You look sad, my son..." It was all she could think to say as she reached across the minor distance to tuck his furs around him more snugly, even though the older woman knew he wouldn't even notice while in such a state. No need for him to lose another limb, now.
"I am,” he replied. “Sad, I mean. I am sad. This all never should have happened." Now his words blurred, and the eerie stillness he once sat in was shattered by a mechanical swaying that listed him forward and back, forward and back...
"You mean New Berk?"
"I mean everything."
Valka had heard, loosely, from his friends how much Hiccup regretted the choices that led him to shoot down Toothless. How he blamed everything that had happened since on himself, and while Valka wished she could disagree, to do so would be a disservice to her son. Though, if one truly followed that line of thinking, everything was her fault not Hiccup's.
She shook her head, dislodging her blame as well as his own; being drunk certainly wasn't the time to be having such a discussion. Hiccup barreled past her silent disapproval, thumbing along the axe the game piece held.
"This is the 'Imposter', or the 'Traitor’—depends on who you ask,” Hiccup explained, keeping his eyes trained on the smooth wood between his fingers.
His gaze was a careful one, reverent even, and Valka watched him as he brought it closer to her, making it easier to see in the patchy light. It was a smooth grey, expertly carved, and with markings that weren't of the Hooligan Tribe yet were familiar in a strange way. A divot, as if it had been touched plenty, had formed along the tall helmet the Imposter wore. Hiccup's calloused thumb found the divot with ease.
"No matter what you call him or how you play, he always dies. That's the game, that's what happens. People die." His voice cracked somewhere along the way and Valka delicately reached for the game piece, her fingers intertwining around his when he was reluctant to hand it to her.
"I had one: a 'Traitor', once,” he continued solemnly. “I never told you, have I, about Viggo...?"
That was a name she hadn't been expecting to hear and Valka couldn't have halted her bewildered look if she tried.
Hiccup picked up on it effortlessly, even with the snow and the alcohol in his blood. He laughed, though it was an ugly little noise.
"Viggo Grimborn?" She questioned. As if there was another Viggo.
"You knew him?" It was his turn to be shocked.
"Knew of him..." She corrected. "I never had the displeasure of meeting the man."
"Yeah, it was definitely a displeasure." Hiccup's laugh came less harsh that time, floating away on the snowflakes that danced away from his mouth. "Until the end.” he added.
Valka let her hand drop from his, watching as his hand curled back into a fist around the Imposter, tucking it up against his ribs as if to shield it from the cold, or maybe it was just to stop himself from looking at it.
Remaining quiet, Valka watched her son as the words began to pour from him, telling her the entire tale. Their war, their barbs, all the losses and victories they both suffered and celebrated, and the ultimate climax of the story: Viggo's blazing death.
He was shaking by the time he finished recounting, shivering from a cold she reckoned he felt more inside than out.
"That was the first time I'd lost someone like that; the first person to die because of my mistakes..."
The soft hitch in his voice made something twist within her, and she couldn’t help but pull him close, letting him rest against her side, for once utterly thrilled that she was still bigger than he in many ways. His weight against her shoulder felt hesitant, careful.
"He died for you, not because of you." Her words were whispered into the crown of her boy's head as she rested her cheek upon it.
"He shouldn't have died at all, I didn't want that!" Hiccup spat the words as if just merely uttering them ate through his flesh. Agitated, he pulled from her embrace, his huffs turning to steam in the cold around them. "He died because he was an idiot." Immediately, he looked regretful saying it, but the anger persisted stronger. "He let foolishness and love get him killed, not me."
Now, that was a might strange of her son to declare, but grief did strange things. To see the boy still grieving a man four years dead, a man who was an enemy, and to say 'love' with such conviction...
"Did he love you?" She asked quietly, even though she didn't need to. Valka could all but feel Hiccup’s emotions as he retold his story, each one of his and Viggo’s interactions having been weighted with something more.
Hiccup needed this; someone to ask him. He needed to tell someone before it ate him alive.
"Of course he did, because he was… because he was the most brilliant man I've ever met."
"He loved you because he was brilliant?"
"He loved me because I'm brilliant,” the chief breathed out, shoulders shrugging weakly, like he couldn't fathom it. "He loved me and he died."
That was a familiar feeling, the mixture of agony and anger she could see swilling about in eyes so closely resembling her own. It must have looked identical on their faces. Wasn’t that just devastating?
Valka felt her heart twist, worry gnawing at her anew. "And did you...love him?"
"No,” He spat again, head shaking violently enough that he almost fell over.
"No," The boy repeated, quieter this time, until another thing tumbled free of his gnashed teeth. "Yes. Maybe. Yes....I-I think I did. I think I do. That's wrong isn't it?" ‘Devastating’ was the proper word once his conflict settled.
Without even having to think it over, Valka clicked her tongue and shook her head, fondness replacing her worry. Hiccup was young, still so young, and it wasn't too far-fetched that such a man might sweep his heart away. In any other situation, it wouldn't even be a debate, but with their opposing sides and the ways he described how they'd hurt each other, Hiccup's conflict made too much sense.
It was a mess, certainly. Heartbreaking, definitely—but was that not all matters of the heart? And to lose the one you have such emotions toward, never to get the closure or comfort you desire.
It wasn't enviable.
"Not wrong, love,” Valka sighed, sympathy tugging her lips into a frown. "Your heart is never wrong. You couldn't control where it fell or how."
Hiccup’s scoff was wet, the sound matching the water gathering in his eyelashes.
How long had he carried all this grief and guilt on his own?
"He was evil, he hurt Berk and my friends, he sold Dragons… and then Astrid… our relationship."
Ah, his woman. The real source, she reckoned, of most of his complicated defiance of his emotions. It could be damning to love one while tethered to another, especially so when the situation was rife with so much violence.
"Do you still love Astrid?” It was a careful question, but one that needed asking.
"What? Of-of course I do?"
She believed him, the alarm in his face was one too deep to be false, but there was a doubt in his eyes that she couldn't ignore.
"...is Viggo the reason you've been…hesitant in marrying her?"
It was as if her words pulled a cork on a pressurised ale, emotions and words burst out of him, animating him again.
"I keep expecting him to come back… you know, to me,” He explained. “I shouldn't but I do. He's dead, or maybe he's out there somewhere, holding up his end of the deal, staying away from us..."
"Do you think he'd have been able to stay away from you for so long, if he loved you like you say he did?"
"No." The word wasn't the heated denial it was earlier. Instead it felt pathetic and weak, like a beaten dog wheezing in the shadows as it took its last breath. "He would have found me, especially after Grimmel… he would have warned me first too, if he'd known..."
Valka shrugged then, raising her hand up to swipe away the barely-there tears from her boy's eyes, the weight of his pain settling in her as he shared it.
"You think I should accept that he's dead... I've tried,” He whispered, resigned. "But I need to think about him sometimes, talk about him, if he's dead and gone from me then I need to…” His voice trailed off weakly.
"You must grieve, my love. For your heart and his life, for all that was and will never be."
His sob shook his form, half laughter and half cry as tears finally spilled over his flushed cheeks, snow flocking to the hot salt water in an embrace. Crying, but nodding, he curled tighter around the hand still tucked against his ribs. "How?"
Like a deathknell, the question fell, and Valka felt her own eyes burn for her own grief and her son’s.
Had she not lost similarly? Surely she must know?
"I haven't the faintest,” The woman confessed, bringing their heads together cheek to forehead, uncaring as his tears soaked into her hair. "You take it, a little each day, and you cherish it. You accept grief. You accept love. They are the same, a mirror image of each other, so make sure you hold hands with both when you walk into your future. Never forget that he died for love, his love, a death he found most worthy. He is in the Halls of Valhalla, or in some world where love conquers all. He is here but far from you now, and you live in his heart. So as you walk with your love and your grief, allow him to live in yours, but leave him there and tend to your future knowing that love lives inside you until you see him once more."
Valka kissed his cheek, felt their tears mix somewhere near her chin, but she didn't mind. They were walking in grief and love together tonight, the ghosts of two men they loved sitting somewhere inside them.
Hiccup's sobs were far more violent than her own, silent but wrought with pain he was at last allowing himself to feel.
She wished she could say Hiccup's subtle comparison of his love for Viggo to the love she had for his father was shocking, but it wasn't. It was relieving, oddly enough, to know how deeply her boy felt for someone who had quite literally given his all for him.
Really, how else was Hiccup meant to feel...?
"Room will grow, things will change, but no one can ever change or take away what you felt for that man; what you still feel now. So cherish that whenever you need to."
"I'm sorry,” He muttered, nasally from tears, wiping a sleeve across his face blindly as he tried to compose himself. It had evidently been a long time since he'd allowed himself such an outburst. If there was ever a time for it though… it was now.
"I don't even know why I needed him tonight, maybe I just—He would have been so mad that I abandoned Berk and almost got myself killed." Now, his laugh was light. Not the ugly sound from before, more of a snort than anything else. It was now a melody, a soft twinkle that fell like the snow.
“I can hear him now: ‘Oh, my dear Hiccup, look at the mess you made. I warned you about your kindness!’”
"Oh, I'm sure your father would have some choice words for me as well. I'm sure they're both seething somewhere,” Valka added with a twitter of her own.
Her words made that laugh louder and she joined in. It was quite funny to imagine Stoick and Viggo raging uselessly in the afterlife at their loves’ mistakes, but there was comfort in it too. Thinking of their guidance, Hiccup’s grin told her that he felt the same, she believed.
"Perhaps we both could have used someone shouting 'no' when we got too..." Hiccup waved a hand, gesturing to nothing.
"Enthusiastic?"
"I would have said stupid, maybe.” He chuckled sheepishly.
"This all was quite foolish,” Valka conceded, shooting her son a look as she wiped both their faces on her fur cloak. Ignoring Hiccup's squawk of disapproval at the hair he caught in the mouth.
"Yeah, it really was. I'm just glad everyone survived… I need to get better at this, for everyone's sake."
"You have us to guide you." She pressed her palm to his chest, above his heart. "And you have him to support you."
Even tearstained and wilting under his sorrow, she'd never seen a smile more hopeful on his face.
They could do this, they would do this, for those they lost and those they haven't.