Disclaimer: I own none of the characters, ideas, etc., of HTTYD in any medium.
Summary: Pre-films. Valka's babe, just a little hiccup, came early. How can she love a child she is sure she'll lose?

This story was originally published June 24, on AO3. Please be forewarned that this story does contain references to some of the nastier aspects and possibilities of pregnancy and childbirth, as well as some bodily functions.

The Fourth Morning

She drifted through the pain, from sleep to a fleeting consciousness then down again into silence. Stoick held her hand between his own, palm rough beneath her fingers, the other palm as rough against the back of her hand. His fingers framed her wrist. He'd his head tucked, so that he might watch her chest as she breathed. The sunlight came weakly in through the window at his back, and it lit his bared hair like fire. The corners of his mouth were weighted, pitched downward; the lines of his face followed. Gently he stroked her wrist.

One by one Valka curled her fingers. He was still a moment and then Stoick snapped upright. He breathed out explosively.

"Val," he said. "My Val. Oh, you've had me worried—"

He cupped her cheek in one hand. As he rose, his great shoulder blocked the window, and he leaned down to press his brow to her brow.

"I haven't died, have I?" she asked, faintly.

Stoick laughed: a deep rumble that echoed in her bones. He kissed her cheek, the one he did not cradle, and his beard scratched at her.

"No," he said, "though—"

Valka reached for him. Her knuckles struck his shoulder; she grasped for his arm. She tried the once to sit up, but the raw and ripped burning between her legs stopped her. An emptiness of thought washed over her. She froze there, holding onto Stoick tightly, and when it had passed she gave up the inch she'd taken, rising from the pillow. Stoick slung his arm about her shoulders, to ease her down again; to hold her. Her nails had broken the skin of his upper arm.

"You bled badly," Stoick said, in his low way. "The healer put stitches in, to stop it. You tore, there." His thumb brushed over her cheekbone, tracing the ridge as it encircled her eye.

She swallowed. Her tongue stuck in her dry mouth. The thickness of her heart hurt her. Valka looked down the length of her body, down the thick furs laid over her, to the elaborately carved foot-board of their marriage bed.

She said, "And the baby?"

Stoick brushed her cheek again; he touched his brow to hers again; he kissed her eyebrow. So, she thought; and her heart was so thick she could not breathe.

"Alive," Stoick said, gruff.

Valka's lips parted. She tried to speak: she did not know how.

"The baby lives," he said, and Stoick drew away, far enough she could see how he smiled at her in the thin day light. His eyes were red-lined. He laughed at the look on her face and came to kiss her once more, on the cheek he'd petted. "Alive. He's alive, Val."

She grappled at his arm again. "He's—he's alive?"

"Aye. Like his mother," Stoick said. "You both gave us such a scare, him coming early like that."

"A month," she said, weakly through a mouth that felt numb. She clutched Stoick's shoulder. The little blood she'd drawn smeared beneath the heel of her hand. "I want to see him. Show me." She would have tried again to sit up had Stoick not set his hand on her arm and held her there.

"You have to watch your stitches, now," Stoick said. He rose from the chair, with the stiffness of a man who had sat a long time in the one place. "I'll bring him to you."

The cradle was at the foot of the bed, hidden behind the board. They'd put it there years ago, for fortune, according to the custom: to bring a child to fill it. Stoick stooped, and when he came up again he'd a little bundle in his hands, something that made small sounds. She knew those whimpers for what they were; still, she could not place them. Stoick was smiling at the furry bundle as he carried it to her.

With dreamlike detachment, Valka held her hands out to Stoick. He passed it to her, and she drew the swaddled thing to her, though her arms shook. The babe was very pink, very creased. He keened. Her breasts ached. His hands worked against his chest, somewhere under the fur wrapped and tucked around him.

"He's been looking for you," Stoick said to her, from very far away. "Hungry, after all that work of coming out."

Valka trailed her fingertips very lightly down the babe's face. "Oh, Stoick—he's such a wee hiccup."

"You haven't heard him scream yet." Stoick pulled the chair closer to the head of the bed and sat again. The chair creaked under him. "He's good lungs in him."

She was shaking her head; how long, she could not say. Her fingers coiled, away from the babe's face. He'd opened his eyes. They were pale, and unfocused, but he turned his face anyway, as if to find her hand again. He'd so few eyelashes, and little other hair. A month early.

"He's so small," Valka said. Her throat was sore. "Oh, look at him. Look how small he is. He isn't ready."

"Ready enough." Stoick covered the babe's belly with his hand. His palm dwarfed the child. "And eager to meet you, Val."

"How will he live?"

She asked it softly. She was thinking of another child, as small. The pain deep and low in her twisted. She squeezed her eyes shut against both.

"He'll be strong," Stoick said. He gripped her shoulder. "Strong like his mother. You survived, the both of you."

The baby squirmed. His cries, weak at first, grew stronger. The creases in his face thickened.

Valka brought him up to the crook of her arm, settling him near to her breast.

"Has he ate?"

Stoick glanced to the window. "Bertha nursed him some a while ago. I thought we should best wait for you to feed him proper."

So, hers was not his first milk. Valka smoothed her hand along his tiny, pink brow, and then she pulled at her blouse's laces, exposing her breast for the babe. He found her nipple well enough, though she had to cup his head so that he would stay. Slowly some of the knot in her chest unwound. The hurting between her legs, where the healer had fixed her together again, was not so severe when she traced the shape of the baby's face with her fingers. When he breathed, delicate puffs of air warmed her breast. She felt him moving in his wrappings, his legs straining forward then to the side.

"He's lovely," Valka said, wondering.

"That he is," said Stoick. He rested his hand around Valka's, cupping her as she cupped the baby's head. "Our little Hiccup."

The healer and the midwife agreed: Valka was to remain in bed for the week, to allow her ruptured skin the peace to mend. Stoick brought the cradle up from the foot of the bed to sit it beside her, so that she did not have to stand to reach Hiccup. She had to stand anyway, to use the chamber pot, though Stoick was there to hold her up the first two days. The third day, in the cold, early morning, she did alone, gripping on to the foot-board as she squatted. Blood spotted the pot along with waste, less blood than the first day, when two of the stitches had pulled out.

She stood carefully, a long process. Her knees had locked; her thighs trembled. The dulling pain in her gut had sharpened again. Hiccup began to cry. Clutching at the foot-board, Valka shuffled around and made her way, half-step by half-step, back to the cradle and the bed. His face was wet by the time she'd settled on to the edge of the bed. Her heart beat, so quickly she had to take a moment only to breathe. Her neck ached. She did not wish to be like this, confined to the house. Stoick had his duties and so he'd left, but Valka had duties to the village as well.

Hiccup screamed.

"Shush, shush," Valka said, leaning to lift him from his cradle. "I hear you, dear thing." She bounced him in her arms. Her abdomen flared, hot. She did not bounce Hiccup again.

He smelled poorly, and so she unwrapped his cloths, first the swaddling and then the diapering cloth beneath. Then she stopped. The chamber pot was at the foot of the bed, where she had left it, and the clean diaper cloths were across the room. Neither she nor Stoick had thought to take them closer to the bed. Valka set her jaw. She breathed in, steadying. Folding the soiled cloth over, she wiped Hiccup's bottom with a clean corner and then, bundling it into a foul ball, she tossed the cloth toward the chamber pot. It missed: she'd winced, halfway through the throw, the turning of her torso too rough.

"I know," she said, worn, staring at that filthy cloth on the floor. "You're hungry. I know. Come here."

He suckled well, better than he had before. She held his head in one hand and the rest of him along the other arm, and bearing him like this, Valka laid down upon the bed. Her foot dangled off the side of the bed. She let it hang there, too tired even to feel shame at her tiredness. The chill of the morning nipped at her skin. Fumbling for a fur, she drew it over Hiccup, naked against her chest, and held him close so that he would not feel the cold as she did.

The morning was too bitter to leave the window open, and so Stoick had drawn shut the wooden slats and pulled the heavy curtain across it before he'd left. A lamp on the table by the bed lit the room. She brushed her fingertips, just so, over the thin thatch of hair at the top of Hiccup's head. It was black now, not at all like either Valka with her brown hair or Stoick with his red, but then so many babes were born with black hair.

"They had black hair too," Valka said to Hiccup, brushing his hair again, again. "Your brother and your sister."

He grunted. His fingers, so much smaller than her own, curled against the swell of her breast. She turned, gently, so that she rested somewhat on her side, Hiccup balanced with his head up. Valka stroked his nape, the diminutive spread of his shoulders.

"I carried him a week," Valka told Hiccup, quiet though only he and the gods would hear her say it. "He went still, and I carried him another week till the water broke and I birthed him."

She had thought him small, that first child she'd born all the way through, but he had been larger than Hiccup; larger, but without breath. All that week she had prayed and she had hoped perhaps that it was only she had grown insensate in some way, and she had known all that time that the babe was lost. The others had been lost, too, but so early on that she could only guess she had carried them at all because she had missed two monthlies, or three, and then bled through her cloths.

"Your sister was like you." Valka ran the back of her finger along his cheek, and Hiccup twisted his face, losing the nipple. She guided him back.

"She was early. And she was so small. I prayed for her," Valka said, "every night I prayed for strength for her. And then she was gone, that third night."

Valka ducked her head. Hiccup smelled sweetly, like a baby did, and also of his earlier waste, and of her milk. Her throat tightened. Three days, she thought.

When he'd finished with the right breast, she brought him down to the left. He stretched alongside her, and then his legs drew up, and he was coiled beside her. His eyelids were low. After a time, his lips, open, fell from her. He was only sleeping, as babies did. Valka rubbed at his belly, rounded from the eating and warm despite the coolness of the hour. She curled about him, that tiny thing, and she held him flush with her skin. Her heart sat heavily. How could she love him if she was to lose him?

"Please," she said. It was the only prayer she had left to her. She did not know what else to ask for. "Please," she said again.

In his sleep Hiccup yawned, and he pressed his face to her chest, his nose to the line of a rib. His breath—steady, clean—gusted across her skin. He did have strong lungs, she thought, and she went on rubbing his belly till she too slept, huddled under the fur they shared. His heart beat beneath her fingertips; it beat as steadily as he breathed. She had a dream of flying, as she often did, and throughout the dream she felt her heartbeat accompanied by an echo, so that she too was steadied.

Once, for a moment, she opened her eyes. The lamp had gone out. The room was shadowed. Hiccup was warm and breathing. Valka closed her eyes again.

She cleaned the mess after they'd finished their nap. Hiccup had soiled the fur they slept on; that had woken her. Hooking him up to her shoulder, she'd got him a clean cloth from the far side of the room and then set him in his cradle while she went to cleaning. The quiet didn't last very long: she was still trying to decide if the fur was worth saving or not when Hiccup started wailing.

"Yes, I'm coming," she said, "be patient—oh, I'm coming."

She had heard of mothers who had learned to distinguish between cries, to know if a babe needed to be changed or fed or burped. And what use was it to learn, she thought; then she pushed that as far from her as she could.

Gathering him up, Valka found Hiccup only wanted to be held, and he settled readily but for a few soft whimpers.

"Were you lonely?" she asked him. He stared at her chin with those big eyes of his. Could a baby so small have any personality? Curious, that was what she thought, the way he looked at her as if he really did see her clearly after all and was wondering who she was.

Stoick returned in the early afternoon. Gobber came with, one large pot tucked under his arm.

"I thought I might spare you the trouble of having to cook for this insensitive lug," Gobber said, setting the pot down upon the dining table. "Is that the little tyke there?"

"Thank you for the food, Gobber," said Valka fondly, and she let him look Hiccup over.

Gobber whistled. "Aye, he is a wee thing, isn't he? How do you reckon Stoick swung that?"

"Watch it," Stoick said, "that's my heir you're looking at."

"Are you sure?" Gobber squinted. "He isn't very vast."

Valka laughed. The sound of it startled her, and she clutched Hiccup more tightly. He whined at this and Valka gentled her hold on him. She checked his wrappings, bound beneath his arms so his hands would be free. Valka bounced him in her arm, though it hurt her to do it, and he was happy again. She supposed he was happy: he quieted and wriggled his fingers. When she offered him her own finger, he closed a tiny fist about it.

"Give him time," Stoick was saying to Gobber. "He'll grow up strong. He's a tough one."

"He's only a babe," said Valka, lifting her finger to see how Hiccup clutched it. His hand rose with her finger, and he looked blearily at what he'd got in his grip. "That's my finger," she said to him, "and that's my hand, and that's your own little fist."

"Well, he'll have to be," said Gobber, "won't he? If he's going to survive you two."

"He'll survive worse," said Stoick.

"The dragons, you mean?"

"Oh, the dragons," Valka scoffed, flexing her finger. Hiccup's hand tightened. "I'm more worried about the cold."

"And that's why I've brought my famous hot meatballs," said Gobber, gesturing to the pot. "They're edible, too."

"You get back to bed, and I'll bring you a plate," Stoick said.

Valka looked up. Hiccup burbled.

"I've had enough of the bed for now," Valka said. "I'll sit at the table like the rest of you."

Stoick frowned, and it was only that he worried, but she said, "Stoick! I've done well enough on my own all day. I can certainly manage a chair."

"Ah, good," Gobber said, lifting the lid off the pot. "I was wondering what we were going to do without you helping run the village for the week. Looks like I worried too soon, eh?"

"The healer said the week," Stoick said, and he threw Gobber a dark look.

"Yes," said Valka, walking, stiffly, yes, but walking to the table with Hiccup still hoisted in her arms, "and I'm saying that I can sit in a chair as well as I can sit on the bed."

"And tomorrow she'll be out lecturing us all on new ways to keep the dragons from eating all the sheep," Gobber said, "without causing the dragons any undue stress or harm or even guilt. Now who wants meatballs?"

Stoick, giving up, drew a chair out for Valka, and she allowed for this. Perching on the seat, she eased back and said, "Do you know—I'm famished."

Gobber shook his head. "Got to keep up your strength to look after that wee kitten you've got there. Meatballs it is!"

"I'll take the boy," Stoick said. He reached for Hiccup.

Valka looked down at Hiccup, and at her hand on his belly, her first finger curled over his chest where his heart beat, under all the swaddling cloths. His grip had loosened, but his hand stayed near to hers.

"Oh, he's fine where he is," Valka said. She scratched her finger over his chest, gently enough not to upset him. "Let him sleep."

Her husband paused, his hand just shy of Hiccup. Behind Stoick, Gobber whistled tunelessly as he spooned meatballs out onto the plates. Stoick's beard pulled: the corner of his mouth creased. He smiled at her, and he squeezed her shoulder. The warmth of his hand remained.

"And ten for Stoick," Gobber said. "What of the wee kitten? Two or three meatballs, do you think?"

"He's well off with his mother," Stoick said, clapping Gobber's back.

Gobber, too, smiled at Valka. She fussed with Hiccup's wrappings, checking that his throat was covered.

"So I see," Gobber said. "Well, then, more for you, eh, Stoick the Vast?"

The smell of the meatballs—well made—lingered long after Gobber at last left them.

Stoick set the candle upon the table on his side of the bed.

"How is he?"

"Sleeping now," said Valka. She straightened from the cradle and paused, still half-bent. The throbbing faded and, more cautiously, she finished standing.

Stoick watched her from across the bed. With his helmet off, the largeness of his ears was unmistakable. So, too, was the heavy angle of his brow, pinched at the middle.

"I'm hardly the first woman to need stitches after childbirth," Valka said, cutting him off before he could start. Gingerly she perched on the edge of the bed and began tying the laces of her night shirt up the front.

Her back was to Stoick. She knew that he weighed his words; the silence told her that. He did not often take such measures. She'd half-expected him to scold her for getting out of bed at all.

Through the thick cloth of her night shirt, she felt his hand settling on her back. His palm rested flush with her right shoulder blade, and his fingers ran at a diagonal up the left side.

"You weren't awake for the last of it," he said. "I saw you lying there, bleeding, and I thought—" His fingers tensed.

"I'm here, aren't I?" Valka said, turning at last to look at him. The laces, not yet tied at her throat, hung loosely. Her husband was a large man, but when his shoulders bowed like that, he appeared diminished. She reached for the hand now at her shoulder and wound her fingers with his.

"Aye," said Stoick. "You are." He brought her hand to his lips. "Though I thought I'd lost the two of you."

She brushed her thumb along his whiskered lip.

"I'll give up my duties for the week if it will keep you happy," she said, "but I will not stay in this bed."

He smiled at that, his eyes creasing. "I could not stop you from leaving this house if I tried."

"You'd try," said Valka, smiling in return, "but you wouldn't succeed. And oh, I'm not going anywhere, Stoick. I just miss the sky, that's all. The sun. The clouds."

His fingers swept along her wrist. Stoick kissed her hand again, and then he leaned forward to kiss her chastely on the mouth. Valka kissed him as well, at each corner of his mouth, though his beard caught between her lips and she had to roll them to get the hair off. He laughed at this.

"Oh, shh," said Valka, wiping at her mouth, "or you'll wake the baby."

"He needs his rest," Stoick agreed, "as do you." And he snuffed out the candle.

The night surrounded them. Stoick busied, tucking blankets in, and Valka laid down amongst the pillows and insulating furs. The ceiling was black, the room in full shadow. Her eyes had not yet adjusted. She lay there, awake, until she could make out the individual boards that made up the ceiling, and then she rolled over onto her side, staring at the cradle. He was a pale shape in the darkness, pale and ill-defined. If his chest rose or fell, she could not see.

Valka stretched a hand out. She could just touch his chest with her fingertips. He was breathing after all. She left her hand there, light on his chest, feeling it rising, feeling it falling, feeling his heart beating.

"He'll be there," Stoick said. He stroked her arm. "He'll wake us up with his screaming, same as he has every morning." Stoick chuckled, and his breath was hot on her shoulder. He kissed the joint, gently through the cloth.

Valka breathed in; she breathed out, in time with Hiccup. She swept her fingertips along his chest, down his belly and up again.

"Wouldn't that be lovely," she said.

It was still dark out when she woke to Hiccup snuffling in the cradle. Stoick had tossed an arm about her waist as they slept; he was far too careful yet to do so when he was awake. The pain had lessened some, from a sharp and rending sort of hot thing to something dull and constant, rather like to her monthlies, and the weight of his arm across her, and the heat of it against her belly, was an unexpected comfort. Valka eased his arm off and sat up, nearly easily. Sleep fogged her, but she moved out of new habit, and so only very gradually did she realize it was morning, and that this was the fourth day.

She'd got her legs over the side of the bed. Her fingers knotted in the furs. Her chest contracted. Hiccup grunted and then made one short, soft keening sound. Valka flattened her hands out and pushed up from the bed, onto her feet. She leaned over the cradle, and her braided hair fell along her shoulder, to brush at his face, his questing hands.

He was not yet crying, her little babe, but he was casting about, rubbing his face along the fur beneath him first on the one side and then the other. His lips smacked. He arched, and Valka got her hands under his back as he arched. Hiccup relaxed into her hands as she lifted him up, to hold him on his back in her arms. He'd a weight and a warmth of his own, and he fit very well in her arms. She patted his back once, twice, and he stretched, his small, fat legs kicking vaguely. Adjusting her grip so that she supported his bottom with her elbow, she caught one of his feet in her hand and squeezed at the itsy toes. His toes arched and then curled again, and she tickled her fingernails down the underside of his foot.

He was too young to smile. Bertha's girl, Astrid, six months his elder, hadn't smiled till her seventh week. Too young to smile, but as Valka rocked him very slightly, he curled his fingers in her tunic and turned his face to her. His eyes were open. How well could he see in the dark, at so young an age? Could he see her face?

Valka tried a smile.

"Hullo," she whispered. "Hullo, little thing. Where did you come from? Small as you are. Did someone forget you here?"

He looked up at her, his eyes so light. She swayed back and forth, rocking him with her. He went on watching her, and Valka went on smiling. The inside of her nose stung. Her eyes, too, as if they were over-dry. She'd a braid still hanging off her shoulder, and as she rocked Hiccup, the end of the braid settled on his belly. He caught it in his hand and held tightly to her hair.

"Did you have a dream?" she asked him. "Were you dreaming of mummy?"

Hiccup rolled his lips; he smacked again. Perhaps he was hungry; but then he seemed content enough, just swaying with her. She held it in her for a time, a very long time, so long that Hiccup had gone into a doze in her arms. What a quiet babe, she thought. The hand clutching at her night shirt had let go, but even in his light sleep he would not let go of her braid.

"You'll have red hair, won't you," Valka said in a low voice. "Today we'll go outside. I'll show you what the sky looks like. Would you even see it? Hm? If I showed it to you?"

She peered at his drowsy face. Their noses brushed. Rousing, he opened his eyes again, but only briefly, and soon those few dark eyelashes he had were against his cheeks once more. His cheek pressed to her breast; he cuddled nearer.

"And tomorrow—" She faltered. Valka hoisted him higher, up so that she could hide her nose against his cheek. How wonderfully he smelled.

"And tomorrow," she whispered, his tiny ear so soft against her lips, "I'll take you to the docks and we'll look for dragons in the clouds. Would you like to see them? Oh, they're beautiful, Hiccup. Don't listen to what anyone else says to you. You just listen to your mother."

Tomorrow, she thought. Tomorrow. To the heavens she prayed again: Please. Give her this. Give her the child who lived.

"Today is your fourth day," she said to Hiccup, and she kissed his nose. He wrinkled his face and grumbled. Her eyes no longer burned, but her face was slick; it was tricky, looking at him through the tears.

"Oh, look at me," Valka said, turning brusque. She got him to her shoulder so that she could undo the laces of her shirt. "I'm being a daft thing, when you must be hungry. Come here and I'll feed you. Mother's milk is best for you, isn't it? Your own mother's, and not Bertha's, though her babe's certainly hale."

Hiccup kicked again and flapped his arms, shaking the braid in his hand. Valka laughed wetly.

"Little dragon!" she teased him. "Do you want to fly away? And leave your poor mother with her chest hurting? Now shush, you. You have to eat if you want to be strong."

He did eat, very well; how strongly he latched on to her breast. She petted his cheek with the backs of her fingers. What would he look like with his hair filled in? She allowed herself to think of it, to imagine brushing curls behind his ears. Oh, she was smiling, and she knew she shouldn't, for who was to say the gods wouldn't take him from her tomorrow? He'd come early, and the early babes struggled the most, and yet: four days, now.

Stoick snorted in his sleep and she glanced over her shoulder at him. He'd turned, as if to gather Valka to him, and in her absence he was frowning, his arm settled in the indentation she'd left in the furs and blankets.

"You're going to be very strong," Valka said, "just like your father." She smiled at Hiccup. "Yes, you will. Strong like your mother, Stoick would say, but he's always flattering. Strong like a dragon."

She followed his small nose with her thumb nail. Hiccup screwed up his eyes and rubbed his nose against her breast. He gripped her braid tightly to his own chest, and his fingers were so small but his hand was steady, for as young as he was.

"My little dragon," Valka said.