Alpha's Nest, two months after Drago's assault

Stoick didn't know what happened, well.. He knew what happened. Losing Hiccup as he wandered off, tracking him to a dragon's nest, meeting Valka again, their time alone together among the geysers on the island, going back to her cave to meet Gobber and Hiccup, the two amputees in the midst of talking about the dragons they had seen. The song and dance he shared with Valka, the attack on the Nest by Drago, Hiccup not being able to stop his dragon Toothless, from blasting him with a plasma shot. Stoick took the blast for Hiccup to save his life, and heard the cries of the valkyries and the golden doors to Odin's Great Hall, but he wasn't ready. He wasn't ready to continue his life without Val by his side, he was going back, he... He broke through the water on the edge of the Alpha's Nest, he looked to the smoldering and ruined landmass. It was better than nothing, Stoick decided, seeing the ships that were still docked on the shore. Perfect, he could sail home.

"Well," Stoick got to the shore and wrung out his cloak, turning back at the still water. "Looks like I'll have to sail back to Berk.." He said, shivering as the still air hung on his cold skin. He turned back to see the mountain. No, it wasn't a mountain. It was the dead body of the Bewilderbeast.

Stoick didn't consider himself an emotional man, growing up on Berk normally turned out cold unfeeling Vikings when it came to death, but he felt tears stinging his eyes. This mighty beast had protected them all from Drago's siege, the attack on the mountain, and died. He removed his helmet from his head as a show of respect.

"You great, big, beautiful, warrior beast you." Words spilled from Stoick's mouth before he could process them. "Thank you, for protecting my Val for all these years. For keepin' her safe and warm and.." Stoick chuckled, "an' well fed. Mustn't 'ave been too hard. She eats less than Hiccup." He placed a hand on the Alpha's muzzle, feeling the molting, cracked scales against his hand. "May they have a grand feast to welcome you to Valhalla, you mighty warrior. My battle brother." A smile crossed his face. "I hope to meet you again."

He turned to the ships, sighing as he had a lot of work ahead of him. He took a step, hearing and feeling crunch beneath his foot, looking down to see Val's mask, and Hiccup's not too far away, laying there. He picked both up, as well as Valka's shield, and set them in one of the less rundown ships. This was going to be a long journey home. To his son Hiccup, his friends and community. To his Valka. Valka..

Two months later, Berk

"Whoo!" Valka and Cloudjumper swerved in and out of trees, happy to be in the air after a recent rainfall. There was a shadow to their left, which Valka saw. "Faster, Cloudjumper!" The dragon shot up, happily roaring as it spun, Valka running along him until he straightened up to allow Valka to stand on his back again. "Yes!" She threw her hands up with a large smile.

The dark shape shot up by then, revealing it to be Hiccup and Toothless as the dragon evened out his flight pattern.

"Nice one, mom." Hiccup congratulated his mother, a smile on his face.

Valka smiled at him, "thank you, Hiccup. I wouldn't be able to beat you and your friends in races, for these past four months, if it wasn't for Cloudjumper and his trust in me." She knelt down and patted the space between Cloudjumper's horns causing him to purr.

"Show offs!" It was Astrid, smiling as her and the others broke through the treeline.

Valka and Hiccup started laughing, deep laughter from deep in their stomachs, until Valka leaned over Cloudjumper's wing and began to barf up her breakfast.

"Again?" Hiccup asked, concerned. His mother had been coughing up whatever she'd been managing to scarf down for the past few weeks and it was becoming concerning.

"'m alrigh'." Valka said hurriedly, ignoring Cloudjumper's glare up at her. He was apparently out of concern and quickly becoming annoyed with her lying.

"We should get you to Gothi though, just to be safe." Hiccup said, looking at his mother.

Valka didn't say anything, a stubborn frown on her face from both the vomit taste and being told what to do by her son.

"I'll go with you." Astrid offered, smiling at the older woman. "I've been meaning to thank Gothi for those herbs that cured my sickness some time ago."

Valka sighed, looking at her. "Alright."

Soon, they were flying to Gothi's hut, Astrid trying to distract Valka with talk about dragons or the Nest all the way there. Valka wasn't exactly excited to see Gothi, the two knocking heads constantly during her time as the woman's apprentice, during her time growing up. This all happened before Hiccup's birth and her capture by Cloudjumper, finding herself worried about what Gothi would say.

"Too much mead, too much grief. Too frail and sickly, too much like the hiccup you were born as. Eat before you die of starvation." All of these were likely what she was going to hear, perhaps not in that order but Val had a feeling she would hear a lot of them.

The two had soon arrived at Gothi's hut, a small smile coming to Valka's face as she and Astrid dismounted their dragons to knock on the door. Valka became distracted, lost in a world of barely over two decades ago when she would come here to learn from Gothi in an attempt not to be ridiculed so much for not killing dragons. Even the years before that, when Gothi would always seem to be stuck with Valka. A gentle tap to her staff, which she realized was from another staff whose wielder was much smaller than she, brought her back to the present.

"Hello, Gothi." Valka greeted her former teacher with a respectful bow, only to be smacked upside the head. She didn't cry out, just groaned in an unpleasant manner before walking inside.

Astrid watched from her place in a chair that sat at a table, wincing in sympathy to her soon-to-be mother-in-law when the woman was struck, as the two made their way to the table.

Gothi looked at Astrid first, curious. Was she alright?

"I'm fine Gothi, I had some time and I decided to use it to thank you for those herbs you gave me a while ago." Astrid said, giving Gothi a respectful bow from her spot.

Gothi nodded to her, a gentle smile on her face, before turning to Valka with a curious expression.

"What?" Valka asked, looking at her. "I do nigh have a problem that rest won't fix-" her lower jaw was grabbed, hard by hands smaller than her own, and her body pulled down so she was face to face with Gothi. A staring contest ensued, for a few tense minutes until Valka pried Gothi's hands away from her face and rushed to the door, flinging it open to vomit just off of the porch and onto the rocks far below.

Back inside, Gothi looked at Astrid, gesturing to Valka with a curious look as the younger woman poured them some tea.

"I honestly don't know how long she's been doing that, maybe a few weeks at best." Astrid said, looking from the still barfing Valka to Gothi with concern. "Do you think she's alright?"

Gothi looked long and hard at Valka, who was shaking as she stopped vomiting. Her thin frame being supported by the staff she held, walking back inside on shaking legs. Wait. It wasn't entirely out of the realm of possibility, but..

She waited for Valka to collapse into a chair before taking her tea and blowing the steam into Valka's face. She watched as Valka began to gag, tears in her eyes as she had nothing more in her to puke back up. That could easily be explained, Gothi decided, before seeing Valka rubbing her chest with that same pained face.

Astrid, taking a drink of her tea as to not be rude to Gothi for being hospitable, watched Valka with interest before sitting up with her eyes wide. As though she finally caught onto something. "How long?" She asked excitedly, taking her hands.

Valka looked, was insulted the right word? "Astrid, there is no way I'm- I mean look at me! I'm past my prime for baring children! I barely bared Hiccup!" Valka was panting, feeling the pain in her breasts again. She glanced over to Gothi, who was calmly and slowly sipping her tea with what looked to be a smile on her face behind the mug. "I dislike this conversation and what it implies. Now if you'll excuse me, I have a Stormcutter who needs to be fed. Good day, Gothi, Astrid."

And with that, she left, her staff leaning on the chair where she sat as she had forgotten it.

Astrid looked from the closing door to where Valka had sat, and then to Gothi. "I'm so sorry about that. I'm going to go after her. Thank you for the tea and your time, Gothi." Astrid politely thanked the elder as she grabbed Valka's staff before she left.

Valka and Cloudjumper were high in the sky, flying slowly as the Stormcutter munched on a mouthful of fish. At his flyer's sigh, Cloudjumper turned his head, several halves of fish hanging from his large mouth.

"No thank you Cloudjumper, I'm not hungry love." She said, laying on the dragon's back. She patted his back as the large reptile swallowed the mouthful of fish, making her feel nauseated as she felt his muscles move while he swallowed his meal.

Valka was, metaphorically speaking, chewing on what had happened at Gothi's hut. She wasn't going to deny that for years she had found herself wondering what life would have been like had she been able to conceive another child. Not good, as she had had one miscarriage in the earliest days of her marriage to Stoick before Hiccup came. So, she had pushed that desire aside, until she met Stoick twenty years later. And that passionate time they spent among the heated geyser patch, it made her blush even now.

She sighed again, staring at the clouds the two passed into while she absentmindedly patted her dragon's back. "What if I am? Could it be possible?" She asked out loud, not addressing or invoking the Gods but asking herself. "If I am, how will I find the strength to go through with it? What if it doesn't survive?" She pushed herself up to look at her stomach, wondering if it really was a possibility that she was with child and it wasn't just unresolved grief. It wasn't unusual for women Valka's age to become pregnant, Hel, it was often celebrated.. but for a woman her size at this age? It could very well be a death sentence and-

The mixture of purring and grumbling of Cloudjumper, which was a strange collection of noises she hadn't heard from him before, caught her off guard. Valka sat up fully, looking at him now facing her again, head turned to her while he remained in one spot flapping his wings.

"I am pregnant, aren't I?" She asked him as though he had been in counsel with Freyja, the goddess of many a part of Viking belief. A soft croon was his answer, leading her to laugh in a watery manner. Trust a dragon, an island of them, to know she was pregnant and soon become more docile with her than usual.

Happy tears became sorrowful wails and mournful screams. She, a mother of forty years old, whose son that was now her oldest, was a full grown man of twenty years old and the village chief, while she was with the child of her dead husband. How could she do this? She was barely a mother to Hiccup, in both memories and being there, so how could she raise a bairn with no prior knowledge of what to do?

By the time her tears stopped, the sun was setting and she was too tired to care about Cloudjumper's slow descent from the clouds, that he had given her the dignity of crying within the safety of the clouds before slowly coming down to home.

When they touched down on the ground, Valka slid down Cloudjumper's back and landing gently on the grass. After scratching under Cloudjumper's chin and a soft goodnight given, she slowly crept up the steps and just as slowly pushed the door open.

She noticed that Astrid and Hiccup were waiting for her, saying nothing as she removed her boots and left them by the door where her staff stay standing. With her head facing forwards but her eyes looking down at her feet, she walked to the table and sat.

Not a word between the three was spoken, as Valka registered a large cauldron hanging over the hearth and smelling stew of some sort coming from it. She decided that Astrid and Hiccup were waiting for her to speak first, but she kept her eyes on her hands. Shame and fear behind tired, raw eyes. What was she supposed to say? That she was with a wee bairn? That Hiccup was going to be an older brother? How her and Stoick's first time together in two decades led to- a shaky exhale left her, the silence making her feel cornered and afraid.

Astrid looked at Hiccup, a soft expression on her face as she watched her fiance watch and wait for his mother to gather herself before speaking. Truth be told, Hiccup was lost too. His father was dead, his mother was still grieving and now this. Astrid told him that Gothi had determined that Valka was with a bairn, which explained her frequent nausea spells and vomiting episodes. He didn't know what to say to make it better, if he even could make the very real situation of his middle aged mother being pregnant with his younger sibling better at all...

To Hel with it, Astrid decided. If neither was going to put on their adult pants and talk about it, she'd have to be the responsible one and start the conversation.

"Valka.." Astrid started slowly, gaining the attention of the mother and son. "I.. well, look.." she sighed, this being more of a conversation between Valka and Hiccup but both were too lost to begin. "I know that this is a scary thing for you, I don't know what your going through exactly, but we're here for you." Astrid said, looking at Valka's face as she took one of her hands. "Every step of the way, I promise."

Hiccup nodded encouragingly, putting a hand on Astrid's that rested on Valka's, "every step." Was all he said, before he and Astrid were pulled into a hug by Valka,who found new tears to shed.

Hiccup pulled his mother close, humming a song as he stroked her shoulder. Humming his parents song to his frightened mother, unsure of how else to make her feel safe.