Stoick couldn't look at her. He didn't want to be angry with her, but he couldn't look at her. He'd spent a lifetime as an angry man, and the more the feeling came back, the more he despised how much it cost him. But try as he might, he was angry, now. As angry and hurt and confused as he'd ever been.
When he saw her for the first time in years, after those damn awkward introductions, he'd felt younger and more emotional than he could ever remember. But then she'd smiled nervously at him, and unforeseen wrinkles came around her mouth and eyes, pointing to grey hairs that had taken over the brown he once knew. That's when the anger came in earnest. He dreamt that night of the day she left. It'd been a day like any other day. The lack of momentum had become a part of his rage.
She had no idea what he'd been through. She couldn't. She didn't know their son, not like he did. She didn't know how much like her he was, how looking at him was a dagger in his chest because it was like looking at her. She had no idea that he'd grown up into her copy, how even without her he spoke like her, moved like her, thought like her, ended up like her. Hiccup was his mother's son, and through no fault of father or son, raising Hiccup gave Stoick the constant compulsion to grieve her.
And now, she was here. Their son was grown. They were both grey. Stoick had spent a lifetime battling anger, and his entire fatherhood stumbling through pitfalls of grief, frustration, and guilt. She was here now, but that couldn't bring her back the way he needed, because she'd been gone for too many years.
Hiccup had only been four years old when she'd left, little more than a babe. Old enough to understand that she was gone, but too young to understand that no amount if tantrums would bring her back. Whenever Stoick looked at her now, he could only hear his son's crying, the angry, four year old sobs that Valka would never remember. They'd defined Stoick's early attempts at parenting, those grief-fuelled tantrums. The screaming, the anger, the tears, the heart-wrenching knowledge that Hiccup was doing nothing really wrong, because his mother was gone, and no one knew how, or why.
And now she was here, and because she was so much like her son, she was trying to mentor him, to teach him, to mother him.
How dare she.
Stoick had never mothered Hiccup. He didn't know how. But he sure as hel had been there to father him, no matter how shoddy, and he'd done it all without her. Hiccup had no mother. The woman who gave birth to him hadn't even recognized him until he'd said his name.
Grey hairs. Wrinkles. Just barely taller than their son, hands long and slender like his, eyes green, mind sharp. She had her hand on their son's shoulder and the sight made something in his blood burn.
Hiccup was a man now, but four-year old screams filled Stoick's ears anew. He looked down away from her, only to see his own silvery beard instead.
How dare she.