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She used to have dreams about him in the warmth of the Sanctuary with Cloudjumper cradling her as she slept. Sometimes her dreams would take her to others, to Stoick and her old friends and the path she always used to take to the woods where she'd get lost in her thoughts of dragons and peace and freedom. But then she would open her eyes and look up at the green ice protecting her from the harsh outside world, and she'd just roll over and shut her eyes tightly so her tears wouldn't spill over because she'd dreamt of it her entire life—of freedom and peace and dragons—and once she finally had it she couldn't enjoy it for a moment because she could only close her eyes to dream of the person she'd left behind.
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Toothless comes down to breakfast earlier than Hiccup. Valka's learned to take this as an alarm. Hiccup looked around the house in the earlier days, as if expecting his father's booming voice to echo at any moment, but it never came and it took him a while to get used to never hearing it again. Hiccup mixes his own milk and honey and feeds Toothless and he sits there in front of her. Sometimes he talks, and sometimes he doesn't, and she doesn't mind either way because he's here in front of her and that alone is a miracle.
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She used to try to imagine him as the years passed, trying to picture what he'd look like as he grew, what his favorite food was and what his smile would look like, but she couldn't get a clear picture because the last time she'd seen him, he was no bigger than a loaf of bread and it had been so many years since she had last looked upon him. Sometimes she wished she could go back, if only for a few minutes. Just to sneak a glance from afar of what had become of him. To see him walk. To hear his voice. To watch him laugh. To see what he had become.
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Sometimes when he walks she finds herself staring at his pegged leg and she wonders what he looked like before he lost it. He doesn't talk much about it, so she doesn't ask. He has plenty more to say on what Toothless must have been like before he hurt his tail and his voice is nothing but guilty when he talks about it and Valka has to hide her smile when he rambles on about that dragon's perfection and then said dragon beams at him and Valka gets to thinking that these two are gayer than Gobber on Lover's Eve.
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Berk has changed. The people are calm and sweet and patient and they remind her of the dragons she left them for twenty years ago. Where dragon skins used to hang now hang the notices for the upcoming races and where weapons were once forged to kill now is a clinic for ailing teeth. The babies she remembers have grown into strong young warriors, with precision and cunning and grace and she can't quite wrap her head around how they can be so precise and cunning and graceful when two of them share a brain and this shared brain can't count to ten, another is the size of an ox and just as obnoxious, the other one is afraid of his own shadow and the other is a femme fatale in every sense of the word. But their leader is perfect. She knows this the moment she sees him and she remembers it every time she sees him afterwards. That boy is perfect. He's sweet and he's thoughtful and he's smart and he's beautiful and he turned out to be better than she'd ever imagined in her time alone at the Sanctuary and she can't believe the man that her beautiful perfect baby boy became when she wasn't looking but she feels like she can never stop looking now.
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Last night she remembered the years she lost, the years she spent hiding away while he grew without her, and this time she didn't try to stop her tears. She only sat there by the fire and let them spill out and after a while he was there beside her with his arms around her and his forgiveness only made her cry harder but he didn't say a word and she knew that in the morning that would be her strength to face the new day and every day that followed.