ann-bat

Moments and days blurred. Between sleepless nights when she’d count his breaths and dazed days when she’d leave Baelor under watchful Maekar’s or maester's eyes only to freshen up and maybe have a bite or two, could not tell if it has been days, weeks or months since the Trial. She did not care if their absence at the capital would go noticed, she did not care if the king needed his Hand, she did not care to answer the summons or pleads. And when Aerion, who had recovered from the beating sir Duncan rightfully dealt him and who was most displeased that his aunt decided to let the hedge knight stay by her side, had suddenly decided he had a voice in the matter of when they were to leave Ashford, she wasn’t able to stop her impulse in time. Her hand collided with Aerion's cheek with a loud ‘slap’, the echo of it ringing in the half empty room the family was dining. For a moment everyone froze, all eyes on her, even the servants. She was not one to lose her temper easily and she didn’t believe that slap to be a sign that she did, even if her chest was heaving and she could feel anger rise inside. Aerion slowly reached to his cheek that burned red and his eyes flared up for a moment, his usual temper ignited in seconds. He hissed:

‘Last time someone struck a royal blood they…’ She huffed despite herself, cutting him short.

‘Do finish this sentence, nephew,’ she spat as Aerion jumped to his feet. ‘I dare you.’

Daeron frowned, Valarr's hand flexed around his knife, Aegon stared in horror as her cold blue gaze clashed against Aerion's violet. The fire inside her raged, demanding he'd pay in blood for his deeds, a part of her anticipating a fight. Someone needed to wipe the floor with that arrogant child of a prince and she was more than willing to. 

‘I am a dragon…’ Aerion started again and she flat out scoffed. 

‘You are but a child,’ she argued. ‘A child and a fool, who has no honor or regard for someone else's life. Your uncle lies fighting for his life after a mess you caused and here you dare complain about missing your whores. Not only are you a coward, like trials proved,’ she hissed, and the words tasted like poison on her lips, ‘ but you are also an arrogant brat who has no care for anyone but himself. Your ancestors would be ashamed of you.’

Aerion seemed taken aback for a moment. ‘You can't talk to me like that! You know nothing about…’

‘Enough!’ Maekar smashed his hand on the table, just as Valarr rose from his seat, intent on defending her. ‘Another word out of your fucking mouth, boy, and so help you gods…’

Whether it was the fury in his father’s eyes or the murder in his aunt's, Aerion didn't speak another word and returned to his food, glaring daggers at his cousin from time to time. Valarr ignored him, as did she until deciding to excuse herself. ‘Try that tone with my mother again, cousin,’ she heard Vallar say. ‘And no gods will help you.’

‘You shouldn't antagonize him,’ she spoke to Vallar later, when he came to visit Baelor. The boy rested on the floor by his father’s bed, his head on his father’s hand.

‘He has no right to speak to you this way.’ Valarr responded not taking his eyes off of his father. He spoke with Baelor’s calm and restraint, yet she could hear a quiet song of rage in every word. So alike. She sighed.

‘Perhaps, but Aerion’s words are irrelevant to me. They don’t matter.’

‘Father wouldn’t have let him off with that.’ Valarr argued, stubbornly.

‘Neither did your uncle.’ she reminded him. ‘Yet you should understand that Aerion is simply trying to provoke you. Don’t let him.’

Valarr raised his head and cocked it to the side, looking at her with a poorly hidden giggle in his eyes: ‘Says a woman who struck across his stupid face.’

She frowned, but couldn’t keep a straight look, smiling eventually. ‘Suppose you will have to be better than your elders, then.’

‘You’re barely thirty, mother.’ Valarr snorted.

‘And yet.’

They looked at each other for a brief moment and then suddenly found themselves giggling, a sound neither of the two anticipated.Neither of them had thought themselves able to laugh anymore, not when Baelor was barely breathing. She looked at her husband, struck with guilt and ache, and froze when her eyes met the half dazed glance of his mismatched eyes. Is he…?

‘Father!’ Valarr’s voice full of relief proved her eyes were not deceiving her. ‘You’re awake.’

Baelor tried to say something, but no words came out. She got to her feet, poured some water into it and walked to her husband’s bed again, hoping her hands were not shaking. 

‘Go fetch your uncle,’ she told Valarr, calmly and the boy rushed away. Then she turned to Baelor and offered him the glass.

Baelor woke up with a headache splitting his skull and ringing in his ears. He forced his eyes open and realised that the ringing sound was a quiet giggling for there were two people in his room : a woman, draped over a chair to his left and a young man sitting to his right on the floor. He felt odd. The room felt odd. And when his eyes met with the woman’s in front of him something in them cut through him like a knife. Why?

‘Father!’ the boy almost yelled and Baelor winced at the volume of his. Valarr. ‘You’re awake.’ He tried to say something, but his throat felt raw and sore and no sound came out. He looked at Valarr then at the woman, almost helplessly, and as if she knew she got up and poured the water for him and brought it to his lips.  ‘Drink,’ he heard her say. Her voice shook and so did her hands, yet she held the glass firmly while he drank. Then brought another one. His head still throbbed but his throat felt less sore after the second glass and he managed to crook a ‘Thank you.’ that lit up the woman's face. She looked at him with tears in her eyes and was about to say something, when the door swang open and another voice bellowed ‘Brother!’. 

Baelor flinched, the word making the ache worse. ‘Please, Maekar, lover your voice.’ the woman said sternly. 

‘Forgive me,’ Maekar crossed the room in few sharp stepps and fell to his knees at Baelor’s bed. ‘Please forgive me, brother.’

Baelor frowned and it sent a wave of ache through his skull. ‘Whatever for?’ he pondered. His brother’s face darken in  something like surprise, then he shot a look at the woman before looking back at Baelor.  ‘You…you don’t remember?’ 

‘Remember what exactly?’

There it was again, a look his brother shared with the woman, who still stood with the glass in her hand. And it was her who spoke this time. ‘There was a trial by combat. You’ve been  hurt.’

A trial? Baelor thought. ‘What trial?’

Maekar averted his eyes. ‘Aerion hurt a performer. A hedge-knight, a boy, really, intervened. He demanded a trial. You fought on the boy’s side.’ Baelor frowned.  It was odd, not that he wouldn’t fight for what was right, but that anyone fighting on his nephew’s would truly hurt him. He was quite a great fighter, the only match for him, perhaps…

‘You fought on Aerion’s, didn’t you?’ Baelor asked.

‘I did. Forgive me, brother. I almost killed you.’ Maekar’s voice was but a whisper, laced with pain and guilt. Baelor raised his hand, surprised at how much effort it took, and touched his brother’s face. ‘I hold no blame for you, Maekar.’ he said.

‘As you should,’ the woman’s voice rang. ‘It is your fault, Baelor, you absolute irresponsible fool. Even a squire knows you don’t  wear a helm that is too small into battle.’

She spoke with anger and frustration, and relief that was a little bit more than just that. Baelor found himself rather amused by it. He looked at her, half fury, half woman, and smiled awkwardly, his muscles not yet fully his to command.

‘Baelor…’ she choked, his name scraping her throat. Nothing happened. He didn't move, didn't blink, didn't breathe. Maekar tensed at the sound of her voice, slouching even more so, the knight to his side turned and even managed a slight bow, the man holding her husband looked up, but not Baelor. She pushed past Maekar and fell to her knees beside him, and brushed a hand over the side of his face, as she'd do in the morning to wake him, yet instead of a warm silk of his cheek her fingers tasted cold. Up close she could see it all too clearly, he wasn't just pale, his skin had lost color, his mismatched eyes weren't starring, they were forever frozen. But the worst of it was the wound on the back of Baelor's head she couldn't see from where she'd stood. Up close it almost made her sick. 

It was meant to be just a tourney. He wasn't even going to joust. She caught herself thinking. In the silence between Ser Duncan's ‘I'm sorry. I'm so sorry…’  she heard her heart shudder and the way Maekar flinched made her wonder if he'd heard it too. 

Everything else smudged into an endless blur: the maesters, the preparations, the words said over Baelor's body. She knew she should've cared, she knew she should've listened and prayed, yet all she was able to think of was if it would've hurt less had she followed Baelor into those flames. It's been days, but the world seemed too quick, too alive for the world her husband had no longer walked, and she only knew it was all wrong: the maesters, the preparations, the words said over Baelor's body, the pyre, even the flames. He should have been burned on Dragonstone, not on Ashford's cliffs, after living a long and happy life, ruling the realm he had sacrificed for so much, not falling on the jousting field at his brother's hand. Baelor deserved that life and a proper funeral with all his family present, yet even Matarys, his youngest, didn't have enough time to get to Ashford  before Baelor had been turned to ash and bone. None of it was right or fair. 

She stayed over the pyre long after the flames had died, taking all the warmth with them. The wind howled a funeral song above her head, ruffling the ashes in front of her, and that too seemed wrong. Baelor's ashes should've danced with a different wind, warmer, dornish. She snuggled tighter into his cloak, draped over her shoulders. It smelled of him: pinewood and smoke,  and ink, and that dornish soap he was so fond of, and for a breath she almost felt as if safe in his arms.

‘Sister…’ a hand on her shoulder was unmistakably Maekar's, for no one else would've been a fool enough to dare touch her. A part of was surprised even he did, for Maekar had kept his distance since the trial. 

His grief turned out to be quieter than she’d expected, the guilt eating at his blunt and jagged demeanor, any hint of his princely composure thinning to a fractured soul of a broken man. ‘I'm sorry.’

The words fell between them like a deadweight, with an almost audible thud, too flat and hollow for the pain she was. They couldn't fill that void, they could not mend the broken bleeding mess that her heart had become, and if she didn't know better, she’d dismiss them as meaningless, a formality from a prince to the widow of his fallen brother, but it was Maekar who had spoken them. Not Aerys or Rhaygel, who despite loving their brother did not share a bond with her quite as deep as Maekar’s ran. He was the closest she ever had to a brother and she still  loved him for it, yet she could not find any comfort in his apology, not when she could almost see Baelor:s blood on his hands, should she stare  hard enough. It was Maekar's hand that dealt the blow, it was his mace that crushed Baelor's skull, it was his son who instigated the trial in the first place. A mere touch of his made her skin crawl and, shuddering, she shed Maekar's hand off her shoulder, tears burning in her eyes. Or was that ash? 

Maekar didn't speak another word. He retracted back silently, just a step behind her shoulder, far enough to be out of the view, yet close enough to catch her should she break. She wished she did, could, but the tears would not come. A part of her refused to admit Baelor gone even though she felt it with every inch of her body. His absence left a gaping wound in her chest, something inside her extinguished forever like his pyre. 

Time passed in fog , solitude and agony. During the days she'd wander around the castle, expecting to see her husband around every corner. She'd walk into the inner yard to see him spar with his brother, the way they did every morning, half clothed, grins wide, heat radiating off of their bodies, only to find the place empty and cold. At night she'd seek him in her dreams, yearning for one more touch, one more look of his mismatched eyes, one more soft spoken word, only to wake up alone shivering, her pillow wet with tears.  No matter how much wood she fed to the flames in their chamber, the chill would not die inside her. It almost felt like Baelor had taken all the warmth of the world with him. She'd wear his cloaks, his tunics, sit in his chair, at his desk with his books yet nothing brought her any sort of comfort, Baelor's absence aching like the wound that would not heal. 

No one dared disturb her. The servants, the hosts, the guards all carefully navigated around her broken heart, tending to her needs in most invisible ways. She could not bear the sight of the Kingsguard and they somehow miraculously, without a word spoken of hers, managed to keep watch without being seen. She'd wake dreading facing a soul and somehow the corridors would be deserted once she'd step out of her rooms. She suspected Maekar's hand in those little gestures, though had no way of knowing for sure. The grief that extinguished her fire feasted upon his soul, drawing a deeper wedge between them. 

The first to break her silence was Aegon. He snuck into Baelor's study a little over midnight, fortnight past the funeral, and didn't spot her until the floors squicked under her shifted leg. His eyes went wide for a moment, then he lowered his head. 

‘Your Grace, forgive me,’ he mumbled under his nose. ‘I didn't mean to disturb. The book…  Uncle's book I borrowed…’

Aegon's voice trailed off as he held up a tome he brought. She felt a stab in her heart at the memory of her and Baelor's countless  debates over his habit of taking quite a few heavy tomes on the trips. He'd always won, just like this time. She imagined him at her side, smiling at her in that very moment in his most impolite way of telling ‘I told you so’. Something inside broke with a thud. 

‘Keep it, Aegon,’ she almost whispered, not trusting her voice not to tremble. ‘You know he'd want you to.’

The boy's eyes shot up, tears silently falling down his chin, that stubborn Targaryen look on his face. Then in a blink he wrapped his arms around her waist and buried his face somewhere against her middle. She stroked his bold head until he gathered himself and bid her good night. 

A day later, somewhat steady on his feet, came Ser Duncan, begging for forgiveness on his knees and swearing his fealty. She was glad to see him recovering, yet could not bring herself to speak the oath. Ser Duncan's loyalty belonged to Baelor as was his oath to be accepted, and sitting in Baelor's chair, wearing Baelor's tunic, dreaming about one more touch of Baelor's hands, she would not be the one to take her husband's right.She could not find the words to assure the poor hedge knight she did not hold her husband's death against him either, so they just sat there in silence for some time. 

Valarr didn't come at all. The boy wasn't her blood, yet she only ever thought him a son and her heart broke for him. He'd always been the one to seek comfort from his father and now, with Baelor gone, he closed himself off from everyone, except for Kiera perhaps.

It was Maekar, who first made an effort to gather what was left of their family together the moment Aerion was well enough to hold a fork on his own. He suggested dinner and despite dreading seeing her nephew, she granted her presence, doing what she thought Baelor would want.

Do not bear any ill-will against my brother he'd say. 

And she didn't. Just as she didn't expect herself to lose her composure that easily, yet when Aerion argued with being sent in Lys, claiming i did nothing wrong she slapped him hard across the face, faster than anyone could react. His eyes flared up for a moment, his usual temper ignited in seconds. He hissed:

‘Last time someone struck a royal blood they…’

‘Do finish this sentence, nephew,’ she spat, cutting him short. ‘I dare you.’

Daeron frowned, Valarr's hand flaxed around his knife, Aegon stared in horror as her cold blue gaze clashed against Aerion's violet. The fire inside her raged, demanding he'd pay in blood for his deeds, a part of her anticipating a fight. Someone needed to wipe the floor with that arrogant child of a prince and she was more than willing to. 

‘I am a dragon…’ Aerion started again and she flat out scoffed. 

‘You are but a child,’ she argued. ‘A child and a fool, who has no honor or regard for someone else's life. A trial that killed your Prince and uncle also proved you're a coward, not that there was any doubt.’ The words tasted like poison on her lips, yet saying them was almost pleasing. ‘Your ancestors would be ashamed of you.’

Aerion seemed taken aback for a moment. ‘You can't talk to me like that! You know nothing about…’

‘Enough!’ Maekar smashed his hand on the table, just as Valarr rose from his seat, intent on defending her. ‘Another word out of your fucking mouth, boy, and so help you gods…’

Whether it was the fury in his father’s eyes or the murder in his aunt's, Aerion didn't speak another word and returned to his food, glaring daggers at his cousin from time to time. Valarr ignored him, as did she until deciding to excuse herself. 

Maekar came to her later that night, his sharp knock on the door cutting through the silence. She let him in, yet he remained by the door, rigid, sharp, as if his instinct of a seasoned fighter demanded he had an escape route. The heavy silence between them was defening. 

‘I'm sorry.’ She spoke first, her mouth curved in disgust with her own actions. ‘I shouldn't have hit him.’

Baelor would be disappointed. 

‘Well, someone had to.’ Maekar's voice was raw. ‘Ser Duncan's beating clearly didn't tame that boy's pride.’

He spoke firmly, steadily even, yet she could feel the extent of his trauma laced through the words. He almost lost Aerion in that fight, and even though the realm would've been better for it, Maekar could not bear the death of his child, no matter the horrors that child committed. The way his jaw trembled, told her Maekar was wrangling with his torn heart at that very moment. 

‘I should have done it,’ he sighed. ‘Should've dragged him by the ear out of that room and made him take the accusations back. I should've…’

His own words seemed to cut him deep, for Maekar's whole frame shrinked. ‘If I did…  if i fucking tried he'd..  Baelor'd be… ‘

A broken sound escaped his mouth, painfully close to a whimper. For a moment the mask of a perfect prince fractured, Maekar's agony almost overwhelming. Then he managed a half choked ‘I'm sorry.’ before turning to the door, covering in the shadows as if regretting exposing himself. 

“Maekar…” she spoke, surprised by the fondness her voice carried. He froze, not daring to look her in the eyes, hand on the door handle. She walked to him, placed a hand on his shoulder, steadying, comforting.

“My husband's choice was his own to make.’ She said firmly. ‘Its weight is not yours to carry.’

He took a sharp breath in and shook his head:

‘And yet, the blow that killed him is.’

***

Baelor came to her that night, as warm and beautiful as the day they first met, sun dancing in his blue eye and sparking in his brown. She crushed into him like a storm and he laughed in her ear, his soft voice wrapping around her like a cloak. 

‘I miss you,’ she whispered somewhere in the crook of his neck.