Fruit Of The Vine

You had woken that morning to Adam's alarm, which was earlier than yours and which he had silenced immediately with the efficiency of someone who had been doing it for long enough that the motion was automatic. You had made a noise of protest into the pillow. He had said, very quietly, go back to sleep, and pressed his lips to your shoulder, and you had heard him move through the flat with his customary unhurried silence — the kettle, the shower, the soft sounds of a man getting dressed in the dark so as not to wake you.

You had not gone back to sleep.

You had lain there and listened to him move and felt the particular quality of that morning — the specific weight of it, the thing it was the morning of — and when he came back into the bedroom to find his watch you had reached for his hand in the dark.

He had sat on the edge of the bed and held it.

"You're ready," he had said. Not a question.

"I know," you had answered. And then, "Say it again."

A pause. And then, with the quiet seriousness he brought to things that mattered, "You are ready. You have always been ready. The jury is fortunate to evaluate you."

You had pulled him down by his tie — his good one, the ceremony tie, deep navy, which you had straightened that morning with a proprietary attention he had submitted to with barely concealed pleasure — and kissed him once, firmly.

"Go be promoted, commander," you had smiled against his upturning lips.

He had looked at you in the dark with the expression that was still, after all this time, the most affecting thing you had ever seen on a human face. Then he had tucked the loose strand behind your ear and gone.

Presently, your thesis sat on the table in front of the jury. Five copies, spiral bound, representing three years and four months of your life in approximately ninety thousand words. You had read it so many times in the past fortnight that the sentences had lost their meaning and become simply shapes, and now, standing at the small lectern with your own annotated copy open before you, the meaning had returned with a clarity that was almost violent.

The argumentation came out cleanly. You had practised it enough that the words arrived in the right order without requiring conscious assembly, which left a portion of your attention free to read the jury — a skill you had developed not from academic training but from years of understanding, via Hardy, via the long education of paying attention, that what people communicated in a room was rarely confined to what they said aloud.

The external examiner, a professor from Edinburgh with a reputation for rigour and a publication record in Victorian poetics that you had read comprehensively, was watching you with an expression of focused scepticism that you had decided, in the first five minutes, to interpret as engagement rather than hostility. The internal examiner, who had supervised a colleague of yours and was known to be sympathetic to interdisciplinary arguments, was making small notes in the margin of her copy. Good notes, you thought. The angle of her pen suggested agreement.

The third member of the jury had asked two questions already, both of which had landed in the right place — the place where your argument was strongest, which suggested either that he was building toward something more difficult or that he was genuinely following the logic. You chose to believe the latter and remain alert to the former.

The fourth was thinking. You left him to it.

You were midway through the section on The Well-Beloved when the door opened.

It opened carefully — the specific quality of careful that you knew, the consciousness of a person aware of the room they were entering and trying very hard not to disrupt it. You did not look. You were mid-sentence, the argument at its most critical juncture, the external examiner's pen hovering above his notepad with an attention that you were not going to interrupt.

But the air in the room shifted, and then — underneath the chalk and old paper smell of the seminar room — something else arrived.

His cologne. It was faint — he was not a man who wore it heavily — but the specific quality of it was unmistakable and had been unmistakable for approximately eighteen months now. Clean and somewhat resinous, the specific warmth of it that you associated with his coat and cold mornings and the hollow of his shoulder on every morning that had followed that first December one. Faint enough that no one else in the room would have registered it. Present enough that you registered nothing else.

Something in your chest settled.

Not the anxiety — that had been manageable throughout, the argument solid enough to carry you. But the particular quality of aloneness that came with standing in front of people who held authority over something you had given three years of your life to. It settled, and in its place arrived a warmth that moved through your shoulders and down your spine, the warmth of being known, of being held in someone's attention from across a room even when that attention was completely invisible and completely silent.

You made your next point with more conviction than any that had come before it.

The questions ran for forty minutes, and you met every one of them.

The external examiner did not, as it turned out, intend hostility by his expression — he intended rigour, which was exactly what you'd prepared for and considerably preferable to goodwill. His questions were precise and demanding and you met each one in the same register, without apology, without deflection. At one point he pushed on the third chapter — the argument about formal constraint as emotional strategy — and you pushed back, calmly and with the particular certainty of someone who had been turning that argument over for three years and had long since arrived at the place beyond doubt.

He made a note. The note had the quality, from where you stood, of agreement reluctantly reached.

The fourth jury member, who had been thinking throughout, asked the last question: whether your argument about structural repression in Hardy could be applied beyond his work, or whether it was, in the end, specific to his particular biographical and historical context.

You considered this for a moment. In the chairs along the wall, the figure was still.

"The biographical specificity is part of the argument," you said. "Hardy matters because he was who he was, in the time he was, under the pressures he was under. To extract the structural principle and apply it universally would be to do exactly what Hardy resisted — to treat individual emotional experience as interchangeable. The general principle exists. But it only becomes meaningful in the specific case."

A pause.

"That seems like a philosophical position as much as a literary one," the fourth jury member said.

"I think the distinction is overdrawn," you said. "Literature is psychology conducted by other means."

You had said that before, some eighteen months ago, to a certain man standing in a small bookshop across from you with a quality of attention that had rearranged several of your assumptions about what it felt like to be listened to. The memory of it arrived briefly and completely and you set it aside, and the fourth jury member nodded, and wrote something down.

The external examiner looked along the table at his colleagues and back at you.

"Thank you," he said. "We'll ask you to wait outside while we deliberate."

The corridor was beige and institutional and had the particular quality of corridors outside rooms where decisions were being made. Your supervisor was there and was now standing with her arms folded and an expression that was carefully neutral in the way of someone who was not neutral at all.

"The Edinburgh man," you said.

"Came around," she said. "I saw it in his face. Third chapter. Great job there."

You exhaled with a laugh.

Adam was standing a little further down the corridor with his back to the wall and his hands in his pockets and he was still in the full dress uniform of a Commander of the Metropolitan Police, which was a formal and precisely cut garment and which he was wearing with the composed authority he brought to everything — except that his hair was slightly wind-disordered in a way that contradicted the formality entirely, and there was a quality in his stillness that was not the usual kind, not the practised quality of a man who had chosen stillness, but the stillness of someone who had been waiting with focused intensity and was very glad the waiting was over.

He looked at you when you started to approach him and crossed what remained of the corridor in three strides and his hands came out of his pockets and he put them on your face — both of them, your face held between his palms, his eyes moving over you once with the diagnostic attention of a man who read people for a living and then settling, warm and certain.

"Well?" he asked.

"I think so," you mumbled.

"I know so," said your supervisor, from somewhere behind you, and disappeared with the tact she occasionally produced when the situation called for it.

"You were extraordinary," he said with that particular look of adoration that he had institutionalized when it came to looking into your eyes.

"You were late," you teased.

"I ran," he said with a smile that began to show on his lips. "Across three floors of Scotland Yard in full dress uniform. I am reliably informed it was undignified."

"I felt you coming in."

"You were mid-argument about The Well-Beloved." The corner of his mouth moved a fraction more. "I did not want to interrupt that."

You looked at him — the uniform, the slightly wind-disordered hair that contradicted it, the quality of slightly effortful composure that told you he had in fact been running, or close to it.

"You came straight from the ceremony?" you asked.

"Yes."

"They'll have wanted you to stay."

"Undoubtedly," he said, and his tone placed the matter precisely where he intended it.

You looked at him for a moment longer, and the warmth of it — the specific, accumulated warmth of knowing this man and being known by him — was such that the beige corridor and the institutional overhead lighting and the decision being reached twelve feet away behind a closed door became briefly and completely irrelevant.

His thumb moved at your cheekbone.

You laughed — a real one, sudden and warm — and he watched it happen with the expression that had always been your favourite: quiet, unperformed, completely glad. Then he drew you forward and wrapped his arms around you properly, fully, and held on with the unguarded completeness of a man who had long since stopped requiring a reason to hold on.

You pressed your face into his chest. The uniform was slightly scratchy at the lapel, and he smelled of his cologne and beneath it, warmer, simply of him.

"The external examiner," he said, into your hair. "How was he?"

"Rigorous."

"And?"

"And I was better," you said.

His arms tightened. "Yes," he said. "You were."

You heard the door open. The external examiner's head appeared.

"If you'd like to come back in," he said, nothing in his tone of voice indicated any effect because of the scene of warm stillness in which you and Adam found yourselves in.

The jury had questions of a different order now — revisions, minor corrections, a request to expand a footnote in the second chapter that you immediately identified as the Edinburgh man leaving his mark on the final document, which was his prerogative and a small price. The internal examiner was smiling. The fourth jury member had closed his copy of the thesis, which you had come to understand, by the end, meant he was satisfied.

The external examiner said Doctor when he addressed you for the first time, near the end, and did it with the slightly ceremonial air of a man conferring something he respected the weight of, and the word landed with a quality you had not anticipated — not triumphant, but settled. True. A thing completed.

Afterward, the room filled with the particular atmosphere of post-viva gatherings — colleagues and supervisors and a few departmental faculty, wine opened too early in plastic cups, the compression of three years of work into an hour of communal relief. You moved through it in a state that was simultaneously present and slightly removed, the way you sometimes felt after something enormous had resolved, the nervous system still running at the pitch of the event while the event itself had concluded.

Professor Hartley found you near the window.

He was the sort of man who was kind in the abstract and specific in his unsolicited opinions, and he had a great deal to say about chapter four. You listened. He was not wrong, precisely — his point about the secondary literature was fair — but the subtext of his commentary was that you had been too confident in your departures from received critical consensus, too willing to stake a position and defend it, and this was a criticism you had heard before and had no particular intention of acting on.

You nodded at intervals.

And then Adam was beside you.

He appeared at your shoulder with the quiet, unannounced quality of movement that was characteristic of him — not stealth, simply a man who had learned to occupy space without announcing himself, and who had crossed the room while Hartley was mid-sentence and arrived without disrupting anything. He looked at Hartley with a pleasant, measured expression that communicated polite attention and disclosed nothing.

"Professor Hartley," you said, "this is Adam Dalgliesh."

Hartley, to his credit, registered the uniform without making a matter of it. "Commander," he acknowledged, and returned, with the confidence of a man comfortable with his own authority, to his point about the secondary literature.

And then — so gradually and with such complete naturalness that it might not have been deliberate, except that with this man nothing was not deliberate — Adam's hand settled at the small of your back.

The touch was light. His fingers moved in the same slow, deliberate way they moved across the small of your back on evenings at his flat when you were reading and he was thinking and the room was warm and neither of you needed to speak. It was a private touch. A touch that knew you, that had learned you, that belonged entirely to the register of your life together and had been transposed, without announcement, into the room full of your colleagues.

You nodded at something Hartley said about methodological confidence.

The circles continued.

You became aware that your attention, which had been dutifully directed at Hartley's point about received consensus, had migrated entirely to the four square inches of your lower back and the hand moving quietly against it, and that you were nodding with the serene focus of someone who had understood nothing in the past thirty seconds and was entirely at peace with this.

— and I think the argument would benefit from a more measured engagement with the existing scholarship, rather than the somewhat declarative approach you've taken in places —

You nodded. Adam's hand continued its circles. You were, you decided, absolutely not going to revise a single declarative sentence.

"Thank you," you said to Hartley, when he reached a natural pause. "That's very useful."

Hartley looked gratified and moved away toward the wine, and you turned to Adam.

He was already looking at you. He had, you suspected, been looking at you throughout. His expression was composed and pleasant and entirely innocent, and his eyes were doing something considerably less innocent, and his hand had not moved from your back.

"Commander Dalgliesh," you said.

"Doctor," he said. And the word in his voice — the specific warmth he put into it, the private version of his register that still, after everything, arrived differently from all his others — did something to your sternum that you were not going to examine in a room full of your colleagues.

"The ceremony," you said. "How was it?"

"It was formal," he said. "The Commissioner is a thorough man. He spoke at some length about institutional responsibility and the obligations of rank."

"And you left in the middle of it."

"I left," he answered carefully, "at a natural interval."

You raised an eyebrow.

"A relatively natural interval," he amended, with dignity.

"Adam."

"There was a gap between speakers," he said. "I used it."

"And ran across three floors of Scotland Yard."

"Efficiently," he said. "I'm told the pace was barely noticed."

You looked at him — the hand at your back, the expression that was composed on the surface and underneath it simply and entirely happy — and felt the warmth of it move through you with the thoroughness of something you had grown so accustomed to that its absence would now be inconceivable.

"You should have stayed," you smiled at him. "It was your promotion. You've spent so many years earning it."

He looked at you for a moment with the long, quiet look that was its own form of speech. His hand on your back moved — not in circles now, simply his palm flat and warm, the uncomplicated weight of it.

"I have spent many years," he said, "earning a great many things. Some of them are at the Yard and I am glad of them." He held your gaze with the complete and unhurried attention that had been, from the very beginning, his most devastating quality. "And some of them are here."

You looked at him.

"There is nowhere," he said, "that I would rather have been."

He said it the way he said the things that were most true — quietly, without ornament, with the directness of a man who had learned, at considerable cost, that the distance between feeling something and saying it was not a distance worth maintaining.

You reached up and straightened his tie, which did not need straightening, which was simply something your hands knew how to do now — the good navy tie, the ceremony tie, which you had pulled once this morning in the dark of the bedroom and were straightening now, and he stood still for it with the expression of a man who found this more affecting than he intended to let on.

"Take me home, Adam," you said. Quietly, so only he heard it.

His hand on your back pressed in, warm and certain.

"Yes," he smiled, and the smile reached his eyes in that way you so adored.

Outside, the December light was clean and pale and honest across the street, the kind of winter light that simplified everything, that stripped away the soft qualifying layers and left only the clear fact of things. He took your hand as you walked. Simply, naturally, without preamble, as though it were something he had been doing his whole life.

You walked beside him through the pale winter afternoon — the Commander of the Metropolitan Police in his formal uniform with his slight wind-disordered hair, and the newly minted Doctor in her good coat with the strand of hair already escaping — and the city continued around you with its magnificent indifference, and the winter light lay over everything with the simple, unelaborated quality of a true thing acknowledged.

His thumb moved against the back of your hand as you walked. The same slow, deliberate tracing that had begun in a corridor and would end, you knew, in the warmth of wherever the evening took you. You tightened your hand in his.

He looked sideways at you, and the look was the morning version, the open version — the face of him that existed before the day assembled its management, which was the face you now carried with you when he wasn't there.

"Robert, from the Bodleian," he said. "We should write to confirm the appointment."

"Sweet Robert," you nodded. “Yes, we should.”

"Thursday, perhaps?"

"Or," you said, "maybe we could not do that today."

A pause. His thumb continued its slow circuit against your hand. "We could not do that today," he agreed, with the seriousness of a man making a considered decision.

"We could do considerably nothing today," you said.

"An attractive proposal," he said. "Put forward with your characteristic decisiveness, doctor."

You smiled at the pavement. He lifted your hand — briefly, without ceremony — and pressed his lips to the back of it, warm and certain, in the middle of the December street, without appearing to concern himself in the slightest with who might see a Commander of the Metropolitan Police doing so.

You looked at him.

He looked back, and the look was everything — the bookshop and the pub and the poem on the table and every lamplit room and every morning since that first December one — all of it present in the simple, unhurried quality of his gaze.

"Come on then," he said.

And you walked on together into the honest winter afternoon, his hand warm around yours, the pale light making everything clear.

A.N.: well, we've come to the technical end of this story. I have to confess that I cried a little while writing this epilogue, there's something about Adam (not just my characterization of him, but the real P.D James' Adam Dalgliesh) that just speaks to my soul.

As I said in previous chapters, this may be the "end" of the story I had originally in mind, but it will definitely not be the definitive end. I have a handful of scenarios planned out (just pending writing) for them.

As a side note, I've created a Spotify playlist with the works that somehow inspired this story. It is the first time I do this, but I wanted to share it with you, so here you can find it.

Thank you so much to everyone that has read this cute lil' story. You will always have a place in my heart.

Dalgliesh taglist: @harubonchari @baelorenthusiast @probablydeadbynowdotcom @caffeinatedwoman @thorins-queen-of-erebor @sgmwester @ms0anthrop @himbohunnicutt

It was preposterous! The Hand of the king? the crowned prince? your father participating in this unneeded risk?! He must have fever, this was maddening, everybody seemed to think it as well but there was nothing to be done now but watch the trial by seven play out.

And watch you did, with horror, every single stomp of horses feet, thrown lances, swinging swords and spit of blood or crack of teeth. The one blessing, you supposed, was that he fought for the side your mischievous cousin hoped to win and so the boys cheers and remarks did not wear on you as deeply. Had he been rooting against your father you’d of soured quickly. You could deal with plotting lords and envious ladies but you did not think you could suffer through hearing your own blood shout for your father’s ruin.

You had never been more tense then you were when Ser Duncan pulled beaten cousin Aerion up and ordered that he yield. This had to end, it needed to end now before something horrible happened. Egg, who had taken up squeezing your hand as you watched with wide eyes, heard his brothers words before you. He jumped and clapped at his brothers announcement and you felt your body relax for the first time since your father had ridden out.

There was no clapping on your part, it didn't feel right given the death and the fact that your family was looking quite rough, but a small relieved smile did settle on your face.

That smile did not last the hour.

It may now never return.

“Prince Baelor is dead.”

You overheard it from a maid in the hall while going to your chambers to freshen, wanting to rid yourself of the layer of anxious sweat that had built on your skin.

A entire new layer was produced from your sprint to the maesters chambers. Surly he was there, surely he was not dead and just very unwell. The maesters would be working on him.

There was work being done but it was on Prince Aerion. Your neck craned as you scanned the room. Where was he?

“Vaella” Cousin Daeron was being held to a seat, a nursemaid holding a blood soaked cloth this his face. He’d been trampled, apparently at the very start of the event.

“I did not know it would be him-“ Daeron attempted but the women tending to him begged him to stop talking, it just produced more blood.

“where is he! Where is my father?” You tore into the hallway again unwilling to stop your search, mind empty and eyes blurred. You started crying so hard that you could not see clearly and ran right into the big hedge knight. The dumb, huge, unimportant man! Your father had told you he did not even think the oaf had truly been knighted! He had quite a bit of blood on him and you felt the warm crimson transfer to your dress and hands. The guards intercepting you before you could barrel into the room any more or the shocked victor could babble up something that likely would not be all the comforting to you. Their remarks were no better.

“it’s no sight for you princess,”

“best not to remember him like this.”

“let the sisters work”

“Prince Baelor would not want you to see this.”

Every sentence driving the reality of the situation into you more. Each one physically jarring you. When Ser Donnel made to take your arm and escort you away you stepped back quickly. Evading his grip.

“I’ll pray the seven spare you.” He’d supported the side that fought against him, they were culpable in your mind. The venom in your tone kept them all back and you fled to your room, to your maids and ladies.

You did not want them, you wanted your mother but she was all the way in kings landing, she and Mataerys likely would not know of the news until nightfall tomorrow and by then your father would likely be on the funeral pyre.

Valarr attempted to comfort you, but he was a ghost himself, still not completely comprehending the gravity of the situation. He needed your comfort as much aa you needed his and you simply had none to give. Eventually he left you alone too.

It was night when you finally stood again, shoulders sloped forward and hands still shaking. They couldn’t stop and you could not sleep. Even laying in bed felt suffocating now so you slipped from the chambers and walked aimlessly down the hall.

You considered for a moment seeking out wherever the silent sisters were working. You wanted to see him…maybe you could help? Bring useful might make you feel better-or at least more normal?

Instead though you found yourself stood before Daeron’s chambers. His remark earlier about not knowing it would be Baelor was still rattling around in your mind. What had he meant?

There was a grumbled decline of entry from inside the room when you knocked. Normally you would have turned around, obeyed the remark. But this incident had you feeling very unlike yourself. Emotions fluctuating and you felt a victim to them, unable to control your reactions. You did not enjoy feeling out sorts you just wanted your chest to stop racing and your mind to stop running.

With a clenched jaw you grabbed at the handle and pulled the door opened.

“who did you think it was?” You asked him right away when your wild and tired eyes located Daeron. He was sat right in front of the fireplace, flames so close there were beads of sweat on his under eyes.

You came forward to where he was and grabbed his shoulder to turn him away from the fire and towards you. He was so clammy that his tunic was damp under your hands.

“Daeron did you see this?” You begged.

He wouldn’t look at you, even the minor glance he made to almost meet your eyes seemed like it pained him. He did not think any of this would help you. It was done. Prince Baelor was already dead. He was taken back that you had even process what he said in the maesters rooms earlier. He supposed it was a testament to how intelligent you were, that your mind, even in the thickness of shock, could grab onto things and filter through them later

“Y-you knew and said nothing!” His eyes closed when your tone took a turn from inquisitive to bitter. He’d been bracing for that since you entered his chambers.

“Not clearly.” Daeron defended himself, weakly, but it was something. “I did not know plainly that it would be him.” He bit out.

Your forehead was a wrinkled mess, deep lines between your brows and your eyes, the whites were so red from tears in this moment that the color of the middle looked altered. You looked a fright and that was as before anybody’s eyes even traveled down to see your bloody, filthy, gown.

“worthless little nightmares that you grumble on about into your bloody cups.” There was the anger, the Targaryen blood you all shared peeking out now that you forgot about being liked and diplomatic.

Daeron had been at the red keep when he had his first vision…woke in the middle of feast where many of your young children were asleep on your chairs with cheeks squished against your mother’s laps. It had been terrifying for you, for the adults as well. You remembered how nobody could seem to console him. That was many years ago by this point and so you really only recalled your father telling you that the gods had given your cousin a gift. It did not seem like a gift to you, not when you had memories of Maekar dragging Daeron out of his mother’s arms because he wouldn’t stop grabbing into her tighter and tighter.

It was clearly a gift that he did not desire. the pressure and guilt and the unease. You knew all of that must surly be there in him and in another circumstance you would have been kinder but this was your father that was lost. Had he said something- you could taste the bitterness on your tongue and knew that he did not deserve whatever you would say next so you swallowed thickly and took a steadying breath.

“I….i know you are not specifically to blame.” You eventually got out. That was what you could offer him at this moment. That was as far as your kindness could extend.

Daeron hadn’t diverted his eyes from you during that whole verbal lashing. He’d suffered worse ones for issue far less painful than what you were experiencing. When you started to sit down, your skirts pooling around you as you joined him on the floor be sighed heavily and took a long swig from his cup.

“I might tell you it grows easier, mourning a parent.” Daeron knew it would be a kindness to say that and offerer some comfort. People had told him the same thing when his mother died.

He diverted his eyes from you back to his cup and gave a dry, exhausted laugh.

“But it would be a lie.”

Your lips twitched and hands wound into the side of your gown. Knuckles quickly going white from how fiercely you gripped at the fabric to try and remain in control of yourself.

This pain would just continue on until it consumed you completely? That was what he was telling you!

“forgive me Vaella.” Your cousin choked out after a long few minutes of your both processing what he had said. When you looked at him, face still locked in the flames you could see his eyes were glossy and red. Perhaps the color was from the firelight reflecting onto his light blue eyes or he’d been doing some crying if his own.

“he was your uncle too, i know you had no desire to join the list let alone a trial.”

“A uncle is not the same thing as a father, you’ve every right to your grief…however it might manifest.” He looked at you finally, really looked at you.

Clearly people had taken issue with how he nursed his shattered heart when he lost him mother.

“does it help that much?” You asked eyes dropping to the cup that was set beside him in the floor. The red stain on his bottom lip to your it was mostly likely an arbor red that he was enjoying tonight.

“To much for my own good.” He groans and lays back over the rug. Letting his mind spin about as his eyes regained a clear focus on the ceiling.

“it helps with the pain,” he turned his face to the side, showing of his maimed ear.

You grimaced slightly at the sight of it, the thick stitches he had going up the hallow of his cheek and to his ear.

“Poppy would be better suited for that issue.”

“Yes, well poppy makes every man think their dreams and nightmares are real….” He leaned up onto his elbow and pushed his cup over towards you. “I worry what it would make of mine.”

You sigh and glance between him and the cup.

“you won’t be a drunkard after one night of overindulgence.” He assured. He knew the pain in your eyes, the tension in every inch of your body and the way your mind was racing. He could pratically hear your thoughts. He’d had all the same ones years before.

How would the family go on? Would anybody live him as much as they had? Things would never be the same? Would you ever smile again Would people ever stop whispering around you? watching your every movement for signs for heartbreak?

He knew the wine wouldn’t actually fix any of this, but it would settle you some. Slow your brain down. He hoped it would let the shock leave you.

You picked up the glass, hand still shaking and Daeron frowned deeper at the tremor. He did not have the most stable hands himself but he did touch your elbow to help you as you drank the contents of the cup down.

Watching thin rivets of crimson liquid train die. Your chin to your neck and soak into the neckline of your gown. He made no attempt to keep the liquid from pooling there, the fabric was already ruined from the blood.

You coughed a bit after swallowing down the last gulp and groaned at the head rush it gave you. Your eyes instantly softer and forhead smooth.

“I’ll have another.” You decided and got your feet under you to go to the small table and fill up the cup again. Almost reaching the brim.

He wanted to warn you to slow down, but he’d also assumed you’d come here because he was the only one who had no room to judge how you grieved, how you got through this first horrible night.

At some point, between glass two and three he’d gotten up and urged you to sit on the edge of the bed.

“the last thing we need to you falling and hitting your head.” He explained when you gave him a disgruntled groan.

“no,” you stood back up, but had to sit right back down because he was to close to you for your body to have any room to stay upright.

“Vaella, just sit down for now.” He sighed. Perhaps he shouldn’t have suggested the wine?

“No,” you pushed your hands against his stomach to urge him back a bit and he hissed a bit, because there was a lot of bruising there that you just hadn’t seen. “I want to talk to him!”

He backed up a bit, having no want to keep you somewhere against your will, he did not want to do anybting that would upset your further. Today has been upsetting enough.

“who?”

“Aerion-“ you snap. Voice giving away the fiery Targaryen nature that you had despite your more simple features. The wine had apparently stifled the sadness but that just mean the rage and anger could simmer to the surface. “It’s all his fault-all of this! Your bloody brother is-“

“my brother is both arrogant and insecure. Which makes for quite the troubling combination in a person.”

You paused, hand on his door. he is not wrong about Aerion and his nature but it also does not make you feel any better about this situation. Foolishly you thought yelling at him-hurting him would lesson your pain.

“and he currently lays in bed unconscious from poppy because of how throughly he’s been beaten. Save your torture of him for another day when he can feel it.”

Again, you suppose he is right.

“Has age made you wise?”

“I am not that old.” Daeron looked down at you.

“you are older than me.” You weren’t meeting his concerned eyes.

“fine-yes I am old and wise and your elder. Will that make you listen to me Vaella?”

You crack the faintest smile and chuckle. It’s not joyful but it’s there, a expression of amusement and not just agony and fear.

“When my mother died,” he sighed it was still painful tk think about. “I didn’t sleep for five days.” You knew where he was going.

“I can’t sleep.” You whispered shaking your head. “Don’t make me-don’t suggest it Daeron!”

He pulled you into him when you started to panic. Tucking your face into his chest and he wrapped his other arm around your back rubbing soothing circles.

“going mad will not make any of this easier, i assure you that. Some rest will make this easier, make tommrow more bareable.” The pyre would be lit then. Baelor, the crowned prince and hand to the king would be put to rest.

“Tomorrow cannot come.” You grip the fabric of his tunic. “I never want it to be tomorrow. He won’t be here tomorrow. I had a father when I woke this morning, I broke my fast with him, I walked to the pavilions with him. If I go to sleep I’ll never wake in a world that he is still in.” Your voice broke, eyes wetting the cloth of his shirt and finally your wrapped your arms fully around him. Fingers digging into his back.

“I cannot wake for a day he does not breath in.”

Daeron closed his eyes letting you squeeze him as hard as you needed, lets you ramble all the words that were in your head. He’d thought them before, had felt exactly as you had.

“then at least lay down,” he pulled your head back a bit cupping your face. Nose red from crying and lips swollen from salty tears. “You do not have to sleep, or even close your eyes. But you need to lay down. Give your body a break.” You shook your head.

“I’m scared to be alone, Valarr left-“ you hiccuped and sniffled.

“Then you can lay here, cousin.” He motioned to his bed. “It’s plenty large, and I toss and turn all night…you wouldn’t be able to sleep even if you wished to!” He promised.

“I shouldn’t.” You whisper and he sighed, knowing what you meant. The propriety of it all.

“you are my cousin…you’ve lost something quite important to you. Whispering maids in some shack of a keep have no leg to stand on.” He promised.

“Really?” You stepped back, wiping your nose. You really did want to be next to somebody. It made you feel better. He specifically made you feel better.

“I swear to you, it is fine.” He stepped away and went to a trunk finishing out one of his long tunics and he held it out for you.

“Oh.” You looked down at yourself seeing the heavy gown, the blood and mud stains and then looked to him. “Father suggested I wear this one today.” You whispered.

“it’s just something to wear In bed, that’s all. You can put it back on in the morning and every day after if that is what you wish.” He was too considerate. Too thoughtful and sensitive. It made trusting him easy and so you took the tunic and stepped into the bathing chambers to get your gown the down, struggling slightly until the fell to a heap on the floor. You left it there and stepped back into his view wearing the grey tunic, tied tight against your collar and hung to just your knees.

“I’m not sleeping.”

“I know-just resting.” He was already laid in the bed. He didn’t want to sleep himself but he had a feeling you wouldn’t get in if he just sat in the chair by the fire and drank.

“yes…I’m not going to close my eyes.” You kneel on the other end and push the warm covers back enough that you can slip under them and lay flat on your back. Eyes blinking as you counted the nails in the ceiling.

Daeron did not speak, he just laid flat on his back, closing his eyes and staying like that until he hear your breathing change. Peeking a eye open then to sleep your head turned, relaxed to the side and your mouth open slightly.

Sleep took you and he knew that act was a mix of cruel and merciful.

He stayed up, watching you, fixing the blankets over you when you squirmed under them and when you turned towards the warmth he radiated he stilled, letting your arm lace over his chest and your head hide between his side and arm.

He did not dare more, and he did not even considerate trying to wake you to shake you off. If he could provide this comfort to you than he knew he should, it was the least he could do.

His eyes had deep bags by morning and when the door rattled open, and he sat his father large broad shoulders fill the entirety of the frame he had to stop himself from groaning. That would wake you.

Maekar had heard whispering of his niece not being in her chambers…and then he heard murmurings about Daeron having a guest in his rooms.

Perhaps he was the sick one for even considering those two things had any overlap. But he was not wrong. Daeron laid in the middle of his bed with Vaella clutching to him, her leg tangled over one of his knees snoring into his chest.

“Don’t-“ he warned through gritted teeth when it looked like his eldest was going to start making some long list of excuses. He doubted any of it would be believable, and knew none of them would change the situation that they’d been found in.

“Not today…” Maekar grumbled, shaking his head. He was going to watch his brother’s body be burned today, thinking about how his son had sullied his brother’s daughter. Ruined your pristine reputation. Was just a issue he could not address right now.

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