A/N: Part of Achievements, Success. Can be read separately.

Pregnancy never truly felt like yours.

Everyone spoke about the miracle, the blessing, the new life growing beneath your heart, but every congratulation, every gentle hand resting on your swollen belly, and every excited smile seemed meant for a different woman. You nodded, smiled whenever you were expected to, allowed the seamstresses to measure you for maternity dresses, listened politely as the nurses spoke about childbirth, and let Valarr spend hours with his palm spread across your stomach, captivated every single time the baby moved. He radiated such complete, unrestrained happiness that it was impossible not to notice. There were nights when he stayed awake for no other reason than to feel one tiny kick beneath his hand, laughing quietly to himself as though he had just witnessed the greatest miracle in the world.

You would watch him from your pillow, trying to share that happiness that he radiated when feeling the baby's kicks or replicating his smile at your absurd food cravings.

There were moments when the weight of the child beneath your ribs reminded you far too vividly of how he had come to exist. Nof the love Valarr already felt for him, but of the night he had been conceived, of the feeling that you had never truly been able to choose, and of the suffocating certainty that your life had begun slipping beyond your own grasp long before you realized it.

Sometimes your hands would instinctively settle over the gentle curve of your stomach, and with them came memories you wished had never existed at all, from the time you deliberately rolled down the stairs, of desperate moments when grief had whispered impossible thoughts into your mind, of days when you had caught yourself praying that the pregnancy would simply... end before it became real. Those thoughts had horrified you almost as quickly as they had appeared, leaving behind nothing but a guilt so profound it became difficult to breathe beneath its weight.

Then you would press both palms more firmly against your belly, as though trying to apologize through the touch alone, squeezing your eyes shut because the baby wasn't to blame. He never had been.

And yet the memory refused to leave. Silent, Persistent.

The labor ended in an emergency cesarean section after endless hours of pain.

Your contractions had begun before dawn, and for nearly an entire day you endured a kind of agony that seemed to have no end. Exhaustion slowly replaced fear until even breathing became a conscious effort, while the voices around you blurred together into rapid instructions, the metallic clatter of surgical instruments, and the relentless beeping of monitors.

Someone said the baby was in distress, and everything happened far too quickly.

The lights of the operating room blinded you. A blue surgical drape concealed your body while the anesthesia stole every sensation below your chest. You couldn't feel pain anymore, only strange, unnatural pressure, as though someone was rearranging your entire existence from the inside out.

Valarr remained beside you in sterile scrubs, holding your hand so tightly it almost hurt. He kept whispering that everything would be all right, though his own voice trembled with fear.

You barely managed to answer. You were too exhausted, too empty.

That's how the cry came. Your baby's first cry. The entire operating room seemed to relax at once. The nurses smiled, the doctors let out relieved breaths, and Valarr broke down in tears.

"It's a boy."

The words echoed through the room amid congratulations and relieved laughter as a nurse carefully wrapped the newborn in a soft white blanket before carrying him gently toward you.

"Would you like to hold him?"

You lifted your head, saw him. The world seemed to stop.

He had the same hair, still damp, the same pale skin, and the same delicate features that, even on a newborn, resembled Valarr so painfully that your breath caught in your throat. It was like looking at a miniature version of him.

Suddenly every memory came flooding back.

The car. Your dress. The tears. You didn't see your son, but the beginning of everything you had never wanted. Air vanished from your lungs. Instinctively, you leaned away, only a few inches, but it was enough.

"No..." The word escaped in a broken, barely audible whisper. "No... not yet."

The nurse hesitated, visibly confused, before gently trying to bring the baby closer to your chest once more. You shook your head again. More firmly this time.

Tears began slipping silently down your cheeks before you even realized you were crying. You couldn't look at him. Every time you did, you saw Valarr.

His nose. His mouth. The shape of his tiny closed eyes.

It was as though your husband's face had been made small enough to fit inside a white blanket, and it was destroying you.

Valarr stopped crying. The overwhelming joy that had illuminated his face only moments earlier slowly dissolved into something you had never wanted to see directed at you: confusion, disbelief, and a hurt so raw it almost seemed childlike. His eyes moved from the baby to you, then back again, as though he were desperately searching for an explanation that would make the moment less impossible.

"My love..." His voice cracked so softly it barely sounded like his own. "He's our son."

You knew.

God, of course you knew.

You had carried him beneath your heart for months. You had felt every movement, every kick against your ribs, every restless night, every ache that came with bringing another life into the world. There had never been a single moment when you forgot he was your son. That was precisely why it hurt so much.

You weren't rejecting the baby.

You were rejecting everything his face awakened inside you. His hair, his pale skin. The unmistakable resemblance to the man standing beside your hospital bed. Every feature seemed to pull another memory to the surface until you could scarcely breathe beneath the weight of them.

It wasn't your child you couldn't bear to look at. It was the past staring back at you through his tiny face.

You wanted to love him. God knows you wanted to.

You wanted to reach out, gather him against your chest, and feel that overwhelming rush of devotion everyone promised would arrive the moment a mother first held her child. You wanted to look at him and see nothing except your baby. Instead, all you could find was guilt, a grief so immense it seemed to hollow you out from the inside. Grief for the woman you had once been, for the future she had imagined, for every version of your life that had quietly disappeared long before you had realized you were mourning it.

The baby let out another small cry, his tiny hands curling instinctively inside the blanket, completely unaware of the storm his existence had just awakened. The sound shattered whatever fragile composure you still possessed.

A sob escaped your throat before you could stop it. Then another. Tears blurred your vision until the room dissolved into streaks of white lights and indistinct faces.

You pressed trembling fingers over your mouth in a futile attempt to contain the sound, your shoulders shaking despite the fresh pain radiating from the surgical incision across your abdomen. Every movement hurt. Every breath pulled against the stitches that had only just been closed, but none of it compared to the ache spreading through your chest.

"I..." you whispered, the words breaking apart before they could fully form. "I can't..."

You hated yourself the moment you said them. None of this was his fault, he hadn't chosen the circumstances of his conception. He hadn't asked to be born.

He hadn't done anything except arrive in the world, small and helpless, searching instinctively for the safety of his mother's arms, and you couldn't bring yourself to give them to him. The realization tore through you with a cruelty unlike anything you had ever experienced. You felt monstrous. Broken. What kind of mother, you thought, what kind of mother wouldn't want to hold her newborn child?

A nurse glanced uncertainly toward Valarr, silently asking whether she should intervene, but he didn't answer. He remained frozen beside the bed, his eyes never leaving your face, his own expression crumbling beneath the weight of emotions he clearly didn't know how to process.

There was nothing he could fix. No reassurance he could offer, no amount of love, money, protection, or certainty could bridge the distance that had suddenly opened between you and the tiny child lying only a few feet away.

The worst part? He'd get away with it.

He would get away with it because she is just her father's sweet new young partner, replaceable, and he is his son, indispensable. He has a reputation as a golden-boy-who-wouldn't-hurt-a-fly; she's just his father's partner. She lives under his roof, and even if she were to tell Baelor about Val's atrocities, she would be the one who suffers.

Aerion? He finds it amusing. He's an agent of chaos, and watching his "perfect" cousin lose his temper over his father's wife is entertaining—the kind of mess he'll jump into.