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Helaena stared down at the crib. Her body was wrecked through and through with ache upon ache; gentle breaks piercing through her like riveting cracks through sheer marble. Her children lay, silent, healthy, sleeping. She watched as their little chests rose and fell and rose and fell again.
It felt foreign. Helaena’s knuckled whitened as she gripped the crib harder, lifting herself to her tip-toes to glean for a better angle to glance down at her babies. How were they hers? Helaena gulped. She had been through the entire process, the bedding (suffocating, dark, Aegon crying), the pregnancy (her mother’s incessant worrying and Aegon avoiding her eye like it were a curse), and the birth (Helaena could still feel it; could still hear her own shrill screams).
Her mother had whispered to her that she had never heard Helaena’s voice so loud before. It was something said in passing, as she gripped Helaena’s hand like a vice in the birthing bed. Her mother’s face had been pale and feverish. She said much. Helaena could only think one thing.
Where is Aegon?
It felt distraught and childlike. She was embarrassed to admit it now, but her pleas had not been for a wife asking on her husband. She had wondered where Aemond was in the same breadth, after all. Helaena was abhorred to reflect on her own emotions and find that her aching was simply the last dying breath of a sister believing that her brothers would be there to protect her from all ill and harm.
Helaena reached down and let Jaehaera grab her fingertip. The baby slept joyously, and Helaena couldn’t help but break a smile. Jaehaerys would no doubt become the future of her mother and grandfather’s plots. But at least until she was wedded, Jaehaera would be hers and hers alone. Helaena supposed she had never understood her mother’s attachment to her so well as she did in that moment.
The door creaked open with a terribly loud groan. Helaena jumped, snatching back her hand, and turned to see who would disturb the nursery so callously.
Aegon was red-faced and stumbling. His eyes were glazed and darting wildly. Helaena let out a gasp.
“Your hair-” She blabbered. Aegon had always had lovely, long, luscious blonde hair of the finest silver. Now, it hang in straggles cutting off around his chin. It seemed that all the confidence of his posture left him with the new cut of hair, as well. He looked thoroughly unwashed, and as Helaena approached him, she nearly doubled at the stench of alcohol.
“Let me see the devils, then.” Aegon sneered, stumbling forward toward the crib.
Helaena put herself between them, holding Aegon by his shoulders, more an embrace than a threat.
“Go to bed.” She insisted, voice shaking like a leaf, and so quiet that she could barely hear herself.
“Let me through.” Aegon insisted, his hand clasping around hers and yanking it from him violently, as if gentle touch were something that came only with fear.
He pushed past her, and Helaena felt cold steel pass through her system like something demonic. Her heart bit at her throat; nipped at her heels, and the cold air of the night knocked the breath from her lungs. She pulled at Aegon’s sleeve; her words strewn tight.
“Leave them alone.” Helaena begged more than she spoke, in truth. There was some part of her that was so afraid of this new Aegon. No longer boisterous nor confident. Every display of ego seemed to be motivated by distraught insecurity and a pretending to the entitlement he once truly possessed. The new Aegon, the one who emerged following the loss of Aemond’s eye. The new Aegon, the one who emerged at the marriage alter. This Aegon was not simple. This Aegon was not predictable. And there he walked; toward the only good thing he’d ever let Helaena have.
“Aegon!” Helaena cried out as he stepped up to the crib. She pulled him back, looking at him with nervous and feverish eyes. “They have done nothing to wrong you, please.” She whispered, feeling the sting of tears buckle up at the back of her eye sockets. They flowed out as waves do at the pull of the moon.
Aegon looked at her with confusion ridden over his cherubic face.
“What?” He asked innocently, drunkenly studying the angles of her face.
His lilac eyes glittered in the moonlight, and Helaena felt deep shame overtake her when she realised that she had entirely misread his intentions. Her hands dropped to her side, and as Aegon slowly came to understand what she thought he had been there to do, his face crumpled.
“Oh.” He breathed out, his mouth shaking and jaw clenching tighter. “Oh.” He repeated, stepping back from the crib. His legs shook, and for a moment, Helaena feared they’d fall away from under him. “Alright.” He whispered.
One of the twins awoke and began crying. Helaena could not find the words to assuage the accusations she had lain forward. She looked at Aegon with a mixture of pity and grief. Helaena wrung her hands together, trying to reconcile the simple, quiet way that she had likely shattered her relationship with both her husband and her brother forever.
“Aegon-” She began, but he scoffed, shaking his head. Helaena could see wetness around the corners of his eyes, but she did not press it.
“I guess it’s best I go then, huh?” Aegon said, his tone dark and flat. He sounded like Aemond. Helaena hated it. It did not suit him.
One twins cries had woken the other, and now, they both wept. Before Helaena could speak, the nursery was flooded with the wet nurse, and a handful of other nurses. Aegon turned on his heel and stalked out.
Helaena could hear the maids talking to her, but she just stood, watching the image of her brother depart from her in a way that was laced with such deep finality that she felt as if she were standing at an unexplored trench.
The new Aegon, it seemed, would begin to overstay his welcome.
Helaena found she did not like the new version of herself, neither. She turned back to her children, and picked up Jaehaerys, holding him against her chest at the behest of her maids. He was warm, and he stopped crying with ease as she rocked him and shushed him.
Would that her arms were large enough to hold and quiet both her children. She did not know how her mother had ever survived through four.
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