Chapter Text
Baelor III
There were some stories Baelor wished the Eternal Flame had left unwatched.
He had long since accepted that death had not freed him into simple peace, that the solemn purpose which had gathered around him and Maekar required witness as much as judgment. But acceptance did not make the witnessing better. There were moments in the long unraveling of House Targaryen that seemed so grotesque, that even watching them from the black shore felt like a kind of helpless participation.
Aerys II Targaryen’s descent into madness was one such horror. The longer Baelor watched it unfold, the harder it became not to rise to his feet as if that might somehow breach the gulf between death and the living world. Baelor saw Aerys as a man rotting in real time, watched the suspicion and cruelty twist together inside him until there seemed little left of kingliness at all.
Beside him Maekar had gone very still, which was never a promising sign. In Baelor’s experience, when his youngest brother became quiet in the presence of great wrong, it meant either that his anger had gone beyond words or that words would soon come with enough force to scorch the earth.
Yet even Maekar’s simmering fury felt less dangerous than Baelor’s own growing disgust, because Baelor was not accustomed to useless anger settling within him. He had always favored control, order, and judgment made coolly rather than in the rush of temper. But there was something about Aerys’ reign -the hideous misuse of power that followed the paranoid king wherever he went- that stirred revulsion in Baelor.
When Brandon Stark rode to King’s Landing demanding justice for what Prince Rhaegar had done, Baelor leaned forward without realizing it. He felt his whole body go taut with the absurd expectation that reason might still enter the scene at some late hour and save it all.
Because Rhaegar, married and with children already by Princess Elia Martell, had taken Lyanna Stark.
In doing so, Rhaegar had set all the old dignities of lordship, marriage, alliance, and law underfoot. There were proper ways to answer such an outrage. Hard ways, perhaps, but lawful ones. Aerys, if any sanity remained in him, might have punished the great House of Stark for their insolent words against the heir to the throne and rebuke his son in equal measure.
Instead he murdered them.
Baelor had seen men die. Gods knew he had seen too many. He had watched battle take them, watched tourneys maim them, watched fever steal children from cradles and old wounds reopen in aging soldiers when the weather turned cruel. But there was a particular obscenity in what Aerys did to Brandon and Lord Rickard Stark that made Baelor’s vision narrow for a moment as though the world itself had recoiled.
Brandon strangling himself while trying to reach the blade that might have saved his father.
Rickard roasted alive in his armor while his son died watching.
The act was so theatrical in its cruelty, so purposelessly vile, that Baelor felt his hands curl hard into fists at his sides. Maekar swore a savage stream beside him, but Baelor barely heard him. All he could think was that this was not kingship. This was not justice. This was not even ordinary tyranny, ugly though tyranny was.
No, this was the behavior of a diseased soul handed a crown and a thousand blades to make his madness everyone else’s burden.
Baelor’s disappointment in Rhaegar burned almost as fiercely as his hatred for Aerys.
He had wanted, though perhaps foolishly, to find something admirable in the prince who had been born despite the tragedy at Summerhall. What he found instead was a man so consumed by his own sense of destiny that he abandoned the most basic obligations honor demanded of him.
Elia Martell deserved better than to be made a living casualty of her husband’s fancies. Her children deserved better than to be born into a father’s romanticized ruin. Lyanna Stark, whatever she felt or chose, deserved better than to become the chess piece of a prince’s self-important vision while the kingdoms bled around them.
And then King’s Landing turned to a pyre waiting for flame.
As Aerys sank further into paranoia, into the crackling madness of wildfire dreams, whispered betrayals and the conviction that destruction might purify what his own failures had ruined, Baelor found himself watching from the very edge of his mind.
It was absurd, of course. There was nothing he could do. Yet every time Aerys ranted of burning traitors, every time jars of wildfire were hidden beneath the city like green-glass promises of apocalypse, Baelor felt the old prince in him pull toward impossible action. He had spent his life believing that duty meant stepping forward when others faltered. To stand now on the shore of death and witness a king prepare the slaughter of his own people without being able to stop him tested something fundamental in Baelor.
When at last Jaime Lannister killed Aerys II, Baelor did not rejoice.
He only exhaled.
The relief Baelor felt was ugly, it was the relief of a man watching a rabid beast finally put down before it could tear out another throat. There was nothing glorious in Aerys’ end, nothing regal or fit for song beyond the bitter kind men sing when dynasties have gone putrid enough to deserve collapse.
The king who had dreamt of fire died by a sworn sword’s hand because the city could not survive his rule another hour. Baelor, who had been raised to revere kingship as a sacred and civilizing duty, felt in that instant a grief so sour it nearly turned to shame.
But even that was not the worst of it.
The murder of Elia Martell and her children was worse.
Baelor had thought himself already too angered to be shocked further, yet when Gregor Clegane burst through those chambers with Tywin Lannister’s will behind him and Robert Baratheon’s consent waiting at the far end of the crime, Baelor felt something in him lurch violently. He knew brutality existed in war. He knew cities fell, innocents died and men excused barbarity with the language of necessity.
But there was no necessity in what was done to Elia or to those children. Only hatred and opportunism. Only the oldest and vilest logic of power, which said that because House Targaryen had fallen, its little ones could be butchered like animals to make the victory feel complete.
Elia fought.
That would burn itself into Baelor’s mind for the rest of his afterlife. He had expected nothing else of a daughter of Dorne, as his mother Myriah Martell held that same intensity that came with being raised in the heat of Sunspear.
Baelor could not help but look at the atrocity and see his beloved mother in Elia, which only made the rage that much worse.
Her son murdered, her daughter too.
Then she herself was brutalized and slain, the whole thing carried out under the broad, smug umbrella of men who would later call themselves saviors of the realm.
Baelor turned away. He could not watch the rest.
He walked from the sight of it with a swiftness that was a departure from dignity, though none who loved him would have called it unbecoming. Baelor was shaking, and his face had gone so rigid with anger that even he scarcely recognized the expression settling there. He had thought himself beyond surprise where cruelty was concerned. Baelor had thought the Eternal Flame, in forcing them to witness so much, might eventually dull the first blade of horror.
Clearly he was wrong, as he found that some crimes remained newly unbearable.
Baelor found Valarr and Matarys by the inward grasses where the black shore softened into earth. His sons looked up at once, and Baelor knew immediately that he had failed to school his expression because both of them went still. Matarys rose first, quick as ever, opening his mouth no doubt to offer some cheerful observation meant to lure Baelor away from whatever dark mood gripped him. Valarr, wiser to such silences, said nothing, but there was concern in the line of his brow as he stepped nearer.
Baelor sat as he folded one arm over his middle and stared out across the burning sea, willing his breath to slow and finding little comfort in the attempt. “What happened?” Matarys asked at last.
Baelor looked at him, at the sweetness and innocence still alive in his youngest boy even here, and felt his anger flare afresh precisely because of that innocence. Because children should have been protected. Because fathers should have gone mad at the thought of children being harmed and yet some men had consented to it with a shrug and a throne beneath them.
“Madness,” he spat. It was all he could trust himself with.
Valarr exchanged a glance with Matarys and then lowered himself to the stone beside his father with quiet care. Neither son pressed him further. Matarys came close enough that his head rested lightly against Baelor’s arm, while Valarr sat straight-backed and steady, the very picture of support. Under any other circumstance, either of them might have coaxed their father back toward softness. Matarys with his openness, his affection, and refusal to let sorrow sit unchallenged for too long. Valarr with his maturity, his instinctive understanding of silence, and the dependable peacefulness that had always made him seem an answer to the anxieties of others.
Today neither could reach him.
Baelor loved them for trying, but the fury remained.
It remained through Matarys’ gentle chatter about the inland animals he had discovered earlier, through Valarr’s quiet efforts to turn the talk toward easier subjects. Something had lodged too deeply in Baelor’s chest, some mixture of disgust and helpless outrage that simply refused to move. He hated that too. Hated bringing this outrage among his sons. Hated that the ugliness of the living world could still stain their hours together here.
It was Maekar who finally dislodged it.
By the time his brother found him, something had changed in him as well. Baelor noticed it at once. Maekar had finally seen Aemon, and whatever words passed between them must have resolved some old worry in his heart. Maekar still looked like himself -grim-mouthed, broad-shouldered, permanently offended by at least half of existence- but there was an extra peacefullness in his violet eyes now.
Maekar stopped a little apart, glanced from Baelor to the boys, and grunted. “Seven Hells Baelor,” he said. “You look murderous.”
Matarys, who had inherited enough of the family’s dramatic instincts to appreciate an opening when one appeared, immediately agreed with his silver haired uncle, “He’s furious.”
“I can see that,” Maekar muttered as he crossed his arms. “He’s doing that thing with his mouth, normally that is my angry thing.”
Baelor turned his head just enough to look at him. “I do not have a thing with my mouth.”
“No you normally do not. I doubt you ever did in life. Here- imagine how I look when I am pissed beyond reason, and put that expression on your face. That is what you look like right now, brother.”
Valarr’s lips twitched despite himself. Baelor might even, under gentler circumstances, have smiled. Instead he only breathed out and looked back toward the sea. “They murdered children,” he growled out, the sound foreign on his tongue.
Maekar hummed in agreement. Then, after a moment, he came and sat on Baelor’s other side. The stone was broad enough for them all, though it now felt less like a place of waiting and more like a family hearth built from grief and heat. Maekar rested his forearms on his knees and stared outward in the same direction as Baelor, as if they might both look hard enough and force the world to answer for itself.
“Elia. Her children. I just- I don’t understand how-.” Baelor shook his head, clearly still aggrieved by the Martell slaughter. Maekar did not offer immediate comfort. That was not his way, and in this moment Baelor found himself grateful for it. Comfort given too quickly might have made the anger in him feel childish. Maekar, who understood rage as intimately as some men understood prayer, let it stand between them first, acknowledged and unashamed.
“They should have torn that Clegane knight apart slowly,” Maekar said at last.
Baelor shut his mismatched eyes briefly. “The man is no knight.”
Maekar nodded with a scowl, continuing with his own rant. “And that son of a bitch Lannister ought to have been sent to the Wall for allowing it.”
Baelor opened his eyes and looked at his brother then. The words were blunt, but there was more than anger in them. There was judgment. Moral disgust. The refusal to excuse atrocity simply because politics found it useful. It reconciled something in Baelor to hear it said by Maekar, who so often clothed his deepest aches in acid and complaint. “He was relieved by it,” Baelor said, voice still rough with suffering. “As if murdered children solved anything.”
Maekar’s jaw hardened. “Some men mistake convenience for allowance.”
For a little while they were silent, the four of them on the dark stone above the burning sea. Then Maekar nudged Baelor’s shoulder, lightly enough that it might have been accidental. “Aemon arrived well,” he said, staring straight ahead. “Annoyingly serene about the whole thing.”
That drew Baelor back toward him at once. “He found peace?”
“Of fucking course he did, and the kid had the nerve to look older and wiser than me while doing it.” Maekar complained, which in his language often meant something far warmer.
Matarys smiled. Valarr lowered his head to hide one of his own. Baelor felt, for the first time in what seemed far too long, the tight coil in his chest loosen a fraction. “I am glad.”
“Aye.” Maekar rubbed once at his jaw. “I thought you might be.” He glanced at Baelor then, only briefly, and in that glance there was more understanding than any long speech could have managed. They had each watched children suffer. Each watched people die badly or too soon or in ways that should have been prevented. Each carried fury at the shape of their house’s ruin, though it burned differently in them. To be understood in that without having to explain the full measure of it felt like cool water poured over iron left too long in the fire.
“So,” Maekar said after a moment, in the same tone one might use to discuss the weather if the weather happened to include dynastic collapse and child-murder, “are you finished trying to glower holes into the sea?”
“Not entirely.”
“You ought to consider stopping soon, it looks rather unnatural on you Baelor.”
At last, against his will and yet with real relief, Baelor smiled. Matarys let out a triumphant little breath and Valarr’s shoulders eased. Beside him, Maekar grunted with the satisfaction of a man who had done what was needed and would not, under any circumstances, call it comfort.
Baelor let the anger fade then, not vanish, for it should not vanish, but fade into something less blinding. He reached first for Matarys, ruffling a hand through the boy’s flaming hair, then clasped Valarr’s shoulder. After a moment Baelor turned his hand and laid it briefly over Maekar’s forearm too.
His brother did not shake it off. That, perhaps, was comfort enough.
Baelor decided he was ready to leave the Eternal Flame.
He had thought, once, that readiness for such a thing might announce itself grandly- with courage swelling in the chest, or some sense of destiny adorning him like a cloak. Instead it arrived in a far simpler form: he had just seen enough. Enough madness. Enough dead children, broken kings, burned halls, violated women, and proud men destroying their own bloodline because they would rather cling to vanity than govern themselves like decent human beings.
There were still years left to witness, still more ruin that the Fourteen Flames no doubt meant to parade before them in the name of context or divine correction, but Baelor found he had no appetite left for it. He did not require a fuller education in the ways his House had failed. He had learned the shape of the disaster well enough. And beneath that harder judgment there was another truth, simpler and more personal.
Baelor wanted to go while the faces of his family were still clear and close to him, while Maekar stood beside him willingly, and purpose still burned between them both.
So he rose from the dark stone above the ember-lit sea, turned to where his brother sat still half-scowling out toward the horizon, and said, “I am done watching.”
Maekar glanced up at once, his expression shifting in that quick, suspicious way that suggested he was bracing for nonsense. “Done with the rest of it?”
Baelor looked back over the burning waters, where the world of men still unfolded in distant fragments too ugly to merit even another hour of their dead attention. “We know enough. More than enough, even. If we are to go, then let us go before they show us some fresh obscenity I shall spend the next century trying to scrub from my mind.”
Without waiting for Maekar’s approval, Baelor found himself calling for Helaena. Not loudly. Baelor merely turned his face toward the inland grass beyond and said, “Queen Helaena,” and the words slipped out over the warm wind as naturally as prayer.
She came quickly.
Or perhaps she had already been near, waiting for the brothers to admit they were ready for their divine mission. Helaena emerged from the greener rise above the shore with the same soft, dreamy serenity she wore the first time Baelor had met her. Her dove grey skirts brushed the grass as she walked, and in one open palm she carried some tiny shell or beetle or other shore-treasure she had been studying before they summoned her. “You are ready,” she noted, and Baelor held back a chuckle at the knowingness of her statement.
Baelor inclined his head. “I am.”
Maekar folded his arms. “We are. I have grown tired of seeing the buffoonary of our House.”
Helaena smiled as though this were entirely reasonable. “Of course.”
Baelor did not miss the way his brother looked faintly put out by her agreeing with him so quickly. “What happens?” He questioned.
Helaena came to stand before them, the molten sky painting warm gold and red into the silver of her hair. “I will put you both to sleep here,” she said, gesturing to the land where ocean met sand. “When you wake, you will wake as newborn children in the reign of King Jaehaerys I.”
Even prepared as he was, Baelor felt the strangeness of that statement pulse through him in a long, sober wave. Newborn. Not restored as men. Not simply placed backward into their own bodies or deposited whole into the old world like ghosts made flesh. They would begin again at the very beginning, small and utterly in the hands of others. Baelor, despite himself, felt the corners of his mouth twitch at the thought of being so tiny again. “Will we at least remain of our House?”
“Yes,” Helaena confirmed. “You will still be Targaryens.” That, at least, was something solid to rest on. Baelor nodded once, but the question that had been needling at him since she first spoke of rebirth rose now with renewed urgency. “And our memories?”
Helaena’s expression shifted only slightly, but enough that Baelor knew at once the answer would not please either of them. “You will not remember at first,” she said.
Maekar made a sound of immediate outrage. “What?”
“You will not regain your memories until you are eighteen.”
There was a brief and holy silence. Then Maekar exploded. “Eighteen?!” he repeated, as if the number itself had personally insulted him. “How in seven blazing hells are we meant to change anything if we don’t even know what needs changing until we are practically grown? What exactly do you expect us to do- wander around half-witted for nearly two decades and then suddenly save the dynasty out of sheer good breeding?”
Baelor laughed before he could stop himself. Maekar turned on him at once. “What the fuck is so funny?”
“What,” Baelor asked with a dangerous grin, “do you believe you would accomplish at five? Or at ten?”
Maekar opened his mouth at once. Then shut it. Then opened it again. “Plenty.”
“Such as? I would love to hear the details of grumpy little Maekar saving the world.”
“For fuck’s sake- I do not know yet, okay? But I resent being denied the opportunity.”
Baelor chuckled outright, and even Helaena’s mouth curved in a quiet, amused line. The sound of his own laughter felt unexpectedly light after so much heaviness, and he was grateful for it, grateful for Maekar’s ability to remain Maekar no matter the circumstances. Before his brother could build further momentum in his protest, Helaena lifted one pale hand. “If you kept all your memories from the start,” she explained, and now her voice lost some of its airy softness and gained a firmer weight, “you would go mad.”
She looked from one to the other, her lilac eyes clear and almost stern despite the gentleness of her face. “Your minds are made for the lives you have already lived. To press all of that into newborn bodies, into flesh not yet formed enough to hold it- it would break you. The memories must return only after your new selves are strong enough to bear them.”
Baelor sobered at once. He had not thought of it in those terms, not fully, but as soon as she said it, the truth of it seemed obvious. The weight of one life had been hard enough to carry as a grown man. What would he expect of that weight when dropped into the skull of a babe? Into the half-formed emotions and the dependencies of childhood? Even the idea felt wrong, too much consciousness in too little flesh.
Maekar still looked mutinous, but less certain in it now. “So we are to trust that at eighteen we simply… wake up to ourselves?”
“That is the idea.”
“I hate it. It sounds deeply unpleasant.”
Baelor glanced sideways at his brother. “You did ask for the chance to save Aerion, it seems that withstanding the growing pains of childhood again without our memories is the cost of such a venture.”
“I know what I asked for,” Maekar grumbled. “I merely hate the concept, damn it.”
Helaena clasped her hands loosely before her. “You will not be entirely altered,” she said. “Your souls are the same. Your minds will grow around new lives, yes, but your natures should remain very similar. There should be nothing to worry about.”
Baelor eyed the gentle Queen. There was the slightest hesitation in the phrasing. Not enough for Maekar to catch, perhaps, because his annoyance was still occupying the front of his attention, but Baelor heard it. Should. There should be. Not certainty. Not promise. Merely the best assurance she could offer.
He chose not to dwell on it. There was no use borrowing new fears now, not with departure so near and the family he loved still waiting to be left behind. Whatever uncertainty clung to rebirth, it would not be resolved by standing on the shores of the Eternal Flame turning it over until it frayed. “Then we had better say goodbye,” he said quietly.
That part was more arduous, in some ways, than agreeing to the strangeness of being born again. For all its sorrow and the impossible things demanded of them, the Eternal Flame had become a home of sorts. Not because death was ever home, but because the people he loved were gathered there in great number. To leave them by choice, even for righteous purpose or duty, felt perilously close to a fresh kind of death.
Valarr took the news with an understanding that Baelor expected and cherished in equal measure. There was sadness in his eyes, certainly, but no protest. He stood very straight when Baelor told him, as if instinct alone had summoned princely composure around the hurt, and after a moment he only said, “Then you must succeed in your mission. Make leaving us worth it.”
Baelor took his eldest son’s face between both hands, an intimacy he would once have reserved for private chambers rather than any place another eye might witness, and kissed his brow. “I will try.”
Valarr’s mouth tightened faintly into a rare grimace. “Try harder than that.”
A laugh escaped Baelor before he could stop it, choked through with love. “Yes, my dutiful prince.”
Matarys was less disciplined about it. He threw his arms around Baelor at once and held on hard, as if that childish method had the power to prevent separation if only he embraced fiercely enough. Baelor wrapped him close and stroked a hand through his red hair, feeling with painful clarity just how much of fatherhood had been made for him. Matarys wept loudly, and his voice wobbled when he spoke, “Come back to us quickly father!”
“I mean to do just that, my dearest dragon,” Baelor assured softly, trying to keep tears from prickling the corners of his eyes.
His father Daeron embraced him with solemn gravity, and in that embrace Baelor felt again the long line between them: father and son, king and king-that-never-was, two men who had understood duty better than most. There were not many words, for they did not need them. Daeron only clasped Baelor’s shoulder and said, “If there was anyone I would entrust the safety of our House to, it would be you my son. I believe in you.”
Aerys, dear quiet Aerys, held Baelor long and said with a kind of deep sorrow, “Bring them back to us, if you can.” Baelor knew at once he meant Maekar’s sons, Aerion and Aegon who had not been allowed into the Eternal Flame.
Maekar’s farewells were rougher, more awkward, and therefore perhaps more moving. Baelor watched him embrace Daeron with one hand, and stand silent with Aemon for a long time, both of them too proud and too newly mended to make a scene of it. He watched him let Daella cling and Rhae tease and still somehow hold both with unmistakable softness. There was something beautiful in seeing his brother surrounded by love he no longer had to pretend did not move him.
Lucerys came running when he heard they were leaving.
Baelor had not realized until the boy reached him, breathless and teary-eyed, just how much comfort he had come to take in Lucerys’ easy companionship over these strange days. There was a sweetness in him that reminded Baelor too fondly of Matarys to be ignored, and more than once the two of them had simply wandered the burning shore together. Jacaerys followed more slowly, dark hair lifted by the wind, carrying himself with that courtesy that always made Baelor think of Valarr and ache for the kings they both should have been allowed to become.
“You are truly going!” Lucerys sniffled and Baelor crouched so that he was level with him. “I am.”
Lucerys worried at his lower lip the way he did when holding back stronger feelings. “I think you will like my mother, can you give her a hug for me when you see her?”
Baelor smiled gently. “I promise to do so once I regain my memories.”
“Do not dare forget it.”
“I wouldn’t dare, it shall be the first thing I do,” Baelor smiled sweetly at the young man. Lucerys considered that and then stepped forward to hug him, fierce in his own way. Baelor embraced him with equal warmth, pressing a kiss to his temple before rising again to face Jacaerys.
The prince inclined his head, but formality did not last long between them now. “Do not let him irritate you too much,” Jacaerys said, glancing toward Maekar with the boldness of someone who had lost all fear of irritable older men. Baelor followed the glance and smiled. “Now that is a promise I cannot make in good faith.”
“Asshole,” Maekar muttered from where he stood being accosted by Matarys for perhaps the fourth time.
Jacaerys’ expression tightened then. “Selfishly,” he started, “I hope that my mother and I get the opportunity to rule the realm with your guidance. And that when the world becomes right, my brothers are given more time in it.”
Baelor looked at him for a long moment. “So do I.”
Then there was nothing left but Helaena and the black shore and the odd finality of choosing the place where they would sleep. She led them a little way inland, to where the grass grew softer and the sound of the sea became a low, steady murmur behind them. The ground there was warm without being hot, as if the Eternal Flame itself had made a bed of earth that remembered summer and refused winter entirely. The sky burned above in its endless indigo, red and gold, and around them stood the family they were leaving: princes and kings, sons and daughters, nephews and ancestors, all gathered with faces lit by grief and hope in equal measure.
Maekar looked round once and muttered, “If I wake as an ugly child, I shall consider this a personal betrayal on Helaena’s part.”
Baelor huffed a laugh and lay down upon the grass. “You will be an ugly infant entirely by your own effort. Trust me, I still remember how hideous you were when I first laid eyes on you.”
“First of all, fuck you. I was an adorable baby, Mother said so.”
“I look forward to your discoveries on the matter, because mother lied to you.”
Maekar shoved Baelor to the ground beside him with the air of a man enduring an indignity in public only because refusal would only lengthen the process. Helaena stepped between them and looked down, her expression very soft now. “When you wake again,” she said, “you will not know this place. Not at first. But it will know you.”
Baelor folded his hands over his chest and turned his face for one last look at the gathered figures beyond her. Valarr and Matarys pressed close together, Daeron with his hand on Daella’s shoulder, Rhae restless even in sorrow, Aemon solemn and still, his father proud and sad, Lucerys half-hidden by Jacaerys’ side, and all the others like stars fixed in the strange heaven of his dead heart.
Then he looked at Maekar. His brother was already glaring upward as if he meant to intimidate sleep itself, but when he felt Baelor’s gaze he turned his head and met it. “Are you ready?” Baelor asked with a nervous smile.
“Fuck no,” Maekar replied with a smirk.
That, somehow, pleased him and Baelor’s smile turned genuine. “Good. Neither am I.”
Helaena laid one hand lightly over Baelor’s brow, the other over Maekar’s, and the touch was cool as moonlight despite the warm air around them. “Sleep” she murmured.
The Eternal Flame blurred.
The burning sky dimmed.
And the last thing Baelor saw was his brother’s familiar, stubborn face beside him. The people he loved waiting beyond, and then even that transitioned into darkness as the dead prince of House Targaryen let himself fall toward life once more.