Chapter Text
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Elain Waters is ready to dismiss her new mother entirely.
Not because of who she is or what she does – Amelia still thinks she's too young to realise what all the men coming and going from her room means – but because she just can't do this again.
So she puts up walls, to protect herself.
Amelia doesn't as much tear down these walls as she ignores them completely.
Elain is two when Amelia catches her learning – reminding herself – how to read. She expects derision. Suspicion. Or, at the very least, questions of a 'where did you get that book?' variety.
Instead, Amelia practically glomps her 'little genus' as she gives her the brightest grin she's seen in a longs time. It's not the usual placid smile she sends towards her customers. It's real and ecstatic and just so full of love that Elain can't help but love her back.
"Mum!" she yelps, before she catches herself because that's who she is to her.
Mum.
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Years go by and Elain still can't look at the Baratheon sigil without smiling. Deer will always hold happy memories for her.
Some of those memories, Elain decides, should accompany her home. Some of those memories do not, strictly speaking, accompany her with their owners' explicit consent.
'Little fawn' her mother calls her, snickering as Elain plasters the crest across her room.
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Training in King's Landing is difficult without chakra, but not impossible.
It starts with mostly running and stretching. Not fun without metaphysical super-energy backing her up, but she's done it before and she'll do it again.
Mobility goes... less smoothly, which is a nice way of saying she'd nearly killed herself trying for a jump she could've easily made as Shikako.
And, when it comes to sparring, the boys down at Sister Dolly's are always looking for a scrap. Some of them are even kind of impressive in a 'just won't go down' sort of way.
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Elain is twelve and riding high on a particularly devastating victory when arrives home to two Goldcloaks standing over her mother's broken body.
"Kill the bitch."
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