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When Jaehaera finds that she’s missing her twin brother, all she has to do is find her reflection. In a mirror, a shard of broken glass, the curved edge of a spoon. Jaehaerys is always with her. She finds great comfort in this.
She wishes she could share this gift with Maelor, but realizes soon after she chases the thought that this is not a gift he will ever find himself needing to possess. There will come a time that he will stop asking for his older brother. There will come a time that he forgets he even had one. Their father seldom mentions him, the lost son he scarcely knew. Jaehaera knows that it is not indifference or lack of care. It pains him deeply that he was not there to defend his family when they needed him. He is haunted by the guilt and regret of never caring to know him better. This, Aegon will never forgive himself for. There are reminders everywhere, tormenting him. It even sometimes pains him to look at her.
But in spite of the ache, the guilt twinges and lingering wraiths, Aegon rarely tears his gaze away from Jaehaera. He keeps her close, never lets her wander too far. She’s a listless girl, with few needs and fewer wants. Her idle vacancy worries Aegon, sometimes. He’ll lift her up in his arms (weak and injured and not at all as strong as they once were, but still strong enough to carry his small daughter, his growing girl) and bury his face into the nape of her neck, where her pale hair is at its wispiest. Clouds and dandelion fluff. She still has that familiar baby smell. It clings stubbornly to her collar. He wants to hold her forever. He wants to carve the shape of her inside his chest and coddle her closer, keep her safer. One could never be too safe, too sure.
His daughter brings him more comfort than her little brain could ever begin to know. Apart from having her safety assured, Aegon often watches his daughter move and exist in a demeanor not unlike the same manner his mother once did. It's a sorrowful, withdrawn existence. All the women in his life carried with them a distinct sadness. Hel did, too. The sadness of what—anticipation? The sadness of knowing? The sadness of living through it all, when you shouldn't have? When you didn't want to make it out on the other end?
Was such a sadness hereditary? Was his kin forever doomed to live like this? Even as a small babe, before the bad began (it had already started), before the worst had come (it was already here), Jaehaera would bring her small fist to her mouth and bite. Her soft gums had not harmed her until they sprouted little teeth and she learned how to gnaw and chew. A girl's real first instinct—how to hurt. It’s how he and Hel learned to tell the twins apart. Swaddled in the same blankets and hair grown to equal measure, the pair looked identical. But Jaehaera always had little red fingers, little cuts leaving her precious skin bitten and torn. Many times did Aegon kiss her fingertips and hush her cries, the result of her tangible ache.
He wondered if his mother bit her fingernails as a baby, if she chewed her fingers raw, and if her mother before her did just the same.
Aegon had found her gazing into the fire once, too close for his own liking. He scooped her into his arms and pressed his nose to her neck and inhaled her baby smell (she’s still young, she’s still small, it won’t be like this forever). Inwardly, he wonders if she had seen something in the flame, and if she was similarly plagued with visions and prophecies and dreams like her mother was. Outwardly, he jests. He's never known what else to do, never known how or what to be for—not until her. He tickles her stomach and tries to make her smile. You must keep away from the fire, pretty girl, you don’t want to end up looking like your ugly father now, would you?
But neither of them believe the threat. Even with scorched skin, Aegon had to believe that he was still alright to look at. Because he looked like his mother, and because he looked like his daughter, and because his daughter looked like him and like his mother. And her brother, whom is hardly spoken of anymore, looked like all three of them.
And so, no one is ever truly forgotten. Not really.