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June 12, 2015
Daemon always joked that despite Jace’s hair, him and Baela both had inherited that Valyrian temper.
Dragon anger, it translated to and Rhaenyra hadn’t found anything more accurate than that. Possessive, protective, and short-tempered. Combined with Harwin’s own blood, it was a miracle that Jace hadn’t been expelled from school before he was.
They hadn’t expected the sulky side of it though, the pouting, that had appeared at the end of the summer prior just a couple days before he was due to return to Harwin’s. It had swept through the household like wildfire, Jace sulking in his room, mumbling excuses. Baela in her room, nearly vibrating the walls with the volume of her music and only turning it down for the sake of Aegon’s naptimes. Both Daemon and Rhaenyra had attempted to find out what had happened, only to be met with children who were doing their best impression of a brick wall, with the exception of Luke who let it slip that the older two had fought.
They’d tried again, over the phone, and both of the teenagers had refused to speak of it, Baela even going so far as to burst into tears when pushed. It’d nearly scared the life out of Daemon, as he hadn’t seen her cry since Laena’s funeral, and he’d refused to push further, claiming that she would come to them when she was ready. Luke, always eager to please, had eventually let her know that Baela did talk to Rhaena about things so she wasn’t completely alone with it.
Jace, though, that boy was tricky. Her firstborn was wound tighter than an eight day clock, a bubbling pot of anxiety and anger management issues. She’d called Harwin, which was always an awkward occasion even as they tried to keep it professional, to see if he knew more only to find him saying that Jace wouldn’t tell him either.
“He needs time, Princess. We’ve just got to be ready and waiting when he shows up.”
Together or not, he’d always call her that it seemed. She found she didn’t mind, and neither did Daemon, who told her so.
“He can call you Princess,” and he’d grinned, “I’m the one calling you wife.”
The two years that followed had been awkward to say the least. Baela and Jace switched between blatantly ignoring each other, glaring at each other, and looking at each other with enough heartbreak when the other wasn’t paying attention that it broke Rhaenya’s own heart. She’d tried to reach out to Jace again about it, but without success.
So imagine her surprise when they’d walked through the front door tonight together. Unexpectedly. Speaking to each other.
Smiling.
It was something she hadn’t seen in far too long.
Luke and Rhaena had seemed remarkably unfazed, which made Rhaenyra want to interrogate Luke again. He was the one most likely to let something slip, maybe she could get some kind of explanation-
But it wasn’t just that. The smiling. It wasn’t a fluke, other strange things were happening as well. Baela had let Jace drive her car to dinner at the ranch with her in it, the car that she wouldn’t even let Rhaena touch. She didn’t even like Daemon driving it, but Rhaenyra could understand that, Daemon wasn’t the most cautious of drivers. Luke took after him in that, if Rhaenyra had her way that boy was going to be stuck on a bicycle or a horse till he was thirty. Maybe sooner if he fessed up about what was going on around here with his brother.
They’d driven out to the ranch after they arrived, not all the way up to the house yet, but to the stables to see the horses. Joff had insisted on riding in Baela’s car, even going so far as to try calling shotgun, but Baela had just laughed and sent him to sit in the back between Rhaena and Luke. Daemon had been wrestling Vis into his carseat and had missed it, but Rhaenyra’s jaw had dropped when, instead of going around to the driver’s side, she tossed the keys to Jace and got in the passenger. It’d been strange enough that Daemon hadn’t even fully believed her until they pulled up to the stable lot and watched Jace get out of the driver’s side, Joff hopping on his unguarded back and nearly taking him to the ground in the process. Baela had offered him no help, too busy laughing, her head tossed back, another sight that had been far too rare over the last few years.
“Huh,” Daemon had said, which might as well have been him admitting he was wrong.
Syrax had been thrilled to see Jace, affectionately bumping him and sniffing at his pockets for treats when he stood in front of her stall, completely ignoring Rhaenyra next to him and making them both laugh at her persistence. She was a sweet mare, golden and gleaming and gentle, Rhaenyra had been there the night she was born. Her one of her foals, Sunfyre, had surprisingly taken to Alicent’s eldest, Aegon, who was happy to spoil her. The connection had given her a surprising number of pleasant conversations with her younger brother, some of which surrounded how he had recently become a father to a three-year-old boy named Jay who happily played with her own Aegon whenever she brought him to the yard.
Thankfully, despite how improved her rocky relationship was with her brother, Alicent’s family was out of town, whether that was living away from home like Helaena and Aegon or away in the Hamptons with Otto and Gwayne for the summer. Her father was content to remain on the ranch, watching it be tended by the staff and enjoying the comforts of home.
Egg called for her then, drawing her attention away from Syrax snuffling furiously at Jace’s jeans pocket, and Rhaenyra went to him, giving in to his pleas to be lifted up to pet Vermithor. Egg was fond of the Bronze Fury, the once fierce and fussy horse surprisingly calm with her baby. Her father had said it was the Valyrian look, that the older horses who remembered her grandparents knew where they came from and wanted the touch and presence of their own. He said that they saw the past in Aegon, they saw what they remembered as home, and who was Rhaenyra to say otherwise, really? These horses were the last of their kind, maybe they knew that too.
When she glanced back at Syrax, her breath caught in her chest. Baela was leaning against Jace’s back, her arms banded around his middle and her chin hooked over his shoulder. Jace was blushing scarlet, his shoulders tense as ever…
But he was smiling.
So was Baela, seemingly unconcerned about being seen by the rest of the family in the barn as she tucked her face into Jace’s neck with a soft laugh, only to let out a shriek of it when Jace’s hands were suddenly under her thighs and hiking her up onto his back.
“Keep those hands in respectable places, Jace,” Daemon quipped after a half-second of startled silence, acting as if he wasn’t just as shocked as she was from where he was leaning out of Caraxes’ stall.
Baela huffed, loudly, crossing her ankles in front of Jace, and rolled her eyes, “He can put those hands wherever he wants. I sure wouldn’t mind.”
“Baela!” Rhaena covered Vis’ ears with her hands as Luke laughed.
Joff glanced up from petting one of the foals, “What?”
“See? They’ve lived long enough with Dad that they’re deaf to it. They’re fine.” Baela squeezed her thighs around Jace’s ribs, “Now, onward, I want to find Vhagar.”
Jace rolled his eyes, still blushing scarlet, but did as he was told.
. . .
Her father had been thrilled to have the whole family present, crowded around a table that Rhaenyra remembered so fondly from her childhood before her mother died.
Daemon and her had been bookended by the littles, but that hadn’t kept her from watching Jace and Baela. After all this time, their family felt whole, felt like it should have, and it made sense why. She couldn’t believe she hadn’t noticed it before. Maybe it’d been denial, hoping that Jace and Luke would be able to escape the scrutiny their family had faced and have normal lives.
Her boys may look like their father, but sometimes she feared that they were a bit too much like her. Jace, with Baela, cursed to be so close to their twin flame that society would never truly understand, just like her and Daemon were. She worried sometimes about Luke and Rhaena too, as close as they were, but when she’d asked Luke, he had denied it.
At least she didn’t have to worry about Joff that way, she just had to worry about how many swear words he picked up from her and Daemon by accident. People already had their ideas about her in this town, she didn’t intend to give her any new ones about her parenting.
Baela and Jace were more reserved with their affection at dinner but were the first to leave, Luke and Rhaena following them shortly after. Joff had a sleepover with a friend, thankfully, so he didn’t feel too left out, and while Daemon drove him to that she took the oppourtunity to take Vis and Egg up to her childhood bedroom. A bathtime and bedtime story later, she heard the crunch of tires on gravel that signaled Daemon’s return, followed by his heavy footsteps on the ancient stairs. They’d grown up in this house, separated by time, of course, but they had. This house was in their bones, in their blood, with his mother growing up here, and her father, and his mother before him. Their family, alongside the Velaryons and the Celtigars, carried what little remained of a home they would never get to see in its glory. The horses from their island, the antiques of precious metal that now lay inaccessible and unstable beneath miles of volcanic rock, the language their kin had spoken, preserved in their line.
Daemon slipped in through the half-open bedroom door, his quiet foosteps growing closer on the carpet of her childhood room before he appeared at her side. Aegon’s eyes were half-shut, drowsy and sweet, a little smile pulling at the corners of his mouth as his father leaned down to kiss his forehead and whisper goodnight. He did the same for Viserys, already asleep, and tucked the blankets in around them before he offered her his hand. She took it, warm and familiar in her own, and followed him downstairs and out onto the porch.
The swing still creaked after all these years, she couldn’t bring herself to have it fixed and Alicent preferred the one on the upstairs balcony, so its flaws thankfully remained untouched over the years even as her mother’s touch had faded in the house’s adornment.
“So,” Rhaenyra asked as Daemon pushed the swing with his foot on the ground, one of the barn cats rubbing at his ankle and his arm around her shoulders, “Jace and Baela?”
“Apparently so. Do you think we’re blind that we didn’t realize it sooner?”
Of course not. They knew what went on in their household.
“I think its new. It’s good to see them happy.”
“It is…” He trailed off as he glanced at the yard, turning more in the swing to look at something.
“What is it?”
He stood suddenly, squinting into the pale-purple dark of the yard. The structures on the property had fairy lights, set to come on as the sun set, which kept the yard from becoming too dark, and it was clearly enough for him to notice something.
“Daemon?” She stood then, turning to fully face the yard and trying to find what he was seeing.
When she finally saw it, she could have sworn her heart stopped.
“Is that?” She trailed off, unsure.
Daemon made a sort of strangled sound in his throat.
“He’s dropped something, surely,” She said, though it didn’t sound too convincing even to herself.
In the distance, at the gazebo, there were two figures. Familiar figures. One of them kneeling, one of them standing.
“Yes,” Daemon said faintly, “Dropped something.”
The figures weren’t moving.
“He’s been down there a while.”
“He’s just.” Daemon hesitated, “Really looking for it.”
“He’s looking at her, Daemon.”
Suddenly, the world started moving again, and in the distance, Baela dragged Jace to his feet, threw her arms around him, and kissed him.
Faintly, above Rhaenyra’s head, she heard a window sash being thrown up and someone, maybe Luke, letting out a startled, “What the-“
His voice went muffled, as if a hand was over his mouth, and Rhaena’s voice was far less faint, screaming across the dark lawn.
“Did you just ask my sister to marry you?”
The two in the gazebo pulled away from the kiss, though were still wrapped in each others arms, and despite the distance and the fact that they wouldn’t be able to see the details, Baela raised her left hand and shook it.
Rhaena shrieked, Daemon and Rhaenyra looked at each other, and across the lawn, she heard Jace laugh, the sound of it as bright and as lovely as the sun.