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Baela can only stand and stare at the place where her daughter disappeared below Driftmark's waves until Rhaena shifts her hold from Baela's hands to her elbow and begins to guide her away from the rocky edge of the sea. Baela trusts her twin to guide her, follows wherever she may lead. Alyn joins them on her free side, lacing her arm through his. He cradles her hand in the crook of his arm with his free hand, holding tight.

They have almost left the area of the funeral procession when their little brothers stop them.

"Sister, I am-" Aegon starts to give his rote condolences but Baela frees herself from her sister and husband and keeps walking past her brothers. It is unspeakably impolite to ignore her king, but she needs to escape.

Alyn takes over speaking to the royal party as she follows the path toward the beach.

She doesn't think she can bear to hear any more condolences from people who didn't know her daughter. She knows that Aegon had loved Rhaenys in the same distant way that she loves her newborn nephew from Viserys and his Lyseni wife, but he didn't know her. Rhaenys had never been well enough to visit King's Landing and Aegon couldn't visit Driftmark while he was still under regency and his power as King remained unconsolidated.

Baela's strides get longer and quicker until she is no longer walking but sprinting across the beach. She stops thigh deep in the Blackwater, chest heaving with breath. As she stares at the horizon line, the sob that has been building in her chest since her daughter died finally rips from her throat.

Someone wades into the surf behind her, barely audible over her cries. Whoever followed her pauses directly behind her. The clouds shift just enough for a female shadow to fall over her. Her sister then.

"Oh, Baela," Rhaena sighs as she curls herself around her from behind, "I am here for you sister."

Rhaena presses a kiss into Baela's hair and simply holds her as she cries. They sit in the surf for hours.

Eventually, Baela's sobs peter into nothing but she remains sitting in her sister's embrace and stares into the waves. It isn't until after the sun has long since set that her sister forces her to her feet.

"Come, we'll catch a chill if we stay out any longer," Rhaena says softly, leading her from the beach and back into the keep. When they get into the keep, their soaked skirts leave a trail of sea water and sand behind them along with lingering looks from servants that follow them through the halls. They reach Baela's chambers in the blink of an eye. A hint of confusion breaks through the utter silence in Baela's mind; the walk to her chambers should have taken longer than that.

Several of Baela's chambermaids work throughout her sitting room, attending to the fire and cleaning; they pause long enough to curtsy as they pass through into her bedchamber. Jeyne, her maidservant is waiting within but Rhaena dismisses her with a gesture, leading Baela to sit on the bench at the foot of the bed.

Baela sits and stares into the fireplace beside her bed as Rhaena quietly takes her hair out of it's styling and braids it simply down her back. The feeling of her sister's hands in her hair comforts her. It reminds her when her mother would do her hair.

Eventually Rhaena has finished readying her for bed and all Baela can do is keep staring into the fire as her sister tucks her into bed as though she were still a child. She keeps watching the flames as her sister quietly leaves the room. Keeps staring for however long she is gone until Rhaena returns and gathers her in her arms.

Baela used to hold Rhaenys like this when her little daughter had trouble sleeping.

She closes her eyes.

____________________________

She opens her eyes.

One of her maids must have opened her window; there is a sea breeze hitting drifting through the room, cooling it.

Baela doesn't know how long she has remained in her bed. Meals have been brought to her, Rhaena and Alyn taking turns coaxing her to sit up and eat pieces of them. She refused them more often than she acquiesced. Everything has blended together into a haze of grief as thick as the morning fog over Blackwater Bay.

Baela lays in her bed, staring blankly into the dwindling embers in her fireplace.

Long after the embers have stopped heating her room and she begins to shiver, Baela finally heaves herself out of bed. She goes to her sitting room in search of warmth. The fire, as dim as it is, casts a dim light around the room.

This sitting room was one of Rhaenys' favourite places to play. Her daughter would on the plush carpet in front of the fireplace and make her toys act out her favourite songs and stories from sunrise to sunset when she was allowed. She would sit in front of Baela's preferred chaise and spend hours having her wooden toys recreate the adventures of her grandfathers while her mother did her hair. Rhaenys hated when anyone other than Baela did her hair, and how could she not indulge her daughter?

Baela sits on the floor, back against the chaise, next to her daughter's spot. Sitting here looking into the space as filled with her daughter's absence as it had been her presence feels like her heart is tearing in two all over again. It had been just a moon before that her daughter's laughter had filled the keep. After all that house Velaryon and Driftmark especially had lost during the war, it seemed that watching as their heir grow from a quiet babe to a joyful child helped them build themselves back up too. 

That's almost certainly the reason Baela was able to turn her eyes from what she lost to what she still has. Still had.

Rhaenys is dead.

She has been returned to the same sea where her grandmother, grandfather, and great-grandfather rest with all the Velaryons who came before. The same sea where her father rests.

Baela collapses against the chaise under the weight of her grief, head falling against the cushioned seat. She has so little left in the world. Her sister is all that truly remains of the life she had lived before the Usurper and his Green dogs took everything from her. And even then, her sister had her new Hightower husband, was planning to start a family with him.

And wasn't that a kick in the teeth? Rhaena had moved forward, was able to build herself a future and put the scars left by the Greens behind her enough to marry the son of the Hightower whore's cousin. Baela would never begrudge her sister what happiness she could make for herself, but still the bitterness remained. When Baela had lost Jace, it was all she could do to focus on the war effort, on running Dragonstone while more and more of her family fell one after the other. To focus on their unborn babe. The last piece of him remaining in this world. It felt as if there was no way to move on from the scars left behind by the world even as her daughter grew, even as her siblings put the past behind them and made a future for themselves. All she could do was focus on her daughter and building her a future.

Now all that is left was Baela herself. Alone on Driftmark, with a husband who is her friend and kin but nothing more. Who had married her and who she had married to protect Rhaenys and herself from that damned council of regents after her grandfather's death. Who didn't love her as anything more than friend and kin either.

It seems that all Baela is anymore is a ghost of the past, haunting the halls of her family.

She forces herself up, suddenly filled with a manic, energetic need to just move. She doesn't know to where but she knows she needs to. She walks and walks, leaving her rooms and walking familiar paths that she would take Rhaenys through. On days where her daughter had no energy to play but the maester said she needed to move, to exercise.

Baela walks through the halls of her husband's keep for hours, until the skies outside start to brighten. Her trail has led her back to her chambers.

The only remaining part of the path is to enter her daughters room. The nursery attached to Baela's chambers that Rhaenys would now never outgrow.

She stares at the door.

Breathes in.

Opens it.

The room is just as it had been when her daughter was last there.

Baela stumbles her way to the little bed, with it's Velaryon teal canopy decorated with silver seahorses and pale green and olive green dragons; Moondancer and Vermax. Rhaenys loves stories of her parents' dragons. Loved stories of her parents' dragons.

She kneels next to the bed as she had done so many times when putting her daughter to bed. The very last time Baela had knelt here had been the night Rhaenys died.

Baela cries. She cries for her daughter, for her little girl partial to stories of adventure and love. Who looked at the world with a wonder her mother couldn't manage anymore. Her daughter who was so good. Her daughter who deserved more than the world that was left for her by the generations before her.

Baela cries and cries and hopes her daughter forgives her for all she couldn't give her.

Eventually, she has no tears left and all she feels is numb.

She stares at her little daughter's little bed and with newly clear eyes she can see a lump under the covers that was not meant to be there. Baela reaches a shaking hand out and pulls back the blankets, revealing a wooden dragon toy. Her daughter's very favourite wooden dragon toy, carved and painted into and the image of Vermax by Baela's grandfather during her pregnancy. There was a matching Moondancer figurine made for Rhaenys after the war ended.

Her daughter hated to go anywhere without her Vermax and Moondancer.

She would cry, heart wrenching sobs, whenever they weren't there when it was time for her to sleep.

They were both meant to be in her coffin with her.

She was never supposed to be without them.

Baela takes the wooden Vermax. She feels as if she is underneath the waves where her daughter rests. Where her toy was meant to rest with her.

She gets up and walks the path to Driftmark's cliffs. The sun has begun to peak over the horizon, the morning fog over the Blackwater beginning to illuminate.

The spring air was already warming as the day began.

She needs to return Rhaenys's toy.

One foot in front of the other, Baela walks to the edge of the cliff where her daughter's coffin had been pushed into the waves.

The waves crash harshly against the cliff side. Her grandfather always said when the water was like this that the Bay was angry. At them, at the king, at everyone, Corlys didn't know - just that this was the weather when the Bay would drown any who thought themselves above her anger.

The Bay's waters throw themselves higher and higher against the cliffs, as if reaching for what is missing from their most recent burial.

The toy feels heavy in her hand. The hollow absence of the small hands that should be holding it instead of Baela is heavier than anything else Baela could imagine. She could almost feel it dragging her down down down the cliff, towards the crushing waves.

The bay burns red with the morning light, furious, hungry.

"Baela!" Rhaena's shout cuts through the roar of the waves, panicked.

Baela closes her eyes.

Of course her sister comes. Rhaena and Baela have been a set pair since the womb. They were together through their childhood in Pentos and they were together until they were all that was left of the main line Velaryons. Of course Rhaena comes to the last place Baela wants anyone to be.

"Baela! Baela, stop!" Rhaena yells, voice cracking as she sprints up the path with her skirts tangling in her legs.

"Get away from the ledge!" A second voice, ragged with desperation joins her sister. Alyn. Breathless, horrified, stalwart Alyn.

Baela opens her eyes.

Her gave fixes on the Bay. The waves reach towards her.

"She cannot sleep without her Vermax," Baela murmurs, uncaring if they can hear her over the crash of the bay against the cliffs. "I can't leave her without it; She'll be frightened."

"Step away from the edge," Rhaena begs, voice quivering. "Baela, please."

Baela does not. She stares at the waves her daughter rests below.

"We didn't put him in with her. Rhaenys will think I left her. She'll think-" Baela's breath breaks with a sob.

"Baela," Alyn's voice is soft behind her, yet still ragged with emotion, "come back from the edge. We can give it to the sea together. You don't have to-"

"I do." Baela finally turns towards them. Their faces are ashen, pale with emotions she hasn't seen them wear in years. "I'm her mother. It has to be me."

And before either of them can react, Baela steps backwards off the cliff.

They both lunge for her, sister and husband, as she falls.

Down.

Down.

Down.

The last thing she hears before she hits the water is their screams of grief.