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There is only misery when the hedge knight’s fists batter into Aerion’s face. Maybe once there had been pride, perhaps brief enjoyment. A smugness when Ser Duncan hadn’t landed a blow and Aerion was still on his two feet, uninjured.
Hard to say. There’s little time to think about anything when pain blooms in every bone and muscle of his body, vision blurring with red and tongue so swollen he can’t quite get it to move. Everything’s gone hazy, like he’s floating between realms, body still alive and in pain, his mind somewhere else.
I yield. I yield. Please stop it. Please.
His tongue stays still. Not quite enough air in his lungs to draw in a breath. The hedge knight is heavy.
“-erion!”
His hearing comes and goes, high-pitched buzzing like there is a bug against his eardrum. Perhaps he’s dead already, or on his way there. Perhaps that’s why he’s hearing his name called out like that, his brain trying to convince itself it hasn’t failed.
“Aerion!”
His lips quiver, dirt and salt and iron trickling down the back of his throat, threatening to suffocate him. “Pa–“
“My boy!”
“–pa,” Aerion pushes out, staring unseeingly at the grey sky, hidden by the fuzzy silhouette of a giant. “Papa.”
He wants his papa. He hasn’t called him in that in years, not since he outgrew his fear of the dark and no longer needed to climb into his parents’ bed and his father’s sturdy arms. At some point he’d stopped being his papa’s boy, started being his father’s son.
A tear slips down his dirty temple, slides into his ear.
“I yield,” he whispers and the pain relents, if only for a moment. The sharpness of a fist is gone, the throbbing of a bleeding lip stays. Now that he remembers the words, he can’t stop saying them. “I yield, I yield–“
The weight is gone, his helmet tugged off. There are hands on his face, frantic voices above him. He can’t see anything.
“Open your eyes, little dragonfly, open your damn eyes.”
He blinks them open, braves through the sting. His father’s here. He’s safe. “Papa.”
His father’s speaking, but not to him. Aerion widens his eyes until the film covering his vision clears, only a bit. His father’s white hair is a mess, almost like it used to be in the middle of the night when his pillow mussed it up and Aerion did the rest, playing with the strands while his father’s hand, big and steady, caressed his tiny back.
A smile tries to tug at Aerion’s lips, but the pain keeps it from fully forming.
“Papa,” Aerion attempts, garbling through the thickness in his throat. His father looks at him and he looks strange, face twisted in an odd shape. Like he’s afraid. “Pr– proud?”
If he dies, he wants to… he needs to know. His father’s been short with him, ever since Mother went. Aerion wants in his arms again, he doesn’t want to be a disappointment.
“Stop talking, Aerion, you’re bleeding out,” his father bites out harshly. Aerion hadn’t realized. He doesn’t really feel anything anymore. “Where is the maester, he’s growing cold–“
Uncle Baelor on his other side, talking to Father in a low voice, both of his hands pressing on Aerion’s groin. Why?
His vision dims again, but this time his eyes are still open. Black dots swim and twirl until he scarcely sees anything. He wants to see his father’s face again. He wants to be little again, when he had his father’s love and didn’t have to fight tooth and nail for a crumb of attention.
Seems even dying won’t keep his father’s eyes on him.
All noise cuts out for a fraction of a second, only an isolated ringing echoing in his ears. Someone slaps him, his face snaps to the side. Fingers on his chin, rattling his teeth.
Why are you doing this, he wants to ask Father, but his lips have frozen, like it’s winter and he’s wandered out without his furs again. There is no fire to warm him up this time, no familiar hands cupping his to get the blood flowing.
The ringing cuts off like the strings on a puppet.
Aerion’s head lolls to the side.
__
Maekar stares at the bandaged hand lying on top of the covers. A single candle lights the room while rain beats against the window, the night stretching dark beyond the pane.
Aerion’s face is barely recognizable under the dressings. They’ve cleaned the blood off, but there’s nothing they can do about the swelling.
It strikes Maekar suddenly how young his son looks, laying there in deep slumber, chest barely rising. Aerion has always been slight in stature, face sweet and softer than the petals on a rose. Dyanna had remarked once, holding their son in her arms, how beautiful he’d surely grow to be.
There is no denying Aerion’s beauty, the fragility in the slope of his nose and the gentle curve of his spine. While his coloring’s all Maekar, he inherited none of his father’s brute strength, none of the roughness and grit.
He’d always thought it a blessing. He’d gladly dressed Aerion in soft silks and carried him when he complained of sore feet. He hadn’t wanted his son to know the unforgiving nature of battle, the coldness that slips into the bones after taking a life and never leaves.
Where Aerion had learned cruelty regardless is a question Maekar has asked himself over and over again. Whether his own inability to discipline his son the first time he found a dead bird in his room had set off something he had never been able to course-correct.
His baby boy, his youngest for many years before Aemon was conceived. How could he have ever looked at that small face and laid a hand on it?
Maybe if he had, they wouldn’t be here now.
Maekar trails his eyes along the bare arm to the prominent collarbones and thin shoulders, up to that small face that’s now older in age, but still bears the innocence of youth. Aerion has grown to be unkind, but there isn’t a world in which he’d rather see him dead.
The terror that had gripped his chest at seeing Aerion in the mud, so limp he’d looked lifeless, it’ll stay with Maekar for a long time, perhaps for the rest of his years.
A shadow falling over Aerion announces the presence of another, but Maekar had sensed him the moment he’d walked in. His brother has a gravity about him that tends to fill the room before him.
A hand, comforting and familiar, grips his shoulder. Maekar closes his eyes and lets the warmth settle in his bones. They might have fought on opposite sides yesterday but this is his brother. There is no one else he would’ve trusted to hold Aerion when it became clear Maekar’s strength had betrayed him and his legs would not carry.
Baelor had gathered his nephew against his chest and carried him to this room. He’d let Maekar collapse on the other side of the bed and grasp uselessly at his son’s hand while he wetted a rag and wiped the grime off the boy’s face tenderly.
“How is he doing?” Baelor asks now, voice pitched low. When Maekar turns to look, Baelor’s eyes are trained on Aerion’s still figure.
Maekar cannot read the look in his face. “The same. Suppose that’s better than the alternative.”
Baelor squeezes his shoulder and smiles briefly before stepping away. Maekar misses his touch already. “He will heal. He fought bravely, you ought to be proud.”
“I would rather he hadn’t fought at all,” Maekar mutters. “I feel many things, pride is not among them.”
“Aerion is a hurricane, sometimes you have to let it storm and pray it wears itself out.”
“You can keep your metaphors. He’s a damn disaster,” Maekar huffs, burying his face in his hands. He feels tired beyond his years. “He is not well in mind. I don’t know what to do with him outside locking him in my room and keeping him where I can always keep watch.”
“That’s no choice for a father to make,” Baelor says, reaching out to trace featherlight fingertips over Aerion’s hair. “Perhaps he’s learned his lesson. I find losing in such manner often grows humility.”
“I doubt my son knows what the word means.”
Baelor hums. “Children. We love them despite the headaches they cause us.”
Maekar chuckles without humor. He hasn’t known a day of peace since his children were born. “Well, he’s alive at least. Won’t walk for a week, most likely.”
They share a smile and Maekar is glad his brother doesn’t mention his red-rimmed eyes, though he knows he’s noticed.
“And we’ll all thank the Gods for that,” Baelor teases, grasping Maekar by the back of his neck. He bends down to press their foreheads together and Maekar dips his chin to his chest, closing his eyes to treasure the closeness. “I know I cannot convince you to leave him, but please, brother, get some rest. He’ll be here when you wake up.”
But will he be alive? Will his heart be beating when I lay my hand upon his chest?
Still, he nods. Exhaustion nips at his heels and threatens to drag his eyelids close. Now that his son is no longer bleeding out and garbling incomprehensible gibberish in the mud, the adrenaline has left him weak.
He’ll see Aerion’s sightless eyes trying to lock onto his in his dreams, he’s sure, or maybe the way he’d drooled blood onto Baelor’s shoulder while Aegon tried to support his father’s steps behind them.
Better than seeing him dead, Maekar supposes. He reaches out to grasp Aerion’s cold hand in his and shudders. Dragons ought to never be this cold. He blankets the small palm between both of his own and brings it to his lips.
Children, indeed.