Work Text:
Maekar’s children are an odd bunch.
It’s not that he doesn’t try, truly; Baelor knows this. He tries, doubly so since Dyanna’s death, and he’s raising them as well as he possibly could. It’s just that it clearly doesn’t stop them from being as they are, for better or for worse, and it’s only when he brings them all for their first visit to Dragonstone that the entire picture of them becomes a little clearer.
The majority of them are too young to still have much of a personality to them other than loud and everywhere, but it’s the older pair that draw his eye – it had been too long since he’d seen them last and they couldn’t possibly remember him well or at all, so he gets to one knee so that they’re on eye level and smiles. His eldest nephew stares back at him with a cautious, questioning gaze, but the silver-haired boy next to him smiles right back and tugs his brother forward by the wrist.
“Hello. I’m Aerion, and this is Daeron. And you’re my uncle.”
It’s more of a command than a statement and he stifles his laughter. Little children do not appreciate being laughed at, he’s quickly learning with his own son, and doing so upon a first meeting wouldn’t be the best impression to make.
“That I am.” Baelor shoots an amused look up at his brother, wrapped up in herding his younger children through the door, and Maekar shrugs, clearly unsurprised. “Welcome to Dragonstone.”
“Is it true that this is where my egg came from? It’s most beautiful. I keep it in the hearth every night.” Behind his son’s back, Maekar sighs, looking resigned even before Baelor had managed to nod. “I would like to see the rest, if you have them. Daeron said—”
“Ah, you’ve set him off now,” Maekar mutters, but he doesn’t seem anywhere near as annoyed as he sounds. “Dragonstone. I’ve told him a thousand times not to expect... but alas. He does.”
“Leave him be,” Baelor says, well aware that it’s easier said than done when it’s not one’s own child being disruptive. He watches his nephews as they disappear down the corridor hand in hand, Aerion still talking his brother’s head off. “I’m sure they’ll get used to the place quickly enough.”
“They will,” his own brother assures him. “The place getting used to them may be a different matter.”
In the following days, Baelor begins to understand what he’d meant. It’s not that the children are disruptive, truly: they’re not. They keep to themselves for the most part. They’d been settled a few doors down from his and Baelor had gone to investigate upon hearing muffled crying from Daeron’s rooms, only to find him visited – and soon enough, soothed – by his younger brother. In turn, Aerion – a fiery boy even at such an early age, prone to bouts of emotion he can’t quite handle just yet – only calms at Daeron’s intervention and in time, Valarr had been curious enough at the sight of his cousins’s excursions to join them as they wander about at the foot of the fortress and report back with anything they discover.
“Uncle!” A piercing voice greets him on one such day, followed by the distinctive sound of the entire small group of explorers running through the sand. “Uncle Baelor!”
Having half-heartedly been watching them from afar until now, making sure that they don’t get into too much trouble, Baelor emerges from the shade where the rest of the family is having lunch. “What is it?”
“There are paintings in the caves!”
Oh, dear.
“Aerion, what the fuck did I say about the caves?”
His nephew doesn’t look too troubled; he just leans past Baelor to look at his father and flutter his wide, innocent eyes at him. “That I can only go if I bring someone older, papa. Daeron and Valarr were both there.”
“Now, Aerion, we both know that that’s not what your father meant, don’t we?” The boy looks like he might protest and Baelor pats him on the shoulder assertively, as if they’re in on a secret together. “You’re too clever to pretend to misunderstand like this.”
He takes that a little better, it seems. “Yes, uncle.”
“Did you like the caves?”
“I did. But—”
He watches as the three boys communicate silently, exchanging glances they likely think are subtle. His eldest nephew looks a little pale, he notices now, as if he’d seen something more than his joyful companions and hadn’t liked it one bit. Valarr is the one to speak up, in the end.
“Daeron thought he saw the paintings move.”
“I did see them,” Daeron whines immediately, indignant, apparently in continuation to a conversation they’d already had. “They did move.”
“It was only the light from the torch throwing shadows.”
Aerion shakes his head in disapproval, as if they’re both being indescribably dense. “It was the fire from the torch that woke them.”
“It’s just chalk on a wall!” Valarr protests, but he knows that he’s outnumbered, hesitation seeping into his voice. “They have never moved before you two came looking.”
Daeron’s face turns even more ashen, if at all possible, while Aerion looks thrilled. “So it was us that woke them?”
“They were not moving!”
“They were! My brother wouldn’t lie!”
“All right, easy now.” Out of the corner of his eye, Baelor can see his brother get to his feet and the time for an intervention likely had indeed arrived: both his son and his nephew are getting rather shrill and Daeron looks as if he might vomit any moment now. “That’s enough investigating for today, I think. Let’s go get your lunch, shall we?”
They do, and all three of the children sulk in their own chairs over whatever perceived slight had stuck with them last, and when he chances a look at Aerion across the table, he can see a shard of obsidian clutched in one of his hands, glistening and sharp, only for the boy hides it away as soon as he notices that he’s being watched.
~.~
Summerhall is as lush as ever when Baelor visits next. It had been a while since he’d seen his brother and he had missed him; had missed his occasionally waspish nature and loud, hectic household, unpolished and rough. His relatives are half-strangers to him again; a fact that he’s faced with when he has to reintroduce himself to the youngest among them, who had grown up into their personalities enough to be distinctive.
Or, as it turns out, enough to be a problem.
“He simply refuses,” Maekar says and he sounds disproportionately defeated over something that doesn’t is surely not quite as set in stone as he appears to think. “He only seems to make time for his night terrors and his wine, though the Gods know he’s too old for one of those things and too young for the other. What sort of boy doesn’t want to be a knight?”
“You can force it upon him,” Baelor shrugs, “as many do. In that case there’s always the chance that he’ll embarrass himself, however, and Daeron isn’t your only chance at a tourney favourite.” Down below the impromptu observation deck over the training grounds, Prince Aerion Brightflame – he had insisted upon the name rather heavily – swings at his tutors with the ferocity of someone much angrier than he should be. “They’re not holding back on him, are they?”
“The dragon will not be patronised, he says. I haven’t got the faintest idea where he learnt that word or why he thought that it applies to him.”
“Chances are they were patronising him before. People tend to, when it comes to princes.”
“And that’s how you get princes who think jousting is a chore. Let them have at this one, at least, if not at Daeron.” But there’s a fondness in Maekar’s voice now as he looks down at the boy, and something in Baelor’s chest flutters in uncertainty when Aerion finally pushes the man away with a ferocious battle cry to his father’s apparent delight. If he had written off his eldest as a lost cause, the second son would be there to absorb the disappointment and turn it razor-sharp, and he smiles up at them whenever he manages to draw blood from his opponents, his smile wide and expectant. Maekar offers up his approval enthusiastically enough and that only seems to fuel him for further brutality. It’s a vicious circle, and it only ends when his nephew tires himself out, which takes a considerably long time. His brother’s smile grows wider still. “He’s better off for it. He will be in the lists as soon as he can, and he’ll have his knighthood the moment his age allows for it.”
It’s unlike the two of them to hand over parental advice. His own sons are entirely different from Maekar’s wildly differing offspring and Baelor would usually hold his tongue, but, “It’s unwise to favour someone so dependent on approval so obviously. It will get to his head.” He lets his eyes stray to Aemon and Aegon close by, playing some game on a small board and stealing glances at the training field. “It will get to theirs, too.”
The little aspiring knight takes after his father to an astonishing amount, Baelor realises just then – Maekar has the same mulish, stubborn look in his eyes as he frowns and pretends to misunderstand. “Good. He and Daeron are the oldest among them. They can serve as all kinds of examples, I would think.”
~.~
He comes to see his nephews more often after that, as they do earn their knighthoods and are pushed into the tournament circuit with the complete lack of grace that had been expected. Daeron is about as interested in the proceedings as a man grown as he had been as a child, which is to say not at all, and Aerion leans into the spectacle of it so heavily that it’s almost excessive. No one minds too much when it’s other nobles that he’s unhorsing, especially when his brother had taken himself out of the competition on his very first go at it yet again, but there are slips in his behaviour that only seem to spring up when his father isn’t around. The help finds all sorts of names for them – he’s in his temper or the prince is having an episode or it’s only one of his moods again – but it’s all the same; aimless, pointless cruelty and anger with no clear origin, explosive and dark. Baelor finds him in his temper by following the trail of overly jumpy servants right into the stables.
“Uncle,” his nephew smiles, pleasant and utterly vacant. “I hope you enjoyed the demonstration as much as I did.”
“How is your brother doing?”
He shrugs and grits his teeth. “As always. He’ll drink those bruises away by nightfall, don’t you worry.” His hands on the reins are forceful as he frees the horse from its opulent headdress. “After Father is done with him, that is.” Those furious eyes turn on him next, accusatory and darkened with something Baelor can’t quite name. “You have to understand that this was all inevitable.”
Somewhere out there, Daeron is being berated over a harmless failure. In here, his little brother is working himself into another fit. “Can you— help me understand?”
“He had dreamt it.” Another challenging look, as if he’s daring him to mock the concept of it. “A dragon dream, not whatever it is that frightened little knights have nightmares about before a tourney. Not night terrors.”
“All right.” But it’s not all right. It never had been. He remembers them as children; weeping echoing off of the corridors of Dragonstone, dancing shadows on the cave walls, haunted eyes on a face too young to hold the burden it had faced. “He dreamt of falling off of his horse?”
“He dreams of many things. He doesn’t share quite as many of them as he used to, but I remember all the ones he does share. Who else does he have to tell them to, if not me? It’s madness to those not of the blood.” He shakes his head, as if to himself. “Or the ones of the blood, too, perhaps. I know what you think of us.”
The accusation, sudden and misplaced in the midst of a meandering tirade, catches him off-guard. Baelor frowns. “I don’t think anything, nephew. It’s why I’m asking.”
“Don’t lie. We were always a bad clutch of eggs; I’ve heard the help say it, and the hatchlings that we grew into are not any better.” It’s unlikely that any of those words had left a servant’s mouth – certainly not in that order – but Baelor allows it. It is, after all, a temper – something to pass through the boy so that he can be released from it in the aftermath. “It’s a ridiculous claim, of course. The world has yet to see a dragon without use; not in its heart. Daeron isn’t likely to remember, or he might hope that I don’t; we were very young. He woke up screaming and told me that I would live to see myself breathe fire. I’ve known since then that there is a reason for all of this. If only anyone were to listen.”
He is mad, Baelor thinks, heart sinking, as mad as his brother and madder still. Something inside him aches – for Maekar, for the frightened, confused young men that their house had made of his nephews, for the blood that had burdened them so. “This world relies on our decisions,” he says at last. “Not on dreams and prophecy, though it was dreams that brought us to the top of this realm.”
“You will rule over the realm yourself soon enough, uncle,” Aerion says, a chilling sort of calm settling over him as if the ire from before had never been there. He sounds almost loving now, nearly as it had been when he’d been a child, but that affection had fractured and broken and been put back together all wrong, the wind howling through the cracks of it along with the sunlight that bleeds through. He leaves the horse be and steps closer, one hand bracing on Baelor's chest so that he can lean in and whisper in his ear, sending a terrible, unwelcome shudder of uncertain anticipation rushing through him. He's close enough to kiss; to only embrace, even. Close enough to kill. “It wasn’t dreams that flew us here, as you well know.” His gaze is dark and hungry, a void that invites any onlookers to step forward and tip over into a fall with no landing in sight. “It was dragons.”
~.~
There is someone in his room.
It had been a long day and a longer night. Mitigating the ridiculous escalation that this tourney had turned into had been hard work to begin with and Aerion had had to go and make an even bigger disaster out of it than it had already been – a clusterfuck, as his brother had so eloquently put it, and one getting worse by the hour at that. Maekar had dragged his nephew away by the collar some time ago, likely to berate him in private, but there’s no undoing the damage. Ser Duncan must be out in the night looking for six champions to back him up, everyone not in a pavilion and into the castle should be long asleep, and there is someone in his room. Guessing who exactly it is, considering how the evening had gone, is not particularly hard work.
“Should you not be resting?” he asks, watching cautiously as the silhouette by the door slinks closer. “I can’t imagine you would like to face a man twice your size in a spectacle for the gods without a moment of sleep.”
“You’d heard of the trial.”
It sounds so pleased – flattered, almost. Baelor narrows his eyes in the pitch black darkness of the room, well aware that his nephew can’t see him. “It’s a little late at night for riddles, Aerion, isn’t it?”
“A trial of seven hasn’t been done since Maegor’s time,” Aerion sighs happily, dropping down onto the bed. “But you know our house’s history better than anyone. You knew what it was right away. I should have guessed.”
There’s a hint of admiration in his tone; the same one that had been present in his eyes earlier as Baelor had taken the time to explain the concept to the hedge knight – the hunger that had been creeping in Aerion’s eyes recently, or perhaps his entire life. He sighs and sits up, facing his guest as well as he can. He had indulged him this long; might as well lean into it yet again if it will mean a less bloody battle for everyone involved tomorrow. “Is there a point to this?”
“There’s glory in the memory of who we are, that’s all.” He falters. “I did not mean for this to happen. My hand was forced; you have to understand. I’ve done this for us. The dragon is not to be mocked—”
“Glory,” Baelor scoffs before he can stop himself. “Perhaps your brother was right to tell you those things when you were a boy; perhaps you can bring yourself to breathe fire. The dragon only ever thinks of what it can burn and trample because it’s a beast. A man should know better than that.”
“Why should we? We’re more gods than men, uncle.” A hand crawls over the covers; closes over his own. “Will you be watching tomorrow?”
“You don’t deserve it.”
“I've forced the gods to witness me," Aerion murmurs, inching closer still, lips brushing against the side of his face as if he's bold enough to say it, but it's only for him to know. "Tell me you’ll be watching.”
He’s mad, Baelor reminds himself, and cruel, and rotten, and he loves you more than words can say, more than he knows what to do with, and if he dies tomorrow, he’ll think it’s for a cause greater than either of you. It’s nonsense, but Aerion is feverish with it, and he lets him have it. It’ll change nothing in the long run, surely; a small mercy for someone quite so desperate for it. “I’ll be watching.”
He can just barely make out a smile in the darkness, ecstatic and relieved, before Aerion leans down to kiss him on the cheek, and just like that – with another squeeze of their joined hands and a bout of terrible, sickeningly sweet fondness – he’s leaving, and he’s gone.