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"Your hair." Baelor exclaimed one night when the two of them were gathered in his candle lit chambers. Valarr turned to look at him with wonder, mismatched eyes meeting the ones similar to his. "It has grown."
Valarr let out a breathless sound, like laughter, and nodded slowly. The task he was burdened with, to write a letter to Matarys, stopped momentarily so he could respond to Baelor. Valarr was a lot like that; pausing things when it was his father who needed something from him.
"It has. Does it look strange?"
He was met with silence for a while - at least a minute - before Valarr heard shuffling behind him. The figure of Baelor towered over him and he had to look up as he'd been occupying Baelor's desk for a while now, just to write that letter.
Baelor's hand, the one that bared his rings, found Valarr's nape and cupped it gently. The swipe of a thumb against his skin made Valarr instantly lean into the warmth of his parent. Because how could one, who was truly loved by his father, find better comfort than in the arms of his own?
The hand on his nape was kind, tangling with Valarr's soft locks, who had indeed grown longer than usual. And since the length had not bothered him yet, nor was the weather too warm for it, Valarr let it.
"Yesterday you had fallen asleep on your desk and a single candle had survived throughout the night. I came in, looking for you, because you had forgotten your dinner." Baelor said without anger- but with familiar fondness. "Dark it was inside. I thought Jena had decided to haunt your room for a moment."
Valarr felt the burning gaze on his nape and, for once, chased it. He looked at Baelor directly, tilting his head back until his neck strained.
"So you do not hate it?" The younger asked again and Baelor laughed briefly.
"No, Valarr. I do not."
He listened to another chair being dragged towards his side and Valarr lowered his gaze to Baelor's hand whereas the elder had done exactly that to sit beside his son. For a moment, none spoke. It was not awkward Because they were not like most. Because while most royalty raised sons for battles and glory and numbers, Baelor raised sons to carry the legacy of bravery, justice and kindness. To carry themselves.
If not for Baelor's birth terms then they would hate him anyways for how he raised Valarr. Not in dragon blood and flames but beneath dragon wings that would not allow injustice to sully his boy's soul.
A hairbrush rested within Baelor's palm, soon, in the colour of dark plums with delicate star designs covering the back of it. He dragged it gently from Valarr's roots down to the ends of his hair, easing out any knot or simply brushing the quaint locks to perhaps make a point.
Valarr felt the brush slide through his hair and stop a few inches higher than his shoulder blade. Oh. "The length agrees with you." Baelor praised in a soothing tone as his fingers followed right after the brushing strokes, smoothing through Valarr's locks and the other truly did not mind that Baelor messed it up again. It only meant that he'd have to stay there a little longer and have Baelor tend to him again, to extend their time together.
Time.
"My armour." Valarr said then, whispering, and drew his hands away from the desk to bring them in his lap. "Why do you have it?" He had not commented on it; why had the pieces of coloured steel, all his, dressed the dummy to Baelor's room at a further corner.
"You know why, my boy." Baelor said calmly but that calmness agitated Valarr deeply, instead of soothing him like other times. When Valarr rose from his seat and turned to him, Baelor did not move.
"It is madness." Valarr snapped at Baelor. "Valarr."
"You are not mad, so why now-" Baelor rose from his seat in return. "Valarr."
"Is this it? Has the Targaryen madness found you vulnerable because you've grown," Valarr fumed taking Baelor by surprise for once that his father could not find the words to respond. "that now you will fight for every single knight facing injustice?"
Prince Valarr did not loose his temper, truly, unless the matter was so of importance. Baelor was of importance.
"Our name has enough taint as it is. That does not give you the right to burden yourself alone!"
"My son." Baelor pleaded.
"It does not give you the right to abandon me!"
"Lykirī, Valarr! Aōle lykemās taoba." Calm down, Valarr. Stop talking, boy.
Baelor had never yelled at him, not once, until that very moment. The High Valyrian rarely left his lips too apart from separate, intimate occasions. Valarr recalled his Uncle Maekar speaking with his father once in high valyrian but Valarr had been too young to understand.
Towards Maekar, the words had sounded soft and loving. But now Baelor did not use them with that same sentiment of affection; he was truly angry. Valarr wanted to not understand him, to be a young boy again that questioned every written word he saw. But Baelor had taught him valyrian well enough to speak and write it.
The deafening silence broke when Valarr spoke again.
"Nyke sȳndrō rȳ ao kepa." I fear for you, father. "Nyke sȳndrō rȳ ñuhor ao māzigon se jēdaghon daor any parent se thi jēda." I fear for your return and to live without any parent in this life, Valarr told him.
Baelor's shoulders sank once he heard the despair in his son's tone. How vulnerable Valarr looked then, pleading with his own eyes for his father to stay away from a battle that did not concern him. But Baelor often disagreed with that statement.
Their chests heaved in unison because both had yelled, both had ached and dreaded this conversation. As much as Baelor had wanted this night to run smoothly and to end it with a soft goodnight to his son, he could not do that because he had made a major decision.
"Deragon rȳ happen rȳ drēje." The trial will happen for justice, Baelor said as he leaned forward; for his forehead to collide with Valarr's. "Skoros drēje ikso served nyke rȳ māzigon ao. Se Matarys." When justice is served, I will come to you. And Matarys.
When Baelor kissed his cheek, Valarr cried.
He did not remember crying before, Baelor could not recall either. Maybe as a babe but not lately, not for years.
To hold his son in pain, through tears he had caused, put shame inside Baelor's heart. It would be easier, he thought, to battle against the largest of men and slaughter them than this. Than to accept the fears he had fed Valarr's heart with.
And so Baelor wrapped his arms around his boy, his sweet son, and touched that familiar hair of his again. "Māzigon inkon nyke." When Valarr whispered to Baelor to come back, with the boy's lips pressed into his shoulder, the Hand of the King ignored his throbbing chest and prayed.
Prayed for the gods to be kind on the morrow.
"Every son quotes his father, in words and in deeds." — Terri Guillemets
"My father was only nine-and-thirty. He had it in him to be a great king, the greatest since Aegon the Dragon. Why would the gods take him, and leave you? Begone with you, Ser Duncan. Begone."
The vast green field smelled like smoke from the ceremonial remnants of Baelor's funeral. Nothing could soothe the ache in his chest now; not Kiera,not the flowers, nor seeing Matarys soon. He knew he was unfair to Ser Duncan. It was not like the man had forced his father to fight by his side, no, because such a reckless decision would come from Baelor's soul alone. Nor had Duncan been the one to propose such a trial either.
But Valarr's anger was all over the place and, strangely, he was at war with himself most. For not being more convincing, for not scheming to neither get his armour back nor bark out stricter orders for another to take Baelor's place. Valarr had not done enough, had he?
And while the guilt ate away his heart as he sat upon that rock alone, he twisted his head to bury it within his cloaks. Baelor's cloaks. The scent of beeswax, from the endless candle lit nights he spent awake, and earth, from hard training, filled Valarr's senses and a silent sob ripped out of his chest.
But the grief made him loud.
Maekar had found him soon and he approached Valarr. The boy had not known bigger grief than today's as his Uncle reached to touch his head and cry also. He heard the murmurs - I am sorry - falling like rain and never stopping. Valarr wished to act worse than he had with Duncan. Maybe scream or push or draw out his sword.
But Maekar also smelled like beeswax and earth and, because Valarr had all the time in the world to question why his uncle smelled like his father, he silently leaned into Maekar's outstretched arm and buried his face to the sleeve of his black clothing.
Ashford felt like a spear lodged into his sides and when Maekar tried to lift Valarr, the boy fought. His long hair thrashed with him, the last piece of him that Baelor had touched and the piece that Valarr would not undo, never cut, again.
"īlon did daor perzdaghon ziry lentor ñuhor bantis dombror." We did not burn him at our home, Valarr said and he did not know if he whispered or yelled it as Maekar held on. "Tembyr thi rhēdesorys sōndagher se īlon." And then Valarr cursed them - May this bloodline end with us - because it was easier to insult the gods and dragons than to lose the other half he ever was.